by Gayle Wilson
“Not a memory. I just know that I was And there was…some evidence of that. On my body.”
Abby closed her eyes, the images of the last night they had spent together moving through her mind like the frames of a movie. Individual images, clear and vivid. Feeling the sensations, even. Reliving the emotions.
“And Rob knew that?” she asked finally.
He nodded, his chin moving up and down against her hair. And then he asked, “Are you that woman, Sterling? Are you the woman Andrews thinks set me up for the hit?”
Chapter Seven
The shock of that took her breath. She had had no idea where his questions had been leading. No idea that Rob believed a woman was mixed up in what had happened.
Maybe that’s why he had sent her out here. Not to jar Nick Deandro’s memory, as he had told her, but as a test of some kind. An attempt, if he believed she was involved, to entrap her.
If that were the case, then Nick wasn’t the victim of this charade. She was. Victim. Suspect. Did they both think she had had something to do with the hit? Not professional, Nick had said. Not the usual mob mechanic.
She understood now that he was probably right about that. Only, he was terribly wrong about the rest of it. About her role in what had happened to him. “You’re wrong,” she said.
Suddenly his hand released her wrist. She didn’t know what he intended, not even when she felt it touch her cheek. There was nothing about the movement that was the least bit uncertain.
His fingers tangled in her hair, tracing downward to the abrupt end of the chin-length strand he had captured. And only then did she understand…long blond hair that used to tangle around me when we made love.
Slowly his hand fell away. Not to grip her wrist again. Not to touch her in any other way. But his forearm was still around her neck and the familiar feel of his big body was pressed tightly behind hers.
“Are you that woman, Sterling?” he asked again. The import of the question had changed somehow with the difference in his tone. She knew that what he was asking now was not what he had asked before.
They weren’t the same two people who had met on those nights in the darkness of her small apartment Hiding because it was dangerous to do otherwise. Meeting only when Nick believed he could safely get away from his assignment for a few hours. When he could disappear without being missed.
Are you that woman? It seemed like such a simple question. It wasn’t, of course, and it was one she still didn’t have any answer for. All she had was another question Are you that man, Nick? That same strong man?
Suddenly, his arm released her throat. It slid across her body, and his hand wrapped around her upper arm. His other hand found her left shoulder. Still standing behind her, gently holding her shoulders, Nick bent and pushed his mouth into the softness under her ear. His tongue traced over her skin, leaving a trail of heat and dampness behind.
Automatically, she tilted her head to rest her cheek against his hair, feeling the black silk of it brush her throat His teeth teased the sensitive lobe of her ear. Finally his tongue slipped inside the small ivory channel, the feel of its movement hot and enticing. Then his breath touched the moisture it had left, soft coolness against the warmth. A shivering seduction.
So familiar she was unable to prevent reaction. Her knees trembled, almost giving way, and a small moan escaped, the sound originating from deep within her throat. Sensual. Needy.
In response to that clearly expressed need, Nick’s hard fingers moved, biting suddenly into the top of her shoulder, forcing her to turn and face him. His left hand fastened on her right arm, and he lifted, pulling her body upward by his strong grip on her upper arms, even as he lowered his head
His mouth settled over hers, and Abby’s opened, responding to the feel of his lips as reflexively as a baby’s hand will tighten over a finger placed within its palm. She stood on tiptoe, straining to increase the sweet contact with his tongue, which demanded response with the compelling surety it had always had.
Nothing had changed, it seemed. Not about this. And suddenly kissing him was not enough. It wasn’t a conscious decision, because she had known what would happen if he ever held her
But somehow she had forgotten to be careful. Her body had forgotten why it should maintain a distance. Overcome by a more powerful need, it reached for his, seeking the once-familiar contact. Needing it. Needing him. She had existed for too long with nothing but memories of this. And now…
She was aware of the enormity of her mistake as soon as he stiffened, but by then, of course, it was too late. Again, his hands on her shoulders tightened, this time pushing her away. Obeying, as she had always obeyed him, Abby took a step back.
His hands fell to the bulge of her pregnancy, the palms cupping over the unmistakable contour of it and then tracing the shape downward. “What the hell?” Nick said, the question so soft it was almost a whisper. “What the hell is going on?”
HE HAD THOUGHT he was so smart. Believed he had figured some of this out. At least why Abby seemed so damn familiar. He had even thought he understood what she was doing here. And now he knew he had been wrong about it all. Wrong about everything.
His hands fell away from her body, and he stood in shock, trying to think. Abby Sterling was pregnant. And although he was no expert, it seemed to him she was pretty far along.
He waited, but she didn’t say anything in response to his question. He could hear her breathing, even the occasional soft shuddering catch in its rhythm. Breathing so unevenly it sounded as if she’d been running. Was she that disturbed by what had just happened between them? Almost happened, he amended.
But then he was pretty damn disturbed, too. It had been a hell of a long time since he’d been with a woman, and this had felt…right. Abby Sterling’s mouth fitting under his. Perfect. Familiar. And he didn’t understand how that could be.
