He yanked on his jeans and hurried downstairs, his gut clenched in a knot.
At the bottom of the stairs, he saw light coming from his office. His heart thudded against his ribs as he charged around the corner and into the room.
She whirled to face him, her eyes wide and startled. She held the stained wedding gown in one hand, and in the other the diamond ring.
“You remember.” Cole heard the sadness in his own voice and realized with dismay how much he feared the return of her memories…the return of her pending marriage to another man.
“No,” she said. “I thought maybe this dress and this ring would spark something, but they haven’t so far.”
Cole was astonished and dismayed at the relief that washed over him. She didn’t remember. Not yet, anyway. At this moment in time, there was no other man in her life.
No other?
Yeah, no other. No one but him. He felt that in his heart and read it in her eyes.
She looked away, putting the ring and the dress on the desk behind her. The fact that she’d been able to come down by herself and confront those articles told him a lot about how far she’d come. This time—maybe—he had been able to help. Though, he realized, the difference was not in what he’d done but in how Mary had reacted. At some point along the way, she’d started trying to help herself. Neither Angela nor his mother had been able to do that. No matter how hard he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to do everything for them.
Maybe no one could have.
The thought brought him a sense of peace he’d never known.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Mary said, still avoiding his gaze. Her breasts, covered only by the skimpy fabric of the gown she’d worn the night before, rose and fell with her quickening breaths. “I should have waited until morning. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He’d be happy to be awakened anytime he could see her dressed like that. Hell, anytime he could see her no matter what she was wearing. In blue jeans and a cotton shirt she set his hormones flowing. But in that wisp of a gown she made it hard to remember all the reasons he shouldn’t make love to her.
She lifted her head, returning her gaze to his, her eyes smoky with desire. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, and he wasn’t sure if she was continuing their conversation about her being up in the middle of the night or whether she was admitting that she’d been thinking about this attraction that surged so strongly between them.
Not that the words mattered. The husky tone in her voice and the look in her eyes broke down any defenses he might have had left.
He took a step toward her, closing the distance between them, and she moved into his arms, lifting her mouth for his kiss. With a groan, he pulled her to him, surrendering all common sense to the passion she aroused in him. There were at least a thousand reasons why they shouldn’t be doing this, but at the moment he couldn’t recall a single one. At the moment, his entire world consisted of the feel of Mary filling his arms, her lips moving on his, the tip of her tongue darting and teasing, her heart beating in time with his in a wild, savage rhythm.
All the tension and restraint of sleeping under the same roof with her, of being so near her, of all the “accidental” touches that set him on fire, exploded in an overwhelming surge of desire.
He caressed the soft skin of her back, then slid his hands over the thin fabric of the gown to her slim waist and along the curve of her hips, obsessed with the need to touch and claim every inch of her. She was slender and delicate, but tonight she didn’t feel fragile. Tonight the length of her as she pressed against him was solid and real and he’d never wanted any woman so much in his life.
Cupping her bottom in both hands, he pressed her more tightly to him even as he knew the only way he could ever be close enough to her was to be inside her, a part of her.
He trailed kisses along her throat, down to the creamy roundness of her breasts. Last night he’d thought the moonlight on her shoulders was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, but her translucent skin was just as beautiful in the harsh glare of the overhead light.
His fingers feeling clumsy and overgrown, he traced the curve of her breasts. When he slid his hand inside her gown, her nipple pebbled immediately at his touch, and her eyes half closed as her head tilted slightly back while she sucked in a quick breath. Her reactions almost pushed him over the edge. He couldn’t stand another moment of the exquisite torture.
His lips moved to hers again, and she responded with an intensity he would never have believed possible from someone who’d seemed so timid. Tonight she was no longer timid. Tonight she’d held the ring and the dress voluntarily and without fear. Tonight her body pressed against his with the same urgent need he felt, and he could barely restrain himself from pushing her backward onto the desk, ripping off the flimsy gown and burying himself in her.
He forced himself to pull away, then traced his fingers along her cheek, his gaze searching hers.
“Mary,” he whispered, “are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” There was no uncertainty in her words or her gaze. It was the only answer he needed to any lingering doubts or questions he might have had.
He scooped her slight weight into his arms and carried her up the stairs, to his bed.
Her moonlight hair fanned out on his pillowcase and her porcelain skin was creamy against the serviceable white sheets. He feasted his eyes for a moment, then reached to turn off the lamp.
She laid a hand on his. “No. I don’t want any more darkness.
He smiled. “Good. I wasn’t through looking. I want to see every expression as I make love to you.”
Having actually voiced the words, he could wait no longer. Unzipping his jeans, he slid them off, then joined her in bed, his lips again claiming hers.
Mary couldn’t remember if she’d had other lovers, but she knew with a certainty that none had ever made her feel the way Cole made her feel, that no other lips had ever kissed her so wonderfully, every movement matching hers in perfect synchronization. His touch brought every nerve in her body to tingling, fiery awareness.
