Each Precious Hour

by Gayle Wilson

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  He didn’t look at her again. He stepped away from her instead, allowing her to lead the way through the glass doors.

  THE MAIDS HADN’T HAD TIME to clean the room, Jared noticed. The bed was unmade, but relatively undisturbed. The sheet and blanket were turned back on one side, just far enough for Robin to slip out. There were no clothes in view. No clutter of newspapers or books. Everything in its place, as controlled and orderly as Robin would like every aspect of her life to be.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t understand all the reasons behind her need for control. He did. That was the toughest thing about what lay between them. He understood about the impact her father’s death had had on the child she had been.

  Her mother had lost her battle with breast cancer less than a year before her dad had been killed. Robin had been ten years old, and the world she knew had suddenly been totally destroyed.

  Wiped out. Blown up. A simplistic metaphor, he recognized, but the heart of everything that had happened to their relationship. If Robin had known what he did for a living when she met him she would never have allowed herself to get involved.

  He had been attending a training seminar in D.C., and they had been introduced at a State Department function someone in the bureau had taken him to. Robin thought, for some weird reason, that he had said he was in town for a computer seminar.

  They had seen each other every night during those two weeks, and they hadn’t talked jobs. Actually, they hadn’t talked much at all. They had made love exactly one week after they’d met.

  From the very beginning, it had been like no other relationship he’d ever had. He had looked back on those days so often this past year, wondering why what he did for a living hadn’t come up. Sometimes he even wondered, bitterly, if it would have been better if it had. Better for both of them. Because then, of course, Robin would have disappeared from his life before they ever had a chance to fall in love.

  “Sorry about the mess,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. To Robin, it really was a mess, and nothing he could say would change her perception.

  She unbuttoned her coat, shrugging out of it and hanging it in the closet. She draped the wool scarf neatly around the hanger. The coat’s darkness had highlighted the fairness of her skin. The moss-green sweater she wore under it warmed it, making her features come alive. Her eyes absorbed its color, although normally they were as blue as Jim McCord’s. Bluebonnet blue.

  Actually, Robin looked more like the senator’s daughter than his real daughter did. And she certainly seemed to feel more obligated to do whatever he wanted her to do than her cousin did. Gratitude perhaps. As well as love. Jared had never doubted the sincerity of what Robin felt for her uncle.

  “I need to look at your head,” she said.

  Until she reminded him, he had forgotten the dull ache at his temple. He hadn’t even felt the blow. He had been too concerned about Robin. Concerned with getting her out of there. With protecting her until he could. “It’s okay,” he said.

  “It might need stitches.”

  “It doesn’t,” he said, smiling, dismissing her concern. “I don’t even know what did it.”

  “A stick on one of the signs. Aimed at me, I think.”

  It had been all he could do not to strike out at the idiots surrounding her and calling her names. Not exactly a reaction his supervisors would have approved of. Not a reaction he would approve of. Not normally. “What set them off?” he asked.

  Robin shook her head. “The camera, maybe. Everybody’s got an agenda. And they all want coverage for it.”

  “And you walked right into the middle of it?” That sounded like a criticism, but he hadn’t meant it to be. He just didn’t understand why she had been out there.

  “I was the middle of it,” she said. “I was waiting for a cab, and when it arrived, the camera crew came up and starting filming. I don’t know why my comings and goings would be of interest to anybody, but apparently someone thinks they are. When they realized the media were there, the protesters all wanted to make the noon broadcasts. It just...escalated.”

  “Anti-McCord?”

  “Some of them,” she admitted. “Because of his stand on the issues, especially the one about building up our shaky defense system. But most of them don’t even know James McCord, much less what he stands for. All they know is he’s been mentioned as a possible candidate for president of the United States.”

  “And they don’t want him to be,” Jared suggested.

  Robin thought before she replied. “Whitt Emory, Uncle Jim’s campaign manager, has tied his candidacy closely to the new millennium. He’s even planning to kick it off with a speech at the stroke of twelve on New Year’s Eve. Here in Times Square. It seemed like a good idea, something Uncle Jim favored, I know, but now...” She shook her head, eyes no longer focused on Jared’s face. “Now I’m beginning to wonder. Every crazy in America has made up his mind that something very bad is going to happen when that clock ticks down to midnight.”

  “And that bothers you?”

  “It bothers me that Uncle Jim is being connected to all those forecasts for disaster.”

  Jared laughed, although the sound was humorless. “Only by the crazies,” he said.

  “Judging by this morning, that’s enough.”

  “You’re not really worried about those nutcases outside, are you? They looked pretty harmless to me.”

  “As opposed to nutcases who aren’t harmless?” she said.

  “Those I’m real familiar with,” he said. “When your crazies start blowing up buildings, you be sure to let me know.”

  Bad move, he realized too late. The words were already out there, lying between them, just as they always had. And it was up to him to do something about the images they evoked.

  He had known last night he would have to be prepared with what he wanted to say to Robin before he saw her again. Then the need to see her had gotten in the way of that conviction. And thinking with a part of his anatomy besides his brain wasn’t something he was usually guilty of, not since he was sixteen.

