“It wasn’t my fault, I swear. He was already watching it when I got in here.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “And did he already know that your nephews take karate lessons?”
He looked a little sheepish. “I might have told him that.”
“Yeah.” Sam’s response was dry.
Marco looked at her. “Jesus, Sam, he’s a boy. He’s going to like stuff like that. We’re hardwired that way, all of us. Playing games like Halo and watching Bruce Lee—that’s normal boy stuff. Ask his dad.”
That was a sore point. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to, which I don’t,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?” Marco raised his eyebrows at her, inviting a reply.
Sam sighed. She didn’t talk about her circumstances very often, because it was personal and it felt like whining and because she’d learned from a young age that the only thing to do when something bad happened to you was suck it up and go on. But she suddenly found herself wanting Marco to know the truth.
“Like I said, he’s out of the picture. I’ve seen him like twice since Tyler was born. I’m fairly certain he couldn’t pick Tyler out of a lineup, and the only reason Tyler would recognize him is because I’ve got a picture of him in Tyler’s baby book that Tyler likes to look at.” Actually, every time she found Tyler looking at that picture it broke her heart a little, but she had thought it was important for the little boy to know he did have a father so she had put it in there and kept it in there.
“So what happened between you?”
Sam shrugged. “I was stupid, what can I say? I started seeing him when I was a senior in high school. He was in my class, popular, good-looking, big party guy. Well, I was into having fun then, too. I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. Then I found out I was pregnant. It was about a month and a half after I graduated from high school. To make a long story short, turned out he did not want to know. He still doesn’t. As far as I’m concerned, if I never saw him again in my life it would be too soon, but I hate it for Tyler.”
The look she gave him must have had more emotion in it than she knew, because his brows contracted and he reached over and picked up her hand.
“The guy’s a jerk. And an idiot.”
His fingers twined with hers. They were warm and strong and gorgeously masculine, she thought as she glanced down at their joined hands. With self-preservation in mind, maybe she should have pulled away, but she didn’t. All he was doing was holding her hand, after all, but the comfort it gave her was enormous. The worst thing about it was, she had never, until right this very second, realized how much Tyler’s father’s abandonment of her and their son had hurt.
“Yeah, he is,” she said over the sudden lump in her throat. “He’s missing out on Tyler.”
“And you.” His fingers tightened on hers, and for a moment there she felt a terrifying prickling at the backs of her eyes. She never cried—another thing she’d learned early on was that all crying got you was a stopped-up nose—but all at once she feared she might as he continued with, “You’re something special, you know.”
At what she saw for her there in his eyes a hard little knot that she hadn’t even realized existed inside her melted away, like a snowball in the sun. It had been a long time since a man had looked at her like that, she realized. Not with lust, but with—tenderness? With maybe a little respect mixed in? Whatever, it was intoxicating. Her breath caught. She was conscious of a warm glow starting to build in the region of her heart.
“Sam—” Marco’s voice was deeper, and she thought that he was starting to lean toward her. Then the sound of a chair squeaking from the den made him shoot a look in that direction and stop. Sam heard it, too, and pulled her hand from his. The idea that Abramowitz, or any of the marshals for that matter, might see her holding hands with Marco struck her as not smart. Just why, she couldn’t have said, but . . .
“So you played basketball in high school, huh? What high school?” Marco’s tone had changed. It was lighter, faintly rueful. He was firmly unmoving now, back on his end of the couch, just as she was on hers.
“St. Clair County Alternative School.” Not altogether sorry to put the intensity behind them, Sam made a face at him. “Just to be clear, there were only six girls who wanted to play basketball, so we all made the team. It was a last-resort high school for kids who had problems with the system, so it wasn’t very big.”
He was looking at her with interest. “What kind of problems?”
“I missed a lot of school. I was rebellious.” She gave a small shrug. “By the time I graduated, I had lived in six different foster homes, all right? Going to school wasn’t my top priority. Hey, I was a kid. What can I say?”
