HEART OF MIDNIGHT

by Fiona Brand

  Joy welled, threatening to overflow the bounds of her natural caution. There were hurdles to overcome before they could be together, she couldn't fool herself on that score.

  She hadn't yet told him about the baby she had lost.

  Gray was possessive, territorial; he wasn't going to like it that she'd kept the pregnancy and miscarriage from him. The fact that he had cut her out of his life wouldn't come into it. Crazy as it seemed, as strong as he was, Gray needed her, needed the reassurance of her complete capitulation.

  It would have to wait, just as she would have to wait for an emotional commitment from Gray. She didn't like leaving the situation unresolved, but they had no choice.

  Words began to filter through her dazed absorption, then entire sentences. Gray was discussing a change of plan, a plan that had included her. She had served her purpose, and now he wanted her out.

  Sam went still inside. She had been set up. Used as bait in a trap to capture Harper, but her usefulness was now over.

  She had become a liability. A distraction.

  A small sound forced its way from her throat. Her arms banded across her stomach. She wanted to curl around the pain, lock it in tight. She had just spent the day making love with Gray. She had told him that she loved him, and even though he hadn't committed himself in the same way, a part of her had hoped.

  Sam stumbled down the hallway. A side door beckoned, and she pushed her way outside, standing in the shelter of a broad patio, gulping in mouthfuls of damp, fresh air. She'd once likened her past relationship with Gray to a roller-coaster ride. That was exactly how she felt now, as if she'd just climbed off a wild ride and was still finding her legs.

  The rain had slackened off to a misty drizzle; the sun was breaking through the cloud in places. Already steam was rising from the smooth emerald lawn, wreathing the tiled patio and pool.

  The door creaked behind her. She knew it was Gray before she turned her head.

  His expression was guarded. "You heard?"

  She nodded.

  "I can explain," he said quietly.

  A small shudder wracked her. She was tempted to say, "I'll bet." She wondered how he would try to manipulate her this time. Sex had been very effective, but even if she wanted to, she didn't know if she could make love again today.

  "If you don't mind," she said, stepping down on to the wet lawn, "I don't want to hear it right now."

  "Dammit, don't clam up on me!"

  Her pulse jumped as she heard him come after her, but she wasn't going to run. There was nowhere to go, anyway.

  He caught her hands, shackling her wrists gently but firmly. "Come inside, Sam, it's still raining and you're getting wet." His voice was pitched low, the entrancing roughness a cajoling purr that somehow still managed to seduce her senses.

  She jerked against his hold. "Don't you dare try and soothe me."

  He was barefoot. He hadn't bothered to fasten his shirt, and it hung open, clinging transparently to his broad shoulders where the misty drizzle had dampened the gauzy fabric. Diamond droplets of moisture were forming on the dark hair covering his chest. Not so many minutes ago her breasts had nestled against that rough pelt. She could see small red marks on his skin, marks she had made.

  Her cheeks heated. Carter had to know what they'd spent the last few hours doing. All of Gray's people probably knew. No doubt it had been in the plan.

  His hands tightened briefly; then he released her. "I'm sorry you were upset by what you heard. I used you, but I couldn't see any way around it unless I kept away from you, and that wasn't an option. I'd stayed away for seven years, I sure as hell wasn't staying away for another seven."

  "You don't have to explain," she said remotely. "I understand why you did it." Even if it hurts that I'm way, way down on that cold list of priorities you have, she said to herself silently. Even if it demonstrates that I may never be first on that list. "Did you organise the photographers?"

  He inclined his head.

  "The clinch looked good. It went well with the headline."

  "The clinch wasn't planned."

  "Just convenient. And the seduction scene? Can you tell me our relationship has nothing to do with setting this trap?"

  "No," he said curtly, "because our relationship has everything to do with it. You were already at risk. Harper had a file on you. It was inevitable that the second he knew we were together, you would join me at the top of his hit list. I've done what I've had to do to keep my family safe – to keep you safe." His voice dropped, roughened. "And that was no seduction scene. You wanted what happened as much as I did. I've never needed a woman the way I need you. I meant what I said, Sam. I want you with me. I want to marry you. If you don't want any part of that, you'd better say so."

