Mercy

by Jean Brashear

  One big hand rose as if to soothe her. Mona held her breath, craving to be nestled in his arms more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. But she wouldn’t move toward him. He’d torn them apart. He was the one who’d changed. She’d kept to their agreement. She wasn’t mother material. Never would be.

  And then his hand dropped to his side and his head lowered. She thought she saw tears in his eyes.

  “Fitz—” she whispered.

  His head lifted. “Not an inch, will you, Des? You grant the ghosts of your past everything, and you won’t compromise one iota for anyone else.” He walked around a chair to avoid her. “I’ll only pack one bag and get the other things later, when you’re not here.”

  He disappeared into the bedroom, where they’d laughed and loved and argued and wept.

  And Mona felt despair of a sort she’d never thought to live through again. This was like when Daddy sent them away. When Paris died and he wouldn’t let them come home. When Mama died and he forgot everyone but Tansy.

  Now the man she’d let become too important was abandoning her, too, and he wouldn’t listen any more than Daddy had.

  Why did they have to have children? They had each other. Their life together had been so good.

  Fitz had been the one who taught her that she could scale mountains if she dared. He couldn’t walk away, now that she was nearing the top.

  She heard him coming back. A crushing ache choked off any words. There were none, really, not for this. Not unless she pleaded, and she was through begging for crumbs. She’d been too forgettable when she was young. She’d never be overlooked again, and if Fitz thought he could put her out of his mind, he was fooling himself. They were part of each other, blood and bone. He’d take some time away and he’d remember how right they were together.

  He just needed some space. She’d concentrate on this godforsaken party and her magazine. It would be plenty to keep her from crawling, even if she should lose her mind and want to try.

  Fitz emerged from the bedroom. “Des—” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I—” He cursed beneath his breath.

  She could feel him waiting for her to turn around, but he was kidding himself if he thought she could look at him now. If she didn’t have Fitz’s love anymore, then her dignity was all she had left.

  She heard him exhale wearily. Heard the door open. She still didn’t budge.

  And then the emptiness stole into her heart, telling her that Fitz was gone.

  Mona collapsed into a chair and curled up against the knowledge that, once again, she was all alone.

  Bonnie Raitt crooned slow, smoky blues. Kat unrolled the sketches and spread them out on her dining table, weighting the edges. She slipped out of her heels and walked from one sketch to the next, swirling the wine in her glass, rubbing the goblet against her cheek.

  Here, in solitude, she could study them at will. Drink them in, though terror still nibbled at the edges of hard-won calm.

  How? How could he see past her careful defenses? How had he stripped her down to ancient dreams?

  Kat laughed silently, shaking her head. That defenseless girl was so long gone she could barely remember her. All traces of her had been firmly routed as if weeds in a garden, she’d thought.

  But like all weeds, dreams were difficult to kill. Somewhere, seeds had germinated in the dry crust over Kat’s heart…and Gamble had spotted the tiny, nearly dead tendrils.

  A knock on her door jarred her from her musings. She wasn’t expecting visitors. Had Mona come back? How had things gone with Fitz? With a frown, she peeked out, then whirled and sank against the door.

  It wasn’t her sister.

  Gamble knocked again. “Kat? I know you’re there. I have to talk to you.”

  The music gave her away. Damn.

  With a deep sigh, she opened the door, reassembling her armor. “We have nothing to talk about.”

  He brushed past her as though invited, larger than life and twice as threatening to her peace of mind. “Yes, we do.” He spotted the sketches and approached them, studying them with a frown on his face.

  “I’m not giving them back, Gamble.”

  Lost in contemplation, he stirred. “What?”

  “I said, I’m not giving them back.”

  He held up a tube. “It doesn’t matter. I have more.”

  She pushed away from the door. “What? How—” She grasped for the tube.

  Gamble held it out of reach. “I have a photographic memory. What I saw is in here—” He tapped his forehead. “Forever.”

