She didn’t stop even when Sam came over a little while later to see what was wrong, and to report that Eve had been arrested and taken to Bakersfield, where there was a county hospital that had a prison ward.
Matt just nodded and muttered, “Good…that’s good.”
Sam bent over to look at him with uncertain and worried eyes. “Matt, is she all right? Are you?”
He blinked her into focus, still in a state of shock himself, probably, the pain not quite reaching him yet. He gave a shaky laugh. “I think so. Yeah. I think we’re gonna be okay, now. We will be…”
Sam made her way back to the van in a state of bemusement, letting autopilot steer her through the crowd of EMTs, CHPs and assorted helpful bystanders and looky-loos, now beginning to disperse. She found Cory sitting on the floor in the open doorway of the van with his head resting against the frame, looking exhausted.
He lifted his head to ask the question with his eyes, and she went to him and kissed him. “She’s okay. He’s okay. They’re both…I think…more than okay.” She sat beside him, being careful not to jostle his injured shoulder and ribs.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Cory began to laugh, silently and with very little movement. Sam looked at him and said, “What’s funny?”
“Oh God, no, not funny-but ironic, maybe.” He looked at her, then put his good arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “I was just thinking…about when I went after you, after the Philippines, remember? Chased you down at your mom’s place in Georgia.”
“How could I forget?” Sam said softly. “And afterward…that’s when it all came out-about you and your family. You were finally able to remember, and tell me what happened.” She closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. Remembering the emotional roller coaster of that day…the terrible pain, and the indescribable joy. “You should see them, Pearse. I can’t…” A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away. Laughed a little. “It’s like watching us, the way we were that day. It was so hard. But afterward…”
He kissed the top of her head. “Afterward, we weren’t two separate people anymore. It was like we’d been through a crucible that melted us down and remade us into one.”
“Trust you to use a word like ‘crucible,’” Sam said huskily. “But yeah, that’s what it was. I think this might be theirs. Pearse, I wonder…is it always so hard? Does everyone have to go through this kind of stuff before they can be happy together?”
“I don’t know.” He paused. “But this business of finding my family is turning out to be a bit more dangerous than I thought. Sam, I never meant for all of this to happen-you know that.”
She laughed and leaned gently into him. “Yeah…but you’d do it again in a heartbeat, you know you would. And don’t forget-we still have two to go. The little girls.”
“Oh, I’m not forgetting. I don’t know, though-maybe I should let Holt handle it next time. When I do it, people keep getting hurt. What do you think?”
“I think,” Sam said tenderly, “that when he does find them-and he will-you’ll want to be there, even if it kills you.”
Cory laughed-then winced. “Ow-don’t say that…”
It was late when Alex and Matt drove up in front of Alex’s house. They were both in Matt’s van, Sam having volunteered to drive Alex’s SUV back to town. Naturally, Cory had elected to ride with her. The two of them were tucked in at their motel down at the riverfront park.
“Maybe we should have gone to the motel, too,” Alex said as she sat looking out the window at her pine needle-strewn walk, and the wooden steps leading up to her front porch. “I don’t have a ramp.”
“Not on your life,” Matt said. “We’ll manage.”
A shiver of strange pleasure ran through her as she opened the door and climbed out of the van. We’ll manage. She was going to have to get used to those words.
She waited while Matt descended in the chairlift, then walked beside him as far as the steps. There they stopped. Matt studied the steps for a moment, then said, “Here, hold my chair steady.”
She watched, swallowing the protests and suggestions that leaped instantly into her mind, while he pushed himself out of the chair and lowered himself onto the nearest step. Then pushed himself up to the next step. He looked at Alex, grinned and barked, “What are you waiting for? Bring me my chair, woman!”
Her chest grew tight with the emotions that seemed to be running amok inside her at the moment, and she couldn’t even trust herself to give that the answer it deserved. She hauled his chair up the steps and onto the porch without saying a word. She was maneuvering it into position so he could reach it, when there came a frantic scratching and whining from behind the front door.
“Oh gosh,” she said, “that’s Annie. What in the world? Here-” She thrust the chair aside and dug in her pocket for her keys.
“Annie?” Matt swiveled to look at her. “My Annie?”
The commotion behind the door escalated into frenzied barking. Alex got the key in the lock and had barely managed to open the door a crack when the dog pushed her way through it. She barreled across the porch, toenails scrabbling on the wood planks, and leaped into Matt’s arms, wriggling like a puppy and trying to lick him everywhere at once.
In the middle of it all, Matt was saying, “Annie? My God, she’s still alive? I thought-Jeez, it’s been five years. Hey, girl, you still know me? You remember me, girl?”
