Glancing at the grease-sodden paper bag, he picked it up and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. Then, taking her hand, Sam urged Savannah to her feet.
“C’mon, I’ll buy you something better on the way home.”
She nodded. “All right.”
Pushing the chair back in, Sam leaned over Megan’s desk to shut off the computer. He recognized the last name across the top of the screen. Savannah had been looking at Elliott’s records. Going through them was probably what had triggered her reaction. He stared at it now, his hand hovering over the sequence of keys to shut down the machine.
Something about the file had bothered him when he’d pulled it up himself half an hour ago. Something that teased the back of his mind, flittering in and out like an elusive title to an old song he only half remembered. The harder he tried, the less it came to him. He’d gone on with his search, his feelings unresolved
The reproduced copy of the claim form was no different on her monitor than it had been on his. Nothing came to him.
And yet—yet there was something....
Sam sighed. It was probably nothing more than frustration on his part. The man had a wife and daughter, and from what he’d read in the file, looked to be stability personified. There was nothing unusual, nothing outstanding, except—if Savannah’s impression was correct—the man was a little henpecked Elliott Reynolds had enough to deal with, without someone delving into his life with a magnifying glass.
Besides, there was no earthly reason for Elliott to kidnap Aimee. He had a daughter of his own.
Pressing the keys, Sam waited until the screen went black. Then he shut off the monitor.
He turned and saw Savannah standing there, looking fragile for all her capability and bravado. Seeing her like that made up his mind for him. Tomorrow he’d get back to all his fine resolutions and make them work. Tonight, Savannah looked as if she needed a shoulder—if not to cry on, then at least to lean on. And his were broad.
He slipped his arm around her shoulders, and they walked out.
Savannah put down her napkin. Tonight they’d brought home a pizza, and she had actually eaten two slices. The aroma made it impossible not to.
Just like being around Sam made it impossible not to hope.
She blessed the whim of fate that had brought to her the article she’d read about their agency. To the article, and Sam.
For a second she sat there, studying him as he finished what she’d counted was his fifth slice. She decided the man had to be hollow; from what she’d seen, he ate well and with gusto and only gained muscle.
He felt her looking at him and wondered if he’d gotten sauce on his chin.
“What?”
“Why did you get into this line of work?” There was a smudge of cheese on his face. Taking another napkin from the holder, she brushed it against his cheek.
Sam could have sworn he felt her fingers through the paper.
Setting the slice down, he rolled her question over in his mind. The choice wasn’t something he had thought long and hard about. It was just something that had evolved. By the time he’d made his move to the agency, it had felt right.
But she was waiting, so he framed the best answer he could.
“I think kids have a right to enjoy innocence for as long as possible. It fades fast enough without having someone rip it away from you. I think of someone taking one of my nephews or my niece away from the parents who love them, the home they know—and a rage builds inside me. There’s no excuse for it. None. People like that should be hauled out and shot. No appeal.”
He blew out a breath, his words echoing in his head. She probably thought he was some sort of fanatic. He lowered his voice.
“The last case I worked on the police force was a kidnapping. A nine-month-old baby. Someone broke into the house and stole her while her grandmother was sleeping in the next room.” He would remember the stricken look on that old woman’s face until the day he died.
Savannah was almost afraid to ask. “Did you find the baby?”
He paused a moment, remembering. Remembering the small body, left for dead. Barely breathing. He’d cradled the tiny infant in his arms while his partner had driven like a madman to get her to the hospital in time. Even now, he felt a tightening in his chest.
“Yeah.”
She had to ask the next question, even though there was something in his voice that made her afraid of what lay ahead.
“Alive?”
He looked at Savannah, realizing what had to be on her mind. He hadn’t meant to mislead her. “Yes, she was alive. Just barely. We got her to the hospital in time. The kidnapper had gotten his ransom and then wanted to get rid of the inconvenient ‘evidence.’”
It had taken three men to pull him off the criminal when they had finally-tracked him down. Sam set his mouth hard. He’d come very close to murder that day. Closer than he ever wanted to be. It taught him things about himself, taught him that he always had to remain on his guard, even against himself.
“I guess I got a little too intense when we found him. I didn’t like what I saw in myself.” That was when he’d discovered that there was a darker side to everyone. Even him. “Neither did the captain. I thought it was better for everyone if I went my own way.” He shrugged. He believed that he had more control now, that he could restrain himself if he were faced with the same situation again. At least, he wanted to think that. “Cade came into my life at the right time.”
Savannah’s eyebrows drew together as she tried to remember. “I thought you said Megan introduced you.”
“She did. She’d worked on Cade’s case when his son was kidnapped. She was with the FBI then.” He smiled, recalling Megan’s wording, and paraphrased it for Savannah’s benefit: “But the Bureau was ‘too confining’ for her, so when Cade began ChildFinders, she quit the Bureau and came to work with him.”
There was a softness in his face when he talked of the agency’s only female partner. Questions rose in Savannah’s mind. Questions that she really didn’t have the right to ask. She asked anyway.
