Forever Blue

by Suzanne Brockmann

Blue nodded. His throat burned and his eyes watered, but he was okay. "I'm embarrassed as hell." He could do little more than whisper in a raspy voice.

  Her eyes were dancing with amusement and she was trying as hard as she could not to smile. "It's not every day I have to save a Navy SEAL from drowning."

  "It's not every day I try to breathe H2O. You'd have thought I would've learned that day one of basic training." Blue pushed himself up and slid back down into the pond. He cupped his hands and brought some of the cold, clean water up to his mouth, swishing it around before he spit it back out.

  Lucy's smile slipped out as she watched him. "You were distracted."

  Blue couldn't argue with that. She was still distracting as hell, sitting so casually on the grass, the moon bathing her naked body with its silvery light. But the real truth was that he'd lost control. Totally. Without question. For the first time in his life he had been out of control.

  The emotional impact of that hit him square in the gut, and he had to look away from her. He'd been out of control. Hell, he was still out of control.

  He heard her stand up and turned to see her gathering up her clothes. "Let's head inside," she said, "before I become one giant mosquito bite." She nudged his shoulder holster with one toe. "Come on, McCoy. Grab your stuff."

  Come on, McCoy. She spoke to him casually, lightly—the way she'd speak to a friend, not a lover. And she didn't wait for him to come out of the water. She started walking back toward the house without him. Doubt churned inside Blue, and he wondered if maybe she hadn't had the same incredible depth of sensations—he didn't dare call them feelings—that he'd had when they made love. But he could have sworn he'd seen something besides friendship and desire in her eyes.

  But maybe he'd been wrong.

  Of course, he was the one who hadn't held her in his arms after they'd made love. He should have kissed her, stayed close to her as the calming afterglow of their lovemaking surrounded them. Instead he'd tried to breathe water, and their intimacy had ended far too abruptly.

  He pulled himself out of the water, then gathered up his things and sprinted after Lucy.

  She was walking through her backyard buck naked, and he had to smile at her matter-of-factness. It was clear that she'd gone skinny-dipping in her pond on more than one occasion. She was quite comfortable walking back to her house without her clothes on. And she had every right to be. The neighbours' houses were some distance away, and the trees and bushes around the edges gave the big yard additional privacy.

  On a whim, he dropped his bundle of clothes as he caught up with her. He pulled her into his arms and spun her around in an inexperienced attempt at a dance move. He'd never done more than a slow rock-and-grind the times he'd danced with women in the various bars and roadhouses that Alpha Squad had visited. But despite his clumsiness, Lucy dropped her own clothes on the lawn, spinning around him with a fluid grace.

  "So you do dance naked in your backyard," he said. "I knew it."

  She laughed. God, he loved the sound of her laughter.

  "Only in the company of very good friends."

  Friends. There was that word again. And again it was accompanied by that nagging sense of doubt, and an unidentifiable but decidedly unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He spun her back toward him and into his arms, holding her close as they moved slowly back and forth in time with the silent melody of the night. Unrestricted by clothing, Lucy's body swayed against his, her soft breasts touching his chest, her stomach brushing his arousal. And he was aroused. Again. Or maybe not again, maybe still aroused. Maybe he was going to be aroused for the rest of his life, regardless of how many times he made love to this woman.

  Lucy was looking up at him, her eyes wide, her smile fading at the sudden intensity of the moment. She felt it, too—she had to feel it, too. Whatever this was, this almost palpable connection between them, this sensation of breathless, out-of-control wonder as he gazed into her eyes, she felt it, too.

  Blue lowered his mouth and kissed her, a slow, soft kiss that made his eyes tear from its sweetness. When he spoke his voice was husky. "You gonna invite me in?"

  "I thought I already did." Her voice shook slightly.

  "You didn't invite me up to your room."

  "My door is still unlocked."

  "I didn't want to—"

  Lucy finished for him. "Assume. I know. Never assume." She threaded her fingers through the hair at his nape, smiling up into his eyes. "Although I'm going to risk assuming that you'd like to go upstairs in the very near future..."