  “Gamble—”

  He stepped toward her, his smile as much caustic as genuine. “Want to wrestle me for them, Kat?” Husky and low, his voice brought back the most electrifying hours of her life.

  Then he was there, a heartbeat away. She could feel the heat of him, the pull of polar north to magnet. “Come on, baby…best two out of three.” His head lowered.

  “Gamble, this is crazy.” She should be able to turn him away.

  He nipped at her upper lip, and she sucked in a gasp of pure lust. “You think I want this?” he asked, blowing a soft breath over the tender skin beneath her jaw. “I don’t have room in my life for you, Kat.” One sizzling stroke on her throat had her blood singing. “Tell me to leave.”

  “You’re no prize, buddy.”

  His chuckle was more than a little harsh. “I don’t like you, either.” He slid one arm around her waist and drew her close.

  Kat dug fingers into his shoulders and leaned into him.

  The tube hit the floor with a thud. Any playfulness vaporized. In its place was hard, aroused male, ready to mate.

  “I don’t want to want you,” she muttered, scraping teeth over his jaw.

  “Ditto.” He slid his kiss down her throat, lifted her up and fastened his mouth on her nipple. “Damn it, Kat, I need you. Now.”

  She dragged him down with her onto the nearby sofa, their mating all fury and thunder. Temper swept gentleness out of its path, making way for hunger, knife edged and huge. Clothing parted only enough to gain access—then he was inside her, and she couldn’t remember why she’d ever left his loft, why she’d been so scared. Ragged and crazy, they clawed their way to an explosive release, then lay there, panting. Still joined. Eyes wide.

  “What the hell was that?” Gamble asked.

  Kat attempted to speak, wet her lips. Tried once more. “I don’t know. But let’s to do it again.”

  His face split in a rare smile. Gamble laughed. “Yeah.”

  Kat found herself laughing with him, something she would never have dreamed could happen. Loving the pure, crazy freedom of it. The improbability. She laughed again, full throated and delicious, and when she felt him hardening again inside her, she rocked her hips and waggled her eyebrows at him.

  Then laughter made way for a lovemaking of a tenderness she would never have believed possible from a rough, raw, angry man like Gamble Smith. He slipped away from her, and she protested with a moan—until his mouth began to do things to her that had her melting, then arching in a plea. As ecstasy spilled over her once more, he rose above her, capturing her gaze with eyes gone somber even as he moved inside her once again.

  And Kat forgot, for a moment, to be scared. To shield herself. That men were the enemy, to be fought at all costs.

  Instead, she spun out on the edge of fantasies she’d thought long gone, held in a gentle cradling of strong arms, drawn out of herself until she dared to be soft…to surrender. With a silken sigh, Kat gave herself up to the man who had captured her dreams on his canvas.

  And then she fell asleep in his arms, trying not to wonder if he’d be there when she awoke.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Coffee, Mona?” Gaby asked.

  Sitting in the meeting with the circulation manager, Helen Cantrell, and Jack Bradshaw, Mona accepted the cup gratefully. She’d slept very little the past two nights. Her newly solitary bed still smelled of Fitz because she hadn’t been able to bring hersel
f to change the sheets. She’d awakened this morning with his pillow clutched to her breast, damp from tears she hadn’t been aware of shedding.

  She felt a thousand years old and wanted nothing more than to climb back under the covers until the hurt went away. Since that wasn’t an option, she raised the cup to her lips. Instantly, her stomach rebelled. Clenching her teeth, she attempted to focus on the spreadsheet before her, but the smells in the room pressed in on her, her gorge rising.

  With shaky fingers, she grasped for the water pitcher and poured herself a glass. The first sip told her that was a mistake. She saw Helen’s speculative glance just as Gaby leaned forward. “Are you all right, Mona?”

  Mona rose from her chair. “I—I don’t feel very well.” She seized on the first excuse that rose to mind. “Last night’s dinner, I guess.” Though she’d hardly touched a bite. She had to get hold of herself. Couples separated all the time—not that she’d breathe a word of Fitz’s departure around here.

  “You sure you want to go on with this meeting?” Bradshaw asked.

