by Nora Roberts
“You want it to be real, don’t you?”
“More than anything.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs as she reached out to stroke his cheek. “And you want me.”
“You’re all I’ve ever wanted.” His face twitched under her palm. “All these years, you’re all I’ve wanted. I’ve never been with another woman. Not like Pike. Not like Riley. I was waiting for you.”
She wished she could harden her heart, but part of her wept for him. “You want to touch me.” She steeled herself and lifted his hand, placed it on her breast. “Like this.”
“You’re soft. So soft.” There was something pathetic and terrifying about the way his hand shook against her, even as his fingers moved to caress.
“If I let you touch me, the way you want, will you let me go outside?”
He jerked back as though she’d burned him. Bitter betrayal welled in his throat. “You’re trying to trick me.”
“No, Jeff.” It was all right for her desperation to show, she told herself. Let him see her weakness. “I don’t like being closed in. It frightens me. I only want to go outside for a few minutes, get some air. You want me to be happy, don’t you?”
“It’s going to take time.” His mouth set in a stubborn line. “You’re not ready.”
“You know how I have to keep busy, Jeff.” She stepped toward him, careful to keep her eyes fixed on his. When she slid her arms up his chest, his eyes clouded, darkened. “Sitting here like this, hour after hour, is upsetting me. I know how much you’ve done for me.” And she felt the outline of the syringe in his pocket. “I know you want us to be together.”
“We are together.” He brought his unsteady hand back to her breast. When she didn’t flinch, he smiled. “We’ll always be together.”
He lowered his head to kiss her. She slipped the needle from his pocket.
“Deanna,” he murmured.
Her sharp indrawn breath betrayed her. She twisted, fighting to plunge the needle into him as they grappled to the floor.
Searching for Jeff finally brought Finn back to the bookcase. He had seen what he and Jenner had missed on their first search. The dimensions, he thought, as the spit in his mouth dried to dust. The dimensions were wrong. The bookcase couldn’t be an end wall. Couldn’t be.
She was in there, he realized. Deanna was in there. And she wasn’t alone. He had one panicked notion of hurling himself bodily against the shelves. His body quivered with the effort of holding back. It wasn’t the way. God knew what Jeff would do to her in the time it took him to break through.
Struggling for calm, he began to search methodically for a mechanism.
She was losing. The hypo squirted out of her fingers when he rolled over her. She screamed as her head rapped hard against the floor. Though her vision blurred, she could see him above her, his face distorted, his tears running. And she knew he could kill. Not only others, but her.
“You lied,” he cried out in an agony of despair. “You lied. I have to punish you. I have to.” And sobbing, he closed his hands around her throat.
She used her nails to rake his face. The blood surged to the surface and ran like his tears. When he howled in pain, she squirmed free. Her fingers brushed over the syringe as he snagged her ankle.
“I loved you. I loved you. Now I have to hurt you. It’s the only way you’ll understand. It’s for your own good. That’s what Uncle Matthew says. It’s for your own good. You’ll have to stay in here. You’ll have to stay and have bread and water until you’re ready to behave.” He chanted the words as he dragged her back toward the bed. “I’m doing my best for you, aren’t I? I gave you a roof over your head. I put clothes on your back. And this is the way you thank me? You’ll just have to learn. I know best.”
He snagged her hand, yanked up her arm.
She plunged the needle into him.
Finn heard the sound of sirens in the distance, but they meant nothing. Every ounce of concentration was focused on the puzzle at hand. There was a way in. There was always a way. And he would find it.
“It’s here,” he murmured to himself. “Right here. The son of a bitch didn’t walk through the wall.” His finger hit a nub. He twisted. The panel opened in well-oiled silence.
Deanna stood beside the bed, the syringe gripped in one hand. Eyes glazed, murmuring her name, Jeff crawled across the mattress toward her.
“I love you, Deanna.” His hand brushed hers before he went limp.
“Oh, Jesus. Deanna.” In one leap, Finn had her in his arms.
She swayed, the needle dropping from her loose fingers. “Finn.” His name burned her bruised throat and felt like heaven. From what seemed like a long, long distance, she heard him swear when her body jerked with a shudder.
“Did he hurt you? Tell me if you’re hurt.”
“No. No, he wanted to take care of me.” She buried her face in Finn’s shoulder. “He only wanted to take care of me.”
