Guarding Laura

by Susan Vaughan

  Laura had the good grace to blush more at that. “Maybe I’ll have a talk with her dad. Or with Burt. You don’t suspect he’s in league with Janus? Not Burt.”

  Cole scrubbed at the scar on his chin as if to remove the nagging doubts about the boy. The underlying suspicion came from his own confused feelings, nothing concrete.

  “I don’t know what I suspect. The kid’s up to something. Isaacs said after they went to the other side of the lake to work he lost track of Elwell. But Kay said he didn’t come to the docks, either. More likely he’s the resort burglar. He has keys and opportunity.”

  “I can’t believe he’d betray his uncle and Stan that way. He was probably goofing off, taking a nap or something. He’s not a self-starter. As distractible as a puppy. Stan has mentioned frustration at Burt’s occasional, shall we say, unauthorized absences.”

  “More puppy stuff. Geared for fun rather than work.”

  She yawned and pushed to her feet. “I’m going to need a nap soon myself. A long one. But since we’re here and not at the play, I have brownies to bake. I promised the sailing class a celebration tomorrow.”

  He enjoyed the sway of her pert heart-shaped butt as she sauntered to the kitchen. “You could call on Bea.”

  She laughed, music that warmed him to his toes. “The kids would never forgive me.” She rummaged in the refrigerator.

  “They’d forgive you anything,” he said, and proceeded to tell her about his conversation with Zach. He joined her in the kitchen and leaned against the wall to watch her as she measured and mixed.

  “Poor kid. I knew his mom was away at work a lot, but I didn’t realize how much he was at loose ends,” she said, stirring cocoa into the ingredients Joyce Hart had supplied. “I’ll ask Stan if he can fit Zach into an archery class.”

  Laura cared deeply about her young charges in both the tennis and sailing classes. The dunking had deterred her not in the least from the responsibility of the regatta. Nurturing and mothering came to her as naturally as breathing.

  Years ago, they’d dreamed of having the family both wanted. Neither had ever married. During the past days, they’d become close again. In spite of the past, and with danger facing them, he was falling for her again.

  Hard. The realization staggered him like a thunderbolt.

  They communicated like before. Better than before. With more honesty. She knew him better than anyone. He thought he knew her, except for the pain that shadowed her eyes.

  She kept telling him to toss the chip on his shoulder. If his rough background wasn’t the barrier, then did it have to be too late for them? She wanted him. And he sure as hell wanted her. So why did she deny her feelings?

  If they could get through his questions about the baby…

  If he could get past that wall she kept around her…

  Chapter 10

  When Laura turned from placing the brownie pan in the oven and setting the timer, she watched Cole gazing at her solemnly.

  He pushed a hand through his hair, then scrubbed knuckles across his jaw, a habit of deep thought she knew.

  At the confusion and questions she saw in his eyes, her pulse scrambled, and heat rose in her cheeks. She braced herself for the questions she feared.

  “If there had been a baby, would you have told me?” His words came out measured and slow and laden with anguish, dredged from his soul.

  More sorrow tightened a band around Laura’s chest. Cole suffered, too. But relief at his question eased her anxiety about what else to tell him. “I tried before…before I lost the baby.”

  “How? I was at Parris Island.”

  “I phoned your dad from Boulder, from the university.”

  “He had my address. Was he drunk?” His hard mask once again in place, he pivoted away to the doorway and stood looking out through the screening.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about the Marines, but he promised to get back to me with your address. I called again, but the phone was disconnected. I—”

  “That must’ve been after he died. Too late.”

  The pain in his forced ironic tone squeezed her heart. “Cole, I’m so sorry. I should’ve tried harder to find you.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault. I didn’t want to be found.” He returned and gripped the chair back the same way she had. “How were your folks about the pregnancy?”

  A wistful memory lifted her lips. “That was the one bright spot in those dark days. Mom and Dad were great, very supportive, aside from wanting to keep the pregnancy secret. I guess I wanted to hide, too. At first I was too angry at you to tell you about the baby. I blamed you. I wasn’t ready.”

