CAPTURED INNOCENCE (20 page)

             
Conley turned and stared at her. “You actually thought it would be that easy?”

             
She sat up. “It was your idea.”

             
“I said that our being married would make it harder for him to claim custody. I suspected something wasn’t right when your parents hired me. Sure, Blake legally adopted Alex, but if you had a man in the picture, maybe there would be somebody out there who might listen and start to ask questions.” He stood in front of her. “We can go get Alex right now. We’ll go to another city. Get the police there to help us and walk away from what we know is going on in this town.”

             
Jo peered at him beneath lowered lashes. “I just want my son.”

             
“Then let’s go get him. Do you have any idea where he is now?”

             
“No.” She bit her lip to prevent the words from bursting forth, but spill out they did. “You’re using my son as bait. You asked me to marry you, then brought me here to use Alex to glorify your career.” She stood, hands propped on her hips, and faced him. “Well, it won’t work. You can leave. I don’t even know who you are.”

             
Conley looked down at her, stunned. His face changed from one of disbelief, to surprise, then reddened with anger. His eyes narrowed and a muscle twitched in his jaw. “I’ll leave when I’m good and ready.” He put a hand on her shoulder and forced her back to a sitting position on the bed. “You’re right. I can’t walk away from what is going on here, but I would never jeopardize Alex. I know in my gut that Blake won’t hurt him. If you can look me in the eye and tell me that our being together hasn’t helped you…then, fine, I’ll leave.”

             
Her lips tightened, and Jo’s eyes clashed with Conley’s. “You know I can’t say that.”

             
He bent, his face inches from hers. “And if you can say that our coming back here and stirring things up hasn’t been beneficial in you remembering things…”

             
“I never knew I forgot them.” She stood, maintaining eye contact.

             
“Well, now you do.”

             
“You have a temper problem. I’ve been watching whenever you get angry. Your body gets all tense, your face gets red…”

             
Conley clamped his mouth closed. A slow smile spread across his face, and Jo’s heart did a flip-flop in her chest. “I think we’re having our first marital fight.”

             
She licked dry lips. “We are?”

             
He nodded and took a step closer. “Definitely. Want to make up?” He reached for her and pulled her close. Conley lowered his head. Jo focused on her growing reflection in his pupils. When his lips closed are hers, she shut her eyes.

             
This wasn’t a mere brush of lips across lips or a chaste kiss on the cheek. He flattened her against him, bending her slightly at the waist and sending her emotions reeling. She gasped when he released her mouth and transferred his lips to her ear lobe then trailed down her neck.

             
“Not fair,” she whispered.

             
He laughed, low and deep. His lips traveled back to her mouth, now not demanding, but slow and thoughtful. Her legs weakened, and she sagged against him, shocked at the way her body awakened to his kiss. Her heart thudded in her throat, and her world spun.

             
“Stop,” she gasped. “I can’t breathe.”

             
“Good.” He increased the intensity of his kisses and lowered her to the bed. “Do you want me to stop?” he whispered, lifting his head. His breath blew against her tingling lips.

             
Mutely, she shook her head.

Conley slid his hand behind her, entangling it in her hair. His gaze locked on hers, then lowered again.

###

             
She woke hours later, the sun setting in the sky, and stretched. Jo turned her head. Conley lay next to her, his gaze on her. “Were you watching me sleep?”

             
“Yes. You’re beautiful.”

             
She lifted a hand to her hair and tried to pat it into place. “I’m sleep mussed.”

             
Leaning forward, he kissed her. Butterflies danced in her stomach. “I never knew it could be like that.”

             
“I’d like to make you aware of a lot more, Jo.”

             
She snuggled closer. Her head fit in the curve of his shoulder. “There’s no going back for me. Not now.”

             
“I don’t want to.” With his finger, he tilted her face to his. “I never had any intention of going back. This is what I want, Jo.
You
are what I want. I love you. I have from the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

             
She warmed at his words, but didn’t reciprocate. What a foreign concept. Somebody wanting her—for her. But did she love him? He gave her a feeling of security, of safety, but was that all? He aroused feelings in her she’d never experienced before. These things in her marriage to Blake had been rough. Her feelings had never entered into the act. The faces of all the unknown men whirled through her brain and she shivered, squirming closer. “How did you get to be so kind?”

             
“I’m not kind, just truthful. You were right when you said I have an anger problem. I spent a lot of time in solitary confinement working it out. That’s where I met God. I prayed for Him to help me control it.” He rolled over to his back, keeping one arm around her and folding one behind his head. “Took God a while to get my attention.”

             
Jo sighed. “God doesn’t pay much attention to me, I’m afraid. Life keeps dealing me trial after trial.”

             
“He sent me, didn’t He?” Conley gave her a squeeze.

             
She tilted her head and peered at him. “Yes, He did.” Her throat convulsed. Tears threatened to spill. “Everything’s going to be okay, isn’t it?”

             
“I think so. But, Jo, Alex isn’t the only one we need to focus on here. We need to stop this thing. You know that, don’t you?”

