Retrieval

by Aly Martinez

“Roman!” she objected, shoving at my chest.

  “Okay,” Leo interrupted. “Let’s calm down. This is just precautionary stuff at the house. But let’s make a deal here. Elisabeth, your man, Mr. Lock You In A Closet Whatever The Fuck You Called Him, will make sure no one touches you. And Alex and Devon will make sure no one touches your man. Everyone’s covered. Okay?”

  After a second, she grumbled a quiet, “Deal.” Glowering at me, she added, “But you should know—you pin me to a damn couch again, Roman, you are going to need men far bigger than those two to keep you safe.”

  This received a chorus of deep chuckles—one of them being mine.

  I casually righted myself on the couch and gave Leo my attention. “So, what’s next?”

  He smiled and shook his head, glancing over at the three guys looming around us. “Get your rooms for the night settled. Assuming all goes well with the security system, I should be able to get you into the house before I leave tomorrow night.”

  “Elisabeth needs to go shopping for furniture,” I informed.

  Leo arched an eyebrow. “You going with her?”

  I replied by stating, “She was looking at floral throw pillows earlier.”

  “Technically, they were damask,” she corrected.

  Leo glanced from me to her and then back again. “Right. Alex. Devon. Take the lady shopping. Roman, you’re with Johnson and me at the Victorian.”

  I grinned.

  Johnson laughed.

  Alex and Devon mumbled curses.

  Elisabeth giggled.

  Leo grinned back.

  Yeah. Worth. Every. Fucking. Penny.

  True to his word, Walt rushed to my side when he found out that I’d collapsed at the gym.

  I’d cracked the back of my head on the floor, splitting it open, but despite the urging of the gym staff, I’d refused to go to the hospital and have it stitched up. I’d taken care of far worse injuries on my own, and going to the hospital meant leaving Tessa with Walt.

  No. Fucking. Way.

  I assured everyone that I was okay, and then, as Walt and Brock shared angry whispers at the door, I quietly asked the front desk girl to call me immediately if Luke happened to show up.

  He wouldn’t. But the only thing I could do was hold on to a shred of hope.

  My head was aching as I strapped Tessa into her highchair for dinner.

  She was chasing blueberries around her tray with two wooden spoons as I finished up the lasagna I’d insisted on cooking as a way to keep my mind off all things Roman and Luke.

  It hadn’t worked. If anything, it had given me entirely too much time to obsess as I mindlessly prepared dinner.

  By the time the oven timer went off, my guilt had become poisonous, which was causing my hands to shake and my stomach to knot.

  “Hey,” Walt greeted, folding his arms around me from behind.

  My body turned solid, and tears flooded my eyes.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he murmured, placing a kiss at my neck.

  It was one of the many times in my life I should have kept my mouth shut. The first being the day Walter Noir had asked me out on our first date. The second being the day he’d slid his ring on my finger. But, just like in those instances, the words flew from my mouth before my mind could intervene.

  “Did you kill that man who came to the gate yesterday?”

  His head popped up and he squeezed me tightly. “So that’s what’s going on inside your head. You’re worried about that piece of shit?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was pissed or concerned, so I stuttered, “I…I just—”

  He turned me around and used my chin to force my gaze up to his.

  I sucked in a sharp breath when I found his face soft, a comforting grin tipping one side of his mouth.

  “Not yet,” he whispered. “But I swear to you he will be taken care of very soon. You’ll never have to deal with him again. No one touches you, remember?”

  A shot of adrenaline jumpstarted my system.

  Not yet.

  Not yet.

  Not. Yet.

  A sob of relief tore from my throat, my body shaking in his arms.

  Roman was still alive.

  “Jesus,” he breathed, tucking my face into his neck. “I had no idea you were this scared.” He rubbed his hand up and down my back.

  It was one of the only moments of solace I ever got. I hated him and wished he’d die on a daily basis, but I was so starved for comfort that I’d accept whatever I could get—even from him.

  His gentleness made me momentarily forget the monster in disguise, and I asked, “What about Luke?”

