U.S. Marshals: Prey (U.S. Marshals Book 3)

by Laura Marie Altom

  Seeing his brother-in-law so happy like this with another woman left Adam more confused than ever. Even a little angry, as though he’d been punched. As though to even have these tangible memories in the home he shared with Adam’s sister was somehow adulterous.

  “Seems like another lifetime,” Joe said. “When I lost Willow, there were days I wished to die. But there was Meggie. Always Meggie.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Adam sighed. “I knew you’d been married before, but…”

  “It was easier to believe Willow and I had a bad marriage? That she was an old crone and back then I’d had a beer belly and Meggie had been a sassy brat? And then I met your sister and she made everything all better?”

  “No. Hell, no, man. That’s not what I meant at all.”

  “I know,” Joe said with a puff of his cigar. “See that?” He pointed to a photo of Willow and Meggie hamming for the camera while in the midst of baking. Meggie couldn’t have been much more than two and both mother and child were covered in flour. “Willow was an amazing cook. She could whip up ambrosia from cardboard and paste. I loved her so much that after she’d died, it sometimes hurt to breathe. One minute she was there and the next…”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Adam said.

  “I know. But when I look at you, a lot of times, I see myself—only worse. After she…well, after Willow was gone, I ran away. Didn’t talk to hardly anyone but my dog—and the fact that I’m still referring to that mutt as a person should tell you just what a fix I was in.” He chuckled, but there was no happiness in his eyes. Only pain. “You, on the other hand, have never shown any outward signs of grief. The day after Angela’s death, you were back at work.”

  “Damned straight—nailing the bastard who shot her.”

  “Yet even after you’d done just that, you kept working. And working. In fact, the whole time I’ve known you, I can’t recall you ever having taken more than a weekend away from your job.”

  “Sure, I have.” He swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “Remember? Right after San Francisco.”

  “How could I have forgotten? A swell break from the monotony for you.”

  “For what he did to Gracie, Visconti deserved to die. Two weeks’ mandatory leave. Small price to pay for the pleasure of seeing that bastard dead.”

  “The fact that you did that—shot him between the eyes without a moment’s hesitation, is what landed you in trouble. Since losing Angela, you’ve become like a machine. The only time Gillian and I ever see you soften is when you’re with Charity. She’s good for you. Reminds you what it’s like to be human. Which brings us right back around to the real reason you’re here, which I’m assuming isn’t to rifle through my past, but ask me how I let go.”

  “I’m not letting you in,” Charity said to Adam outside her loft at one in the morning. “Ralphie, however, is always welcome.” She knelt to hug the excited dog. She’d missed him.

  “Come on,” he said, “I know it’s late. And I apologize for that. Truly, but what I have to say can’t wait.”

  She sighed, and against her better judgment stepped aside to let Adam and his loveable mutt back into her world. But he’d better make it quick. Having already made the decision that from now on they were coworkers—nothing more—she wouldn’t go back on her word. Even if it was only to herself.

  “Five minutes,” she said. “That’s how much time you have till I’m going back to bed.”

  “Fair enough.” He dragged her by her sweatshirt sleeve to the sofa. “Bug—Charity—my head’s spinning. There’s so much I want to tell you, I’m not even sure where to begin.”

  “For starters, are you drunk?”

  “Sober as a church mouse.”

  Nose wrinkled, she asked, “Sure that’s how the saying goes?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked, reaching for her hands. “Charity, I’m cured. I had this long talk with my shrink, and then Joe, and they both told me it’s okay for me to love you. That I’m not jinxed or cursed. That it’s all right for me to be happy again. Live a full life.”

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, kissed her till she quivered from his warm breath and achingly familiar smell. She loved him, Lord help her, she loved him. But did he honestly believe what he was saying? “Adam, sweetheart, no one—or two—people could solve all your problems in one day.”