             
She twirled one finger in the light colored hairs on his chest. “I know.” His stomach rumbled, and she giggled. “Hungry?”

             
“For you. Food can wait.” He pulled her on top of him and drew her face close to his.

             
Jo woke the next morning, still wrapped in the new-found warmth of Conley’s love. She smiled and stretched, lifting her arms above her head before opening her eyes. Her hand brushed against an empty pillow. She started upright, then heard the reassuring sound of the shower and allowed herself to fall back onto the pillows.

             
He’d told her he loved her. Was she capable of loving a man? She had no doubt of her feelings of safety with Conley. The emotions that swept over her during their lovemaking, she couldn’t begin to describe. But, love? She didn’t think she was capable. Would Conley be satisfied with anything less than her total love for him?

             
She rolled onto her side and clutched his pillow to her chest. During her marriage to Blake, she’d allowed him his husbandly “rights”, having been drilled by her mother on the proper acts of a good wife. Her lips twisted. She’d been well experienced by then. She closed her eyes, the past horror washing over her. Bile, hot and sour threatened to rise.

             
“Good morning.” Conley placed a tender kiss on her lips.

             
She opened her eyes and smiled at the warm look in his eyes. Her discomfort instantly receded. “Good morning.”

             
“Ready for breakfast? I ordered room service.”

             
“Wonderful. I’m starved.” Jo sat up and snatched at the sheet on the bed. She stopped at the sight of the white linen robe draped across the back of a nearby chair. Conley always thought of everything.

             
He held the robe while she slid her arms into it, and Jo turned toward the small round dining table. A distraught woman on the television caught her attention and she turned the volume louder. “Conley, look at this.” Behind the woman, off to the side, were the burned remains of Blake’s house.

             
Conley placed an arm around Jo’s shoulders and she pressed closer to him as they listened to the crying woman plead for the return of her children. Her heart sank to the pit of her stomach. “It’s Blake’s neighbor. They’ve taken her children.” She craned her neck to look into her husband’s face. “We’ve got to do something.”

             
“It’s time to put some pressure on your mother. She knows something. I’m convinced of it, and I think she’s scared.”

             
Reaching for a hot roll from a covered basket, Jo shook her head. “Sylvia Woodward isn’t afraid of anything.”

             
“I think she is. The toughness is just a cover.” Conley stretched across the table and poured her a cup of fragrant coffee, strong with the scent of Hazelnut.

             
She spread butter on one half of a hot roll. It melted into the soft valleys. “Okay. I’ll put the pressure on her after breakfast.”

             
“Do you want me to go with you? I don’t like the idea of you going anywhere alone.”

             
“I need to do this. I need to put to rest some very active ghosts.”

             
“I’ll drive you and wait outside.”

             
She opened her mouth to protest and clamped it shut at the warning look in his eyes. “Fine.”

Jo laughed, the sound shrill and nervous. She glanced at her parents’ house, then up at Conley. “I’m nervous.”

             
He squeezed her arm. “I can still go with you.”

             
“No. I need to do this. Her guard will be down if I go alone.”

             
Conley lowered his head and kissed her. “I’m right out here if you need me.”

             
She reached up and cupped her palm around his cheek. “Thank you.”

             
The walk to the front door seemed never ending, and Jo’s heart rate seemed to accelerate with each step. Her pulse pounded in her ears. The massive oak door towered over her, and she hesitated before reaching for the door knob. She jumped back as the door swung open.

             
“Good afternoon, Jocelyn.”

             
“Sylvia.”

             
Sylvia’s eyes hardened, resembling blue ice. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m still your mother.” She held the door open wider. “Come in. We’ll sit in the living room.”

             
With trembling legs, Jo followed her mother. A tea tray with a pot and cups sat on the coffee table next to a tray of tiny sandwiches. “Are you expecting company?”

             
“I was. Tea?”

             
“Please.” Jo sat on the edge of the sofa. Her mother quietly handed her a tea cup and saucer, then held out the tray of sandwiches.

             
“I’m assuming, since you left so abruptly last night, that something is on your mind and you are determined to speak to me about it.”

             
Jo’s cup clattered against the saucer as she set it down. “Some children disappeared.”

             
“I heard it on the news.” Sylvia lifted her cup to her lips. “Tragic.”

             
“You aren’t going to make this easy, are you?”

             
Finely arched brows rose over Sylvia’s eyes.

             
“I want to know how you got me. I want to know how you could sit back and let me be used the way I was. I want to know how you could sit there and be silent when Blake beat me.”

             
“Jocelyn.” Sylvia set her cup down and folded her hands in her lap. “Children are adopted every day and their true parentage not revealed. What is so wrong about my wanting a child? I’m sorry if I should have told you we weren’t your biological parents, but—a”

             
“It’s the abuse that’s so wrong.” Adopted or not, Jocelyn should have grown up in a loving home.

             
“We never abused you. We gave you everything a child could want. The best of everything. We
saved
you from a life of abuse, if anything. As for your marriage, it wasn’t our place to step in and interfere…”

             
“Interfere?” Jo stood and paced the room.

             
“Women would die to be in your shoes.”