Her eyes shimmered. “Sam—”
“Come on, honey. Don’t be tongue-tied now.”
“Don’t call me honey.”
“I suppose the endearment’s reserved for the good Dr. Wright now.”
“I’m not discussing Chad with you.”
“Why not? I think a husband should be able to discuss his wife’s lover, don’t you?”
Whitecaps frothed, then iced over. She looked incensed. “Chad is not my lover. And even if he were, it’d be no business of yours, because I am not your wife anymore!” Her voice rose.
Maybe in a few years he’d look back and find some humor in this. Like when he was dead in the ground about a hundred years.
He pushed to his feet and closed his hands over her shoulders, feeling her jump, before backing her to the doorway of his bedroom until she stood in the hall. He took his hands away from her and handed her the briefcase.
His wife.
The only woman he’d ever loved, and the only woman whose lack of trust in him had nearly killed him.
“Yes,” he said almost gently. “You are.”
Then he closed the door in her face.
Chapter 4
Delaney stared at the door for only a moment before she dumped her briefcase on the floor and reached for the handle.
But something inside her paused.
Could it be?
Her fingers curled against her palm.
No. Couldn’t be, she assured herself firmly and reached for the handle and turned it. She pushed the door inward, but couldn’t make herself take a step into the bedroom to save her soul.
Sam was sitting again on the foot of the bed. Hunched forward, muscles clearly defined under a satin layer of bronze skin. His arms were braced on his thighs, hands loose, relaxed, between. She met his unreadable dark eyes.
“I don’t believe you,” she said baldly. As if the words could make it so.
He merely quirked an eyebrow. “There’s a surprise.”
“What do you hope to gain by this pretense? It’s so easily disproved.”
“Then go ahead and do that, Delaney. Disprove it. You’ll need to before you pledge your troth to Do-Wright.”
“Leave Chad out of this.”
“Why? Seems he’s officially part of the threesome now.” His voice was mocking. “Like it or not, Delaney, you are—” his jaw tightened “—my wife.”
“I’ve got the papers that say otherwise!”
“Really. Well, I’ve got the papers that say the action was dismissed because of incomplete paperwork.”
“I had an attorney, Sam. He wouldn’t have made a mistake like that.”
He rose and it was like watching something dangerous uncoil. “Hope you don’t depend on him too often, then.” He slid open a drawer in his bureau and pulled out a thick manila envelope. “Read it and weep, darlin’.” He held it out to her.
She didn’t believe him. He was playing some sort of game for reasons known only to him.
Yet she found herself walking into his bedroom—not a smart place to be in the best of circumstances—to take the envelope.
“Takes only one paper to get married, but takes a stack two inches thick to get unmarried.”
She ignored his black comment as she unfastened the metal tab holding the envelope closed and slid out the contents. The same contents that were in the same size envelope her attorney had mailed her a year ago.
Only, you were such a basket case, you put the envelope in the closet without ever looking at it.
She rested the papers on Sam’s bureau. Her chest ached from the hard beat of her heart and she had to stare hard, read twice, to make sense of the cover letter.
And when she did, the bottom of her stomach seemed to drop out.
The judge had dismissed the petition because the filing had not been properly completed.
“Dismissed on a technicality,” Sam murmured behind her. “Seen it happen time and again in criminal cases.”
Delaney thrust back her hair and read the letter again. But of course the contents hadn’t magically changed just because she was on the verge of losing it.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“When? During our weekly telephone chats?”
Her lips tightened. Until that evening she hadn’t spoken with Sam since the day he’d moved out of their apartment. “You could have called.”
“You’re the one who filed, Delaney,” he reminded, and his even, reasonable tone set her teeth on edge. “Not me. When the time period the judge gave to correct the omissions passed and nothing happened, I figured that was your decision, too. Hope you didn’t pay your lawyer too much, though. Not that you’d miss it, with the Townsend family bank account at your disposal, but—”
“Stop it.” She whirled around to face him, managing to scatter the papers across the smooth wood surface. If she had used the Townsend attorney, none of this would be happening now. But she’d been determined to keep the matter in her control, and look at the results.
“Suppose you want to call Do-Wright.”
She started. Chad. The furthest person from her mind. “We’re still married.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re still married.”
“Are you shooting for the say-it-three-times-and-click-your-heels thing? It’s not going to change things, and there’s no Good Witch on Turnabout who can wave a magic wand.”
“How nice you find this amusing, Sam. What if I’d—”
“Already walked the white carpet with Do-Wright?” The corner of his lip lifted. “Would have put an interesting title behind your name. Might have caused some curiosity with your colleagues. Bigamy—”
“Stop!” She launched herself at him, pushing at his chest. Some part of her sane self watched on in horror. “Can’t you take anything seriously for once?”
He’d barely swayed from her attack. “I take plenty of things seriously,” he assured. “Just not you marrying Chad Wright. What the hell were you thinking, Delaney? He gives bland new meaning. He’ll bore you to tears.”
“He’s not boring, he’s calm.”
“He’s a wimp and you’ll walk all over him.”
“We’re in perfect accord with our plans.”