Part of it was her size, he supposed. The feel of her wrist under the grip of his big fingers, the bones so incredibly delicate. And that damn perfume made it hard for him to think clearly when he was around it. Around her.
Then it was difficult to do anything but be aware of the screaming need of his body. The endless wanting that was just like the dreams that woke him and left him to lie alone in that bed, his body aching and trembling.
That was really why he had begun this fantasy, he supposed. Why he had begun to believe Abby Sterling was the woman he dreamed about. Because they wore the same perfume, he mocked himself. Some cop, Deandro. Some real smart detective work.
There must be at least a million women who wore that same popular scent. Would he want all of them? Would he go through life imagining that they, too, were someone he had once made love to? Someone he had once loved.
He had been reluctant to use those words before, especially after Andrews’s suggestion about the woman’s possible involvement in the hit. But they had been in his mind. In the back of it, anyway, because of the intensity of the dreams. Because of the terrible sense of loss that was always there when he woke up.
Obviously, he had transferred that need, that emotion, to the first woman he’d come in contact with since he’d been shot. To Abby Sterling, who was some other man’s wife. Who was carrying some other man’s baby.
Apparently he was not only blind, he thought bitterly, but brain-dead as well. He used to pride himself at being good at what he did. Figuring things out. Thinking everything through.
This time he had done his thinking all right, but not with his brain. He had relied on another notoriously less reliable organ. And on his famous gut instincts. All because Abby Sterling had somehow “felt” familiar.
She even had tonight. When he had put his mouth over hers, his hands fastening around her upper arms to pull her up to him. It had felt so…right. How the hell could she feel this familiar and be a stranger?
All the while, his rational mind was still trying to deal with the shock of his discovery that Sterling was pregnant. The bodyguard Andrews had sent out here t
o protect him was pregnant, he repeated mentally, disbelieving. And that made no sense.
Unless…The thought was sudden. And considering everything, it was also frightening Given his situation, it was frightening as hell.
But he denied his urge to touch her again. To put his hands over the hard roundness of her belly. To try to judge with his fingers how advanced this pregnancy really was. And he fought against seriously considering the possibility that had just entered his mind.
Even as he did, the hard ache in his groin increased, the blood rushing there in response to the image he knew didn’t belong in his head. The picture of a dark-haired infant suckling the small, perfect globe of her breast, blue-veined and rose-tipped. His baby? Could this possibly be his baby?
Without his conscious volition it seemed, his fingers moved, trembling as they began their upward journey. They hesitated, without touching, over the bulge they had explored before. He wanted to. God knew, he wanted to touch her again, but that would tell him nothing. Nothing he didn’t already know.
Abby Sterling was pregnant. He knew that, but he sure wasn’t familiar enough with women in that condition to be able to tell anything about the time frame. More than six months? To his shocked, searching hands she had certainly felt big enough for that And if so..
He could still hear her breathing, but the inhalations were softer now, more even. She sounded less like she was running a race. Calmer. Maybe that was only because he no longer had his hands on her body.
Sexual harassment in anybody’s book, he thought, almost amused by the realization. Running his fingers over her stomach as if he had some right to touch her. To touch the shape and incredible tautness of her pregnancy. To try to measure it.
But still, he needed to know. He needed to understand why his body had betrayed him. Why he had believed so strongly that he had known this woman before Known her in the oldest sense of that word, the Biblical one.
His hand continued to rise as the thoughts circled inside his head. It had moved above waist level, however. Moved higher. Determined not to grope. Determined to find out, as he had asked her, just what the hell was going on here.
He stretched his arm forward a little, reaching for her face, and his fingers made contact. There was something soft under their tips. Fabric of some kind. Sweater?
He moved his hand slightly and knew by the texture that he was right. Under the sweater, he could feel bone, and he allowed his hand to trace along it. Collarbone. As delicate under his exploring fingers as her wrist had been this morning.
He had to fight the compulsion to move his hand downward a little, to cup his palm under her breast. To feel the weight and shape of it in his hand. Surely then he would know. Surely he would be able to tell…
Stupid. Infinitely stupid, some still-rational part of him jeered. She was a woman. Just as a million women wore this perfume, a million of them would feel the same to his groping, untrained fingers And he could imagine how she would react to that particular attempt at identification
He touched her neck instead, his fingers gliding upward. And then her cheek. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch from the contact, and he couldn’t imagine why she was allowing this. His fingers traced lightly over the bones of her face. Jawline. Cheekbone. The incredible smoothness of her skin. Small, slender slope of nose.
But there had never been a picture in his head of the woman from the dreams. Even if he had any experience at “seeing” someone through his fingertips, he would have nothing to compare this experiment to when he finished. Nothing.
Finally he touched her hair again. That single memory had been so clear. Even now he could remember watching her gather the golden strands with both hands and hold them bunched high on her head. At some time he had done that. Had watched her hold her hair off the heat and dampness of her neck.
And he had felt it spread over his body, the spiderweb fineness of the strands caught against the dampness of his own skin. Against his face. Caught in his late-afternoon beard. He had tangled his fingers in the curling length of it. And now, instead…
“I’m sorry,” he said.
