He breathed out in relief and lifted a hand to cup her head. The thought of losing her did strange things to him, now that he knew how good it could be, how it felt to have someone who cared about him. He had that with his newfound mother, he knew, but his mother had to love him because he was her son. Madeleine didn't have to care about him. She didn't have to cook dinners for him or kiss him or make love with him. She didn't have to throw herself into his arms when he came home from work, or look at him the way she did. Him, with his face, the face even his mother looked at with poorly disguised pity. His beautiful Madeleine was his because she wanted to be, and his feeling for her only intensified to realize how much she did not need him.
He put a finger under her chin and lifted her head to look at him. She closed her lids to his probing gaze and he touched her lashes to make her open them again. When she was looking at him, he said, “I used to have a Volvo.”
Madeleine stared at him in confusion for several seconds. And then she laughed.
He smiled and leaned his forehead against hers. She laughed again, hugged him, and they looked into each other's eyes. After a moment their gazes turned suddenly sober.
There was an air of anticipation between them as they went on looking at each other for breathless seconds. Then Madeleine put her hands to his face, and in a broken whisper she said three words that made his eyes squeeze shut and his breathing stop. He wanted to say her name, but no words could make it past the thickness in his throat. He could only hold her to him and clutch at her arms and shoulders with his hands. For the first time in his life he felt like giving thanks. The first twenty-seven years had been pretty dismal, but here suddenly was a woman he adored telling him she loved him.
He felt her lips cover his and he opened his mouth to kiss her. Madeleine's hands still cupped his face, and she began to gently kiss him on his cheeks and chin and forehead, her lips soft against the pits and scars of his skin. Eris opened his eyes finally to look at her, and he saw the words she had spoken repeated in her gaze as she looked at him. A shiver passed through him and the skin of his arms and chest goose pimpled. As one they left the sofa and moved down the hall to the bedroom, unbuttoning clothes and taking down hair as they went.
Minutes later her fingers were tangled in his hair and he was tasting the skin below her navel when he felt her jump. Then he heard the reason for it.
Someone was knocking on the door.
They looked at each other then Eris got up and put on his jeans. He went to the door shirtless and barefoot, to let his mother know he wasn't planning on coming home that night. He swung open the door and saw Dale Russell standing on the porch. Dale Russell stared at Eris. His brows drew together in a deep frown. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“That's my business,” said Eris. “What do you want, Russell?”
He smirked and moved down a step. “The same thing you just got, obviously. Guess I'm shit out of luck tonight.”
Eris shoved open the screen door and grabbed Russell before he could leave the porch. Eris slammed him into a post and held him by the throat, telling him what he would do to him if he ever spoke that way again. Russell's face turned red and then purple before Eris finally released him. Dale Russell gagged and coughed and spat, and then he reached to the waist of his uniform and drew his gun. He pointed it at Eris.
“You sonofabitch,” he said hoarsely. “I'll kill you.”
“Bullshit,” said Eris, and behind him he heard an intake of breath that said Madeleine was at the door and watching.
Dale's eyes darted to the door. “Now I know why I'm having such a hard time with you, Madeleine. My skin's too clear. And maybe too white, huh?”
“Put the goddamned gun away or I'll take it from you,” Eris warned, and his eyes spoke to Russell as he stood holding the gun in his hand. Eris knew he could take it from him, and Russell knew it too.
He forced a laugh and holstered the gun. He laughed again as he walked to his truck and climbed inside. He was still laughing as he drove away.
“Asshole,” Eris muttered under his breath, and he turned to go back inside, Madeleine stood just inside the door dressed in a robe. She was staring at Eris with a peculiar expression. Eris closed the door behind him and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. After he drank the water he found her still looking at him. He put the glass down and asked her what was wrong. She gave her head a small shake. “Nothing. I had no idea you were fearless.”
Eris said, “If he was going to shoot me he would have done it rather than talk about it.”
Madeleine swallowed. “How reassuring.”
He took her hand and they returned to her room. “If he comes back to bother you while I'm not here, call the head office and tell them he's harassing you.”
She agreed, and then haltingly began to tell him about the phone calls she had received, and her second meeting with Bruce Beckworth, the man in the baseball cap.
Eris sat down on the bed beside her and drew a deep breath. He wished it was Madeleine living with him instead of his mother. He was frustrated by his inability to protect her when he wasn't around. “Ask Gloria Birdy to go with you the next time you feel like getting out,” he told her. “I'll feel better if you're with her.”
Madeleine nodded and slipped off her robe to lie down again. Eris took off his jeans and moved in beside her. Then it occurred to him to ask about her diaphragm. He gave her a gentle nudge and asked if she was wearing it. She shook her head. “It won't stay in with you.”
Eris blinked. “So you haven't been using anything?” “I don't have anything else to use. I didn't think about it while I was in the city.”
His heart rate quickened. “Are you concerned?” She propped herself on an elbow to look at him. “Not as concerned as your mother would be if she knew.”
He smiled at her and she smiled back at him. Then he took her in his arms.