  “I know, but listen,” he said, cupping his hands to her cheeks, searching deep into her eyes. “Joe said the most amazing thing. That I don’t have to be afraid anymore. I don’t have to worry about disrespecting Angela’s memory. I just have to love her as she was. You know, cherish the memory, but not devote my every thought to it. Joe and my shrink reminded me that if Angela truly loved me she wouldn’t have wanted me to die with her. And I’ve been dying, you know. My dad saw it, and brothers and even you, but I didn’t listen. Until you, I was— Oh, Charity.” Her cheeks still framed by his hands, he seized her lips in another kiss. A deeper, mesmerizing sharing of emotions. “I loved her,” he said. “But she’s gone, and here you are. Like this shining beacon, showing me the way. I love you, I love you, I—”

  “I’m sorry, Adam. Please don’t take this personally, but I think I’m going to be—” She made a mad dash for the bathroom and promptly threw up.

  “You okay?” Adam asked ten minutes later, cold rag on Charity’s forehead once the worst of whatever malady had bit her had passed.

  She nodded, and he helped her up and into bed.

  “This wasn’t quite how I’d planned the night to go.” He eased beside her, brushing her hair back from her cool forehead.

  “Must’ve been something I ate,” she said. “I’ve been starving all day, but now…” She blanched. “I never want to eat again.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to eat, just tell me we’ll get through this together. That any more rough patches I have, you’ll help me through.”

  “Hey,” she complained, rolling onto her side to face him. “Who’s helping who here? I’m the sick one, remember?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Back to you, is there anything I can get you? Water? Sprite?”

  “The one thing you could do for me, Adam, is reassure me that all the pretty words you just spouted were for real. I’d just made the decision to make a clean break from you, but here you are again, telling me things have changed. I won’t play this constant hot-cold game. I can’t. It’s not fair.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Name anything you want, and I’ll give it to you.”

  Hugging her pillow, she looked away. “Oh, that’s easy. But the one thing I want, you’re nowhere near ready to give.”

  “A wedding?” he asked. “Try me. Name a date, and I’m there. Gillian’s been dying to have a wedding at her castle. Want to rock her world by tying the knot at Christmas?”

  Charity wasn’t sure what to make of this new-and-improved Adam. Had one session with his shrink and a heart-to-heart with Joe really done all this?

  Though every bone in her body told her not to trust him, that his intoxicating words were but one more trap, she raised her chin, tremulously smiling. “If you hurt me again, Adam Logue…”

  “Trust me,” he said, planting the most tender kiss ever on her forehead.

  And because she loved him, she overrode the nagging voice telling her to slow down and said, “Yes, I would love to marry you for Christmas.”

  Steph screamed for joy when Charity told her the news of her and Adam’s engagement. As did Adam’s sister and sisters-in law. Franks even gave her Monday afternoon off to go wedding-dress shopping. So why, when she should be the happiest woman in the world, was she now in the bathroom of Hearts on Fire Bridal Boutique tossing her cookies? Or more accurately, the chicken salad she’d had for lunch.

  “Everything all right in there?” Gregory, her personal bridal assistant, asked discreetly from outside the door. The man was six-four and much prettier than Charity.

  “Just dandy!” she sang out,
staring at her waxy complexion in an ornately edged gilded mirror.

  “Bridal jitters are completely normal,” he sang back. “Just get that cute little bootie of yours back out here and we’ll pop the cherry on some to-die-for bubbly we just got in this morning.”

  After splashing cold water on her face, she dried it with a paper towel, then headed back to the trenches. Who’d of thought picking a wedding dress would be so hard?

  “It’s about time,” Gracie said, looking at least fifteen months pregnant in the posh surroundings. Plush white carpet formed a luxurious foundation for funky, gilded Victorian furniture. Every wall surface that wasn’t gilded was mirrored.

  “What you waitin’ for?” Gwen Stefani asked from hidden speakers.

  “We were all starting to worry,” Gracie said.

  The whole gang was gathered. Gillian, Allie and her mom—even Adam’s dad, Vince. All of them were staring at her as if she was some rare form of alien life.