“Where were your parents?”
“My dad was kind of like Tyler’s: he was never around. And my mom—she remarried when I was in fourth grade. My new stepfather wasn’t interested in having a daughter. She took off with him, moved to Florida. I lived with my grandma and my great-aunt for a while, until my grandma died and my great-aunt had a stroke. Then there was nobody left who wanted me, so I went into foster care. I was in eighth grade.”
“That sucks.” His tone was matter of fact, but his eyes had darkened.
Sam nodded. “Yeah, it did. I guess I kind of went off the deep end for a while after that, nothing too bad, just being a little wild and wanting to have fun and blowing off school. When I met Justin—Tyler’s dad—I thought everything was going to change.” She smiled wryly. “Which it did: I got Tyler.” The glance she shot him as soon as the words were out of her mouth was fierce. “For the record, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
He smiled at her. “He’s a great kid.”
“Yeah, he is. He totally turned me around, too. Once I had him, and I knew it was just the two of us, him and me against the world, I grew up fast.” Feeling uncharacteristically shy suddenly from having revealed so much, she shot him another look. When she spoke again, her voice was slightly gruff. “So there you have it: the story of my life. If you’ve got any, I’ll take questions now.”
“I do have one.” His eyes gleamed at her as he followed her lead into less emotional territory. “Who’s Carl?
Whatever Sam had expected—maybe a request for a definition of what “a little wild” entailed—it wasn’t that.
“Carl?” She gave him a puzzled look. “Carl works at A+ Collateral Recovery. How did you hear about Carl?”
“When Tyler called you and I answered, he asked if I was him.”
“Oh.” The smallest of pauses. “Carl’s been calling me lately, trying to get me to go out with him.” At the inquiring look Marco gave her, Sam shook her head. “Not going to happen. I’m careful about the men I bring into my life now that I have Tyler. In fact, I don’t bring men into my life now that I have Tyler.” Which, proving the previous conversation had not been a completely useless whine-fest, brought her to the point she’d been wanting to make to him: “As a matter of fact, I’ve been meaning to ask you if you would kind of cool it with him. He likes you a lot, and . . .”
The ninety-second warning beep of the alarm in the kitchen interrupted. Both Sam and Marco stiffened and looked toward the doorway. A heartbeat later, clearly drawn by the same thing, Abramowitz came out of the den. For a moment all three of them waited, looking toward the kitchen. Then the sound of the code being entered eased the tension. Footsteps could be heard crossing the kitchen, and then Sanders appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in the usual dark suit and tie, with the usual grumpy expression on his face. As the marshal in charge of the security detail, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to appear at times other than the shift on which he stood guard, but there was a kind of tension in his demeanor that told Sam something was up.
What alarmed her was that he was looking at her.
“I got a call just a few minutes ago,” Sanders said without preamble, stopping just over the threshold and folding his arms over his chest.
Uh-oh, Sam thought.
“About what?” Marco leaned forward to fix Sanders with an intent gaze.
“Her,” Sanders said. Sam had known it. She felt her stomach tighten. “She’s out of here. The kid, too. Tomorrow, eight a.m. Transferred to the custody of another team. Deputy Marshal John Romeo will take charge.”
Sam couldn’t help it. She immediately glanced at Marco, expecting him to say something along the lines of no way in hell. But he didn’t. Instead he just looked at Sanders kind of thoughtfully.
“Wait a minute.” If she had to stand up for herself, she could. After all, she’d been doing it practically all her life. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
“No.” Sanders’s reply was blunt.
“To hell with that,” Sam said hotly, shooting to her feet and glaring at Sanders. “I’m not going to—”
“Sam, hold up.” Marco’s quiet interruption had her glancing around at him. Still seated on the couch, he met her gaze. “This is a good thing. You and Tyler need to go.”
“What?” Realizing how much she didn’t want to leave him rattled her. “Aren’t you the one who kept saying we were safer with you?”
