by Nora Roberts
“We don’t have any problems.”
She hadn’t expected such hard-line resistance to such a basic step, but realized she should have. “Of course you do. Seth’s afraid to be touched.”
“He’s not afraid to let Grace touch him.”
“Grace?” Anna pursed her lips in thought. “Grace Monroe, from the list you gave me?”
“Yeah, she’s doing the housework now, and the kid’s nuts about her. Might even have a little crush.”
“That’s good, that’s healthy. But it’s only a start. When a child’s been abused, it leaves scars.”
What the hell were they talking about this for? he thought impatiently. Why were they talking about shrinks and digging at old wounds when all he’d wanted was a few minutes of easy flirtation with a pretty woman?
“My old man beat the hell out of me. So what? I survived.” He hated remembering it, hated standing in the shadow of the house that had been his sanctuary and remembering. “The kid’s mother knocked him around. Well, she’s not going to get the chance to do it again. That chapter’s closed.”
“It’s never closed,” Anna said patiently. “Whatever new chapter you start always has some basis in the one that came before. I’m recommending counseling to you now, and I’m going to recommend it in my report.”
“Go ahead.” He couldn’t explain why it infuriated him even to think about it. He only knew he’d be damned if he would ask himself or any of his brothers to open those long-locked doors again. “You recommend whatever you want. Doesn’t mean we have to do it.”
“You have to do what’s best for Seth.”
“How the hell do you know what’s best?”
“It’s my job,” she said coolly now, because her blood was starting to boil.
“Your job? You got a college degree and a bunch of forms. We’re the ones who lived it, who are living it. You haven’t been there. You don’t know anything about it, what it’s like to get your face smashed in and not be able to stop it. To have some bureaucratic jerk from the county who doesn’t know dick decide what happens to your life.”
Didn’t know? She thought of the dark, deserted road, the terror. The pain and the screams. Can’t be personal, she reminded herself, though her stomach clutched and fluttered. “Your opinion of my profession has been crystal-clear since our first meeting.”
“That’s right, but I cooperated. I filled you in, and all of us took steps to make this work.” His thumbs went into his front pockets in a gesture Seth would have recognized. “It’s never quite enough, though. There’s always something else.”
“If there weren’t something else,” she returned, “you wouldn’t be so angry.”
“Of course I’m angry. We’ve been working our butts off here. I just turned down the biggest race of my career. I’ve got a kid on my hands who looks at me one minute as if I’m the enemy and the next as if I’m his salvation. Jesus Christ.”
“And it’s harder to be his salvation than his enemy.”
Bull’s-eye, he thought with growing resentment. How the hell did she know so much? “I’m telling you, the best thing for the kid, for all of us, is to be left alone. He needs shoes, I’ll get him goddamn shoes.”
“And what are you going to do about the fact that he’s afraid to be touched, even in the most casual way, by you or your brothers? Are you going to buy his fear away?”
“He’ll get over it.” Cam was dug in now and refused to allow her to pry him out.
“Get over it?” A sudden fury had her almost stuttering out the words. Then they poured out in a hot stream that made the flash of pain in her eyes all the more poignant. “Because you want him to? Because you tell him to? Do you know what it’s like to live with that kind of terror? That kind of shame? To have it bottled up inside you and have little drops of that poison spill out even when someone you love wants to hold you?”
She ripped open her car door, tossed her briefcase in. “I do. I know exactly.” He grabbed her arm before she could get into the car. “Get your hand off me.”
“Wait a minute.”
“I said get your hand off me.”
Because she was trembling, he did. Somewhere during the argument she’d gone from being professionally irritated to being personally enraged. He hadn’t seen the shift.
“Anna, I’m not going to let you get behind the wheel of this car when you’re this churned up. I lost someone I cared about recently, and I’m not going to let it happen again.”
“I’m fine.” Though she bit off the words, she followed them up by a long, steadying breath. “I’m perfectly capable of driving home. If you want to discuss the possibility of counseling rationally, you can call my office for an appointment.”
“Why don’t we take a walk? Both of us can cool off.”
“I’m perfectly cool.” She slipped into her car, nearly slammed the door on his fingers. “You might take one, though, right off the dock.”
He cursed when she drove away. Briefly considered chasing her down, pulling her out of the car and demanding that they finish the damn stupid argument. His next thought was to stalk back into the house and forget it. Forget her.
But he remembered the wounded look that had come into her eyes, the way her voice had sounded when she’d said she knew what it was like to be afraid, to be ashamed.
Someone had hurt her, he realized. And at that moment everything else faded to the background.
Anna slammed the door of her apartment, yanked off her shoes, and heaved them across the room. Her temper was not the type that flashed and boiled, then cooled. It was a simmering thing that bubbled and brewed, then spewed over.
The drive home hadn’t calmed her down at all; it had merely given her rising emotions enough time to reach a peak.
She tossed her briefcase on the sofa, stripped off her suit jacket, and threw it on top. Ignorant, hardheaded, narrow-minded man. She fisted her hands and rapped them against her own temples. What had made her think she could get through to him? What had made her think she wanted to?
