Shattered

by Joan Johnston

  “I’ll cook. You need to stay off your feet.”

  She could see he was eyeing her ankles. She tried to pull the one he was holding out of his grasp and get the ugly things out of sight, but he caught her foot.

  “Hold it,” he said. “Let me help you get your shoes off. I forgot how much trouble you have reaching your feet when you’re pregnant.”

  He untied her tennis shoes, loosened the laces and eased them, one after the other, off her feet, along with the tennis socks she wore. It had been too much effort to bend over her enlarged belly and remove them herself.

  Holly felt emotional tears in her eyes and blinked them back. Removing her shoes and rubbing her feet was something Jack had done for her when she was pregnant with Ryan. This was the first time he’d touched her since he’d moved in.

  Holly moaned as Jack used his knuckles to massage her arches.

  He glanced up and their eyes met. And he smiled.

  It was a rare sight because they’d had so little to smile about lately. She smiled back and said, “You have no idea how good that feels.”

  “I wish I could be here every day when you get home. I might as well be here,” he added ruefully. “That son of a bitch Pendleton has been as elusive as an eel.”

  “There’s some ground sirloin defrosted in the fridge. How about sloppy joe’s?” She’d suggested the meal because she knew it was easy to make, and because it was one of Jack’s favorites.

  “Sounds good.” But he made no move to stop what he was doing.

  “If I weren’t so tired I’d offer to help with supper,” she said.

  “How was Ryan today?” Jack asked.

  “The same. Except he had visitors.”

  Jack lifted an inquiring brow and Holly said, “The twins showed up with their mother. And Wyatt Shaw.”

  Holly was watching closely, so she saw the slight grimace that crossed Jack’s face before he said, “I can’t believe Kate and the twins are still living with that man.”

  “He was good with Ryan and the twins,” Holly said.

  “He would be,” Jack muttered in disgust, as he laid her right foot down on the ottoman.

  She was sorry she’d mentioned Kate’s visit, because it seemed to have put Jack in a bad mood. Bad enough to quit what he was doing, anyway. He’d probably been mentally comparing her swollen ankles to Kate’s more delicate ones.

  To her surprise, he picked up her left foot, this time starting his massage with her toes. She’d never told him that the tips of her toes were an erogenous zone, that when he ran the callused pads of his fingers across them, she felt her womb contract.

  But this was no time for foreplay, even if it was unintentional. She wasn’t feeling particularly attractive, especially when she compared herself to Kate Pendleton. Besides, she didn’t think she could stay awake for sex, even if Jack were interested.

  “You’re tickling me,” she said with a forced smile, tugging at her foot. She persisted in wriggling until Jack left her toes to work on her arch with his knuckles.

  “Lord have mercy,” she murmured. “That hurts so good.”

  Jack chuckled.

  She leaned back and closed her eyes and moaned at the pain/pleasure. “Don’t stop,” she said, when it seemed he would.

  “How soon before Ryan will be able to come home?” he asked.

  She opened her eyes and met his gaze. “It’s going to be a while, Jack.”

  He stopped what he was doing and asked, “Why isn’t that damned chemo working?”

  “The doctor hasn’t found the right combination of drugs. But he will.”

  “How much more of this torture is Ryan going to have to endure before the doctor figures out he can’t stand it?” Jack grated out.

  “You’d be surprised what Ryan can stand.”

  “Well, I can’t take much more of this.”

  Jack let her foot drop back onto the ottoman as he rose and headed for the bar in the living room. He poured himself a bourbon and stood at the bar while he emptied the glass, then poured himself another drink. “I never realized how hard it would be to see my son suffering, especially when I’m helpless to end it.”

  Holly shoved her feet off the ottoman, hefted herself out of the comfortable chair with a great deal of effort and crossed to Jack. She took the glass out of his hand and set it aside. “This isn’t going to solve anything.”

  Inebriation hadn’t made things easier for her father. And it wouldn’t make things easier for Jack. “We have to stay positive for Ryan’s sake.”

  “Say something hopeful,” he urged. “Say something that will make me believe our son will get well.”

  But the statistics weren’t on Ryan’s side. Instead, she took a step as close as her burgeoning belly would allow, wrapped her arms around her husband’s waist and laid her head against his chest. “Hold me, Jack,” she said quietly.

  She was certain he needed to be held as much as she needed his arms around her. She waited with bated breath until his arms tightened around her shoulders. He rocked her, comforting both of them.

  “God, Holly. Who’d have thought we’d end up like this? How did we get so far from where we started? I can remember a time when I couldn’t wait to get home to share my day with you, to hold you like this, and be held like this.”

  “I have to take the blame for a lot of what went wrong,” Holly admitted.

  “I think I started a few of those arguments,” he said gruffly.

  “Back then, I was afraid to love you, Jack,” she said quietly.

  “What?” He leaned back and said, “Holly, look at me.”

  She leaned her head back and looked up into his serious brown eyes.

  “What are you saying? That you didn’t love me?”