The next morning Eris rose early, kissed Madeleine on the nose, then returned to his house. Sara was up and dressed, surprising him, and she greeted him as he came in.
“I'd like to go out with you this morning,” she said. “Puttering around here is truly a bore, and I always think of dozens of things to tell you that I can never think of again once you're home.”
“It's not a good idea today,” Eris told her, thinking of the incident with Dale Russell. “I have too many stops to make.”
“Please,” she said. “I really am dying of boredom, and I'm thinking of going home soon. I want to be close to you a while longer before I go. Your superior will understand, I'm sure.”
Eris could see she wasn't going to give up. He sighed and then nodded before disappearing to take a shower and dress. In the shower he surprised himself by thinking that Madeleine was more like him than his own mother. Sara was clearly an extrovert, clearly uncomfortable spending time alone. Madeleine knew how to occupy herself, the same as Eris. He had seen the notebook she'd filled up with writing on her dresser. She was working whether she knew it or not.
He was glad to know she had struck up a friendship with Gloria and Earl Lee Birdy. They were good people and Eris liked them. He would never have imagined them to be Madeleine's type, but she always managed to surprise him.
Like the thing with the diaphragm. He suspected Madeleine was a bit surprised at herself over the matter. He wasn't certain he could actually sire any children, but then he had never believed he would find someone he wanted to have a child with. Not until Madeleine said she loved him. He was still reeling from that, and a part of him almost wished she hadn't said it, because now all he could do was wonder if she loved him enough to stay.
Just thinking about it made his eyes close and his breathing slow. He wanted to say it to her. Leave or stay, he had wanted to push the words past his lips. But something had stopped him. He figured it was the adopted kid in him, the one who had learned to trust, the one who believed, and then was burned by circumstance.
She knew how he felt about her, he told himself.
She had to know.
After he finished in the bathroom he passed through the hall to go to his room and found his mother standing at the foot of his bed. Eris wrapped his towel firmly around his middle and told her he needed to get dressed.
“You want me to braid your hair?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
She smiled. “Okay. Some do, some don't. Yours is awfully long. Did you already eat, or can I fix you something for breakfast?”
”A cheese and egg sandwich would be great,” he said, and she frowned at him.
“What?”
“Fry an egg and put cheese and mayonnaise on the bread.”
“Ugh. The things you bachelors eat.”
Eris closed the door firmly behind her as she stepped into the hall. He liked the cheese and egg sandwich Madeleine had made for him. It was quick and filling and didn't make much of a mess.
The sandwich his mother made for him wasn't nearly as good, but Eris ate it anyway and swallowed a glass of juice before heading outside to see about his hawk. His mother was still eating at the table.
The hawk was dead in its cage, speared through the middle with a long pointed stick. Eris drew a sharp breath and looked around himself, his eyes narrowed and his mouth tight.
His first thought was of Dale Russell, but anyone could have killed the hawk. The slimy kitten-killing Earthworm could have done it, he told himself as he eyed Sherman Tanner's house.
He put on some gloves and removed the hawk from the cage so his mother wouldn't see it. He placed it in the garage in a paper sack to take care of later.
Goddammit. He hated to see that. Someone being cruel to an animal just to be cruel to a human.
His mood was sour the first few hours that morning and it stayed sour in spite of his mother's attempts to change it. Finally she sighed and said, “Did you and Madeleine have an argument?”
“No.”
“Then what's wrong? Are you always this moody?”
He only looked at her.
“You and Clint, the original silent brooders. I don't know where you come by it, unless it was from my father. He was a brooder to beat all brooders. Made my mother crazy. He'd spend hours sulking and expect everyone else's mood to be just as dark as his. He wasn't happy until he'd made everyone else unhappy. Then he would suddenly, miraculously cheer up again.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Eris's mouth. He turned the truck down the county road where he had caught Bruce Beckworth shooting birds and listened to his mother go on about family peccadilloes until she had him chuckling.
Then a tire blew out.
Eris muttered under his breath and stopped the truck to get out and have a look. It was the left rear tire, and it was already flat. He hunkered down to examine it, and a hundredth of a second after he lowered himself, the rear glass of the pickup shattered and he saw his mother's head slump forward. Before he could turn around and look, a bullet slammed into his shoulder and then another struck him just above his shoulder blade, sending him into the tailgate of the truck and causing his vision to darken. Eris flattened and rolled under the truck. From far away he heard the sound of a door slamming and tires spinning in the dust. He twisted around to look, but the pain of the movement caused his vision to darken again and he could see nothing but the blackness of unconsciousness awaiting him. He took deep breaths, and when he was ready, he moved out from under the truck and pulled himself up with his uninjured side to ease himself to the open driver's door.
