Darius opened the fridge, grabbed an orange and a slice of cheese and sat down at the table, his gaze still on the monitor. Motion sensors would set off an alarm if anyone breached the perimeter of the yard, and there was no need to sit watching for action, but he watched anyway, glad for the silence, but almost wishing that Catherine’s attacker would show. A quick easy resolution to the problem. Take the guy down, assure Catherine’s safety, go on with his life.
Only, things had changed. What he wanted had changed. Or, maybe it was the same as it had always been.
There hadn’t been a time when he hadn’t wanted a family. He’d just given up believing he’d ever have one. After Melody had confessed that she’d fallen in love with someone else while he was in Afghanistan, he’d been willing to consider that he might spend the rest of his life living alone.
It wasn’t what he wanted, but he’d made peace with the idea.
And then Catherine had walked into his life, and everything had changed. He’d started to imagine sharing his life with someone, started to believe it was a real possibility. That the connection and relationship and love he’d spent years hoping for could happen.
Only problem was, Catherine didn’t seem to feel the same.
A floorboard creaked above his head and feet padded across the floor. Taryn? Catherine?
He cocked his head, listening. A door opened. Closed. Footsteps sounded on the stairs, soft and light...almost tentative.
Catherine.
He was sure of it, but his heart still jumped when she walked into the room, her red hair mussed, her eyes shadowed.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“My stomach woke me.”
“Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“I’ll make you an omelet.”
“How about I make you one?” she responded, opening the fridge and pulling out a carton of eggs. She’d changed out of her dress and into fitted black pants and a blue shirt. They hugged her curves perfectly, showcasing her thin waist and long legs. Distracting, but not so distracting that Darius didn’t notice the tear tracks on her cheeks.
“You’ve been crying.” He covered her hand, stopping her before she could open the egg carton.
“I was dreaming about Eileen. We were making her favorite pumpkin pie together. I woke up thinking that maybe her death had just been a horrible nightmare, but then I realized where I was, and I realized she’s really gone.” Her voice broke, and Darius wrapped her in his arms. She fit perfectly there, her head nestled against his chest.
“Eventually, it won’t hurt so much.” He smoothed her hair, his palm resting on her nape, the warmth of her skin seeping through his pores and heating him from the inside out.
“I know.” Her hands slid around his waist and rested on his back. He figured he could stay there forever, holding her, inhaling the sweet berry scent of her shampoo, running his fingers over her soft hair.
But they had a meeting to attend, and he stepped back, looked into her face. Beautiful and exhausted.
He touched her jaw, traced the hollow beneath her cheekbone. “You still look tired. Did you sleep at all?”
“Plenty. If not for my growling stomach, I’d probably still be sleeping. How about you?” She moved away, and he let her, because leaning in and tasting her lips again was not a good idea.
“I slept like a log until Taryn woke me for my shift.”
“I thought you were up a little early for our trip,” she responded, opening the carton of eggs.
“We won’t leave for a couple more hours.” He took a bowl from the cupboard and handed it to her, catching a whiff of berries and cream as she cracked eggs into it.
He should probably back off and give her some space, but this was something he’d always wanted. This feeling of working together, of normalcy. Even in the safe house, even with the waves crashing outside and the ocean breeze seeping through cracks in the windowsill, even knowing that there was nothing normal about their situation, with Catherine he felt like he was home.
The thought shook him.
What he’d always wanted. Right there for the taking, but there were a dozen reasons why he couldn’t.
The first being Catherine.
Her needs superseded anything else, and she needed to move at her own pace, decide what she wanted from him in her own time.
He watched her for a moment, wondering if it would be possible to walk away if she asked him to.
* * *
Catherine whisked the golden eggs to within an inch of their lives, afraid that if she moved back or sideways, shifted just a little, she’d bump into Darius.
He stood so close she could feel his heat through her T-shirt. So close, she could smell soap and masculinity. Close enough that all it would take was a turn of the head and...
She stopped short of the thought, not happy with the direction her thoughts were taking.
She couldn’t deny her attraction to Darius, but she could control it.
She poured the eggs into a pan and stirred them haphazardly, not caring much about the outcome. She needed to eat, but what she wanted to do was walk outside and let the ocean breeze cool her heated cheeks.
“I’m sure that whatever they did, they didn’t mean it,” Darius said wryly as Catherine dumped eggs onto two plates and set them on the table.
“What?” she asked, rifling through the drawers until she found forks.
“The eggs. First you beat them, then you dumped them. I figure they must have offended you.” He put buttered toast next to the eggs on her plate, neatly and calmly, because that’s the way Darius seemed to do everything. Organized. Efficient. Calm.
