Absolutely.
And yet she sat with her mouth closed and her thoughts flying.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“Sure.”
Again with the “sure”? That word needed to be banished. Forever. No. Not okay. That was what she should have said. Just thrown him out of here. Instead, he was sitting on her bed, way too close, and already she knew her life would never be what it had been. How could it be after all this? And maybe that was the point. That life meant bumps and bends and hills to be conquered.
None of which could be accomplished in neutral.
“Amanda, I’m sorry. For everything. For getting you into this mess, for tearing your life up and for blaming you this morning. No excuses. I’m an idiot sometimes.”
Oh, she might love this man.
She bit her bottom lip but finally gave up and smiled. “You’re funny, David.”
“Sometimes I’m that, too.” He shifted a little, facing her straight on, his soul-piercing gaze glued to hers. “Will you let me try to fix this? This week has been hell, straight up hell, but I knew we’d get through it. I knew. But when you walked out this morning, that did me in. I was mad and hurt and irritated at myself and everyone else. And then my mother got a hold of me.”
Amanda laughed. “Poor baby.”
He grinned at her. “Seriously, she’s tough. And most of the time, she’s right. Annoying, that. Since I’m coming clean, I might as well tell you that she has you lined up to be the next member of our family.”
Gulp. “Wow.”
David set his giant hand on hers, and his palm was warm as he curled his fingers around hers, cocooning her. She rested her head back and closed her eyes because this was the part of being with David she loved. That feeling of safety and warmth. With that, though, came the risk of heartbreak. No neutral.
Not with this man.
“Yeah. No pressure there. I think she has a point, though. When I’m not being a dope we’re good together. I love talking to you and touching you. The minute you leave me, I want you back. And for a guy who spent years running, that’s new. I like it. It makes me feel...lighter. Like dealing with my crazy family isn’t so hard because I have you to make me laugh. To tell me when I’m wrong and not have it be a power struggle. To make me understand that it’s okay to disagree and it doesn’t mean you don’t support me. I get that now. This morning, my emotions took over. I’m sorry. I can’t promise my emotions won’t get in the way again, but I won’t blame you for it if they do. Never again.”
“David—”
He raised his hand. “All I want is dinner. When all this gets hashed out, let me take you to dinner. We’ll start again. Two people who’ve just met.” He squeezed her hand. “Think about it. Please.”
He stood, then raised the safety bar again. “Now I’m leaving because the doc said you need rest and they’re gonna throw me out anyway.” He kissed her lightly on the head, and his scent, the musky maleness she’d grown used to, surrounded her. He lingered for a few seconds before backing away. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Stop him. “Okay.”
Then he turned and headed for the door. Stop him. But if she did, there’d be no neutral. If nothing else, he deserved better than that. Everyone did.
Even her.
“David?”
He stopped and tilted his head to the ceiling but didn’t turn around.
“Yes. To dinner. And, if you’re not in a rush, maybe you could sit with me for a while?”
He turned and strode toward her and instinctively she sat up. The room spun and she gripped the sheet, waiting for him to reach her again, and there he was, instantly by her side, leaning over the rail. But as fast as he was moving, he gently cupped her face in his giant hands and kissed her, a long, slow kiss that she wasn’t sure she could ever live without again. Kisses from David were either fast and fierce or slow and gentle, each one different and surprising and perfect. This would be life with him. Different. Surprising. Perfect.
And definitely not in neutral.
Chapter Fifteen
One Month Later
David eased his car to a stop in front of a bungalow in Ina, Illinois, a small town almost five hours south of Chicago consisting of a whopping two and a half square miles. Amanda studied the gutter hanging from one side of the tiny house and the ripped screens on the two front windows. With a little work—maybe more than a little—the house could be adorable.
From what Amanda knew, nothing that had gone on in this house, not one single thing, could ever be considered adorable. This had been the home of Juliette Powers, the nineteen-year-old woman whose reconstruction sat in a box on the floor of David’s backseat.
“This is it,” David said.
“I see that.”
Yearning for freedom and a better life, Juliette had run from this house at sixteen. Her mother’s second husband had been abusive and getting nastier by the second, and Juliette had craved independence and a life free of yelling and fists. She’d been on her own, working odd jobs, living in shelters, for almost three years before her death.
Why she was in that storage shed the night she died, no one would ever truly know, but Amanda suspected Detective McCall’s theory—that the young woman needed a place to hunker down on a cold night—was as close as any.
David shifted the car into Park and shut the engine. “You ready for this?”
She nodded. “I am. I didn’t think I would be, but it feels...right. Juliette didn’t get a happy ending, but we brought her home. That’s what I’m hanging on to. She’s safe now.”
