by Harper Allen
“But that’s just it, Pearson. I didn’t change my mind,” she said unhappily.
Sully had told her that he’d said nothing to Pearson about her real reason for tearing out of the church, but she owed the man in front of her the truth. She should have told him about Malone a long time ago, she thought regretfully. Maybe if she had, her confession now would have been easier.
“In the crowd outside the church today I thought I saw a man…a man I was very much in love with once,” she said softly, holding his gaze as steadily as she could. “Except I knew it couldn’t be him, because he—”
“Because he was dead.” Pearson finished her sentence for her in the same quiet tone. “You thought you saw Seamus Malone, Ainslie? Is that who the man in the crowd reminded you of?”
Taken aback, Ainslie could only stare at him in confusion. Bridging the distance between them, he put his hands lightly on her shoulders.
“I was talking with Father Flynn in his office when you arrived. I couldn’t help hearing the name you called out.”
“But…but how did you know he was dead? How did you know I’d once been involved with him?” She stared up at him uncomprehendingly.
“I’ve known for a long time—almost from the first, in fact.” He sighed. “I wasn’t prying, Ainslie. But beneath that toughly competent exterior you show to the world, I saw a deep sadness. I think I already knew I cared for you more than I’d ever cared for anyone. I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to lessen that sadness for you. So I made some inquiries, and when I learned about Malone I realized just how truly strong you were. A tragedy like that might have destroyed another woman.”
“It almost did, Pearson.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “I’m not as strong as you think I am. Today must have proved that to you.”
Touching only on the essentials, she haltingly described her encounter with John Smith, saying nothing about his hunted lifestyle or the fact that his pursuers had nearly caught up with him while she’d been with him. That wasn’t her story to tell, she thought uneasily. True, she’d shared some of it with Sullivan, but Sully’s life hadn’t always been as conventional as it was now. She’d hoped for more understanding from her ex-mercenary half brother, she admitted to herself.
Of course, even to Sully she’d said nothing about the kiss.
If she’d needed one last scrap of proof to convince herself that the man she’d been with today wasn’t Malone, that kiss in the parking garage would have been it. Malone’s lovemaking had always held a touch of teasing wickedness. Even during their most passionate moments, it had never been hard to detect the bad-boy glint in his eye, the delinquent one-sided smile he wore as they urged each other on to more dizzying heights together.
The man who’d kissed her today had done nothing more than touch his lips to hers, linger there for a moment, and then pull away. Instead of playfulness, there had been an almost hopeless desperation in his kiss.
It had felt as if he’d given her his soul, and left before she’d had a chance to give it back.
And from the second his mouth had come down on hers, the unshaven roughness of his skin chafing against the sensitive corners of her lips, she’d felt a dark flame flare into immediate life deep inside her…
“I’m going to have to agree with Sullivan on this one, Ainslie.”
Pearson had listened to her without interruption. When she had fallen silent he had said nothing for a few minutes, but now he held her slightly away from him, his expression troubled.
“I think I can understand the anguish you felt when you saw him. It’s important to you that you never had a chance to say goodbye to Malone, isn’t it?”
He seemed about to say more, but at that moment the phone on the desk buzzed discreetly. With a glance of apology at her, he walked over to answer it. Ainslie found herself feeling obscurely grateful for the interruption. Turning away, she stared sightlessly at the rows of books in front of her.
Pearson McNeil might appear stuffy, but his stuffiness stemmed from a determination to do the right thing, whatever the circumstances. That wasn’t stuffiness, that was integrity. Her actions today must have hurt him deeply, but his feelings for her hadn’t wavered.
You can’t go on running the rest of your life, she told herself somberly. Unbidden, the vision of a man who had been forced to do just that came into her mind. He was another one she would have to forget, she thought. She would never see him again, never even know if he had survived past today. Unconsciously, her hand went to her lips, her fingertips tracing the heat that she imagined she still could feel there.