When she heard the knock on her door, she bared her teeth. She expected her across-the-hall neighbor wanted to exchange some little bit of news or gossip.
She wasn’t in the mood.
Determined to ignore it until she could be civilized, she began yanking pins out of her hair.
The knock came again, louder now. “Come on, Anna. Open the damn door.”
Now she could only stare as shock and fury made her ears ring. The man had followed her home? He’d had the nerve to come all the way to her door and expect to be welcomed inside?
He probably thought she’d be so consumed with lust that she’d jump him and have wild sex on the living room floor. Well, he was in for a surprise of his own.
She strode to the door, yanked it open. “You son of a bitch.”
Cam took one look at her flushed and furious face, the wild, tumbling hair, the eyes that sparkled with vengeance, and decided it was undoubtedly perverse to find that arousing.
But what could he do about it?
He glanced down at her clenched fist. “Go ahead,” he invited. “But if you belt me you’ll have to write a five-hundred-word essay on violence in our society.”
She made a low, threatening sound in her throat and tried to slam the door in his face. He was quick enough to slap a hand on it, strong enough to put his weight against it and hold it open. “I wanted to make sure you got home all right,” he began as they struggled with the door. “And since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I should come up.”
“I want you to go away. Very far away. In fact, I want you to go all the way to hell.”
“I get that, but before I take the trip, give me five minutes.”
“I’ve already given you what I now consider entirely too much of my time.”
“So what’s five more minutes?” To settle it, he braced the door open with one hand—which she found infuriating—and stepped inside.
“If it wasn’t for Seth,
I’d call the cops right now and have your butt tossed in jail.”
He nodded. He’d dealt with his share of furious women and knew there was a time to be careful. “Yeah, I get that too. Listen—”
“I don’t have to listen to you.” Using the flat of her hand, she shoved him hard in the chest. “You’re insulting and you’re hardheaded and you’re wrong, so I don’t have to listen to you.”
“I’m not wrong,” he tossed back. “You’re wrong. I know—”
“Every damn thing,” she interrupted. “You drop in from bouncing around all over the world playing hotshot daredevil, and suddenly you know everything about what’s best for a ten-year-old boy you’ve known barely a month.”
“I was not playing at being a hotshot daredevil. I was making a career out of it!” He erupted, his purpose of conciliation and peacemaking shattering to bits. “A goddamn good one. And I do know what’s best for the kid. I’m the one who’s been there day and night. You spend a couple of hours with him and figure you got a better handle on it. That’s just bullshit.”
“It’s my job to have a handle on it.”
“Then you should know that every situation is different. Maybe it works for some people to spill their guts to a stranger and have their dreams analyzed.” He’d worked it out carefully, logically on the way over. He was determined to be absolutely reasonable. “Nothing wrong with that, if it’s what does it for you. But you can’t rubber-stamp this. You have to look at the circumstances and the personalities here and, you know, make adjustments.”
She couldn’t get her breathing under control, so she finally stopped trying. “I don’t rubber-stamp the people I’m chosen to help. I study and I evaluate, and goddamn you, I care. I am not some bureaucratic jerk who doesn’t know dick. I’m a trained caseworker with over six years’ experience, and I got that training and that experience because I know exactly what it’s like to be on the other side, to be hurt and scared and alone and helpless. And no one whose case is assigned to me is just a name on a form.”
Her voice broke, shocking her to silence. Quickly she stepped back, pressing one hand to her mouth, holding the other up to signal him away. She felt it rising inside her, knew she wouldn’t be able to stop it. “Get out,” she managed. “Get out of here now.”
“Don’t do that.” Panic closed his throat as the first hot tears spilled down her cheeks. Furious women he understood and could deal with. The ones who wept destroyed him. “Time out. Foul. Jesus, don’t do that.”
“Just leave me alone.” She turned away, thinking only of escape, but he wrapped his arms around her, buried his face in her hair.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He’d have apologized for anything, everything, if only to put them back on even ground. “I was wrong. I was out of line, whatever you said. Don’t cry, baby.” He turned her around, holding her close. He pressed his lips to her forehead, her temple. His hands stroked her hair, her back.
Then his mouth was on hers, gently at first, to comfort and soothe while he continued to murmur mindless pleas and promises. But her arms lifted, wrapped around his neck, her body pressed into his, and her lips parted, heated.
The change happened quickly and he was lost in her, drowning in her. The hand that had stroked gently through her hair now tangled in it, fisted as the kiss rushed toward searing.
Take me away, was all she could think. Don’t let me reason, don’t let me think. Just take me. She wanted his hands on her, his mouth on her, she wanted to feel her muscles quiver with need under his fingers. With that strong, half-wild taste of his filling her, she could let everything go.
She trembled against him, shuddered in his arms, and the sound she made against his desperate mouth might have been a whimper. He jerked back as if he’d been stung, and though his hands weren’t completely steady he kept them on her arms, and kept her at arm’s length.
“That wasn’t—” He had to stop, give himself a minute. His mind was mush and was unlikely to clear if she continued to look at him with those dark, damp eyes that were clouded with passion. “I don’t believe I’m going to say this, but this isn’t a good idea.” He ran his hands up and down her arms as he struggled to hold on to control. “You’re upset, probably not thinking . . .” He could still taste her, and the flavor on his tongue had outrageous hunger stirring in his belly. “Christ, I need a drink.”
