Her gaze sought his. Within its depths, he saw the questions, and he knew she deserved the truth about him before this went any further.
John took a deep, fortifying breath. “A woman is beaten every fifteen seconds in this country, Hannah. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four in the United States—more than accidents, muggings and rapes combined. Think about that. Those women don’t have a choice. Neither did you.”
He didn’t tell her that the women who leave their batterers were at much greater risk of being killed than the ones who stay.
“How do you know all that?” she asked guardedly.
The question sent a cold finger of dread down his spine. John had known this moment would come. It always did. This is what he wanted, he told himself. He wanted her to know the ugly truth about him. He should have been prepared for the pain, but he wasn’t. He told himself things were better this way. That she had the right to know what kind of man she was dealing with. What he hadn’t counted on was the confession being so damned difficult, or the cost so incredibly high.
“I know because I’ve been there.” Gathering his courage, he turned to her and leveled her with a hard look. “I come from a long line of batterers. My father. My grandfather before him.”
She blinked as if he’d posed her with a complex problem. “What are you saying?”
“I grew up watching my old man beat my mother. I’ve been around enough to know I’ve got the Maitland temper. I’ve got that same violence inside me.”
“Just because your father battered your mother doesn’t mean you’re the same kind of man. A lot of people have tempers—”
“The stats see it differently.” He clenched his jaw against the jab of shame. “Fifty percent of children who grow up in a violent home become batterers themselves.”
“That means the other fifty percent grow up to become decent spouses and parents—”
“I’ve had relationships before, Hannah. And I’ve destroyed them. I’ve hurt the women who loved me.” He felt his lips draw back in a snarl. “Dammit, I’ve looked down and seen my hands clenched into fists—”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I won’t let that happen to us.”
“You’re not a violent man.” She started toward him.
John didn’t want her any closer. The urge to turn and walk away pounded him. He knew what would happen if she got too close. If she touched him. He might have the discipline to walk away to keep her safe, but he didn’t have the willpower to walk away from her touch.
He jolted when her hand closed around his forearm. “You’re decent and kind and courageous. I’ve felt the gentleness of your touch. I’ve experienced your kindness. I’ve seen the compassion in your eyes. And I’ve seen you risk your life for a person you didn’t even know.”
“If you’re looking for a hero, you’ve got the wrong man.”
“You’re wrong—”
“You don’t know about Philly. You don’t know what happened the day I left.”
“Then tell me. Let me decide for myself.”
John stared at her, stunned by her faith in him. How could she believe in him without question when he didn’t even believe in himself? Why couldn’t she just make this easy on both of them and let him walk away?
“My old man was a cop,” he began. “An alcoholic with a nasty temper and a mean streak that ran deep. It didn’t happen often, but I saw him hit my mother enough times that by the time I was six years old I hated the son of a bitch.”
Thirteen years had passed since he left Philadelphia, since he’d heard the sound of fists striking flesh. Since he’d heard his mother’s cries. Since he’d had to hear her lie about the bruises. But even after all this time, John could still feel the helplessness and anger boiling in his chest because he couldn’t do anything to stop it. Tonight, the memories pounded through him hard enough to make him sweat.
“He took a swing at me a couple of times and passed it off as discipline. By the time I was eight, I knew how to move fast enough to get out of his way. My mother wasn’t that lucky.” He laughed, but the sound that erupted from his throat tasted bitter. “Sometimes I think she took the brunt of it to keep him off me.”
“Oh, John. I’m sorry.”
He risked a look at her, felt the need cut him hard and deep. Her eyes were soft and fierce at once as she gazed back at him. An intriguing mix of compassion and strength that completely undid him. No woman had ever looked at him like that. No woman had ever believed in him the way Hannah did. He wanted her, he realized, and hated himself for it. He might walk away later, but he knew if she touched him tonight, his discipline would crumble like ice beneath a pick.
“Why did she stay?” she asked.
“The usual. Love. Denial. Some crazy notion of loyalty. She wanted to keep the family together, even though it was tearing all of us apart piece by piece.”
“What happened the day you left?” she asked.
He wished like hell he didn’t have to tell her. He didn’t want to look into her clear, brown eyes and see condemnation—or God forbid, fear. But he knew the truth was the only honorable route to take. Just as he knew it was the only way to keep her from making a mistake that would end up costing them both.
“My old man and I got into it a couple of times over the years,” he began. “Most times I just took it. I was tough and fast and had a smart mouth that drove him nuts. By the time I was fifteen, I’d hit him back a few times. By the time I was sixteen, he’d stopped hitting her in front of me. He knew I’d stop him.” He sighed. “But one afternoon when I was seventeen, I came home from school early and found my old man there. He was drunk. Ticked off at my mother about something. They’d been arguing. I walked in the door just in time to see him throw the first punch.”
Across from him Hannah flinched. “Oh, no…”
“I saw her fall. Heard her pleading for him to stop. Something snapped inside me when I saw her blood on his knuckles. I went after him with everything I had.”
