Their Baby Bond

by Karen Rose Smith

  Ten minutes later when he returned to the living room, Tori’s lawyer had left and she was sitting on the sofa sorting through a pack of pictures she’d recently had developed. He suspected most of them were of Andy.

  “If you want to get away from here, I have a place we can go. An old friend of mine has a casita near Chimayo he rarely uses. It’s rustic, but it has electricity and running water. We could go hiking tomorrow. You could make yourself so tired you might be able to sleep at night.”

  “You don’t have to give up your weekend for me, Jake. I just wanted you to know what was happening, since you were there when Andy was born, and…” Her voice trailed off, and he remembered exactly where they’d left things.

  Closing the distance between them, he stood very close but didn’t touch her. “I care about what happens to you and Andy. You will make yourself crazy if you stay here. Even if you go into the gallery and work, it won’t take your mind off Barbara. But physical exertion might. We can even drive over to White Rock Overlook and Bandelier to explore the cliff dwellings. Whatever it takes to make the time pass.”

  He knew Tori found strength in the mountains. Nothing was more spectacular than standing at the Overlook, gazing down at gorges and waterfalls. And the cliff dwellings at Bandelier—they would take her out of the present, thrust her into the past and maybe help her forget for a short while.

  “If I leave and Barbara needs to reach me—”

  “You have your cell phone.”

  “The mountains could interfere.”

  Now he did take Tori by the shoulders, then rubbed his thumbs along her cheekbones. “You can call in for messages. We can always find a land line.” Nudging her chin up, he saw the questions in her vulnerable blue-green eyes. “We’ll just take each hour as it comes.”

  The urge to hold her and kiss her and make love to her was so strong he fought the desire with every ounce of self-control he possessed. There was a world of difference between them, a past he couldn’t shake and too much riding on what would happen with the baby for him to give in to more primitive instincts.

  “Go pack a bag,” he instructed gently. “The casita’s less than an hour away.”

  The landscape, which usually engrossed Tori, was more like a brush stroke swirling around her than the soothing, peace-invoking blanket it usually was. Not only was she worried about Barbara’s decision, but the tension between her and Jake hadn’t lessened since their trip to the toy store. There was so much unsaid between them. Jake’s offer to spend the weekend with her had surprised her. Yet, thinking about it now, she knew he was the type of man who would do anything to help anyone.

  They stopped at a store for groceries and supplies. As they wound along Route 503, the silence between them built in intensity. By the time they reached Chimayo, purple dusk had surrounded the cliffs, and the reddish-brown earth had dimmed into shadows.

  Tori had no idea what to expect as Jake veered off the main road. A short time later he made another turn and she spotted the casita. With night enveloping them she couldn’t see it very well, but from what she could tell the outside was cream-colored adobe. It was small with a barrel-tiled roof and an attached carport. As they climbed out of Jake’s truck, the gravel was loose under her shoes.

  Jake led the way, flipping on the light as soon as he opened the door.

  The place was utterly charming. The wood-plank floor was old and scarred, but bore a polished patina. A woodstove sat on a Mexican-tiled hearth. Small high windows lent more wall space. A red-and-navy sofa and a comfortable-looking navy armchair angled around the stove, while a lodge-pine table held a wrought-iron lamp with a parchment shade. The kitchen area was tiny, with its two-burner range and small refrigerator. Tori could see into the bedroom, which only had enough room for a double bed, nightstand and highboy chest. There was a handwoven rug, patterned with corn dancers, in front of the sofa. A kokopelli hanging was draped on the wall above a small bookcase.

  Jake disappeared for a few minutes and returned with Tori’s overnight case in one hand, his duffel bag in the other. Although he carried her bag into the bedroom and laid it on the bed, he dropped his duffel behind the sofa.

  Did that mean they’d be sleeping separately? If ever Tori needed Jake to hold her, it was tonight.

  “I’ll get a fire going in the woodstove.” He didn’t make eye contact.