“That was Sullivan.”
Pearson’s dry voice broke into her thoughts and she turned to him almost guiltily.
“It seems we didn’t lie to Father Flynn after all,” he smiled, his head tipped quizzically to one side. “Bailey went into labor half an hour ago. Sullivan says if you want to see your newest niece being born, you’d better get over to Mass General right away.”
Reaching out for her hands, he clasped them loosely in his, his eyes on hers. “You said a few minutes ago that you hadn’t changed your mind about going through with our marriage. I haven’t either, Ainslie. But I want to give you time to come to terms with any lingering conflicts you might have. When I return from Greystones we’ll have dinner together, just the two of us, and you can tell me if Malone is really dead and not still alive in your heart. If he is, and if your feelings for me still include marriage, then we’ll arrange a quiet ceremony as soon as possible.”
“And if he isn’t?” she asked softly.
Pearson released her hands. His smile was wry. “If he isn’t, then I went up against a ghost, and lost.”
Chapter Five
Megan Angelique Sullivan’s name had been well chosen. The tiny, exquisite scrap of humanity she’d seen Bailey holding in her arms with tired joy a few moments ago was an angel, Ainslie thought. Her ex-mercenary, ex-playboy of a brother had been beaming down on his wife and daughter as if nothing else in the universe existed for him. With such a legacy of love, her newly born niece already had the most valuable gift her parents could ever give her.
Would any child that she and Pearson might have together grow up with that same sense of total security? Ainslie stood stock-still in the brightly lit hospital hallway as the answer came unhesitatingly to her. She cared for Pearson. She respected Pearson. And after his compassion and understanding today, she wished more than anything else that she did love him.
But she didn’t. She’d handled things badly, and for reasons that now seemed foolish, but her instincts hadn’t been wrong. She had no business marrying him. She had no business contemplating having a child with a man she couldn’t love forever, and with all her heart.
Which means you’re never going to have what Bailey’s experiencing right now. You’re never going to hold a Megan Angelique of your own, never going to create a new and perfect little being with the man you love. Because that man was Malone.
Slowly she resumed walking to the bank of elevators at the far end of the hall. By now Pearson would have already left for Greystones, and this time she was determined to do it right. A phone call wouldn’t suffice. Punching the call button for the elevator, she tiredly massaged the troubled crease between her eyebrows.
The rest of the O’Connell females, including Tara and her aunts, had been allowed a two-second peek into Bailey’s hospital room before being ushered firmly out by a sergeant major of a ward nurse. Tara had already announced she would be staying overnight with Aunt Kate—more, Ainslie suspected, because her adopted daughter had wanted to give her some time alone, than because the notion of getting up at five and accompanying Kate to the gym to watch the more dedicated of the boxers go through an early-morning workout was appealing to the teen.
Despite herself, she smiled faintly. Whatever the reason, Tara would be under the eagle eye of “Kiss Me Katie” for the next day or so, and for that matter, so would be the gym. After informing Pearson
of her decision regarding their marriage—and that’s not anything I’m looking forward to, she thought heavily—devoting the rest of the week to some solitary and serious soul-searching might be a good idea.
The elevator doors started to slide open. From the far end of the long hall behind her she heard footsteps, and, looking around, she saw a pair of orderlies approaching at a restrained trot, the gurney between them the obvious reason for their discreet haste.
“Hold the elevator!”
The orderly at the head of the gurney called out the command in an unpleasantly grating voice, and from a nearby room came the immediate and lusty bellow of a just-awakened baby. Giving a nod of acknowledgment to the approaching pair, Ainslie felt a twinge of sympathy for the unknown mother and a spurt of impatience toward the orderly. They were in a hospital, for God’s sake. Didn’t the man know any better than to shout—
“Ainslie! Get in!”