  His hands stilled, and I realized I’d made a huge mistake.

  I could have been scared of Roman, but I had absolutely no reason to fear Luke. So my asking about him could only be construed as interest in Walt’s warped mind.

  “Luke? Your personal trainer?” he whispered maliciously.

  My mind scrambled for a cover. “I…I was just trying to figure out if I needed to hire someone new. That’s all,” I said, attempting to move away.

  But his once gentle hands turned punishing in the span of a second.

  I was still wrapped in his arms when he squeezed me painfully tight, my lungs protesting and my tender ribs screaming. “I…can’t…breathe…” I choked.

  He nuzzled his jaw against the side of my face and drawled, “Good.”

  I struggled in his arms, the combination of fear and his grip making it nearly impossible for me to breathe. I was on the verge of passing out again when he suddenly released me. He didn’t move away as he watched me fight to draw air into my lungs. He hovered over me, a venomous glint in his eyes.

  “Please,” I begged, stumbling away, drawing him away from Tessa, knowing from experience what would follow.

  I hadn’t gotten far when he caught me, the tips of his fingers biting into the backs of my arms.

  “He’s dead,” he sneered, rearing one of his hands back.

  I closed my eyes preparing for the blow, but it never came.

  I pried my eyes open, and he grinned, brushing the back of his hand down my cheek. A moan of approval rumbled in his chest when I flinched.

  “I gutted him with my own hands,” he said, trailing his fingers down my eyes, my nose, and then my chin. “You should have heard him screaming to God for help. Such a fucking coward, that one.” He kept his eyes locked on me as he asked, “You don’t have a problem with that, do you, sweetheart?”

  I hid my wince and fought the vomit crawling up the back of my throat, keeping my shield firmly in place as I replied, “Not at all, honey.”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  But I’d learned with Walt that there was never a right thing to say.

  “Not at all, honey?” he whispered, gripping my neck and lifting me to where I could barely keep my tiptoes on the floor. “Not at all, honey?” He laughed, dropping me back down. “Not at all, honey!” He yelled at the top of his lungs, spit flying from his mouth as a heavy hand struck my face.

  I stumbled back as pain exploded within me.

  Tessa screamed from her chair as Walt roared, “Liar!”

  “I’m not lying about anything,” I cried, my hand covering my swelling cheek.

  “You fucked him. You whore!”

  I adamantly shook my head. “I didn’t! I swear. He never laid a finger on me.”

  He stormed forward, and I retreated as fast as I could, stopping only when my back hit a wall.

  He slammed his palm on the wall beside my head and leaned in, snarling, “Trust me, he wanted to.”

  “No,” I stated firmly.

  He held my gaze and searched my eyes.

  My heart raced, blood thundering in my ears, and I had to hold my breath to keep from exposing my fear, but I finally managed to repeat, “No.”

  Anger still radiating off him, he shoved off the wall and backed up a step. “Well, then I have some good news for you, Clare. As far as I know, Luke i
s alive and well.” He cracked his neck. “For the next half hour, anyway. What’s his last name?”

  Any relief I’d had when I’d heard he was alive morphed into paralyzing fear. “Walt, no,” I gasped, shaking my head.

  “If this guy means nothing to you, give me his fucking last name.”

  Frantically trying to come up with a distraction, I stepped forward and rested my hands on his chest. “I swear to you he means nothing to me, Walt. But that doesn’t mean he needs to die.”

  He swatted my hands away. “Name. Now. Or you will regret this.”

  But I already regretted everything. I couldn’t add Luke’s death to that—not again.

  “Please don’t do this,” I pleaded, reaching out for him once more.

  Suddenly, he turned on a toe, giving me his back as he headed toward Tessa.

  My heart constricted as I flew after him. “Walt! Stop!”

  “Mama!” she shrieked, fighting to get out of her seat as he approached.

  I rushed around him, blocking him from advancing any farther.

  I fully expected him to plow over me. But he came to a halt, his hand stabbing into his pocket to retrieve his phone. He quickly dialed a number and lifted it to his ear.

