Troubleshooters 05 Into The Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He laughed. "No. I just thought I could no longer be surprised by American ways and—" He looked at her, looked at Haley, who was slowing down, her eyes drifting shut. "You're beautiful and she's beautiful and... it's beautiful to watch. I don't know why most of the world insists on hiding such a beautiful thing."

  "Because most men can't seem to grasp the idea that breasts were put on this earth for something other than their own personal pleasure," she said. "They can't walk past a woman breast-feeding a baby without getting a woody. So we have to keep ourselves covered up because of their problem. Oh, shoot, I'm leaking on the other side." Dammit, she'd ruined another shirt. By the time she got home, the milk would have stained.

  "A woody," he said. He laughed. "I think I know what that means. I've never heard it called that, but..." He laughed again. "And this is something you're comfortable talking about with a man who's not your husband?"

  "I think of you as a friend," she told him. "Friends say whatever they want to each other, don't they? If you want, I'll watch what I say. I just thought—'

  "No," he said. "I don't want you to watch what you say. I'm just... aware of how differently we were raised by our parents, you and I."

  "Yeah, well, my mother was too busy fucking anyone who brought home a bottle of gin to raise me. My sister raised me." She didn't want to talk about that again. "What's with your brothers? They're not very nice."

  Ihbraham sighed. "It's ugly. It's ... We inherited my father's business—a car dealership—when he died. I don't want to work with them, but they want me to come back because the business is jointly owned with our uncle and cousins. If I come back, we'll have control. It's foolish and petty and they shouldn't have come looking for me." He muttered something in that funny language. "But I guess they're angry, and now I am, too. A perfect situation, huh?"

  "They said something about me, didn't they?"

  He glanced at her. "Yes, they did. It was not kind and I will not repeat it. They're fools."

  Haley had definitely crashed. Mary Lou gently pulled her nipple free from the baby's mouth, and put her on her shoulder. The trick now was to get her to burp without waking her up. She rubbed Haley's back. Come on, baby...

  "So that was this guy Bob, huh?" Ihbraham asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.

  "That was Bob." A burp. And Haley slept on. Alleluia! "Cute, huh?"

  "Cute?"

  "Handsome, I mean."

  "Ah. Is that what you think?"

  "Definitely. What do you think?"

  "I think he's up to no good," Ihbraham told her. "I think you should be careful. His being here was no coincidence. I think he is... what is it called? Stalking you."

  She had to laugh. "You know, he said the exact same thing about you. Here, would you... ?"

  She held Haley out so that he could take the baby from her. It wasn't easy to do, but the alternative was to sit there with her boob hanging out.

  "How could I be stalking you when you are the one who comes outside to see me?" he asked. His hands were so dark against Haley's fair skin.

  Mary Lou pulled down her bra, and then examined the damage done to the other side of her shirt. It looked as if she'd dipped the tip of her breast into a cup of water. So much for getting ice cream. She wasn't going anywhere looking like that.

  "Maybe you're just such a good stalker that you're able to lure me to you without me knowing it," she said.

  He laughed. "Ah. Of course."

  "Or maybe I'm stalking you."

  "Feel free to continue," he said. "I'm enjoying it very much."

  If anyone else had said it, it would have been creepy. Or heavy with innuendo. But combined with Ihbraham's wide smile and warm eyes, it was simply nice.

  He was terribly nice—much nicer than she was. "I'm sorry I lied, you know, about you being my sponsor. I just... I..."

  "I know why you said it," he said quietly. "There's no need to explain."

  "You could be, you know. My sponsor, I mean. You're already doing everything that Rene used to do. More, actually."

  But he was shaking his head. "I can't."

  "Sure you can." She loved the idea—it was brilliant. Why hadn't she thought of it earlier? "It would be perfect—"

  "No," he said, his voice almost as sharp as it had been when he spoke to his brothers. Haley jumped and he spoke more softly so as not to wake her. "I'm sorry. But it's not possible. Not at all."

  Embarrassed, Mary Lou stood up, scooping Haley from his arms. "Well, I have to go. I won't trouble you anymore tonight then."