“Which include what? Working side by side seventy hours of the week? Hell, baby, you already did that without being married to him.”
She mentally dragged herself back from being drawn further into a verbal battle. “There’s no point in rehashing the past.”
“Particularly when there was never any initial hashing.”
“We communicated,” she defended.
“We argued and we made love. Two things we did supremely well.” His gaze dropped to her lips. “Can you say the same about Do-Wright?”
She felt the flush rise in her cheeks and damned the fact that it had more to do with the way he looked at her than anything else. “I’ve already said that Chad and I aren’t lovers. I refuse to let you beat me over the head with that.”
“Engaged, thinking you were free to marry, and you two never slept together?” His eyebrow rose. “You’ve been colleagues since before you and I even met four years ago, and you’ve never…” He shook his head. “Doesn’t that make you wonder, just a little, Delaney? I mean the guy does like women, doesn’t he? He’s milquetoast compared to you. How do you think he’ll react when he finds out that under your sleek, refined exterior, you’re a firecracker in bed?”
She slapped him. Then stared at the outline of her hand on his cheek with shock.
The corner of his lip kicked up. “And you always preach that violence is never the answer.”
“You’re despicable.”
“Maybe. But I’m right, and you know it.”
“What does it matter to you, anyway, Sam? It’s not as if you want to be married to me. You left, remember? Walked out, taking hardly anything but the clothes on your back with you. And you didn’t just leave me. You left your job. You left the state, for Go
d’s sake. I only found out that you’d come here because my father checked the precinct for me to see what forwarding address you’d left!”
And hadn’t that been a humiliating experience? Her father had made no secret that he blamed her for Sam’s departure. But then, her dad was good at blaming her. She’d known perfectly well that he preferred Sam’s company to her own.
“Missed me, did you?”
“I’m going to bed,” she said flatly. “Alone,” she added before he could make some comment. “And tomorrow I’ll get off this island even if I have to swim to do it.” She turned on her heel and strode from the room, slamming the door behind her.
He was impossible. He’d always been impossible. She made her living working with people. She believed that nobody was a lost cause, that the mind and the emotions of a person were never beyond hope.
But Sam was…Sam.
And being a psychiatrist hadn’t gotten her any closer to understanding him than it had to understanding herself.
“Impossible,” she muttered, grabbing her briefcase again and hurrying into the guest room, closing—and locking—that door. Just in case.
She wished she could lock the door on her memories just as easily, but they pushed in on her relentlessly.
“What are you doing here?” Catcher Dan’s was her dad’s favorite tavern. Though the department had given him a formal retirement dinner, it was here that the boys and girls in blue were giving Captain Randall Townsend his true sendoff. Whether her dad expected it or not, Delaney felt she should be there. What she hadn’t expected was to see Detective Vega there, as well.
He wasn’t wearing a suit, for once. The dozen times she’d seen him since he’d first come to her office seeking information about a patient of hers he’d been in a suit and tie, albeit a loosened tie.
Now he wore blue jeans that fit obscenely well and a Hawaiian print shirt. Untucked.
He had his index finger wrapped around a sweating longneck beer. He tilted the bottle in greeting. It was marginally more polite than her greeting had been.
“Everybody wants to send off the captain,” he said, leaning toward her so she could hear him over the din.
Delaney sat back as far as the mahogany bar behind her would allow. It was one thing to square off with the man across her desk or a judge’s chambers. Another entirely to be cramped together in a bar that ought to be closed down for exceeding the maximum occupancy. “You’ve never come to his parties before.” Not Randall’s birthday celebration. Not the departmental holiday celebrations.
Sam’s lips tilted. He leaned forward again. Just a few inches. Just enough to make her blood rush a little faster.
“Didn’t know you were missing me,” he said. He reached past her, setting his beer on the bar. He left his hand propped on the curved wood.
Delaney felt surrounded by him.
It wasn’t altogether unpleasant. The whiff of his aftershave was rather like getting a first breath of ocean wind. Faintly spicy. Decidedly fresh. She buried her nose in her wineglass, acknowledging his comment with a noncommittal nod.
His head dipped close to hers again. “When are you going to have dinner with me?”
He hadn’t asked her that since the first day they’d met two years ago. She’d refused. Had considered him judgmental and unfeeling. And had definitely held his profession against him. He was a cop. She didn’t need more cops in her life. “I don’t date.”
“Wasn’t asking for a date. Just dinner.”
She smiled, despite herself. “The difference being?”
“Professional.”
Her smile died. “If you’re seeking a therapist, go through the department. If you’re talking about my sessions with Alonso Petrofski—” She realized his eyes were smiling. “Oh. You’re—”
“Joking. Yeah. We’ve battled enough over Petrofski in the past two years. This is supposed to be a retirement celebration. You don’t look very celebratory.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She smiled even more cheerfully and lifted her glass. “Celebrating away.”
His lashes were thick. Spiky. Longer than her own. He really was attractive in a dark, intense way. She felt the warmth of his gaze on her face and lifted her glass again, draining it far too quickly.
“Why don’t you?”