“John, you can’t blame yourself for that. You were seventeen years old—”
“I knew exactly what I was doing. I wanted to stop him. Dammit, Hannah, I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hurt him so badly that he’d never raise a hand to her again.”
“You were protecting your mother.”
“I was enraged and out of control. Just like him.”
“He didn’t leave you much choice.”
“I didn’t just stop him, Hannah. I hurt him.” John braced against the memory, but the shame sliced him like a blade. “I don’t remember most of it. Just that one minute his fist was drawn back to punch me, the next he was lying on the floor. Even after he was down and wallowing in his own blood, I didn’t stop. I put my old man in the hospital that day. I nearly killed him.” He raised his gaze to hers. “That was the day I realized I’m an animal just like him. So, before you hang that hero tag on me, I think you’d better take a hard look at the man to see if he’s really who you think he is.”
* * *
The words left Hannah reeling. With shock for what he’d gone through as a boy. With pain for the man he’d become. And with disbelief that he could think he was anything like his father. The sudden, wrenching need to make him believe that made her reach for him.
Clenching his jaw, John caught her wrist and lowered it to her side. He didn’t speak, but she saw the war raging in his eyes. The war against desire and honor. If only she could make him believe the point of contention between the two was moot.
“I won’t let you believe that about yourself.” She didn’t know everything he’d been through back in Philadelphia, but there was no way she would ever believe the man she’d known for the last two days was violent. She’d experienced his kindness and compassion firsthand. She’d watched him go pale, his eyes darken with fury when he’d seen the battered woman at Angela Pearl’s. She may not know anything about herself, but she knew without a
doubt John Maitland would always be a hero in her eyes. The realization that he believed otherwise broke her heart.
He jolted when she eased her wrist from his grasp and put her hand on his forearm. He shuddered at her touch, the muscles beneath her palm cording with tension. “Hannah…don’t.”
“Look at me, John.”
He turned to her, his eyes dark and troubled, his face tight with an emotion she couldn’t begin to name.
“You’ve proven to me in a hundred different ways in the last two days what kind of man you are. It’s going to take a lot more than a mistake you made as a seventeen-year-old boy to make me believe you’re a batterer.”
“A child’s exposure to violence is the strongest risk factor for transmitting that behavior from one generation to the next,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean you’re a batterer.”
“It means I’m at risk. It means any woman I care about is at risk. Dammit, I have a temper, Hannah. In my eyes that means you and your unborn child are at risk.”
He started to turn away, but she didn’t let go of his arm. “Don’t turn away from me.”
“I care about you too much to let this go any further.”
“Maybe this has already gone a lot further than you realize.”
A curse hissed through his teeth. “I don’t get involved, Hannah. I don’t do relationships. No matter what happens between us, there’s going to come a day when I’ll walk away from you. Because deep down inside, I know if I don’t walk away, I’ll end up hurting you. And that’s the one thing I’ll never do.”
CHAPTER 13
Her faith devastated him and shook him all the way to his core. John wanted desperately to believe he didn’t have the violence inside him. That his father’s legacy hadn’t affected his life or the decisions he’d made about getting involved.
Only, he knew better.
As Hannah stared up at him with eyes so clear he could look into them and almost see tomorrow, he felt the slow coil of hope burgeon in his chest. It was an unfamiliar emotion that made his throat tighten and threatened the walls surrounding his heart.
“You saved my life,” she said simply. “You risked your own life to get me on board that helicopter. You’ve spent the last few days risking your safety to keep me out of harm’s way. And now you expect me to believe you’re a batterer?”
John felt those walls fracture with an almost audible crack. “I’d rather die than hurt you, Hannah. I could never live with myself if I…” He couldn’t finish the sentence, found himself struggling just to get enough oxygen into his chest. “You deserve better.”
“I deserve the truth.”
“You deserve the opportunity to get the hell away from a man like me. I’m giving you that opportunity.”
“What you’re giving me is a cop-out.”
This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. He stared at her, incredulous and a little angry, not sure what to say or do next.
“Your sense of honor is commendable, but misplaced,” she said.
“Yeah, well, Red, my misplaced sense of honor, as you so aptly put it, is going to save both of us a hell of a lot of pain in the long run.”
“The only thing that hurts at the moment is knowing you believe that about yourself.” Raising up on her tiptoes, she brushed a kiss across his lips. “You’re wrong.”
Surprise and pleasure and a dozen other emotions he didn’t want to name rippled the length of him. “Don’t,” he said.
“Stop me.”
John endured the kiss, his heart pounding, his blood heating, his palms wet with sweat. The logical side of his brain told him to set her aside and get the hell out of there—pronto. But the moment their lips met, his intellect died a quick and painless death.
Sensation assaulted him, the warm pressure of her mouth against his, the scent of her hair, the sweetness of her breath, the heady rush of blood to his groin. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a tiny voice of reason told him it wasn’t too late to walk away. He could drive her back to Denver. Drop her at a shelter or even the police department. Staying with her under the guise of keeping her safe was no longer a viable option. If he were any kind of man at all, he would get out before either of them did something irrevocable.