  “Yeah, I know. You were right.” His voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “How did it happen? The miscarriage.”

  Oh, God, how to begin. How to tell it without revealing everything. She ached with dream images of babies that would never be born. Anxiety seemed to cut her lung power, making it difficult to speak. “It was December, Christmas vacation.”

  “December.” As realization dawned, horror roughened his voice. “You were six months pregnant.”

  She continued, reciting automatically, as she had the car trunk tale. “My family came to Colorado, to hide my pregnancy from anyone at home. My cousin Angela and I were driving back to the cabin after skiing at Steamboat Springs.”

  “Angela’s the one you went to Europe with?”

  She nodded, a lump the size of France in her throat. “Actually, Angela skied, and I relaxed. I’m a fair skier, but being pregnant put me off balance. We hit ice. Black ice. Invisible. My Porsche spun out of control. It slammed into the guardrail. It…burst into flame. I got out. Angela didn’t.”

  Tears stung her eyes again, but she set her chin and blinked them away.

  She could still see in slow motion the other cars, the shocked faces of drivers as she and her cousin in the Porsche spun around and around, faster and faster toward the metal guardrail.

  She could hear the shriek of rubber on asphalt and ice, Angela’s horrified gasps.

  She could feel the sickening carnival-ride whirl and the rush of air when the door swung open and an invisible hand flung her like a rag doll from the careering automobile. Then red-hot shards of pain in her side.

  “That must have been horrible for you.” She didn’t know when he moved, but Cole was standing beside her. His hands on her waist seemed to be the only force keeping her on her feet. The anguish in his eyes must have mirrored hers.

  “I’m all right.” She plucked a paper towel from the kitchen counter and blew her nose. “I was pretty depressed for a while. Counseling helped, so I could move on. Talking about the accident brings back all the anger and sorrow.”

  “Can you go on?” The warm support in his voice offered a cushion for her pain.

  She nodded. “I…tried to struggle to my feet, to go to Angela, but my legs didn’t want to work. People held me down, wrapped me in a blanket. And then I must have passed out.”

  “And you…lost our baby?” His voice was so gentle, so full of pain it made her heart ache. Gingerly, he placed the flat of his hand on her stomach.

  She felt the imprint of every finger, of the palm and of his heat. She allowed the gesture to comfort her. As long as he couldn’t see the scar beneath his hand.

  “When I woke up in the hospital, I was no longer pregnant. He was too premature and too damaged in the crash to survive.” She felt Cole’s body go rigid, but she didn’t stop. “The surgeon brought him to me only because I pitched a fit they could hear in the next county. He’d been cleaned up and swaddled in a soft blue blanket, but he was so tiny, like a doll. So perfect. So still.”

  “A son.” His voice grated like ground glass on sandpaper. “We would’ve had a son.”

  She raised her head to gaze at him. His eyes were as opaque and bleak as winter frost. “I named him Michael Cole Rossiter.”

  “Michael. It’s a good name. Thank you for the Cole.” His tight mouth tilted at o
ne corner. “A son. Laura, if only I’d known…” His voice broke, and he squeezed shut his eyes.

  “He’s buried in the family plot beside Angela. She died on impact.” In her own way, Laura had died, too. The loss and the partial hysterectomy had left her scarred inside and out.

  And empty.

  But no emptier than she felt at this moment. Emptier than when she was bleeding in that car trunk. Empty down to her soul. Drained of all energy and hope. A hollow shell.

  She felt him straighten and square his shoulders. His strong fingers smoothed her hair back from her face. “You couldn’t have saved Angela from the fire. You’d have only endangered yourself.” He pulled her into his arms.

  A sob choked her voice. “The ice…the Porsche wasn’t good in winter weather. I shouldn’t—”

  “Stop, Laura. Blame the ice, not yourself.”

