Who Do You Love?

by Maggie Shayne

  She looked a little afraid but mostly excited as she lowered her foot to the floor, got to her feet and, taking Jack’s hand, limped to the patio doors.

  Chapter 4

  Jack walked with her onto the patio, where some of the party guests milled around, sipping drinks from cut-crystal glasses. Grace leaned on him, but she was the one leading the way. They moved slowly to the farthest corner from the house, and down the steps to the ground below. The beautiful people glanced their way, but no one made comment. This was the golden child of Harrison Phelps and one of the men from his group of chosen ones. At least, that must be how it appeared to them. So what could they say?

  They took a path lined in white gravel, and the moment they were out of sight, Grace’s mysterious limp vanished. She stopped leaning on him and walked easily, sending him a mischievous smile.

  “You never fooled me for a minute, you know,” he said, his voice low, his body at odds with his mind. Hell, he knew she was too good for any kind of fling, and he also knew anything more was impossible. She wasn’t cut out to be a cop’s wife. Hell, they’d had seminars on this kind of stuff. The divorce rate, the depression rate, the suicide rate. But Jack didn’t need seminars. His father had been a cop. And he’d watched the stress and the strain of that reality slowly wear away at his mother, making her old, making her hard long before her time. And his mother had been tough. Strong, cut from burlap…not silk, like Grace Phelps.

  Yet, here was Grace, looking up at him with eyes bluer than the sky…waiting for him to…kiss her.

  Yeah. That was it, no doubt. She’d stopped walking, and was leaning now with her back against a flowering apple tree, all in blossom. The smell of the flowers was intoxicating and heavy and sweet. Little paper petals of white with a touch of pink tinting them at the edges. Growing in bunches, and raining down like confetti every time one of them moved.

  And Jack thought for the thousandth time that he was only human. So he leaned in, and he kissed her. She slid her arms around his neck, and she kissed him back. And he fought with everything in him to keep it sweet and tender. No tongue, no grinding of hips, though damn, how he wanted to add those elements. She wasn’t like that, though. She was crystal glasses and he was paper cups. She was as pristine and delicate as one of the petals that drifted to the ground around them. Still, her body pressed to his, and his to hers, and his arms held her tight, and he kissed her long and slow amid a shower of apple blossom petals.

  And it was just like magic.

  A month later Jack sat in the Five-Alarm Diner on Main, across from his partner of more than a decade, and he broke the news.

  “What do you mean, you’re quitting?” JW sat there looking at him as if he’d grown a second head.

  “Look, I can’t start out married life with a lie this big hanging between us. I just can’t.”

  “No, you’re right. You can’t. So tell her, Einstein. Tell her you’re a cop.”

  Jack shook his head slowly. “She couldn’t handle it.”

  “I think you’re underestimating her.”

  “Look, what makes you think I want to be a cop all my life, anyway? Huh?” He averted his eyes when he said it. “The way Harry Phelps has things set up, I can practically pick a job and name the salary.”

  JW sipped his coffee, then set the cup carefully in its saucer. He ran a hand over his widening bald spot and the thick dark hair that surrounded it like a horseshoe. He sighed. “You don’t want to work for your father-in-law, Jack. Believe me, it’s not—”

  “I wouldn’t be working for my father-in-law. He has friends. Tons of them. They like me.”

  “You mean, they like the guy they think is you. Jack McCain, security consultant, the guy with the expensive suits and shiny shoes that are costing you every bit of your paycheck. They don’t even know the real Jack McCain, the cop who spends ten hours a day with the scum of the earth.” JW shook his head. “And come to think of it, neither does your bride-to-be.”

  Jack faced him slowly. “That’s right. And she never will.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Jack.”

  “She’s worth it, JW. I don’t want this garbage touching her. I’ve seen what it can do. My mother—” He bit his lip, cut himself off. “I just don’t. You understand?”

  JW nodded. Sighed heavily, rolled his eyes, but nodded.

  “I knew I could count on you.”

  “Yeah. You always could.”

