by Lori Wilde
“Sweetheart.” Instinctively he reached for her, with his raw, scarred hand. “Tell me the truth. What’s really wrong?”
Tish shrank back from him. “Don’t you dare touch me, Shane Tremont. And don’t you dare call me ‘sweetheart.’ ”
He retracted his hand, understanding he’d started across a line that he couldn’t cross. “I just want to help,” he said, and helplessly let his arm drop to his side.
“Why?” She glared at him and her breasts rose sharply as she drew in a deep breath of air.
Tish had always asked hard questions of him. She made him think, often goading him into reconsidering his positions. She challenged him to examine his values and beliefs.
In the beginning of their relationship, he’d loved that about her. Toward the end, it had driven him crazy. She could never leave well enough alone. Always prodding, digging, wanting more answers than he had to give.
“Because I care.”
“If you cared, why did you leave me?”
“You know why I left.”
“I needed you and you abandoned me, you asshole.”
Shane winced as her words struck him like a stunning blow. She was right and his failure ate at him. She didn’t deserve this.
“What can I do to make it better, if you won’t tell me why you were crying? Is it me? Is it Elysee? Is it the engagement? Is it too much for you to handle? Do you want out of the job?”
“I was not crying.” She enunciated the words slowly, injecting her sarcasm. “I don’t cry. It’s not something I do. Got it?”
He watched the emotions play across her face. Anger sparked in her eyes, tightened her jaw. Frustration furrowed her brow, sadness dragged down the corners of her mouth.
She looked haunted.
“So what is it? Just tell me.”
“Johnny,” she said. “I was thinking about Johnny. Happy now?”
He couldn’t believe she said it. He stared at her, his heart constricting in his chest, unable to believe she’d uttered their dead baby’s name.
Until that very moment, Tish hadn’t been thinking about Johnny. She’d spent the last two years learning how to bury that hurt so deep she couldn’t find it. Hiding it under clothes she didn’t need and shoes that were criminally expensive, disguising it with ice cream, locking it away in the attic of her mind along with those tiny little baby things.
But then Shane had insinuated she was pining over him, that she was jealous of Elysee, that she couldn’t handle the stress of videotaping their precious wedding. And she’d just gotten mad. She was determined not to let him know she’d been tearing up over him and their shattered marriage. So she said what she knew would stop him in his tracks.
Once the name of their dead son had been uttered, the past jumped up and slapped hard against her.
Chapter 15
Tish was in labor, but it was too soon. Two and a half months early. Something was very wrong. She knew it deep inside her. Her baby was in serious trouble and there was nothing she could do about it.
And she was all alone. Shane, the bold, strong Secret Service agent who she’d thought would always protect her, no matter what, was out of town on an undercover assignment.
“Help me,” she cried to the doctor. “You’ve got to help me. Help my baby. Something’s wrong with my baby.”
Please, God, don’t let the baby die.
The doctor, with his green scrubs, chubby cheeks, and coffee-colored skin, stared at the monitor. Then he looked at her. He was a professional. He knew how to hide his feelings, but for one brief second, she saw both fear and pity in his eyes.
And in that awful moment, Tish knew the dream was over. Nothing would ever be the same again.
The wonderful, romantic fantasy that began that night in Louie’s nightclub, the night Shane sauntered into her life and swept her off her feet, was shattered. The magic vanished. Shane couldn’t protect her from this. She didn’t believe in miracles anymore.
It was over.
“Is there someone I can call for you?” the doctor asked.
“My husband,” she said. “Call Shane.” When he got there everything would be all right. He would make it all right. Shane had that kind of power.
Dread, more powerful than anything she’d ever experienced before, took hold of her as a disabling contraction twisted through her body, mangling her womb.
“The baby,” she gasped and grabbed the doctor’s arm. “What’s happening to my baby?”
The doctor didn’t answer. He pulled away from her. Called to the nurses. The room filled with medical personnel. They were doing things to her, prepping her, hustling her down the hallway to the operating room.
C-section.
Before, she’d feared the word. Terrified at the thought of being cut open. Thinking she would be less of a woman if she couldn’t give birth the “real” way. But now, all she could think was Yes, yes, yes. Cut me open, get him out. Save my son.
They placed a mask over her face. Told her to count backward from a hundred. The room was cold, sterile, lonely. She was scared. So scared.
Shane, where are you when I need you most? Shane. Shane!
“We’ve lost the fetal heartbeat,” she heard a tense-voiced nurse call out.
Save my baby!
Where’s Shane? She needed Shane. She could not do this alone.
“Shane!”
Then the world blurred, her eyelids sank closed, and she was gone.
Shane laid a hand on Tish’s forearm. A gesture of sympathy. She stiffened beneath the weight of it. She didn’t want his pity. Didn’t want to see the regret in his eyes. He’d screwed up. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“I don’t need you,” she said. “Not anymore. You belong to Elysee. Leave me alone.”
He looked hurt. Good. He’d hurt her plenty; now it was his turn.
Tish shrugged off his hand, turned and headed for the exit. Stepping carefully so that she didn’t falter. Didn’t stumble and give away what she was truly feeling.
