They’d made love in a shower numerous times and the tub, too, but never in an outdoor shower. His adventurous nature had always appealed to her. She’d always been such a cautious, practical soul—her mother had always been so stressed, Jayne had worked overtime to be the perfect daughter and that regimen eventually became habit. Rigid attention to detail was a great trait for a nurse, but not in her personal life. Then Conrad had burst into her world.
Or rather he’d hobbled into the E.R. on that broken foot, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge just how badly he’d been hurt. Even in a cast, he’d been more active than any human she’d met. He’d swept her off her feet, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she’d done something impulsive.
She’d married Conrad after only knowing him for three months.
If they’d dated longer might they have worked through more of these issues ahead of time? Had a stronger start to their marriage, a better foundation?
Or would she have talked herself out of marrying him?
The thought of having never been his wife cut through her. She wanted a future with him. She couldn’t deny that, but she also couldn’t ignore what a tenuous peace they’d found here.
And the least bump in the road could shatter everything.
* * *
Conrad lounged on the shower bench with the door open, watching his wife tug her clothes back onto her damp body. Damn shame they couldn’t just stay naked, making love until the world righted itself again. “I read once that ‘The finest clothing made is a person’s skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.’”
She tugged her T-shirt over her head, white cotton sticking to her wet skin and turning translucent in spotty places. “Where did you read that?”
“Believe it or not, Mark Twain.”
“I always think of you as a numbers man.” She pulled her hair free of the neckline, stirring memories of washing her, feeling her, breathing in the scent of her.
Her legs glowed with a golden haze, backlit by the sunset. There was still time left in this day.
He gave her a lazy smile. “You’ve been thinking of me, have you?”
“I do. Often.” Her smile was tinged with so much sadness it socked him right in the conscience.
He stood and left the shower stall, sealing the door after him. He reached for his jeans. “And where do you think of me? Somewhere like in bed? Or in the shower? Because I thought of you often in the shower and now…”
She rolled her eyes. “Where doesn’t matter.”
“It’s been a long three years without you. I’m making up for lost time here.” He tried to lighten the mood again, to bring them back around to level ground. “That’s a lot of fantasies to work through.”
“If only we could just have sex for the rest of our lives. That would probably cure your insomnia.” She gave her jeans an extra tug up her damp legs, her breasts moving enticingly under the T-shirt.
She’d been his wife for seven years and still his mouth watered when he looked at her. Her blond hair was slicked back wet, her face free of makeup, and she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“The last thing I think about when I’m with you is sleep.” What a hell of a time to remember how their marriage had cured his insomnia in the beginning.
“Eventually we would wear out.” She sauntered up to him and buttoned his jeans with slow deliberation, her knuckles grazing his stomach.
“Is that a challenge?” His abs contracted in response to the simple brush of her fingers against him.
And he could see she knew that.
She patted his chest before stepping back. “You enjoy a challenge. Admit it.”
He grabbed her hips, hauled her against him and took her mouth. He would eat supper off her naked body tonight, he vowed to himself. He would win her over and bring her into his life again, come hell or high water. The past three years without her had been hell. The thought of even three days away from her was more than he could wrap his brain around.
The possibility that he might not be able to persuade her started a ringing in his ears that damn near deafened him. A ringing that persisted until he realized…
Jayne pulled back, her mouth kissed plump and damp. “That’s my cell phone. I should at least check who it is.”
Disappointment bit him in his conscience as well as his overrevved libido. “Of course you should.”
She snatched her purse from the ground and fished out her cell phone. She checked the screen and frowned before pushing the button. “Yes, Anthony? What can I do for you?”
Anthony Collins? Conrad froze halfway down to pick up his polo shirt off the ground. What the hell was the man doing still calling Jayne? She said she’d ended any possible thoughts of romance between the two of them.
The way her eyes shifted away, looking anywhere but at Conrad wasn’t reassuring, either. He didn’t want to be a jealous bastard. He’d always considered himself more logical than that. But the thought of Jayne with some other guy was chewing him up inside.
She turned her back and walked away, her voice only a soft mumble.
Crap. He snatched his shirt off the ground and shook out the sand. He stood alone, barefoot, in the dirt and thought of all the times he’d isolated Jayne, cut her off from his world without a word of reassurance. He was a bastard. Plain and simple. She’d deserved better from him then and now.
Jayne turned around, and he willed back questions he’d given up the right to ask. He braced himself for whatever she had to say.
“Conrad.” Her voice trembled. “Anthony said he’s been getting calls from strangers claiming to be conducting a background check on me for a job I applied for. It could be nothing, but he said something about the questions set off alarms. He wondered if it might be someone trying to steal my identity. But you and I know, it could be so much worse than that….”
Her voice trailed off. She didn’t need to state the obvious. His mind was already shutting down emotion and revving into high gear, churning through options for their next move.
