by Marie Force
She pulled back to look up at him.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked, pushing the hair back from her face.
“That we usually jump each other the second we’re alone up here.”
Smiling, he said, “Actually, you usually jump me, but I don’t complain. I like to think I’m an accommodating husband.”
She lost it laughing, another thing she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of tonight. But leave it to Nick. “Whatever. We all know you’re the one who does most of the jumping.”
“All? Who all knows that?”
“Me and all my people.”
His brows lifted with disbelief. “Are you kissing and telling, Samantha?”
“Of course not. By all my people, I mean Sam Holland, Samantha Cappuano, Lieutenant Holland and Second Lady Samantha Cappuano. That’s a lot of people to deal with.”
“Believe me, I know.”
She poked his belly, and he laughed. “Did you come up here hoping to get lucky?”
“I get lucky every time I get to hold you, no matter what we do or don’t do.”
Placing her hand on his face, she held him still for a fairly platonic kiss by their standards. With her lips pressed to his, they simply existed together, breathing the same air, suspended on an extended break from the rest of their lives for that one moment in time.
“I want to keep them,” she whispered many minutes later.
“I do too.”
“I’m sorry I did this to us.”
“Please don’t be sorry. They needed us, even if it was only for a short time.”
“This proves that we can never again foster a child unless we know we get to keep them.”
“That’s probably true. Look how fast we got attached to Aubrey and Alden.”
“We suck at it.”
“We suck at remaining detached from sweet kids in need of a loving home. I can live with sucking at that.”
A sob erupted from her chest, taking them both by surprise as tears slid down her cheeks. “I want to make everything all better for them.”
“No one can do that.”
“I want to try.”
“I know, sweetheart.” His hand made small soothing circles on her back.
She hated the tears, but they did make her feel a tiny bit better as the storm subsided. Suddenly, she was very, very tired. “We need to go downstairs so they can find us if they need us.”
“I need five more minutes of this first.”
“I can do that.” After a long period of silence, she said, “You really have to go away for a whole week?”
“It’s not three weeks.”
“Even one week. Too long.”
“I know, babe. For me too. I keep thinking that maybe we might eventually get over this madness between us, but it only seems to get worse—and I mean that in the best possible way—the longer we’re together.”
“I know. We’re hopeless. I used to make fun of couples like us.”
“Did you?”
“Oh yeah.” She made gagging, retching sounds that made him laugh. “It was so disgusting to me. Like Angela and Spence when they were first married. Ugh. So happy and in love and always touching and other gross stuff. And now look at me. Look what you’ve done to me.”
“I’ve made a complete mess of you.”
“At least you’re aware of it.”
“Oh yes,” he said suggestively, “I’m very much aware of you and everything about you.” He moved ever so slightly, but it was enough to put him on top of her as he gazed down at her.
As naturally as she breathed, she raised her knees and spread her legs to make room for him as she wrapped her arms around him. She hadn’t thought she needed more than sweet comfort tonight, but with him hard and pressing against her suggestively, she suddenly needed him in every possible way.
“Nick.”
He kissed her neck and rolled her earlobe between his teeth. “What, honey?”
She raised her hips in blatant invitation.
His lips skimmed her jaw on the way to her lips. “I thought we needed to go downstairs.”
“We do,” she said, feeling and sounding breathless. He was the only man who’d ever made her breathless. “Soon.”
“So what you’re saying is we need to be quick?” As he spoke, he continued to move against her, making her crazier with each thrust of his hard cock against her sensitive flesh.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“I can do quick.” He slid into her, giving her all of him in one deep thrust that made her cry out from the shock and the thrill.
One thrust was nearly enough to make her come, and that had certainly never happened with anyone but him.
Nick moved slowly, reverently. This was still more about comfort than it was about sex, and it was just what she needed.
Sam clung to him, the way she so often did when the life she had chosen got to be too much for her.
He held her tight against him and made slow, sweet love to her, giving her everything he had the way he always did. “Samantha,” he said on a gasp that told her he was waiting for her.
Her emotions were such a jumbled mess tonight that she wasn’t sure she could let go enough to come, but of course he knew that and used every trick he had to ensure a satisfying conclusion for them both.
Sam’s head spun, and her body quaked in the aftermath. How did he do that so easily? He played her like a maestro every single time. Completely spent, she had nothing left for the walk downstairs.
“Wake up, babe. We need to go down.”
“I know.”
“Now, Samantha,” he said, kissing her until her eyes popped open. “There you are. One minute until sleep. Come on.” After withdrawing from her, he helped her up and into her robe, tying the belt around her waist before he got dressed and blew out the candles. “I’ll go down first and ask the agent to take a break. Don’t lie down again.”
“Yes, Dad.”