  “I’ll, uh, be needing a best man.”

  JW lifted his head. “Do I have to use a pseudonym?”

  “Knock it off.”

  “So how long before I get the incomparable joy of breaking in a new partner, buddy?”

  Jack licked his lips. This had been the toughest conversation of his life. But at least this part of it wasn’t going to feel like a betrayal. “Not until we bag, tag and deliver that scurvy little dealer, JW. I won’t bail on you in the middle of a case this big.”

  Jack could almost see his partner slump a little bit as the air left his lungs. Relief. But then JW frowned. “How the hell you gonna manage that? The wedding’s in two weeks!”

  “Doesn’t matter. As much as I hate to lie to Grace…it would be worse to walk out in the middle of this. No. I’ll stay on until we wrap it.”

  Jack had been having nightmares. Of course he hadn’t told anyone. Who could he tell, anyway? Not Grace; she didn’t know the truth. And certainly not JW, since he was the one getting blown away by some punk who thought himself a kingpin in the recurring dream that had been haunting Jack since he’d made this decision.

  He didn’t know if the dream meant anything. He only knew he couldn’t walk out on his partner in the middle of a case this volatile, because it could happen. And Jack couldn’t live with that.

  “What do you mean, you’re quitting?”

  Charlie sat on the foot of Gracie’s bed, gaping at her. Hope sat on the far edge, and Grace was curled at the head, pillows pulled around her as if she needed something to cling to.

  “He is marrying a delicate, society miss, not a jock who spends way too much time at a smelly gym on the bad side of town, Charlie.” Grace sighed, lowering her head. “Besides, all that stuff was…childish. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a grownup. I’m going to be a wife…and a mother, eventually. I mean, how many mothers do you know with black belts, anyway?”

  “Not nearly enough,” Charlie said.

  “But…but Grace, what about basketball?” Hope asked.

  Grace shrugged at her sister. “What about it? I played on a college team. College is over. It’s not even an issue.”

  “Well, of course it’s an issue. Grace, you’re good. You love the sport too much to just…just let it go. What about those kids, huh?”

  “What kids?” Then Grace’s brows went up. “You mean, those girls from the gym? How the hell do you know about them, Hope?”

  Hope looked guilty. “One of them called for you yesterday while you were out. And we…talked.”

  Grace got to her feet, taking a pillow with her and flinging it to the floor. “How did those kids get this number? Good grief, what if Mom had answered the phone?”

  Charlie picked up the pillow, plumped it and settled it back on the bed. “You need to stop being so afraid of what your mother might think, Grace. You gotta be honest. Those girls were starting to depend on you.”

  “I didn’t ask for that,” Grace said, battling a surge of guilt. “I was just trying to be nice, giving them some pointers when they showed up at the gym.”

  “Yeah, and then they started showing up three times a week, same as you, just like clockwork. And you started ‘giving them pointers’ for an hour before you went about your business every single time.”

  “So?”

  “So, you were coaching them, Grace. Maybe it wasn’t official, and maybe you were never asked, but that’s what you were doing. And you know it, and I know it.”

  Lowering her head, Grace closed her eyes. “Maybe…I can keep going down th
ere a couple of times a week…for the girls.”

  Hope smiled. “You should, Grace. I don’t think those kids have much else to look forward to.”

  “Yeah, and I think you were enjoying it as much as they were,” Charlie put in.

  Grace nodded. “Yeah, I guess I was. Besides, Jack doesn’t have to know about it.”

  Hope looked at Charlie and rolled her eyes.

  “Stop it,” Grace said. “You guys just aren’t getting it, are you? I love this man. I love him.”

  “So you love him! So what? Does that mean you have to lie to him?” Charlie demanded.

  “I am not lying to him!”

  “You are so!” Charlie snapped.

  “Grace, she’s right,” Hope whispered, putting her soft, perfectly manicured hand over Grace’s. “You can’t start out married life pretending to be something you’re not.”