  “His name, Clare. Right. Fucking. Now.” He pointedly glanced over my shoulder at a now hysterical Tessa.

  Walt had never gone after Tessa before, so I had no idea what he was trying to insinuate, but it was my daughter, so I wasn’t about to wait to find out.

  It was the exact moment my soul broke in two.

  One part would forever be with Tessa, and the other would be buried in a shallow grave with a man whose only mistake was being kind.

  “Cosgrove,” I whispered, the pain searing through me.

  He barked, “Luke Cosgrove,” into the phone. Then he turned on a heel and strode out the front door, slamming it behind him.

  Tears sprang from my eyes, and the heave of my stomach threatened to overtake me. I managed to get Tessa out of her chair and both of us locked in my bedroom and then locked in the bathroom before I lost it.

  She crawled into my lap, curling as close as possible as I threw up in the toilet.

  How is this my life?

  I couldn’t do it anymore, but I knew with a certainty I could feel in my bones that Walt would never let me go.

  He was going to kill me one day.

  The only thing I could do was make sure Tessa wasn’t there to witness it.

  It would gut me, and I’d live the rest of my short life soulless and empty, the promise of dying being my only reward.

  But I now had it in my power to make sure she wouldn’t suffer the same fate.

  She was young; she’d forget me eventually.

  I never would though.

  At least, this way, I could let go and allow death to swallow me with the vision of her smiling branded on the backs of my eyelids.

  Sobbing, I rose to my feet with her snuggled in my arms. “Mama’s gonna take care of this, baby,” I whispered, carrying her to my bed. “You’re gonna be okay.”

  I climbed into bed, held her impossibly tight, and cried myself to sleep, mourning the loss of my only child.

  Ten days later…

  “Calm down,” Roman urged.

  “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”

  “Elisabeth,” he called, shaking my shoulders.

  I clung to his shirt, fighting for breath, as an all-out panic attack tore through me. It wasn’t my finest hour. It was, however, thirty minutes before the entire Leblanc family was set to descend upon my old Victorian for Thanksgiving dinner and I had just burned the bottom of the sweet potatoes.

  Roman and I had been taking it slow. Which, for us, meant we’d furnished an entire house together, he’d moved in, we’d taken two full weeks off work so we could spend every day together, he’d made love to me every night, and I’d fallen in love with him all over again. Not that I’d ever fallen out of love with him, but it was different this time.

  Time had changed both of us.

  But, dare I say, this version of Roman Leblanc was even better. He pissed me off with his bossiness, but it only made the moments when he was tender that much sweeter.

  We had bodyguards watching us twenty-four-seven, but he never made me feel like I was trapped inside the house. He worried about me—I could see it in his eyes. But, if I wanted to go somewhere, I went. And, depending on the task, he sometimes came, too.

  Not everything had changed though. We still laughed like maniacs, slow-danced in the shower, and occasionally ate dinner on a blanket on the dining room floor instead of at the table.

  It wasn’t all a walk in the park though. I was still struggling with the past and our new reality. Our attorneys were working around the clock, and we waited with bated breath for a judge to sign off on our request for DNA testing. It wasn’t an easy sell, but with Rorke and his team working on their end, we had hope someone would come through for us.

  Tessa weighed heavily on our minds. I prayed that she was safe. And, if I was being honest, I prayed the same for Clare. I couldn’t imagine what she was living through, but Roman was right. Our first responsibility had to be Tessa, but that didn’t mean I’d give Clare up.

  I’d framed the grainy surveillance photo of Tessa and placed it on the nightstand next to a picture of Tripp. Then I promptly lost it when I realized, if Tessa was ours, it probably meant that Tripp wasn’t.

  Roman held me until I was out of tears and eventually fell asleep in his arms. The next morning, I awoke and found him fully dressed, sitting in bed, holding a scrapbook that I knew had still been in my nightstand at the old house.

  I’d started it when we’d first decided to do IVF. In that book was everything from the beginning to the end: ultrasound follicle pictures from when I was in the stimulation phase. Pictures of Roman and me wearing those hair nets doctors wear in surgery—it was taken just minutes before they’d put me under for our egg retrieval. There was another picture of us in the exact same pose taken five days later as we held a tiny picture of two beautiful embryos while waited for them to be transferred back into my uterus.

