Deceptions of the Heart (19 page)

He finally managed to open the door just a crack and slipped into the house, keeping his profile below the windowsill. I did likewise, crawling behind him and sitting on the floor just inside the door. “I thought you said we weren’t being followed. So if nobody’s watching, why are we doing this?”

He punched the correct security code into the alarm system. “Because somebody might be following us,” he replied, as if his reasoning was perfectly logical and he hadn’t just contradicted himself.

“But you said—”

“Shhh…”

He slinked toward the front of the house. I followed a few paces behind. I smirked. “You’re paranoid.”

“Will you keep your voice down?” he whispered. “I’ll go upstairs and get the money. You go to your office and find your papers.” His orders carried like a shotgun blast.

I couldn’t believe he was telling me to keep my voice down. “Where will I find them?”

“Don’t you have a safe?”

“Well, yeah, I think so. But I don’t know the combination. I mean, that’s one of those things I don’t remember.” I rolled my eyes.

“Jennifer, stop being difficult. Just stand in front of it and close your eyes. Maybe your fingers will do the remembering for you.”

“Are you serious?”

“Just try.” His voice crackled with exaggerated patience. “You know we need those documents—”

“You don’t have to explain it to me like I’m a three-year-old…again,” I muttered and glared at him.

He straightened and stretched when we reached the darkened hallway. I grabbed him by the elbow. “Can’t I go upstairs with you while you get the cash? Then you can come with me to my office. I don’t like wandering around in the dark as if we’re criminals or something. This is…stupid.”

“You are such a wuss, and we are wasting time arguing about this. Can’t you pull yourself up by the bra straps and handle one thing for us?”

I propped my hands on my hips. “My bra straps? Aren’t you funny? I don’t like your tone, Anson Cristobal. What if someone is in this house? What if someone’s waiting for me? Trying to…attack me? Again? You know that’s happened to me before.”

“Scream.”

“What?”

He pushed me toward my office with one sharp jab in my lower back and then headed up the stairs.

He can’t push me around so easily.

I followed him upstairs to our bedroom and found him leaning head first into the bottom of his closet. I whistled my admiration of his tight behind.

He looked up at me with a stack of cash in each hand. “I thought I told you to go open the safe.” His reprimand scared my arguments right back into my mouth.

“All right, already.” I scowled at him. “I’m going.”

He marched across the room and grabbed a pillow from the bed—the case a makeshift bag for the cash, no doubt. I grumbled about his insensitivity and lack of judgment all the way down the stairs. My muttering ceased as I stopped on the bottom step, listening for any faint noise, looking for the slightest movement among the shadows.

Light glowed from the bottom of the office door. We left no lights on. I glanced up the stairs. Anson wouldn’t countenance any more of my cowardice. I was on my own. Again. I spotted a heavy vase on a hall stand. Tossing the dead flowers on the floor, I slipped down the hall and then turned the knob with my free hand, attentive to any sign that someone might be lurking on the other side of the door. I slammed it open with a bang. The empty room hummed with the lingering specter of invasion—the unsettling suspicion that someone had rifled through my belongings.

Urgency pushed me to finish my assigned task. I opened the closet door, pushed aside some boxes on the middle shelf, and then stood without a clue in front of the wall safe. Closing my eyes per Anson’s instructions, I placed my fingers on the dial. Left, right, left. Nothing. I wanted to holler up the stairs that his stupid idea wasn’t working. I tried again. To my amazement, this time it worked. And even more amazing—my birth certificate and social security card were inside.

I ran my finger over the raised lettering and the official seal.

Jennifer Calhoun. Who was she?

The paper listed my adoptive parents and where they came from but nothing more. It didn’t tell me how I got from a small town in California to Virginia Beach, Virginia.

There were other papers in the safe. I opened a large manila envelope and found newspaper clippings. I leaned my back against the adjacent wall. Engrossed in what I read, I slid down until my bottom hit the floor beneath me.