  “That’s just it. I’m not pretending. I’m…I’m changing.” Grace paced the room slowly, turned and paced back. “I can be the kind of woman Jack thinks I am. The kind he fell in love with. I know I can. And it’ll be fine. I promise you guys, it’ll be just fine.”

  Charlie sighed, lowering her head and shaking it slowly. “Where did I go wrong?” she muttered.

  “I blame myself,” Hope said.

  “Knock it off, you two. We’ve got tons more to do than discuss my retirement from sports, at the moment. I’m getting married in two weeks.”

  Hope sighed, ignoring her sister’s attempt to change the subject. “He’d love you, anyway, you know. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That he wouldn’t?”

  Grace stared at her sister for a long moment, struck by how hard she’d hit the mark. Their mother’s love had always been conditional. Be what she wanted, act the way she wanted, do what she expected, and you would be showered in her love. Yet always, always, both girls had kept parts of themselves hidden away, secret, out of fear they would lose that love if they revealed themselves to be less than the image their mother demanded. Grace had led a double life, and she sensed Hope, too, was hiding more than anyone knew.

  But understanding why she felt the way she did certainly did nothing to change the feeling or make it go away. Jack had fallen in love with the belle of the ball that night. With the elegance and grace she’d had to practice for hours to pull off with any degree of success. He was always telling her how sweet she was, how delicate and pure. Those were the qualities he loved in her. And she loved him so much…he was the only man she’d ever felt this way about.

  No. She couldn’t risk everything, not now.

  She wouldn’t.

  Two weeks later she stood near the swan pond on the grounds of her parents’ home and vowed to love, honor and respect the man who’d stolen her heart. And he promised to do the same in return. When he kissed her, her heart melted and her blood warmed.

  And it was all pretty much downhill from there.

  Chapter 5

  Grace had bought a naughty black teddy, all but transparent, with garters and lace and a built-in push-up bra—and a pair of high-heeled slippers with fuzzy tufts of black at the toes. She had even packed them.

  But she couldn’t wear them. Oh, she might fantasize about slinking across the hotel room while Jack’s eyeballs popped. But he wasn’t like that.

  He was…above that kind of carnal decadence. It must have been bred out of him, or trained out of him, but either way, he was above it. A gentleman. His every touch, every kiss, had always been gentle, respectful, careful.

  And he thought she was some kind of an angel.

  So, with a sigh of reluctance and a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach, Grace stuffed the black lace back into the very bottom of her suitcase, and she put on the long, white satin nightgown instead. It was sexy, too, but in a clean, virginal-bride sort of way.

  She was no virgin bride. He was going to know that, but he would be too much of a gentleman to ask about it.

  She almost wished he would. A spark of jealousy, a burst of anger, would reassure her somehow. Because though she loved him, and she knew he loved her, there seemed to have been something missing in their relationship so far.

  Passion.

  Jack tapped on the bathroom door. “Are you all right in there, Grace?”

  Closing her eyes, she shook away her foolish notions. It was wedding-night jitters and nothing more. “Fine, darling. I’ll be right out.”

  She looked one last time at the suitcase that held her hidden fantasies tucked away in the bottom. Then she closed the lid with a decisive click and, turning, opened the door.

  Jack smiled gently when she did. His eyes skimmed lower, to her feet, and up again, and he said, “You look like an angel.” With one hand, he stroked her outer arm, shoulder to wrist. “Almost too beautiful to touch.”

  Not exactly the reaction she’d been hoping for.

  They had never made love before. Jack had never even suggested it, but Grace had seen fleeting, all-too-brief glimpses of the fire buried deep inside him once or twice. When their kisses had become heated, when she’d forgotten for an instant the role she was supposed to be playing. She’d told herself he was holding his passion inside because he was a gentleman and because he respected her enough to want to wait until they were married. She’d told herself it would be loosed tonight. That his restraint, so obvious she could feel it tugging at him every time they touched, would fall away. That he would take her to the very heights of ecstasy tonight.

  He didn’t.