“Let’s get out of here.” He carried her through the opening, down the hall, where he dragged at the locks.
“I kept asking him to let me go outside.” She breathed in the raw air like wine. “He shot you, Finn. He was the one who shot you. And he killed Tim.”
She jolted at the sound of screeching brakes.
“Well.” Jenner climbed out of his car, moments ahead of two black-and-whites. The picture of Finn carrying Deanna down the front steps wasn’t what he’d expected to see after he’d gotten the frantic call from Fran Myers. But it was an image that satisfied. “Went off on your own again, Mr. Riley.”
“You can’t trust a reporter, Lieutenant.”
“Guess not. Good to see you, Miss Reynolds. Merry Christmas.”
Deanna studied her reflection in the dressing room mirror. The bruises had faded from her throat, and the haunted look had ebbed from her eyes.
But her heart was still sore.
As Joe had often told her during her reporting days, she had one that bled too easily.
She couldn’t afford for it to bleed now. She had a show to do in thirty minutes.
“Hey.”
She glanced over, saw Finn. Smiled. “Hey back.”
“Can you spare a minute?”
“I’ve got several for you.” She swiveled in her chair, held out her hands. “Don’t you have a plane to catch?”
“I called the airport. My flight is delayed two hours. I’ve got time on my hands.”
Suspicion gleamed in her eyes. “You’re not going to miss that plane.”
“I know, I know. You’ve already laid down the law. I’ve got a job to do, and you’re not going to support me if I screw it up. I’m going to Rome. Only a week off schedule.” He bent down, kissed her. “I figured I had time to give one more shot at talking you into coming with me.”
“I’ve got a job to do, too.”
“The press is going to be all over you.”
She arched her brows. “Promises, promises.” She stepped off the chair, turned a circle. “How do I look?”
“Like something I don’t want to be several thousand miles away from.” He tipped up her chin, looked deep into her eyes. “You’re hurting.”
“I’m better. Finn, we’ve been through this.” She saw his face change, harden. “Don’t.”
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take before I close my eyes and stop seeing you in that room. Knowing you were there all those hours, and I’d walked right by you.” He pulled her roughly against him. “I still want to kill him.”
“He’s sick, Finn. All those years of emotional abuse. He needed to escape, and he used television. And one day, the day he found his uncle dead, I walked out of the screen and into his life.”
“I don’t give a damn how sick he is, how warped or how pathetic.” He drew her back. “I can’t, Deanna. I don’t have it in me to care. And I can’t stand hearing you blame yourself.”
“I’m not. Really, I’m not. I know it wasn’t my fault. Nothing he did was my fault.” Still
, she thought of Tim, whose body had been found in the trunk of her company car in a downtown parking lot. “I was never real to him, Finn. Even all the time we worked together, I was never anything but an image, a vision. Everything he did he did because he’d twisted that image. I can’t blame myself for that. But I can still be sorry.”
“Dee.” Fran stepped into the doorway, winked at Finn. “We need the star in five.”
“The star’s ready.”
“I can postpone the flight, stick around for the press conference after the show.”
“I can handle reporters.” She kissed Finn firmly, on the mouth. “I’ve had plenty of experience.”
“Want to get married, Kansas?” With his arm around her, he walked her into the corridor, down toward the set.
“You bet I do. April third. Be there.”
“I never miss a deadline.” He turned her around to face him. “I’m crazy about you.” And winced. “Bad choice of words.”
She wasn’t surprised that she could laugh. Nothing surprised her now. “Call me from Rome.” Marcie leaped forward to repair Deanna’s lipstick. “And don’t forget, you have to handle the flowers for the church and reception. You have the list I made you?”
Behind her back, he rolled his eyes. “Which one?”
“All of them.”
“No you don’t.” Marcie threw up a hand before Deanna could lean into another kiss. “You’ve got thirty seconds, and I don’t want my work smeared.”
“Stay tuned, Kansas. I’ll be back.”
Deanna took another step toward stage. “The hell with it.” She whirled around, flew into Finn’s arms. Over Marcie’s groan, she clamped her lips to his. “Hurry back,” she told him, and rushed toward the stage, nailing her cue.
The floor director stabbed a finger toward her. Over the sound of applause, she smiled into the camera’s glass eye and slipped seamlessly into millions of lives.
“Good morning. It’s good to be home.”