Her arms wrapped around the solidity of him, holding him to her, reveling in the feel of him…the muscles in his back and neck that rippled beneath her hands when he moved, the width of his chest and the coarse mat of hair on that chest…the solid male reality of him. She could feel the hardness of his arousal against her thigh and marveled that she could have caused that reaction in him.
When he slid aside the straps of her gown, cupped her breasts and took one nipple between those magical lips, electricity shot through her and she arched upward with a low moan. He sucked gently, and she was suddenly certain she would burst into flames at any second, completely consumed by her desire for him.
As their bodies tangled together, every spot he touched turned to an erotic zone. She drank in the smell of him…soap and an indefinable scent that belonged only to him and that she would recognize blindfolded. In his embrace she felt strong and sheltered, free to give of herself completely, every inch of her suddenly, wonderfully alive.
When finally he poised between her thighs, she reached down brazenly to guide him into her.
He was steel sheathed in silk, and she gasped at the incredible sensation of his smooth hardness moving inside her.
He stopped, his forehead creased with concern. “Are you okay?”
She smiled. “I’m more than okay.”
He grinned and resumed the tantalizing movements. “Yeah, you sure are.”
She arched to meet him, responding from a primitive place inside her that needed no memory to tell her how to react. He’d said he wanted to see her every expression, but it was she who watched him as they moved together. She wanted to experience and wallow in every sensation, every look, every sound, every feeling, wanted them imprinted on her memory so strongly they could never leave her.
When he opened his eyes and focused on her, for that moment she felt not only their bodies but their souls blending. She was a part
of him and he of her, and then the world exploded in a burst of fireworks that centered at their joining but spread through all of her from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.
Cole groaned, and she could feel him pulsating inside her, joining her explosion of sensations.
He collapsed on top of her, and for a few moments, she shivered in delight at the aftershocks.
When the ability to think returned, she felt certain if the room had been dark, she would have been able to see sparks flying from her skin during the crescendo of their lovemaking.
Cole rolled over and turned out the light then pulled her to him, spoon-fashion. “That was wonderful,” he said softly, his mouth moving on her hair. “You are wonderful.”
“So were you. That was the most incredible experience of my life.”
He parted her hair and kissed the back of her neck. “But you can’t remember the rest of your life,” he teased gently. “How do you know you haven’t had much more incredible experiences?”
“Because I could never have forgotten something so amazing. Besides, if it had been any more incredible, I don’t think the top of my head would have stayed on.”
“I’m not sure mine did.” He held her closer, his breath warm on her neck.
Cole’s body curled around hers felt so warm and right. Tonight, she knew, she would have no nightmares, hear no voices.
At the memory of those voices, she tensed. How could she offer her body to Cole and not be honest with him? She had to tell him. Even more importantly, she had to tell him about reading the journal.
“Cole,” she said, her voice cracking the delicious, velvety silence that engulfed them, “are you awake?”
“Barely.”
“I need to tell you something.”
“I’m listening.” His muted, sleepy voice was the embodiment of satisfaction, and she wanted to give in to the lure to join him there, to forget about the diary and fall asleep in his arms.
But she couldn’t. “I found Angela’s journal.”
“Angela’s journal? What are you talking about?”
He sounded surprised. If he hadn’t known about the book and hadn’t left it open on her bed, who had?
“The one she kept hidden in Billy’s dresser drawer.”
“I didn’t know she kept a journal. Did you read it?”
So he hadn’t known. That meant the only person who could have left that book on her bed was her. No intruder could possibly have gotten past Cole’s alarm system. “I didn’t intend to read it. I know I shouldn’t have. But, yes, I did.”
“It’s okay. I should have told you the whole story before.”
“You mean about her ex-husband?”
He sighed. “What did she say about him? That he was stalking her?”
“Yes. He sounds like a psychopath.”
“I’d better tell you the story from the beginning.” He rolled onto his back, away from her, taking his body warmth and the warmth of their union.
She turned toward him and found him gazing upward at the ceiling. He seemed somehow much farther away than the actual few inches. “I met Angela when I was on the police force. She called in one night complaining about a prowler that she thought was her ex-husband.”
Mary shivered in the darkness, feeling and identifying with Angela’s fear of someone she couldn’t see.
“Said he’d been harassing her,” Cole continued in an emotionless monotone. “Pete was my partner then, and he and I checked the entire neighborhood thoroughly but didn’t find anything. That’s pretty typical when something like that happens. The prowler leaves before we get there.” He hesitated, and Mary sensed that he didn’t feel emotionless at all, that his emotions were so intense he couldn’t release them, couldn’t allow them into his words or he’d be swept away by them.
“I’ll never forget the way Angela looked when we told her we’d done all we could and that we had to leave. I felt so sorry for her. She was tiny and helpless and scared. Billy was four then, and he was clinging to his mother, just as terrified as she was. I made it a point to stop by periodically after that and see if things were all right.” He shifted, rearranging the pillow beneath his head.
