by Gayle Wilson
Chapter Eleven
The darkness that surrounded him was so familiar Nick had been aroused since Abby had guided him up the steps and through the back door of her small apartment
Part of that was the lingering hint of her perfume. It permeated the very air of the rooms, which were warm and close, despite the late-night touch of fall outside. But part of it was in his head as well. Emotional echoes.
Because he had been here before. A lot of times Here in this same warm, fragrant darkness. Alone with Abby.
“I guess I need to call Rob,” she said, coming back into the room where he was sitting
She had left him in the living room while she went to take a shower and put on some clothes. When she spoke, he had to force his mind back to the present. Away from the too-powerful memories that were bombarding him.
He was finally remembering. Not in any logical kind of order. And not anything earth-shattering. Not unless he counted the memory of Abby’s body moving under his—which had always been pretty earth-shattering, now that he thought about it. But still, undeniably, he had been remembering.
“Not yet,” he said quietly “Don’t call anybody yet. I think we need to take some time. Do some thinking”
Which wasn’t going to be easy for him, he knew. Not here, at least. Not now that he knew this was where they had secretly met. Had made love Where, together, they had created the child she carried. Here, where the last thing he wanted to think about was who they could trust.
Abby sat down on the arm of the couch next to him. She laid something across his lap, and automatically he reached for it, fingers examining. It was a T-shirt, he realized, the cotton knit soft and warm.
“I thought you might be cold,” she explained.
He could smell shampoo and the soap she had used when she showered But he could also smell smoke from the fire they’d escaped, caught in the fabric of his jeans or in his hair.
“I’m okay,” he denied, but he held the shirt because it gave him something to do with his hands. Something other than what they wanted to do.
They ached to pull her down to him. To examine every inch of her skin To make sure she was telling him the truth. To make sure everything really was all right. To make sure she wasn’t lying to protect him from the knowledge that she or the baby had been hurt.
“What time is it?” he asked. Not because he cared, but because it was something safe to ask and because he had no idea. He had lost all track of time in the endless hours of this night.
“About four-thirty. It’ll be daylight soon.”
The silence that followed was one of those uncomfortable pauses he hated, caused, he knew, by her sudden remembrance of his blindness. He thought about telling her that he had been able to see the fire. He even wondered if telling her that would make any difference in how she felt about him now.
But he knew the diffuse red glow he had seen might not mean anything. The fact that he could distinguish between total darkness and the presence of strong light was about as important as his newfound ability to tell the difference between the front and the back of a jigsaw-puzzle piece.
A real important job skill, Deandro, he mocked himself. Abby would be proud of that. And maybe one day he could tell their kid whether it was night or day. Maybe. And then again, maybe not.
“You want to try to get some sleep?” Abby asked softly.
Her voice was concerned. Concerned for him, and that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Concern for him was not anything he had ever wanted to hear in Abby’s voice.
She was the one who had been forced to go through this difficult pregnancy alone. The one who had had to climb off the roof of a burning house tonight. The one who had slipped and fallen—
“How’s your chin?” he asked, finally remembering what she’d told him, her voice making light of the injury
“It’s okay. I look like the victim of a little domestic violence, but it’s nothing serious. Just another bruise.”
“Another bruise?” Maybe from climbing out the window?
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“It matters to me, Sterling. Whatever happens to you matters a hell of a lot to me.”
“Don’t, Nick. Not tonight. I don’t think I’m up to talking about this tonight.”
“This?”
“About us,” she clarified.
Despite what he had known, his stomach lurched. Just from hearing her admit to it. Just hearing her say us, her voice full of undercurrents. He nodded, but he couldn’t leave it alone. It was too important to him. She was. The baby.
“This is my baby,” he said. It was not even a question.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“But you weren’t planning on telling me about it?”
A long silence. At the end of it she would tell him the truth. He now knew that much about the woman that he had loved enough to have never forgotten her, in spite of everything else he had forgotten.
“I don’t know,” she said finally.
He nodded again. But her response had hit him like a physical blow. Incredibly hurtful. Devastating in the sense of loss it represented. “You willing to tell me why?” he asked.
“Not tonight,” she said, her voice almost pleading. “I told you I don’t want to talk about that tonight. I’m really not up to it Please, Nick, just…”
He waited, but the sentence had faded away, and she never finished it. “Just forget it happened?” he suggested bitterly “Is that what you want me to do?”
“You already have,” she said softly.
And that was accusation, he realized in surprise. He was still able to read her well enough to recognize the bitterness of her tone for what it was. And it was so damned unfair, he thought, fury roiling through him. As if he had wanted to get shot. As if he had wanted to have part of his life destroyed. The most important part of it. As if he had wanted to be robbed of these memories. Of his child.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Abby?” he asked, his question cold and angry “You think I deliberately—”
“I think we’re both tired. And I think we’ve got more important things to think about than hashing over the past.”
