A second police car pulled into the shopping center. Thankfully, Agent Wickowski was right behind him. Noah headed for the agent. As more police cars arrived and choked off the area, he explained what had happened.
The door to the jewelry shop opened abruptly. A little old lady was thrust forward, her hands over her head.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot me! He says to let him go or he’s going to start killing people! He shot Mr. Gioni!”
“We’re going to call the store,” an officer yelled back. “Tell him to—”
“No! He says no hostage negotiators and no SWAT teams! He wants to leave now or he’s going to kill someone!”
Noah grabbed Wickowski by the shoulder. “He isn’t bluffing.”
Wickowski grunted. “According to the report I read, you’re a trained marksman.”
“Yes.” His gut knotted. He knew what was coming.
“Can you take the guy out?”
“With someone else’s weapon?”
Wickowski went to the trunk of his car. The clap of thunder all but obliterated the sound of the shot, but the little old lady collapsed like a boneless pile of rags onto the sidewalk.
Noah accepted the rifle.
The officer in charge objected strenuously when Wickowski and Noah approached. They had a SWAT team en route. They had hostage negotiators en route. They didn’t want any interference. Wickowski didn’t either.
The rain began to slow. A man suddenly appeared in the door of the shop. His face was pasty with fear as he called out in a shaken voice. “He says to let him go right now or he kills me. My wife will be next. For God’s sake, do something!”
Noah moved up. He rested the barrel of the rifle on a police car. He checked the sight. Using the rifle scope, he found the thief standing to one side of the man in the doorway.
He wasn’t a clear target. The rain would affect the shot, and Noah had never fired this rifle before.
The man was using Sydney as a shield, a gun to her head. If Noah fired, the thief’s weapon could discharge, killing her. Noah needed an opening. Even then, he would have to make a head shot under impossible conditions.
And if he missed, he could kill Sydney.
Wickowski and the senior policeman approached. They were still arguing bitterly. Sydney was talking to the thief, anger and fear on her face. Noah blanked her from his mind. He drew on his training like a cloak. He blocked everything but those thoughts that centered on his target. The black ski mask was clearly silhouetted against the white wall, but the shot would be incredibly tight.
Then the gunman moved. Pulling Sydney along with him, he stepped closer to the door. That brought him closer to the window. He was agitated. Angry. One step. Two.
The thief straightened his arm, bringing the gun around toward the man in the doorway.
Between one heartbeat and the next, Noah fired.
CHAPTER TEN
The stench of his sweat practically suffocated her. The thief was scared and he was angry. Sydney had watched in horror as he shot Mrs. Zettlemyer in the back. Now he prepared to do the same thing to the man whose wife was sobbing uncontrollably.
Garlic Breath yanked her forward two steps. He swung his arm out to fire again.
“No!” Sydney screamed. She wrenched to one side, trying to throw him off balance. Suddenly the man’s wrist seemed to explode. The gun clattered to the floor. For a moment, shock held them all motionless. Then he yelled in pain while Sydney twisted free of his hold. She dived on top of the fallen gun.
Another shot exploded. Or maybe that was thunder. Sydney didn’t know. She was deaf in one ear and her head was ringing from the sounds of the gunfire. The smell of sweat and garlic mingled with the scent of the cordite, making her ill. But she couldn’t let him get the gun again no matter what he did.
The room erupted in noise and confusion. More gunshots. The thief fell beside her. A woman screamed shrilly, over and over, a horrible, loud grating sound. Sydney wanted to scream too, but she couldn’t.
Male voices shouted. Hands reached for her. She curled tighter, struggling to protect the gun. Then she realized the hands belonged to a uniformed officer in a bright yellow slicker. The small display room was filled with wet angry people. And the thief lay where he’d fallen on the floor, unmoving. The policeman lifted her to her feet, urging her away.
Suddenly, Noah was there.
Sydney flung herself into his arms, dimly aware of his sodden clothing. She didn’t care. She cared only that he was there, holding her tightly in his arms. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking.
“Good shooting, Major.”
Agent Wickowski’s voice came from behind her.
“Your rifle pulls to the left and down,” Noah told him.
Wickowski grinned. “That was still one hell of a shot.”
Sydney drew back. “You fired that shot?”
Noah looked bleak. “Only the first one.”
She pulled his face to hers and kissed him fiercely, putting all the jumbled emotions she was feeling behind that kiss. After an instant, he kissed her back, hungrily, greedily, as if he couldn’t get enough of her mouth. Which was exactly how she felt.
“I hate to break this up,” Wickowski said, “but the media just arrived. If you two don’t want to make the six o’clock report locked in a clinch, I’d save that stuff for later.”
Reluctantly, Sydney stepped back. Noah loosened his hold, but he didn’t release her.
“Mr. Gioni!” she remembered.
“He’s with the ambulance attendants,” Wickowski assured her, and she could see it was true. They had the shirt off his spindly body and were applying pressure to his wound.
“Looks like a flesh wound,” Wickowski said.