  “You’ll be the first person I call,” Robin said. Her voice was bitter, and her eyes had gone cold.

  Falling back into the old patterns, he thought. Everything came down to his giving in. Giving up a job he was good at. A job that was important. Because Robin couldn’t take the heat.

  It wasn’t fair, he thought. It never had been. He remembered that his father used to ask him, ruffling his hair, even when he was grown, “And who told you life was fair, bucko?”

  “If you ever call me, Robin, I’ll come,” Jared said, letting her hear his sincerity. He would come. Just as he had this morning. Because he loved her. Enough to give her anything she wanted. Anything except who he was.

  “I know you would,” she said. Her eyes had softened.

  She did know it. That was the ridiculous part of all this. They loved each other. With the kind of love that made people stay together for seventy-five years, still holding hands as they sat in their wheelchairs in the nursing home.

  They had both recognized that from the first. Only at the beginning, Robin hadn’t known what he did. And when she found out, it seemed she could never forget. Or accept the risks.

  “Let me take a look at that,” she said, gesturing with an upward tilt of her chin at the cut beside his eye.

  Allowing her to play doctor would give him a few minutes to think. Maybe time enough to formulate something to say about why he was here. At least it would give him an excuse to hang around a little longer. To be with her.

  “Okay,” he agreed, feigning reluctance. Unthinkingly, he touched the cut, which was sticky with blood, and winced.

  “In the bathroom,” Robin suggested.

  A small, enclosed space, he thought, which would necessitate their closeness. Not quite as close as they had been when he had held her against the wall of the hotel, but better than the cold distance that was betw
een them now. Anything was better than this.

  Chapter Three

  The bathroom smelled of soap and shampoo and Robin’s perfume. A combination Jared had been lucky enough to enjoy on more than a few mornings. Mornings that came after nights that still haunted him, tantalizing with the force of their memories.

  Standing in the doorway, he wondered if Robin felt them. If she were as tempted as he was to turn this into something else. Into what had happened between them the last time they’d been together.

  He had tried to tell himself that night had been a mistake. It had just put them back on the same endless merry-go-round of need and desire and deprivation, but the argument hadn’t been convincing, not even to him. He couldn’t regret the fact that Robin had come to him, no matter how many nights remembering what had happened forced him to lose sleep, his body aching with need.

  Just as it had this morning. As soon as he’d touched her, he had been hard, his groin engorged with a rush of blood. Nothing had changed. At least not about that.

  “You’ll have to sit down so I can reach it,” she said.

  He had stopped in the entrance to the bathroom, just breathing in the familiar scent. He took a couple of steps into the room and then sat down on the commode, the lid of which was conveniently down. Robin’s neatness fetish.

  She turned on the water in the lavatory and let it run, testing the temperature with her fingers. When it was warm enough, she soaked one of the washcloths under the stream. She turned, holding the cloth in her hand, and then she hesitated.

  The small room was cramped, and the cut was on the side of Jared’s head that was away from her. She tried to move in front of him, but his long legs, knees almost touching the wall, were in the way. He adjusted his position, one leg on either side of the toilet, hands resting loosely on the seat between his thighs.

  Robin stepped in front of him, touching his chin with the fingers of her left hand. She tilted his head so she could see the place where the sign had struck. Her lips flattened, and then her eyes moved from the cut to meet his.

  “Not too bad,” she said reassuringly. She began to dab the cloth along the raw edges of the injury, soaking away clotted blood. “I don’t think this will leave a scar.”

  “That’s something I’ve been real worried about,” Jared said and out the corner of his eye he could see her response. Her mouth relaxed, the corners lifting a little, almost in a smile.

  “Of course, a scar might add to your charm,” she said, her voice almost teasing, the way it had been before all the bitterness came between them. “Make up some entertaining cop story about how you got it. Appropriately heroic, of course.”

  “Like pulling the woman I love out of the middle of a riot?”

  The hand holding the cloth hovered above his brow for a few seconds. After a long silence, she said, “That one’s not exactly designed to lure the young, the lovely and the unattached.”

  “I’m not looking. Not for young, lovely or unattached.”

  “What are you doing?” Robin asked, her hand moving again.

  Good question. And Jared had known all along he would need a good answer. Only he hadn’t managed to come up with one yet. Not one that made any kind of sense. Not one that didn’t involve some protracted explanation of the fact that he had been scared spitless that morning at the federal building. Not so much afraid he was going to die, but afraid he was going to do it without seeing Robin again. Without telling her he loved her.

  “I’m just trying to understand,” he said.

  “Me? Or you?”

  “Both, I guess. Understand us.”

  He had used that word downstairs. His excuse for being here. And it was close to being accurate. As close as he was going to be able to come to why he was really here—without spilling his guts. And he wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

  Maybe he would get over whatever had been bothering him since that morning. Maybe in a couple of months he wouldn’t feel the same way about his job. Maybe he’d be eager to get back to work. Eager to do exactly what he had always done.

