Ladies' Man

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He paused, the intensity of his eyes keeping her from turning away. “But I kept putting off typing up a letter of resignation, because even though I’m not perfect, you know what? I am good at what I do. And the thought of giving up sets my teeth on edge.

  “So I didn’t quit. And I’m not going to quit now,” he told her. “I’m not going to walk off this case, and I’m not going to walk away from you. Bottom line: I love you. God, I never thought I’d say those words, but there you have it. I can’t break it down into anything simpler than that. I want to be with you. And you’re just going to have to get used to me hanging around.”

  Ellen could almost believe him. Maybe she did believe him. Maybe he even believed himself. Maybe he really did think he loved her. But how long would it last? She wasn’t willing to take the kind of risk involved in finding that out firsthand.

  “What time do you need to be at your shoot in the morning?” he asked.

  “Eleven.”

  Sam swore. “I’ve got a meeting scheduled at ten over at Bob’s studio. My lieutenant’s coming out to talk to him, and I have to be there. There’s no way I can go to that and then get back here in time to get you to Starfire at eleven.” He swore again. “Okay. I know. You’re just going to have to come along with me to the meeting. We’ll leave from there.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I can go over with Hyunh.”

  “Nope. You go with me, or you don’t go at all. No exceptions. I might make mistakes, but I don’t make them twice.”

  “But Hyunh is one of the best bodyguards in the country.”

  “When it comes to your uncle, yeah, you’re right, she is.”

  “Then I don’t understand why—”

  “If we’re outside the house, then I’m next to you,” he told her. “This is not something I’m going to change my mind about.”

  “But Hyunh has had even more experience than you in—”

  “If it’s Bob this guy’s after, I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that she would be the best person to protect him,” Sam said.

  Ellen didn’t get it. “What’s the difference?”

  “You’re not Bob. And I’m not so sure she’d throw herself in front of a bullet for you.”

  “And you would?”

  He didn’t say anything, but his answer was written all over his face. Yes. He would.

  Ellen stared at him in shock. In the sudden silence, she could hear the ticking of Bob’s grandfather clock in the living room. Nearly an entire minute seemed to pass before Sam shifted his weight and looked away from her.

  “I wasn’t kidding when I told you that I love you,” he said quietly, glancing back into her eyes.

  Ellen gazed back at him, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. She did the only thing she could do. She ran for her room.

  THIRTEEN

  There were suitcases in the entrance when Sam came downstairs in the morning.

  The brawnier of the three muscle-bound security guards—Barney was his name—was by the front door. He glanced up at Sam and nodded a greeting.

  “What’s this?” Sam asked, afraid he already knew the answer to his own question.

  “From what I understand, Ms. Layne and the kids are leaving tonight,” Barney told him.

  Sam nodded. “Can I get you a cup of coffee from the kitchen?” he asked, the even tone of his voice not betraying the turmoil brewing inside him.

  Ellen was leaving. Tonight.

  “Nah,” Barney said. “I’ve had my caffeine today. But thanks.”

  Sam nodded again and went into the kitchen. There were bagels and cream cheese out on the counter, but he seemed to have lost his appetite.

  As he poured himself a mug of coffee Ellen came into the room. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was pulled back into a casual ponytail. She looked maybe seventeen years old at the most.

  “Whoa,” she said when she saw him. “Déjà vu. Weren’t we just here?”

  She was trying to be cheerfully nonchalant. It wasn’t working.

  Sam turned to face her. “So, when exactly were you planning to tell me you were leaving?”

  Some of her forced cheerfulness vanished. But Ellen held her ground, even raising her chin as she met his eyes. “I wasn’t keeping it a secret.”

  “It would’ve been nice if you had come to tell me, maybe even talked it over with me first.”

  “You would’ve tried to talk me out of it.”

  “Damn right I would’ve.” He glanced at his watch, taking one last slug of his coffee before setting his mug down on the counter. “We’ve got to pick up T.S. on our way to Bob’s office. We should probably get going.”

