She turned, knowing that if she didn’t make good her escape, she’d dissolve into tears. This time, though, Derek didn’t only grab her arm. He had her pressed to his body before she had time for a breath.
“Jesus,” he whispered against her hair, then inhaled sharply. “Don’t leave.” He backed up to a tree. “Not like this. Don’t leave yet.”
“If you don’t want me involved—”
“I do. You’re the only thing that’s held any meaning in my life for the past five months.” Bracing his legs apart, he drew her into the cradle of his hips. “I need you, Sabrina.”
“But—”
“I don’t want you involved because I don’t want you hurt.”
“I’ll be hurt if I’m not involved.” She raised her head, and in that instant she identified the very deep, very private, very new feeling she had. She touched his cheek with a trembling hand. Her fingers whispered over his cheekbones, soothed the scar by his eye, erased the last of the scowl lines from his brow, sank deep into his thick, dark hair. “Please?” she mouthed.
Derek had never seen love in a woman’s eyes. He’d seen affection and desire—even adoration in the eyes of the occasional fan—but never love. The difference was in depth. When he looked into Sabrina’s eyes, he was looking into a fathomless well of warmth, of caring and giving and need. It had to be the most wonderful, most humbling sight he’d ever seen.
“Oh baby,” he murmured and lowered his mouth. He didn’t kiss her, but paused just shy of the act, retreated, sought her eyes again to make sure he hadn’t imagined what he’d seen.
It was there. All of it. Everything he felt himself, and more.
This time he did touch her lips, but very, very gently, as though too much pressure might shatter something so new. He covered her mouth, lightly sucked it in, slowly released it, drew back, then dipped his head and kissed her again in the same, slow, sipping way. He discovered that the taste of love was that much more rich, that much more sweet than anything he’d ever tasted. It was also more lasting, causing each successive kiss—and one followed the other in lingering progression—to be even more rich, even more sweet. And addictive. And arousing.
“Sabrina…” he whispered against her mouth as the heat rose in his body.
She opened her eyes. Her hands held his head, fingers lost in his hair. She was vaguely aware of standing on tiptoe, but she hadn’t knowingly made the effort. Derek’s arms had done it for her, closing around her, lifting, supporting.
Her gaze went from his eyes to his mouth and lingered there. His lips were moist, parted. She wanted them again. But more than that, she wanted him. She didn’t yet know in what capacity, but she knew that she wanted to make love with him, wanted to sleep with him, wanted to wake up in his arms and lie with him in the sun.
Needing to tell him how she felt, she initiated the kiss this time. But initiation was all she got, because Derek met her, matched her, and the kiss became one of mutual dawning. Everything was new. Sabrina was far from a virgin, yet the small sounds that came from her throat when he filled her mouth with his tongue, the helpless gasps when he slid his hands up by the sides of her breasts spoke of a near-virginal surprise. Likewise, Derek’s blood was running hotter than it had run since he’d been twelve.
“We have to stop,” he gasped.
“Oh no.”
He put his forehead to hers and squeezed his eyes shut. His breathing was rough. “Do you know … there are some weekends when they have games and family picnics … nine months later some of the wives give birth.”
“How?” she whispered. She had both hands flat on his chest and was moving them up and down over the thin, white knit of his tank top.
“In the bathroom. I want you so bad that I’d almost think of dragging you there, but it’d be so dirty, and you’re so clean.”
“I’m not—”
“You weren’t made for quick and shabby. You were made for slow and rich, silk sheets, soft sounds.”
“I’m not a—”
“I couldn’t take you there,” he said more harshly. “I couldn’t take you anywhere in this place. I’d lose it, I know I would. Psychologically, I couldn’t do it. I’d think of all these guys screwing bimbos against the wall…”
“Don’t, please don’t.” She knew that he was working himself up, taking sexual frustration and letting it mushroom into a more general anger. “It doesn’t matter, Derek. We’ll have time.”
“God, I hate this place!”
“You won’t be here forever.”
“But will you want me when I’m out?”
She looked at him in surprise and saw the vulnerability that he either hadn’t bothered or been able to hide. “Of course I’ll want you when you’re out,” she answered, puzzled. “How could you think I wouldn’t?”
“I’ll be an ex-convict.”
“Is that supposed to be worse than a convict?”
“I don’t know. Maybe this place … it’s convenient for you when you see Nicky.”
“Derek, I haven’t been stopping here just because it’s convenient.”
“Maybe it’s that little bit of danger here that turns you on.”
She took his hand from the back of her waist, held it in both of hers, kissed his knuckles, then pressed it to her heart. Her eyes held his. “It’s not that.”
“Sabrina…”
She was very carefully separating his fingers, shaping his hand to her breast. Wanting to concentrate on the sensation, she closed her eyes.
Derek swallowed hard. He knew he should tug his hand away, knew that feeling her would only make things worse, but he couldn’t deny himself. There had been so few pleasures in his life in the last twenty months. Most had revolved around Sabrina. Just as he’d needed to kiss her before, he needed to touch her now.