His playful scowl was the last thing she saw before he disappeared down the stairs in full vice president mode to get rid of the agent in the hallway. A minute later, he called up to her. “Coast is clear, my love. Let’s go.”
Yawning her head off, Sam got up and half walked, half staggered to the stairs where he waited at the bottom for her.
“Should I be prepared to catch you?” he asked as she descended with the finesse of a drunken sailor.
“Quite possibly.”
He kept an arm around her until they were in their bedroom with the door closed.
Sam went directly to the bed and landed at an angle across the mattress.
“Samantha.”
His voice was the last thing she heard before sleep claimed her.
* * *
FOR A LONG time after Nick got Sam into bed, head on pillow and under the covers, he was awake staring at the ceiling, thinking about Alden and Aubrey and wondering what would become of them—and what had become of him and Sam and their family since the children had entered their lives just over twenty-four hours ago.
One day.
So much could happen in a day.
In his life, some of the biggest events had happened in a single day. When he met John O’Connor at Harvard and made a friend for life in the course of an hour. When he met John’s father, Senator Graham O’Connor, and found his life’s work. When he met Sam and fell irrevocably in love with her—and stayed that way for six long years until he saw her again and discovered that nothing had changed after all that time. When John was murdered, which ironically had launched him into the political spotlight—albeit reluctantly. When he met Scotty and knew, almost instantly, that the boy was going to change his life. When President Nelson asked him to be his new vice president.
Single days that changed his life.<
br />
Strangely enough, he’d experienced a similar tilting of the axis beneath him when he met Aubrey and Alden. Maybe they were intended to be a short-term lesson, to remind him of his many blessings. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were intended for more than the short-term, despite how things seemed to be turning out.
He’d meant what he told Sam that it was in the children’s best interest to be taken in by family members, or at least it seemed like it would be. But he also meant it when he said he wished they could’ve kept the children with them. They could give them a nice life, surrounded by people who would love and care for them as if they were their own.
Would the aunt and uncle do that? How well did Alden and Aubrey even know them?
A sound from the hallway had him up and out of bed, heading for the door to see what was going on. He found Elijah carrying Alden, who was sobbing uncontrollably.
“So sorry to bother you,” Elijah said. “I was hoping I could get him downstairs before he wakes Aubrey.”
“No bother,” Nick said. “Let me get the lights for you.” He went ahead of them and turned on lights.
They went into the kitchen where Elijah sat at the table with his brother still clinging to him as he cried his little heart out.
Uncertain of what he should do, Nick poured glasses of water for them and put them on the table.
Elijah sent him a grateful look before returning his attention to Alden. “Did you have a bad dream?”
Alden shook his head.
“You want to talk about it?” Elijah wiped the tears from his brother’s face with the paper napkin Nick handed him.
Alden nodded.
Nick wondered if he should leave the room, but something kept him there, afraid to move out of fear that even the slightest distraction might prevent Alden from speaking.
“What’s wrong, Alden?” Elijah asked gently. “Are you sad about Mommy and Daddy.”
“Uh-huh,” Alden said.
That was the first word Nick had heard from him since he arrived. To his knowledge, Alden hadn’t actually spoken to any of them.
“I... I saw them.”
Nick’s heart rate slowed to a crawl as he waited to hear what else the child would say.
“Who did you see?” Elijah asked.
“The bad men.” He buried his face in his brother’s T-shirt and began to cry again.
Electrified, Nick met Elijah’s panicked gaze.
“Let me get Sam.” Nick left the kitchen and quickly went up the stairs. He sat on Sam’s side of the bed, hating to disturb her, but who knew if Alden would be able to speak about this twice. “Sam.” He gave her a gentle shake. “Samantha.”
“Mmm, what?”
“It’s Alden. He saw something that night, and he’s talking to Elijah about it.”
Her eyes popped open. “Now?”
“Right now. In the kitchen.”
She sat up, and he moved so she could get out of bed.
“Sorry to wake you, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Definitely.” She tightened the knot of the robe around her waist. “I need to use the bathroom, and then I’ll be down. See if you can hold him off until I get there.”
“Will do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NICK WENT BACK down to the kitchen where Elijah held the glass of water for Alden. “Sam will be down in a minute.”
Elijah nodded and cuddled his brother, rocking him gently as Alden’s little body echoed with leftover sobs.
Sam came into the kitchen, her blue eyes sharp as she took in the scene before taking a seat at the table.
“Hey, Alden,” Elijah said, his gaze fixed on Sam. “What you said about seeing the bad guys, can you tell me what you saw?”
“They...they made us go in the car to the bank and... They were hurting Mommy. She was screaming, but when Daddy saw me, he shook his head.”
Under the table, Sam reached for Nick’s hand and held on tight.
“What did you do?”
“I went back upstairs, but I could still hear.” Alden sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve.
“What did they say?”