“But what about Mrs. Zettlemyer?”
“Who?”
“She’s a sweet little old lady, one of our steady customers. He made her go outside and then he shot her in the back to show you he meant business.”
“Ah,” Wickowski said with an understanding nod. “She’s still alive. They took her away in the first ambulance.”
“Thank God!”
“Yeah. We can all be thankful the guy was such a lousy shot. And that the major here wasn’t.”
Sydney saw someone had pulled away the gunman’s mask. Barry Fairvale lay where he’d fallen. Two emergency medical technicians worked to stabilize him. They’d stripped away his shirt, revealing bloody holes in his chest and abdomen. That was what Noah had meant about a first shot. When Fairvale had run toward the door after Noah shot him, the police had fired until they brought him down.
The woman whose husband had come so close to being another victim abruptly collapsed in hysterics. Sydney glanced at Ramona. The clerk was shaken, but otherwise unharmed. In fact, she seemed to be taking events in stride now that the terror was over. She was certainly handling things better than Sydney, who was very glad that Noah continued to hold her.
“Come on,” Wickowski said, “let’s get the two of you out of here before the press is all over you like a cloudburst.”
IT WAS EVENING before they found themselves back at Fools Point in Noah’s father’s house, with multiple cars in the driveway and two armed men in the kitchen.
“What would you say to a whirlpool bath?” Noah whispered in her ear.
“Yes.”
He smiled and stroked her hair away from her face. Sydney had thought she was too tired to care about anything after they finished eating, but his touch proved her wrong. Her body came alive at his expression.
“Come on.” They bade the two officers good-night and headed upstairs. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been that scared in all my life,” Noah told her. “When I saw that gun pressed against your head—”
“I can’t say it thrilled me much either. Did he follow us there, Noah?” She needed to touch and be touched. Probably some sort of affirmation of life after coming so close to death today. It would be so easy to love this man.
“He must have.”
>
“What about the second bank robber?”
“Probably Coughlin or Yosten. Wickowski seems confident that Fairvale will tell them who he was if the tape doesn’t. Did I mention the tub is big enough to hold two?” he added.
“No, I don’t think you did.”
While they made up the bed with fresh linens, Noah used every occasion to touch her, or give her warm, intimate looks that reminded her of their incredible love-making the night before.
“We can’t do anything with those men downstairs.”
“Of course we can. Their job is to see that we aren’t disturbed tonight.”
“I don’t think that’s how Agent Wickowski worded it.”
“Same difference. And you did say something about needing a handmaid last night.”
His slow sexy grin caused a hitch in her breathing. “If you’re applying for the job, I’ll need references,” she told him.
“Yeah?”
“Definitely.”
“Beggars shouldn’t be choosers. Remember,” he pointed out triumphantly, “now you can’t get either hand wet.”
“I can’t?”
“Bandages.”
She glanced at the small elastic strip on her left hand where she’d cut it on the display case. “Oh.”
A river of wicked need flowed through her. No man had ever made her so completely aware of her own sexuality—or of his.
Raindrops pelted the window in a soothing rhythm. “I may not qualify as a handmaid, but I’m a pretty handy guy.”
Her pulses danced with shimmering heat, hammering out a cadence her mind was just starting to understand.
“Hmm. How handy are you?”
He clasped her face between his hands. “Very, very handy.”
Sydney stopped thinking entirely during the long, slow drugging kiss. A moan of need built in the back of her throat. The kiss turned demanding, but she wasn’t sure which of them was doing the demanding. She couldn’t get enough of him. Wanting was a fever straining outward from her very core.
When he eased back, his voice was as shaky and rough as she felt. “I’ll wash your back,” he offered in a low coaxing tone.
“My back?”
“And your front.” He traced a finger over her collar bone and down her chest, pausing just short of one beaded nipple. “And a lot of other interesting places.”
His gaze smoldered. So did she. “At least we won’t have to worry about bumps in the night tonight.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively and touched the tip of her nipple.
“I wasn’t referring to that sort of bump.”
“I’m not interested in any other kind.”
Her body felt exquisitely tuned to his, ignited by the smallest touch, the least expression. She turned quickly before they ignited spontaneously, and checked out the bathroom.
“It is a large tub,” she agreed, “but hardly large enough for two of us.”
“Trust me. It’s big enough.” He turned on the taps, watching her through eyes that smoldered.
They shed their clothing in indecent haste before he turned on the jets and lowered her into the bubbling, foaming water. She scooted forward. He slid in behind her. Then he drew her against his chest. Pulling back her hair, he kissed the length of her neck, making her quiver expectantly. She twisted until their lips could meet, kissing him while his hands scooped water over her breasts, skimming her nipples until they were hard and pointed. Then he covered them with his rough palms. Her nipples responded almost painfully to his touch. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“Noah!”
His breath came in ragged pants. “I don’t think I can wait,” he said.
“Neither can I.”
His fingers sank into her hips as he lifted her, positioning her, until with a single thrust, he was inside, filling her completely. She closed over him with demanding impatience, holding him inside her body.