  "That assumption is correct." Blue smiled. "Of course it's based on fact—"

  "A hard fact," Lucy agreed, her grin making her cheeks dimple. "A very hard fact."

  Blue kissed her again. This kiss was still as sweet, but it was laced with a searing fire. She pressed herself against him and he had to release her. If he didn't, he knew they'd never make it inside the house. He grabbed their clothes from the ground and tugged her toward the back porch.

  It was crazy, insane. They'd just made love. They'd just had a sexual experience so intense that Blue had lost all sense of up and down.

  But already he wanted her again. Right there in the backyard. Right on the lawn. Or on the porch. Right there on the porch. He pulled her to him, kissing her feverishly as she opened the screen door and pulled him inside. Or maybe on the kitchen table. That was as good a place as any. He threw down their clothes, freeing his hands to touch her, to fill his palms with her softness as he kissed her again. But she escaped, pulling him with her up the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom.

  The intensity of his desire would have been frightening if not for the fact that she clearly felt it, too.

  She clung to him, kissing him fiercely as he somehow managed to cover himself, to protect them both.

  And then she pulled him back with her onto the colourful sheets of her bed, crying out with pleasure as he filled her.

  Oh, yeah.

  This thing that he felt, whatever it was, Blue knew she had to feel it, too.

  Chapter 13

  "Who's the man in the picture?"

  Lucy was lying with her head on Blue's shoulder, tracing the hills and valleys of the well-developed muscles of his chest. His words didn't make sense-not until she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. Even then she wasn't sure what he was talking about.

  "What picture?"

  'The one on your dresser," he said, gesturing with his head toward the other side of the room. "There's a framed photo of you with a man."

  "Edgar Winston." She realized which picture Blue was talking about and pushed herself up so that she could look at him more comfortably. She rested her head on one hand, supported by her elbow. "He was a friend of mine."

  Blue looked away from her, across the dimly lit room toward the chest of drawers where the photo sat. He couldn't possibly have seen the picture's details from here. Lucy knew he must have noticed it at some other time. But the thought of him in here without her, looking at her things, didn't upset or offend her. In fact, her response was quite the opposite. It made her feel good, warm. Blue was curious about her. He wanted to know more.

  "A friend," he said quietly. He turned back to her, gazing into her eyes. His were serious and very blue. "The way I'm your friend?"

  Was it possible that Blue was jealous? Lucy's heart started beating a little harder. If he was jealous, then maybe he felt more for her than simple friendship.

  "Are you talking about sex?" she asked. "Do you mean, like, did I sleep with him?"

  He smiled, the laughter lines around his eyes crinkling. "You know, that's what I do love about you, Lucy. You just grab right hold of the point of a conversation and shake it by the neck. No tiptoeing around."

  That's what I do love about you... In the context of Blue's sentence, it was only a figure of speech. Lucy ached for it to be true. If only he loved her. The way he'd made love to her tonight, both out at the pond and here in her bed, she could al
most believe that he felt something for her. Something powerful and strong. Something a lot like love.

  But that was just her own wishful thinking.

  "Isn't that what you're trying to find out?" she asked Blue. "Whether or not sex was part of my relationship with Edgar?"

  "Yeah," he said, laughing silently. "You're right. That's exactly what I'm trying to find out." He leaned forward, propping himself up on his elbows in order to kiss her. "I'm sorry, though. It's not my business. I shouldn't have asked. You don't have to tell me."

  "Don't you want me to tell you?"

  He knew she was teasing him and he grinned good-naturedly. "What I want," he said, "is for you to tell me everything there is to know about this Edgar guy, starting with the fact that there's no chance at all he's going to show up here angry as hell, wielding a double-barrel shotgun and threatening to blow me to kingdom come."

  "There's no chance of that," Lucy said quietly. "He's dead."

  Blue closed his eyes, silently cursing himself out. Of all the insensitive things he could have said.... "Aw, Lucy, I'm sorry."

  "You didn't know. How could you have known?"

  "I'm still sorry," he said again.

