It was vacant. There were imprints in the rug where the bed had stood only yesterday. The hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach threatened to swallow Nicole up as she sank down in the space where the bed had been.
He was gone and she had no way of finding him.
The noise in the other room had Nicole scrambling back to her feet. Heart thudding madly against her ribs, she hurried into the living room, calling his name before she reached it.
“Dennis?”
The husky man in the paint-splattered, faded coveralls looked at her curiously. Two cans of paint were on the floor beside him.
“No, my name’s John.” He nodded needlessly at the roller in his hand. “I’m here to paint the apartment.”
Nicole’s heart felt like a huge lead weight in her chest. She walked past the man on legs that were oddly rubbery.
“I’d better get out of your way,” she murmured as she left the apartment.
Dennis took a long drink and then set the mug down. Smoky Joe’s certainly lived up to its name all right, he thought. The air was thick with the smell of smoke, beer and cheap perfume. It wasn’t a place they came to with any frequency, but the atmosphere seemed to suit the mood that was hovering around him these last few days.
“Want my opinion?” Winston asked.
He wrapped his hands around the mug as he stared straight ahead. A woman with raven hair and a fuchsia dress made out of a scrap of material was grinding against her partner on the dance floor directly in his line of vision. He looked away.
“No.”
Winston sighed as he sipped his own beer. “You need a personality transplant, Lincoln.”
Dennis looked at his partner darkly, then turned his head away again.
It was like stepping through a minefield, Winston thought. Safest thing was to back away, but he cared about the man too much to keep his mouth shut.
“Back to the one you had before all this started.” Lifting the mug again, Winston watched Dennis over the dingy glass rim.
“Thanks, Dr. Freud.”
Even the voice didn’t sound as if it belonged to Dennis. He’d gone through a complete change since they had discovered the disk, Winston thought. Since he had left Nicole.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Dennis muttered into his mug.
“You know what you can do,” Winston told him and earned an even darker scowl. He pressed on. “You don’t act like a man who should be riding high right now.” Winston leaned forward. He wanted to get this out quickly, before Dennis walked out on him. “Look, we actually caught the bad guys for a change. The disk turned out to be a gold mine of information.” Keeping his voice low, his tone grew in intensity. “We even got the head guy, the man you said was responsible for your old man committing suicide.”
That should have made him feel good, Dennis thought, finally seeing Trask behind bars where he belonged. The man had aged considerably in his rise up the power structure. Stripped of his trappings, his men, Trask had looked like a shriveled little old man. It should have made Dennis feel vindicated, triumphant. Something. It didn’t.
Dennis took another sip. He didn’t taste the beer. Only his own dissatisfaction. “Your point?”
Winston gripped Dennis’s wrist. “My point is you don’t act like a man who’s temporarily Sherwood’s fair-haired boy.”
Dennis shrugged. “Maybe that doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
“Exactly.” Dennis could see the concern mixed with growing frustration in Winston’s eyes. “And maybe that means that you still have some unfinished business.”
He didn’t want to hear her name. He didn’t want to hear anything about it. The look in Nicole’s eyes outside the bank had cut him completely dead. She had made it clear that she didn’t want anything to do with him. He just had to get on with his life, that’s all.
“Drop it, Winston.”
Winston remained steadfast. “Sorry. I can’t. I have to work with you and right now, you’re about as easy to work with as a bear with a burr lodged where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Dennis raised the mug to his lips. “Colorful.”
Well, at least Dennis wasn’t hitting him or storming out. Maybe he was making a breakthrough. “Accurate. Go talk to her.”
He sighed. A little of the darkness crept away from his eyes. When it did, Winston saw the misery that existed there.
“She doesn’t want to talk to me, Winston. She made that very clear.”
Winston remembered the look on Nicole’s face as he had backed away. “She was angry,” he argued.
Angry didn’t begin to describe what Dennis had seen on her face. “And what makes you think she’s changed her mind?”
Winston knew that if Dennis walked away from this, he was never going to forgive himself.
“She’s had time to cool off. Maybe she misses you.” Winston’s mouth curved as he thought of what he had witnessed on the monitors. He’d never seen his partner so content as when he was with Nicole. “Or that maid service you provided for her.” He pushed the mug away as he leaned forward again. “Sherwood said you deserved a couple of days off for a job well-done. Why don’t you take it and spend it with her?”
Did Winston think that hadn’t crossed his mind a dozen times? With the same result each time. Dennis knew she wouldn’t see him. “Because she won’t even open the door to me.”
