The kiss—long, exploratory, question and unspoken answer—felt both a blueprint of some possible future and a torch that burned the bridges that linked them in the past. It tasted of reunion and a sad goodbye to the two years they’d lost. And it was a single, thin rope tossed across the two-year chasm that yawned between them, a first hope of a tenuous bridge to the absolute present.
When she drew away from him he had to fight every instinct not to pull her back. He knew if he touched her at that moment, or she him, there would be no holding back, that all barriers and safeguards would crumble. Part of him wanted that collapse, while another part of him struggled to remember the uncertain future, the awkward, nebulous present.
A knock at the door thankfully intruded at the moment of having to face the present, and acted like an icy shower on Alec. He whipped around, grabbed the gun from the top of the cabinet and peered out the spy hole.
He turned with a relieved grin for Cait. “It’s a crib I asked them to send round for Allie.”
Cait’s face had drained of color and she’d dropped to crouch over Allie. Now she shakily pushed to her feet, color returning to her face, her eyes too wide and on the gun he held in his hand.
He shoved the .45 back on top of the cabinet and opened the door for the maid. After he tipped her, he let Cait close and lock the door while he tried opening the crib. He tugged at the supports from various nonfunctional points. “How does this damned thing work?”
She took it from him, depressed raised knobs on either side and popped the bed into shape. She locked the braces, pulled the safety guards over the locks and flipped the mattress into place.
“I’m not going to even ask how you did that,” he said, taking the now cumbersome square from her. “Where should I put it?”
Cait was again struck by their almost natural slippage into a sense of being a cohesive team. He’d thought of a crib; she could set it up. He carried it for her, ready to place it where she dictated. Somehow their unity, the sense of being a couple, a pair, felt too easy and its very natural quality made her uncomfortable.
“I don’t—in the alcove?”
He disappeared around the corner and came back empty-handed. “Will she wake if you move her into the bed?”
Cait didn’t think Allie would wake at anything less than Alec’s gun going off, but he’d gone to the trouble of arranging the crib, and he obviously wasn’t familiar with a toddler’s ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, in any wild position.
“She will, but she’ll go right back down as soon as her head touches the mattress. Would you get her blanket for me?”
She wished she could snatch the words back; innocuous as they were, they seemed to underscore that familial, married-couple feeling. And that, more than anything else, seemed to taunt her for her fantasies, her grief, even her careful, well-ordered life.
She wriggled Allie from the car seat harness and ignored the grunts of protest as she lifted the still-sleeping baby into her arms. Alec had stripped the cases from two of the pillows on the beds, but instead of moving to the alcove, he stared at her, at the mildly squirming Allie in her arms, as if he’d never seen a mother and child before.
“She’s so beautiful, Cait.”
Cait couldn’t help the smile of maternal pride that curved her lips.
“So are you,” he said.
She could only gaze at him, robbed of speech, cheated now of that very unity she’d felt misgivings about only seconds earlier. His three little words, so are you, made her realize now that the sense of being a couple hadn’t been truly uncomfortable at all; it had held the threads of passion at bay, had stayed the tension that played between them like an out-of-tune violin, tension that made every nerve ending jangle and every thought become jagged edged with confusion.
She couldn’t have moved if her life had depended on it and was exceedingly grateful when he calmly, prosaically preceded her to the alcove and put sheets on the crib’s mattress.
She gently deposited their daughter down in the cozy bed. The thought—their daughter—caught her unawares and wrenched painfully deep inside her, and more grievously still when he draped Allie’s blanket over her pajama-clad back.
He straightened slowly and met Cait’s eyes. Again something seemed to pass between them, but like before, she didn’t understand the meaning. Then, at the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat, and the warm, blood-rushing sensation of falling, she knew she hadn’t wanted to understand; it was far easier to deny than to accept the truth.
And the truth was simple, however devastating. Whatever it was that lay between them, be it past or bonds or even fantasy, there was something and it burned in him every bit as she could feel it searing her.
Unconsciously, maybe still trying to escape the need she felt threatening to consume her, she backed out of the alcove. But not far enough, not swiftly enough, perhaps purposefully slow.
The moment, like her mind and body, seemed arrested in time, crystallized by conflicting wants and needs. Alec’s blue eyes, heavily hooded and slightly red from lack of sleep and worry, gave nothing of his thoughts away, but she could feel his want.
She ached to raise her hand to his cheek, to feel the muscle sure to be flexing there. She fought against his magnetic pull, though he didn’t so much as twitch a finger in her direction.
She’d remembered every nuance of their time together, each word, all touches, sounds and smells, but snared by him now, caught in that timeless moment in a motel she couldn’t even name, she stared into the present, knowing this impression, this mutual want would override images from the past. This Alec, this man who gazed at her with equal portions of longing and uncertainty, as aware of the fragility of their tenuous present as she could ever be, once had meant the world to her.
And no matter what she’d said, what she’d tried to make herself believe, he wasn’t a stranger. He could never be one. They were bound in ways both mysterious and mundane.
A second knock at the door caused Alec to brush past her and again pull the gun from the cabinet before peering out the peephole. The very ease of his action underscored the danger that lurked outside somewhere, danger that threatened them all.