  “Of course I do.” Mona gritted her teeth.

  “Coffee’s hard on an upset stomach. When I was pregnant with my first, just the smell of coffee made me violently ill,” Helen observed. She lifted her mug to her lips. “I should have known from the outset that Annelise would turn out to be a hellion. I was never so exhausted as when I was pregnant.”

  Pregnant. The word was a lightning bolt right between the eyes. Mona scrambled to dissemble. “Well, I can’t blame anything but the Chinese takeout around the corner.” All too aware of Bradshaw’s narrowed gaze, she pushed forward, swallowing around the nausea that had her breathing light and shallow. “Okay, let’s talk about this report.”

  For half an hour, she battled danger. Jack wanted to pin the blame on editorial, but Helen, thank God, was armed with statistics about the sales staff. Mona fought to listen with her normal intensity, but beneath her every thought lay the thumping heart of terror.

  No. No way. She’d been on the pill for years.

  Finally, the meeting ended.

  “He’s out to get you, Mona.” Gaby smiled.

  Mona tried to summon her usual disdain, but she craved silence and peace to order her thoughts. “He wants my job, but he’ll have to dismember me to get it.”

  Gaby smiled, a half-grown shark increasing in strength every day. “He’ll have to get through me first.”

  Mona was absurdly touched. Tears burned behind her eyelids and scared her half to death. She was the ice queen. She ate nails for breakfast. She did not cry. “Thanks” was all she could manage.

  “So…how are you feeling, honestly?”

  “Fine,” Mona said, her insides trembling with her need to be alone.

  Gaby didn’t seem convinced.

  “I could use something carbonated,” Mona said. “The shrimp…I’m never ordering from there again.” Then she cloaked herself in her usual command, her voice cooling. “If you don’t mind—?”

  “Oh—yes. Right away,” Gaby said. “Then we can go over this afternoon’s appointments?”

  “Absolutely,” Mona replied. “Just give me half an hour to clear some of this.” She gestured with a quick sweep of her arm.

  “Sure thing,” Gaby replied, gathering up an armload of files. “I’ll get the cola, then I’ll guard you from the barbarians.”

  Mona forced a grin. “Great.”

  When the door closed, Mona reminded herself not to fall apart just yet. After Gaby reappeared, she would lock the door. Just don’t think. It can’t be.

  Gaby deposited the soft drink on her desk and grabbed some files. “Thirty minutes. The only one who gets through is Fitz.”

  “Right.” Mona didn’t glance up, because if she did, she’d cry for sure. Fitz wouldn’t be calling yet, but he would, one day soon.

  And what would she tell him? You got your wish? I hope you’re happy?

  She glanced at the cola can in her hand, struck by an entirely new thought. Were soft drinks bad for a baby?

  Ridiculous. There was no baby.

  Suddenly, she recalled that for two days when Fitz was in danger, she’d been so unnerved and distracted she’d forgotten her pills. But she’d caught up as soon as she’d remembered. And it hadn’t been the first time she’d skipped one with no ill effects.

  Her fingers shaking as if palsied, she placed the can on her credenza and stared out at the city she’d always wanted to take by storm.

  It couldn’t be true, her mind said, over and over again. She tried the word on her tongue, but she could barely whisper it, so foreign to anything she’d ever applied to herself. “Pregnant.” A sound so soft it could barely register as a feather on the wind. Fate could not be that cruel.

  Helen’s remark had nothing to do with her. She’d changed nothing about her life: ergo, life couldn’t change the rules on her. But then she considered that her husband of almost ten years had left her; thus, the rules had already changed. Her nice, neat, orderly life was coming unraveled after all she’d done to assure that it never would.

  Her beloved husband had betrayed the very foundation of their concord, had altered the carefully lettered script of the agreement they’d made from the first. Had her body, so attuned to his, turned its back on her, too?

  She sat down at her computer and logged onto the internet, searching for symptoms of pregnancy. Nausea could be anything.