Three weeks earlier, David and Amanda, along with Detective McCall, had brought Juliette’s remains—her skull and the hair found near it—home and attended her funeral. Now they were back. All because Amanda wanted Juliette to be remembered as a beautiful young woman, so she had finished her reconstruction on the second duplicate skull cast the lab had provided her. Scott Bench had disposed of the first one by tossing it off a bridge into the Chicago River. So many times, they’d tried to dump Juliette, to make it that she’d never be identified, but somehow, she refused to go unnoticed.
“I don’t want this to sound condescending,” David said, “but I’m proud of you. You’ve done an amazing thing here.”
Amanda shrugged. “You helped. But thank you. I can’t say I’m happy about it, but there’s satisfaction in knowing who she was. Giving her a name again. We did that, David. Together.”
“I know.”
He leaned over the console and kissed her. Just a soft peck before backing away half an inch. She opened her eyes and met his alluring blue gaze that never failed to spark energy in her.
“I love you, David Hennings.”
His eyes popped wide. He knew her well enough, more than well enough, to know an admission like that, putting her heart out there, allowing herself to be vulnerable, didn’t come easy. He had, in fact, cracked the code. By being honorable and trustworthy, he’d made it easy for her to love him. Case closed.
“Well,” he said, “that’s good news.”
And then the idiot grinned. Just sat there with a smug smile and she wanted to throttle him. Let him have it because she’d just told him she loved him, and he wanted to tease her about it. Even so, she felt fairly confident his feelings ran as deep. The week prior he’d slipped and almost said it, but he’d stopped himself, probably afraid he’d spook her. Well, fine.
She reached to the floorboard and grabbed her purse. “I have something to show you.”
“Finally a naked picture of you?”
“You wish.”
She placed a folded sheet of paper into his palm and he pursed his lips.
“Go ahead,” she urged. “Read it.”
After opening it, he scanned it. The smile he’d just hit her w
ith grew, and seeing it, seeing him happy and proud—of her—made something clog in her throat. She smacked her hands over her eyes before she started bawling. These past few weeks had been like this. One giant release of pent-up tears. Years’ and years’ worth. As healthy as it was to let all the fear and pain go, she’d prefer to ditch the waterworks. Just enjoy happiness for a change.
“The forensic workshop,” he said. “You’re going.”
She dragged her hands down her face, then wiped them on her slacks. “I am. It starts next month. I’ll be gone three weeks, but when I come back, I think I’ll be ready to officially try forensic sculpting. I’m not afraid of it anymore. I’m out of neutral, David. With you, with my work, all of it. Thank you.”
He leaned over the console again, wrapped his hand around the back of her head and hit her with one of his mind-melting kisses, more ardent this time, changing it up from a minute ago and reinforcing her belief that he would always offer surprises. After the years stuck in her safe zone, David had managed to pull her out of it and make her comfortable doing so.
He broke the kiss but held on. “I love you,” he said. “You have to know that, right? I didn’t want to rush you.”
She nodded. “I do know. And thank you for not rushing me. For letting me get there on my own. I needed to say it first. With you, there’s no neutral. There’s just us—and your crazy family—and that’s all I’ll ever need.”
* * * * *
Read on for a sneak preview of FATAL AFFAIR,
the first book in the FATAL series by
New York Times bestselling author
Marie Force
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Fatal Affair
by Marie Force
ONE
THE SMELL HIT him first.
“Ugh, what the hell is that?” Nick Cappuano dropped his keys into his coat pocket and stepped into the spacious, well-appointed Watergate apartment that his boss, Senator John O’Connor, had inherited from his father.
“Senator!” Nick tried to identify the foul metallic odor.
Making his way through the living room, he noticed parts and pieces of the suit John wore yesterday strewn over sofas and chairs, laying a path to the bedroom. He had called the night before to check in with Nick after a dinner meeting with Virginia’s Democratic Party leadership, and said he was on his way home. Nick had reminded his thirty-six-year-old boss to set his alarm.
“Senator?” John hated when Nick called him that when they were alone, but Nick insisted the people in John’s life afford him the respect of his title.
The odd stench permeating the apartment caused a tingle of anxiety to register on the back of Nick’s neck. “John?”
He stepped into the bedroom and gasped. Drenched in blood, John sat up in bed, his eyes open but vacant. A knife spiked through his neck held him in place against the headboard. His hands rested in a pool of blood in his lap.
Gagging, the last thing Nick noticed before he bolted to the bathroom to vomit was that something was hanging out of John’s mouth.