  “I’ll put the groceries away.”

  Jake lit the stove and checked on the supply of firewood out back, and Tori started dinner. She put pasta on to boil while she sautéed chicken pieces with onions and peppers.

  “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” he insisted when he returned to the kitchen.

  “It kept me busy.”

  “Busy hands, quiet mind?”

  “I wish it worked that way.” Putting the lid on the pan, she asked, “Who does this place belong to?”

  “Craig Fernandez. I worked with him in Albuquerque until he decided to become a special agent in Chicago with the U.S. Customs Service.”

  “He’s going to hold on to this place?”

  “He inherited it from his uncle. He doesn’t want to sell it. I check on it every now and then for him.”

  Jake had mentioned Albuquerque, and all the questions she had about the work he used to do came tumbling back. But there was enough tension between them as it was. She didn’t want to add to it.

  During dinner their conversation was more stilted than it had ever been. After they stowed away the leftovers and cleaned up the dishes, Tori went to the bedroom to use her cell phone. But there were no messages waiting for her on her machine. Unzipping her suitcase, she took out the framed picture of Andy she’d laid on top. When she picked it up, she let all the love she felt for the little boy wash over her.

  She didn’t even realize she was crying until Jake came into the bedroom. Turning her around to face him, he took her into his arms. “Shh,” he whispered into her ear. “It’s going to be all right.”

  But she shook her head, feeling as if her world had turned upside down, feeling as if she was losing everything that was important to her, including Jake.

  As he held her, both of their hearts started beating faster. In moments, their rhythm seemed to unite, and Tori couldn’t tell which was his and which was hers. When Jake’s hands moved up and down her back, the long strokes became caresses that soothed and then made her tremble. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her tears, then her cheeks, then her mouth.

  She’d missed him so.

  From the hunger of his kiss, he’d missed her, too.

  As he lifted her sweater over her head and tossed it aside, she reached for the buttons on his flannel shirt. Their movements were quick and frenzied…because if either of them thought about this for too long, they’d stop. Each time they came together, Tori fell more in love with Jake. He was nothing like any man she’d ever known. He was strong and good and true.

  As he trailed kisses over her breasts, she set to work on his belt buckle. When her fingers unzipped his fly, she heard his sharp intake of breath. He not only had power over her, she had power over him. They gave and they took, partners and equals.

  There was raw hunger in Jake tonight. She could feel it in his fingertips, see it in his eyes, read it in his kiss. Everything he did caused trembling and turmoil and pleasure so exquisite she never wanted it to end. His hard arousal told her this foreplay was just for her. But she wanted him to know she didn’t need it.

  No restraint bound her as her hands explored his chest, then the pulsing male heat. When he backed her up to the bed, they fell onto the mattress. Jake seemed insatiable as his kisses became more intimate, deeper, wetter. His lips and tongue weren’t only on hers, but everywhere.

  He fingered her nipples, and then laved and suckled them until she cried out, “I need you, Jake!”

  “God help me, I need you, too,” he murmured, and then trailed kisses lower and lower and lower, until she was grabbing the spread beneath her, squeezing i
t into her palms. The pleasure he was giving her was so wonderfully, achingly erotic, she couldn’t keep still. His tongue taunted her thighs and then the V between them. She felt as if she’d explode into a million pieces, yet she knew more was coming. His hands slipped under her bottom, lifting her to him. When his tongue probed and then found the bud that had swollen for him, her cry echoed in the room. She’d hardly had a chance to appreciate the wonder of the explosion until he was on his forearms above her, thrusting into her, taking her on another journey with him…into him.

  She wrapped her legs around him and took him in deeper. He groaned. When her muscles contracted, he stilled for a few moments. “I want to make this last,” he said hoarsely.

  She wanted to make it last, too. Because she didn’t know what was going to happen next, if they’d ever make love again. Was Jake regretting the tenuousness of their bond? Was he realizing he might want more, too?