Footsteps pounded down the stairs, so I stuffed everything behind my back.

“Jennifer?” Anson called, his whisper loud enough to wake the dead. I cringed. He had broken his own mandate. His voice blared like a foghorn on a still night. Except the night wasn’t quiet. Rain pounded the window and pummeled the side of the house in angry gusts. A shadow shifted and captured my attention. I looked across the office at the wedding picture.

“Anson!” I yelled without care for who might be listening.

“What?” He was beside me before my heart started pumping again. “I told you not to yell.”

“Look.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked without turning in the direction my shaky finger pointed. “I heard a door slam.” He glanced toward the portrait on the wall. The glass was smashed. The surface sliced and scored. The picture ruined. Our faces removed from the scene.

“Why?” I asked. The answer came to me in a flash. “Marnie.”

“What? No. She wouldn’t do anything like this.”

“Does she have a key to the house? Did you give her the security code?” It made no sense that someone slipped past our security. The little red light blinked when we entered the house.

“Sure, but—”

“She ruined my wedding gown. She did it on purpose,” I reminded him.

“She was young and grieving her mother,” he replied, his words falling on me like a stone weight. “Cut her some slack.”

“You know what they say,” I babbled from a mental distance. “If your wedding gown gets ruined on your wedding day, it’s bad luck.”

“That’s just superstition—”

“Bad luck,” I repeated for emphasis.

“I don’t believe in luck.” He reached for my elbow to help me up. “Come on, Jen. We’ve got to get out of here.”

I pulled my arm away. “If you heard the door slam, why did it take you so long to come downstairs?” I asked, suspicion spiking beneath my words.

“Well, honey…” He stopped, embarrassment covering his features.

“Well? What?”

“I thought you might want this…” He held up one of my flimsy nighties. One of those slinky little things I’d refused to wear since I woke up with Rhonda’s memories. I turned my head away. He nudged my face back to his with the tip of his pointer finger. The glow of a forty-watt light bulb illuminated the amusement on his face. “Are you blushing?”

“Don’t torment me,” I fussed.

“I have no intention of tormenting you.” He brushed my cheek with his fingertips—a tantalizing reminder of what he wanted from me. “I have other plans,” he whispered. “I just thought…you know…you’d look…sexy in this.”

“Sexy?” I hurled my disbelief at him. “I can’t believe—”

“Why not? I can say things like that to you, can’t I? I’m your husband, remember?” The mist in his eyes informed me he was mushy again. That was fine with me. I was getting used to his romantic advances. Anticipating them. Desiring them. Needing them desperately. His mouth hovered near mine. I closed my eyes, waiting in delicious expectation of the kiss he was about to plant on me.

Maybe we can delay our departure for a few…

The phone on my desk rang, startling us both out of our very personal moment. Without a word, he pulled me up. We ignored the call and left the house the way we arrived.

Chapter Twenty-One

Anson draped his arm over my shoulder. Across the room, the rain outside the double window slid down the dirty pane in cascading rivulets, causing the world outside to wobble. Inside our world was warm, if not exactly secure. The motel room we shared was tiny and dingy—not at all up to Anson’s standards.

We pretended to watch mindless television drivel, almost like a normal couple, but I suspected his mind was miles away from here. Mine was. The sitcom caught my attention for a minute and a half until I sighed and shifted.

“Are you okay?” Anson asked into my hair, caressing my bare shoulder with his warm hand. The nightie didn’t stay on very long.

“You want the truth or a well-intentioned lie?” I snuggled closer into his side. Anson was an interesting combination of gentle passion and ardent tenderness. It felt good to lean into him, to absorb his strength.

“Lie to me,” he said with a humorless chuckle and circled me in his embrace.

I closed my eyes and relished the closeness. “Okay, then I’m just dandy,” I murmured almost truthfully, but not quite.

“Hey, what more could you want?” He turned his head toward mine. Amusement danced in the warmth of his reply.