Winston laughed shortly as he shook his head. “If you’re going to let a locked door stop you, then you don’t deserve to be in the Department.”
Gaining physical access was one thing. Gaining emotional access was another. “It’s not that locked door that I’m thinking about.”
“If you can’t unlock that one, then you’re not the man I think you are.”
Dennis said nothing. He stared into the inside of his empty mug for a long time. Empty, just the way he felt without her. Finally, he pushed back his chair and rose.
He looked down at Winston. “I guess there’s no other way to make you shut up, is there?”
Winston’s smile was smug. “Nope.”
“Tell Sherwood I’ll call in,” Dennis instructed as he pushed the chair to the table.
Winston nodded. “See you around, partner. Tell her hi for me,” he called after Dennis.
Dennis waved a dismissive hand behind him as he left.
She was getting good at it. Tired, but good. She’d managed to feed and change first one twin and then the other quickly enough so that the process didn’t have to begin again as soon as she was finished. Both were now sleeping peacefully. One more thing to do before she could think of herself. Not that she wanted to think about herself or anything at all. The hectic pace she kept up was the only thing keeping her going right now.
Why hadn’t he come back, damn him?
With a sigh, she filled the dog’s dish and set it down before Romeo. The Labrador looked at the offering without interest. He uttered a low moan as he nosed the dish aside.
Nicole squatted down beside the animal. “I know just how you feel.” She stroked the dog’s head. “You miss him too, don’t you? I’m sorry, Romeo, but he’s deserted both of us. Don’t waste your time thinking about him. Just move on. There’s no sense in mooning around like a lovesick puppy. Forget him. That’s what I’m doing.”
The hell I am.
The doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Her mother had gone back to her home in Santa Barbara with promises that they would all get together at the end of the month. There was Marlene’s wedding to plan before things got back to normal.
When the bell rang again, she rose to her feet and crossed to the door. At this time of day, it was probably a persistent salesman.
Her words of dismissal disappeared when she looked through the peephole. With a cry of disbelief, she pulled open the door and threw herself into Dennis’s arms.
Relief washed over him. Holding her close, he brought his mouth down to hers. God, but he had missed her.
This was what she had been dr
eaming about for the past several days. It was what she had been aching over every waking minute she immersed herself in her whirlwind routine. He was back. He was really back.
The next moment, a firecracker went off inside her brain, releasing explosions and with it, a realization. Nicole wedged a hand between them and pushed Dennis back. Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him. “I forgot.”
The kiss and the one hundred and eighty-degree switch had him dizzy. “What?”
She scowled. “I’m still mad at you.” How could he have walked away from her, stayed away so long and then come back as if nothing had happened?
He started to take her back into his arms. “I noticed.”
With determination, she pushed against his chest again, holding him at bay. “No, I’m serious.”
Before he could begin his defense, Romeo came running up and leaped all over him like an eighty-five pound puppy. “Down, Romeo, down.” After washing Dennis’s face with his tongue, the dog obeyed. Dennis rubbed Romeo’s head as he walked into the apartment.
Hurt feelings mingled with joy. Nicole planted her hands at her waist as she followed him. “You walked out on me,” she accused.
He turned, confused. If he lived to be a hundred, he was never going to understand the species. “You told me to go.”
“Not for this long.” The longer he stayed away, the more certain she had become that he hadn’t really cared at all. “Where have you been all this time?”
He shrugged. “Working. Tying up all the loose ends.” They had enough evidence, thanks to Logan’s disk, to put the key members of the Syndicate away for a very long time. “Trying to get over you.” He cupped her cheek with his hand. He’d almost forgotten how the feel of her skin thrilled him. “It didn’t work. Everywhere I looked, you were there. You were in my thoughts morning, noon and night.” He dropped his hand to his side, unable to read her expression. “Winston says I’ve gotten to be hell to work with.”
She was trying desperately to compose herself. To put everything in perspective when all she wanted to do was to wrap herself around him and hold on tight. “Then he is your partner?”
“Yes.”
A small smile played on her lips. “At least that wasn’t a lie.”
He didn’t know where to begin, or how. All the words he had rehearsed on his way here had become a vague fog in his brain. “No.”
“But everything else was.” She searched his face, wanting to know the truth no matter how much it hurt. She deserved the truth. And prayed that it was what she wanted to hear. “Was it all lies, Dennis? Was everything you told me a lie?”
Dennis shook his head. He wanted to take her back into his arms, but this had to be cleared away first. “No.”