  In that moment Sam wished she could say just that, but she couldn't. The unadorned truth was that she wanted any part of Gray that he was willing to give her.

  The singular strength of that notion was like a cold wave slapping her in the face. She loved Gray with a depth and intensity that stunned her. If she could have only a small part of him, then she would take it. She accepted in that moment that he would probably never love her as she wanted him to.

  Sam closed her eyes. "You want everything."

  "Yes."

  The risk, the shattering vulnerability, of her position shook her. If she had been stripped bare and staked beneath the merciless glare of the midday sun, she couldn't have been more defenceless. He was asking too much, but it was already too late. She loved him, and she hurt.

  But what did she have to lose? she thought fiercely. She knew the terrible events that drove Gray, the long years he'd isolated himself from the people he cared for most – from the life he should have been living – in order to protect them.

  She was one of those people.

  That streak of ruthlessness had probably kept him alive in places and situations she could barely imagine; it was an essential part of the man she loved. Even though she was bruising herself against it, she couldn't wish it gone.

  She lifted her chin and met his gaze coolly. "I said I loved you. That hasn't changed, nor is it likely to. I'll go to Sydney, move into your house, I'll even marry you if that's what you really want—"

  "Sam—" He stepped toward her.

  "No! Don't stop me. I haven't finished." She swallowed against the husky rawness of her throat. "There's something I need to tell you, before you go and do whatever it is that you do. Before you go and risk yourself and maybe get killed. You asked me why I left you all those years ago. I only gave you half the truth." She paused, dragged in an aching breath. "I was pregnant. I lost the baby at four months. I miscarried."

  Pregnant.

  Of all the reasons for Sam to run from him, that one had never occurred to Gray.

  Just the thought of Sam pregnant with his child made him weak inside. Then he remembered the day he'd seen her in the park – that had been months later, and there had been no sign of a pregnancy then.

  He swore softly, his hands curling into fists to keep from touching her, from demanding to know more than that bare statement. She would fight him if he so much as laid a finger on her; he knew that as surely as he knew he had to reach past this new barrier.

  Another wall, another damn mystery. She hadn't told him, not one word, not one hint that they'd made a child together. She'd chosen to shut him out of the most intimate of bonds. His hands clenched into fists. If he'd known…

  If he'd known, what then?

  Gray sucked in a deep breath, trying to ease the tightness still banding his chest. He was still having trouble grasping the enormity of what she had hidden from him.

  A baby!

  The concept shook him. Sam had been pregnant with their child. His child.

  Yet, even now, she hadn't wanted to tell him. She had given him her body, agreed to marry him, but still she was blocking him out. Even though he was doing the same to her, through sheer, cold necessity, it made him furious that she could close herse
lf off from him so easily. He felt like a thirsty man in the desert gifted with a handful of water, yet even as he lifted the water to his mouth, it slipped from his fingers, sliding away no matter how hard he tried to hold it, and his thirst, barely slaked, raged on.

  "I lost the baby," Sam repeated in a flat voice. "I wanted her so much."

  More than she'd wanted him.

  Again Gray had to restrain himself from touching her, demanding more than the distant grief in her eyes. It made him crazy to know that she had needed him, but instead of reaching out, she had run from him. Sam's grief was like a punch in the place that used to house his heart. She had buried their child with only her aging, sick grandfather to buffer her against the loss.

  "Dammit, Sam you should have told me," he said flatly. "I should have been with you. You should have let me help you. Me. Not anyone else. If I'd known, I would have married you then."

  "And what?" she challenged. "Stashed me in your house and left me alone for seven years while you went off and hunted your brother's killer?"

  Gray's jaw tightened on a pulse of fury and despair. For the first time he allowed himself to wonder if the hunt for Harper had been worth it, if he hadn't simply created more damage by trying to bring his brother's killer to justice. How much more would they have to lose before it all ended? "Promise me you'll never keep anything like that from me again."