That hurt, too. She might be right about the more important problems, but again she had relegated him to the past. Past tense. He nodded, determined not to beg her. He knew what the problem was, of course, and he didn’t blame her for what she was feeling Not for any of it. He would be the last person in the world to blame her for having difficulty dealing with how much he had changed.
But she needed to understand that he couldn’t help what had happened to him. Somehow he’d screwed up, maybe in trying to have this relationship with Abby, and as a result he’d been made. Maybe he’d been careless or stupid, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. Nor about the other—about what had happened between them. Which she apparently wanted to forget. And which he had only now begun to remember.
“Why don’t you want me to call Rob?” she asked.
“I just think we ought to…lie low for a while. Don’t let anybody know where we are.”
He had wondered about his motive. Maybe it wasn’t just good police work, maybe not just being careful. Maybe it was something else. Something far more personal.
“Blanchard will tell him about the fire,” Abby argued. “Somebody will, eventually.”
“Let ‘em,” he said.
“That doesn’t make sense, Nick. Rob’s my supervisor. I need to let him know you’re all right. That I am.”
“Can’t it just wait until morning, Abby?” he said softly. “Let’s sleep on it.” Again he felt the discomfort between them, almost palpable. As thick as the smoke had been in the upstairs hallway tonight.
“Okay,” she said finally. Reluctantly.
She rose from her perch on the arm of the couch, but he didn’t hear her move again. She was still standing there, he realized. Watching him, maybe Remembering? Just as he had been.
“You can
have the bed,” she offered finally. “I’ll have to put on some clean sheets, but that won’t take but a minute. I don’t think—”
“Abby.” Whatever was in his tone—and even he wasn’t sure what was there—stopped the rush of words. She waited, and the uncomfortable silence grew and expanded. “I’ll sleep out here,” he said. “The couch is fine.”
“Except it’s a love seat and about two feet shorter than you are,” she said. “It won’t take a minute to make up the bed.” She had already moved, the sound of her shoes on the wooden floor making her direction plain. She was walking away from him.
“I won’t sleep in your bed, Abby.”
The footsteps stopped. “Why not?” she asked, sounding as if she really didn’t know. “The room’s a little messy, but I’ll clear a path. I’ll pick everything up. I’ll make sure that—”
“I don’t mean I’m refusing to sleep there. I mean…I just won’t be able to sleep. Not there.”
“Don’t, Nick,” she said again, her voice softer.
“You can’t just make this go away, Sterling. You can’t wish it into oblivion What happened between us happened. And there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
“I don’t need this tonight,” she said again.
He waited, listening to the silence fill all the empty space that stretched between them Listening to his own heartbeat, strong and rapid, pounding in his temples. And even though he tried, determined not to beg, he couldn’t prevent the words that came out of his mouth.
“Then I guess that’s the difference between me and you I do need it, Abby. I still need you.”
“Nick,” she whispered.
The sound of his name was full of pain. Maybe even regret. But she said nothing else, and after a long time he heard her move again. Away from him. And then he heard the sound of the closing door.
ABBY CLOSED her eyes, holding them tight against the rush of tears as she leaned back against the safety of her bedroom door. I guess that’s the difference between me and you, Nick had said. I do need it, Abby. I still need you.
She could imagine what it had cost a man like Nick Deandro to make that confession. Physical needs, she understood. She had admitted to those since the first day she had seen him again, standing barefoot in the open door of the old house, looking exactly the same. Except for the dark glasses, a barrier that she couldn’t seem to overcome.
And what the hell kind of person did that make her? she wondered, almost hating herself. Hating her fear How could she walk away from the raw, aching need she had heard in his voice?
She wanted Nick to make love to her as much as he could possibly want to. She had wanted him for months, dreamed about him touching her again. Dreamed about…
She opened her eyes, and the bed where they had spent so many secret hours was right in front of her. She hadn’t made it the morning she’d left. She had been running late, and she knew Rob would be impatient to get out to the safe house and then back into the city. The sheets were tangled and disordered, just as they had been when she’d climbed out of them that morning, leaving the troubling dreams of Nick behind her.
Just as they had always been when Nick left her in this bed alone. Spent. Passion-drained. Satiated with the feel of his body moving above hers in the darkness. His darkness. Why should it matter what kind or degree?
What kind of person was she? she wondered again. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she bring Nick here, allow him to make love to her again, out of compassion if nothing else.
You got to feel sorry for the guy, Rob had said at the beginning And Mickey’s warning. If you do, don’t do it so he’s aware of it. My best advice, Abby. Learned from experience.
So she wasn’t going to invite Nick back into her bed because she was sorry he was blind. He wouldn’t want that. He would never forgive her if he figured out that’s what she had done.
And he would. If that was all that was left between them, even if that was all that it eventually became, he would know. Nick was too smart, too perceptive, not to figure that out. And he could read her so well. He had always been able to.
