The Honeymoon Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  She crossed the gravel road at the same deliberate gait and leaned forward into the wind a little as she reached the soft sand of the dunes. She was having a tougher time walking now, but she still seemed completely focused on whatever inward voices had prompted this midnight stroll.

  If she was dreaming, what was it about?

  Was she imagining their lost child, perhaps following the ghostly image of a three-year-old girl across the shifting, sandy dunes?

  Sam shivered suddenly. He was beginning to feel surrounded by a past that he’d hoped was safely dead and gone. The look in Kelley’s sea blue eyes this evening, when she’d talked about their baby, had forced him face-to-face with things he thought he’d managed to outdistance a long time ago. And now—

  Kelley had reached the end of the ridge of dunes and stopped at the flat stretch of beach.

  Behind her, Sam stopped, too.

  And another wave of memory hit him so hard he could feel it rolling right through him.

  It had been a night nothing like this one, a calm, starry night many miles north of here. Flat country, ranching country.

  And it had been angry voices that had wakened him, not soft footfalls.

  He’d heard his parents shouting at each other, heard his mother’s shrill demands.

  Get out. Get out and don’t come back.

  And the door slamming.

  And the rising dismay in his mother’s sobs.

  At seven years old, Sam had been shaken by the sound of his mother crying. But the idea of his father leaving had alarmed him even more. He’d hurried down the stairs of their little house as quickly and silently as he knew how and wriggled out the loose pantry window the same way he’d wriggled in whenever he’d been out later than he was supposed to be.

  Nobody had noticed him.

  It had been nearly morning—when his father stopped the truck for gas—before Sam poked his head out from under the canvas tarp in the truck bed and announced his presence. There had been traces of tears on his father’s face— had the whole order of things gotten turned upside down in one night? Sam remembered wondering—but J.D.’s broad grin at the sight of his youngest son had made up for everything.

  At least for a while.

  Sam realized he was clenching his hands tight at his sides. It took a surprising amount of effort to flex them again.

  He’d overturned his whole life on that starry night, following one path, running like hell away from the other.

  Was he doing the same thing now?

  He frowned into the windy darkness ahead of him, to where Kelley stood wrapped in her own thoughts, and knew that even if he was, he didn’t have a choice. He’d been drawn after her tonight by something he hadn’t even tried to resist.

  “Kelley.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. The wind was coming directly off the water, blowing Sam’s words back toward the cottages.

  “Kelley, what the hell are you doing out here all by yourself?”

  He could tell by her expression that he’d startled her. But there was something else in her face, too, something that tugged Sam’s memory back to the day she’d sat at the foot of his hospital bed, staring at him with that dazed, questioning look in her eyes.

  She hadn’t cried then. But she was crying now. He could see the tears glistening in the faint light from the Windspray entrance.

  “Ah, hell.” Sam took a step closer to her, then stopped. The fine sand shifted under his bare feet, slipping out from under him.

  Did Kelley want him here? His mind flickered back to the memory of his father’s face lighting up at the sight of Sam curled up in that canvas tarp. His whole life, Sam had never forgotten that feeling of having somebody really want him.

  But Kelley—

  “You shouldn’t be out here.” His doubts made his voice harsher than he’d intended. “You don’t even have your gun.”

  “I don’t care about the gun.” Her voice, normally so honey smooth, was clogged with tears now. “I just wanted to be by myself.”

  Well, that was pretty blunt. But he still couldn’t leave her. And it wasn’t just because he was worried about her safety.

  “You were by yourself in the bedroom,” he reminded her.

  A fresh gust of wind tore through what was left of her decorous braid, and for a moment she looked almost ghostly. Her hair, warmed by the sun over the past couple of days, had turned blonder on top. It caught the distant light now, glinting gold against the dark sky. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and haunted. For a confused moment Sam wondered if he was dreaming all this—the beach, the pounding waves on the sand, the impossibly fair-skinned loveliness of the woman ahead of him.

  Then she raised her hands to her temples, holding back her swirling hair. The gesture was so familiar, and so unhappy, that it brought Sam back to the present moment with a jolt. This was no ghost—it was Kelley Landis, the only woman he’d ever really loved.

  And she was as miserable as he’d ever seen her.

  “I know I was alone.” She sounded angry as she repeated his words. “I just had to get out, Sam. I just—I needed—” She stopped and looked over her shoulder to the waves that were hurling themselves on the hard sand of the beach. “I don’t know what I needed,” she finished finally.

  He took another step closer to her. “That doesn’t sound like you,” he said. “You’ve always known exactly what you needed to do.”

  “And now I don’t. You don’t have to rub it in.” The anger was still there, but Sam had a feeling she was only using it to mask the tears he could hear in her voice.

  The sound of those tears affected him more than her cool elegance ever had. He’d always been in awe of her grace, her poise. But now—

  His feet still shifting under him in the sand, he closed the distance between them.

  “Kelley, I—”

  Damn it, what was it he was trying to say to her? It had started to be a lecture about not going out alone at night, but somehow he couldn’t get those words to come out.