Why couldn’t he have been ugly as a toad and mean as a hornet?
It would have been so much easier to resist him.
“I guess I’m a little anxious about today,” she said, truthfully. She didn’t add that being near Darius made her wonder if everything she’d thought about her future had been wrong. Made her question the decision she’d made to live her life alone.
No men.
No complications.
No way to be hurt again.
Once was enough, because she didn’t think she could survive it if Darius betrayed her the way Peter had.
“About meeting Kensington, you mean?”
“About what I’m going to find out from him. What if you were right? What if he and my mother were together, and I’m related to him? What if he’s...”
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t change who you are.”
“I know, but it will change what I can do. I planned to pack up and leave when we got back to Pine Bluff. I wanted a fresh start. Nothing to connect me to the past. If he’s my father, then I’ll have no choice but to get to know him and his family.”
“We always have choices, Catherine.”
“Not when it comes to family. They are what they are.”
“You’ve got a point, there. But, even family doesn’t have to hold us. My father tried to be part of my life when I came home from Afghanistan. He saw an article in the newspaper about my injuries and my return, and he decided it was time to have the relationship we hadn’t had when I was a kid.”
“What happened?”
“He was still the same guy who’d walked out on me and my mom when I was a baby. A drunk. A drug addict. Maybe, he really wanted to have a relationship. Maybe he just wanted to share what he
thought was my limelight. I still don’t know, and I don’t care. After a couple of months of him showing up drunk at my apartment, I told him he had to get clean or get another place to stay. He found another place. That was the last time I saw him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. I made peace with it years ago. The thing is, I could have let him stick around, tried to build something that wasn’t there, but that would have added to the struggles I was having during my recovery. In my mind, it wasn’t worth it.”
“Do you regret telling him to leave?” She couldn’t imagine doing the same, but then, she’d spent her childhood wishing her parents were alive.
If she found out Kensington was her father, would she be able to walk away from it?
She didn’t know, but she had to find out.
She was certain that Eileen had known how she would feel, because Eileen had known her. All those moments spent, memories built, and now they were part of the past.
“You’re thinking about Eileen again, aren’t you?” Darius asked, squeezing her hand.
“She’s the only family I’ve ever really known. It’s hard to let that connection go.” She washed her plate and set it in the drainer, staring out the window above the sink. A sandy bluff sloped up toward the indigo sky. If she climbed to the top of it, she could look out over the ocean, watch as the dark horizon slowly lightened.
If she was fortunate, would her life be the same? Darkness eventually flooded by light.
“Want to go for a walk before we leave?” Darius asked, and she wondered if he could sense how desperate she was for fresh air. As if that air could clear her mind and clarify her thinking, help the world make sense again.
“We can do that?” she asked, and he smiled.
“We can do whatever we want. As long as we’re careful. I’ve been watching the monitor for an hour. There’s no one around, and we have no reason to believe we were followed by anyone. As long as you haven’t told anyone you’re here—”
“Who would I tell?”
“Peter?”
She laughed. “He’s the last person on earth I’d tell.”
“That bad of a breakup, huh?”
“You could say that.”
“I’d rather hear what you have to say. Come on.” He grabbed his jacket from a small closet near the front door and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“I can’t take your jacket. I’ll go up and get one from the room.”
“You’re not taking my jacket. I’m giving it.”
“But—”
“For once, just go with the flow, Catherine.”
Go with the flow?
Had she ever done that?
Even before she’d gone to prison, she’d made careful plans, kept lists, checked things off.
High school education? Check.
Job? Check.
Nursing degree? Check.
Marriage and children had been next. All planned out and easy to imagine. Only, the plans had come to nothing. Her hard work, her determination, had brought her nowhere.
Darius opened the door, and she followed him outside, the cool ocean breeze bathing her cheeks with moisture that felt like a thousand tears. All her life, she’d tried to be strong. All her life, she’d fought to be the person she thought she should be. All her life, she’d counted on her strength and power to get her what she wanted. It hadn’t been enough. Could never be enough.
Waves pounded against the shore, the heaving crash of water against rock drowning out everything. The beauty of it beguiled, the starkness of the dark horizon against the lightening day filling Catherine’s senses. She inhaled the salty spray, exhaled the hard knot of sadness, let herself feel the moment, and in it she felt something else.
Renewal.
Strength.
As if God were there, whispering, This is what I have created. This is what I can do. Let Me do what I can with you.
And she wanted to, because nothing she had done herself had ever been enough.
