A frisson rippled through her. “I just got in a few minutes ago. I’m sorry. I didn’t get a chance to call you before dinner. We were pretty busy.”
“Are you okay?”
She reached out for a pillow and pulled it over her lap. “It was a…tough night.” Her throat felt tight. “You saw the news?”
“Yeah.”
So he knew the child had been found too late. Three tiny years of innocence obliterated in an instant because of one man’s malevolent insanity.
“Have you had to deal with other cases like this?”
Where a child was killed by an abductor? “No. We’ve had more than a few that ended up being a recovery rather than rescue.” And it never got any easier. “But nothing like this.” Accidents versus heinous intention. “The FBI was there. Police crawling all over the place. Local, county, state. Must’ve been around seventy-five searchers.” Her eyes ached, dry and so tired. “It was…awful, Cameron. We found her poor little body stuck under a bush near a highway rest stop.”
“Where were you?”
She pinched her eyes closed. “On the other side of the highway. A witness had called in a report of a driver pitching something out their car window—a car similar in description to one used by the suspected abductor—in that area. We were in tight critical spacing. Nathan—he’s the youngest SAR—found the body. He’s pretty wrecked.”
“Jesus.”
She wished she could get the image out of her head. “I’m sorry I didn’t call and cancel dinner.”
He made a rough noise. “Come on, Faith. Do you think that really matters?”
“It always had to Jess.” She hadn’t meant to admit that.
“Your ex? He was a firefighter, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” She didn’t recall ever telling him that fact.
“You’d think he’d have had a better grasp on priorities.”
Faith carefully exhaled. “He didn’t figure I needed to be out saving anything when he was already doing it himself.” No. Jess had wanted her home having his babies. And when she’d failed in that regard, he’d traded her in for a better model.
“Do you want me to come over?”
Forget carefully exhaling. She felt as if her breath were knocked right out of her. “Why?” she croaked.
“Because you’ve had a tough night. You shouldn’t be alone.”
She rubbed her eyes a little harder. “You can’t leave Erik alone. Particularly at this hour.”
“Then call someone. Your brother. Or your friend who owns the sporting goods store. Tanya, right?”
It undid her that he recalled such specifics. “Chris is undoubtedly on duty, and if he’s not, he’s grabbing what little sleep he manages to get between the hospital and the ranch. And Tanya’s still dealing with Toby, her son. He’s had the flu for the past few days.” She opened her eyes, but the image of that poor toddler seemed seared into her brain, overriding the pale, sage green bedroom wall she’d painted just a few months earlier. “I appreciate the concern. But I’m fine.”
He made a soft, disbelieving sound. “Right.”
Her spine stiffened a little. “I’m not some fragile thing, Cameron.”
“No. You’re human,” he countered evenly. “And this has nothing to do with your competence or abilities. Which, frankly, might intimidate the hell out of some people.”
“But not you?” Some portion of her mind realized that she was shaking. “Never mind. I didn’t mean that.”
“You make me feel a lot of things, Faith. Intimidated isn’t one of them.”
Her eyes stung unmercifully. “Cameron—”
He swore softly. “What the hell are we doing here, Faith?”
She trembled harder. “I don’t know. I, um, I’m going to take a shower.” Maybe she’d be able to warm up, then. “And go to bed. Where you should be. You have school tomorrow.” The clock face mocked her. “Today,” she amended.
“Faith—”
“I’m fine,” she spoke quickly, over him. “Good night, Cameron.” She quickly leaned over and hung up the phone.
Then she stayed there, hunched over the pillow bunched against her abdomen. But he didn’t call back.
And after several minutes of silence, she finally stopped expecting the phone to ring again. She went into her bathroom and took her shower, just as she’d said she was going to do. And even though the room was dripping with steam when she finally stepped out a long while later, she still felt cold inside.
She pulled on an ancient pair of sweats, wrapped herself in her thick robe for good measure, and went back into the living room. She flipped on the television. But the only things on were an infomercial touting the miraculous effects of a hair tonic and all-night news.
She wasn’t up to seeing a news report of that night’s horror so she settled for the infomercial, even though she didn’t think she was going bald anytime soon. But the low noise was better than silence and she went into the kitchen. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and her stomach was protesting, but the thought of food was more than she could stand. She eyed the bottle of wine Tanya had brought over when they’d had dinner together last week. But when she reached into the refrigerator, she pulled out the jug of milk instead.
Hot chocolate was a better choice.
She pulled out a saucepan, sloshed milk into it and stuck it on the stove to heat.
Her head was pounding.
In a bowl, she mixed up real cocoa with sugar, a dash of salt and a splash of vanilla, the way her mom had always done when she was little.
The bottle of aspirin sitting on the kitchen table was empty. Her silent reminder to buy another when she managed to get herself to the store. Fortunately, she had a stash in her first-aid kit in the SUV. She turned down the heat under the milk, pushed her feet into the fur-lined boots sitting by the door and went outside to retrieve it.
She found the bottle just where it was supposed to be, and shook out a few pills into her palm. Cold night air whisked over her wet head so she hurriedly locked up the SUV again and turned back to the sidewalk.
