Callahan's Fate (13 page)

“Oh, baby,” he told her. “Honey, angel,
darling,
acushla
, sweetheart, come for me.
 
Oh, God, oh, Jesus and all the saints.
 
Raine
.
 
Rainee
.
Lorraine. I love
you, I love you,
I
love you.”

He thrust into her with all the power
and might in the world, or so it seemed, as she convulsed, body burning with
erotic heat, delight spiraling through her body as potent as electricity, and she
rode the high with him.
 
They came
together in a satisfying burst of wonder and clung together.
 
He shook hard as he climaxed, and she held
onto him tight, his words echoing in her mind.

“I love you, too,” she cried as the
aftershocks
spasmed
through her body.
“Oh, Callahan.”

After, he managed to fit onto the couch
with her tucked into his arms.
 
Raine
cuddled against him, content to listen to his steady
heartbeat.
 
“Hey,” he whispered.
 
She waited, certain he was about to say
something poetic and beautiful. “I should’ve thought to pull out the bed, huh?”

So much for sweet words, she thought and
laughed.
 
Her giggles were contagious,
and he joined her in mirth until they both slid from the couch onto the
floor.
 
Callahan stood up and offered her
his hand.
 
When
Raine
found her feet, she faced him, her gaze intent on his dark eyes.
 
“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t mention it, baby.”

She had to know, so she asked. “Did you
mean it?”

Callahan cocked an eyebrow upward.
“About the bed, or that I love you?”

Her heart skipped several beats. “Both.”

His eyes met hers without wavering.
“Yeah to both and yeah, I love you,
Raine
.
 
It wasn’t just something I said in the heat
of the moment.
 
I feel it here.”

He tapped his chest, and she put her
hand over his. “So do
I
,” she told him. “I love you,
too.”

The smile he shared could illuminate Forty-Second
Street. “Good,” Callahan said. “That’s real good.
C’mere
.”

Raine
moved
forward.
 
He held her close and planted a
tender kiss on her forehead, then a steamier one on her mouth.
 
His arms were both haven and heaven, the
place she wanted to be.
 
After a pause,
he said, “So do you want to go out, or are you hungry?”

“I’m starved.”

“We’ll order in,” he said. “You like
Italian? I can order food from the place I planned to take you, and we can eat
here if it’s all right.”

“That sounds perfect.”

Forty-five minutes later, with Callahan
dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt,
Raine
wearing
one of his shirts to be comfortable, they sat down to the best chicken cacciatore
she had ever eaten.
 
Cal poured them each
a glass of wine, and the sweet red went down smooth with the food.
  
Neither said much, but they touched often
and a peace stretched out between them, soft as the night.

Raine
relished the
food, but she savored the newfound wonder of shared love even more.
 
Although she’d dated many guys, two of them
on a semi-serious basis, she had never experienced the poignant depth of
emotion she felt with Callahan.
 
She
chalked up his lack of conversation to similar feelings and adjusting to this
unexpected but marvelous development.
 
When she moved to New York, she never expected to find a lover, but she
had, and she couldn’t remember being happier.

As she cleared away the remains of their
dinner and tossed the trash, Callahan came behind and kissed the nape of her
neck. “It’s getting late.
 
You
wanna
stay here tonight?”

She did but couldn’t. “I can’t,” she
told him. “I wish I could, but all my clothes and stuff are at my place.”

“You’ve got your teacher bag.”

Raine
glanced down at
the laptop bag with enough compartments to carry her daily schedules and
paperwork. “I do, but I’d have to leave so early.”

“I’ll get up and take you if you want,
doll.”

Raine
considered it
and caved. “If you have time, then okay.”

“I do.”

“So what do we do now?” she asked. “It’s
probably too cold to go up on the roof.”

“It’s not for me, but you’d freeze even
if you put your skirt back on,” he said. “Let’s go to bed, what do you think?”

“I think it’s an excellent idea.”

Together, they folded the bed out to its
full size,
then
Raine
made
it up with fresh sheets.
 
Callahan
showered, and then she did, before donning one of his T-shirts, so big it swam
on her.
 
At first she thought they would
cuddle, but once they were prone, his hands roamed over her body and her desire
quickened.

“Love me,” she whispered in the darkness,
and he did, with slow measure and intense tenderness.
 
He brought her to orgasm with skill, and they
shared the climax together.
 
This time,
they didn’t laugh afterward, but nestled together, tighter than spoons in a
drawer, and slept.

****

Before daylight, they rose and dressed,
she in her discarded teacher’s outfit, Cal in simple attire. “I’ll dress at the
precinct,” he told her, tossing a few garments into a bag. “Let’s go.”

Despite the early hour, the familiar
yellow cabs prowled the streets, and the ever-present wail of sirens screeching
somewhere echoed in the distance.
 
Few
pedestrians were out, and many of the shops still had their barricades down,
waiting for business hours.
 
Callahan
stopped at a tiny bakery on the corner to buy sweet rolls and coffee.
 
They ate on the subway, the train car almost
empty. An old woman smiled at them, her expression so soft
Raine
imagined she must remember the joys of new love.

Callahan walked her to her building and
kissed her. “Where will you be when you quit for the day?” he asked.

Raine
named the drug
rehabilitation facility in lower Manhattan where she had two students. “Why?”