He tucked the gun behind his back in the waistband of his trousers before opening the door to take their breakfast. What was she doing here with a man who carried a gun to answer the door?
Surviving. That’s what she was doing. Just trying to survive.
“Maybe the coffee will clear my head,” she heard him mutter.
“I don’t think it’ll help,” she murmured, thinking of herself, remembering their kiss.
“No,” he agreed. His eyes met hers. “I can only think of one thing that would help.”
Her breath caught. This was too fast, too nebulous. Too dangerous.
He turned away. “You must have been reading my mind when you ordered this,” he said, lifting the lids off plates and setting them aside. He flashed a grin at her. She smiled weakly back.
He pulled back a chair for her and waited until she was seated before sitting down himself. “Okay, breakfast first, then we’ll brainstorm,” he said.
Her entire mind was a storm.
“Between the two of us, we should be able to come up with a way to get the whole cover-up out in the open without getting me killed in the process.”
“And maybe we can save the Western world while we’re at it,” she said. If only she could come through this relatively sane.
“Why not?”
“Why not.”
Cait buttered the toast; Alec divided the bacon. She added cream to her coffee; he held out his cup for a dollop. She bit into a slice of apple and he said, “It’s weird.”
She thought he might be reading her thoughts again.
“Being here together like this, I mean. It’s like we’ve never been apart.”
Cait couldn’t answer, because this time, even if he wasn’t conscious of it, she knew he was lying through his teeth. They had never been toget
her in any way except passion. They had shared a few crumbs of meals two years before, but everything had been seasoned with fear, flavored with the knowledge they would soon be killed.
The food now suddenly tasted like cardboard, as empty as the uncertain future.
Instead of designing an ingenious plan to catch the bad guys, as Alec persisted in calling them—finding it easier to refer to them by that casual designation, Cait supposed, than labeling them “friends”—Alec yawned through breakfast and continually eyed the bed closest to .the table.
Finally Cait couldn’t stand it any longer. “Go to bed, Alec,” she ordered. “You said yourself that we’re probably safe for the time being. Get some sleep.”
When he looked as if he might argue with her, she continued, “We need you alert, thinking.” We need you alive, she thought. “And you haven’t slept since when, yesterday?”
“I dunno,” he said, but he rose obediently and headed the two short steps to the bed closest to the door, the vulnerable side of the room. He didn’t look at her as he pulled back the covers and removed the gun from the back of his pants. He set it on the nightstand on the left of the bed. After unzipping and removing his trousers, he sat on the edge of the bed and stripped the sweatshirt from his torso, pitching both it and his pants to the chair he’d abandoned. He hiked one leg up to remove his socks seemingly unaware that she sat only a few feet away, her eyes riveted on him, her mouth dry, her heart pounding far too rapidly.
Cait, watching him, again felt that stab of almost casual intimacy. He removed his right sock first, then his left and, instinctively, she knew he always performed the action this way. She didn’t remember his removing his socks two years ago. There hadn’t been time or need for such a small luxury. The sight of the simple preparation for sleep brought tears to her eyes; she should have seen him do this a thousand times.
Already half asleep, he leaned back against the pillows, releasing a sharp groan of relief or pain. His nearly nude body beckoned her, but she remained in her chair, fingers curled around the wooden arms, nails pressing into the pine. She felt a million cold-hot miles away, watching as he flipped the sheets over him. He sighed roughly.
So did she.
“Aren’t you going to sleep?” he asked blurrily. His eyes were already closed, his breathing growing deeper.
“I’m all right,” she said, pushing out of her chair and retrieving the gun from the nightstand. She held it gingerly between thumb and forefinger. She didn’t look at him as she crossed to the television cabinet and stood on tiptoe, using her fingertip to push the gun on top. She hated it. She hated the need for it. And, irrationally, welcomed its presence as long as Alec held it in his hands.
“I dreamed about you,” he murmured.
She froze for a moment, then turned around. His eyes were closed and his mouth lax.
“Me, too,” she breathed. “About you.”
“You’re there every night, Cait. Every damned night.”
She felt as if a hot poker were laid against her heart.
“What?”
“What—?” His eyes flickered and opened. “Did I fall asleep? Sorry.”
“S’okay,” she murmured soothingly, though her head felt light and her hands numb. “Go on to sleep.”
“My gun’s on the table....”
“I put it on the cabinet,” she said.
“That’s good. Jack won’t think to look there.”
“No,” Cait whispered, knowing be wasn’t really with her, that he’d already crossed over into sleep.
“Bastard,” he said.
“Sh-h-h”
“How could you let me think she died?”
“Sh-h-h.”
“But she sleeps with me, Jack. She’s with me all the time.”
Cait, choked by his words, hearing a truth he would never in a million years admit, realized he was far more tired than he’d let on. He’d only said he needed sleep, he hadn’t said he was desperate for it, that it would have overtaken him by force if he hadn’t lain down.
“You better not,” he muttered, turning his head on the pillow restlessly.
“I won’t let anything bad happen,” she said.
“Oh, good,” he said, as if his conscious mind only needed that reassurance before letting go.