Once the violent retching finally stopped, Nick stood up on shaky legs, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and rested against the vanity, waiting to see if there would be more. His cell phone rang. When he didn’t take the call, his pager vibrated. Nick couldn’t find the wherewithal to answer, to say the words that would change everything. The senator is dead. John’s been murdered. He wanted to go back to when he was still in his car, fuming and under the assumption that his biggest problem that day would be what to do about the man-child he worked for who had once again slept through his alarm.
Thoughts of John, dating back to their first meeting in a history class at Harvard freshman year, flashed through Nick’s mind, hundreds of snippets spanning a nearly twenty-year friendship. As if to convince himself that his eyes had not deceived him, he leaned forward to glance into the bedroom, wincing at the sight of his best friend—the brother of his heart—stabbed through the neck and covered with blood.
Nick’s eyes burned with tears, but he refused to give in to them. Not now. Later maybe, but not now. His phone rang again. This time he reached for it and saw it was Christina, his deputy chief of staff, but didn’t take the call. Instead, he dialed 911.
Taking a deep breath to calm his racing heart and making a supreme effort to keep the hysteria out of his voice, he said, “I need to report a murder.” He gave the address and stumbled into the living room to wait for the police, all the while trying to get his head around the image of his dead friend, a visual he already knew would haunt him forever.
Twenty long minutes later, two officers arrived, took a quick look in the bedroom and radioed for backup. Nick was certain neither of them recognized the victim.
He felt as if he was being sucked into a riptide, pulled further and further from the safety of shore, until drawing a breath became a laborious effort. He told the cops exactly what happened—his boss failed to show up for work, he came looking for him and found him dead.
“Your boss’s name?”
“United States Senator John O’Connor.” Nick watched the two young officers go pale in the instant before they made a second more urgent call for backup.
“Another scandal at the Watergate,” Nick heard one of them mutter.
His cell phone rang yet again. This time he reached for it.
“Yeah,” he said softly.
“Nick!” Christina cried. “Where the hell are you guys? Trevor’s having a heart attack!” She referred to their communications director, who had back-to-back interviews scheduled for the senator that morning.
“He’s dead, Chris.”
“Who’s dead? What’re you talking about?”
“John.”
Her soft cry broke his heart. “No.” That she was desperately in love with John was no secret to Nick. That she was also a consummate professional who would never act on those feelings was one of the many reasons Nick respected her.
“I’m sorry to just blurt it out like that.”
“How?” she asked in a small voice.
“Stabbed in his bed.”
Her ravaged moan echoed through the phone. “But who... I mean, why?”
“The cops are here, but I don’t know anything yet. I need you to request a postponement on the vote.”
“I can’t,” she said, adding in a whisper, “I can’t think about that right now.”
“You have to, Chris. That bill is his legacy. We can’t let all his hard work be for nothing. Can you do it? For him?”
“Yes...okay.”
“You have to pull yourself together for the staff, but don’t tell them yet. Not until his parents are notified.”
“Oh, God, his poor parents. You should go, Nick. It’d be better coming from you than cops they don’t know.”
“I don’t know if I can. How do I tell people I love that their son’s been murdered?”
“He’d want it to come from you.”
“I suppose you’re right. I’ll see if the cops will let me.”
“What’re we going to do without him, Nick?” She posed a question
he’d been grappling with himself. “I just can’t imagine this world, this life, without him.”
“I can’t either,” Nick said, knowing it would be a much different life without John O’Connor at the center of it.
“He’s really dead?” she asked as if to convince herself it wasn’t a cruel joke. “Someone killed him?”
“Yes.”
* * *
OUTSIDE THE CHIEF’S office suite, Detective Sergeant Sam Holland smoothed her hands over the toffee-colored hair she corralled into a clip for work, pinched some color into cheeks that hadn’t seen the light of day in weeks, and adjusted her gray suit jacket over a red scoop-neck top.
Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves and settle her chronically upset stomach, she pushed open the door and stepped inside. Chief Farnsworth’s receptionist greeted her with a smile. “Go right in, Sergeant Holland. He’s waiting for you.”
Great, Sam thought as she left the receptionist with a weak smile. Before she could give in to the urge to turn tail and run, she erased the grimace from her face and went in.
“Sergeant.” The chief, a man she’d once called Uncle Joe, stood up and came around the big desk to greet her with a firm handshake. His gray eyes skirted over her with concern and sympathy, both of which were new since “the incident.” She despised being the reason for either. “You look well.”
“I feel well.”
“Glad to hear it.” He gestured for her to have a seat. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
Pouring himself a cup, he glanced over his shoulder. “I’ve been worried about you, Sam.”
“I’m sorry for causing you worry and for disgracing the department.” This was the first chance she’d had to speak directly to him since she returned from a month of administrative leave, during which she’d practiced the sentence over and over. She thought she’d delivered it with convincing sincerity.
The Rebel Page 19
