by Ana Barrons
She pulled back. “It hurts too much, damn you!” Her shout came out as an angry whisper, and for some reason that made her cry harder. She tried to beat on his chest with her one free fist, but she had no strength.
“I know,” he said, his eyes bright with tears. “But I won’t let go. If I could take the pain on myself, I would, but I won’t leave you to feel this all by yourself. Let me feel it with you, honey.”
She collapsed into a sobbing, choking mass, and he held her through it all, even when the nurses and the officer on duty came rushing in to see what he was doing to her, he held on to her with all his strength, and all his gentleness. Because he understood. And because he loved her.
“I can’t stay here,” she said when she finally stopped crying. “I want to go home. I need to go home.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She shook her head slowly. “I have nothing left to give you. I’m all used up, Joe.”
“Then don’t give me anything.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “Let me give to you. I have so much to give you, baby.”
She gazed up into those beautiful, troubled brown eyes. They were wet, and bloodshot, and there were dark rings around them, but they were still beautiful.
“Then give me time,” she said.
Chapter Fifty-One
Mid-September
Joe opened his eyes to the sound of giggling followed by loud shushing coming from the direction of his father’s kitchen. He bunched up the pillow under his head and rolled over, away from the window, from the irrefutable proof that the sun had risen yet again. Damn thing kept doing that, day after day after day, regardless. Parallel universe. That had to be it.
The day Catherine and her parents left to go back to New Hampshire he’d gone into free-fall. He was still tumbling through space a couple of weeks later when Evie died and he’d been forced to land so he could catch Tiffany. Now, thank God, almost six weeks from the day, there was solid ground under his feet—just not the same ground everyone else walked on. In his world, each step was like swimming through molasses, agonizingly slow and tedious, with zero visibility.
He threw his arm over his eyes. Christ.
The screen door banged shut, followed by the telltale clicking and sliding of puppy claws on the hardwood floors.
“Frodo! Here boy!”
Mike’s little voice was music to Joe’s ears. He smiled and took his first deep breath of the day. It had been Mike’s idea to get a puppy for Tiffany after her mom died, and Joe was convinced that having Frodo to take care of had done more for Tiff than all the therapy money could buy. Granted, it was a pain in the ass having to take the thing out to pee in the middle of the night and then clean up when it crapped in the house, but it was worth it to see the joy on the kids’ faces whenever they were around the little mutt.
The giggling and shushing was moving up the hallway in his direction when Joe remembered it was his birthday. In that instant, the pain of a single unfulfilled birthday wish, sent up year after year, stabbed through his heart so sharply it brought tears to his eyes.
I wish for Mommy to come home.
He was thirty-five years old today, and the wish was the same, he realized. Only this year it was another woman he wished for.
I wish for Catherine to come home.
He squeezed his eyes shut as the familiar ache settled in his chest. The footsteps were coming closer, and he didn’t want the kids to come in and find their big strong daddy figure lying there all bummed out and pathetic. He pretended to be fast asleep, snoring a little to make it more convincing. Then the doorknob squeaked and they were in the room.
“He’s asleep,” Mike whispered, plenty loud enough for someone to hear down the street.
Joe snorted for effect.
“Not anymore,” Tiffany said.
“Well, we have to wake him up anyway, or else how’s he going to eat?”
Frodo yipped from the doorway, and a few seconds later wet heat and puppy breath bathed Joe’s cheek.
“Surprise!” the kids shouted.
Joe didn’t move. When he felt Mike’s weight on the bed behind him and a hand on his arm, he exploded out of the blankets with a loud roar and grabbed his squealing, laughing little brother in a bear hug. Tiffany stood holding the tray of food for about two seconds before she set it down on the floor and jumped on the bed. Joe roared and growled and tumbled two shrieking, giggling kids and a yipping puppy around in that bed until he’d expelled enough of his pain and longing through his lungs and could face another day without her.
Half an hour later, full of cheerios and sliced bananas, showered and dressed in jeans and a red-and-black flannel shirt, Joe carried his mug of coffee out to the screen porch. The morning air was crisp and dry, the wood floor cold on his bare feet. Robert looked up from the Herald Sports section.
Joe flopped down across from his father. “So where is your lovely concubine this morning? I had to make my own coffee.”
“Birthday shopping, I guess.” Robert laid the paper aside. “So Perelli’s attorney plea-bargained a single life sentence instead of two or three for handing them Dale French. God help us all if that sick bastard ever sees the light of day.”
Joe took a long sip of coffee and thanked God and Marcus Hall once again for keeping Dale French behind bars until the trial. As Joe had hoped, Weinstein and Hall figured out who had done what to whom after Catherine remembered Ned’s little confession—and the MPD forensics unit dug Blair’s appointment book out of the gutted inside of a tape recorder.
