All Fall Down (25 page)

There, he held back. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I want you to be—”

She laid her fingers against his mouth, stopping him. “Yes,” she answered. “I've never been more sure of anything.”

They made love then. They sank to the mattress, holding one another, kissing, exploring. They didn't
speak. He undressed her, she him. Each helped the other with stubborn undergarments and uncooperative fasteners, though there was none of that awkwardness of first-time lovers, none of that almost painful uncertainty.

Melanie thought of nothing but the pleasure of his hands and mouth, the ecstasy of his body over hers. Inside hers.

It was perfect. He was perfect.

Afterward, they lay on their sides, cupped like spoons, hearts beating fast. Melanie yawned and she felt Connor smile against her hair.

“I should go,” he murmured.

“No.” She snuggled closer into the curve of his body. “Stay.”

“Are you sure?”

This time it was she who smiled. “You asked me that earlier tonight. My answer hasn't changed.”

“Good.” He pressed his face to the curve of her neck; he breathed deeply. “Go to sleep. I'll stand guard.”

“Stand guard?” She twisted slightly to meet his gaze. “Against what?”

“The nightmares.”

Emotion choked her. She couldn't speak. So she simply laid her head against the pillow. And when she closed her eyes, the nightmare images stayed away.

M
elanie's eyes snapped open. Though instantly awake, she lay still, listening to the silence, heart pounding. She became aware of several things at once—that it was still hours before dawn, that the temperature had dipped dramatically during the night and that she was alone.

She turned her head to the pillow beside hers. It still bore the imprint of Connor's head. She reached a hand out, but the bed where he had lain was cold.

Melanie closed her eyes against the hurt that coursed through her. The betrayal. He had said he would stay, that he would stand guard for her. Instead, he had slinked off while she slept.

She tipped her face to the ceiling. Is that what had awakened her? she wondered. The click of the front door shutting? Or the sudden realization that she was alone?

Or something else? Something dark and frightening?

Her thoughts turned to the events of the previous day. They flashed behind her eyes in slide-projection fashion—Boyd stretched out on the bed, Mia's shock, Connor's tenderness. Ashley's absence.

Ashley.
Melanie frowned. They hadn't spoken since
their argument the Saturday before. Melanie had called every day, and every day she had left an apology on her sister's machine. And a plea for Ashley to return the call so they could talk.

She hadn't.

Yesterday, Melanie had called again. She had left her sister a message—on both her home answering machine and with her cellular message service. And again, Ashley hadn't returned the call.

But she must have heard about Boyd's death, Melanie thought. It would have been the top news story no matter where in the state Ashley was working. Even considering how crazy her sister had been acting, how angry and jealous as she had been over Veronica's intrusion in their lives, she should have called when she heard. Her sister's husband was dead—he had been murdered.

Something was wrong. Ashley was in trouble.

Moaning, Melanie rolled onto her side and dragged Connor's pillow to her chest, hugging it to her. The pillow smelled of him, filling her senses even as Boyd's image—blindfolded and silenced, grotesque in death—once again filled her head.

Melanie forced the image out, turning her thoughts to Mia. She glanced at the bedside clock, wondering if her sister had been able to sleep. She had meant to call and check on her again before going to sleep, but had forgotten.

She'd had other things on her mind.

Connor.

She glanced at the bedside clock again, aching, feeling shallow and foolish. Some sister she was. Her
twin's hour of greatest need and she had been off banging a man who didn't care enough about her to say “So long, baby.”

Even as guilt gnawed at her, Melanie reminded herself that Mia was in good hands—Veronica had promised to stay, all day and all night. She had vowed not to leave Mia's side.

Melanie drew her eyebrows together, recalling the way the two women had clung to each other. Not so much with shock and grief, but with something else, something odd and out of place.

For Pete's sake! Melanie sat up and tossed Connor's pillow off the bed. She was imagining things. First about Ashley, now Mia and Veronica. She was tired and heartsick and feeling more than a little bit ridiculous over her behavior with Connor.

Shit and double-damn. How was she going to face him?

Distraught, she climbed out of bed. She grabbed her old chenille wraparound robe from the post at the end of the bed, slipped into it and cinched the belt. A cup of chamomile tea, she thought. And the mystery novel she had been inching through, the one with about as many surprises as a child's game of hide-and-seek.

She went to retrieve the book, stopping and making a small sound of surprise when she reached the family room. Connor stood motionless at the window, his back to her. The moonlight fell over his only partially clad form, creating both highlights and shadows. He looked more like a statue than a flesh-and-blood man.

He heard her softly expelled breath and turned. In
the moonlight that spilled through the glass and over his face, she saw that he was crying.

He had offered to keep her nightmares at bay.

He had his own to fight as well.