Startled, she whirled around, and met the same impossibly green eyes she’d seen from the steps of St. Margaret’s. Dressed in hospital scrubs, with an operating mask covering the bottom half of his face and a surgeon’s cap pulled low over his brows, he was standing in the elevator, his expression shadowed with urgency.
And despite what she’d just been telling herself, again she felt the impact of that gaze slam into her.
“John—what’s happened? What are you doing here?” Finding her voice, she stared in concern at the man in front of her. “Surely it can’t be safe for you to be seen in public like this!”
“It’s not. And stop calling me that, Lee.” His reply was muffled by the mask, but there was no mistaking the sharp edge in his tone. “Get in—now! They’re probably already on their way up here.”
“Who? The men who were after you?”
None of this made any sense, she thought in confusion. The events of the afternoon had been bizarre enough, but this was verging on insanity. He’d told her he couldn’t risk staying in Boston, now that he’d been traced here. He’d told her he intended to disappear.
So why had he come back to her?
Suddenly, Sully’s skepticism, so unpalatable only a few hours ago, seemed reasonable. In fact, she thought shakily, Sully might not have taken it far enough. Had there ever been anyone pursuing them? Right from the start, had it all been the smoke and mirrors of an unbalanced mind—smoke and mirrors that, in her own agitated state, she’d fallen for too easily? Had everything she’d accepted as coming from his mysterious enemies been just a few more examples of his crazed contraptions? Had he arranged the fire in his building himself?
“Yeah. I was careful, but I wasn’t expecting them to have the hospital staked out. I think they spotted me.” His tenseness was almost tangible. “Come on, Lee!”
Humor him, Ainslie thought with dreadful clarity. This has gone far enough. You can’t let him drag you into another of his insane nightmares. She was suddenly grateful for the approaching hospital employees and their gurneyed passenger, now passing by the nursing station about a third of the hall length away, and coming closer.
“Okay, John.” She stepped closer to the elevator opening, her tone conciliatory. “But keep the door open. Those orderlies have a patient on a gurney with them, and we can’t just—”
“Orderlies?”
Under the loose-fitting scrubs his whole body froze into stillness. Whether or not there was any basis at all for his paranoia, Ainslie thought with a flash of compassion, the man’s fear was real enough. Above the mask his eyes flickered briefly, as if he was making an instantaneous decision.
The next moment his hand had shot out, grasping her just below the elbow. With a jerk, he pulled her toward him, even as he punched repeatedly at one of the numbers on the bank of buttons just inside the elevator door. Reflexively she tried to pull away from him, but his grip held her like an iron clamp.
“Dammit, John—let go of me!”
“I told you, Lee—stop calling me that.” The short sleeves of the scrubs barely fit over his biceps. As he kept his thumb firmly pressed against the elevator button, she saw the rigidity in his muscles. “Their being here can only mean one thing—for some reason, they’re after you now as well as me. I’ll bet good money that gurney’s empty. You’re the patient they intend to transport.”
Had the approaching footsteps coming down the hall increased their pace? The metal ratcheting of the gurney sounded off-kilter, as if it were being pushed faster than it had been designed for.
The elevator doors began to slide closed. She didn’t know who she was more annoyed with, Ainslie thought in frustration, him or herself. But she knew one thing. She wasn’t going to allow him to drag her into two cat-and-mouse chases in one day, especially when she was beginning to suspect that there wasn’t a cat at all.
She heard the swish of the doors coming together, heard the footsteps break into a run, heard the grating voice shouting angrily from only a few feet away. She relaxed her knees slightly, bounced up on the balls of her feet, and made a fist.
Not allowing his grip on her left arm to hinder her, with her right hand she let fly with a roundhouse punch, aimed at the point of his chin concealed under the medical mask.
For such a big man, his reflexes were incredibly fast. His head jerked back and his free hand caught her wrist just inches away from his face.
The doors slid firmly closed behind her, cutting off the angry shouts. Smoothly the elevator began to descend.
“I stashed a wheelchair behind a planter in the lobby. I hope to hell it’s still there.”