Cameron stood in her path.
She swayed. God. Now she was seeing him in her mind, too.
Only hallucinations didn’t reach out and grab your elbows with strong, remarkably gentle hands.
Did they?
“What the hell are you doing out here?” His voice was rough.
She opened her palm. “Aspirin.”
He exhaled noisily, and closed his arm over her shoulder. “Let’s get you inside. You don’t even have on a coat.”
She found herself hustled up the walk. She wasn’t sure he hadn’t just lifted her right off her feet, when it came down to it. And she was still staring at him when he let go of her to close her front door.
He set the tennis racket he’d been holding in one hand on the narrow table by the door where she always dropped her keys and mail, and shrugged off his shear-ling coat, which he dumped over the top of her weighted-down coat tree. “What do I smell?”
As if he’d been there a dozen times, he walked right past her into her small kitchen. She followed, seeing him pull the saucepan off the heat in just enough time to keep it from bubbling over. He turned the heat off.
In her preoccupation, she hadn’t turned the heat down. She’d turned it too high.
“What are you doing here? Where’s Erik?”
He opened one cupboard. Then another. Found a glass that he filled with water and handed it to her.
She stupidly remembered the aspirin in her hand, and swallowed it quickly. Then he took the glass back and set it in her sink.
“Erik’s still asleep in his bed at home,” he finally answered, apparently satisfied now that she’d swallowed her aspirin. “Todd Gilmore came over to stay with him.”
“Todd Gilmore. As in your student, Todd.”
“Yeah. He watches Erik now and then for me.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“No. This is a first. Gilmore’
s a night owl, though. Brags about it every day when he’s falling asleep in my second-hour math class. I knew he’d still be up when I called him, and he was. Plus, he lives in the house next door to me,” he reminded her.
She could feel her face heating under the steady weight of his gaze. “Does he know you were coming over here?”
“He knows.”
“Great.” She could just imagine the gossip that would fly now. “I told you I was fine, Cameron. I don’t need your…coddling.”
He was standing with his back to her stove, a good ten feet from her. “What do you need, Faith?”
She stared at him, mute, while too many things tangled inside her head, her chest, to be let free.
He made a rough sound, and crossed the kitchen in two strides. “Think you may be a harder case than I am,” he muttered, and pulled her against him, tucking her head against his chest.
She shuddered. His warmth, his strength, his…comfort…nearly more than she could bear. “Cameron.” She didn’t know what else to say.
He just held her.
And a tear leaked down her cheek. She rubbed her cheek against his soft beige shirt. His fingers slowly threaded through her hair. And another tear fell.
“I don’t even know if they’ve caught the guy,” she murmured at last.
“They did. News was full of it.” His lips pressed against the top of her head. Her forehead. Then he cupped her face and tilted it back to his gaze. His thumb slowly brushed over her damp cheek.
“I hope they hang him,” she said thickly.
His palms were warm on her face. And there was no judgment in his dark gaze. He just slowly tucked her back against his chest, rocking ever so slightly. “How’d you ever end up in search and rescue?”
She curled her hands over his biceps and closed her eyes. “Because of Jess,” she admitted. “My ex-husband.” She was silent for a long moment, soaking in the warmth of Cameron’s body through her completely unappealing robe and sweats. “I was actually going for a teaching degree.”
“In?”
“Elementary education.” She sighed when his fingers started threading through her hair again then rubbed gently against her scalp.
“Then what?”
She lowered her head a little when his fingers found her nape and massaged there. Heaven. “Jess was with the fire department already. We were out on a departmental picnic and a child got separated from his folks.” She sighed, angling her head a little more. Oh, he was good at that. “I’d always been into outdoor activities. Camping. Sports. It’s one of the things Jess and I had in common.” Things that hadn’t been enough to hold them together. “After that picnic…I don’t know. I saw what SAR was all about, up close and personal. I changed course a little.”
“Was the kid found?”
She nodded. “Safe and sound and sunburned as all get-out.”
“Were you and Jess already married?”
“About six months by then.” No matter how good Cameron’s hands felt on her, she didn’t particularly want to discuss her marriage. She shifted, lifting her head and his hands fell away, but only to transfer to her shoulders.
Where he found a whole new set of tired muscles.
She closed her eyes, her lips curving despite herself. “You could have a second career,” she murmured after a moment. “Cameron Stevenson. Master masseur.”
“Third career.”
“Right.” Her head had found its way back to his chest. “What was it you did in Denver?”
“Made rich people richer.” His palms slid beneath the robe and the soft, worn terry cloth slid off her shoulders. It bunched loosely around her waist, still held in place by the tie. The collar of her faded gray sweatshirt had long been cut out and his fingers slid beneath it, finding the bare skin of her shoulders.
Her hands slid down his sides, finding purchase in the empty belt loops of his blue jeans. “And you, too?”
“And me.” His voice dropped even lower.
“So, you, um…” She hesitated, then let out a long sigh when his fingertips pressed firmly against her back. He’d reached up beneath her sweatshirt, she realized dimly.
“I…what?”