She closed her eyes, lifted her face up to the darkness, giving herself over to the faith she had denied for too many years.
“Catherine?” Darius asked, touching her arm, and she opened her eyes, looked into his, her breath catching.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Magnificent.” He smiled into her eyes, his black hair ruffled by the wind, his stance strong. It couldn’t be easy for him to walk across the sand, but he’d done it without complaint. Done it with grace and ease the same way he did so many things.
So are you, her heart whispered, but she wouldn’t speak the words.
“So, tell me about Peter.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who he was to you?”
“My boyfriend for three years. My fiancé for five months.” The first and last man to break my heart. “I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. He was a star witness for the state at my trial. Said that my compassion and love for my patients had probably tipped me over the edge and made me into a mercy killer.”
“Nice guy, but you’re telling me what he was. I want to know who he was. What he meant in your life and your heart.” He turned so they were face-to-face, his eyes as soft as the summer sky.
“He was just...someone to fill the emptiness.” If she were honest with herself, she could admit that. She’d loved him, given her entire heart to him, but he hadn’t consumed her. Not the way she knew Darius could if she let him.
“Just so you know, if I’d been him, I would have wanted to be a whole lot more than that.” He ran his hands up her arms, cupping her elbows and tugging her closer.
She should pull away. Tell him they needed to go back to the house, but looking in his eyes was like looking into forever, and she couldn’t stop.
No matter how much she knew she should.
“He was more than that. Funny and hardworking and...”
“Yeah,” he cut her off. “I’d want to be more than that, too.” His hands drifted higher, cupping her shoulders, then her neck, his palms warm against cool skin, his touch light and undemanding.
“You scare me so much,” she whispered, and he smiled gently, tracing a line down her cheek, his finger stopping at the corner of her mouth.
“Good, because you scare me, too.”
“Right.” She laughed, breaking away, putting some distance between them, because Darius tempted her like nothing else ever had and if she let herself, she’d fall right into his arms.
“I was engaged a few years ago.”
“You were?” She turned, nearly bumping into his chest.
“She broke up with me when I got back from Afghanistan. She’d met someone else. Fallen in love. I figured that must have been God’s way of saying that marriage wasn’t for me. Then, I met you.”
“Darius—”
“If you don’t want this, tell me now. We’ll go back to the house and I’ll call my boss and have him send someone else out to play bodyguard, because I don’t know how many more days I can spend with you and still be able to walk away.”
She could see the truth in his eyes.
No artifice. No flowery words. Just Darius and his honesty, and she couldn’t make herself tell him what she should, couldn’t do anything but lean closer, inhale his heat and masculinity.
His hands curved around her waist, and she was in his arms, pressed close to his chest, his lips brushing hers.
It felt
so good to be there, and Catherine gave herself over to the moment, the crash of waves receding, the scream of gulls fading. Nothing but Darius. His lips. His hands.
Him.
She wanted this, wanted him with a passion that left her breathless.
“Hey! You two! Aren’t we going to visit the senator?” Taryn’s loud call was like a splash of ice water in the face, and Catherine jumped away, her cheeks blazing as she met the other woman’s eyes.
“Hold your horses, Taryn. We’re on the way,” Darius responded, his breath heaving, his eyes blazing, every bit of his attention still focused on Catherine.
“Well, hurry it up. We don’t have all day.” If Taryn was surprised by what she’d seen, she didn’t show it, just smiled and walked away.
“We’d better go,” Catherine said, but Darius grabbed her hand, holding her still.
“Just so you know, I meant what I said, Cat.” He called her by the name he had the day they’d met, a name she’d hated since Peter’s betrayal. A name she thought she would gladly hear on Darius’s lips for the rest of her life.
“Okay,” she responded, and he smiled.
“Good. Now, we better go. Taryn gets grumpy when she has to wait.” He kissed her forehead, wrapped an arm around her waist and led her back to the cottage.
EIGHTEEN
The Kensington estate stood on a bluff overlooking the ocean, the stark white house standing proud and tall against a steel-gray sky. A six-foot wrought-iron fence surrounded the property, weathered pine trees sheltering it from the view of distant neighbors.
A lonely place.
Or that’s how it seemed to Catherine as Darius pulled up in front of the gated entrance.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
“No.” She touched the copy of the check Darius had given her to bring. Not the real thing, but plenty of proof. The real check was on its way to the Pine Bluff sheriff’s department. Logan planned to have a handwriting expert determine whether the signature was forged.
“Better get ready, then, because we’re here,” Taryn said.
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