  He sighed. "You're no trouble to me, Mary Lou. I would like very much to help you but..."

  She waited for him to finish, but he just shook his head.

  "Just think about it, okay? Don't say no right now," she said, stopping him from speaking. "Sleep on it for a day or two, please?"

  He was shaking his head again, but he didn't say a word.

  "I do have to go. Sam'll be home soon." Maybe. "And I really should get Haley into bed."

  Ihbraham stood up and walked her the few feet to her car, folding the stroller as she put Haley into the car seat.

  She used her new key to unlock the trunk. "Thanks for copying this for me," she told him, holding up the key.

  "It was no trouble," he said.

  "See you tomorrow," she said as she got into her car and headed for home.

  Chapter 18

  The call on his cell phone came a fall forty minutes after Muldoon had expected it.

  It was Joan. "Are you decent?" she asked without even saying hello.

  "Uh, yeah." God, what did she think he was doing in here with Brooke?

  "Good," she said, "because there are about fifteen people standing in the hallway outside the door."

  "Well, what are you waiting for? Come on in."

  "The night lock's been thrown."

  Brooke must've done that when they first came back to her room. "Sorry," he said. "I'll unlock it." He closed his phone as he pulled the door open and...

  Joan hadn't been kidding. A busload of people filed past him and into the suite's sitting room.

  "Where's Brooke?" Joan's boss Myra asked.

  "She's in the bedroom," he told her. "She, uh, well, she passed out, I guess."

  "I don't guess it, I know it." Myra vanished into the other room.

  Joan was one of the last inside, and she looked at him and laughed, shaking her head in what sure looked a hell of a lot like derision. "Good job keeping Brooke from drinking too much."

  "I tried to keep her away from the bar," he said as evenly as he could, considering how angry he was. How dare she look at him like that after throwing him to the wolves the way she had? "But she had a way of getting the bar to come to her. Besides, she was drunk before we even went downstairs. You can't even remotely blame that on me."

  "I'm not blaming you," she said. "I'm just ... disappointed. I hope you had fun, Lieutenant, because welcome to the part of the evening that's not going to be so enjoyable."

  He honestly doubted that it could get much worse.

  She joined the others in the sitting room, and Muldoon closed the door. And caught sight of himself in the entryway mirror.

  His hair looked as if he'd spent most of the past hour in that bed with Brooke. His uniform wasn't just rumpled. He'd actually re-buttoned his jacket one button off all the way down. And—oh, shit!—there were actually lipstick stains in some extremely risqué places.

  "Lieutenant Muldoon, will you please join us?" Myra was back in the sitting room, having dispatched some of the others into the bedroom with Brooke.

  He smoothed down his hair and hurriedly re-buttoned his jacket. There was nothing he could do about the lipstick, except stand with his hands clasped in front of him and pray that they invited him to sit down quickly.

  "Please have a seat," Myra commanded, thank God, and he did.

  Joan was on the other side of the room, on the same sofa he'd sat on just a few hours ago. She had a legal pad with
her, and her full attention was focused on whatever it was that she was jotting down.

  "We'd like to issue a statement to the press," Myra told him, "about your relationship with Brooke. We'd like to make public the fact that you and the President's daughter are in the middle of a long-term, committed relationship."

  "But we're not."

  "Actually, what we'd like to do is announce your engagement," Myra said.

  Muldoon laughed. "Yeah, right." But holy shit, she wasn't kidding. And Joan ... Joan still wasn't looking at him. "You guys want me to marry Brooke? I mean, I know what it probably looked like, but I didn't... I mean, I stayed because I didn't want to leave her alone after she... But honestly, we didn't even—"

  "Relax, Lieutenant," Myra said. "Of course we don't expect you to marry her. We just want to announce that you intend to get married—let the public know that the dress off the balcony was Brooke's way of celebrating her powerful feelings for you."

  "Except there's a videotape of her speech to that senator-—"

  "Apparently the audio track didn't record until the very end," Myra told him. "All they have of the first part is video, and you better believe that the part of that video they're going to show on the news—over and over as many times as they possibly can—is Brooke taking off her dress and you throwing her over your shoulder like a caveman, carrying her into her hotel room."