  Oh, it was tender, their lovemaking. Tender, and gentle, and slow. More like intimate snuggling, she thought, than actual sex. She felt him trembling as he moved on top of her, his shoulders virtually quivering like a volcano of passion bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to erupt. But it didn’t. He held her as carefully as if she were a fragile porcelain treasure, and when he finally stopped, she was unsure whether he’d climaxed or not. She…hadn’t even come close.

  He kissed her cheek, rolled off her and held her lightly. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked.

  Hurt her? He’d barely touched her. “No, of course not.”

  “Good. You’re…okay, then?”

  “I’m fine.” If feeling like clawing her way up the wall to the ceiling and shrieking like a frustrated tomcat could be called fine, that is.

  “Good.” He rolled over, snagging a robe off the bed. “I’m gonna run you a nice hot bath, then. And then we’ll go out. Do something special. Okay?”

  “Sure.” She had thought that what they had been doing was something special. But it hadn’t turned out that way.

  Maybe, Jack thought, this had been a mistake. Hell, their courtship had been torture, but the actual marriage turned out to be far worse. He tried his damnedest to be the man his beautiful young wife thought he was. All well-bred and gentle. When deep down, he’d wanted to throw her on the bed that night, tear that pristine dress off her and ravish her from her head to her toes. He’d been holding back for so long—because that was what a girl like Grace would expect. Restraint. Decency.

  Not making love to her had been bad enough. But how could he have known that actually doing it would be so much worse? His desire for the woman had been building ever since he’d first set eyes on her. No, desire wasn’t even the right word. It was more than that. So much more. It was carnal. It was hunger. It was pure undiluted lust. If he had let it loose…hell, she’d have packed up and gone home before morning. So Jack had bound himself up in chains of restraint. He’d held back. He’d vented the tiniest fragment of what had been building inside him. And all it had done was make him want her even more.

  He thought that within six months he would probably explode from the pressure within. Or go insane.

  Ah, but looking at her, looking into those innocent eyes of hers that night after he’d made love to her for the first time, he’d realized that even though he’d held himself in fierce check, the sex act had traumatized her a bit. She’d looked confused, bewildered, upset. Just th
ink how much worse it might have been.

  He was an animal. He felt guilty for having touched her at all. God knew he wasn’t worthy.

  That night, their wedding night, had pretty much set the pattern of intimacy between them. They’d settled into a routine after the honeymoon. Sex was infrequent—because it was a hell of a lot easier for Jack to not have her at all, than to have her while fighting his own feelings and holding himself back.

  And there was more, of course. There was Jack’s work. He and JW were closing in on the cocaine supplier they had been after for so many months. But they still hadn’t caught him. Jack couldn’t leave his job to take one of the fabulous ones he’d been offered for five times the money. Not until he nailed this guy. But lying to Grace was wearing on him. Every day she would ask him something about his work, and every day he would tell a half-truth or skirt the question.

  The combination of not wanting to suffer the fiery temptation of being near her, of hating to have to look into her blue eyes and lie to her, and of wanting this damn case finished so he would no longer have to, resulted in a lot of late nights. Worked weekends. Missed dinners. And while Grace said she understood…Jack rather doubted it.

  But she was all right. She had her family. She had the house—oh, hell, the house. A wedding gift from Harry and Mitsy. Jack had to give Harry credit, though. The old man had taken Jack’s taste into account. It wasn’t a sprawling mansion enclosed in a fence. Instead, it was a redwood-and-glass modified A-frame, sitting on its own fifty acres on the shore of Looking Glass Lake. Thirty minutes from the city, and perfect. Jack had loved it on sight, but he couldn’t even think about the price tag without feeling like the world’s biggest moocher. When he mentioned that to Harry in a rare private moment, his father-in-law’s reply had been predictable, if not entirely accurate.

  “You saved my life, son. All I gave you was a house. We’re not even close to being square.”

  He was wrong, though. Dead wrong. Harry had given Jack his daughter, and that was one gem Jack knew he couldn’t earn in a dozen lifetimes. Not if he saved a thousand lives.