  “I’m fine,” Charity said. “Really.”

  “Excellent,” Gregory said with a double clap. “On with the show. Michelle, Rochelle, Babette! The bride’s ready for her next selections!”

  Three women as perfect as that stacked swimsuit model Adam once dated, paraded around the room in wedding dresses Charity didn’t have half the bod for—not to mention the confidence.

  Who was Charity trying to fool? Even if Adam had finally proposed, that didn’t mean he truly loved her. All it really meant was that he’d finally caved to family pressure. Or even worse, that he’d felt so sorry for her that because of all the years they’d been friends, he’d for real proposed out of some misguided sense of duty.

  Oh, sure, she’d had the confidence to tell herself she was over him, but when he came back, proposing with all the aplomb of a knight in shining armor, all her carefully constructed emotional walls crumbled. She wanted a baby. Oh, how she wanted a baby. And she most especially wanted that baby with Adam, but what then? Now that it looked as if all of that might really be happening, what did she do about her job? She’d fought so hard to be one of the toughest guys around, so what did it say about her that now, in addition to taking down bad guys, she also wanted to try out new chocolate-chip cookie recipes and take the kids to Saturday matinees?

  The worst part was, what if she did start an amazing new chapter of her life, only to have Adam falter yet again? How would she ever pick up the pieces?

  “Oh, that one’s gorgeous,” Allie’s mom, Victoria, gushed.

  “I have to agree,” Vince said. “That’s a real contender.”

  “Let’s add that one to Charity’s try-on list,” Gillian said in regard to the beaded chiffon dream dress that looked more like a silken sparkling cloud than a garment.

  The show went on and on while Charity’s stomach continued its nervous dance. After ten more dresses had been added to her try-on pile, the parade finally ended and it was time for her portion of the show.

  In the dressing room, Steph asked, “You still under the weather? You don’t look so hot.”

  “Thanks.” Charity slipped into a sequined-satin number she felt totally out of place even trying on, let alone wearing.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Steph said, easing up the zipper. “You all right? Is this just bridal nerves or are you coming down with something? Want me to call Larry?”

  “No, I don’t want you to call the new family doctor.”

  “Are you upset because I didn’t want to go along with Gillian’s offer to throw us a double wedding? You know how I’ve always dreamed of a June wedding and—”

  Charity rubbed her forehead. “I’d have been happy either way. Have your June wedding. Promise, I’m fine with it.”

  “Good,” Steph said. “And here I’ve been worried all afternoon that I was the cause of your funk.”

  “Stop.” Charity wriggled out of the dress. “Wish everyone would stop asking what’s wrong. In less than eight weeks I’m marrying a guy I’ve loved forever. What in the world could possibly be wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Steph said, holding out the next dress—an antebellum number with a skirt wider than Charity was tall. “Which is why I don’t understand why you’re being so hard to please. If you’re to have any chance at having a dress altered in time for the wedding, you’re going to have to pick one today.”

  “All right,” Charity said. “I will. Just quit nagging me—about everything.”

  Charity returned home exhausted only to open the door and get the most energizing vision of her life.

  Ralphie dashed over to greet her with tail wagging and a happy howl.

  “Bug,” Adam complained, “Gillian promised she’d have you out at least another hour.” He looked beyond-words gorgeous on her sofa, wearing nothing but jeans and a suspicious grin as he tossed one of her only two good towels over something on the coffee table.

  “Want me to leave?” she asked, only just now realizing that the man and the wedding were really, truly happening.

  Tears filled her eyes and she shut the door, then ran to Adam, all but throwing herself into his arms.

  “Hey,” he crooned, smoothing her hair. “What’s wrong? Brides aren’t supposed to be weepy.”

  “I—I know,” she said. “It’s just that you’ve backed out on me so many times that—”

  “To be fair, I’ve only backed out on an official proposal once.” He kissed her forehead and cheeks, then pulled her onto his lap, gently rocking while she clung to him tighter still. “Trust me, my buglicious beauty, from here on out, I’m going nowhere.”