  All she wanted to do was touch Jake—his body, his heart, his soul. Her hands roamed over his shoulders, then stroked the back of his neck under his thick hair.

  He shook his head as he gazed down at her. “I’ll lose the battle if you keep doing that.”

  “But we’ll win the war,” she murmured.

  “Hold on,” he said roughly. “We’re going to do this together.”

  She held on—to Jake, to her dreams, to her hope that her life would become everything she imagined it could be. Each of his thrusts was tempered and restrained until she tongued and nipped his earlobe.

  “Tori,” he protested, as he thrust faster and harder and deeper.

  Tori kept her eyes open, watching Jake’s every feature. She could lose herself in the passion, but she wanted to see his. She needed to catch the emotion in his eyes and see for herself that she meant more to him than a passing fancy. Jake’s brown-black eyes had never been so fascinating. She’d never before seen them filled with such intensity.

  His jaw was dark with stubble now, his sensual lips parted as he took in a breath, sank in deeper and said, “Come with me, Tori.”

  Their rhythm was as old, as primal, as transfixing as the mountains, their pleasure as majestic as the highest peak meeting the bluest sky. She surrendered to the beauty and the awe and the sensations that rippled through her and over her and in her, until Jake cried, “Now,” and she was catapulted with him, into that forever place where lovers remember a moment for a lifetime.

  She and Jake had made love before—but never like this.

  When Jake collapsed on top of her, she loved the weight of him, his breath on her neck, his scent mingling with hers.

  After they’d both recovered enough to breathe more normally, Jake shifted onto his side, gazed down at her and stroked a wayward strand of hair from her cheek. She waited, hoping he’d reveal his feelings for her, hoping he’d put into words what she’d seen in his eyes.

  When he didn’t, she was convinced his walls and defenses were still firmly in place. She had to find out why.

  “What happened in Albuquerque, Jake? Please tell me.”

  He was still for so long that Tori didn’t know what to expect. Slowly he intertwined his fingers with hers, then extricated them. “I’m going to get a shot of Craig’s bourbon. I’ll meet you in the living room. Do you want anything?”

  If Jake was going to confide in her, tell her what had turned his life upside down, she wanted to be clearheaded. “No, I’m fine.”

  After he got out of bed, he stopped to pick up his jeans, then left the room. Tori was afraid that the remoteness would come back into his eyes, that the intimacy they’d shared would be forgotten. But maybe they were about to enter into a different kind of intimacy.

  Dressing in the red sweats she’d brought along, she went into the living room and settled on the sofa to wait for him. She heard him moving about the kitchen, apparently putting on a pot of coffee to brew.

  But as he came into the living room he carried a glass in his hand with an inch of amber liquid. He’d pulled on his jeans, but the button at the fly was unfastened and he was bare-chested. Tori remembered absolutely everything that had happened in that bed only moments before.

  When he sat on the sofa beside her, he left at least a foot of space between them, and she knew he intended that. Plying him with more questions would push him away. She waited patiently.

  He took a sip of his drink, then set it on the coffee table. “Marion’s mother was right. I got her killed.”

  Tori clasped his arm. “I’m sure it wasn’t as black-and-white as that.”

  “It was as black-and-white as you can get. I was a primary negotiator. I trained men and women under me on the police force. When Marion applied to become a negotiator, I was attracted to her. But I knew if we worked together, nothing could come of it. What we’d get involved in required good rapport, not man-woman tension zipping around, maybe interfering with instincts.”

  He leaned back against the sofa cushion. “Before an officer attends school for negotiations training, we put them through real-time scenarios to see if they have what it takes to do the job. Marion came through it like a pro, and I knew she had the intuition, the sense of timing and the patience to talk down someone who was holding hostages.”