And most of all how to make sure Jayne’s safety hadn’t been compromised.
Up to now his gut had told him Zhutov didn’t have a thing on him. He didn’t make mistakes on the job. But he couldn’t ignore the possibility of Zhutov’s reach when it came to Jayne so he’d been aggressively cautious.
Had he been cautious enough? Or had something slipped through the cracks while he was lusting after his wife? He shut down his emotions and started toward the house.
“We need to get inside now. I have to call Colonel Salvatore.”
* * *
Jayne hated feeling useless, but what could she do? She wasn’t some secret agent. Hell, she didn’t even have her car or access to anything. She felt like she’d been turned into an ornamental houseplant—again.
Conrad had locked the house down tight before going to the panic room to talk to Salvatore and access his computers. She padded around the kitchen putting together something for supper while listening to one side of the phone conversation, which told her absolutely nothing.
Only a couple of hours ago, he’d shown her the clinic and it was clear he’d been trying to reach out to her by sharing that side of his life. Although the spontaneous soccer game had touched her just as much.
She tugged open the refrigerator and pulled out a container of Waldorf salad to go with the flaky croissants on the counter. And she vowed, if she found one more of her favorite anything already waiting here for her she would scream.
How could the man have ignored her for three years and still remember every detail about her food preferences? For three long years her heart had broken over him. She would have given anything for a phone call, an email, or God, a surprise appearance on her doorstep. Did he really think they could just pick up where they left off now?
She spooned the salad onto plates, her hands shaking and the chicken plopping on the china with more than a little extra force. Would he have
continued this standoff indefinitely if she hadn’t come to him? She couldn’t deny she loved him and wanted to be with him, but she didn’t know if she could live the rest of her life being shut out this way.
Slumping back against the counter, she squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to breathe evenly. She thought about that teenage Conrad whose trust had been so horribly abused by his father. Conrad, who’d grown into a man who built a health clinic and devoted his life to a job he could never claim recognition for doing.
Boothe was right. Conrad was a good man.
She just needed to be patient. And instead of peppering him with questions nonstop, she could start offering him parts of her past, things that were important but that she’d been hesitant to dredge up. But, good God, if she couldn’t tell her husband, who could she talk to?
Yes, she still loved Conrad, but she wasn’t the same woman she’d been three years ago. She was self-reliant with a clear vision for her future and a sense of her own self-worth.
She also knew that her husband needed her, whether he realized it or not. Pushing her own fears aside, she opened a bakery box full of cookies.
* * *
No matter how hard he worked to shut down emotions, still he couldn’t ignore the weight of Jayne’s eyes on him, counting on him. At least they had one less thing to worry about.
He leaned against the kitchen doorway. “Salvatore’s looking into the calls, but so far he said everything looks on the up-and-up. He’s confident it was just a hiring company for a hospital running a background check.”
“Thank God. What a relief.” Her eyes closed for an instant, before she scooped up two plates off the counter. “I made us something to eat. We missed lunch. Could you pour us something to drink?”
She walked past him, both plates of food in her hands. He opened a bottle of springwater, poured it into two glasses with ice then followed her into the dining room. Already, she sat at her place, fidgeting with her napkin.
No wonder she was on edge. All the pleasure of their day out, even making love in the shower, had been wrecked with a cold splash of reality. He sat across from her and shoveled in the food more out of habit than any appetite.
Jayne jabbed at the bits of apple in her salad. “Did I ever tell you why I’m such an opera buff?”
He glanced up from his food, wondering where in the world that question had come from. But then he had given up trying to understand this woman. “I don’t believe you did.”
“I always knew my parents didn’t have a great marriage. That doesn’t excuse what my father did to us—or to the family he kept on the side. But my parents’ divorce wasn’t a huge surprise. They argued. A lot.”
He set his fork aside, his full attention on her. “That had to have been tough for you to hear.”
“It was. So I started turning on the radio to drown them out.” She shrugged, pulling her hair back in her fist. “Opera worked the best. By the time they officially split, I knew all the lyrics to everything from Madame Butterfly to Carmen.”
The image of her as a little girl sitting in the middle of her bed singing Madame Butterfly made him want to time travel to take her bike riding the hell away from there. But was he doing any better at protecting her in the present?
She leaned forward on her elbows. “Just so we’re clear, you have absolutely no reason to be jealous of Anthony. Nothing happened with him, and I made sure he understood that when I spoke to him yesterday. I even had a friend from work pick up Mimi. I would never, never betray your trust that way.”
“I believe you.” And he did. He knew how she felt about what her family had been through with her father’s longtime affair.
“What’s wrong then?” She clasped his arms, holding on tight, her eyes confused, hurt and even a little angry. “Why are you so…distant? You know those walls destroyed us last time.”