Sanders snorted derisively at that, but Sam paid no attention to him. Her attention was all on Marco. Her hands were clenching into fists at her sides, and that would be, she realized, because she was in full combative mode. And also because she was scared. And, so deep inside that she could barely even acknowledge the emotion was there, maybe even a little hurt. No, more than a little. A whole hell of a lot hurt.
“That doesn’t apply anymore.” Marco looked at her steadily. “Veith found the safe house in St. Louis. The longer we stay here, the more likely it is that they’ll find this one, too. Having you and Tyler here just isn’t smart anymore.”
“There you have it,” Sanders seconded.
“So why don’t we move on? As in, all of us?” Sam demanded accusingly of Sanders, who shrugged.
“Got no orders to move. But I do have orders to hand you off. And that’s what I’m going to do. Eight a.m. sharp, so be ready.” As if to forestall any further argument, Sanders turned and walked away, heading back the way he had come.
“No way—” Sam would have gone after him, but Marco grabbed her hand. This time his grip felt very different: he wasn’t letting go.
“Wait. Listen. Sam, hear me out. This is for the best,” Marco said as her furious gaze skewered him. “You remember how you called where I am ground zero? You were right. It is. They’re after me. You and Tyler are better off somewhere else.”
“You didn’t think so before!” The beep of the code being entered into the security system again announced that Sanders was already on his way out the door and out of her reach. Desperate to confront him while she could, she tugged at her hand. Marco held fast.
“The situation has changed.” Marco’s expression was grim.
From the corner of her eye, Sam saw Abramowitz giving them a once over. Clearly he hadn’t missed the fact that Marco was holding her hand. As if he realized that she was looking at him looking at them, Abramowitz cleared his throat noisily. Then as she transferred her glare to him he said, “Uh, you need any help with that?”
Sam realized that he was referring to Marco’s determined possession of her hand, and that he was offering to step in to protect her if she needed it. It was a decent thing to do, and she would have appreciated it more if she hadn’t been so damned mad.
“No,” she snapped. With a shrug, Abramowitz retreated back into the den.
After he was out of sight, Marco continued in a soft and urgent voice, “Look, I know this John Romeo, okay? He’s a good guy. You and Tyler will be safe with him.”
“No.” Sam shook her head. The thought of being separated from Marco was making her feel weird. Kind of panicky and—totally resistant to letting it happen. Unreal to think that she now associated being with him with being safe. “I’m not going. We’re not going.”
“I don’t think no’s an option.” Marco’s grip on her hand was warm and strong. It was also, she had little doubt, unbreakable unless and until he wanted to let her go. “Look, Sam—”
He broke off as Tyler called from upstairs, “Mom? Can you come here? I need help.”
Sam kept her eyes fixed on Marco even as she raised her voice to respond to Tyler. “I’ll be right there.”
Marco said, “Everything will be okay, I promise. I need you to trust me on this.”
Sam’s eyes searched his. At what she saw in them, she felt cold all over. “So you really want us to go?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” Sam said, and yanked her hand free from that not-so-unbreakable-after-all grip as Tyler called, “Mom?” again.
Without so much as a backward look, conscious of Marco’s eyes on her until she was out of sight, she headed upstairs. She was furiously angry, she realized, and refused to even try to analyze why.
For the next couple of hours, she was busy. She got Tyler to bed without telling him what was getting ready to happen in the morning. That would be because she knew that he would be upset at the idea of leaving “Trey” and she didn’t want to deal with what that might entail, which would almost certainly include but not be limited to his being unable to go to sleep, while her own emotions were in such turmoil. After Tyler was finally asleep, she set out the clothes that they would wear tomorrow, then packed their newly acquired belongings in a trash bag. Not that anybody had said she would be allowed to take said belongings with them, but it didn’t matter; she was determined that she would. Then, finding herself totally wired with sleep the last thing she felt like doing, she went along to the second bathroom and took a long, hot bath. When she emerged from the bathroom, all rosy and still faintly damp and wrapped in her white bathrobe with her hair twisted into a loose knot on the top of her head, she cast a quick glance down the hall toward Marco’s bedroom. His light, which had been on when she entered the bathroom, was now off.