  "First of all, it was a fireman's hold and ..." Muldoon shook his head. They weren't interested in what happened after he'd pulled the curtains, only what was to come, because in their book, they all assumed they knew what had happened here tonight. Still... "This is crazy." He needed to state it at least once for the record. "I didn't sleep with her. I didn't have any sexual contact with her at all." He looked at Joan. Surely she'd believe him.

  But when Joan looked back at him, her eyes were decidedly cool. "Myra, Lieutenant Muldoon is going to need a clean pair of pants before he leaves tonight. Shall I see about getting that for him?"

  "Please do," Myra said.

  Joan rose from her seat and, dialing her cell phone, she headed out of the room.

  "Our plan is to announce the engagement, then have you appear in public with Brooke regularly over the next few months," Myra continued. "We've already started preliminary arrangements for you to be transferred to the East Coast, to a SEAL team out of Little Creek."

  "What?"

  "And in a few months, after things die down a bit, we'll announce that the engagement's off."

  No way, no how, absolutely not. But Muldoon didn't have to put it in those terms, because he could not for the life of him imagine Brooke ever agreeing to this farce. "I think you might want to run this idea past Brooke," he said as evenly as he possibly could.

  Joan came back in. "Pants in ten," she reported as she sat back down.

  "Dick is with Brooke right now, talking to her," Myra told Muldoon.

  "Dick is done talking to her," the man said, coming out into the sitting room. "She's too out of it to reason with. We're going to have to wait until the morning, see what she says in the sober light of day."

  "But as of right now, it's a no, right?" Muldoon persisted. "I've got to tell you, it's still going to be a no in the morning. I don't think she likes me very much."

  "It's not just a no, it's a hell no," Dick agreed.

  "What exactly did she say?" Myra asked.

  Dick shook his head. "She's drunk. She's incoherent."

  A female aide stepped forward. "I believe her exact words were, 'There's no way in hell I'm going to spend two hours let alone two months with a man who can't even get it up.' "

  Dick winced. "Thank you, Deb. That was probably not necessary to repeat."

  Muldoon laughed, but no one in the room was looking' at him. Everyone was suddenly intensely preoccupied with a spot on the rag or on the wall. They didn't actually believe that he was... Did they?

  God, even Joan was staring at her shoe.

  "Just in case you were wondering, that's not true," Muldoon said.

  "Of course it's not," Myra said much too quickly. It was transparently obvious that she was humoring him.

  This was a lose-lose situation—the more he protested, the less they would believe him.

  Joan stood up. "I think we've abused Lieutenant Muldoon enough for one night."

  "All right," Myra decided. "We'll meet in the morning."

  "No," Muldoon said. "I'm done here. I'm not transferring anywhere. And I'm not lying to the American public for two months. I'm sorry, I'm as big a supporter of President Bryant as anyone, but I'm not going to do that. Brooke is one messed up, incredibly unhappy woman, and playing games like this, covering up her embarrassments—that's not helping her at all."

  "He's right," Joan said. "A lot of people heard what Brooke said on that balcony tonight. Just because we don't have audio doesn't mean the real story won't break—'

  "God!" Muldoon couldn't stand it. "Tell the truth because it's the truth—not because you know you'll be caught in a lie." He looked directly at Joan right before he went out the door, lipstick stains be damned. "You should be ashamed of yourselves."

  The Ladybug Lounge was quiet for a Saturday night. Sam sat at the bar, watching Cosmo play pool with a pah" of college girls who weren't much older than Mary Lou had been when he'd first laid eyes on her. Laid eyes on her and laid her—all within the span of a few short hours. All in an attempt to exorcise the ghost of the woman he really wanted to be with.

  Sam nursed his beer, knowing he was going to have to go home when he finished it, knowing he was going to have to bring up this most unpleasant subject. Hey, I've been thinking, and this marriage thing really isn't working out.

  Mary Lou would start to cry.