Annoyed with both of them, she swiped the back of her hand over her cheek to dry it. “I’ll make coffee.”
“I wasn’t talking about coffee.”
“I know, but if we’re going to be sensible, let’s stick with coffee.”
She stepped into the kitchen area and kept herself busy with the homey process of grinding beans and brewing. Every nerve in her body was on edge. Every need she’d ever had or imagined having was brutally aroused.
“If we’d finished that, Anna, you might have thought I used the situation.”
She nodded, continued to fix coffee. “Or I would have wondered if I had. Either way, bad idea. It’s important to me never to mix sex and guilt.” She looked at him then, quietly, levelly. “It’s vital to me.”
And he knew. Knowing, he suffered both helpless rage and helpless pity. “Christ, Anna. When?”
“When I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry.” It made him sick, in his gut, in his heart. “I’m sorry,” he said again, inadequately. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
“That’s where we disagree. Talking about it is finally what saved me.” And he would listen, she thought. And he would know her. “My mother and I had gone to Philadelphia for the day. I wanted to see the Liberty Bell because we were studying about the Revolutionary War in school. We had this clunker of a car. We drove over, saw the sights. We ate ice cream and bought souvenirs.”
“Anna—”
Her head whipped up, a direct challenge. “Are you afraid to hear it?”
“Maybe.” He raked a hand through his hair. Maybe he was afraid to hear it, afraid of what it would change between them. Another roll of the dice, he thought, then looked at her, waiting patiently. And he understood he needed to know. “Go ahead.”
Turning, she chose cups from the cabinet. “It was just the two of us. It always had been. She’d gotten pregnant when she was sixteen and would never say who the father was. Having me complicated her life enormously and must have brought her a great deal of shame and hardship. My grandparents were very religious, very old school.” Anna laughed a little. “Very Italian. They didn’t cut my mother out of their lives, but my sense was that it made her uncomfortable to have more than a peripheral part in them. So we had an apartment about a quarter the size of this one.”
She brought the pot to the counter, poured the rich, dark coffee. “It was in April, on a Saturday. She’d taken off work so we could go. We had the best day, and we stayed later than we’d planned because we were having fun. I was half asleep on the ride back, and she must have made a wrong turn. I know we got lost, but she just joked about it. The car broke down. Smoke started pouring out from under the hood. She pulled over to the side and we got out. Just started giggling. What a mess, what a fix.”
He knew what was coming, and it sickened him. “Maybe you should sit down.”
“No, I’m all right. She thought it was the radiator needing water,” Anna continued. Her eyes unfocused as she looked back. She could remember how warm it had been, how quiet, and how the moon had drifted in and out of smoky-looking clouds. “We were going to hike back to the closest house and see if we could get some help. A car came along, stopped. There were two men inside, and one of them leaned out and asked us if we had a problem.”
She lifted her coffee, sipped. Her hands were steady now. She could say it all again and live through it all again. “I remember the way her hand squeezed mine, clamped down so hard it hurt. I realized later that she was afraid. They were drunk. She said something about just walking down to her brother’s house, that we were fine, but they got out of t
he car. She pushed me behind her. When the first one grabbed her, she yelled at me to run. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. He was laughing and pawing at her, and she was fighting him. And when he dragged her off the road and pushed her down, I ran up and tried to pull him off. But of course I couldn’t, and the other man yanked me off and tore my shirt.”
A defenseless woman and a helpless child. Cam’s hands fisted at his sides as both rage and impotence coursed through him. He wanted to go back to that night, that deserted road, and use them viciously.
“He kept laughing,” Anna said quietly. “I saw his face very clearly for a moment or two. Like it was frozen in front of my eyes. I kept hearing my mother screaming, begging them not to hurt me. He was raping her, I could hear him raping her, but she kept begging them to leave me alone. And she must have seen that that wasn’t going to happen, and she fought harder. I could hear the man hitting her, yelling at her to shut up. It didn’t seem real, even when he was raping me it didn’t seem like it could be real. Just an awful dream that went on and on and on.
“When they were finished, they stumbled back to their car and drove away. They just left us there. My mother was unconscious. He’d beaten her badly. I didn’t know what to do. They said I went into shock, but I don’t remember anything until I was in the hospital. My mother never regained consciousness. She was in a coma for two days, then she died.”
“Anna, I don’t know what to say to you. What can be said to you.”
“I didn’t tell you for your sympathy,” she said. “She was twenty-seven, a year younger than I am now. It was a long time ago, but you don’t forget. It never goes away completely. And I remember everything that happened that night, everything I did afterward—after I went to live with my grandparents. I did everything I could to hurt them, to hurt myself. That was my way of dealing with what had happened to me. I refused counseling,” she told him coolly. “I wasn’t going to talk to some thin-faced, dried-up shrink. Instead I picked fights, looked for trouble, found it. I had indiscriminate sex, used drugs, ran away from home, and butted up against the social workers and the system.”