  Kelley waited out his silence, hands at her sides again, the wind whipping insistently through her hair and around her dark sweatpants and T-shirt. The longer he looked into those troubled blue eyes of hers, the closer Sam came to realizing what it was he wanted to say.

  And he wasn’t sure he could do it.

  “Kelley—” He tried again, and couldn’t quite manage it.

  But then Kelley swallowed hard against something that looked like a sob, and Sam suddenly knew what had brought him to this point.

  He’d seen bitterness and resolve and unhappiness in Kelley’s eyes these past three years. But he’d never seen her beautiful face without some faint, persistent light of hope behind it.

  Until tonight.

  Tonight she looked beaten. Empty. Exhausted. And Sam couldn’t stand the sight of it.

  “Kelley, I just wanted to tell you—”

  He couldn’t do this just standing here, he thought. He needed to touch her, to hold her. He took a step closer and ran one palm slowly up the length of her arm.

  She didn’t respond, but he thought she was breathing faster. So was he.

  “That day—in the hospital.” The sentence ran into a dead end. Sam pursued it anyway. “There were things I tried to say to you then. But—I just couldn’t.”

  He wasn’t sure he could say them now. It seemed as though the three intervening years should have made this easier, but it hadn’t.

  “I just felt dead.” His short laugh was harsh. “I know you needed me. And I had nothing to give you. Not a damn thing. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want—that I wasn’t thinking—”

  It was hard to get his next words out at all. Maybe if he pulled her against him—like this—and felt the soft swirl of her hair against his face—

  He finally managed it.

  “Kelley, I’m sorry about the baby.” It was like struggling through heavy seas to get the simple words out. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

  It fel
t as though everything that had stood between them came crashing down in that one instant. Kelley gave a low cry that seemed to have Sam’s name buried somewhere in it. She clutched him around the waist as though she, too, had been drowning in deep waters. And Sam closed his own arms around her so hard that his shoulder ached with the effort of it.

  Hell, all of him ached, from the strength of everything that was shuddering through him. Kelley was crying again. Maybe Sam was crying, too. He wasn’t sure. And he didn’t care. He felt as though the two of them had become part of the rising storm around them, buffeted by their own memories and holding fast to each other to keep from being swept away.

  He shifted his grip slightly and heard Kelley’s voice rise in protest.

  “Sam, don’t leave me.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He kissed her tangled hair, and the spot at her temple where her heartbeat pulsed, quick and urgent. She raised her arms to his neck and drew him even closer. Sam kissed her cheekbone and tasted tears there, salty as the sea but sweet, so unimaginably sweet to him.

  “You’re all right, Kelley.” He didn’t know where the words were coming from. They weren’t phrases he’d ever thought he would use again. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “I’m just so tired of hurting this much.”

  Sam’s brief laugh was whirled away from him on the wind. She’d just voiced his own thoughts, the ones he’d never quite dared to put into words.

  And it wasn’t just surprise he was feeling.

  It was relief.

  And understanding.

  And a sympathy so strong he thought it might tear him apart.

  He had no idea how long they stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms. He gave up trying to speak and just held Kelley close, waiting until her body was no longer wracked by those quiet sobs. When she’d gone still against him, he kissed her again, smoothing her hair with his hand and whispering her name against the soft skin of her forehead.

  She made no move to step away, and Sam couldn’t imagine ever wanting to let her go. But he was suddenly weary, as though he’d just run for miles to reach the safe haven of Kelley’s embrace. And something in the way she was leaning against him made him think she was feeling the same way.

  “It’s late,” he murmured against her ear.

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “Do you want to go back in?”

  “I suppose we should.”

  They still had a case to unravel and a criminal to catch, Sam remembered. The recollection of it astonished him.

  “Going to be a big day tomorrow.” He wasn’t sure if he was reminding himself or Kelley.

  But their assignment seemed to be the last thing on her mind as she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. She seemed to be searching for something, although Sam couldn’t imagine what it might be.

  “It’s been a big day today,” she said.

  She was right. Sam snorted, hardly able to believe he’d started the morning at the target range, feeling like a complete failure.

  And now he was walking back across the dunes with one arm clasped tightly around Kelley’s shoulders, feeling the soft strength of her fingers at his waist. They walked in step so perfectly—always had, he recalled now.

  He was remembering a lot of things that he hadn’t let himself think about for a long time. And not all of them were painful.

  He remembered, as they stepped back into the kitchen, how it had felt to come home together.

  He remembered the naturalness of it, and his own sense of amazed gratitude that he could feel at home, after so many years of restless wandering.

  The silence in the cottage seemed to wrap itself around them as Sam closed the sliding door. With the cool night wind locked outside, their cottage became a refuge, a resting place. Sam almost laughed to think how it had felt like a trap only a few days ago.

  Kelley moved toward the bedroom door, but she paused, looking over her shoulder at him. Her hair was gloriously tangled, a soft mass of tendrils that softened her face and warmed the cool elegance of her features.

