by Maggie Price
“Delivering a baby?” The total disbelief in Iris’s face sounded in her voice. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ll tell you on the way there.” He gave her shoulder a light prod. “Start packing.”
She knocked his arm aside. “I can tell by the way you look that you’ve been on another binge. Snorting. Drinking. You show up here, talking nonsense at a hundred miles a minute and expect me to pack a bag and go with you, no questions asked. Forget it—”
“Shut up!” He clamped a hand on her elbow and pulled her a few feet down the hallway. “You don’t go with me, we’re out the money from the Calhouns. I don’t know about you, but I need that money. I have to have that money. So shut your damn mouth and do what I say!”
“Why would we be out the Calhouns’ money?” Iris attempted to jerk her elbow free, but adrenaline and strength made his grip iron tight. “They were a sure thing.”
“They still are. The mother’s waffling.”
Iris stopped struggling. “Lori Logan? She changed her mind about giving up her baby?”
“Let’s just say she’s thinking about changing her mind. I’m not giving her a chance to do that. I snatched her up a couple of hours ago. Stashed her in a place where there aren’t any bleeding hearts telling her it’s okay if she decides to keep her brat. It’s not okay. I need you to deliver the kid.”
“What about Logan?”
“You deal with her, the same way you did with the other two who waffled. ‘Out of forced necessity,’ you called it.”
“Oh, my God. Ohmygod!”
Stu froze at the sudden panic in Iris’s voice. She had stopped looking at him and was staring past him into the living room. Her eyes were huge; she’d gone so pale her skin looked nearly translucent.
Loosening his grip on her elbow, he pivoted toward the living room. He stared at the image on the TV, searching, searching.
The show on serial killers was still on, the setting having switched to a press conference, taped at some previous date. A silver-haired man stood at a podium with several men clustered behind him. Lights from media minicams glared as the speaker answered questions fired by reporters. The information line at the bottom of the screen identified the man as an FBI Special Agent.
“He’s a damn cop!”
Stu gave her a baffled look. “You know the FBI guy with the silver hair?”
“Not him, idiot!” Iris jerked from his grip and rushed into the living room. She grabbed the TV remote off the coffee table and turned up the volume.
“…from those facts, the group of agents standing to my right from the Bureau’s Crimes Against Children Unit surmised that the Lolita Killer had previously spent time in jail.”
“There!” Iris stabbed a finger at one of the men standing in the cluster behind the speaker.
When Stu focused on the face, his body instantly went rigid. The man had sat in Stu’s office only a few hours ago. Mark Calhoun.
“Christ.” Bands of tension wrapped around Stu’s chest, tightening as he moved into the living room.
“If he’s a cop, she is, too!” Iris was trembling now, her lungs heaving, her breath rasping. “Mark and Grace,” she spat. “They’re onto us. They know!”
Iris dropped the remote, then whirled. “I can’t stay here. They’ll come and get me. Put me in a cell. I’ve got to get out of here.” She snatched a ring of keys off the coffee table. “Now.”
“Wait!” Stu snagged her arm as she turned. He felt the same panic that clearly held Iris in its grip, but he wasn’t so far gone that he was going to run out into the night and just take off. He didn’t have a license to practice law, but he had no problem thinking like a lawyer. “You can’t just leave. We need a plan.”
She yanked against his hold, her body twisting. “Let go!”
He clamped his free hand on her other arm and gave her a shake. “We have to think.”
“You think. I’m leaving.” She struggled to get free. “I can’t live in a cell. I can’t stay alive in a cell.”
Her eyes were wild now, her voice shrill enough to shatter glass. Stu knew if the cops got her while in a panicked state she’d give them everything. Including him.
He dug his fingers into her arms. “Calm down, dammit. Get a grip.”
She smashed the ring of keys against his right cheek. The pain from the keys’ jagged metal edges was like an explosion, as clear as a star on a cold night.
“Bitch!” He pressed a hand to his cheek, felt blood seep against his fingers. In a sudden rush of black fury, he swung his arm, hitting her with an open-handed blow to the side of her head.
The impact sent her reeling backward like a drunken dancer, momentum pitching her down. Stu heard the crack when her head hit the edge of the coffee table.
“Get up.” He had ice picks stabbing into his cheek, and his breath escaped in a grunting rush. “You’re going to take care of these cuts. We’ll figure out our next step after that.”
When she didn’t move, he spat a crude oath. “I said get up.” He squatted, gripped her shoulder then rolled her onto her back.
The eyes that stared up into his were open, glazed and lifeless.
Grace was sprawled across the bed, her body slick with sweat, her heart thundering in unison with the storm roiling outside when Mark’s cell phone rang.
“Damn.” With his mouth pressed against the curve of her left breast, she felt the warm wash of his breath when he muttered the word. He lifted his head, his eyes lazy and sated. “Duty calls.”
“Us civil-servant types live to serve,” she murmured, drumming up the strength to smile. Her smile became dreamy when she watched him walk to the small desk and snag his cell phone. Santini had one hell of a body. And that magnificent body had one heck of an effect on her own.