“I thought I’d come meet you,” he told
her. “Then we’ll maybe go ride the ferry and grab something to eat.
 
I
gotta
see you,
baby.
 
Knowing I will gets me through the
day.”

Her smile blossomed across her lips as
joy radiated from her heart outward. “All right, sure. I’ll look forward to
seeing you.”

“What time?
Four or
four-thirty?”

“You’d better make it four-thirty.”

He nodded. “I’ll be there.
 
Love you, baby.”

“I love you, too.”

The words tasted sweet on her tongue,
and she watched him walk away, loving his swagger as he returned to the subway
station.
 
Then
Raine
went upstairs, showered, put on a fresh outfit, and prepared to tackle another
day, her step light and happy.

Chapter Nine

Callahan wanted to look back to see if
Raine
watched, but he didn’t.
 
Instead, he whistled a merry tune, some old
folk song he’d learned in elementary school.
 
As he strode toward the subway, he inhaled the morning air.
 
The autumn chill added a bite and a sense of
freshness often lacking.
 
Instead of the
usual tobacco aroma from smokers huddled in doorways and alleys, the smell of a
corner dry cleaner, the wafting scent of baking bread, or the rich one of meat
sizzling on a street cart’s grill, he swore he smelled pumpkins and hay and
spice.
 
Love, he decided, did funny things
to a guy and made him forget the mundane for the magical.

He skirted around a slow-moving older
woman with two heavy shopping bags and turned toward the entrance at
Delancey
Street to catch the
F
train to the Bronx.
 
If he
didn’t hurry or if he got hung up anywhere, he would be late, but right now
Callahan didn’t give a shit.
 
Nothing
could touch his happiness,
nothing
,
not even an ass-eating from his precinct captain.

If he hadn’t paused to let a man with
two little kids go down the stairs first and gave them space, he wouldn’t have
changed his opinion.
 
Some instinct,
though, made him turn his head right, and when he did, Callahan spotted Snake
Marsh.
 
He stood with his back against a
light pole as if he waited for someone.
 
Cal’s quick scan of the crowds failed to reveal Bull or Shoe, but he
wasn’t sure if their absence boded well or ill.

Icy fingers crawled down his back.
 
The bad news bastard hanging around this
close to
Raine’s
place set off major alarms.
 
It might be coincidence—hell, he hoped it was—but
if it wasn’t, his lady could be in danger.
 

His stomach tightened, hard as a fist,
enough to hurt.
 
Callahan ignored the
pain as he backtracked.
 
Instead of going
down into the station, he bypassed it and took up a position on the corner
where he could watch Snake.
 
Sooner or
later,
Raine
would head for work.
 
He mentally kicked himself for not asking for
her full schedule.
 
All he knew was she’d
finish up in Lower Manhattan late this afternoon.
 
I’ll be
late, but I don’t care.
 
I promised I’d
do my best to keep her safe, and I will.
 
I love her.
 
I can’t lose it.
 
Or go through anything like I did with
Anthony.

Although he considered calling the
precinct or at least his partner, Joe, Cal didn’t.
 
Since he hadn’t put on the uniform this
morning, he blended into the street, part of the moving mass of people going
somewhere for the day.
 
About the time he
had almost decided he suffered from paranoia, Snake detached from the pole and
strolled up the street, his ponytail swinging.
 
Halfway down the block, his kid brother Bull fell in step beside
him.
 
Without hesitation, Callahan
followed, keeping back and remaining on the opposite side of the street.
 

Morning sunlight highlighted
Raine’s
hair as she left her building and walked in the
opposite direction.
 
Cal followed her,
keeping far enough back she wouldn’t catch sight of him, and kept the Marsh
brothers in view.
 
They slowed their
pace, he noticed, but when she stepped onto a bus a few blocks away, they
didn’t follow her.
 

Although relieved, Callahan wasn’t done
stalking the brothers.
 
He joined a crowd
crossing at the next corner and doubled back to catch up with them.
 
Keeping enough distance to avoid their
notice, he trailed them for several blocks.
 
When they ducked around a corner into a small space to light cigarettes,
he paused and listened.
 
Their voices
were amplified by the walls around them, and he heard them without any
difficulty.

“Did you see the bitch?” Snake said.
Callahan recognized the low growl of his voice from their brief interaction on
Coney Island. “Strolling along, smelling like fuckin’ bacon, man, a cop’s bitch
if I ever saw one.”

“Yeah,
I seen
her,” Bull answered. “What you got against her anyhow? She wasn’t
so
bad as a teacher.”

“I hate the police bastard she’s with,
that’s what.”

“He busted you?
For
what?”

“He sent me to Riker’s Island, man, to
jail, and he’s one of them trying to pin Juan’s murder on me, but they don’t
got
any evidence so he can’t. He
ain’t
putting me away again, no fucking way.”

“You iced Juan, though, I was there,”
Bull said with a nasty laugh.

“That’s nothing no one needs to know,
kid, not Juan or any of the rest.
 
No one
fucks with your bro, Bully, and you know it.”

“So the dude’s a fuckin’ cop and you
hate him, I get it. But why the teacher, man?”

“
’Cause
she’s
his
, that’s reason enough.
 
Besides, he’s the one who killed Dante, man. Everyone
on the street knows that. So it’s payback.
You going
soft on me, Bull?”