But when she reached the door, she found a chair blocking her exit. She leaned over to push it aside, but Shane was already there. His hand brushed against hers as he shoved the chair away from the door.
Adrenaline rushed through her blood, strummed her nerve endings, shoved her senses into overdrive. The familiar feeling of heat and excitement she’d always associated with Shane filled her.
But there was more. She felt something different. Something starkly fresh and unexpected.
Danger.
The hairs on her arms lifted.
What was this? How could being with Shane suddenly feel dangerous and new?
She knew him so well. The texture of his hair. The sound of his throaty voice. The smell of his Shane-y scent. The way he phrased his sentences. How he preferred his eggs sunnyside up and liked the crust cut off his bread. She knew what motivated him. What thrilled him. What turned him off. She knew how to push his buttons, how to provoke his anger. She also knew what words soothed him. How to appeal to his highly honed sense of honor and integrity.
So why this sense of danger?
Because it was taboo. Being alone in the ladies’ room with a man who was engaged to someone else. And not just any someone else, but the President’s daughter.
She wasn’t the only one feeling this forbidden sensation.
Shane’s Secret Service training might have taught him how to hide what he was thinking, but he couldn’t fool her. His arousal strained at the zipper of his tuxedo pants.
For a breath-stealing second, she had an almost irresistible urge to reach out and touch him where it would affect him the most. She ached to feel the hard outlines of his male body pressed against hers just one more time.
Heat swamped her.
A purely physical response. She had an overwhelming urge to kiss him. Never mind that he was engaged to Elysee. She was the one who did this to his body.
Chemistry.
They still had it. Apparently, no
t even divorce could destroy it.
Tish raised her eyes to meet his.
They stared at each other.
From the chagrined expression on his face, she recognized that he knew she’d seen his acute reaction to the simple brushing of their hands.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
Then without giving him an opportunity to respond, she pushed through the door and rushed out into the corridor. Her heart pounded erratically, her palms sweaty.
Shane wanted her!
It doesn’t mean anything. He’s engaged to Elysee. He’s not the kind of guy who cheats. His body just reacted. History, chemistry. It doesn’t mean anything.
But she could still make him hard.
Tish suppressed a grin and forced herself to amble back into the ballroom, past the stern-faced Secret Service agents.
“Tish!” She glanced over to see Elysee waving at her from across the room.
Ho, boy. Feeling like a traitor, Tish hitched in her breath and went over.
“Have you seen Shane?” Elysee asked.
“He was in the hallway earlier.”
Not a lie. Okay, so it wasn’t the complete truth either, but there was no sense hurting Elysee with the details of what had transpired in the ladies’ lounge.
“Where’s your camera?”
Instinctively, Tish’s hand went to her shoulder, but she’d already realized the familiar weight was missing. Oh gosh, she must have left it in the bathroom stall, forgotten because she was too preoccupied with Shane. Leaving her camera behind was equivalent to a first-time mother forgetting her newborn infant in the backseat of a car.
Panic smacked against her rib cage. She spun away, running back toward the bathroom.
Please let it still be there.
She crashed into Shane’s chest just as he was coming into the ballroom.
His hands went up to grasp both her shoulders. “Whoa. Slow down.”
“Let go.” She tried to pull away from him but he held on.
Anxiety mingled with attraction. Fear dueled it out with chemistry. He was the reason she’d forgotten her camera in the first place. His fault.
“What is wrong with you, woman?” he growled.
“My camera.”
“What about it?”
“I left it in the bathroom.”
He let go of her then, followed her back into the hallway. Tish was barely aware that Elysee was behind them. There were several people in the corridor and they were all staring at her.
Tish clambered through into the bathroom, heels snapping against the tile as she hurried to the last stall on the left, shoved the door open and stuck her head inside. Her eyes went to the purse hook where she’d hung her camera bag.
When she saw the empty space, her heart dropped into her shoes.
While she’d been foolishly getting sexually charged up over her ex-husband, her camera—the most precious thing she owned—had been stolen.
The look on Tish’s face was a knife to Shane’s gut. He knew how important the camera was to her. Not only because it was the tool of her trade, but because behind it was the only place she felt truly safe in the world.
On the outside she presented a bubbly, optimistic, free-spirited front. She even had herself convinced she was an outgoing extravert who loved fast-paced activities.
But Shane knew better.
When things got too rough and the world got too fast, she would retreat behind her camera. Even during their marriage, when he would try to pull her into his arms and give her the safety and security she’d never had growing up, she hadn’t really been able to accept it. Oftentimes in the middle of cuddling, she would slide off the bed, pick up her camera, and start filming him. As if what she saw through the viewfinder was her only avenue to real intimacy.
It had irritated him to no end. During their marriage, what she hadn’t seemed to understand was that for Shane, the camera was a barrier to their intimacy, not a conduit. She always had a camera with her, no matter where they went. She had never really let him into her life at all, he realized with a start. She always kept him a camera’s width away.
“Oh, Tish,” Elysee exclaimed. “This is awful.”