Her breast filled his palm. She wasn’t large, but she was well formed and firm. Heat shimmered through layers of fabric—chic, stylishly wrinkled cotton and beneath that a bra—and those layers kept him from feeling her nipple, even when he stroked her lightly. But he heard when she sucked in her breath, and he knew from the way she arched her back that she enjoyed his touch.
“Come here,” he whispered hoarsely, turning so that she was beneath him against the tree. He’d been to his share of orgies, but making love with an audience had never turned him on. He was very turned on now. He couldn’t help himself. At least he could shield Sabrina some.
Thrusting a leg between hers, he leaned into her. He ducked his head and traced her lips with his tongue while he carefully released a button of her blouse and slid his hand inside. Sucking in a breath, Sabrina opened her eyes to his.
“I have to touch,” he whispered. The urgency of it was written all over his face. He found her breast, circled it, covered it, then began to knead. “Have to touch … Is it good?”
Eyes glued to his, she nodded. She was biting her lower lip to keep from crying out. Her hands clung to his sides, fingers digging into the hard skin just above his jeans.
Derek was panting softly when he put his lips to her temple. He moved his hips against her thigh, but she was the one to put the need into words.
“I want you,” she whispered. Heat was gathering in her body, pooling between her legs, and just above that the ache was intense. She’d never in her life felt the kind of driving desire she felt at Derek’s hands. To say that she loved him only went partway in explaining that desire. Once upon a time, she’d loved Nick, yet she’d never felt what she did now.
Nick had wanted her. Derek needed her. She supposed that was the most immediate of the differences.
A small cry slipped from her throat. Long, lean fingers had stolen beneath the lace of her bra and were setting fire to her bare breast. She cried out again when a fingertip grazed her nipple, which was already taut and straining.
“Oh God,” she cried in a high whisper. “Oh God…”
“Not Him,” Derek returned on a hoarse but regretful note, “just me.” Taking back his hand, he drew h
er from the tree and crushed her to his length. His body trembled in longing. “I can’t give you what you need just now. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
It wasn’t a question of impotence: he was stone-hard against her. Reassured, she said, “I can’t give you what you need, either.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. The scent of his body was cushioning her descent from desire’s high.
“If we were somewhere else, somewhere private—”
“Yes. In a minute.”
He moaned. “I don’t deserve you, Sabrina.”
“I refuse to argue about that. Not any more today.”
“When will I see you again?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her cheek against the fine, curling hairs that his shirt didn’t cover. “Another two weeks?” The sound she made, a swallowed groan, mirrored his own feelings about a two-week separation. Pushing off from his chest, she raised urgent eyes. “Give me something to do, Derek. Please. Give me something constructive.”
He knew that she wanted to write. He also knew that he had no intention of letting her publish his story before he had done what he was set to do.
But there was another need he had. When she came to see him, he knew that he was her focus. He was selfish enough to want that even when she was back in New York. Besides, what he’d be asking was right down her alley.
“You can help me,” he said very quietly. The process of thought and its direction had effectively cooled his heat. He sniffed in a breath and straightened, lifting his weight from her. “Does the name Lloyd Ballantine ring a bell?”
It was a minute before she realized what he was saying, a minute before she’d recovered enough from his touch—and its sudden loss—to do that. “Lloyd Ballantine was … a justice of the Supreme Court. He died in an automobile accident several years ago.” She wondered why Derek had asked.
He didn’t let her wonder long. “I want to know anything and everything you can learn about the man.”
She nodded, but she was wondering again. It was only natural.
“Don’t ask,” he said, and there was something in his quiet tone that underscored the request. Cupping her shoulders, he looked down at her. “I shouldn’t be involving you at all this way, but you wanted to help—”
“I do!”
He gnawed on the inside of his cheek and contemplated the eagerness in her eyes. Then he gave a single, resigned nod. “Lloyd Ballantine. Anything and everything. As discreetly as possible.”
* * *
It wasn’t until later, in the car heading back to New York, that Sabrina wondered about the rest of Derek’s story. She hadn’t heard his theory about what had happened. She hadn’t been able to offer an opinion.
But she would see him again. There would be other visits, other talks. She was deeply and emotionally committed.
And able. She didn’t know why learning about Lloyd Ballantine was important to Derek, but one thing she did know was that when it came to doing research, few people were more thorough than she.
Chapter 10
LEARNING ABOUT Lloyd Ballantine was a far greater undertaking than Sabrina had imagined, both because there was an abundance of sources to plumb and because the initial sampling she made of those offered little. Newspaper and magazine profiles drew identical pictures of a hard worker, a scholar, a family man who had been a moderate force on the bench.
She waded through a biography that had been written shortly after his death, but it was a long-winded and saccharine affair. What surprised her was that it had been penned by a well-known author, a man whose past work had led her to expect something more than Pablum.
She spent several mornings at the public library working with microfiche and took out an armload of magazines to pore through at home. But she made less headway than she’d hoped, because she had decided to put the Fifth Avenue apartment on the market, and there was immediate activity.
On a Saturday in early August, after nearly two weeks in New York, she drove north again. This time she stopped at Parkersville first.