“I’m right here,” she murmured, unexpected tears blurring his sleeping form.
“Right... here,” he repeated, his words slurred.
“Good night, Alec.”
“Caitie...” he mumbled. “Come back to me, Caitie....”
The tears stinging her eyes burned free and spilled down her cheeks.
Chapter 10
Saturday, November 10, 10:30 a.m. EST
“Give her up, Alec.”
“Never.”
“I’d rather not have to kill you....”
“To get to Cait, you’re going to have to.”
Jack raised the 9 mm assault rifle in his hands and trained it on his former partner. “Why don’t you let it go, Alec? You’re only creating problems by protecting her.”
“Why did you lie to me, Jack?”
“Get out of the way, Alec.”
Something brushed his face; he didn’t dare look away from Jack to see what it might be.
“Did you know about the baby?” Alec asked, his eyes on the gun.
Jack started to laugh, and raised the rifle another notch. Alec could see straight down the barrel.
“I warned you, Alec. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Alec swung his arm at the same moment Jack depressed the trigger.
In the split second before he struck, Alec analyzed the touch on his face. He froze in the very act of slamming his fist against Jack’s gun, understanding in that nanosecond that he was asleep, dreaming, that there was no gun, no Jack. His eyes flew open to see a wide-eyed, curly-haired infant whose head barely topped the side of the bed.
Allie gazed at his upraised, deadly hand. “Big,” she said, her mouth slack with awe.
“Oh, God,” he muttered over the huge lump in his throat. He forced his hand to his suddenly cold body. “You’ll never know, sweetheart.”
Allie said something that sounded like “mameep” and gave him a clue to her meaning by pointing beyond him.
Alec rolled over to see Cait curled on the other bed, facing away from him and obviously deeply asleep. Mameep ... Mama is asleep. Baby talk, he realized, wasn’t simply mispronounced English. Allie seemed to employ an entirely new variation of the language altogether.
“How did you get out of your bed?” he asked.
“Aleet.”
Alec struggled for translation. “What?”
Allie apparently decided he was deaf and repeated the word at a slightly higher volume, then echoed it even louder.
At the third shouting of the incomprehensible word, Alec sat up, disoriented, dry mouthed, thoroughly rattled by the need to provide his overtly distressed daughter with whatever aleet might be.
“I don’t understand,” he said honestly, earnestly. And abashedly. This was his own daughter, for heaven’s sake; surely it didn’t take an advanced degree in linguistics to communicate with a fourteen-month-old baby. People, even a few remarkably stupid people, managed it all the time.
All, apparently, except him. Because he hadn’t known she existed, because he hadn’t lived with her, grown with her.
“Aleet! Aleet!” Allie yelled with enough lung power to drown a five-alarm pealing bell.
“Hey, hey, hey!” he countered. “I can hear you fine, sweetheart. I just don’t understand.”
He tried his best grin, the one that invariably made old ladies offer him their seat on the subway, the one that had made him the object of several stray dogs’ undying loyalty. It had zero effect on his daughter.
“Aleet!”
“Give me a clue,” he said, feeling desperate.
She pounded the bed with baby fists and tears sprang to her enormous blue eyes, filling them, smiting him. A
s scared of her as he was—and on a fear scale of one to ten, this two-foot-tall baby human registered a full ten—he couldn’t let her stand there in overtly abject misery. He reached out and plucked her up from the side of the bed and onto his lap. “Don’t cry, honey. Whoa, whoa. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just don’t understand.”
Huge tears clung to her incredibly long, dark lashes. Her blue eyes, a richer blue than his own, were awash with liquid, brightening them. His heart constricted. Painfully.
“Please,” he said. “I want to help you. Just tell me what you want.”
She blinked at him, then said slowly, clearly, “Aleet.” She stared directly at him, as if she thought him not only deaf but mentally handicapped, as well. She put her hands on either side of his face as if tactile assistance would help him glean her meaning. “Aleet.”
Beneath her baby fingers, he repeated her unusual word. She looked startled and her tears stopped as if someone had simply turned them off. He raised his eyebrows. She lifted a finger to touch one.
“Eyes,” she said.
“Eyebrows,” he corrected with a crooked smile. His heart pounded furiously. This was his daughter talking to him, his little girl tracing the line of his eyebrow. They were actually communicating. He raised and lowered his eyebrows several times and her baby finger moved with them.
Allie giggled and his heart turned right over. Permanently. Irretrievably and forever hers.
“Eyebrow,” he said, and waggled them again just to hear Allie giggle. He felt both inept and wonderful at the same time.
“Trow,” she said, making one rise by pushing it herself.
“Good girl. You got it. Eye-brow,” Alec said slowly, grinning down at her, lifting and lowering her finger with his shaggy brows.
“Eye,” she said, and poked him smack in one.
He couldn’t restrain the slight yipe of protest, but it only made her giggle.
“Eye,” she said again, digging in.
“Yes, eye.” He grimaced, gently prying the offending finger from the now profusely tearing object of her interest. “And you’re probably right. I didn’t need that one. I have another.” Without much luck, he willed the pain to back off and the tears to subside.
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