“Are you and Megan...?”
She couldn’t find the word that she wanted to use. Anything she came up with would have given him the wrong impression.
Or maybe the right one.
Sam laughed, trying to picture himself with Megan. Petite, lively and feisty as hell, Megan was probably one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met, but there had never been any spark between them. And he figured it was better that way.
“We go back a long way, but Megan and I know too much about each other to get involved.”
That didn’t seem like a stumbling block to Savannah. If anything, it was the opposite. “I thought that was the basis of a good relationship—to know a lot about each other.”
“Maybe.” It occurred to him that he wanted to know more about Savannah. More than he’d already discovered by tapping into her personnel file on the computer. He’d meant to scroll past it, but found himself reading instead. Absorbing. “In this case, it’s more like knowing a lot about your sister.”
“She would make one beautiful sister.”
There was no jealousy in her voice, he realized. Only admiration. Another woman would have been catty. But then, Savannah had no need to feel threatened by anyone. “Yes, she would.”
He was looking at her strangely, and she couldn’t read his expression. “What is it?”
He’d been struggling with his conscience and with his needs since they’d walked into the house. No, he corrected, since he’d woken up this morning. Right now, the forces of good were definitely not holding their own.
Leaning over, he ran his thumb along her lower lip. Torturing himself.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you all day.”
If she listened, she could hear her heart pounding. There were no doubts now. Maybe they would come later, but for now, he was all that she wanted. All that she needed. If there were promises that hadn’t been made, so be it. He was her comfor
t. And her fire. And she needed both
“That’s good,” she said softly, “because I’ve needed to be kissed all day.”
Once the words were out of her mouth, it unleashed the flood of emotion she’d been trying to dam up. She stopped trying.
Savannah raised her face to his. “Kiss me, Sam. Make me forget all these terrible thoughts that are haunting me. Please,” she breathed.
“Shhh.” He cupped his hands around her face and felt his heart tighten, just as it had last night. “You should never have to ask for something like that.” Not when you make a man want to drop to his knees in reverence for being allowed to spend even a moment in your presence, he added silently.
Sam kissed her then, tenderly pressing his lips to hers. Unprepared for the ardor he met. It was like testing the waters with his fingers only to have something grasp his wrist and pull him down into a whirlpool. A whirlpool that dragged him off for a wild ride through white-water rapids.
They were breathless immediately.
Breathless and wanting and eager.
Sam felt her straining against him, and he had to hold himself back to keep from ripping the clothes from her body. He couldn’t begin to recognize himself or the emotions bouncing through him with such immeasurable energy.
This wasn’t him.
There’d never been this frenzy seizing his body before. Bending it to its will.
He wasn’t a womanizer, but there had been a fair number of women in his life. Women he’d enjoyed and who had enjoyed him.
But always, always, he’d been in possession of his mind, of his thoughts. Now it seemed as if they were crashing and colliding, breaking up into fragments in the heat of his desire.
He couldn’t seem to collect himself.
He didn’t want to.
She was like water to his thirst, air to his oxygenstarved body. He felt entirely dependent on Savannah for his very life.
He didn’t like being dependent, but he was too consumed by her to rebel. To even contemplate rebelling.
All he knew was that he needed her. Needed to feel her skin, soft and silken, beneath his fingers. Needed to feel the pulse in her throat throbbing against his lips as he pressed kiss after kiss there.
Needed, most of all, to feel born again in her burning desire for him.
All day, Savannah had felt as if she were sleepwalking through a never-ending nightmare. Only now did she feel alive—alive in the wake of Sam’s touch, in the wake of his passionate kiss.
As he stripped away her clothing; and as she frantically stripped away his to feel his hard, naked body against hers, anticipation vibrated through every part of her. She wanted to make love with him. To him. And to have him make love not just with her but to her with all the wild, unbridled passion that there was between a man and a woman.
She wanted to feel... everything.
She never knew it could be like this, had never dreamed that it could be this passionate, this mindnumbing, this overwhelming.
Her need for him seemed bottomless, and even as she gloried in the sensations vibrating through her, her need frightened her. To need was to be vulnerable, and she’d been needy, been vulnerable. Been disappointed.
It was logical to be afraid.
But logic was something that couldn’t find her here in this fiery, safe place Sam had created for her in his arms. Couldn’t find her when her thoughts all turned to dandelion seeds being blown away in the wind. There was nothing left where logic could root.
Savannah groaned, only distantly aware that somehow they had wound up on the floor. Her heart pounding in her ears, she arched her body to capture every sweet sensation as his lips and tongue forged a trail along her skin. Her skin sizzled, dampened by his moisture, dried by his breath.
And then it was happening. He was taking her, making love to her with his hands, his mouth. Her body trembled as it sailed on the crest of another climax that he’d created for her.
And then another.
Everywhere he touched, the madness followed: the wave taking her up and over, but never quite down again. No matter how much she tried, Savannah couldn’t catch her breath.