  She nodded, swallowed hard.

  “Now, tell me, did you find a dress?”

  “N-no,” she said through lingering sniffles. “But Gregory said he’d find a few more to show me tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Need another day off? Franks would probably give you one.”

  “No,” she said, sliding off of Adam and onto her feet in search of a tissue.

  Ralphie followed.

  “Probably what I need is to get back to work.”

  “We’ll be glad to have you.” Adam got up, too, wandering into the kitchen to grab a beer from the fridge. He popped the top and took a sip, standing there in her kitchen, bare-chested, scratching his abs.

  To most women, this might not have been such a significant thing—a guy standing in her kitchen downing a beer and scratching. But to her, having loved him as long as Charity had, she fought a new batch of tears over the fact that he was finally, really and truly, on the verge of being forever hers.

  Out of that knowledge came the confidence that she had what it took to be a great mom. And a great marshal. No more worries. All she had to do now was to revel in what would surely be the happiest time of her life.

  Shyly smiling, she walked right up to him, planting her hands squarely on his chest. It was high time she put all this second-guessing behind her and take this engagement out for a test drive. “Is it time for bed?” she asked.

  “Sleepy?” He hooked his free arm around her waist, pulling her in for another kiss on the top of her head when where she most keenly craved his lips was on a bit lower spot.

  “Not particularly.”

  Pushing her back, a devilish grin lighting his eyes, he said, “You aren’t propositioning me, are you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Hot damn.” He parked his beer on the counter, then swooped her into his arms “By all means, let’s go straight to bed.”

  Ralphie pouted when they closed him out of the bedroom.

  When Charity’s alarm went off Tuesday morning, and Adam was there in her bed, one arm around her, the other swatting the incessant beep, she knew everything would be all right. Even while he’d made love to her, she’d had this irrational fear that in the morning he’d be gone. As though the past twenty-four hours had been a dream.

  “Morning, beautiful,” he said with that slow, sexy grin she so loved.

  “Morning.”

  “If we shared a shower, think
we could be good?”

  “We were good last night.”

  He feigned shock. “Cracking dirty jokes before you’ve even had your morning coffee? I’m marrying a wicked woman—and I like her…” He growled, tackling her with a few playful nips and kisses. “A lot.”

  Charity hadn’t known a shower could be such fun. And when Adam demanded she eat her breakfast in bed, she wasn’t about to turn him down.

  “I could get used to this pampering,” she said, a forkful of cheesy scrambled eggs heading to her mouth.

  “Good. Because for what I’ve put you through, you’ve got the rest of your life for me to spoil you.”

  Thirty minutes later, eggs churning, Charity surrendered her car keys to Adam and he drove them to work.

  “You know,” she said, exhausted from just their hike from the garage to their office. “I think the true reason you proposed is because you like driving my car.”

  He clutched his chest. “You got me.”

  She slugged him, then, when he whined she hit too hard, she kissed not only the supposed sore spot, but his lips.

  “Come on, guys,” Bear said in passing. “Get a room.”

  Charity giggled.

  “Did you find it?” Bear asked, walking alongside her since having nudged Adam out of the way.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Your wedding dress. Duh.”

  “Oops.” Casting a wink over her shoulder, she said, “Guess I’m still dazed by a certain someone’s kisses.”

  “Puke.” Bear held open the office door. Charity’s bliss continued for the next hour or so, at least until Franks called the lot of them into his office. On his desk sat an awesome-smelling bag of microwaved popcorn. Adam’s eggs had been good, but popcorn sounded like a fantastic breakfast. Was it too soon to eat again?

  “Listen up,” he said once they’d all taken seats. “I know last week’s protective gig was unorthodox, but it got the job done.”

  Charity grinned while Beau put his arm around her and squeezed. Everyone else in the room—aside from Sam—shared a laugh.