Her head felt a little muzzy. Cigar smoke, loud laughter, louder music, and too hastily drunk wine. She hardly even realized that it was she who leaned closer to him to be heard. “Why don’t I what?”
“Date.”
She turned her head to look up at him, only to find his face mere inches from hers. She swallowed. Her heart thumped a crazy little beat. Lord. A tilt of her chin and she could press her lips to his.
In the far reaches of her mind, she heard a burst of applause. As if the universe were cosmically urging her to do just that.
Then she realized the cheering was for the retiring Captain Townsend. Her face felt hot as she leaned back again. There hadn’t really been such a small distance between her and Sam, she assured herself.
She focused her attention on her father, who was standing front and center on the tiny dais in the corner of the bar. He was tall, his blond hair graying into elegant silver. He held a mug of beer in one hand and a cigar in the other and he was grinning, even though Delaney knew the last thing in the world her father wanted to do was retire from the force.
He waved down the cheers and chatter.
Sam drew his finger along Delaney’s arm.
She swallowed and focused harder on her father’s hale-and-hearty speech. She knew the drill. She was the captain’s daughter; his only remaining family since the death of her brother more than a decade earlier. Any minute now he’d throw out his arm and invite her up there with him. And she’d tilt her glass to him, give him a kiss and share a joke—God knew what—about how great it would be having him around more.
Sam’s finger drifted over her wrist.
She drew in a much-needed breath and slid off the bar stool. Looked at him, listening to her father with half an ear.
There was something uncommonly still about Sam, she decided. And yet something excruciatingly alive in his gaze.
Then her father’s words penetrated. “…all of us raise a toast to the one person I wish could have been here tonight. My son, Randy.”
More cheers. More drinking. Captain Randall Townsend stepped off the dais and was immediately surrounded by his backslapping well-wishers.
Delaney stood there. Her eyes prickled. Her throat burned. The wine she’d consumed rose.
Sam wrapped his arm around her waist and somehow she found herself standing outside, gulping in great gasps of chilly night air.
“Here.” Sam pushed a glass—she didn’t know from where—into her hand. “Drink.”
The sidewalk seemed to undulate beneath her feet. “I’ve had enough to drink. More than enough.”
“It’s water.”
She drank. When the squat glass was empty, she cradled it in her palm, staring down.
“Better?”
“Yes.” No. But at least she didn’t feel in danger of losing her lunch anymore.
“What was that all about in there?”
She stared harder into the empty glass. Maybe if she stared hard enough, the tears burning behind her eyes wouldn’t fall. “My father’s retiring,” she stated the obvious.
He took the glass from her and set it on the stoop. There was a collection of other glasses already there. Before the bar closed, they’d be cleared away. Then he folded her hands in his. “A fact that causes you tears?”
Simple human contact. It was definitely underrated. What else could stir the words to her mouth? “There are two things my father has loved,” she said huskily. “His son and his career. Now he’s losing the second thing, as well.”
Sam’s thumbs moved over the backs of her hands. Warmth seeped into her cold fingers. “I’d heard the captain lost a son a long time ago. What happened?”
Cold again
. “You want the official version, or my father’s?”
“Yours.”
“It was an automobile accident. The car went off an embankment.” She looked up at him. Felt the intensity of his dark brown gaze right through to her bones.
Even though she knew she could stop with just that much information, she continued, “He died. I didn’t.” The words were bald, but they held the bottom line.
She couldn’t bring herself to admit she’d been arguing with Randy, begging him to pull over so she could drive. That she’d tracked him down at a fraternity party, dragged him out minutes before the party was raided by cops from her dad’s own precinct. If she’d left alone, he’d have been arrested like his frat brothers instead of behind the wheel of his car that she’d jumped into, still trying to “save” him from himself.
If she’d left him alone, the accident would never have happened.
After a moment Sam exhaled. He let go of her hands only to tuck her hand through the crook of his arm. It was a courtly gesture. “Come on.”
She realized she’d walked half a block with him before it occurred to her to ask where they were going.
“My place.”
She absorbed that. Felt acutely aware that he waited for her to tell him no. Just as acutely aware that he wasn’t pressing or persuading. That he would accept her answer, either way.
That he was the only one in an entire room of her dad’s cronies—people she’d had surrounding her nearly all of her life—who’d noticed that she was at all affected by her father’s speech.
She curled her fingers more closely against the curve of Sam’s bicep. Her heart skittered around inside her chest.
And they continued walking.
The door vibrated at her back, and the past slid back into the past. Delaney blinked, staring across at the bed that she’d made with sheets she’d found in a hall linen closet. They’d been neatly folded. Smelling fresh. She’d been unable to stop her speculation of who’d done Sam’s laundry because he’d never been known to do it before. Then she’d sat out on the deck, waiting for him to reappear, wondering if he would reappear.
The door vibrated again. She turned and yanked it open after fumbling with the lock, too many emotions to decipher tangling inside her. “What?” She glared up at Sam. Sam, four years older than when they’d first met, barely two years older than that night outside Catcher Dan’s when their relationship took a fateful turn. But he was no less disturbing. With or without his shirt. And he still smelled faintly of a wild ocean breeze.
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