  “I know,” she cried into his chest. He smelled so good, sunshine and life and strength. She didn’t want him to be her anchor, but she needed him at that moment. “They call it survivor’s guilt. I wasn’t even driving. Angela was. She’d insisted we take the Porsche because she loved driving it. She wanted to buy it from me. Aunt Emily, Angela’s mother, has hated me ever since. If only I hadn’t given in, she might be alive. And our baby might have survived.”

  Our only baby.

  His arms tightened around her, and he murmured, “You couldn’t have known. The accident wasn’t your fault.”

  “Oh, Cole, I wanted our baby. Every day I talked to him and sang to him. I could feel him move, and I saw the sonogram images. They showed his tiny fingers and toes. He…” Grief racked her, and she could say no more.

  “Shhh, I said it before. No if onlys. Thank God you’re alive. You could’ve died, too.”

  Blinking away her tears, Laura leaned back and gazed at his dear, dear face. He’d donned a blank mask, a defensive mask devoid of emotion, but moisture sheened his eyes and beaded his lashes.

  Yes, the truth hurt him, but no more than rejection for no reason. She’d been wrong to keep it from him. But not wrong to keep her renewed love to herself. Neither of them needed more heartbreak.

  She knew love again, but her scars would never heal, and the ghost of what could never be would separate them again—forever. Her love for him was only a dream she could hug to herself during the long, cold, barren winters to come.

  He smoothed a rough-skinned hand down the side of her face. “I understand why you went into a depression afterward. You had a lot of grief to work through.”

  After her body had healed from the accident and the surgery, grief and depression had thrown her into a self-destructive spiral.

  He didn’t need to hear it, but maybe this next confession would be enough to drive him away. He’d think she was unstable and unbalanced. “My body healed, and I went back to school, but I couldn’t sleep or eat or concentrate on my studies. I skipped classes and slept. Too much. But it kept my mind off the baby and off what had happened to Angela.” And off the fact that I’d never have another child.

  “Then you got some help?”

  “Not soon enough. I couldn’t tolerate anyone touching me. I felt dirty, but I hadn’t the energy to wash. I could barely tolerate me.” She gave a mirthless laugh, expecting him to move away from her. “Shocking, isn’t it? I shocked myself.”

  He cleared his throat, and his arms tightened around her. “You weren’t yourself.”

  Both touched and stymied that he wasn’t repulsed, she rested her cheek on the steady beat of his heart. “Finally my roommates dragged me to a counselor. She hooked me up with other grieving women who’d had miscarriages.”

  “A group.”

  “We had little in common except losing babies. Some of the women had lost more than one. Hearing their stories was wrenching but also healing. We shared our stories, we hugged, we held hands, we wrote poems and made small memorials.”

  “And you healed each other,” he finished for her.

  “Their support helped me stop my downward spin. I focused on my studies again. I relearned the comfort of human touch through holding hands with my group and later with my roommates. But I didn’t have another date the rest of my college career.”

  Later she immersed herself in her work and teaching tennis to ghetto youngsters. And when she did eventually date again, she learned a hard lesson. A woman who couldn’t have babies wasn’t marriage material. “Some of us in the group keep in touch by e-mail and grief chat rooms. I’ve missed them terribly since I’ve been in hiding.”

  “No wonder you hated me. I caused you all that pain with my carelessness.” His voice sounded as choked as hers.

  She closed her eyes against the pain of a new realization. If she’d told him about the pregnancy, he’d have stood by her. She should’ve remembered his integrity and sense of responsibility. She shouldn’t have believed Valesko or the rumors. If only she’d been thinking clearly and not through a haze of anger and resentment.

  There would’ve been no accident, no miscarriage. They would’ve had a son. And possibly more babies. Agonizing regret washed over her, choking her with pain.

  When she could breathe again, she raised her face to gaze into his eyes, dark with fierce determination. “Never say that you caused all my pain. You didn’t cause the miscarriage, and both of us made the baby.”

  His big hands massaged her shoulders. She hadn’t realized how stiffly she was hunching them until he eased the tension. “Now I know even better why you chose the Murphy the cat’s name. Nine lives, but three or four have expired. I promise you I’ll get Alexei Markos and whoever he’s hired. You’ll be safe this time, Laura.”