The guards at the front desk had come to know her. She stood apart physically from many of the other regular visitors—and beyond that, she was friendly. Once she had begun to recognize the faces behind the glass, she’d offered smiles in greeting. In time the smiles were returned.
There were no smiles on this day, though. “He’s not here, Mrs. Stone.”
Sabrina was sure she’d heard wrong. “Excuse me?”
“He’s not here.”
She frowned, then swallowed. “Not here?” Possibilities started popping into her head, the first of which was that there had been another fight and Derek had been hurt seriously enough to warrant transfer to another facility. Her heart began to pound. “Where is he?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Was he hurt?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Then he’s all right?”
“I presume so.”
She tried to keep calm and consider the other possibilities. She knew that he wasn’t due to appear before the parole board for another two months, but perhaps that process had been hastened. “Has he been released?” she asked, afraid to hope.
It was just as well she hadn’t, because the answer she received was a firm, “No. No release.”
“Is he in solitary?”
It might have been the loss of color on her face, or the worry in her eyes, or the goodwill her smiles had built up over the past months. But the guard seemed to soften. “I’d tell you if he was. I’m sorry, Mrs. Stone, he just isn’t here. I know he’s been transferred, but that’s it.”
She believed that the man really did know nothing, but that was small solace. “Why would he have been transferred?”
The guard shrugged.
“Was there trouble here?”
Another shrug.
“Did he—was there any message left for me? He would have known I’d be coming.”
The guard arched back from the speaker and said something to his colleagues, who rummaged through several small piles of papers. Their search turned up nothing.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, Sabrina tried to understand her options. “How,” she began quietly, “would I go about learning where Derek is?”
“I’m not sure, Mrs. Stone. If it was public knowledge, we’d know ourselves.”
“The guards in his house—they’d know, wouldn’t they?”
“No.”
“Then the warden. I’d like to see the warden.”
“He’s away for the weekend.”
“He must have left someone in charge. An assistant warden?”
“That’s right, but you can’t see him. Not today. You’ll need an appointment, and you can’t get that till Monday.”
“I don’t believe this,” she whispered in dismay, then moved on to her next option. “Since it’s Saturday, I’ll probably run into a dead end with the Department of Corrections, too. Do you have an inside number I can try?”
The guard cast a glance behind her at the line that was beginning to form. He leaned closer to the speaker. “Try the phone book. The commissioner’s Lou DeGenio. He lives in Watertown.”
Her eyes went wide. “The commissioner? He was personally involved in Derek’s transfer?”
“Not necessarily. But McGill isn’t our average customer. If DeGenio doesn’t know about the case, he’ll tell you who does.”
Sensing that she would get no more, Sabrina thanked him with a final sad smile and left. Stopping at a pay phone in town, she found that the phone book had been stolen. Not that it would have solved the problem. According to Directory Assistance, there were four Louis DeGenios in Watertown.
Sabrina was just bold enough, just desperate enough to call each of the four and ask if she’d reached the commissioner of Corrections. She was holding her breath when she reached the last, then let it out in a groan when she was told that, no, this wasn’t the commissioner and that the commissioner had an unlisted number.
Feeling an incredible emptiness, she drove on into Vermont, to the small inn where she’d planned to spend the night. There, in a room that might well have hosted George Washington in his day, she phoned New York. After trying each of the city boroughs, the operator finally found a Westchester number for the name Sabrina had given. Sabrina prepared herself for the probability that the man wasn’t home as she dialed it.
A deep, gravelly voice answered. “Yeo.”
“Mr. Cottrell?”
“Mmm?”
She let out a grateful sigh and followed it with a rush of words. “My name is Sabrina Stone. I’m a friend of Derek McGill’s, and I wouldn’t be disturbing you at home on a Saturday if I didn’t feel the situation was urgent. I went to Parkersville today and Derek wasn’t there. He hadn’t said anything to me about the possibility that he might be transferred, even though he knew I’d be back to visit, and he didn’t leave a message. None of the guards could tell me where he was. I’ll need an appointment to meet with any of the prison officials, the Department of Corrections is closed, and the commissioner’s phone is unlisted.” She was close to tears. “Do you know where he is?”
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line, and for a split second Sabrina wondered if she’d gotten the wrong man after all. She clearly remembered the name David Cottrell from newspaper reports of Derek’s trial, but she couldn’t rule out the possibility that in her upset she’d remembered wrong. Fears were crowding her mind, confusing her.
Then David’s voice came across, still sandy but alert and cautious. “Are you all right, Mrs. Stone?”
She breathed again. “I’m fine, but is Derek? I saw him the last time he was beaten. He should have been taken to a hospital then. Now I’m imagining all kinds of awful things. Do you have any idea what’s happened?”
“Derek is fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“How do you know?”
“I spoke with him this morning. I’ve been trying to reach you ever since. If you were on your way to Parkersville, that would explain why I couldn’t get through.”
Sabrina sank down on the bed. David Cottrell had spoken with Derek, and he was all right. “Where is he?” she asked weakly.
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