  Sam heard the hurt threading Gray's rough voice. "I didn't mean to keep her from you," she said quietly. "I always intended to tell you, but then I miscarried. When you didn't show I assumed that for you our relationship had ended the moment I left. There didn't seem much point in telling you about the baby."

  Sam studied Gray's face, the light and shadow etching his features so that they seemed chiselled not from stone, but from the very essence of life. There was nothing remote about him now. She realised with a jolt of searing regret that he would have loved her child, their child. She had hurt him. Until she'd seen his grief it hadn't occurred to her that she could do so. "I should have—"

  "No," he said roughly. "No more regrets. The past has taken enough." His hands settled on her upper arms. "It's nearly over, Sam. Just a few more days. If I know you're safe with my family in Sydney, I can finish this without having to worry about your safety."

  Sam stiffened. "I'll go to Sydney. I'll be safe, but you won't be." Even though she knew the question was useless, she still had to ask it. "Why does it have to be you, Gray? Why can't someone take your place like Farrell took mine?"

  He picked up one of her hands, which she absently noticed was knotted into a fist, and enclosed it in his warm grip. "You look so fierce," he whispered, "like a cornered tigress. Maybe you do love me."

  "Answer my question."

  He released her hand. "Harper is my mistake."

  "So you're the only one who can fix it." Her fists thudded into his chest, and he trapped them there. "It wasn't your fault! Harper was the one who pulled the trigger."

  "I didn't pull the trigger," he agreed flatly, "but I may as well have done. Jake and Rafaella died because of my carelessness. Their future, the family they had planned, died with them. Instead of a wedding, my family had to endure a double funeral. But I was still alive. Do you know how that felt? I wanted to live, I was glad to be alive, and Jake was dead because I screwed up."

  As if a veil had been ripped aside, she saw the grief and fury that ate at him, consuming him piece by piece, even as he strove to overcome his feelings with the relentless hunt for Harper.

  The coldness, the remoteness, had become necessary for Gray simply to function. His body carried the scars of the battle he still fought, but those scars were as nothing when compared with his inner wounds. He was clenched tight around that hurt, held in thrall to pressures that would crush a weaker man.

  His strength and will took her breath, made her ache inside with the need to ease the burden. He had hurt her, but his pain was beyond bearing. "You can't bring Jake back." Her mouth twisted in bittersweet memory of her own struggle with death. "He's gone. You can't reach him, and he wouldn't thank you for putting your own life on hold for him. Jake loved you. He would want you to live, not spend your life trailing death."

  Gray flinched. "The cold fact remains that when Harper was moving in on the family I'd sworn to protect, I wasn't doing my job well enough to stop him."

  Sam drew a startled breath. "You were with me." Her stomach clenched with cold dread. "Is that why you walked away from me in the park? Because every time you looked at me I would have reminded—"

  "No." His voice was hoarse. "If you understand only one thing about this whole twisted mess, it has to be that I've always wanted you."

  But he had chosen to keep her separate and apart from the most traumatic event of his life. He was closing her off from what she needed most – him – and stashing her neatly out of the way, where she could be safe.

  Sam pulled away from Gray's hold. He loved his family, and he had loved his brother. She understood that emotion very well, just as she understood his fierce depth of loyalty, but she was only just coming to understand the rest.

  Gray blamed himself for those deaths.

  The blood drained from her face, leaving her feeling chilled, slightly dizzy in the hot sunlight that now blazed down. The sheer force of his will had dismayed her, but now she could see exactly where the iron had been forged.

  And that didn't change her wild need to protect him, both from the external dangers that had already scored his flesh and altered his voice, and from the shadowy internal danger that she was only now beginning to understand. He was a master at closing himself off, at walking away. In some ways they were terribly alike, except that she had learned, finally, how empty walking away could be.