Her heart rose to her throat. He hadn't wanted her to see him this way—she saw it in the way he stiffened, in the way something about him seemed to pull in on itself. Away from her. From them.

“I woke you,” he murmured stiffly. “I'm sorry.”

“No.” She lifted a hand, then dropped it to her side. “I thought you'd gone.”

“I wouldn't do that. Not without saying goodbye.”

He turned back to the window, away from her and she wondered if this was that goodbye.

He looked over his shoulder at her. “That story you told me about your father and Mia and what you did to protect her, I can't stop thinking about it. I wish to God I could.”

He returned his gaze to the night. One second stretched into many. The silence shouted.

“What's wrong, Connor?” she asked finally, voice thick. “With the things you've seen, my story—”

“It's you, Melanie. You'd do anything to keep your family safe. And I didn't do enough.”

She didn't reply though it hurt not to. She didn't make a move for him or reach out. She sensed that he wouldn't want her to, that he needed to stand alone.

“I had a sister.” A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “Suzi. My only sibling.” His voice gentled. Warmed. “She was a sweet kid. A good person, the kind who was always bringing home strays or helping somebody in a jam.

“I was twelve years her senior, I raised her after our parents died in an accident. In most ways, I was more her father than brother. And then she grew up. And I wanted a life.”

He settled into silence and Melanie suspected that he was using the moments not to prepare his thoughts but to chasten himself for his choices, to hate himself for them. “I let her down. I was busy at Quantico. Full of myself and the
important
work I was doing. She called, she was frightened. She needed me to come home.” His voice thickened. “I told her to grow up.

“And then she was dead. Murdered.” He sucked in a quick breath. “If I had gone home…if I hadn't been so consumed with my own importance…” He let that thought trail off and picked up another. “Her body was never recovered. That makes it worse, it…I fantasize sometimes that she's alive. That the blow to her head, that it…that she has amnesia and can't find…”

Her heart broke for him. “Oh, Connor.”

He glanced away, eyes bright. “She was embroiled in an affair with a married man. An abusive man. He'd threatened her. I believe he killed her.”

“But you never found him?”

“No. I reviewed the facts, the scene, the profile a thousand times in the past five years. Probably more. It's always a dead end.”

The shadows she had seen in his eyes. The sadness.

The bulletin boards in his house. The unsolved crime. Of course.

“I'm sorry.”

He met her eyes and Melanie saw in them the tor
tures of hell. “A part of me doesn't want to catch the Dark Angel. A part of me hates those men as much as she must. I wonder sometimes, if we don't catch her, maybe she'll find him for me? I pray she does. So you see, Melanie, I'm a fraud.”

Melanie held a hand out to him. She shook her head. “Come back to bed. Now. With me.”

He hesitated, then took her hand. For the second time that night, she led him to her bed. And they made love, fueled by both passion and shared secrets.

Only this time, afterward, as sleep pulled at them, Melanie silently promised to stand guard for Connor.

Tonight, she vowed, the nightmares would not have him. Tonight, he was hers.

T
he medical examiner released Boyd's body for burial twenty-four hours after the murder. His funeral was held twenty-four hours after that, on a Thursday. It had drizzled on and off all morning, but the sun made a brief appearance just as the mourners began to arrive at the graveside.

To Melanie's surprise, Stan attended. He stood on Casey's left, she on Casey's right. Each held one of the child's small hands in their own—to an uninformed onlooker, they must have appeared the perfect family.

Melanie was grateful for Stan's presence. Casey needed him there. The last couple of days had been difficult ones for them all, including Casey. The child was distraught over his uncle's passing and by the bits and snatches of conversations he had overheard, the whispers and speculation. It hadn't helped, Melanie was certain, that she had been tense and impatient, his typically adoring aunts distracted and uncommunicative. He had responded by misbehaving, then bursting into tears at his mother's sharp reprimand.

None of them were handling this very well, Melanie thought. She glanced at her sisters, standing just to her right, huddled together, Veronica with them.

When she had finally connected with Ashley the morning after the murder, her sister had sounded almost hysterical. Her emotions had been all over the map, one moment angry, another despairing. Still another, deeply frightened.

Mia, on the other hand, had been emotionless. She had been moving through her days and duties like a sleepwalker, seeming to be able to access neither highs nor lows, just a disturbing, unnatural neutral.

Thank goodness for Veronica, Melanie thought, moving her gaze to the third woman. She didn't know how Mia would have gotten through this without her. The attorney had never left Mia's side, even staying with her at night. She had helped Mia make the funeral arrangements, had accompanied her to Boyd's lawyer's office for a reading of the will and to a meeting with Boyd's accountant to make certain he had left his affairs in order.

He had. He had also left her sister a very wealthy woman.