  She saw the confusion in his gaze and wondered how much she should tell him about her fears all those years ago.

  Everything, Holly. If you want a chance at a life together, you owe him that.

  “You know what my dad was like, Jack.”

  “He walked out on you and your family. A lot,” Jack said. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “I was always afraid that you’d do the same thing. So…I never let myself trust you—love you—completely. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  He let go of her and reached behind him to remove her hands.

  She tightened her grip. “Please don’t let go of me, Jack. I’m telling you this because I’ve changed.”

  His hands remained at his sides, but Holly kept her arms around him. She focused her eyes intently on his, which were shuttered now. “I forced you out of my life a year ago because I thought it would be easier to have you gone once and for all than to wait for you to leave on your own.”

  “What the hell—”

  She stood on tiptoe and used her mouth to shut him up. The kiss was brief and shocked him into silence.

  “I don’t know if you still have any feelings for me, Jack. I just wanted to let you know that I still have feelings for you. And that I’m willing to take the risk that if I welcome you back with open arms, you’ll stay.”

  His arms closed around her slowly, but they tightened until she squeaked. He loosened his hold as he searched her eyes, perhaps looking for proof that she was no longer hiding the truth from him.

  “I love you, Jack,” she said. “I’ve missed you. I need you.”

  Holly didn’t know what else she could say. She felt exposed, vulnerable, as she waited for his response.

  Jack bent and slid one arm behind her knees. He lifted her as though she weighed nothing. She marveled anew at the play of muscle and sinew in his powerful arms and shoulders. A moment later, he was headed down the hall.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “Unless you have an objection, I’m going to make love to my wife.”

  Holly was suddenly wide awake. “I have no objections at all, except…”

  He stopped in his tracks and said, “Tell me now if you d
on’t want this.”

  “I don’t feel very pretty right now,” she confessed, peeping up at him from beneath lowered lashes.

  “You’ve never been more beautiful to me than when you’re carrying my child. Don’t you know that, Holly?”

  She slid her fingers into the hair at his nape and lifted her mouth to his for a kiss that was as arousing as it was satisfying. “Take me to bed, Jack,” she murmured against his lips.

  She needed the reaffirming closeness, the solace that they had always found in each other’s bodies. It seemed tonight Jack needed her as much as she needed him. She would hold him tight and love him well. There was no telling when it might be the last time.

  Because the day was coming when she might have to choose between saving Ryan by revealing the existence of a sister, or saving her marriage by continuing to keep her secret. She was pretty sure that if that happened, only one of them would survive.

  27

  Jack had forgotten how easy it was to make love to Holly. How well they fit together. How much the smell of her and the taste of her and the feel of her skin appealed to him. He supposed that, like all rejected men, he’d convinced himself that he could fall in love with another woman just as easily as he’d fallen in love with Holly.

  But it hadn’t happened.

  He wondered if his feelings for Kate were different because they’d never made love. He supposed that was part of it. There was something soulful about joining the male body to the female body. At least, there always had been with Holly.

  He was spooned behind her, because that was the easiest way for him to enter her when she was pregnant, something they’d learned when she was carrying Ryan.

  Jack forced his thoughts away from his son. He palmed one of Holly’s breasts, large and heavy from her pregnancy, and used his forefinger and thumb to tease the nipple into a tight bud.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Holly said.

  “Like this,” Jack said as he slid himself inside her.

  Holly moaned as Jack kissed her nape and said, “I meant, I don’t know how you make me feel so beautiful, when I’m huge like an elephant.”

  “You’re huge with my baby, which makes you a very beautiful elephant.” His hand was caressing her taut belly when he felt their child kick him. He chuckled and said, “The Little Slugger wants you all to himself.”

  “The Little Ballerina is dancing again,” Holly replied with a lilting laugh of her own.

  He felt her hand cover his own and guide him, telling him what she liked, where she wanted him most. It was something he’d always admired about Holly, that she helped him to know how best to satisfy her. He could feel her breaths becoming shallow, see the pulse race at her throat, feel the tension in her body as he touched her, as he moved inside her, and as she began to climax.

  He loved the sounds she made in her throat as her body convulsed around him. He felt his orgasm joining hers, and the mounting ecstasy tore a groan of exhilaration from his throat.

  The aftermath of sex with Holly was sweet. The total relaxation of their sated bodies, the sweat cooling their skin as it evaporated, their heaving lungs gradually quieting, their heads resting close beside one another on pillows as their eyes slid closed.

  “I love you, Jack.”

  “Love you, too.”

  It was what he’d always said. The words were out before he could stop them. He realized he didn’t want to call them back. He would always love Holly, even if he didn’t spend the rest of his life with her.

  “Do you, Jack?” she asked. “Do you still love me?”

  Jack disentangled himself from his wife and reached over to turn on the lamp in her bedroom, since the light of the day had gone while they’d been making love. He shoved a pillow behind him and sat up. From nine years of marriage, he knew when his wife wanted to talk. This was the wrong time, as she very well knew. But he’d learned from past experience that she wouldn’t rest until they’d discussed whatever it was she had on her mind.