“The latest victim was how old? Seven?”
Hearing Mark’s questions, Grace’s smile evaporated. She sat up against the bank of pillows, watching as he reached into his briefcase and retrieved a file folder. It was evident from the conversation that another CACU agent was calling about one of the cases Mark was working. Grim-faced, he continued to ask for details while jotting notes.
“Dammit, Zabel, I know I could be more help getting a handle on this bastard if I was there.” Mark’s voice was as hard and unyielding as his profile. “The case I’m on should wrap in a day or two. I’ll catch a flight to Anchorage the minute I get free.”
Grace closed her eyes. She could hear her heartbeat pounding in counterpoint to the rain that beat against the windows. Now, however, her pulse wasn’t hammering due to lust. Realization had just hit her with the strength of a sledgehammer.
He was leaving.
She dragged in a breath. Then another. Mark had told her he would leave. She had made up her mind that thinking about the past could wait. That she would have hours, days, years to think after he was gone.
Despite the assurances she’d given herself, regardless of how she had thought she’d prepared herself, hearing Mark talk about leaving sent cold reality swooping down in the form of searing pain.
She had talked herself into believing she could handle being Mark’s lover again on a temporary basis. Fooled herself into thinking that was more like it. Had she ever truly believed she could deal with being right back where she was six years ago, totally wrapped up in a man already planning to walk out the door?
In love with a man she might never see again.
Oh, God, she loved him.
She knew it was possible that in his own way Mark loved her. But whatever his feelings, they weren’t deep enough for him to stick around.
He ended the call, stuffed the file back into his briefcase, then pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “That was Zabel. He’s filling in for me on the Alaska murder investigation until I can get back there.”
“So I heard.”
When Mark dropped his hands and turned to look at her, Grace realized the pain shimmering through her had sounded in her voic
e. “I have to go, Grace,” he said quietly. “We both know that.”
“Yes.” Sitting there naked, she suddenly felt totally vulnerable. Rising, she went to the bureau, opened a drawer and snatched up the first sweater she came to. It was white and soft and hit her midthigh. “Knowing you have to leave is one thing.” She pulled the sweater over her head, then turned to face him. “Sleeping with you one minute, then listening to you make plans to walk out the door when you’ve barely crawled out of bed with me is another.”
Jaw set, Mark reached into the closet, snagged a pair of jeans off a hanger and hitched them on. “I have a job to do. I thought you understood that.”
“I do.”
“Then understand something else.” He took a step toward her. “I don’t intend to say goodbye to you when I leave. I don’t want this to be like six years ago. We can work something out. Figure out how we can spend time together.”
“Between your cases.”
“Yes.” Muscles flexed in his jaw as he jabbed his hands in his hair. “Dammit, that’s my life.”
“I know.” Grace felt tears welling in her eyes. His life had been the same six years ago. There hadn’t been a lot of room in it for her then, and she’d been smart enough to know what little he had to offer wouldn’t be enough for her.
It still wasn’t.
She fisted her hands against her thighs, unfisted them. Last night, he had opened up to her, stripped away all his defenses, and told her about his past. He had given her that part of himself so she could understand why he was the man he was. Why he couldn’t turn his back on his job.
She figured she owed him the same.
“We have to make a clean break,” she said quietly. “Because last time we didn’t, and people I loved got hurt.”
His brows slid together. “We did make a clean break. When you told me you wouldn’t move to Virginia with me, you asked me not to call. Not to write. No e-mails. I respected that. You said you were sure it was what you wanted.”
“Turns out I wasn’t so sure.”
He took a step toward her. “What are you talking about?”
“When I met Ryan, there was something between us instantly. A spark. I thought there could be more. But not while I still had feelings for you. Feelings I’d tried my damnedest to shake. Because I couldn’t shake them, I had this gnawing sensation in the back of my mind that maybe I’d screwed up royally by not going to Virginia with you.”
Turning back to the bureau, she opened another drawer, pulled out a pair of jeans and tugged them on.
“You were still inside me,” she continued after a moment. “My head, my heart. I wanted to be fair to Ryan. I couldn’t give myself to him until I figured out what to do about you. So, I decided to go for broke. I arranged to take a leave of absence from the job. I called your office. You weren’t in town but were due back the next day. I caught a flight back east. My plan was to show up at your condo, announce my intentions to live with you, then jump your bones.”
“You didn’t…” Mark stared at her in dawning dismay. “Are you talking about that one time you showed up at my condo?”
“Yes.”
“You said you were in D.C. to attend a conference. Law enforcement training.”
“I lied.”
“Why?” He closed the distance between them, his brows set in a thunderous line. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“Two reasons. One being the long-stemmed blonde who was perched on your couch when you answered your front door. The second was because you were packing to take off for yet another crime scene.”
“The blonde didn’t mean anything.”
“Her name was Brenda.”
“I don’t give a damn about her name! She was just someone I dated.”
“I know. I could tell by the way you looked at her. There you were, with this gorgeous blonde snuggled on your couch, and what were you doing? Packing to leave town.”