Alex, being pretty much out of tears by this time, said in a husky croak, “Dogs don’t have any sense of time, don’t you know that? She probably thinks you just took a really long lunch break.” She watched the dog, still wriggling in Matt’s embrace, nuzzling and licking every place she could reach, and folded her arms across her chest where there seemed to be a permanent ache, now. Shaking her head, she murmured, “All this time I thought she was getting old, ’bout ready to die. Maybe she was just depressed. Like she was sleeping away the time until you decided to come back for her.”
Matt grinned at her over the Lab’s graying head. “What about you, Alex? You been depressed, waiting for me to come back?”
“Don’t push it, Matthew.” But she went to sit on the step beside him.
Annie gave a sigh and settled herself with her head in Matt’s lap, and they sat there together in silence, the three of them. Annie drifted off to sleep, and Matt and Alex watched the moon come up.
Alex said softly, “You really hurt me, Mattie.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I was there for you, all during rehab. How could you not know I…wanted you?” And how was it that even now it was so hard for her to say the words? Want…love. Yes, both of those. Why can’t I just say it?
Matt reached for her hand. “I did know. I did.” He looked up at the moon. “The truth? I was…angry, back then. At everyone, but especially at you.” He waited, but she didn’t say anything, so he took a breath and went on, and his voice was soft and hoarse with pain. “I was mad at you because you could still walk, still climb mountains, do all the things we’d always done together. I don’t know if you can understand, but…I couldn’t bear to be with you then.”
Alex cleared her throat, struggling to understand. The tears she thought she’d run out of were falling again, silently. She brushed them away, but they were still there in her voice when she whispered, “I lost something, too, Matt. I did.”
“I know…” His arm came around her, and she felt his body quiver.
She turned into him and held on to him, and felt his face press against her hair. After a while she drew a shuddering breath and said, “I don’t think I ever cried for it, either-for you. Not ’til today.”
He laughed, blowing warm puffs into her hair. “You sure made up for it.”
She straightened up, brushing tears and stray hair back from her face with both hands. “I guess we’ve got a lot of things to make up for. And a lot of things to work out-you know that, right?” It’s not like a fairy tale, where it says “Happily Ever After�
� and that’s it…no more problems.
Matt was looking around him. “Yeah, like a ramp for this place. And I seem to remember some narrow doorways…”
She tried to smile, but a new heaviness was creeping over her. “What about your job? Down in L.A.? Don’t you coach some kids? You can’t just…abandon them.”
He shook his head and murmured, “No.”
The heaviness inside her became misery. For a moment she was angry. This is why I didn’t want to love him. This-the sadness, the pain. The not knowing how to live without him. I didn’t want this! I hate this!
“How about this?” Matt said, gazing up at the moon. “Rafting season’s only half the year, right? The other half we’ll spend in L.A. Or…I’ll commute, if you can’t stand to live in the city. It’s only what-two and a half hours?”
And just like that, the heaviness lifted and happiness filled her again-but it felt so fragile, that happiness. So terribly, terribly fragile.
Chapter 11
Matt said, “Whatever it takes, we’ll work it out.”
She laughed, and it sounded more like a whimper. “Easy for you to say. You always were the brave one.”
“What are you talking about? You’re the bravest person I know.”
But she was afraid. Terrified. He could feel it. Even though he couldn’t see her eyes, he knew the fear was there, the way it had been up on the Forks when they’d been about to go through the fire.
If we’d known then what we were about to go through together…we didn’t know it then, but that fire was the easy part.
He ran his hand down her back and felt her shiver. “What’s wrong, Alex? Tell me.”
“There’s so much, Mattie. So much we haven’t talked about. Things…we haven’t…”
“Ah.” He felt ripples of a new excitement vibrating deep inside his chest. Carefully, he said, “Things…like sex?”
She hitched in a breath. “Yeah, like that. I don’t know…how it is with you. I mean…” and now she sounded testy “…well, obviously, you can still turn me on, but that’s not really…it’s not enough.” She turned her face to him. “Is it?”
Tenderly, he traced the side of her face with his fingertips, then leaned to brush her lips with his. “This…is definitely something we need to talk about-a lot. But…showing you is probably easier. How about, if you’ll get this dog off me and hand me my chair, we take this inside?”
“Matt-”
“Trust me, Alex.”
She nodded, but he could feel the resistance in her still. She maneuvered his chair closer, then braced it for him while he hoisted himself into it, then stood hugging herself and looking scared. He held out his hand to her, and she hesitated, opened her mouth but didn’t say anything. And he remembered.
“That night at The Corral. When I wanted you to dance with me,” he said quietly, “and you didn’t. Why?”
She rubbed her arms, shrugged, but didn’t look away. “I guess…I didn’t think you could.”
“And you were wrong, weren’t you? You didn’t want to do the Forks with me. Why?”
More firmly, now, maybe getting where he was going with this, she replied, “I didn’t think you could.”
“And…you were wrong. So now I’m asking you.” Again he held out his hand, and said softly, “Come…make love with me, Alex.”
He held his breath, and after a brief and suspenseful moment, she reached out and took his hand.