  He followed her out of the kitchen and down the hall. Barney opened the door for them and led the way down the front path toward the limousine waiting at the curb. No one else was on the sidewalk. That was good. Still, they couldn’t get inside the limo quickly enough to satisfy Sam. Ron opened the car door, and Sam nearly pushed Ellen inside, then climbed in himself.

  “I think you’re turning into an agoraphobic,” Ellen complained, rubbing a bumped elbow.

  “What I’m afraid of is a little more specific than open spaces,” he told her. “I’m afraid of a shooter on a neighbor’s roof. Or maybe someone driving by with a semiautomatic.”

  He’d sat down next to her, and now she moved so that she was sitting across from him, farther away.

  Sam glanced out the window as the limo started rolling, well aware that they were mere minutes from T.S.’s house. If they were going to talk privately, he didn’t have much time.

  “So tell me, honestly, what are you running away from? The stalker? Or me?”

  Ellen laughed nervously. “Wow, you really cut to the chase.”

  “You’re leaving tonight. I don’t have a lot of time to spend on small talk.”

  She could no longer meet his eyes. “I don’t know what to say to you, Sam. You know where I stand on—”

  “Yeah, you think I’m too young. That part I know by heart. I don’t understand it, but I know it. Why don’t you start by telling me how you could make love to me the way you did two nights ago without feeling something.”

  She looked up at him then. “Oh, please. Don’t pretend you’ve never had a relationship based purely on sex.”

  “You’re right, I have. Too many times. But I don’t think you ever have.” He moved across the car so that he was sitting next to her again as the limo pulled up in front of T.S.’s building.

  Sam glanced out of the window. He could see T.S. walking toward the limousine. He must’ve been waiting in the lobby. Ellen shifted, about to switch seats again, but he stopped her, holding her arm, gently forcing her to look at him.

  “I love you,” he told her softly. “We can make this work. Wherever you’re going tonight, let me come with you and—”

  The door opened and T.S. got in. Talk about timing.

  “Hey, white boy,” he greeted Sam jovially, then nodded at Ellen. “How are you, Ellen?”

  “Fine,” she said faintly.

  “Me too,” T.S. said, settling back in his seat. He had on his Cheshire Cat smile, and Sam knew that, as sensitive as his best friend usually was, T.S. wasn’t picking up the tension between Sam and Ellen. “I just received some really great news from my publisher. They’re going wild with the publicity for my next book. It’s coming out late October, and it has Christmas gift written all over it. The publisher is doing everything it can to promote it—and I mean everything, except maybe tying it in with a fast-food Happy Meal. I was starting to think they were cooling their jets with me, you know, pulling back on the publicity bucks because I wouldn’t do the talk show circuit, but this is pretty huge. It’s bigger than the effort they made for the alien book, three years ago. Remember that one?”

  “Alien Contact,” Ellen said. “Yes. I think I remember seeing commercials on television for that one.”

  “That’s right.” T.S. was very happy.

  Sam was not. “Elle
n’s leaving town tonight,” he told T.S. flatly. “She’s running scared—she’s quitting—because she finally believes me when I tell her that I’m in love with her.”

  T.S. froze, glancing from Ellen to Sam. “Well. Gee. Maybe I should sit up front with Ron?”

  Ellen closed her eyes. She should have known that Sam wasn’t going to let her just slip away. She should have known that he would fight her decision to leave, that he would resist, kicking and screaming.

  “And you know what the really stupid thing is?” Sam continued. He was talking to T.S. but looking at Ellen. “She loves me too.”

  Ellen closed her eyes. “Sam, I’m sorry if I’ve given you that impression.”

  T.S. shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I think it would be a really great idea if I could just use the intercom or the phone or whatever you’ve got in this thing to talk to Ron so I can ask him to pull over and—”

  “Look me in the eye,” Sam demanded. “Come on, Ellen. I dare you. Look me directly in the eye and tell me you don’t love me. ‘I don’t love you, Sam.’ If it’s true, you can say it, no problem, right?”