He shoved away from the table, holding himself in check. Barely. But he wouldn’t be like her father, shouting and scaring the hell out of her. “This whole mess with Zhutov and you having to second-guess every call that comes into your life. Do you expect me to be happy that there are people asking around about you? That I had to take you to a remote corner of the world to make sure no one is after you—because of me?”
“Of course you have a right to be worried, but if Colonel Salvatore says there’s nothing to worry about, I believe him.”
“Nothing to worry about—this time.”
“We don’t always have to assume the worst here.”
A siren split the air like a knife, cutting her off midsentence.
He recognized the sound all too well. Someone had tripped the alarm on the outer edges of his property.
Holy crap. His body went into action, his first and only priority? Securing Jayne.
“Conrad?” Her face paled with panic. “What’s that?”
“The security system has been tripped. Someone’s trying to break into the compound.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and hustled her toward the front steps. “You need to lock yourself in the panic room. Now.”
Eleven
Jayne hugged her knees, sitting on a sofa in the panic room. Her teeth chattered with fear for her husband. She’d barely had time to process Anthony’s confusing call before the alarm had blared. Conrad had hooked an arm around her waist, rushed her indoors and opened the panic room. He ushered her in and passed over a card with instructions for how to leave…
If he didn’t return…
Horror squeezed her heart in an icy fist with each minute that ticked by. She’d already been in here for what felt like hours, but the clock on her cell phone indicated it had only been sixteen minutes.
Someone was trying to break in and there was nothing she could do except sit in this windowless prison while the man she loved faced heaven only knew what kind of danger. Desperately, she wanted to be out there with him, beside him. But Colonel Salvatore had been right. She was Conrad’s Achilles’ heel. If he had to worry about her, he would be distracted.
She understood that problem well.
There wasn’t anything she could do now other than get her bearings and be on guard. Surveying the inside of her “cell,” she took it in, for all the good that did her.
As far as prisons went it wasn’t that bad, much like an efficiency apartment, minus windows and with only two doors—one leading out and the other open to a small bathroom. A bed filled a corner, a kitchenette with a table in another. A table and television rounded out the decor.
A television? She couldn’t envision anyone in a panic room hanging out watching their DVD collection. Angling sideways, she grabbed the remote control off the end table. She turned on the TV. A view of the front yard filled the flat screen.
Oh, my God, she was holding the remote to a surveillance system. She wasn’t isolated after all. Relief melted through her. She could help by monitoring the outside. She yanked her cell phone from her pocket and saw…she still had a signal so the safe room hadn’t blocked her out.
She thumbed through the remote until she figured out how to adjust the views—front yard, sides, the river—all empty. Her eyes glued to this thin connection to Conrad, she clicked again to a view of the outward perimeter including the clinic.
Not empty.
In fact, a small crowd gathered outside, even this late in the day with the sun setting fast. In the middle of the crowd, four lanky figures sat with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
Teenagers.
Probably not more than fifteen.
And if she guessed correctly, they were some of the same kids who’d played soccer with Conrad just that afternoon.
She clicked the remote, the camera scanning the view until she found Conrad standing with Dr. Boothe. Her husband had his phone out, talking to the doctor while thumbing the keypad. She sagged back on the sofa. If there was any danger to her here, Conrad wouldn’t be so far away.
Still, she stayed immobile, waiting for his call. She wouldn’t be the fool in
the horror films who walked right into a killer’s path in spite of all the warnings. But how many times in her life had she sat waiting and worrying, unable to connect or help? She couldn’t be a helpless damsel in distress or a passive bystander in her own life.
Her cell phone buzzed beside her, and she saw an incoming text from Conrad.
All clear. Just a break-in at the clinic for drugs. I’ll be home soon.
A moment of sheer fright was over in an instant. Was this how Conrad lived on the job? Not fun by any stretch of the meaning. But then, not any more stressful than the time she’d been working in the E.R. when a patient pulled a knife and demanded she empty the medicine cabinet. He’d been too coked up to hold the knife steady, and the security guard had disarmed him.
There weren’t any guarantees in life, regardless of where she lived.
She picked up the clearance code and punched in the numbers to open the door back into the house. She texted Conrad an update.
Made it out of the panic room. No problems with the code.
She hesitated at the urge to type “love you” and instead opted for…
Be safe.
Seconds later the phone buzzed in her hand with an incoming text.
This will take a while. Don’t wait up.
Not so much as a hint of affection coated that stark message, but then what did she expect? He was in the middle of a crisis. She shook off the creeping sense of premonition.
For a second, she considered returning to the panic room and just watching him on the screen, but that seemed like an invasion of his privacy. If she wanted this relationship to work between them, she needed to learn to trust him while he was gone. And he needed to learn to trust that she could handle the lifestyle.
So what did a woman do while her man was out saving the world? Maybe she didn’t need all the answers yet. She just needed to know that she was committed to figuring them out.
All or Nothing Page 13