“I have news for you, mister. It does get better than this,” I said, despite the last few hours of my life.

I would live in a backwoods shack in the middle of nowhere if I could be with him.

“Really? When it gets better, wake me up.” The strained, raspy tenor of my man’s voice revealed his exhaustion. I reveled in calling him my man. All afternoon I had delighted in the knowledge that Anson wanted me. His love for me was still raw, but it was active and living and expanding into something sweet and sensual and worth holding next to my ragged, bruised, unreliable heart.

“When we get there, let’s start with the newspaper archives,” he said, opening the conversation we’d been sidestepping.

My happy bubble burst. I blew the weariness out of my mouth, past my lips. I didn’t want to talk about the past or my birth mother or Jackson or Alex or Rhonda’s miserable life in California. I didn’t want to think about any of it. I didn’t want to live it. I wanted it to go away. I just wanted to remain in this state of limbo, where no one and nothing existed except me and Anson and the grungy motel room.

“Why?” I asked, despite my better judgment. “What do you expect to find there?”

“Birth announcements. Death announcements. Marriage announcements. Property transfers. I don’t know. Any trace of Claire’s mother. If we can find someone who knew her, then maybe we can find someone who’ll tell us about her life before she moved to Virginia. If she had a daughter out there, surely someone will know about that.”

“Adoption records are sealed,” I said with no energy for the discussion. “I hired a lawyer to try to get them opened for me. The judge said I didn’t have a valid reason. Of course, that was before I knew my heart…” I stopped before I completed the thought, my skin prickling with excitement.

Anson nudged me. “Jen? How did you know that? Did you just—”

“Yes. That’s from Jennifer’s memory. And I just realized something else.” I sat forward, bracing myself for the unknown. “At the house, I reminded you that Marnie poured red wine all over my wedding gown.” Scenes from the past started popping into my consciousness with fresh intensity. “The vision of my mother…I bet that’s Jennifer’s memory…my memory…mine. I’m remembering things that belong to me, not to Rhonda. That’s good, right?”

He must have sensed the depth of my agitation, because concern darkened his eyes. He pulled me to him. “Calm down. You don’t need any more excitement. Your cheeks are flushed.”

“No doubt,” I agreed and did as he suggested. But it wasn’t long until I sat up again. “Maybe my memory will come back now.” I sat with my legs criss-crossed. This time he joined me, leaning against my shoulder.

“Do you really want your memory back?”

My joy did a nosedive. “I’m not sure.” I leaned my head against his cheek. “I like the way things are now. I’m not sure I want the past dragged into the open any more than it already has been.”

“Me either,” he agreed without any sign of resentment. He clicked the television off with the remote. “When was the last time you ate? You didn’t touch the omelet I made for you.”

“I’m sorry. It looked good. Really, it did. I guess I was a little distracted.” My stomach rumbled. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“Good idea. I’m starved.” He rose from the bed.

He looked so good to me. Not slick like Whitaker or rugged like Sairs. But attractive in a masculine way that appealed to me. Anson was solid and real. More than just a handsome face. The urge to be with him again settled into every fiber of my body.

“Anson?”

He turned toward me, a towel dangling in his hand. I must have stopped him on the way to the shower. My eyes must have told him what was on my mind. The towel dropped. He looked at my discarded nightie on the floor and grinned. “Guess you won’t need that this time.”

I grinned back. “I didn’t need it last time.”

He threw the covers back and pounced on the bed next to me. I giggled like a girl and fell back. He stretched out beside me, not yet touching me, surveying me from head to toe. A bright fire lit his eyes and I knew with a woman’s instinct when he held me this time, there would be no gentle restraint. His mouth found the curve of my neck. His arms drew me to him in an embrace almost too fiercely alive to endure. The man made me feel young and exciting. He pulled something bold and sweet and beautiful out of me. In return, I gave him everything I had. After I absorbed every ounce of our mutual pleasure until neither of us had any strength to continue, he lay next to me, spent and oozing happy vibes.