  Ellen couldn’t say it. She couldn’t even look at him. “I don’t want to love you, dammit!”

  “Aha! Not the same thing. Right, Toby? You’re an expert with words. ‘I don’t want to love you’ is not even close to ‘I don’t love you,’ wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, good,” T.S. said as the limousine pulled to the curb. “We’re here.”

  “Don’t quit on me, Ellen,” Sam told her.

  The limo door opened and Ellen scrambled out, wishing she were as strong as Sam believed her to be. But she wasn’t, and it was easier to quit. It was far easier to walk away than to risk her heart.

  Quitting now meant that she wouldn’t have to wait around, in a permanent sense of dread, wondering when their affair would end.

  Sam watched Ellen pull away from him, and he knew that he’d lost—not the war, just the battle. Ellen was going to find out that it would take more than that to make him walk away.

  He squinted in the bright sunlight as he hustled Ellen and T.S. toward the entrance of the network building. The big lobby was open to the public, but it would be better than being out on the sidewalk. And once across the marble-tiled expanse, they would take one of the private elevators up to Bob’s suite of offices.

  The doorman pulled the doors open, and Sam scanned the lobby. The network had beefed up security—in addition to the man behind the desk barring general access to the elevators, there were three armed guards at the door and three others positioned around the room. He also spotted two undercover detectives from his own precinct—clearly, after yesterday’s incident with Jamie, his lieutenant was finally taking the threats seriously.

  A few dozen other people were around, some looking at the artwork on the walls, some hanging out in the air-conditioned coolness of the lobby hoping to get passes to Bob’s afternoon taping, some waiting to meet other people—glancing at their watches or reading a newspaper.

  One of them, a man with a folded newspaper under his arm, started to cross the lobby, his pace and his route on a direct intercept course with them. There was something odd about him, something about his body language, something about the way he was holding that newspaper.

  The man glanced up and looked directly at Sam, and everything clicked into sharp focus.

  “T. S. Harrison?” the man said.

  Alien Contact. Three years ago T.S. had released a book called Alien Contact. Suddenly it all made perfect sense. The stalker wasn’t after Bob or Ellen or even Lydia or Jamie. All this time, the stalker had been after T.S.

  Sam reached for his gun, but he was too damn late.

  As if in slow motion, he watched the newspaper fall away, revealing the man’s gun. He heard himself shout for Ellen and T.S. to get down as it seemed to take an eternity to pull his own sidearm from his shoulder holster. He pushed Ellen down as the first of the bullets blasted into him, the roar of the gun echoing. He felt the impact, felt the searing, white-hot pain in his chest as he was pushed back, nearly on top of T.S.

  A second and then a third bullet punched into him just as hard, and Sam knew in that instant he was a dead man, his future shrunk into the few short minutes it was going to take him to bleed to death right there on the white marble tile of the network lobby.

  But he wasn’t dead yet, and this bozo had three more bullets left in his gun—and Sam was damned if he was going to have the chance to use them on Ellen or T.S. With a strength he didn’t know he had, he managed to pull his own gun free, and fired. Through a haze of pain and confusion, he seemed to see the gunman fall, but he wasn’t certain.

  He could hear people shouting; he could see T.S. kneeling beside him. He reached up and grabbed T.S.’s shirt. “Did I get him?”

  “You did.” T.S. was breathing hard as he took the gun from his hand. “He’s dead, Sam.”

  “Thank God.” Sam fought the pain, struggling to sit up, to find Ellen, to assure himself she was all right. He turned, and Ellen was there. Ellen with her beautiful eyes. She was covered with blood. His blood, he realized, after a flash of panic. That was his blood. God, he didn’t want to die. “I love you,” he told her.

  She was crying, he realized, her face wet with tears.

  “An ambulance is coming, buddy,” T.S. told him. “Just hang on.”

  “No time,” Sam gasped. God, it was hard to breathe. One of the bullets must’ve hit one of his lungs. He had to get to a hospital, and he had to get there now. It was his only hope. “Help me. Now. The limo…”

  Ellen was there, helping him up. “Help us,” she said sharply to T.S. “Please! We’ll drive him to the hospital ourselves!”