  The necessity that drove his actions was clear, but that didn't change the central problem. Gray had only ever talked about want and need, never love. She had to wonder if the very iron that tempered his will hadn't also encased his heart.

  "Oh, yeah," she said softly. "I understand. Completely. You're so big and strong, you have to take the whole weight on your shoulders. Well, lighten up, Lombard! How could you – or anyone – have guarded against a man like Harper? By your own admission, he's stalking your family! If he hadn't killed when he did, he would have bided his time and killed later. Read the papers! Watch the evening news. These guys make the headlines on a regular basis. If you had kept Jake and Rafaella safe, who would he have got on a second attempt, before you finally realised what he was all about? Tell me who might have died in their place? And who would have got the blame for it?"

  Chapter 14

  After Gray left, it was eerily quiet. Sam unpacked, then made herself a sandwich. Carter had moved his gear into one of the bedrooms and was now out in the garage checking something to do with alarms.

  Her hands shook as she sipped an ice-cool glass of milk to help the small bite of peanut butter sandwich she'd just swallowed go down. The tremor was half exhaustion and half a growing tension over what she knew she had to do before she turned her life completely over to Gray.

  Doggedly she worked her way through the sandwich and the milk, and gradually the tremor subsided. The food steadied her, easing the faintly sick feeling in her stomach.

  She was leaving tomorrow. Gray had organised her flight before he had left. It was close to Christmas, so he hadn't been able to book a seat on any of the airlines, because they were all full. That hadn't been a problem. Gray was a Lombard; he had simply chartered a private jet. Carter would fly with her to Sydney, then return to Auckland once she was handed over to whoever was assigned to bodyguard her.

  Tomorrow she would meet Gray's family, make her home with them while Gray stayed here and…

  She went cold at the thought of how many times he must have put himself in harm's way, as he was doing now. A stubborn part of her couldn't believe that everything would turn out all right, that after all this time there would be any kind of a fairy-tale ending.

  She gave h
erself a mental shake. This was the kind of thinking that had sent her running once before. Loving Gray might terrify her, leaving the Royal, her friends, everything she knew and had clung to, might hurt, but even hurting, she wasn't willing to go back.

  She took a deep breath. In order for her to go forward, there was one thing she had to do. Alone. Without Carter dogging her footsteps – or perhaps vetoing her decision altogether – without the possibility of the presshounds finding her and uncovering the most private piece of her past. Something she should have done a long time ago. Gray hadn't left her time for much in his light speed schedule; if she was going to act, it had to be now.

  Just the thought of what she had to do made her heart race. She wasn't foolish enough to discount the risk she would be taking, even if she knew that risk to be minimal. When she had unintentionally eavesdropped on Gray's plans for her earlier on in the day, she hadn't missed Carter's relief at being released from what he termed "babysitting" duty when Sam was eventually handed over in Sydney.

  No one knew where she was, except Gray and his men. If anyone was watching her, they would be watching the policewoman at the hotel.

  Methodically Sam rinsed her dishes and placed them in the dishwasher, then wiped up the crumbs she had made, forcing herself not to hurry, to keep her movements controlled – if she gave way to the panic that beat inside her, Carter would know something was wrong, and he wouldn't let her out of his sight When the kitchen was clean, she went in search of Carter's truck keys, praying he didn't have them on him.

  He had left his truck keys on the dresser. She slipped them into her pocket. Next she collected her handbag and stored it in a cupboard in the kitchen, where she could grab it quickly on her way out. She scribbled a note informing Carter that she would be back in a couple of hours and left that in the cupboard with her handbag. She would leave the note in plain sight on the table when she left.

  When she had done everything she could to ensure a speedy exit from the house, she hunted amongst her belongings for a couple of old T-shirts she wouldn't miss and jammed them down into the S-bend of the toilet bowl until they were out of sight. She washed her hands, then pulled the flush until water spilled over onto the tiled floor. When she was satisfied that the situation looked dire enough to keep Carter occupied for the few minutes it would take her to make a clean getaway, she went to find him.