Releasing both her arms, he took off the surgeon’s cap, stuffed it into a back pocket of the scrubs, and raked an unsteady hand through his hair. It had been tied back in an unkempt ponytail. He went on, seemingly unfazed by her attempted attack on him of only seconds ago.
“We’ll leave by the emergency entrance, and try to get to my car without alerting them. I figure in this getup, and with you in a chair, we might not draw their attention so easily.”
What little composure she still had shattered at his words. She glared at him, not bothering to conceal her outrage. “How about if I’m screaming blue murder while you’re trying to sneak me out in my wheelchair, John? Do you think we might draw their attention then? Do you think they might notice if I hop out of the damn chair and throw a few more punches at you, John? Because that’s exactly what I feel like—”
He pulled down the mask that had been covering his face. The beard was still there, but it had been inexpertly cropped to heavy stubble. He gazed at her, a spark of anger in his own expression.
“So help me, honey, if you call me that one more time I swear I’ll go crazy all over again. I planned to tell you when we’d gotten safely away from here, but—”
He glanced at the floor indicator. They were on five, and still descending. He turned back to her, a tight and humorless smile lifting one corner of his mouth.
“The night we met we went back to your place and made love, three times before dawn. You made me coffee the next morning. It was undrinkable, because your coffee always is, but I didn’t care. We let it get cold and we made love again.”
He went on. “I bought you a pair of silver earrings shaped like crescent moons the second day. We sat in a park and held hands for an hour, not saying a word, just looking at each other. You gave me a bath once. I’ve got a scar on my left shoulder blade, and you kissed it. When I looked at you, I saw that you were crying. Should I go on?”
He took her silence for acquiescence, and continued. “You’ve got a tiny birthmark on your upper thigh. You used to go out of your mind when I kissed the back of your knee. The night I disappeared I asked you to marry me. As I was walking out the door you pulled me back in and whispered something in my ear.”
“What did I whisper?” The blood was pounding in her head so loudly that she hardly heard her own question. Her lips felt so numb that she wasn’t even sure she’d asked it until his answer came, prompt and unhesitating.
“You told me
what you were going to do with me when I got back that evening. You said it included massage oil. I was so weak with desire when you finished describing what you had planned I could barely stand.” He shrugged, the gesture no more than a controlled lifting of his shoulders. “I didn’t want to tell you like this, Lee. But you knew this afternoon anyway, didn’t you? I’m Malone. I’ve come back.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, Malone’s dead. You’re someone called John Smith, and right from the start you’ve come up with one crazy story after the other. You’re not Malone. I buried Malone.”
She heard the soft ping that meant the elevator had passed another floor. He flicked his gaze to the indicator and a muscle in his jaw tightened.
“Ask me anything.” His voice was edged. “Ask me anything about our time together. I remember it all.”
Why was he doing this to her? Ainslie thought distantly. This was too surreal. She felt as if she was surrounded by a thick fog, a fog that was pressing in on her, making it hard for her to breathe.
“He made me a promise.” Her voice sounded as if it came from a long way away, through the enveloping layers of pain. “You can’t know about that, because you’re not Malone. I put roses on his grave.”
“I promised you I’d never leave you the way you’d been left before.” His eyes were dark. “You’d had a nightmare, and I heard you crying out in your sleep. I held you and you told me you’d been dreaming about your father and how he’d walked out of your life, taking your half brother with him. You said in your dream there were birds—great birds, with wingspans longer than a man’s arm—and that they’d taken him away. I promised you I would never leave you. I promised you I would always come back.”
“Malone promised me that!”
All at once the fog surrounding her was blown away, as if by some powerful wind. She could practically hear it, Ainslie thought in cold desperation—a howling crescendo of hurricane-like proportions that rapidly blotted out everything else in her head. She raised her voice to be heard above it, found her vision blurring from the tears it had brought to her eyes.