“I had a job to do.”
“Exactly.” Grace lifted a hand palm up, let it drop. “I had known all along that the job came first with you. Until last night, when you told me about your childhood, I didn’t understand why. I just knew you’d never let anything or anyone take precedence over your work. I knew that, but it didn’t sink in until the day I showed up in Virginia. I saw then that no matter what woman was sharing your life, she didn’t stand a chance—not pitted against your job. So, I came home.”
“You should have stayed,” Mark retorted. “You should have given what we had a chance.”
“What we had didn’t stand a chance,” she countered quietly. “Turns out my showing up at your place and seeing what I did was the best thing that could have happened to me. I shut the door on my past with you and I fell in love with Ryan. I did love him. Totally.”
Mark closed his eyes. “I know that.”
Her emotions roiling, Grace paced to the windows, glanced out into the rainy black night. “What you don’t know is that about a year before he died, Ryan overheard Carrie, Morgan and myself talking about my trip to see you.” Grace turned and braced her back against the wall. “It was just girl talk. Idle stuff about guys from the past.”
Mark angled his chin. “Let me guess. Ryan’s reaction was anything but ‘idle.’”
For a moment, no more than a blink of the eye, Grace was right back there, facing the pain and hurt that had roiled in her husband’s eyes. Her throat aching with regret, she wrapped her arms around her waist.
“When Ryan confronted me about what he’d overheard, I told him the truth. All of it. He said he believed me. But I could tell there was still doubt. Uncertainty that maybe I’d settled for him because I couldn’t have you.” Grace dragged a hand through her hair. “From that day on you stood between us.”
“Christ.”
“You were a ghost, Mark. One I couldn’t exorcise. Always there, hanging over my marriage.”
“I feel like I should apologize.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Tell you I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” she said quietly. “No one’s, really. But it’s the reason I can’t do this again. I can’t let you hang over the rest of my life like smoke that I can’t quite get clear of. If we keep this up, keep falling into bed together, that’s exactly what will happen. For me, anyway.”
“Dammit, Grace, I don’t want to lose you. We can work something out—”
“No. I can’t sit home for months on end, hoping you’ll find a big enough hole in your schedule so you can drop by to see me. Then while we’re together, spend my time wondering how long it will be before you leave again.”
For want of something better to do, she moved to the bed, began smoothing the blankets and sheets they’d rumpled while making love. When it came down to it, she thought, the only time she’d ever felt Mark Santini was hers—totally hers—was during bouts of mind-blowing sex. Out of bed, the job took priority. Always the job.
She plumped the pillows banked against the headboard. “I thought last night when we wound up in this bed that we were starting something.” She grabbed a pillow off the floor, propped it with the others. “I realize now we were finishing what we had in the past. For good this time.”
“Like hell.” He stalked across the bedroom and clamped his hands on her shoulders. “Do you think making love with you was just a casual roll in the hay for me? Think again, McCall. We’re not over.” He leaned in, his dark eyes as turbulent as the storm outside. “I asked you to move to Virginia with me because I cared about you. If you had told me why you’d shown up on my doorstep, what we had wouldn’t have ended. We wouldn’t have spent six years apart.”
She lifted her chin, studied his face. “If I had told you the truth that day, would you have still packed your bags and left town?”
“You know the answer to that.” His fingers dug into her shoulders. “I couldn’t change the fact a kid had gotten butchered. That my job was to find the bastard who’d done it before another kid died. I had to leave
.”
“So did I.”
“Grace—”
“I know what it’s like to have a normal life with a man who’s always there. That’s what I had with Ryan, and it was really special. If it weren’t for him, if we hadn’t had what we did, maybe I could settle for what you can give me.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to settle, Mark. Someday I’ll have the kind of life I need with another man. What I don’t want is the specter of what you and I once had—or might have had—hanging over that relationship, too.”
The ringing of the phone on the nightstand had Mark swearing viciously.
Grace eased out of his hold. “Better answer that, Mr. Calhoun.”
“We’re not done with this, Grace. Not by a long shot.” The undertone of steel in his voice backed up his words.
He stalked to the night stand, snatched up the receiver. “Calhoun.” He listened, then said, “You’re not interrupting anything, Mr. Harmon.”
While he listened, Grace watched Mark’s expression transform from fiery emotion to a cop’s sharp intensity.
“Of course we still want to meet the mother of the child we’re going to adopt.” Meeting Grace’s gaze, Mark mouthed the word Junior so she would know which Harmon he was talking to.
“The location isn’t a problem,” Mark said, checking his watch. “But like you said, it’s an hour’s drive from here. It will take us a while to get there. If you’re sure she wants to meet us tonight, Grace and I will leave right away.”
She was doing both of them a favor, Mark decided as he steered the rental car off the interstate. After forty-five minutes of driving through the rainy night, he had finally figured out how Grace had worked things in her mind. By breaking off their relationship before they got in too deep, she thought she would do them both a favor and save them some pain.
Good try, he thought, but it wouldn’t work. Not for him, at least.
