A Love Worth Living (3 page)

The offending file stood out on her dark-wood coffee table. It was the only thing in her condo out of place. Resignation mingled with the thrill of the chase, and she settled into her spot on the couch, opened the file and spread the gory pictures over the bare, expansive surface of the table.

Two hours later, eyes drooping over the crime-lab photos, Carrie called it a night and let sleep claim her.

Chapter Three

The hot air worked her lungs as she fought to breathe, even in the shade. Though it was midday, she was the only one at the mass grave. She waited under the tent for the rest of her crew to show up, but the ground was still for miles around her. It was just her and the bodies they were in the process of uncovering.

A cry split the air and she spun, scanning the horizon for signs of life.

Nothing.

When she turned back to the grave that marred the otherwise serene village, two sunken eyes within a gaunt face peered at her over the lip of the chasm.

“Help me.”

She ran to the edge to help the boy escape. She reached out her hand to pull him from the dirt-packed excavation hole. Instead of hauling him free, Carrie was pulled in by his unexpected strength. She yelped as her back hit the bottom. The pit sank much deeper than she remembered. She’d have to wait for her crew to send down a ladder.

The grave was endlessly wide, filled with half-living children reaching out for her, calling for their mothers, crying for mercy. Tears poured down her cheeks while fear and pain warred in her chest.

A young, pregnant girl approached, her red hair lying lank around her sallow skin. “Save me,” the girl mewled. “Help me!”

The tiny emaciated hands of the dying children grabbed for her clothes and tugged her downward. She sank into the soft mud with them. How could she help them from down here? How could she help if she was dead?

She struggled forward, clawing up the dirt sides and almost escaping. David poked his head over the edge and reached for her. He pulled her out and she sagged against him.

Her sigh of relief choked to a halt when David’s hands wrapped around her neck. She took a closer look at him—rotting flesh, bullet wounds, everything the children had suffered. “Yes, Carrie,” he hissed through a rotting jaw, “you’re going to break when you lose me too.”

“No!” The floor beneath her quaked in response and the ground broke apart around her. Her body shook from phantom hands on her shoulders.

“Carrie, God, wake up!”

Carrie’s eyes, swollen and itchy, popped open to reveal David’s face. He shook her again. She flinched away, cowering on the couch until the lingering fingers of her nightmare let go and reality seeped back into her awareness.

She sat up, her back rigid with knotted muscles. “What are you doing in my apartment?” She tried to keep the accusation from her tone, but it was either that or vulnerability, and she knew the greater evil in such a choice. The weak part of her wanted to let him wrap her in his arms. The logical part of her created a very organized list of reasons why that path led to disaster.

His frown deepened, looking odd on his usually cheerful face. Pangs of regret hit her chest. She’d put those lines there.

“Gunnerson called you, and when you didn’t pick up, he sent me over to check on you. The deposition starts in thirty minutes. He was worried.” He looked away when he answered, his eyes only flickering back to her once.

Bloody hell!
She leaped up from the couch and rubbed the nightmare from her eyes. With frantic hands, she scraped all the photos together and shoved them back in their folder before she stripped out of her work clothes, leaving a trail of laundry from her couch to the kitchen. She pressed a few buttons, and manna, in espresso form, brewed into her favorite travel mug. She grabbed milk and sugar from the fridge and her mouth watered in anticipation of her morning latte.

A choked sound made her spin around. David’s eyes were glued to her almost-naked body.

“Shit!” She scrambled to cover herself and darted into her bedroom. She’d definitely flashed David her goods, and if she wasn’t consumed by anxiety about her meeting, she’d probably panic about that too.

Instead, she swept all other issues aside and, hands shaking, dressed in one of the five navy suits in her closet. She fumbled with the buttons of her cream blouse, huffing in frustration when her post-nightmare jitters made it nearly impossible to dress herself.

“Let me.” David, tall and imposing, pulled Carrie’s hands to her sides and out of his way. All business, he did up her buttons and helped her into her coat before he grabbed her travel mug from the dresser and placed it in her hands. “Double shot, skim milk, two sugars. Let’s go before you’re late. And no, you’re not driving.”

She would have complained if she hadn’t been sucking down her coffee like it was oxygen. On the way out, she stuffed that damned file into her tote and fished out her phone—dead battery. Hard to hear an alarm, or phone calls, from a bricked phone.

“Twenty minutes, Carrie.”

In a daze, she followed David out of her apartment and let him lock it behind her. Her fingers clenched, like a tight enough grip could stop the tense threads of her life from unraveling around her.

They traveled in silence down to the parking garage where David ushered her into his car before backing out with a well of patience Carrie couldn’t fathom. If she’d been driving, she would have pealed out of there, as much running from her morning as rushing toward her appointment.

Once on the street, David poked at the radio until classic rock piped through the car. A few heartbeats later, he broke the silence. “Must have been some nightmare.”

She was not going into it, not before this trial and certainly not with him. “I overslept. My phone battery died.”

“Bullshit.” His harsh curse sliced through the heavy tension. “You don’t wake in a cold sweat, screaming, from sweet dreams.”

The nightmare images swamped her and she relived the whole thing as David drove through the relatively calm streets of Crystal City. Dread paralyzed her vocal cords. She locked away the fear until it faded from her consciousness, something she’d nearly perfected after Afghani insurgents had held their camp at gunpoint a few years back. Her panic attacks had earned her more than one gutshot from their steel-toed boots.

The technique didn’t always work, but today she was in luck. “I’m sorry to have worried you. It’s nothing.” She was impressed by the evenness in her voice, even as she felt echoes of nightmare-David’s phantom hands around her neck.