  She reached out, touching the side of his face. Her fingers were cool against his skin and she touched him so gently. "He was my business partner," Lucy said. "And, yes, our relationship was totally platonic. No sex. Even if he was still alive, he wouldn't have shown up waving a shotgun. He would've approved of you. He had a thing for well-built blondes himself."

  Her words took a moment to sink in. "You mean, he was...?"

  "Gay," Lucy said. "I met Edgar in college. Two days after we first met, it was as if we'd been best friends forever. We went into business together after we graduated. Computer software design. We had an office in Charleston and we made money like crazy."

  "I didn't know you had your own business," Blue said, taking her hand and lacing their fingers together. Her hands were slender but strong, with long fingers and short nails.

  She made a face at him. "What did you think I did between college and six months ago when I joined the Hatboro Creek police force?"

  He shook his head. "I don't know. I guess..." He shrugged. "I didn't think about it. I just always pictured you here in town all that time. But you were living in the city."

  "Actually, I moved back to Hatboro Creek about a year ago," Lucy told him. "Right after Edgar died...."

  He rarely saw her when she wasn't smiling, Blue realized. Lucy was usually so upbeat, with a smile or a grin at least lurking, ready to break free. But now her eyes were filled with a quiet sadness that made him ache for her.

  "I'm sorry," Blue murmured. "How did he... ?"

  "AIDS," she said flatly. "It was awful. He got so sick. I just watched him...disappear." Her voice broke and she had to look away from him. Blue didn't want to hear this.

  But he did. He touched the side of her face, gently pushing her hair behind her ear. Lucy glanced up into eyes so warm and blue and sympathetic she felt her own eyes fill with tears.

  "It's hard to watch someone you love die," he said softly. "It's hard to know what to say or do." He paused. "I have a friend—Frisco. Alan Francisco. He didn't die, but he's wheelchair-bound. I never know what to say to him anymore. I don't know how to treat him."

  "You treat him exactly the same way you did before," Lucy said. With her free hand, she wiped the tears from her eyes.

  "Even when he shuts me out?"

  "Especially when he shuts you out," Lucy said. "When Edgar got depressed, I stayed with him. I moved into his condo. I wouldn't let him give in. Did you know that it's a scientific theory that laughter and humour increase the odds of survival among patients with terminal illnesses?"

  Blue shook his head. "No, I didn't know that."

  "I stayed with Edgar till the end," Lucy said quietly. "I was holding his hand when he died."

  "You don't run away from anything, Yankee, do you?" Blue continued. He smiled slightly. "You should've been a SEAL."

  She had to smile at that. "Yeah, right."

  "What happened to your software business?" Blue asked.

  "When Edgar got sick, it was at the point where it could run itself," she explained. "We hired some key people to do the work for us and booked ourselves passage on a cruise around the world, but it was already too late. By the time Edgar found out he had AIDS, it was too far along. I think he knew he was sick for quite a while. He just put off getting tested. So we never got to Egypt and Kathmandu. Instead, I held his hand as he fought off all sorts of viral infections and three different kinds of pneumonia. The pneumonia finally won."

  She took a deep breath. Blue was still listening, so she went on. "After he was... gone, I went to the office for the first time in months. I wasn't there for more than thirty seconds before I knew that I couldn't go back. I didn't want to be there without Edgar. The woman I'd hired as acting president asked me not to sell, at least not right away. She was afraid one of the larger companies would buy us out and all the employees would be excessed. I didn't want that, but I knew I couldn't stick around. So I just kept things as they were."

  "That's when you came back here, huh?"

  Lucy nodded. "My mother left me this house when she died. Hatboro Creek seemed like the logical place to go. And then the job opened up on the police force...."

  "Law enforcement is pretty different from computer software design," Blue said.

  "That was the idea. I wanted to do something entirely different. And it was. You should've seen me learn to shoot. At the risk of bragging, I got a high percentage of bull's-eyes the first time I was on the firing range. I was good at it. I figured the rest of being a cop would come even easier. Boy, was I wrong."

  Blue watched Lucy, realizing that this was the first time she'd ever really told him about herself. He'd done a great deal of talking over the past several days and she'd mostly listened. It honestly hadn't occurred to him that she had had a life beyond Hatboro Creek. But it suddenly made incredible sense.