Sam Mitchell had resigned “for the good of the country” after the New York Tribune announced that Perelli’s boss was none other than the vice president’s unofficial right-hand man, but so far French hadn’t blown the whistle on his childhood friend—or on Suzannah, who, on the pretext of a breakdown over her old friend Ned Campbell’s murder, had been hustled out of the country before the shit hit the fan.
Perelli’s testimony against the vice president was all hearsay, and the police simply didn’t have enough evidence to charge Mitchell with a crime, but local law enforcement and the FBI were hot on Suzannah’s trail, though no one was officially calling her a suspect. Joe wondered how long French’s loyalty would hold if he ended up in prison after the trial.
When and if the bastard talked, Joe would relax. Meanwhile, he was keeping his mouth shut.
Robert picked up the News section of the paper and poked at an article. “Some retiree claims he spotted Suzannah on a yacht off one of the Greek Islands.”
“May she rot in hell when they catch her.” Joe glanced at the paper under his father’s elbow and wanted to laugh. “Jeez, Dad, you don’t have to hide the Tribune. We both know their coverage is ten times better than the Herald’s. I read their website when I have the stomach for it.”
Robert grinned a little sheepishly. “Wouldn’t be caught dead subscribing to it, though, would you?”
“No, I’m afraid Frank would come to my house and skin me alive while I slept.” Joe shook his head at the thought of his editor. “I can’t believe he’s keeping me on. I totally screwed him over, fed him lame excuses, even tried to quit. But he’s keeping my ass employed. Anything bad I ever said about him I officially retract.”
“Does Catherine know about this investigative piece you’re doing on post-traumatic stress disorder?”
Joe shrugged. “Not yet.” It was an act, of course. It wasn’t possible for him to have a casual thought about Catherine. Or to dismiss any mention of her with a shrug. He was lucky if she sent more than one-word text messages in response to his daily I love you, are you okay? And he was really lucky if she added a couple of x’s and o’s. She would get in touch, she’d promised. When she was ready. Whenever that would be.
Maybe she wou
ld call him today, on his birthday.
Sure, just like Mom used to.
“She’s nothing like your mother,” Robert said.
Joe stared at him. “That mind-reading stuff is scary as hell.”
* * *
“You okay?”
Pam was wearing the worried frown Catherine had seen since she’d picked her up at the airport. She smiled to reassure her friend. “Just a little nervous about seeing him.” She tugged at the ends of her shaggy hair. “I wish it had grown out a few more inches. But at least the bruises have all faded.”
Pam leaned across the seat of the Explorer and patted Catherine’s hand. “You could be painted green and you’d still look like a goddess to him. And anyway, it’s a cute haircut, especially considering how they butchered it in the ER.”
Catherine took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and stepped out of the car. When she rounded the house the Chesapeake Bay came into view—and she saw him.
He was standing alone on the dock behind the house, silhouetted against the setting sun, hands in his back pockets, gazing out over the water. Catherine’s chest squeezed and her eyes began to fill.
Joe.
She whispered his name, trying it out on her tongue, over and over. Then her legs started moving faster, carrying her toward him, and she was jogging across the wide expanse of lawn, calling his name as loud as she could. He turned. And, oh, God, the expression on his face—
He didn’t move at first, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. As she came closer he began to move, and then he was coming toward her, and he was calling her name in a voice so hoarse she barely recognized it. When they finally reached one another she was laughing and crying and shouting, and she grabbed onto him so hard he stumbled backward and they both went down.
She landed more or less on top, and found herself gazing down into his face. His crows’ feet had deepened, and his cheekbones seemed sharper. He’d lost weight. She stroked a hand over his cheek.
He framed her face with his hands, brown eyes filled with joy and disbelief. “Is it really you?” he whispered. “Or am I dreaming?”
“It’s me. I can’t believe I’m touching you. I’ve missed you so much.”
He shifted so they were on their sides facing one another, his arm cushioning her head. He touched his lips to hers in a soft, sweet kiss, then moved back and searched her eyes again. “How are you? Really?”
“Okay, but not perfect.”
His brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
She answered by wrapping her hand around the back of his neck and pulling him in for a long, deep, soul-touching kiss, the kind of kiss most women fantasized about but few ever experienced. Whatever nerves she’d had about seeing him dissolved in the crisp evening air. Arms and legs twined and tightened and shifted in a frantic attempt to unite and never let go. Lips and tongues plunged and stroked and licked and nibbled, devouring one another in a frenzy of pent-up passion.
“Now I’m perfect,” she whispered against his lips and felt him smile.
“I guess I should have been more careful with you instead of knocking you down,” he said, stroking a gentle hand up her side. “I bet you’re still sore.”
“I am, but I have painkillers for that. There weren’t any pills to make me miss you less. And as I recall I knocked you down.”
He smiled, but his expression quickly sobered. “How are your parents?”
