He still found her that irresistible. Only this time around, Emily wasn’t going to come to him the way she had seven years ago. This time around, she knew better.
Jim took a deep breath. “You’re tired,” he said, forcing a smile. “I know. I know what it’s like to be out there pretending to be someone you’re not for hours. You can’t relax, not even for a second, for fear you’ll say something wrong or make a mistake.”
“Excuse me,” Emily said, and he realized that by standing there the way he was, he had penned her into the corner.
Jim moved aside, and she opened the bedroom door. He was in the middle of her bedroom now, not two feet away from the big double bed Emily would be sleeping in tonight. He could picture her lying there, and it didn’t take much to go another step farther and picture himself there, too. And oh, baby, that was one dangerous thought. He yanked his eyes away from the miniature flowers on the print of her bedspread to find her watching him. Self-consciously he smiled and moved past her, out into the relative safety of the hall.
“I’m exhausted,” Emily said, and her voice shook very slightly. “And you’re right. It’s not easy spending so much time with a man I despise.”
That statement seemed to be loaded with hidden meanings, and Jim tried to look into Emily’s eyes, to see exactly what she had meant. Was she talking about Delmore—or God, was she talking about him? But she didn’t look up at him for longer than an instant as she murmured a good-night and closed the bedroom door.
Jim walked slowly back into the living room, forcing himself to face the facts. He was poised at the brink of an emotional avalanche. He wanted this woman physically, there was no denying that. But it also seemed that she’d awakened more in him than merely his libido. He felt all sorts of frightening sensations whenever she was around—hell, he felt them whenever he so much as thought about her. And he thought about her damn near one hundred percent of the time.
He felt protective. Possessive. He felt proud—God, she was undeniably her own person, standing up so firmly for the things she believed in. He respected her, he admired her, he liked her. Yeah, he definitely liked her.
But feeling those things didn’t mean that he loved her, did it? No, even he wouldn’t be stupid enough to fall back in love with a woman who disliked him—and probably even despised him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EMILY’S DREAM started the way it always did. It started the way that awful evening had started—with deceptive calm and normality.
This time, she was having dinner with Carly. They were at that new place on Venice Road, the restaurant with all the big-screen TVs. Country Music Television was playing, showing a Dwight Yoakam video.
Carly was telling her about the latest stud she was dating, but right in the middle of a description of the guy’s peculiar eating habits, Carly turned into Michele Harris, Emily’s college roommate from her freshman year.
Michele was talking about something just as important and gripping as Carly’s latest conquest, but although her mouth moved, Emily couldn’t hear the words. Yet she knew that whatever her old roommate was saying didn’t matter. She knew as soon as she saw Michele’s face that the nightmare had begun.
Sure enough, the restaurant on Venice Road disappeared, replaced by Emily’s freshman dorm dining room. She and Michele were sitting in the corner, at a round table near the television. They were sitting exactly where they’d been that awful night.
The television was set to a channel showing reruns of M*A*S*H, exactly as it had been. And the show was interrupted by a late-breaking news story, exactly as it had been.
Emily had dreamed about it hundreds of times before. She’d even lived through it once. But the horror was no less intense as the television newsperson reported live from the scene of a recent downtown shoot-out between local police and an escaped convicted killer.
“The killer, Laurence Macy, has been declared dead at the scene,” the reporter’s dispassionate voice said as the camera panned across the area. “But he didn’t go down without a fight.”
Emily watched in disbelief as the news camera lingered on Jim Keegan’s beat-up old car. A portable police light still flashed from the roof. The car had been riddled with bullets, its windshield shattered.
“Two police officers have been shot,” the reporter continued as the camera cut back to him, “and one is in critical condition.” He turned to look over his shoulder at an ambulance parked haphazardly in the middle of the street. A crew of paramedics came into sight, shouting as they ran toward the vehicle, pulling a stretcher with them.
“The unidentified policeman,” the reporter said as the camera zoomed in tighter on the figure on the stretcher, “is being taken to University Hospital.”
It was Jim. His eyes were closed, and his mouth and nose were covered by an oxygen mask, but Emily recognized him immediately. And—oh, God! His chest was covered with blood. The paramedics scrambled around him, pulling him up and into the ambulance and slamming the doors tightly shut.
“We’ll report in later from the hospital when we have information on the police officer’s identity and condition,” the reporter said, but Emily was no longer watching. She was already halfway out of the dining room.
The taxi ride was interminable. The hospital was only a few blocks away, but it seemed to take forever to get there. Still, Emily managed to arrive before the ambulance.
The emergency room was bustling, preparing for the ambulance. Emily stood in the lobby and prayed. Please, God, let Jim live. Please, God, don’t let him die.
The ambulance pulled up with a squeal of tires, its siren wailing. The doctors ran outside to meet it, opening the van’s doors and taking over from the paramedics. And then Jim was inside. Emily followed as they wheeled him down the hall.
His eyes were open and glazed with shock and pain. He was laboring to breathe, every breath a rattling effort. Bright red blood was everywhere, seeping through the bandages and the blanket that covered him, even flecking his lips.