As for herself, Melanie didn't know how she would have managed without Connor. Not that he had stepped in and taken over her life, the way Stan would have insisted on doing. Simply knowing he was there for her had given her strength.

She darted a glance over her shoulder. Connor stood toward the back of the group, with a cluster of her colleagues that included Bobby and her chief. Their gazes met, and although he didn't smile, she felt warmed to her bones.

They hadn't been alone together since the night they'd become lovers. There hadn't been time or op
portunity. But he'd never been far from her thoughts. She had held the memory—and her burgeoning feelings for him—close to her.

The service ended. The mourners began to depart, some stopping to pay their respects to Mia, others simply heading to their cars, heads bent low.

Stan turned to her. “Can we talk privately?” he asked.

She hesitated. “This isn't a great time, Stan. Mia's—”

“It'll only take a moment. I promise.”

She wavered a second more, then nodded. “Casey,” she murmured, stooping to look him in the eyes, “go by Aunt Ashley for a minute, okay?”

For a moment, she thought he was going to refuse, then he smiled. “'Kay, Mommy.”

He trotted over to his aunt and tugged on her hand. She bent her head closer to his, looked over at Melanie and gave her the thumbs-up sign. Melanie mouthed “Thank you,” then returned her attention to Stan.

He was watching Casey, expression naked with longing. A shiver of fear moved up her spine. She could imagine a man who looked like that doing whatever was necessary to get what he wanted.

“He's a great kid, isn't he?” Stan murmured.

Melanie frowned. “You're just discovering that?”

“No, I— Yes, in a way I am. I don't have the privilege of spending as much time with him as you do.”

Here we go.
She folded her arms across her middle. “It's been a hell of a few days, Stan. I don't think—”

“I'm sorry,” he said quickly, cutting her off. “I
didn't mean that the way it sounded. It's just that sometimes I think of everything I've missed and…”

He let the thought trail off and cleared his throat. “The hearing's next week.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I've enrolled him in the kindergarten in my district. In case the judge…rules in my favor.”

She inched her chin up a notch. “So have I. He's excited, making plans with his friends.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “My lawyer says yours is good. Top-notch.”

“You sound surprised. Who did you expect me to hire?”

“Not Pamela Barrett, that's for sure. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

“A friend recommended Pamela. I'll have to thank her.”

“I just wanted you to know that,” he said.

He looked uneasy, she realized. Uncertain. Was the ever-confident Stan May worried he might lose the case? That Pamela would follow through on her threat to see that he had less visitation with Casey than he had now?

Was she sensing a reluctance in him concerning the suit?

Melanie hid her surprise—and the hope that sprang to life inside her. If he was worried, she really did have a chance of winning.

Or of changing his mind.

He began to turn away, but she touched his arm, stopping him. “Do you have to do this?” she asked. “Is it really so important that you punish me? Now,
after all the time that's passed? I'm a good mother, you know I am. A change of custody will break Casey's heart.”

“How do you know that coming to live with me will break Casey's heart?” He met her eyes. “And how can you be so certain my motivation isn't simply that I love my son?”

“Stan, please. Give my powers of observation a little credit. You've never shown that much interest in being a parent.”

He flushed and shifted his gaze to Casey, playing peekaboo with his aunt. His expression softened. “I'm not the father I was when we were married.” He returned his gaze to hers. “I'm not the man I was. You don't know, you're not with us when we're together. We do things, we play…I spend time
with
him, Melanie. Not just around him.”

Melanie gazed at her ex-husband, weighing his words, her gut reaction to them. Casey no longer cried when he had to go to his dad's for the weekend, he didn't complain or pout. She wasn't sure exactly when that had changed, only that it had. She had assumed that Casey had simply become accustomed to his schedule and accepted it.

Now she wondered if the reason he didn't cry or complain was that he was happy to go.

When Melanie didn't comment, Stan went on. “I love Casey. I miss him when he's with you.” His voice thickened slightly, as with emotion. “This isn't about punishing you. It's about me and my son, about wanting us to be together all the time.”

Just like she wanted to be with him.
A lump formed
in her throat. She had misjudged her ex-husband. He
had
changed. It was time for her to change, too.

The fact of the matter was, one of them would lose primary custody of Casey. It could as easily be him as her.

Unless something changed.

“We both love Casey,” she murmured. “We both want what's best for him. Can't we find a compromise? Can't we at least try?”

He looked at her a moment, waffling. It wasn't in Stan May's nature to compromise. It was one of the things that made him a powerhouse of a lawyer. But this wasn't about a client, this was about his son—a son she had just realized he loved very much.

She used that knowledge. “Let's put Casey first,” she urged. “Let's not fight over him. I'll bend if you will.”

“All right,” he said finally, slowly. “I'd like that. For Casey, I'd like to try.”