But the sweet urgency of her kiss cleared his mind of everything except the moment. The essence of her hovered like a sweet hologram, moving over him, through him. Softness and heat and unspoken promises breached the boundaries of his discipline. The walls he’d spent so many years erecting and fortifying shattered.
He kissed her back, tentatively at first, then hungrily. Her arms went around his neck. “How about if we just hold each other for a while?” she said.
Only then did he realize he hadn’t put his arms around her. They hung at his sides. But the need to wrap them around her was so acute, he ached with it. “I don’t deserve to hold you,” he said. “I don’t deserve to be with you like this.”
Pulling away slightly, she took his hands in hers and met his gaze levelly. “I may not know my own name, but I know with all my heart you would never hurt me or any other woman.”
Never taking his eyes from hers, he raised their clasped hands and kissed her knuckles. “If I were a better man, I’d walk away right now.”
“If you were a better man, you wouldn’t be human.”
He thought about that a moment, then felt the grin emerge. “That’s a scary—”
Before he could finish the sentence, she captured his mouth in a kiss that made his head reel. He heard a groan, realized it had come from him. Then passion overrode caution. Raising his hands to her hair, he cupped the back of her head and devoured her mouth. She opened to him, and he went in deep, tasting her, savoring her, putting every sensation to memory because deep down inside he knew this would be their one and only time together.
Fresh urgency plowed through him when she pressed her body against his. The last vestiges of his discipline crumbled. Need hammered at his common sense, scattering it like powdered snow in a gale. He wanted to feel her softness against him. Wanted the warmth of her flesh in his hands. He wanted to lose himself inside her.
He cupped her breasts, marveling at the weight of them in his hands. An involuntary moan rumbled up from his chest when he felt the hard peaks of her nipples through her bra. “I’ve got to touch you.” With shaking fingers, he lifted the hem of her sweatshirt and dragged it over her head. “Now.”
Her hair tumbled over her shoulders. Her sweet scent surrounded him, drugging him, driving him toward a cliff that promised a fatal fall. He deepened the kiss, fumbling with the clasp of her bra, desperate to touch her. The sound of his own heart raged in time with his labored breaths. The scrap of lace opened. Her breasts, swollen from her pregnancy spilled heavily into his palms. John groaned again, told himself it was lust that made his legs go weak, his head spin. But he’d had plenty of lustful encounters in his lifetime and none of them had ever come close to this. He didn’t want to put a name to the magic exploding between them. If he did, it would be real, and he would have to deal with it. He had absolutely no idea how to deal with Hannah.
He cupped her, all the while gently caressing the sensitized tips with his thumbs. “You’re incredibly beautiful,” he whispered.
“You make me feel beautiful.”
“You are. All of you. Right or wrong, I want you, Hannah. I’ve never wanted anyone so badly in my life.” He barely heard his own voice over the thrum of blood through his veins. Wasn’t even sure what he’d said, only that he felt the words all the way to his soul.
Breaking the kiss, he lowered his head and trailed kisses down her neck. He thought of the bruises on her throat and his mouth lingered there, seeking to heal the flesh, erase the hidden scars. She shuddered, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop even if the building had been on fire and their lives in peril. John figured he could die right now and never be as happy as he was at this moment.
Her breasts were rounded, her nipples small, dark pe
aks. She gasped when he took her into his mouth. She arched, her breaths coming short and fast. He suckled and teased, barely hearing her cries of pleasure, barely aware of her trembling hands at the back of his head, pressing him into her.
Her stomach was soft and rounded. Closing his eyes, he skimmed his hands over her. Longing was an ache that thrummed throughout his body. He wanted her, wanted the child she carried within her to be his. Crazy thoughts, he knew, but John refused to consider logic when his entire world spun crazily out of control. Not when he was intoxicated on magic and prepared to make a fatal leap with this woman, knowing fully he wouldn’t survive the fall.
Slipping his hands in the waistband of her scrub pants, he eased them down her hips. Her panties came next. She stepped out of them, then kicked them off. All the while, she kissed him. Driving him insane with her mouth. The feel of her body against his. The sighs emanating from deep inside her.
Breaking the kiss, he leaned forward and set his mouth against her ear. “There’s time to change your mind,” he whispered.
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
He shouldn’t have been relieved, but he was. Vastly. “I’ve got a confession to make.”
Raising her gaze to his, she arched a brow.
“I’ve never made love to a pregnant woman before.”
A soft laugh broke from her lips. “I think the generalities are the same. Think you can handle it?”
“Ah, watch the ego, Red, will you?” He smiled, but it felt tight on his face. It stunned him to realize he was nervous. Very, very nervous. “What about you?”
“I can definitely handle it.”
It took him a moment to find his voice. “I don’t want to hurt you or…uh, the baby.”
“Oh, you mean physically?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I was reading from the medical Web site stuff you downloaded back at your cabin—”
“Did it mention mind-blowing sex?”
“Not in that exact context, but I gathered it’s okay for a pregnant woman to have sex. It said some women’s…uh, sex drive is exponentially heightened during pregnancy.”
A Hero to Hold Page 18