The robe’s tie finally gave up the ghost and the once-pink terry cloth slid to her feet. His fingers swept down her spine. Found the ache at the small of her back even through the worn-thin fabric of her sweat-pants.
What had she been going to say? “Ah…right. Didn’t go into teaching to make your fortune.”
He laughed softly. “Who does?”
She wasn’t cold anymore. She was melting. From the inside out. “But you changed…oh, that feels good…your, um, mind about making rich people richer?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Why?”
His fingers hesitated for a moment and she held her breath, yearning for him not to stop.
His fingers pressed again, moving in a tight circle right above her rear, and she let out an appreciative sigh.
“I had more degrees than anyone could ever need,” he murmured. “And a client list longer than my arm. I couldn’t keep up with them from here—not when they were spread out all over the states. I was traveling all the time. Gone more than I was here. And after Laura…died—” he exhaled “—not working wasn’t an option. I had to find something to do. And it wasn’t hard to add a teaching certificate to my other credentials.”
He hadn’t turned to teaching until after his wife had passed away. Her hands slid up his torso, exploring the hard ridges of muscle and sinew. “How did she die?”
For a long moment she feared he wouldn’t answer.
His head brushed hers. His mouth touched her shoulder and she felt his lips moving against her skin. “She was out antique hunting. It was raining. Her SUV hydroplaned into a tree. She never had a chance.”
Her hands slid behind him.
“She was always on me about traveling too much. Was afraid with all the flying I was doing that something would happen.” He sighed again. “And she was the one who—” His voice broke off and he lifted his head. His eyes were shadowed. “She wasn’t even fifty miles away from Thunder Canyon. Erik was with her.”
She sucked in a hard breath. “Oh, Cam.”
“He was belted in his safety seat. Laura had always been rabid about that.”
And ever since, he’d been afraid of losing his son, too. No wonder the man was so protective where Erik was concerned.
“I didn’t give her what she wanted while she was alive. So I’m doing it now,” he said gruffly. His hands lowered to his sides and he stepped back. “Living the life she’d wanted.”
She frowned a little. “And what about what you want?”
He was backing up. Until he planted his hands on the kitchen counter on either side of him. “It doesn’t matter what I want. This is what I’m doing.”
She looked at the floor tiles, measuring them off between her feet and his. He couldn’t put more distance between them unless he left the room. “Which doesn’t include doing this,” she concluded. Her voice was barely audible. “Doing…me.”
“Don’t.” In contrast to hers, his voice was sharp. Harsh. “Don’t reduce this.”
She pressed her lips together for a long moment, until she felt vaguely certain that her vocal chords might work. “Have you—” Did she even want to know the answer to this? “Have you been with…anyone since she died?”
His fingertips were pressing so hard against the countertop that they looked white.
And she chickened out. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.” She of all people should know there were some things too private for discussion.
His lips twisted. “If not your business, then whose?”
Which she didn’t know how to take. “I don’t know what you want from me.” She swallowed, and tugged the sagging collar of her sweatshirt back up her shoulder. She had to look a fright.
But his gaze, when it ran over her, told her differently.
A fact tha
t only added to the confusion mired inside of her.
“I want to know that you’re all right,” he said after a moment. “I need to know that.”
Her heart squeezed. “Why?”
He just eyed her. “I don’t know.”
She absorbed that. “I’m…tired.” To-the-bone tired. She bent down and picked up her robe, pulling it securely around her shoulders. “I’m going to bed. I’m fine. And you can lock the door on your way out.”
Chapter Ten
“And you’re telling me that Cameron came over just to make sure you were okay after the search, and then left without…?” Tanya’s head was close to Faith’s, her voice barely a whisper.
Faith dabbed the end of her French fry into the puddle of ketchup on the side of her plate. “He just came to make sure I was okay,” she said evenly. There were four other women seated around the table at The Hitching Post that Saturday afternoon. They were there for their official no-hearts Valentine’s Day lunch.
Tanya had been included only because her husband was still on duty at the station. She wasn’t officially manless, as the rest were.
Frannie Waters, Becka Townsend, Sharona Miles and Diana Crocker had all graduated from high school the same year as Faith and Tanya. Ever since, every Valentine’s Day, those without significant others had gotten together for lunch. Not a single year had passed without at least two of them meeting.
“My soon-to-be-ex golfs with Theo Gilmore,” Frannie said. Her hand was wrapped firmly around a strawberry daiquiri. Her second, and she vowed it would be her last for the day. “And he told me—as he was dropping off our final papers, mind you—that the coach called Todd over to watch that little hooligan after midnight.”
“Erik isn’t a hooligan,” Faith defended, only to wish she’d kept her mouth shut when she saw Frannie elbow Diana, knowingly. That was the problem with old high school friends. They never forgot how to push your buttons.
“Told you she liked the coach,” Frannie singsonged.
“What does it matter,” Becka goaded. “You’ve just spent the past hour claiming that romance is truly dead.”
“Yeah, well, it is.” Frannie lifted her drink. “The trick to keeping romance alive is not to marry the guy when he asks. After the wedding gifts have been put away, it’s all downhill.” Her gaze rounded the table, resting on everyone’s faces. “Am I right?”
All He Ever Wanted Page 13