How could someone lose that much blood and still live?
“Jim, hang on!” Emily cried, but he didn’t, couldn’t, hear her.
“We’re losing him,” a nurse reported, her voice cutting through the noise.
The medical team moved faster, but not fast enough.
As Emily watched, her own heart hammering in her chest, the machine hooked up to monitor Jim’s heart rate flatlined.
The doctors and nurses worked frantically to revive him. Emily stood there in the hallway, watching in horror.
She felt the last of her control slipping, sliding away, as the doctors attempted to start Jim’s heart with a jolt of electricity.
He was dying. He was going to die.
“No!” she cried. “No! It’s not supposed to end this way! Jim! Jim! No—” She threw back her head and screamed, a piercing, primitive, throat-burning cry of grief and rage.
The door to her bedroom burst open, and light from the hallway flooded into her room and yanked Emily out of her dream.
She sat up with a start as Jim made a quick circuit of her room, checking the window locks and glancing into the closet. He was wearing only a pair of running shorts, and his hair was disheveled from sleep. He held a gun with an easy familiarity, as if it were an attachment to his arm.
“Are you all right?” he asked, putting the gun’s safety on as he came to stand next to the bed.
Emily nodded.
He was still breathing hard, his broad chest rising and falling. She could see the faint scars where the bullets had struck him and where the surgeons had operated. He wasn’t dead. He hadn’t died. He was standing right here, in front of her, living, breathing proof that her dream had been only that—a dream.
Still, she couldn’t seem to stop the tears that were streaming down her face.
“Nightmare?” Jim asked gently.
She nodded again, still silent, hugging her knees tight to her chest and closing her eyes. She heard the clunk as he put his gu
n on her bedside table, then felt the mattress sink as he sat down next to her on the bed.
“It must’ve been a bad one,” he said. “You called out for me, and then you screamed. You scared the hell out of me, Em.”
Emily lifted her head, pushing her hair out of her face with a hand that was still shaking. “I’m sorry—”
“Hey, shh…no,” Jim said. “That’s not why I was—You don’t need to apologize.” He reached for her before he realized what he was doing. It wasn’t until he had his arms around her, until he felt her body stiffen, that he remembered she didn’t want him to touch her. But before he could pull away, she put her arms around his neck. She held him so tightly it nearly took his breath away.
This had nothing to do with him, Jim told himself. Right now Emily needed someone to hold her, someone to hold on to, and he happened to be here. That was all this was, nothing more.
Still, he closed his eyes, breathing in the sweet fragrance of her hair as he rocked her back and forth. He gently stroked her back, soothingly running his hand up and down the soft cotton of her T-shirt.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “It was only a dream.”
After a while, he could feel her start to relax. He felt her stop trembling and heard her ragged breathing return to normal.
“I won’t let anything bad happen, Emily,” Jim said. “I promise you. Whatever you were dreaming about, it’s not gonna happen, I swear.”
“But it already did happen,” Emily said.
Jim pulled back to look searchingly into her eyes. “Has Delmore hurt you?” His jaw tightened. “Damn it, I’ll kill him—”
“I wasn’t dreaming about Alex. I was dreaming about you.” Tiredly, she let go of him. She moved away from him on the bed so that her back was against the headboard—and so that she was out of his reach.
“Me?” he said.
She could see the surprise on his face. He was surprised that she’d been dreaming about him—and equally surprised that she would admit it.
Emily pulled her knees up and rested her elbows on them. She supported her forehead in the palm of one hand. “I was dreaming about the night you were shot,” she said. “I don’t know, I guess seeing you again brought back the old nightmares.”
“Nightmares?” he asked. “Plural? You mean, you’ve had this kind of dream before?”
She nodded. “I guess having my boyfriend shot made kind of an impact on me.”
“You never told me.”
“I didn’t have them until after you were out of the hospital for a few months.”
Until after they had split up. Until after he had staged that ugly little scene in the University Boulevard bar. Emily hadn’t mentioned that night, but Jim knew that she was thinking about it.
“In my nightmare,” Emily said, pulling the sheet higher up the bed, as if she were suddenly cold, “you always die, right there in the hall near the emergency room lobby.” She looked up and briefly met his eyes. “It’s as if my mind is playing out the worst-case scenario. It’s as if I get to experience what I was most afraid of when I saw them wheel you in.” Emily shrugged, sweeping her hair back from her face. “I don’t know. I had a roommate who was a psychology major, and she said—”
She looked up, startled, when Jim caught her wrist. He was watching her intently, questioningly. “You saw them wheel me in?” he asked. “You were there. I thought I’d only imagined hearing your voice.”
She was staring down at the fingers encircling her wrist, but he didn’t release her.
“I got to the hospital before you did,” she said.
“But how?” he asked, realizing suddenly that he’d never asked her how she’d first heard that he’d been shot. They’d never talked about it. “Who called you?”
“No one,” she said, looking up into the piercing blue of his eyes. “I saw you on the news, being put into the ambulance.”