  As the words scrolled by on the screen, she could barely breathe. Nausea, yes. Unusual need for sleep during the day. Sensitivity to smells. She sank back in her chair. Her hand drifted downward, pressed against her belly.

  And despite all the reasons she needed to be wrong about this diagnosis, something deep inside her knew.

  She’d felt so at sea recently, adrift from the normal ebb and flow of her life ever since the night Fitz had been restored to her. The Fitz who’d returned to her arms was not the man who’d left two days before. Had the same forces that had changed him at the cellular level had altered her chemistry? Tiny pills were no barrier to the urge to celebrate life. To cement the bond between them in a manner older than time. They’d come together in heartfelt thanksgiving, grateful beyond the power of words to be restored to each other again.

  Everything had changed then. She just hadn’t realized it.

  Dear God. She was carrying Fitz’s baby inside her, will she or nill she. It was not a possibility she’d ever considered, and it terrified her now.

  The choices before her glittered like jewels and crocodile teeth, the dangerous beauty and sparkling menace of them striking fear in her heart.

  In her corner office, Mona stared out at the world she’d wanted to rule, arms locked tight around her waist. Endless moments passed before she realized she was crying…for the husband she could regain with one single call…and the life inside her she was not sure she was brave enough to keep.

  “Where in Texas are you from, Gamble?” Kat asked as she lazed on the pile of cushions.

  He scowled. “It’s not important. Stop wiggling.”

  She forced herself to still, though she really wanted to leap up and dance. “It is to me. Tell me about your family. I know you have a mother because we’ve already established that her lessons in manners didn’t stick. What about your dad? Brothers or sisters?”

  He stood before the easel, bare-chested, jeans half-buttoned, hair tousled, and looked good enough to eat. “Why does it matter?”

  Kat laughed, too thrilled with the day to let anything annoy her. “Something to hide? You on the lam?”

  He didn’t answer; instead, he emerged from behind the easel and tipped up the picture hat that was all she was wearing. Then he walked behind her and adjusted one shoulder.

  The touch of his hands on her skin, as always, got her insides humming. Kat leaned back, viewing him upside down. Languor gave way to the urge to jump up, to climb his body, to revel once again in the raw electric charge of their lovemaking.

  “You couldn’t be st
ill if your life depended on it,” he complained. “Come on—surely a few more minutes won’t kill you.”

  “With all the money I’m generating for you, you can afford to pay a model.” The hat fell off, and she slid one hand up his thigh. “But you can’t—” Kat stopped, horrified at what she’d been about to say: you can’t make love to her. Good God. She was never jealous.

  She rose and grabbed for the nearest clothing: Gamble’s flannel shirt. “I want some coffee. You have anything but that rotgut instant?”

  Gamble grabbed the tail of the shirt as she passed, and reeled her in. “I’m not through with you yet.”

  She pushed at his chest. He only laughed and drew her closer. “Don’t. I don’t want to—”

  “Bullshit.” He was hard and ready. He jerked open his pants and lifted her in one smooth move. Despite her nerves, she wrapped her legs around his waist, and he thrust inside her. Kat’s head fell back and she moaned.

  “Forget everything but this. It’s all we need to understand,” he said, his eyes burning flame-hot blue.

  That had always been true, until him. She’d never cared before to know more about the men who’d come into and been dismissed from her life. It shouldn’t matter now who Gamble was, where he’d been, who he’d loved.

  But it did. Once her body was satisfied…just as soon as she’d had enough of him—only once more, surely—she’d start asking again. And this time she’d get answers.

  Later. Kat tightened her legs around his waist and met him, thrust for powerful, mind-stealing thrust.

  Later would be soon enough.

  After a morning spent trying to keep her head above quicksand, Mona was positive she would scream or cry or otherwise disgrace herself if she didn’t get away where she could think.

  She was desperate to talk to someone who would understand, but one by one, she discarded names, forced to face the reality of her life. She had friends galore, but none to whom she could confide something of this magnitude. Staggering across shaky ground, she dared not open up to a soul.