It was only when she spoke that Shane even remembered his fiancée was standing behind him. He turned his head toward Elysee, saw four Secret Service agents clumped up in the ladies’ lounge beside her. A group of curious onlookers craned their necks behind Elysee’s wall of bodyguards.
Tish started humming.
Uh-oh.
Shane flashed a glance at his ex-wife and her pallor confirmed his fear. He understood her, and that understanding scared the hell out of him. Tish was teetering on the verge of cracking up. She’d been under tremendous stress and having her expensive camera stolen was the last straw.
And he was at fault.
He had followed her into the ladies’ room earlier, pressured her into talking to him, stirred the old sexual chemistry between them, and caused her to forget her camera.
A memory flashed in Shane’s mind.
He remembered coming home one day to find Tish in the nursery. Surrounded by sacks and packages and boxes of brand-new baby things—clothing and bassinets, diapers and bibs, stuffed animals and picture books. She was humming a lullaby and putting away the things she’d bought, a dreamy smile on her face as she swayed gracefully.
A mother getting ready for her new infant.
Just one problem. It was after they’d lost Johnny.
Whenever she hummed like that it scared the living shit out of Shane and he knew of only one way to stop it. He had to get that camera back.
Sir Galahad to the rescue again, eh? It didn’t work before, what makes you think it’ll work now?
He didn’t have an answer. He just didn’t know what else to do. It had only been a few minutes. Whoever had stolen the camera couldn’t have gotten far.
“Get to the exits,” he barked to the Secret Service agents. “Don’t let anyone leave the floor until we’ve found that camera.”
“Shane?” Elysee raised a hand to her throat. “We’ve got guests. VIPs. Dignitaries. We can’t ruffle political feathers, but we can buy Tish a new camera.”
Elysee didn’t get it and he didn’t have time to explain.
“Come with me,” he said to Cal. “We’re searching the rooms in this wing. Elysee, go back to the ballroom and make some politically correct excuse why the guests can’t leave yet.”
Everyone jumped to obey him.
Tish stopped humming. A good sign.
He and Cal tore down the corridor. Cal took the rooms on the left side of the hall, Shane the ones to the right. He wrenched open the door to a conference room, did a quick search. Nothing seemed disturbed.
He tried the next room, then the next.
In the fourth room, he found what he was looking for. The French doors leading out into the courtyard stood ajar.
Shane rushed into the courtyard just in time to see a shadowy figure sprint across the lawn. Instinctively, his wounded hand reached for the shoulder holster that wasn’t there. God, he wished he had his gun. He felt naked without it. Just as Tish must feel without her camera.
“Stop!” he called out. The thief didn’t know he didn’t have a weapon. “Secret Service!”
The culprit kept running.
Shane swore under his breath and took off at a dead sprint. But the thief had too much of a head start and Shane just couldn’t keep up. His lungs throbbed, sending sharp pulses of pain shooting through his chest. He’d become sadly out of shape since his accident.
The thief broke through the privacy hedges to the street beyond. By the time Shane got there, he was out of breath. He stood a moment in the darkness, heaving in air, body quivering, wondering how he was going to break the news to Tish that her camera was gone.
Then he spied the camera bag lying in the dirt underneath the Japanese boxwoods.
Feeling like a conquering hero, h
e shrugged off the pain and made his way back to the party with the bag. He slipped inside to find Elysee holding court, Tish sitting quietly beside her.
The minute Tish spotted him she was on her feet, her eyes wide, overjoyed to see her bag.
“You found it!” she breathed and reached out to take the camera bag like it was her long-lost baby. She clutched it to her chest for a moment, then unzipped it and took the camera out.
“Is it okay?” Shane asked.
Elysee came over and slipped an arm around his waist. “Are you all right, Tish?”
Tish shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said. “But whoever stole the camera took the disk.”
Thanks to Shane, Tish had her camera back. Everything was going to be okay.
“I don’t understand. Why would the thief leave an expensive camera like this, but steal the disk?” Elysee asked.
“They weren’t after the camera,” Shane said.
“Who’d go to such lengths for a disk of our engagement party?” Elysee wrinkled her nose in confusion.
“Tabloids,” Tish said. “They’ll pay millions for exclusive shots of the first daughter’s engagement party.”
“Oh, no.” Elysee groaned, crossed her palms and pressed them against her heart. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
Tish felt instantly protective of her. “It’s okay.”
“No it’s not.” Elysee shook her head. “It’s going to be a nightmare for security and…”
“Fear not.” Tish grinned and dipped her hand into the pocket of her dress, pulling out a compact camera disk.
“Is that what I think it is?” Elysee breathed.
“Yep. I’d just changed out the disk before the camera went missing. I’ve got your engagement party pictures right here. You’re safe.”
“I’m not sure I trust her,” Lola Zachary said to Elysee after the engagement party, when they were alone in Elysee’s bedroom at the White House.
Elysee wasn’t really listening to Lola. She was thinking about Shane. She’d wanted to spend some quiet time with him after the party—maybe kissing in the garden under the full moon. They hadn’t spent nearly enough time kissing, but protocol and circumstances had reared their heads. All she’d gotten from him that night was a chaste kiss.