His hands fell from the strand he had touched. He had known before, when he had felt her pregnancy, but he had wanted to be wrong. He took a step away from her And he waited.
A long time. Standing alone in the darkness of his humiliation. His stupidity. His blindness.
“It’s all right,” Sterling said finally.
Her voice was different, but he couldn’t tell what was in it. Apparently he couldn’t tell a damn thing about what was going on around him. Stupid, mindless groping in the dark, trying to believe he could still figure things out.
“This is what Rob meant,” he said. “About needing to rest.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
Which told him two things, he realized, his mind worrying at what had happened. Still working at the puzzle despite knowing how wrong he had been before. It meant Abby Sterling’s pregnancy was pretty far along or her supervisor wouldn’t have been so concerned about her And it also meant, of course, that nobody was still trying to find Nick Deandro.
Which should have been comforting, he supposed. But it wasn’t. Not a damn bit comforting. “They finally tell Andrews I’m not ever going to remember?” he asked.
She hesitated a fraction of a second too long before she answered him. Since he had been reduced to reading voices for information, the lack of an immediate denial was a pretty good clue to the reality of what was going on
“No one’s said that,” she hedged.
“But that’s what they think”
“Rob believes the mob thinks you’re dead.”
“Those guys don’t buy the death of a witness until they touch the cold dead body with their own hands,” he said. “Andrews knows that. So I can’t figure why else he would send someone like you out here”
“Someone like me?” she repeated softly.
Nick laughed “I forgot. Gender sensitive.”
“What does that mean?” The same tightness that had been in her voice when he’d confronted her on the stairs was back. A little angry. A little insulted. But it was better than hearing what had been there before. That tinge of pity after she’d blown her denial by hesitating over it
“It means that Mickey Yates wasn’t about ready to drop a kid when he came out here. It means something sure as hell seems to have changed about my situation.”
That sounded bitter. Self-pitying, even to him. And he supposed she could read his voice as well as he could read hers. But that realization had really hurt.
It deepened the despair that had been there since the beginning. The fear. He kept hoping he’d get better because everyone had kept telling him he would.
Now he knew the truth. They weren’t worried about protecting him because apparently everybody knew he was no longer a threat to anyone, despite their endless reassurances. And if they were wrong about the amnesia, then they were probably wrong about the rest of it, too. About the blindness But he couldn’t deal with the thought of that now. Not while Sterling was reading every nuance of his voice, as he was trying to read hers.
“They call off the indictments?” he asked instead, speaking around the knot of frustration that was building in his throat.
“They’re still expecting you to be able to testify. Eventually. They’re still counting on you,” she added.
“Spare me, Sterling. At least spare me that load of crap. That all I’ve heard from Andrews and everybody else for months. At least admit what’s going on here.”
“What do you think is ‘going on here’?” she asked angrily. “Why don’t you explain what you think the fact that I’m pregnant means?”
“You know as well as I do what it means. Andrews sends you out here for a rest while you pretend to be playing bodyguard for somebody who apparently doesn’t need a bodyguard anymore.”
“Implying I’m the next best thing to no bodyguard.”
“Implying that if Andrews was re
ally worried about somebody coming for me, he sure as hell wouldn’t put you in their path.”
She took a breath, audible, and he waited, but the silence stretched. Apparently she was thinking about what he’d said.
“Because I couldn’t protect you?” she asked finally.
“Because he’s not going to put a pregnant woman in jeopardy. You know that as well as I do. If I can read that good ol’ Southern boy that well, then you sure understand how his mind works. He wouldn’t do that. So that means—”
“Nothing,” she interrupted. “It means nothing. I’m a cop. I’m part of O.C. Special Unit. I’m still on the payroll, Deandro, and I’m expected to earn my money. And for your information I’m pregnant, not disabled.”
“Thanks for reminding me, Sterling. I guess I needed that little lesson in the distinction between me and you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said hotly. “Damn it, you always—” She stopped, the angry words cut off abruptly.
“I always what?” he asked. “What do I always do, Sterling? Rattle your damn feminist chain?”
She didn’t answer. He heard her move instead Preparing to go past him, to get out of the kitchen and go back upstairs, he thought To avoid him and his unanswerable questions.
Suddenly, he was angry, too Part of it was his frustration, or maybe fear, boiling over after months of trying so damn hard to keep it in check. Part of it was fury over her assumption, again, that he was just being a sexist bastard.
But part of it was also the knowledge that there were still a lot of things unresolved here. Things that he couldn’t figure out. Maybe even things that she and Rob Andrews were keeping from him, which was pretty easy to do now. The truth of that made him even angrier.
He reached for her, intending to stop her escape, but his hand brushed against her body and slid off. Missing her, he realized, because she had sidestepped, avoiding him. At that, anger flooded his body, the hot white strength of rage overcoming everything rational. “Don’t you dodge me, damn you,” he said.
He lunged for her, but again she wasn’t there. Not where his hand had just touched her. Where he had expected her still to be standing. He swung his arm in a wide arc in front of him, fingers reaching for her. And encountering emptiness.