  Holly sat up next to him and used the sheets to cover her breasts knowing, again from past experience, that he would find the sight of them distracting. Jack arranged pillows behind her so she would be more comfortable.

  “Do we really have to talk about this?” he said in an effort to head off what he was afraid would be a quarrel that would negate the peace they’d found in each other’s arms. “Can’t it just be what it was?”

  “What was it?” Holly asked.

  Jack sighed. “Sex, Holly. Damned good sex.”

  “All right,” she said.

  Jack frowned. That didn’t sound like the argumentative Holly he knew. “All right?”

  She smiled. “I agree. It was damned good sex.”

  Jack relaxed. “Now what?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I could use some supper. Followed by a good night’s sleep.”

  Jack felt relieved and delighted by Holly’s reply. “We’re already in bed. How would you feel about ordering a pizza?”

  “Sounds delicious. Pepperoni?”

  “Half mushroom, half pepperoni?” he countered.

  “There’s a coupon for half off by the phone in the kitchen,” she said.

  “I’ll order the pizza and get us something to drink while we’re waiting.” He got out of bed without thinking about his nakedness. He turned to Holly and said, “What would you like to…”

  He paused in mid-sentence, arrested by the look in his wife’s eyes as she surveyed his body—face, chest, waist, hips, genitals. He felt his body respond to the intensity of her gaze and watched her pupils dilate as the blood surged through his body, causing a powerful reaction.

  “What would you like?” he repeated in a voice hoarse with need.

  She met his gaze with the hint of a smile and said, “You?”

  “Let me order the pizza,” he replied with a grin. “Then I’ll see what I can do before it arrives.”

  “They deliver in thirty minutes or less.”

  He laughed. “I think I can manage that.” Then he sauntered from the room. It wasn’t until he hung up the phone after he’d ordered the pizza that he realized he was feeling happy. With his wife. Whom he was divorcing.

  And who was waiting for him in bed.

  Was he a bastard for making love to Holly when he still planned to leave her after this child was born? After all, they were still married. They still cared for each other. Loved each other, he amended. So where was the harm?

  The harm was that he would be hurt again when they separated at last. They had a long history together, which was both good and bad. Holly had already rejected him twice in his life. He wasn’t sure he could survive being forsaken for a third time.

  So don’t give her your heart.

  That was more complicated than it sounded, because the truth was, he didn’t think he’d gotten it back when he’d left her the last time.

  “Jack? Is the clock ticking yet?”

  He didn’t want to consider the past. Or think about the future. He just wanted to make love to his wife.

  “It’s just starting now, Holly,” he said as he headed down the hall. “Here I come, ready or not!”

  He heard her giggle like the girl he’d known a long time ago, as he launched himself onto the bed.

  28

  “What do you mean, you have to go to China?” Kate said as she watched Shaw pack his suitcase, which was laid out on his bed. She was pacing on the opposite side of the room.

  “I’ve been facilitating a construction project for the past six months. There’s a hitch and I need to be there.”

  “After telling me how dangerous J.D. is, you’re leaving us to fend for ourselves?” Kate said incredulously.

  “Bruce will keep an eye on the boys. I called Sergeant McKinley to ask him to watch over you.”

  “I would like to have been a fly on the wall when you had that conversation,” Kate muttered. “What did Jack say?”

  “He agreed to keep an eye on you, of cours
e.”

  “Of course. Can’t someone else do this for you?”

  He threw another crisply starched and folded white shirt into the suitcase and added a couple of silk ties. He stuck his hands on his hips and said, “Do you think I want to make this trip? I don’t have any choice.”

  “I understand you have to make money.”

  “It’s not about the money,” he snapped. “It’s about the political ramifications if I don’t follow through on my part of the bargain I made with the Chinese.”

  Kate didn’t understand why she felt so agitated. She should be glad Shaw was leaving. She should be glad to have this time to herself to think about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kate threw up her hands. “Of course you don’t.”

  He stalked around the foot of the bed, took her by the arms and said, “I’ll be back as quick as I can get here. If you’re worried, you and the boys can always take a few days off from school and from work and stay here.”

  “You know how I feel about that,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her to keep him at a distance.

  He pulled her into his embrace anyway. “Kate, please,” he murmured in her ear. “I’m going to be worried enough about all of you when I’m halfway around the world. Do me a favor and stay here at the compound.”

  “Then J.D. wins,” she said stubbornly.

  He pursed his lips as he looked into her eyes. “He certainly wins if he manages to explode a roadside bomb anywhere near where you are. Please, Kate, do this for me.”

  She nearly gave in. He sounded genuinely worried. Instead she said, “You have your job to do. I have mine. And I don’t want the twins to miss any more school.”

  He shook his head in defeat and let her go. “Fine. You do what you have to do.”

  “I will,” she said, suddenly feeling bereft.

  He closed the suitcase and dropped it on the floor.

  “When are you leaving?” she asked.

  “The Gulfstream is being serviced right now.”