At the stoplight, he turned to her and swept an angry thumb across her cheek. It came back wet and Carrie’s hands flew to her face, skin heating in shame.

“Yeah, nothing. Like Wednesday was nothing.” His lips pressed into a thin line as he made his retreat and sped toward the courthouse. “I just want to make sure you are okay.”

Despite her embarrassment and reluctance to talk about her issues, part of her wanted David to ask about the nightmares. She’d dealt with her fair share of psychologists, therapists and psychiatrists after the death of her father and Grace, and none had helped. “David—” She cut herself off. Now wasn’t the time or the place. Instead, she shifted her focus to the trial. “Thank you for driving me.”

“It’s nothing.”

She recognized the resignation in his posture from the one time she’d heard him talk with his mother—the only time she’d seen him upset. Something deep within her knew once he dropped her off, the ball was in her court.

Losing him would hurt like a flock of carrion birds pecking at her flesh. And though needing someone—needing
him
—terrified her, so did being alone without the promise of a long, exhausting workday to distract her.

David made her feel part of something beyond her small existence. She credited him with her tenuous hold on sanity over the past taxing months, though she’d just come to understand that while in Rwanda.

He screeched to a stop in front of the courthouse seven minutes before she was due to take the stand. She popped open her door and the muted sounds of traffic filled the car.

Shifting back into Drive, David looked at her tote bag expectantly, and she snatched it off the floor before she got out.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Desperate, she ducked her head back into the car. Words worked free from her throat. “Don’t go.”

He looked at her and shook his head. “That’s not how it works, Carrie, not after Wednesday night. I understand why you ran, but it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.”

She winced at his words. Her muscles ached from her nightmare and protested the motion. “About that—”

He shifted the car back into Park and jabbed at the hazard-lights button with resignation twisting his features. “You don’t get to brush that aside or say it didn’t mean anything.” He got out and shut his door so gently the car barely moved. She’d just closed hers when he spun her around and pulled her against his chest. For a psychologist, he had a remarkably muscled body.

The heat of his skin shook away the lingering chills from her nightmare. When his fingers speared into her hair and brought her eyes to meet his, all other thoughts fled her mind. Thank God.

“You used me, damn it.”

“Yes.” The ugly truth painted her in self-loathing.

He leaned in, then grimaced and backed off, hands out by his sides. Her skin froze where she missed his touch. “I’ll be in the parking garage, waiting to take you home. We’ll finish this later.”

With that brush-off, she stumbled up the courthouse steps and found the assigned trial room.

Gunnerson half stood when she slipped through the doors, but Carrie waved him off. From the looks of things, they were running behind. Perfect—she’d get some much-needed time to calm down.

She slipped back out the doors and dashed to the ladies’ room across the hall. A little cold water, mascara and eyeliner, and maybe she could pass for the focused, competent woman she was supposed to be.

A grueling ninety minutes later, Carrie left the stand, anxiety a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. The defense attorney had been brutal, taking advantage of every exhausted fumble she made. Though their case was strong, guilt nagged at her. She’d let down the family.

“Carrie, hold on.” Gunnerson caught up and guided her into a nearby alcove rimmed with hard benches. He guided her to sit near the edge of one, then sat on the bench to her left. “Are you all right?”

She pasted a moderate smile on her face. Too much and his bullshit meter would go off. “My phone died. I’m so sorry I slept through—”

With one hand he waved aside her complaints. “Carrie, it’s not just this morning.” He grimaced and took her hand. “The files you submitted yesterday had some serious errors that need to be corrected.”

Carrie dug fingernails into her leg. “I’ll come in and fix those today.”

An emphatic shake of his head deterred her offer. “I’ve got Stevens working on them. And before you protest, I’ll make sure you get a final look at them when you come back to work.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

He inclined his head and raked her over with his expert eyes. “When you come back to work.”

Cryptic much?

He patted her on the back of the hand—shit, just like her dad used to do—and left her alone in the alcove to battle her tears.

She didn’t know how much time passed before familiar footsteps approached. From the corner of her eye, she watched David fold down onto the bench next to her. “I hear you’ve got the day off.”

Miserable, she nodded. Speaking wouldn’t be wise.

“How about we go home?”

Home.
The word sounded so inviting when he said it. She took his outstretched hand and let him pull her up. Maybe she could glide on his pity and avoid the conversation that lurked in his eyes. Yeah, with those odds, she might as well buy a lotto ticket.

The return trip was quiet until they reached her door. David again tended to her locks and ushered her in.

“Thank you—”

He groaned and hauled her against his lips, bringing down her defenses with a brutally tender kiss. He broadcast everything in his touch, as she’d suspected he would. Artifice wasn’t in David’s repertoire, and that was the very reason their lips hadn’t met last night—she knew he would undo her.

A sob escaped her mouth, and he took the opportunity to sink his tongue against hers, lighting nerve endings she hadn’t known she had.

Her arms looped around his neck to absorb his fortitude, and he tore away from her mouth, though his hands never stopped caressing her face. “You used me, and I’d let you do it again, Carrie, because I can’t seem to find good sense where you’re concerned.”

His next kiss echoed the first but turned the volume up to eleven. His lips clashed with hers as teeth and tongues fought for dominance. Carrie tasted his conflict and the tears she hadn’t realized she was crying again.

“Shit.” He ended the kiss and rested his head against hers. His thumbs swept away the wet trails on her cheeks. “Carrie, don’t cry.”