  Sam wanted to move closer to her again, to step through the open bedroom door and lie down on the rumpled bed with Kelley in his arms. His hands ached with the need to hold the soft weight of her breasts, to set her whole body on fire with the intimacy of his touch. And his soul ached, too, with the loneliness of too many long nights without Kelley Landis.

  But he knew he wouldn’t do it.

  She spoke as he was starting to move back toward the living room sofa.

  “Sam, I—”

  Sam shook his head. “Shh, sweetheart. You don’t have to say anything.”

  She put a gentle hand on his arm as he passed her, and Sam stopped short. Even in that soft touch, Kelley had the power to calm some of the restless demons that were chasing around inside him.

  And her touch awakened something, too—something Sam wasn’t ready to deal with yet.

  “You didn’t have to say anything, either,” she told him. “But you did. It means a lot to me, Sam.”

  He knew she was talking about the words that seemed to have been torn out of him after such a long silence—the ragged admission that he, too, had felt the loss of their child, had mourned the brief life that had been so cruelly cut off. He drew in a long, slow breath, amazed at the relief of finally sharing some of the blackness of that loss with Kelley.

  But that didn’t mean he’d forgotten all the hard lessons he’d learned on that night at the warehouse.

  He was tempted to pull her close to him, to breathe in the sweet, salty perfume of her hair once more tonight. He could imagine how it would feel to kiss her good-night, to feel the gentle contours of her body fitting against him with tailor-made perfection.

  But he couldn’t let it happen.

  He just couldn’t.

  “Good night, sweetheart.” He ground the words out, and saw her eyes widen at his tone. If she only knew how much it was costing him to keep his distance from her….

  He refused to think about it, or about the seductive possibility that she might actually want him to follow her into that dark bedroom. He strode past her into the living room and picked up the pillow that had fallen onto the floor when he’d awakened earlier. He beat it back into its original shape with fierce energy, not caring that the movements hurt his shoulder.

  “Good night, Sam.” From the bedroom doorway, Kelley’s voice sounded almost wistful.

  Sam grimaced and pulled the pistol out of his pocket. He didn’t want to hear the soft regret in Kelley’s words, any more than he wanted to be settling down on this too-short sofa by himself again.

  He wanted Kelley Landis, more than he’d imagined it was possible to want a woman. He wanted to recapture what they’d once shared. The humming in his blood reminded him in some very specific ways of how it had felt to make love to her all night long, to give way to everything that she made him feel.

  But those days were gone.

  And in spite of what had just happened between them out on the beach, one of the things Kelley Landis made him feel now was remorse. Pure and simple.

  He’d failed to keep her safe three years ago. He’d failed to protect their unborn child, failed to secure the future they’d both dreamed of. He’d been the experienced agent, the one in charge. But he’d ignored everything his own experience should have taught him.

  And he’d be damned if he would let himself forget it again.

  “I’m not wild about this.”

  “Of course you’re not.” Kelley poured milk into her coffee mug and stirred it with maddening calmness. “Admit it, Sam, you still think you have to oversee every piece of this investigation personally if it’s going to work at all.”

  The annoying thing was that she was right.

  The other annoying thing was that she seemed to have regained all her poise overnight. Sam, on the other hand, was a mess.

  “We don’t have the time to indulg
e that lone horseman complex of yours,” Kelley continued. “You said yourself that we’re running out of time. Besides, you’re quicker with locks than I am.”

  “Wiley said you could pick a lock without even thinking about it.”

  She gave him that faint, catlike smile that always drove him crazy. “I’m good,” she admitted, “but I’m still not as good as you.”

  It was a surprise to hear her say it. But then, maybe she’d been surprised to hear him speaking up for her professional skill, too. It was a far cry from their defensiveness when they’d started working on this case.

  Her next words brought Sam back to earth. “And you’re not as good as I am at making small talk with people, which is what I’ll probably end up doing all morning with the Gustaffsons and Wayland,” she said.

  “You never know. You might pick up something useful. Keep your ears open.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that, Sam.”

  “I probably don’t have to tell you to be careful, but I’m going to do it anyway. These people are our three main suspects, after all. Any one of them could have been the person who fooled with that gas tank on Tuesday night.”

  “I know.” The catlike satisfaction on her face went away, leaving a vestige of the haunted expression that had drawn him to her in the night. “Do you want more coffee?”

  Sam felt as though he’d barely slept, between the throbbing in his shoulder and the thought of Kelley tossing and turning in the queen-size bed while he’d been doing the same thing on the sofa. He’d heard her, heard the faint rustling of the sheets as she’d tried to find her way toward sleep. It hadn’t exactly been a restful night for either one of them.

  And he needed to be sharp this morning, because he was probably going to have only one clear shot at searching those two cottages. “All right,” he said, draining his cup and wincing as the hot coffee seared its way down his throat. “Let’s go over the story one more time. I want to make sure we’ve both got it straight.”