  T.S. pulled Sam into his arms like a baby, carrying him back out to the street, to the limo.

  The pain was nearly unbearable, but that pain meant he was still alive. Sam half crawled and was half dragged into the limo. Ron hit the gas before the door was even closed, lurching out into the street, tires squealing.

  God, there was no time. He was so cold…

  “Ellen?”

  “I’m here, Sam.” She was cradling him in her arms, trying to protect him from the jarring movement of the limo as it sped and bounced over potholes, racing toward the hospital. “I’m right here.”

  “Whatever happens, it’s okay, because I was happy, being with you, you know?”

  T.S.’s voice was raised and laced with fear. “Come on, Ron. Dammit! Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

  “Don’t you quit, Sam,” Ellen told him. “I love you. Don’t you quit on me now.”

  The limo bounced as they skidded to a stop in front of emergency room doors.

  “Knew it,” Sam whispered, somehow managing to smile as he fought the blackness, as he clung to the vision of her beautiful face. “Knew you loved me too.”

  Ellen prayed. She sat in the church chapel as the hours ticked slowly past.

  Hyunh had brought her a change of clothes. She couldn’t remember going into the ladies’ room and changing, but she must have, because she was wearing a clean pair of jeans and a different T-shirt.

  Her other clothes had been nearly saturated with Sam’s blood.

  He was in surgery now, his life in the hands of the doctors and God. Ellen could do nothing but wait. And hope that he’d heard her when she’d told him not to quit.

  But he wasn’t the quitter.

  She was.

  Sam could feel the painkillers coursing through his system before he even tried to open his eyes. His eyelids were incredibly heavy, and his mouth tasted like crap, and it would’ve been a whole hell of a lot easier just to sink back into unconsciousness, except someone was holding his hand.

  He knew that someone had to be Ellen, and he knew if he could only get his damned eyes open, he’d see her gorgeous smile.

  Don’t quit, she’d told him.

  Well, he hadn’t quit yet.

  He opened his eyes and found th
at it wasn’t going to be that simple. He had to work to bring his vision into focus, and even after he did, he still didn’t see Ellen.

  He moved his head to look down at his hand, and there she was. She’d pulled a chair next to him, and she’d fallen asleep, her head resting on his bed.

  He pulled in a breath to speak—bad idea. His words came out as a groan of pain, but it got the job done. She lifted her head, pushing her hair back from her face.

  “Sam?”

  He didn’t breathe quite so deeply this time. “Hey, babe,” he said, nearly soundlessly.

  She started to laugh and cry, both at the same time. “I better call the nurse.”

  “Are you kidding? I don’t want to kiss the nurse—I want to kiss you.”

  She pushed the call button anyway, then leaned over him, gently brushing his lips with hers.

  “The doctor says you’re going to be all right,” she told him.

  “Told you I don’t quit.”

  Ellen squeezed his hand. “I’ve decided not to quit either.” She smiled at him. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “Because you were right.”

  Sam forced his eyes open a little wider, but he felt more of the painkiller kick in and he knew it was a losing fight.

  She took a deep breath. “I was wondering if maybe, in September, you would, um, consider relocating to Connecticut. You see, I’m not going to stay in New York. I don’t want that soap job. I really don’t want it, Sam—it’s not just because I’m afraid of change. I liked acting when I was working with Lydia—that’s what made it fun. Being with my daughter. But when Lydia wasn’t there, it was tedious. It’s all waiting around and…I’m babbling because I just virtually asked you to move in with me, and maybe what you had more in mind was going out to dinner.”

  Move in with Ellen. Move in with Ellen. Hell, he didn’t need the painkiller. He only needed to hear her say things like that and he was filled with euphoria.

  “Yes,” he said. “Connecticut. Yes.” It was an effort for him to get the words out, but he was rewarded by another soft kiss.

  He closed his eyes, letting himself drift back into sleep, his future stretching out ahead of him like some endless shining road.