He checked over his shoulder as he moved, but there was no sign of the gunman. The pain streaked like fire down his body every time he moved his head and he gritted his teeth as he bent down to slide inside the cab. He reached with his good right arm to lift his mother's head, and his hand came away covered with blood. He saw a red horizontal line that started almost at the back of her skull and plowed through her left temple. Rivulets of blood streamed down her cheek. Eris checked for a pulse and found a faint one. Then he picked up his radio.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Madeleine's lip curled when she saw Sherman Tanner come hurrying up the drive to the cabin. She took her notebook inside and made a point of slamming the door. He came and hammered on the wood anyway.
‘‘You'll want to hear this,” he called from outside. “I just heard something on my radio about our neighbor that might interest you. He's been shot.”
Madeleine's breath stopped. She rushed to jerk open the door. “Eris? Eris has been shot?”
“That's right,” said Tanner, pleased to be imparting such information. “The woman in the truck with him was shot, too. They're both being flown to Wichita by helicopter, because it sounds like the woman's injuries are critical and Renard didn't want to leave her.”
Madeleine asked if he knew which hospital and then nodded when he told her. It was the hospital in which Jacqueline and Manuel worked.
“Who did it?” she asked, thinking of Dale Russell. “Do they know who shot them?”
“An unknown assailant was all I heard,” said Tanner with a sniff.
“Thank you for telling me,” Madeleine said, and she shut the door in his face to rush to the telephone and call Jacqueline. Her sister was in surgery, and Manuel was out of the office, so Madeleine quickly threw some things in a bag, scooped up the kitten, and locked the door to the cabin behind her. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she got in the truck and started the engine. She was fuming at Dale Russell, whom she knew had to be responsible. The man pulled a gun on Eris last night. She had seen him.
Worry made her teeth grind as she drove, and she began to pray as she had never prayed, asking for Eris to please be all right. For the first time in her life she was truly in love and the man she was in love with didn't need his mother to die right after he found her. She was important to him, and she could make him laugh and she could tell him things about himself he needed to know.
Her mental state made her reckless. She made it to the city in under an hour and sped through traffic to Manuel and Jacqueline's house to quickly drop off the kitten before hurrying on. She couldn't leave it in the hot pickup any more than she could have left it at the cabin to go hungry. She wrenched open the door with a key her sister had given her, and saw Manuel naked on the sofa in the living room with a woman who was not Jacqueline.
Madeleine's face went slack with shock and Manuel leapt from the sofa and reached for his pants. Madeleine put the kitten down and left the house, hurrying to the pickup to get to the hospital, a few blocks away. She shook her head in amazement and disgust as she drove away and didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry over all the time she had wasted envying her sister's marriage.
Her heart felt sick for Jacqueline, and she knew she would avoid her sister rather than seek her out once in the hospital. She wouldn't be able to look her in the face without blurting out what she had just seen, and Madeleine had other things to worry about at the moment.
She was given the runaround in the intensive care unit until she told them she was Eris Renard's fiancée and begged to be allowed to see him. A kindly doctor took pity and showed her to Eris's room, where he lay swathed in bandages, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. His gaze lowered as she stepped in the doorway, and at the sight of her face he extended his good arm to her. The doctor nodded and told her to go on, closing the door behind her. Madeleine went to Eris and dropped her purse to put her arms around him. His arm came around her waist and she pressed grateful kisses against his face and mouth before looking him over to assure herself he was all right.
“I tried to call you,” he said.
“Tanner told me. Is there any word on your mother?”
“She's still in surgery.”
“Where was she hit?”
“In the head.”
Madeleine sucked in her breath. It was too bad Manuel was fooling around at home. He was purported to be one of the best neurologists in the state.
“What about you?”
“Once in the shoulder,
once beneath the shoulder blade.”
She swallowed and he took her hand and squeezed her fingers.
“Shouldn't you be sleeping?” she said. “Are you in any pain?”
“They gave me a shot.”
“What happened?” she asked. “Do you think it was Russell?”
“No.” Eris's eyes shifted away from her. “Russell is no marksman. First a tire was shot out, and then the shooter went for a heart shot on me, but I was already bending down to look at the tire. I don't think he meant to hit Sara.”
“Was she conscious? Did she speak to you?”
Eris looked at her. “She came around just as we were landing. She asked me to take her home.”
“She did.”
“She was frightened, and going into shock.”
Madeleine held her breath. She would not ask. He would have to tell her.
“I told her I would,” he said.
“Take her home.”
“Yes.”
“How much time will you have off?”
”A few weeks disability, and possible additional suspension for having her with me in the first place. I'll stay in New Mexico a week or two.”
Madeleine nodded. “When will you leave?”
“As soon as she's able. It'll be up to the doctors to say.”
She squeezed his hand then she cleared her throat and said,
“I should go now and let you sleep. I'll come by later, if they let me in. I had to tell them we were engaged.”
Eris quirked a brow and Madeleine dropped a final fleeting kiss on his lips before departing. She left the room and found the nearest elevator to take her down to the hospital cafeteria. She ordered a Diet Coke and sat huddled in a booth in the corner, unable to fight the feeling that once he left he would never return.
When she saw Jacqueline enter the cafeteria she thought of hiding, but it was too late, her sister had already seen her.
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