She raised her chin, taking a deep breath. Nicole proceeded like a tightrope walker across a high wire, one tiny, cautious step at a time. “Where did you draw the line?”
His eyes held hers. “I didn’t lie about my family. Or about my past. I really do have a law degree.” He took a step closer. “And I didn’t lie about the way I feel about you. That part was very true.”
She wanted to believe him so much. “Was making love with me part of your job?”
He smiled, remembering. “Making love with you was the most wonderful experience of my life. If that had been in my job description, I would have signed on when I was fifteen.”
Despite the situation, she smiled. “I would have been eight.”
“I would have waited.” He touched her again, his fingers gliding along the line of her jaw. He saw something in her eyes that gave him hope. “Listen to me for a minute. I have to tell you something. Craig was in debt to the Syndicate. Heavily. I don’t know how he managed it, but he stole the accountant’s disk—”
That sounded so strange to her. “They have accountants?”
He grinned. “Sounds funny, doesn’t it? But they’re businessmen after a fashion. Anyway, he thought that was his insurance policy. They had other ideas.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean—?”
He didn’t relish this part, but she deserved the truth, all of it. “They killed him. The car was tampered with.”
Nicole covered her mouth in horror. But there were no tears. They had long since left her.
“Unfortunately for them, whoever tampered with the car did it before they found out where Craig hid the disk.”
“And that’s where you came in,” she said quietly.
“That’s where I came in,” he repeated. “The Department thought you had it, or knew where it was.”
She had never known the trouble she could have been in. Nicole shook her head. “I never—”
Dennis stopped her. There was no need for excuses. “I know.” He took a deep breath. “Nicole, I’m not sorry for doing my job. I’m only sorry that it hurt you.”
She bit her lower lip, wavering. “I really do want to believe you, but—”
The hell with waiting. He couldn’t separate the way he felt from his words. Dennis took her into his arms. “Look into my eyes, Nicole. What do you see?”
She looked up and saw her reflection in his pupils. “Me.”
He nodded. “That’s right.” His arms tightened around her. “Only you.”
If she was trying to hold out against him, she was losing the battle. She could feel her body calling to his. Struggling, she tried to maintain her composure. “Why did you go looking for my mother?”
That he could answer simply. “Because you told me you wanted her.”
Nicole shook her head. “I was half out of my head with pain.” Another man would have dismissed what she had said under those circumstances.
His eyes touched her face, caressing her. Making love to her. “Sometimes the truth comes out at times like that.”
Maybe it did, she thought. She owed him for that. Owed him for a lot of things. “My mother thinks you’re a terrific person.”
He smiled then and it rose to his eyes. “Mothers always liked me.”
She could easily believe that. He had the look of apple pie and baseball about him. Nicole threaded her arms around his neck. “Daughters, too.”
The sigh of relief that went through him was tremendous. “Then you forgive me?”
She cocked her head. “That all depends.”
He saw the glint of humor in her eyes and knew that things were going to be all right from here on in. “On what?”
Nicole ran her tongue along her teeth, her eyes holding his. “On how you plan to make it up to me.”
That was easy. “I plan to try for the rest of my life, Nic.”
She hadn’t expected him to look so serious. Her pulse quickened. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
They both knew he was. “I took a look at my streamlined life and realized that it was missing something. Actually, three somethings,” he amended. The dog barked. He glanced in Romeo’s direction. “Maybe four.” And then he shut out everything else in the room except for her. “Nicole, I love you. I’ve never said that to anyone before, and I don’t intend to say that to anyone else again, except maybe to Erika and Ethan. Because I do. I love all three of you, and I want you to be part of my life from here on in. Otherwise, it’s not a life, it’s just an existence. Marry me, Nicole.”
Yes, yes! She raised her eyes innocently to his. “Would I be Mrs. Dennis Lincoln if I did?”
That was an odd question. “Yes. Why?”
“Just checking,” she explained impishly. She wound her arms around his neck and rose on her toes. Her body fit neatly against his. “I just thought you might have given me an alias.”
“No, I didn’t lie about that, either. My name is really Dennis Lincoln.”
“Good, I’ve gotten used to that. No more lies?”
He lowered his mouth to hers. “No more lies,” he promised. “Ever.”
She felt the last word against her lips as he pressed his mouth to hers. And she believed him. You had to believe a man who made you feel safe.
<
br /> ISBN: 978-1-4268-7054-5
HAPPY NEW YEAR—BABY!
Copyright © 1996 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella
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Happy New Year--Baby! Page 22