He made her head spin.
He made her want to give her heart again.
Sam had never met anyone remotely like her. So willing, so able. So incredibly supple and agile that he thought every part of her must be double-jointed. Her boundless desire humbled him as it took him prisoner. And made him never want to break free.
Cradling her body beneath his, unable to hold himself back any longer, Sam linked his hands with hers. She opened her eyes then, and looked into his eyes. Looked into his soul. And captured it.
Her chest was heaving, rubbing against his. Urging him on.
Words he’d never said to any woman echoed in his brain, demanding release. But if he said them, then he could never take them back. And he wouldn’t trap her this way. It wasn’t fair. What she felt was need created out of the terrible moment in which she found herself. It wasn’t because of any true feelings she had for him. But he could live with that, he told himself. And down the line he could make peace with it.
If he could have her now.
A sheen of sweat covered their bodies as he lowered himself into her. Her eyes didn’t drift closed, instead they widened. Widened still more as he began to move.
Lifting her hips, molding herself to him, Savannah mimicked his rhythm.
The pace of their dance increased, growing faster and faster until it set a tempo of its own and he had to hurry to keep up.
He tasted her gasp in his mouth as she reached the summit a beat before he did. And then he was enveloped by it, by a sensation that, at that moment, he felt he could have died for.
And sharing it with the woman he knew he would have died for.
The thought remained echoing in his mind, lingering long after the euphoria had slipped back into the shadows again.
Sam held her close to him, while outside, twilight embraced the world.
Held her and loved her. And wished from the bottom of his soul that he didn’t.
Chapter 14
Sam had learned that even with a gut instinct, you have to back off sometimes in order to allow it to gel. There was such a thing as trying too hard, and he knew that he was.
What had been bothering him about Elliott’s family medical records gelled the next morning in Savannah’s kitchen.
A desire for coffee and her—not in that order—had brought him downstairs. He’d woken up to find her side of the bed empty, and the sheets fairly cool. Instantly alert, Sam threw on his jeans, grabbed his shirt and padded down the stairs barefoot, looking for her. A feeling of unease shadowed him.
He found Savannah in the kitchen, crying.
Sitting on the stool closest to the wall, Savannah seemed to have physically withdrawn into herself. Her body shook with sobs that she was trying—with some success—to muffle.
The sight of her, so distraught, shook him down to the core of his being. The helplessness that held him captive, rendering him unable to remedy the situation for her, only heightened his frustration.
Crossing to her, Sam whispered her name, afraid of startling her. “Savannah?”
She turned away from him, obviously not wanting Sam to see her so completely out of control. But he wouldn’t leave the room, wouldn’t leave her alone on this desolate island on which she found herself. Instead, though she tried to push him away when he came to her, Sam patiently gathered her into his arms and held her.
He stroked her hair, letting her cry against his chest. Feeling useless. All he could do was let her know that she wasn’t alone. Because he loved her.
“I know. I know,” he told her softly against her hair. “But we’ll find her. You have to believe that, Savannah. We’re going to find her.”
After a moment, she raised her head. She looked up at him, knowing he was doing everything he possibly could.
Knowing also that it might not be good enough.
She gulped in air before she could speak. “I just...looked at the...calendar and then I just lost it.”
She was pointing toward the wall. He didn’t bother looking at the calendar that he knew hung there; he’d noted it before. It depicted a Norman Rockwell cover from the Saturday Evening Post.
“Is it her birthday?”
Savannah shook her head. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that I—she had an appointment today...at 9 o’clock...just well-child care... I forgot... And now I won’t be able to...” Her voice broke again.
The barely audible words struck a chord. Something flashed in his mind, momentarily illuminating everything. Pushing aside the sympathy he felt.
Sam grasped Savannah by her shoulders and held her away from him. Excitement throbbed through his veins. “What did you just say?”
Stunned by his reaction, she tried to think. “That I won’t be able to—”
“No, no, before that.” Agitated, he waved her sentence away. She’d said something to stimulate a thought, but he was losing it again. “Something about her appointment.”
Savannah stared at him, not knowing what he wanted from her. “Her visit to the doctor?”
Those weren’t the words she’d used. He needed the exact words. “You called it something.”
Her mind jumbled, Savannah tried to sort out her words. “Well-child care?”
And then it just fell into place as if it had always been there. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” Wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, Savannah stared at him. He wasn’t making any sense. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“It’s what’s been bugging me about your friend Elliott’s medical files” Now that he thought about it, it seemed so clear. How could he not have seen it?
Now that he’d figured out what hadn’t seemed right about Elliott’s records, he wanted to get to the office to look at the file again as soon as possible. He needed to play this through.
“What are you—” Savannah began.
“C’mon.” One arm around Savannah, Sam picked up a piece of now-cold toast from the stack on the dish. It would have to serve as breakfast until later. This was more important. “I want to get to the office to check this out.”
A Hero for All Seasons Page 16