It was so much easier than she’d imagined, and at the same time, so much scarier. Maybe the scariest thing she’d ever done, because it was all so new. So different. And at the same time, in the most thrilling of ways, the same.
Matt used the bathroom first, after explaining to her why he needed to, and what he was doing. Then, when she told him she wanted-needed, after three days on the river, and all they’d been through since-to take a shower, he maneuvered his chair close to the bathtub and bathed her himself. Soaped her body with long, loving, sensual strokes, laughing when the spray made him and everything else in the bathroom as wet as she was. And when she told him she wouldn’t be able to stand up if he kept doing what he was doing, he pulled her naked and soaking wet into his lap and took his time caressing her dry with a towel. Then…slowly, began to stroke her wet again, with his mouth, this time.
When she was shivering uncontrollably, he wheeled them both to her bedside. Holding her waist in his hands, he eased her off his lap and when her knees threatened to buckle, helped her to stand while he looked at her. Feasted on her with his eyes.
Then…“Touch me,” he whispered hoarsely.
He’d always loved to be touched. Everywhere…she remembered that so well. The sheer pleasure of touching him. The way he’d close his eyes and seem to lose himself in her touch. It was the same now, except he didn’t close his eyes. And that made it even more intense for her. More scary. The same, and yet different.
She let her open palms rest lightly on his chest, at first, on those sculpted pecs that were-again-the same Matt, only different. She let her hands glide, oh so slowly, over his chest, his torso, his hard-muscled belly…then up to his shoulders…down his arms and over his hands, guiding them down to her hips and then to her thighs…while she leaned forward and brushed his mouth with hers, barely breathing.
“I’d like to get into bed now…” His words blew gently against her lips.
She whispered, “Yes,” and pulled shakily away from him to draw aside the covers.
And again, he didn’t hide anything from her, neither the awkwardness nor the unexpected grace, as he shifted himself from chair to bed. She hovered, and helped him when he asked her to, with pillows piled up for his back, and to dispose of the rest of his clothes. Then, when he lay naked and completely exposed to her, he raised himself on one elbow, glanced down at himself and smiled-not his warm, beautiful Mattie smile, but one so wry and vulnerable it made her heart turn over.
“See?” And his voice had a rasp in it she’d never heard before. “I told you…it’s still me.”
And suddenly, she wasn’t nervous or scared or uncertain anymore. She felt almost overwhelmed with strength and tenderness, and…Yes, love. Booker T’s right. I’ve always loved him. How could I not have known?
Smiling, with all the confidence in the world in her eyes, she leaned down to kiss him, kissed him long and deeply while she straddled his body. He pulled away to whisper, with a small laugh, “You always did like to be on top.”
“Hush up, Matthew,” she growled against his mouth as she lowered herself over him, touching his body from chest to thighs with her own. “I don’t care who’s on top, or what goes where. As long as we go together. You hear me?” She kissed him again, for a long, long time…and finally drew back enough to gasp. “And we do…go together. Don’t we? Can you feel that?”
“I don’t feel that. I feel you.” He closed his eyes and his arms came around her, vital and strong.
And as he held her, she felt him, too, felt him with every nerve and cell in her body, in a way she never had before. She felt him as though he were a part of her, as if they’d somehow become two parts of the same whole, and in that moment she knew that Booker T was right, that human beings weren’t meant to be alone. Holding the man she loved in her arms, melding her body with his, she felt herself fill with the most intense joy she’d ever known, or could ever have imagined. Because half of herself that had been missing for so long had finally come home.
“Oh, Mattie,” she whispered brokenly, “I love you. And I do need you.”
With tenderness and a smile in his voice, he replied, “I know.”
Epilogue
Several months later, in a motel room somewhere in west Texas…
Holt Kincaid sat on the edge of the unmade bed and punched a number on his cell phone speed dial. He listened to it ring, imagined it ringing in a room far away in South Carolina, on the shores of a small lake. It rang three times before a machine picked up.
“Hello, you’ve reached Sam
and Cory’s place. We’re both away from home right now. Leave us a message and we’ll get back to you.”
He disconnected and sat for a moment with the phone in his hand, thinking. Then he pulled the laptop that lay open on the bed closer to him, found the page he was looking for, scrolled down the list of phone numbers on it until he came to the one he wanted. Dialed it.
Several minutes and several different numbers later, he’d learned several things. One: his employer was on assignment in Sudan, and there was no way in hell to reach him. Two: his employer’s wife was also on assignment, God-and the CIA-only knew where. Three: he was on his own.
Holt Kincaid didn’t often feel frustrated, but he did now. Here he’d finally managed to get a line on one of his client’s missing twin sisters, and there wasn’t anybody he could break the news to.
News that wasn’t good.
And he was very much afraid that if he waited, it might be too late.
What the hell was he going to do now?
KATHLEEN CREIGHTON
has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today she says she is interested in everything-art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.
***
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