  Then the images changed. There was a picture of us holding a positive pregnancy test, both of our eyes filled with tears. It was followed with weekly belly pictures leading up to our twenty-week ultrasound, where we found out about Tripp’s condition. But, even through my grief, I still documented every moment of our little boy’s life.

  On the last page was a picture of his tiny body snuggled into my chest, Roman’s hand on his back, a huge smile on both of our faces. The name Roman Daniel Leblanc, III “Tripp” in huge letters at the bottom of the page.

  Roman smiled as he placed the album in my lap then kissed my forehead. “Lis, he was ours in every way that mattered. He was created with love, born with love, and died with love. Not everyone can say that.”

  Oh, yes. I loved Roman Leblanc.

  So, with tears in my eyes and a photo album of our baby clutched to my chest, I filled him in. “I love you.”

  He grinned, the twinkle of the man I’d first met all those years ago dancing in his silver eyes as he said, “I love you, too. I never stopped, and I never will.”

  That afternoon, we went to visit Tripp’s grave together for the first time ever.

  The peace I felt while standing in Roman’s arms as we both spoke softly to our little man was indescribable. When we got home later that night, just before we fell asleep, Roman confessed that, the day I’d buried Tripp’s ashes at the cemetery, he’d spent the afternoon in my empty house, sitting on the edge of our old bed, trying to figure out how that had become his life.

  It broke my heart, but I held him tight and assured him that that life was over for both of us. And I meant it. I wasn’t a fortune teller, but I still knew that Roman was here to stay. Mainly, because I flat-out refused to ever let him go again.

  After that, he sat in bed, laughing, as I gave him a ration of shit because, if he had been sitting on my bed
a year ago, he had clearly broken in.

  We both fell asleep with smiles on our faces.

  Content for no other reason than we were doing it together.

  Which brings us back to the now. Thanksgiving Day. Burnt sweet potatoes. Me in an all-out panic about that—but mainly about spending a holiday with Roman’s family for the first time in years.

  “Chill out,” he said, palming each side of my face and dipping his forehead to rest on mine.

  “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” I replied.

  Then I chilled out because his hand slid into the back of my hair and he tipped my head back so his mouth could cover mine.

  I moaned as his other hand made it down to my ass.

  He kissed me just long enough for me to forget my potatoes, but not his family. Therefore, when he released my mouth, I only said, “Oh God,” once.

  “Baby,” he started. A man like Roman Leblanc did not roll his eyes, but right then, I could sense that he was fighting the urge. “I’ll go to the store and buy some more fucking potatoes.”

  “It’s Thanksgiving, Roman. Nowhere is going to be open.”

  “Then I’ll find a fucking field and dig ’em up myself. Just calm the hell down, Lis.”

  “Screw the potatoes. Your family is coming over!” I gripped the front of his T-shirt.

  Yeah, Roman was back to his old uniform. I hadn’t seen him in a suit since that day at the police station. Albeit his old uniform had gotten a seriously pricey overhaul, but they were still jeans and T-shirts, so I could deal with it. My man was sexy all the time, but something about him in washed-out denim did it for me.

  He eyed me skeptically. “That’s usually what happens after you invite family over and then spend a week hashing out the details of who is bringing what.”

  I scowled as his lips twitched with humor. “I know this, Roman. But I haven’t seen your family in years.”

  “You saw Kristen yesterday.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And I know you’ve seen my mom semi-recently. She loves to rub that shit in my face every time she sees you.”

  “She rubs it in your face?”

  He nodded. “Lis, I’ve been in love with you for years. Moms have a knack for reading between the bullshit. She loved you and made no secret of the fact that she wanted us back together. So yeah—every single time she saw you, I got a phone call the next day telling me how beautiful and happy you looked. And how you did whatever-the-fuck nice thing you happened to do while she was with you. And, because she’s my mother, I couldn’t even hang up on her.”