“Sometimes Angela was fine, but sometimes she told me horrible stories about the things her ex-husband was doing to her and had done before their divorce. She said she’d moved from Tulsa to Dallas to get away from him, but he wouldn’t leave her alone, that he came down every few days to harass her, that he was stalking her. I believed her. I’d been a cop long enough to know that psychos will do whatever it takes to get their kicks, even make a five-hour trip on a regular basis.”
I believed her? The words and the way he spoke them caught Mary’s attention. Was he suggesting there was a reason not to believe Angela?
“I was there one evening when he came to pick up Billy for visitation. Billy didn’t really want to go with him, but his dad was insistent in a quiet but firm way. I figured he was on his best behavior because of me. He’s a big guy, bigger than I am, and I was furious at him for what I took to be bullying his own son. I wanted to shove my fist in his face, punch him out, show him what it felt like to be on the receiving end. I didn’t, of course. I was polite but I let him know that I was a cop and that I was taking care of Angela and Billy. He gave me a funny look, and, at the time, I thought it was because I had him worried.”
He turned his head on the pillow then and looked at her. In the moonlight she could see the bone-deep sadness that had drawn her to him from the first, that intimate knowledge of the depths of pain.
“That night was when I decided to marry Angela. In a way, I guess I wanted to do for her what I hadn’t been able to do for my mother, rescue her, take care of her. If I was Angela’s husband, I’d have the right to talk to her ex, to beat him to a pulp if he bothered her. I’d be around all the time to be sure he didn’t hurt either one of them. I can’t really say I was ever in love with Angela, but I cared for her and Billy. I didn’t want anything to happen to them. So we got married.”
He’d never really loved Angela. He’d only wanted to take care of her. On one hand, Mary felt a tiny thrill of pleasure at that knowledge, but at the same time she reminded herself that Cole was taking care of her, too. Nothing more.
Cole looked away, returning his gaze to the ceiling and laying his arm across his forehead as if to completely block her out of the next part of the story. “It wasn’t long before I realized that her fears were groundless. She’d hear somebody outside or even in the other room when I didn’t hear a thing. I finally went to Tulsa and confronted her ex. We had a long talk. He’s a nice guy, and he showed me proof that he only came to Dallas once a month to visit his son. He said she started getting paranoid right after Billy was born.”
“But,” Mary protested, “what about all those things she wrote in her diary?”
“Fantasies. Delusions. After my talk with Bill, I tried to get her to see a psychiatrist, get help. She refused. In fact, that seemed to upset her even more.
“So I did everything I could to make her feel safe. I bought this house where it would be virtually impossible for anyone to find us. I put in the best alarm system I could find. When Bill came for his visitation with Billy, I arranged to meet him in a restaurant on the other side of town so he didn’t have any idea where we lived. I thought surely she’d realize she was in no danger. But she never did.
“Every shadow was a threat. Every hang-up phone call, instead of being a wrong number, was somebody verifying that she was home. No matter how hard I tried to reassure her, no matter what I did, she was terrified.”
Every shadow was a threat. Every hang-up phone call was somebody verifying that she was home. No matter how hard I tried to reassure her, no matter what I did, she was terrified.
It sounded eerily like her own situation, only she was worse than Angela had been. She heard voices, saw a man with no face, forgot her own past, blocked the action of tearing a page out of Angela’s journal.
&nbs
p; He stopped talking, as if the story had ended, but Mary had to hear the rest of it. “What happened the night she died? After reading the journal, I thought her ex must have killed them, but apparently I was wrong about that.”
“Yeah, you were wrong about that.” Cole sat up on the side of the bed and stared out the window. “It was my fault.”
Finally she knew the source of the torment that held Cole in its unforgiving clutch. In those four words she heard the wellspring of the anguish she’d seen in his eyes and felt in his soul.
“Your fault?” she asked.
“I didn’t believe her.”
“But I thought you said there was no danger, that she was having delusions. That certainly wasn’t your fault.”
“She was having delusions but she was still in danger. She called me on my cell phone one night when Pete and I were on a stakeout. We were waiting for a flesh-and-blood bad guy, and I thought at the time it was more important. But Angela was running from bad guys who were worse, ones she couldn’t get away from, the ones inside her own head.”
“You said her death was an accident.”
“Accident was a poor choice of words. Two vehicles collided, but it wasn’t really an accident. When I didn’t come home, she put Billy in the car and left. I have no idea where she was going. I’m not sure she knew. She was probably just trying to get away from the danger. The witnesses say she stopped at a traffic light. An elderly man crossing the street tapped on her window to tell her that she had a low tire. He said she took one look at him, hit the gas and pulled into the intersection in front of a semi. The driver lived, but she and Billy were killed instantly.”
Mary could feel the sorrow and guilt emanating from him in waves. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said in what she knew would be a vain attempt to reassure him.
“I’d heard it all so many times, I ignored my gut reaction that told me she really was in danger that time. I was responsible for her safety, and I failed. If I’d listened, if I’d gone home, she wouldn’t have been out in the car. She and Billy would be alive today.”
Private Vows Page 15