With the water churning around them and his hands rubbing her sensitized breasts and his lips devouring her nip by erotic nip, Sydney stopped thinking altogether and gave herself over to the sheer physical pleasure of loving and being loved.
Her release, when it came, was savagely beautiful in its intensity. Noah drove to his own completion seconds later. She sagged limply against his chest in the foaming water, utterly spent.
“You are the most incredible woman I’ve ever known,” he whispered against her hair.
“You’re pretty spectacular yourself.”
“Marry me, Sydney.”
“What?” Her body tightened in shock, the mood dispelled in an instant.
“Marry me.”
She reached over and turned off the jets, separating the two of them in the process. Water sloshed over the sides of the tub. “You can’t be serious.”
“Perfectly serious. I’ve never asked another woman to be my wife before.”
Part of her instantly wanted to shout yes, but sanity prevailed.
“Don’t shake your head,” he objected. “I can take care of you, Sydney.”
She bristled. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
“Then you can take care of me.”
He was serious. Fear chased away the peace of only moments ago.
“Noah, you know that’s impossible.”
“I don’t know any such thing.”
“We barely know each other.”
His dark eyes seemed to look inside her soul. “We’ve been through one crisis after another. I’d say we know each other better than most couples.”
There was some validity to that, but she shook her head once more. “I told you, I’ll never rush into marriage again.”
He drew his hand down her belly. Instantly, her body responded with awakening interest, despite the tremors his words were invoking.
“Not even for the sake of the baby?” he asked. “We could be married in three days. We’d be a real family.”
He knew her fondest desire. She’d told him what that dream meant to her. And it was all too easy to picture Noah’s role in her dream. “You aren’t playing fair, Noah.”
“I’m playing to win, Sydney. Marry me.”
“I can’t. You only think you want to marry me because of everything that’s been happening to us. We’ve been thrown together during a terrible ordeal and—”
In one smooth motion he stood, bringing her with him. Water lapped at their legs. She felt ridiculous facing him naked in a tub full of water. But the moment her breast brushed his chest, another surge of wanton desire resurfaced.
She knew he correctly interpreted her reaction and triumph lit his eyes. “You still want me. Admit it. Give me that much at least, Sydney. Even though we just finished making love you still want me.”
“That’s a physical attraction, nothing more, Noah.”
“Nothing? I’d say it’s a lot more than nothing, Syd.”
His mouth closed over hers. She tried not to respond, to stand quietly beneath the pressure of his lips, but it would have been easier to stop breathing completely. Just that fast, she wanted him all over again.
But he never once said the words that would have made everything right for her.
“Okay, you proved you can make me want you,” she said when they drew apart, “but sex doesn’t make a marriage, Noah.”
“Maybe not, but it’s a start.”
Sydney climbed out of the tub and reached for a towel. She was sad and hurt and scared all at once. Her heart ached to accept all that he offered, but she couldn’t. Sex wasn’t love. And she’d already learned the hard way that without it, a relationship was nothing.
Noah stepped out of the tub and reached for a towel as well.
“There’s something you have to know about the baby, Sydney.”
Her hand flattened on her stomach. “What about the baby?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you for days, ever since I realized you didn’t know the truth.”
“You said Jerome lied,” she remembered.
“He did. The baby isn’t his. It’s mine.”
The world seemed to come to a stop, narrowing to just this man and his impossible words. Emotion punched a hole in her lungs, releasing all her air.
“No.” The protest was a thin whisper of sound in a world without other noise. Suddenly cold and feeling naked and defenseless, she backed up, clutching the towel she had wrapped around her body.
“At first I assumed you knew, Syd. I waited at the hospital that morning for you to wake up so we could talk about the situation. Then I realized you had no clue.”
His dark eyes watched her intently while his calm words turned her brain to ice.
“I thought you knew and agreed to my being the donor. It was only when I asked to speak to Leslie that day at her office that I confirmed what I’d begun to suspect. Jerome tricked you. He tricked all of us. He altered the consent form you signed.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Jerome told me you were desperate to have a child—that you were threatening to leave him. Because of his low sperm count, he didn’t even have a statistical chance of fathering his own child. He explained that neither of you wanted to take genetic chances, so he asked me to be the donor.”
“But why would you agree?”
Noah released his tension in a long sigh. “I never planned to marry, never planned to have children.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It didn’t seem like such a big request. Jerome and I weren’t close. I never expected to meet you. Never expected to even see the child. He said I’d be saving his marriage, and at the same time, creating a way for our father’s line to continue.”
She stared at him so bleakly, he felt sick. “How could you be so cold-blooded about creating a new life?”
Noah searched for an answer and couldn’t find one. “I guess it just didn’t seem very real. Everything seemed so simple when Jerome asked. You know how persuasive he could be.”
“Simple.” She brushed her mouth with a knuckle. “So why bother to tell me now? Because it isn’t simple anymore?”
My Baby, My Love Page 19