“They wanted Daddy to give them money. He said...”
“What did Daddy say, Alden?” Elijah asked, his own eyes bright with unshed tears.
“That he would give them money, but they had to stop hurting Mommy.”
Sam held up one finger, then two, then three, hoping Elijah would ask how many guys.
He nodded “How many strangers were there?”
“Two.”
“You’re sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What did they look like?”
“One of them was big with brown hair and the other one was skinny. He had yellow hair like mine. The big guy was on top of Mommy, and she was screaming.” His voice caught on another sob. “He was hurting her. I wanted to help her, but Daddy shook his head. Should I have helped her, Lijah?”
“No, buddy,” Elijah said, tears running down his face. “You did the right thing. You did what Daddy told you to. He would be so proud of you for that.”
“I wanted to help Mommy. She always helps me.”
“I know, but Daddy didn’t want you to get hurt too.”
“When I smelled the smoke, that’s when I went to get Aubrey. We hid in the closet.”
“That was really smart. You kept her safe.”
Alden put his thumb in his mouth, his eyes heavy. The poor guy was probably exhausted from holding all that in.
“I’m going to take him back to bed,” Elijah said.
“We’ll be right here when he’s settled,” Nick said.
After Elijah left the room, carrying his brother, Sam and Nick sat for a full minute in complete silence.
“He saw the whole thing,” Sam said, dabbing at her eyes. “He saw them rape his mother in front of his father, who was bound and helpless.”
Nick sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly, aching for the child who had witnessed such horror and the man who’d had to watch the woman he loved be assaulted. The senselessness of it all overwhelmed him.
Sam withdrew the cell phone she kept on her at all times since the night Arnold was killed in the line of duty while she slept through it. She placed a call to Captain Malone. “It’s Sam. We’ve had a break in the Beauclair case.”
* * *
“I HAVE TO go in to work,” she said ten minutes after Elijah and Alden left the room.
“You need to sleep, Sam.”
“I told Malone I’d meet him at HQ.”
“Call him back and tell him you’ll be there at six.” When she started to protest, he placed his hand on hers. “You can’t function on an hour of sleep. Tell him you’ll meet him at six.”
“Fine,” she said with a huff of aggravation. “But you’re not the boss of me.”
“Sweetheart,” he said, laughing, “ain’t nobody the boss of you.”
Sam smiled, even though she ached on the inside for poor, sweet Alden. “That’s kinda true, isn’t it?”
Nick raised that eyebrow that made him look extra sexy. “Kinda?”
Sam called Malone again. “My bossy pain-in-the-ass husband says I have to sleep for more than an hour before I can come out to play.”
Malone snorted with laughter. “Meet me at six?”
“See you then. I’ll give Carlucci and Dominguez some marching orders in the meantime.”
“Sounds good.”
“Happy now?” Sam asked Nick when she’d closed her phone.
“I’ll be happy when you’re back in bed.”
“One minute.” She called Detective Carlucci and asked her to get photos of anyone else related to the case, so they would have them if they were forced to show them to
Alden for an ID. Sam hoped it wouldn’t come to that. If they were able to get the perpetrators another way, it would be her preference not to involve him at all.
“A five-year-old eyewitness to murder,” Carlucci said. “How does he get past that?”
“I have no idea,” Sam said. “But one step at a time. Let’s catch the bastards who killed his parents.”
“We’re on it. We’ll get the photos together.”
“Thank you.” She put down her phone, propped her chin on her hand and looked at Nick. “How will I ever sleep with the things he said in my mind?”
“You might not sleep, but at least you can rest. Come on.”
Sam took his hand and let him lead her upstairs to bed. In the hallway, she paused outside the bedroom where the children were staying with their brother, wishing there was something more she could do for them.
Nick’s hand on her back kept her moving toward bed. He tucked her in and then cuddled up to her, putting his arm around her.
Sam tried to relax her racing mind and rigid muscles as she went through the various pieces of the puzzle one by one.
“Stop,” Nick said softly. “It’ll still be what it is in the morning. Close your eyes and rest, Samantha.”
She wouldn’t have thought she could sleep, but the next thing she knew, the alarm was going off, making her groan. Five hours was about four less than she needed, but that was all she was going to get.
“I’ll make you some coffee,” Nick muttered.
“Don’t get up on my account. Get another hour.”
“I’d rather spend that time with you.”
“You’re insane. If I didn’t have to work, not even you could get me out of this bed.”
“Good to know,” he said with a low chuckle as he squeezed her ass.
“I’ll be in the shower. If I’m not out in ten minutes, come after me.”
“I may come after you anyway.”
“After you start the coffee.”
“Of course.”
Sam dozed off under the hot water, coming to when Nick’s arms slid around her, his lips skimming her shoulder. “In case I forget to tell you, you’re the best husband I ever had.”