She expelled a long breath. “We’re taking it one day at a time. We’ve accepted that Blair isn’t coming back, and we each have our own regrets about what we might have done to prevent this from happening.”
Some day she would tell Joe about the phone call, the one she had ignored. But not today.
Would anything have changed if she had called Blair back? She would never know. And that—along with the pain of loss—was something she would have to live with for the rest of her life.
Joe cupped her cheek. “I understand.”
That was all. He didn’t try to convince her that regrets were useless, there was nothing anyone could have done. One more reason to love him.
“It was good of you to call Tiffany after Evie died,” he said. “It meant a lot to her.”
She nodded. “We did some long-distance grieving together. Thank God you and your family were there for her.”
“She’s family now too.” He leaned in for another kiss.
The screen door banged, and it took them a moment to register that they were about to be invaded. Joe slid his hands out from under Catherine’s sweatshirt and shifted off her, and she laughed at his fumbling attempt to hide his erection under her hip.
Jasmine and Frodo reached them first, amidst a cacophony of barking and yipping, followed by Mike and Tiffany, who stopped short about ten feet from where they lay, unsure what, exactly, they were seeing.
“Who the heck’s that?” Mike asked.
Catherine pushed herself up into a sitting position, but kept her legs entwined with Joe’s. She never wanted to untangle herself from this man, not physically or in any other way. “It’s me,” she said. “Who the heck do you think?”
“Catherine!” the kids shouted. Mike jumped on her and Catherine wrapped him in a huge hug. Tiffany moved closer and Catherine held out an arm to her. After a moment she sank to her knees with a smile and joined Mike in Catherine’s arms.
“I’ve missed you two so much,” Catherine said with a fierce squeeze.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” Robert boomed from halfway across the lawn.
“I told you,” Pam said in that no-nonsense tone of hers. “It’s Joe’s birthday present. It would have been here sooner but the flight was delayed.”
Catherine whispered in Joe’s ear. “You get to pull off the wrapping at bedtime.”
Joe whispered back, “I honestly don’t think I can wait that long.”
Pam informed everyone that she and Robert had a sudden hankering to take the kids out for pizza and a movie, and that Joe and Catherine would have to manage without them for a few hours. Then she herded the kids and dogs and a shocked Robert back to the house.
Catherine lay back on the grass and wrapped Joe in her arms. They both heaved a sigh, then laughed. She stroked the head resting on her chest. “I’m too contented to move inside right now,” she said. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
“Not even your cottage?”
“Only if you were there.”
They were silent for several minutes, listening to the evening sounds—crickets and squirrels and water slapping the dock, the soft rattle of leaves in the light wind. Joe slipped his hand under her sweatshirt again and cupped her breast.
“I was so afraid I’d lost you for good,” he said.
She squeezed him tighter. “I’m sorry. It took me some time to realize that home, and safety, weren’t all I needed. I don’t want to be away from you anymore.”
Joe came up on an elbow. “I don’t have to live in Washington. I’m beyond ready to take a break from the newspaper business. There are some book ideas floating around in my head. I can write anywhere.” He paused. “Including the White Mountains.”
Relief and happiness surged through her. Maybe there was a God, after all. She stroked his cheek. “Your life has been in Washington for thirty-five years. Do you really want to give that up?”
He pushed the hair away from her face. “You mean more to me than anyone or anything in Washington. I love you with everything I have, Catherine. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He rested his forehead on her shoulder. “Is that what you want?”
She raised his head with both hands and gazed into his eyes through her tears. “I’ll love you until the day I die, Joe. And if that was a marriage proposal, I accept.”
He rolled on top
of her and kissed her hard. “It was,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “Heck, we’ve already got a couple of kids to raise.”
She smiled. “Only two? How about a couple more, starting from scratch? Or will I have to settle for that slobbery little puppy of yours?”
Joe slid down her body, lifted her sweater and kissed her belly. She shuddered with pleasure. “Nothing would make me happier than to see you pregnant with my child.”
“Maybe if we have a girl we could name her Evie.”
Joe smiled. “I’d like that.”
“She was right about you, you know.”
“Evie? About what?”
Catherine held tight to the only man she—like Evie—would ever trust to raise her children. “You’re the most decent man I know, Joe Rossi.”
* * * * *
Forbidden love is just the beginning...
Get hooked on this heart-pounding read from
Ana Barrons!
Wrongfully Accused
Detective Gabriel Hugo has never been able to forget Kate Franklin. Eight years ago he let down his
barriers and made love to her, but guilt and regret tore them apart.
Now she’s the prime suspect in the murder of her
second husband, an ambitious congressman. The FBI wants Gabe to use his connection to Kate to prove her guilt. Unfortunately his desire for Kate is as intense and forbidden as ever. But when the attacks on Kate’s life begin can she trust Gabe to prove her innocence and keep her safe?
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