So if she invited him back into her bed, it had to be because she wanted him there forever. Because she felt the same way she had felt before. Because she still wanted what they had talked about then. Rings, mortgages and babies. Anything less than that was a lie. And it would be cheating. Nick didn’t deserve to be cheated.
And right now…Right now she still didn’t know if she felt the same way. She had been so afraid of his blindness. Afraid of how it would have changed him. She had been able to admit that finally, after seeing him again.
Now, standing with her back to the door that she had used to shut him out, she deliberately paraded the hated images before her mind’s eye. Made herself study them. Let her emotions cringe before their reality.
That sad, half-completed puzzle spread out on the desk. The opaque black lenses, always looking a little to the side of her face. That angry game of blindman’s bluff. Nick’s groping fingers, unable to find her in the darkness because she wouldn’t let him. His hand carefully examining the items she had set out on the table for him.
She closed her eyes again because she couldn’t bear to see those images anymore. Or to think about them. They were not any part of the Nick she knew. The Nick she had loved.
She could remind herself of the others, of course. And she had. Standing in the living room beside him after he’d asked her. Standing in the terrible, painful silence.
Thinking about the gentleness of his hand pressed over the movement of his child. About his voice, forcing her out that window when she’d been so afraid. Nick pulling her up when she wouldn’t have been able to move on her own. Making her climb over the parapet. Breaking her fall with his own body, knowing all along that they could both go down.
It wouldn’t have mattered to him. She knew that, too. Nick would give his life for hers. For this baby. She knew that as surely as she understood any constant in her life. Nick would die for either one of them. Willingly and without hesitation.
Because he loved her. Because that was the kind of man he was. And she…? She was hiding from him in this room because she wasn’t sure she could accept the hesitant, searching movement of his hands. An occasional fall. His uncertainty.
What kind of person was she? she wondered again. What kind of woman would do this to the man she loved?
The man she loved. The words repeated, echoing endlessly like a challenge shouted into a cave. The man she loved Nick Deandro would always be that man. She put her hand on her thickened waist, aware again of the changes in her own body.
And was reminded suddenly that life is made up of endless changes. In our physical bodies. Aging. Illnesses. Changes in circumstances. In emotions In strengths and weaknesses.
That’s why married people lived longer—the bond of a partnership. Working together to deal with whatever life offered. Whatever changes. Ups and downs. And through it all, all the give-and-take, both would change. Grow. Mature. Learn to trust. Learn to believe that love would always be enough. More than enough to overcome whatever happened
The door opened behind her, and she turned, her vision blurred because of tears she hadn’t even been aware were streaming hotly down her face. Nick was standing there, silhouetted against the light she had left burning in the kitchen. A light he couldn’t see. Just as he couldn’t see her. And might never be able to again. Not able to see his own child.
“Abby?” he said Questioning. The small note of uncertainty clear and somehow beloved in his voice.
“I’m here,” she said. And because she knew it was right, knew it now in the deepest part, the very heart of who she was—and of who he was—she reached out and took Nick’s hand And drew him with her into the room.
HER FINGERS had found the waistband of his jeans. They were trembling so much that pushing the metal buttons through the holes was taking an eternity. When his fingers closed over hers, she thought he intended to fin
ish this for her. To take over the necessary task she had begun.
Instead, he held her hands, stilling the movement of her fingers against the hard, enticing warmth of his stomach. Then, holding both of hers folded within one of his, his other hand lifted to her face, thumb brushing over her wet lashes. It trailed down her cheek, tracing the path her tears had taken.
His big fingers were again gentle, moving like a whisper across her skin. She took a breath, a small intake of air, of sound In response, his hand shaped her face, its palm warm and roughly masculine against the smoothness of her skin, and then his thumb caressed her lips.
“I heard you crying,” he said.
She nodded, knowing he would be able to feel the movement.
“Why, Abby?” he asked. “Why did you change your mind?”
She sniffed, unromantic, but necessary. Gathering control Trying to think She had been prepared for his body, for his hands, his touch. Skin moving against skin.
What she had not guarded herself against was his mind. She was not ready for his questions. Not for these that had no simple answers. “I thought men didn’t like to talk,” she said.
She freed her hands, and they moved back to the job she had undertaken. This time he didn’t stop her, but when she had unfastened the last of the buttons, he made no effort to push the jeans off his narrow hips.
Even in the low light spilling through the open bedroom door, she could see him clearly. His body was so familiar. Her eyes traced the arrow of dark hair which disappeared into the V-shaped opening she had just created.
It was shadowed, yet stark against the bronze skin. Above the ridged abdomen that the line of hair bisected, his chest broadened, still hard, despite his injuries. Firmly muscled. Strong. Such a good, strong man.
Her throat closed with love and with need, the same need that flared like summer lightning into her lower body. She reached for him, pressing her fingertips gently against the reddened scar on his shoulders. Then, somehow, they drifted to touch a small pebbled nipple.