  Jesus.

  He'd done some impossibly hard things in his life, including becoming a SEAL and then making the leap from enlisted to officer. Fuck, that had been a battle all the way. Forget about the fact that his job was filled with kill-or-be-killed scenarios that he'd faced without blinking. Yet here he was, nearly shitting in his pants at the thought of going home and telling a five-foot-three-inch woman the bitter, unhappy truth.

  He didn't love her. He'd never loved her. He was never going to love her.

  He should have married her purely to provide prenatal care for her from his health plan. He should have made it clear right from the start that they were not going to live together as husband and wife, and that they were going to divorce right after the baby was born. Yes, he'd pay both alimony and child support, but the fact was that he couldn't marry her for real because he didn't love her.

  He loved someone else.

  Christ, he was a stupid fool to think that love didn't matter, that it was a luxury that a man could learn to live without. That it was an extra—a bonus if you found it, a double plus if you actually managed to make it work.

  He'd fucked up royally, assuming that he could actually make his marriage to Mary Lou into something real even though there was no love between them. He'd hurt Mary Lou; he'd hurt Haley who, although she was still tiny, no doubt felt the tension in the house; he'd hurt himself; and, maybe worst of all, he'd hurt Alyssa.

  And he had hurt Alyssa. He knew that was true, despite her rapid rebound and her current perfect-seeming love affair with that perfect fucker Max. The look on her face as Sam had told her he was marrying Mary Lou was one he'd carry with him to his grave.

  Sam sighed.

  Muldoon—who was sitting several seats down the bar— sighed, too. What a misery fest. He sat with his head in his hands, drinking beer cut with lemonade—a habit he'd picked up during time spent in Germany.

  He'd said nothing when he'd arrived, even though Sam and Cosmo had been playing pool at the time. He waved off their offer for him to take on the winner and sat down at the bar, where he still sat.

  "If you're looking to get drunk, that's not going to do it," Sam had said to Muldoon two beers ago, after the coeds attacked and he'd retreated back to the bar himself.
<
br />   "Believe me, sir," Muldoon had replied, "I'm not looking to get drunk."

  "Didn't go too well tonight, huh?" Sam had sat down about four stools away from Muldoon, careful not to get too close. Sometimes misery needed a whole lot of elbow room.

  Muldoon looked up at him. "It was a total goatfuck."

  That had been the first time Sam had ever heard little Mikey use the F-word, even in that context. He'd worked hard not to react—to drop his beer bottle or fall to the floor in a dead faint. Instead he'd cleared his throat, wishing he was better at this. "You want to talk about—"

  "No."

  Sam knew when to shut the fuck up, and that had been definitely one of those times.

  Over at the pool table now, Cosmo was staunchly ignoring some pretty obvious body language that those two girls were giving him. If he wanted to, he wasn't going to go home alone tonight. But it sure as hell seemed as if he didn't want to. Although, really, who knew what went on inside of Cosmo's head. Maybe he was purposely playing hard to get.

  Across the room, the main entrance opened and...

  "Mike," Sam said. "Heads up."

  Muldoon looked over his shoulder and saw Joan DaCosta picking her way through the little tables that dotted the floor, heading directly toward him. Shaking his head, he turned back around. "Shit," he said on a sigh, closing his eyes briefly.

  Muldoon's giving her his back didn't slow down Joan. In fact, she slid onto the barstool next to him and ordered a glass of white wine from the bartender.

  She waited until it was delivered, until after she took a sip, to speak.

  "Are you okay?" she asked Muldoon.

  "Me? Yeah, I'm just great. Thanks."

  Whoa, sarcasm coming from the King of Polite. This was a night full of firsts. Sam knew he shouldn't be listening and he tried to focus his attention on the pool table.

  "I'm really sorry," Joan said to Muldoon, loudly enough so that Sam couldn't help but overhear. "About everything."

  "Fine," he said. "Apology accepted. Conversation over."

  She was silent then, but only for a minute or two. "I'm pretty sure I owe you a bigger apology than that," she said. "At least an explanation. I really feel awful—"