The Man Behind the Cop
Page 19
I can’t live without her.
And then, without the slightest difficulty, he thought, I love her.
THE CHILDREN WERE SKINNY and dirty and traumatized. Both stuck to their mother like leeches. Bruce guessed it would be several years before they would be pried loose for any length of time. But Lenora held them with extraordinary tenderness, speaking softly, pressing kisses to their cheeks and the tops of their heads. It was as if no one else existed.
Bruce felt something like envy. He had never seriously considered having children of his own before. But watching Lenora with her two children, watching Karin hovering over them, he felt like an idiot. Yeah, of course he was in love. And he couldn’t imagine anything better than to have kids with her.
He wanted to be alone with her. Right now. He wanted to drag her into his arms and kiss her. He wanted to make passionate love to her, before or after he went down on bended knee and asked her to marry him.
Adrenaline kept pumping through him. His chest felt bruised, after hours of despair and the heart-wrenching sight of a mother reassuring her young children and then saying goodbye to them, in a way they might not have recognized but that every adult had. How had he gotten to his age without seeing how powerful love could be?
Of course, it was hours before he had a chance to exchange more than a few words with Karin.
Lenora and the kids went to the hospital, where her family enveloped them. Bruce’s last sight of Roberto for the night was in the back of a squad car, his face a blur as he stared with dark, angry eyes.
Karin finally went home, but not before pausing at Bruce’s side and saying, “Will you come when you can?”
“Yeah.” He touched her face. Didn’t trust himself to kiss her. He might not be able to stop.
He didn’t get away for hours.
It was just after two in the morning when he knocked on her door. The porch light was on, and at least one lamp in the living room. Nonetheless, he barely tapped, in case she’d fallen asleep.
The door opened and she stepped forward as he did the same. His arms closed convulsively around her. For a moment he just held her. Why did he feel this way? he wondered. Neither of them had had a near-death experience today, or even been in danger. But he felt as if they had, as if they needed to grab and hold on to each other.
Karin pulled back. “Did you see her? Wasn’t she amazing?”
“Yeah.” His voice was rough. “She was amazing.”
“You taught her to do that.”
“She doesn’t remember the class.”
“But somehow she did. When she needed to.”
Okay, damn it, that did feel good. He’d done something worthwhile. Knowing that helped a little, because his heart hadn’t been the only thing bruised today. His ego had been, too. He’d be rethinking every damn decision he’d made for a long time to come. They’d been a blink of the eye from tragedy today, and he would have blamed himself. In the end, he hadn’t been able to help Lenora. She’d had to rescue herself. The cop in him didn’t like knowing that, even as the man marveled at her extraordinary courage.
“We’re standing here for the whole world to see.” Karin suddenly sounded self-conscious. She hugged herself and stepped back. Probably she’d just remembered that she wore only a camisole with spaghetti straps and a pair of low-slung pants that looked like sweats but thinner. Yoga pants, maybe. Her nipples showed through the thin knit fabric of the top, clear enough that he hardened at the sight. “Will you stay tonight?”
“Yeah.” Gruff again. “I’ll stay.”
“Good.” Her teeth worried her lip. “I think I need you.”
“I need you, too.”
Her smile warmed. “I’m glad.” She shut the door behind him and turned the dead bolt, then moved naturally into his arms again.
The opening was perfect. Bruce suffered a momentary hitch. It reminded him of having to speak for the first time in a foreign language to a group of native speakers. You felt as if you were making an ass of yourself.
So? Be an ass.
Looking down into her face, glowing up at him, he took the leap. “I love you.”
Her entire body went still. The smile vanished. Only her eyes were vividly, intensely alive, searching his. “You mean that?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He slid a hand around the back of her neck, reveling in the silk of her skin, the tension and strength and fragility that made up a woman who’d captivated him from the beginning. “I mean it.”
“Oh.” It was as much a sigh as an exclamation. “I love you, too. You know that, don’t you?”
He hadn’t expected to feel as if his heart had just been cleaved in half. Excruciating, and weirdly pleasurable. His heart would never be whole again. He imagined himself handing her a chunk of it, bloody and still beating, the wound in his chest open.
Bruce cleared his throat. “I…hoped.” With his free hand, he brushed hair back from her forehead, loving the curve of it. “I think, today…” Why was this so hard to say? “We saw love. A different kind, but…indomitable.” Not a word he could ever remember using, but it seemed right. “I thought, if he’d had that gun to your head…”
“You would have done anything.”
He nodded. “Meeting you changed me.”
She actually laughed, a soft sound, and shook her head. “You’ve always had the capacity to love someone. You do love Trevor.”
“I want kids.” The words seemed torn from him.
“I want you.”
Her lips parted in surprise.
“Will you marry me?”
She gave a cry and rose on tiptoe to press her mouth against his. The kiss was long and sweet, shared wonder more than physical hunger, although he felt that, too.
“Yes,” Karin murmured against his mouth. “Oh, yes.”
“Cops make lousy husbands.”
“But you’ll understand when I’m immersed in some poor woman’s horror, or I have nightmares about a ten-year-old who’s been raped by her grandpa.”
Yeah, he’d understand. She’d get what he did, too. She was that woman in a million who’d be able to handle marriage to a cop.
“I love you,” he said again, as if those three simple words summed up every one of the thousand emotions that swelled in his chest.
The amazing thing was, they did. And they got easier to say, too.
Tears sparkled on her lashes, and she murmured, “Now, make love to me.”
That part, he’d already learned to do. He and she—they’d never just had sex, he realized sometime later, as he touched her and was touched, as they alternated passion and tenderness. They’d always made love.
Maybe she was right. He hadn’t needed therapy to alter some vital part of him so he was able to feel love.
He’d just needed Karin.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1716-8
THE MAN BEHIND THE COP
Copyright © 2008 by Janice Kay Johnson.
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