He had gone to bed. Without even trying to talk to her, to clarify what she’d thought had been building between them, or even to say a private good-bye. Maybe he was hoping to make his good-byes brief and unemotional, and thus was saving them for the rush and confusion of the morning. But, she discovered, she needed more than that.
Sam felt furiously angry all over again. As she stood there in the shadowy hall, glaring at Marco’s dark bedroom door, the reason she was so mad at him hit her.
Once she and Tyler left the town house, they were probably never going to see him again.
Her heart broke at the thought. And the jackass didn’t even seem to care.
Sam couldn’t stand it. No way was she leaving it like this. There was too much unsaid—un-everythinged—between them.
After tonight, she would never get another chance.
Tightening the belt around her waist, shaking her head so the knot of her hair came loose and spilled around her shoulders, she turned, padded down the shadowy hall, and walked through Marco’s open bedroom door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Marco was indeed in bed. It took Sam’s eyes a second to adjust to the gloom, but when they did she had no trouble picking out the long, large mound under the covers that was him. If she’d heard snoring, she probably would have killed him there and then and been done with it, but luckily for him she did not. Looking around, she located the switch on the wall, snapped on the light, then blinked at the sudden brightness as a single bedside lamp came on. By its light, she could see him lying on his back with one arm curved beneath his head. He was bare to at least the waist, where the striped blanket that was the top layer of bedclothes ended. Above that, he was all broad shoulders and sinewy muscles and tanned skin against white sheets. Even as she absorbed how absolutely sexy he looked lying there like that she saw that his eyes were open. He was awake and looking at her. That was when the thought hit her that maybe coming into his bedroom like this had been a mistake—okay, coming into his bedroom like this definitely had been a mistake—but she was to
o mad to care.
“Something wrong?” Sitting up suddenly so that the covers puddled around his hips—he was wearing boxers, and, God, the guy looked good bare-chested!—he reached for the crutches propped beside the bed.
“Oh, yeah.” Sam frowned right back at him. No, scowled was a better word. Then, mindful of Tyler and not wanting to wake him up, and remembering that Abramowitz was downstairs and might even be able to overhear, she closed the door. And locked it, because what she had to say was absolutely private. By the time she strode to the side of his bed, Marco had apparently divined that whatever she wanted did not require him to be up and on crutches, because he’d quit reaching for them and was leaning back against the headboard with his brawny arms folded over his hunky chest, watching her. Planting her fists on her hips, she gave him a ferocious glare and said, “Tomorrow morning, before we leave, you’re going to get up and say goodbye to Tyler. You’ve gone out of your way to make him like you and he’s going to be upset at the idea that we’re leaving you. You’re going to lie to him, do you hear? You’re going to lie and tell him that you’ll be in touch just as soon as all this is over.”
For a moment Marco just looked at her without saying anything. Divining what he was thinking was impossible. She could not read a thing in his face.
“You really think lying to him is a good idea?” he asked mildly.
“Under the circumstances, yes.” By that time Sam was the opposite of mild. She was tense, angry, practically vibrating with hostility. “He has no idea that he’s probably never going to see you again. If he knew that, it would break his heart.” To her horror, her voice wobbled a little on the last word.
“Sam.” He reached out, caught her hand. “I’m doing my best for you and Tyler here, believe me.”
She jerked her hand away like the warmth of his skin burned her. “You know what? I don’t care. I just don’t want you to hurt Tyler any more than can be helped.” She gave him another of those fierce looks. “So you’re going to lie to him, and later on when he asks about you I’m going to keep on coming up with excuses about why you haven’t been in touch until eventually he forgets all about you. Which he absolutely will do, although it’s going to be a little rough on him until then.”
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