  And if that happened, after he had tried to get back together with Robin, then it wouldn’t be fair to her, of course. “And who told you life was fair, bucko?”

  “There isn’t any us,” Robin said. “Not anymore.”

  “There could be,” he said.

  And cursed his stupidity. Not that what he had said wasn’t the truth. There could be. All he had to do was give up his job. Stop pulling detonators away from the explosives they were attached to. It was really very simple.

  She was standing in front of him now, her hands at her sides, no longer working on the cut. The right hand still held the washcloth, stained pink with his blood. Slowly he turned his head, looking up into her eyes. They were blue again. Maybe the difference in the fluorescent lighting. Maybe emotion.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  No answer. He still didn’t have one, and he had known she would ask that question. What did it mean? he wondered. That he was ready to give up the bomb squad? To change professions? Was that what he had come here to say?

  Suddenly the image of those kids was in his head, almost as clear as the memories of Robin. Before they’d found the bomb that morning, the children had been evacuated from the day care center, which was on the bottom floor of the building. They had been out on the sidewalk across the street, holding hands so the teachers could keep track of them. And about three blocks too close to the obscene hunk of Semtex in that elevator.

  Someone else would have disarmed it if he hadn’t been there. He must have told himself that a thousand times. Not just since that morning, but during the last two years. Ever since he had met Robin. Someone else could do it, someone else would do it, if he weren’t there. Except that morning he was the one who was there. He had discovered that extra wire. Not somebody else. Him. Jared Donovan. Because he had a sixth sense about them.

  It was almost like what the dogs did—sniffing the explosives out. Everyone on the squad knew. They called him Spooky, like Mulder from the “X-Files.” Or they hummed the first few bars of “The Twilight Zone” theme when he did something like what he had done that morning. Something weird. Because somehow he had known when he’d cut those first two wires that it wasn’t over. He almost hadn’t listened to that instinct. And if he hadn’t...

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I don’t know what it means. Just that I miss you, I guess.”

  “You came here to tell me that?” The words were without inflection. No accusation. No anger. No anything.

  “I came here because...” He honestly didn’t know what came next. It seemed there was nothing left to say. Nothing that hadn’t been said so many times the words were old and worn-out and meaningless. “Because I love you,” he said finally, his voice low, almost a whisper.

  Still looking up at her, he put his hands on her hips, one on either side, resting them on the small protrusions of her hipbones. The wool of her skirt was rough under his palms.

  Robin didn’t move. Not away from him, at least. Not even when he stood, sliding his hands up until they were resting at her waist. Not even to take the single step backward the wall behind her would have allowed her to retreat.

  Jared lowered his head, tilting it to align his mouth over hers. Just before his lips made contact, she turned away. The downward movement of his head stopped, his mouth almost touching her cheekbone instead of her lips. He took a breath and then released it before he straightened. He removed his hands from her waist, and they stood there in silence.

  After a moment or two, he became aware of a maid’s cart clattering down the hallway outside, coming toward Robin’s door. He could hear the woman singing, in Spanish he thought, although the words of the song were muted and indistinct.

  Robin’s face was turned away from him. He could smell her perfume again, its fragrance released by the warmth of her skin. Or by their closeness. It drifted over him in a long slow roil of memory. And nee
d.

  He closed his eyes, knowing he’d blown it. He should have stayed away. Of course, if he had, there was the possibility that Robin might have gotten hurt in the disturbance out front. Maybe he had a sixth sense about her as well. If so, it was the only “sense” he had ever had where she was concerned. And he supposed he should be grateful for that one.

  The maid knocked on the door, breaking the silence. Releasing them. Robin tossed the washcloth in the sink and moved past him to let her in. He stood there, gathering control, the room suddenly cold and sterile. As lonely as his apartment had been last night.

  When he started to leave, he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror. He turned his head to the side so he could see the cut, touching it with his fingertips, as if they would tell him more than the visual assessment.

  The injury was obvious enough that it would probably evoke comment at the precinct. Some jokes. Not that he cared about those. He wasn’t too fond of the idea that the guys on the squad might put two and two together and figure out he’d been here when the riot broke out. A couple of them knew about Robin, but they thought his relationship with her was over. If her name was mentioned on the news in connection with the disturbance this morning...

  He didn’t really give a damn. It was nobody’s business if he couldn’t get a woman out of his head. It hadn’t interfered with his job. Nothing ever had. No one could ever say Jared Donovan hadn’t done his job.

  Because he knew the cost of not doing it. He had seen them, lined up across the street that morning, wiggling like puppies. Eyes shining with excitement over the break in the routine, all those little kids had watched him as he’d walked out, his knees shaking. They hadn’t known how close to dying they had come.

  He nodded to the maid as he stepped out of the bathroom. Her eyes widened, maybe in response to the cut at his temple. He didn’t know and didn’t care.

  Robin was standing beside the outside door, holding it open. A not-too-subtle invitation to leave?

  “You’ve had breakfast?” he asked.