  He knew she was a rookie—that she'd been on the police force for only six months. He hadn't known that before that she'd lived and worked in the city. She'd owned her own successful computer business. She'd probably gone to meetings with clients, worn business suits, high heels

  Well, no probably not. Lucy probably had one of those laid-back, jeans-and-T-shirts kind of computer business. That was more her style. But either way, she'd definitely had a life beyond Hatboro Creek.

  He was glad for her, and saddened for what she'd been through with her friend.

  "Being a cop isn't that easy." Lucy forced herself to smile, trying to disguise the unhappiness in her eyes. Blue pulled Lucy to him, hugging her tightly. He bet she'd smiled at her friend Edgar all those endless months as he'd died. He could picture her smiling for Edgar's sake, even though she was crying inside. She was a remarkable person.

  As he held her close, as she buried her face in his neck, Blue suddenly felt his own heart beating. It was slow and steady and quite possibly stronger and louder than he'd ever felt it beating before. He felt a sense of calm, a state of peace, more powerful and complete than any he'd ever felt in his entire life.

  And that was odd as hell, since he was currently the main suspect in the murder of his stepbrother. He should feel turmoil, anger, frustration and grief.

  But all those chaotic feelings were pushed aside, dwarfed by a powerful sense of completeness.

  He was in love with Lucy Tait.

  The thought popped into his mind out of nowhere, and his first reaction was to dismiss it entirely out of hand. That was ridiculous. He couldn't be. Love didn't happen this way. Love hit fast and hard and devastatingly intensely, like a wildcat bringing down its prey.

  These feelings he had for Lucy—whatever they were-had crept up on him while he wasn't paying attention. He had become slowly and steadily surrounded by this gentle warmth, this calm happiness.

  He liked her. He really, really liked he
r. Maybe that was what this was.

  But he really liked Joe Cat, too, and the thought of being apart from Cat didn't shake him the way the thought of leaving Lucy did.

  It was more than the sex, though Lord knows he'd miss that less than five minutes after he left her. It was her smile, her laugh, her bluntness, her cheerful honesty that he'd really miss.

  Lucy lifted her head and still tried to smile. "I'm finding out the hard way that I'm better at designing software," she told him. "The truth is, I was a lousy cop."

  "No, you weren't."

  She shook her head, covering his mouth with her hand. "You know I wasn't cut out for the job, so do me a favour and don't try to pretend that I was," Lucy said. "I prefer the truth, McCoy—no matter how difficult it may be. Don't ever lie just to be nice."

  He pulled her hand away, lightly kissing her fingers first. "I wouldn't," Blue said. "Honesty is real important to me, too, Lucy. All my life I've seen people use other people." He was quiet for a moment, then he added, "Do you know that you're the first woman I've... been involved with... who hasn't had some ulterior motive for being with me?"

  Lucy looked away, hoping Blue wouldn't be able to see the secrets she was hiding. Because she did have an ulterior motive. She was in love with him-and she wanted him to love her, too. That was one major ulterior motive. "You're exaggerating," she said. "You've got to be."

  "I'm not."

  "You're telling me that you know for a fact that every single one of all the women you've ever been—"

  "There haven't been that many," he interrupted quietly.

  "That's hard to believe."

  "It's true."

  "And not one of them was with you simply because they liked you?"

  "None of them ever tried to get to know me." He paused. "Except for you."

  His soft words made her cheeks heat with a flush. If only she didn't want more from him—more than an easygoing friendship spiced with hot sex. But she did want more. She wanted so much more.

  "Even back in high school," Blue told her. "Even Jenny Lee—" Something shifted in his eyes. It was almost imperceptible. Almost. "In some ways, she was the worst. It took me a long time to get over her using me the way she did. After that I started to expect it. Some women liked being with a man in a uniform. Others were after an officer—it didn't matter who you were as long as you had some kind of rank. I once met a girl—she seemed really nice. Turned out she and her brother were writing a book about SEAL Team Ten."