  She watched his wolf’s eyes kindle with a laser-blue flame. Years had passed since she felt the heat of desire. Not since that single weekend with Cole. During her brief relationships later, she’d only gone through the motions.

  She hadn’t burned.

  Until now.

  She reached up to trace the grooves tracking down his cheeks. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I concealed the truth this long, but…” Surely she had more to say, but his heated gaze blurred her mind and seared her body.

  She was finished talking.

  So was he.

  The hard ridge of his arousal pressed against her belly. Her confession had shocked him, but he still wanted her. Shaking with love and need, she turned her mind away from the shadow still between them.

  She needed an affirmation of the love that had once produced a small ephemeral life. She needed a flesh-and-blood memory to accompany the dream.

  He slanted his mouth to fit hers. Heart racing, she met his tongue hungrily with her own. Her eyes closed as his lips devoured hers.

  As his long fingers molded her body, her skin heated and her bones melted like butter. She burrowed into the strong column of his neck, kissing and murmuring her need into his throbbing pulse points. Her body remembered his—the feel of his hands, the texture and salty scent of his skin.

  She felt herself lifted to the counter behind her, her sweatshirt tugged up and her bra roughly pushed aside. He spread her legs and ground his hardness against her as he sucked on one nipple and then the other, shooting sparks of need along her nerves directly to the core of her passion. From somewhere far off she heard a whimper and was startled to recognize her own voice.

  Dropping hot kisses around the shell of her ear, Cole whispered in a voice smoky with desire, “Laura, your soft heat, your passion, you make me crazy.” Returning his lips to hers, he tore off his T-shirt, shucked down his jeans. “Say you want this, you want me.”

  “Yes, Cole, yes,” she said with raw passion, popping the snap of her own jeans and wrestling with them. He slid them and her panties down and away.

  She heard a groan escape him when her hand closed over his pulsing flesh.

  “Wait,” he rasped out, “I want to protect you.” He stepped away to slip a foil packet from his toiletry kit.

  He didn’t need it, but she couldn’
t tell him.

  The air between them seemed to heat as he came to her, sliding his hands over her thighs and up the sensitive skin of her hips. Passion coursed through her in a wave of need. She had to have him inside her, to fill the emptiness, if only temporarily.

  She wrapped her legs around him and dug her fingers into the bunched steel of his shoulders. He lifted her easily and lowered her onto himself.

  The impact of his entry jolted her entire being. It had been so long.

  So long.

  Uttering guttural sounds of pleasure and control, he held himself still inside her as she adjusted to his invasion. The magnetic tides that pulled them together stirred and pulsed inside her.

  “Cole! Please…”

  His eyes met hers, and lightning flared between them, searing her to her very core. She strained against him as he drove into her with the same uncontrollable need that raced through her. His unbridled thrusts rolled waves of pleasure through her and beckoned her closer to delirious oblivion.

  Tongues of flame licked over her body. When he reached between them to stroke her sensitive center, together they were catapulted into the heart of the fire itself.

  Long moments later, Cole dragged himself up from the drugging sensuality. His lungs still heaved, and his heart pounded. He reeled from the emotional and physical upheaval.

  He couldn’t believe he’d been so rough, so fierce in his need, slamming into her silkiness with the fury of a wild animal. He was a selfish bastard, taking advantage of the emotional maelstrom. But he’d needed her generous loving to fill up the fissures of new grief.

  The creamy swell of her soft breasts, the curve of her cheek, the sweetness of her lips, he’d drunk nectar from each, shaking with lust. He’d lost himself with her in primal passion. With no one else had he ever felt such a frenzy. In a raging fever, his body had burned. He’d had to be inside her or expire.

  With her, only with her, passion burned away the reins of control. His whole body had erupted with his release. Sex with Laura was deliriously earthshaking, a force of nature. Even more, a union of their hearts and spirits.