  Although Tori was still touching Jake, he seemed to slide away from her emotionally as he went on. “A negotiations team consists of primary and secondary negotiators, a psychologist, a scribe who documents everything, and other support personnel. Marion had been on call as a secondary negotiator for over six months. Then that day all hell broke loose. A few backup members of the team were down with the flu. When we got the call about the hostage situation at the bank, I was involved in a drug bust. I was informed that a twenty-two-year-old attempted a holdup and he was armed. The bank manager made the mistake of telling him that he’d never get away, that the video cameras would identify him, that he’d pushed the panic button and the police were already alerted.”

  Jake stared straight ahead, reliving it. “I made the decision that Marion should be primary until I got there. From what I understand, she was doing an okay job of it. Time is usually on the negotiator’s side. We rarely ever do face-to-face negotiations. But when she was talking to the robber on the phone, she found out there was a child inside. She decided to make a deal with him. If he’d send out the little girl and her mother, Marion would go in.”

  When Jake took another sip of his drink, he leaned forward, removing himself from Tori’s touch. She didn’t know if he was going to continue talking. But then he looked her straight in the eye. “She wore a vest. She went in against the advice of the psychologist on the team. I was on my way there when the bank robber freaked, and his gun went off. Marion took a bullet in the head, and a bank customer was also killed.”

  The woodstove’s heat was warming the cabin, but there was a chill around Jake, almost like a force field that kept her at bay. “Why do you blame yourself?”

  “Because I should have let someone else take care of the drug bust. I should have left and handled the bank myself.”

  “What choice did you have, Jake?”

  He ran his hand over his face. “I don’t know. That’s what the P.D.’s psychologist kept asking me. That’s what I keep turning around in my head. It shouldn’t have gone down like it did. Maybe I was too attracted to Marion to see her flaws. Maybe she wasn’t ready to act as primary. Something in my judgment was off, and until I figure out what it was, I can’t go back to that work.”

  After a momentary pause, she said quietly, “You can’t let your guilt over this ruin your life.”

  Standing, he snapped, “It’s not ruining my life. I’m moving ahead.”

  “Are you?”

  “Dammit, Tori. How do you get rid of guilt? It isn’t like I can open a window and throw it out. Don’t you understand? It’s with me all the time. I feel responsible for what happened…responsible for her.”

  “And now you don’t want to be responsible for anyone. But it’s in your nature to be a respon
sible man, to care for others, to help them when they’re in trouble, to protect them from danger and heartache. That’s why you’re so good with Ricky and Ryan, why you checked into Charlie’s background, why you’re here with me now. There’s a war going on inside you, Jake. Until one side wins over the other and you can convince yourself to lay it all to rest, you’re not going to know where you want to go or what you want to do.”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, he let out a frustrated sigh. “You’re just like the rest, Tori. This isn’t as simple as making a decision.”

  “I know that. But maybe you need to get back into police work,” she suggested softly. “Maybe you need to save other lives.”

  “Or lose them.”

  She could see Jake was still caught in the web of his background, wanting to be a different man than his father was, insisting on freedom, instead of being trapped by a relationship. Marion’s death had seemed to drop a cage over him. Somehow he had to find the key to unlock the door.

  Tori knew she could help him with more talking, with more touching. Love healed, and the love she felt for him was so strong she knew it could work wonders. But he had to be willing to let it.

  “It’s probably best if we turn in,” he said, ending the conversation. “We can get an early start in the morning, go to White Rock, climb all those steps to the cliff dwellings and hike around. It’ll do us both good.”

  In her opinion, making love with Jake again would do a lot more good. But she could see he was bound in memories, trying to remove himself from feelings, not pack on more. She knew making love made him feel—because Jake Galeno was not a callous man. He was a warmhearted, caring man, a man who deserved a wife and a family and a future rich with rewards.

  He glanced at his bourbon sitting on the coffee table. Taking it to the sink, he tossed it in. He didn’t look at her when he said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He was dismissing her. He was telling her he wanted to be alone, that they wouldn’t be sharing the bed or confiding secrets in the middle of the night.

  “I’m going to call for messages again and then get a shower,” she said. “If you want to talk any more…” She could still hope.