“Oh, God,” Jim breathed. He could remember the sense of disbelief he’d felt when the bullets hit him. No way. No way could he have been shot. He was off duty, he wasn’t wearing a vest, he wasn’t ready for it. There must be some mistake. But the only mistake was his. There was so much blood. There was blood everywhere.
And Emily had seen him that way. On television. Without warning.
Emily’s eyes filled with tears. “Then, when they brought you in, they wouldn’t let me near you. They wouldn’t even let me hold your hand.”
“I thought I heard your voice,” Jim said. “I tried to find you. I wanted to tell you…”
He’d been so sure he was going to die. In fact, he’d been damn near ready to give up the fight. He’d been so tired and…But he’d wanted to tell Emily that he loved her. He’d tried to tell the doctor to give Emily a message from him, but the man wouldn’t listen. He’d kept telling Jim to save his strength.
And then Jim had heard Emily’s voice again. He’d heard her tell him to hang on, to keep fighting.
So he had.
But he hadn’t really believed that she was actually there, in the hospital. It was bad enough that she’d seen him in the hospital bed, with all those tubes and monitors hooked up to him, after he was moved out of ICU. But, God, down in the ER, when he’d first been brought in, he’d been a real mess. That was enough to give anyone nightmares for the rest of their life.
“Emily, I’m sorry,” he whispered, blinking back the sudden sharp sting of tears in his own eyes.
She wiped at her eyes, at a tear that threatened to roll down her cheek. “I am, too,” she said.
Jim wasn’t holding her wrist anymore, she realized. He was holding her hand. And she was holding on to him just as tightly.
“Sorry,” she said, releasing him. She managed a watery smile. “Usually when I have these dreams, I don’t have access to such solid proof that you really are all right.”
He was looking at her with such wistful sadness in his eyes that she didn’t flinch or pull away when he reached out to push her hair back from her face.
“I really blew it, didn’t I?” he asked quietly. “By getting shot that way. I knew it was rough on you, but I had no idea…”
“It wasn’t as if you got shot on purpose,” Emily said. “It wasn’t much fun for you, either.”
“I didn’t want you to have to live through something like that ever again,” Jim said, cupping her face with his hand. His fingers were so rough, but he touched her so gently. Emily felt her pulse kick crazily into double time. “I never thought you would have nightmares.”
She was looking up at him, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted. She was wearing a faded white oversize T-shirt that didn’t quite succeed in hiding her body from his view. The cotton was thin, and it clung to the soft fullness of her breasts. He forced his eyes back to her face. Her skin was so soft, and her beautiful hair was tousled from sleep. She looked sweet, so sweet and so innocent, as if somehow the past seven years had never touched her, as if she were somehow still eighteen years old, even after all this time.
He ran his thumb lightly across her lips. “God, Em, you’re so beautiful—”
Desire. It was suddenly so palpable, it might have been a living thing, swirling around them, surrounding them, connecting them.
Emily knew that the desire she could see in Jim’s eyes was mirrored in her own. Like him, she was helpless to hide it, powerless to conceal it. She could see it on his face, hear it in the way he breathed, feel it in his touch, in the heat of his skin.
She wanted him to touch her. She wanted to touch him. She wanted—
He kissed her.
Gently his mouth met hers in a kiss so sweet Emily nearly cried out. It had always amazed her—it still amazed her—that a man who was so much larger than life, a man who lived his life so passionately, so intensely, could be so breathtakingly tender.
Even as he deepened the kiss, as his tongue sought entry into her mouth, even then he was unquestionably gentle. Emily felt herself melt. She felt her bones turn to liquid, felt her bod
y molding to fit against his as he took her into his arms and kissed her again and again.
His touch and taste were so familiar, it seemed as if they’d last made love just yesterday. Her memories were incredibly vivid. They’d tumbled together on his bed, a double bed just like this one, kissing and touching, exploring….
Emily felt Jim yank the sheet out from between them. She gasped as he rolled over, pulling her on top of him. Their legs intertwined, the roughness of his against the soft smoothness of hers. She could feel the hard bulge of his sex pressing against her as he kissed her again. He wanted her—it was undeniable.
She knew she could tell him that she wanted him, too, without saying a single word. All she’d have to do was to keep responding to his kisses. Or maybe, more obviously, she could pull her T-shirt up and over her head. No doubt he’d catch on pretty quick if she was lying naked in his arms.
Emily could remember the way he had caressed every inch of her body as he made love to her. He had made her feel as if she were the most beautiful, most desirable, woman in the world. She could remember how he had somehow seemed to know when to unleash his passion, when to leave his sweet tenderness behind. She could remember how he’d let himself lose control, giving himself over to her completely, crying out her name as waves of intense pleasure exploded around them both.
She could remember how totally, how absolutely, how with all her heart, she had loved him.
Her memory of that love was so strong, she could almost feel it. It was as if she’d been thrown backward in time, back seven years, back before Jim had hurt her so badly, back before she had known the kind of man he really was.
She could make love to him again, as if it were seven years ago. She could pretend that she was eighteen again and in love for the first time.
But tomorrow morning, when they woke up, it wouldn’t be seven years ago. It would be now, and they would be here, and it would be awful.
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