Paper Rose (26 page)

Tate pulled off his face mask and retrieved the man's gun, a small automatic, before he pulled a flip-phone from his pocket and dialed the emergency services number, adding a request for an ambulance to be dispatched before he hung up.

“Oh, do you think I broke his wrist?” Cecily asked, puzzled, as she wrapped her arms around her chest and stared at the writhing form on the floor.

“You might have,” Tate returned in a voice like steel. “But I called the ambulance because I broke several of his ribs.”

He didn't sound sorry, either. He went down on one knee and jerked the mask off the intruder, revealing a thin, unremarkable face now contorted with pain.

“Did you think I was stupid enough to lead you here and then take off without a backward glance?” Tate asked the man furiously. “I checked with the airport and the car rental service. Not that many people rent automobiles and ask for directions to Cullenville. Today it was just myself…and you.”

“Damn…you,” the man choked. “She…ruined everything. Everything! We had…it made!” He choked again and glared at Tate. “We'll…get her…and you!”

Tate caught the man by the hair and Cecily felt her hands go cold at the way he looked at his fallen enemy. “Do you know Marcus Carrera?”

The other man seemed to go still for an instant. Sure he knew Carrera. Everybody did. The man was a don, a legend, in mob circles. He made Gabrini look like a pickpocket. He swallowed. “Yeah. I know who Carrera is.”

“He knows where you live.”

Already pale, the man's face went white. “Hey, you can't…!”

“I can. I have.” Tate let go of his hair. His face was rigid. “If one hair on Cecily's head is damaged, in any way, I don't have to tell you what to expect. You might tell your friends that you aren't the only member of your syndicate that I've investigated.”

“You're bluffing.”

Tate just stared at him. “A lot of people owe me favors. Some of them are in prison. You'll never see it coming. Neither will any of your cohorts.”

“You're just…a…crazy Native American. You work for wages for a construction company! What can you do to us!” the man said contemptuously.

“Wait and see.” Tate got to his feet.

“My name is…Gabrini. I got family everywhere!”

Tate went back to Cecily, checking to make sure she was all right. “So have I,” he said, watching her.

She was still too shaken to say much. She let Tate pull her close and hold her until the shaking stopped. Reaction was only now setting in. It was uncomfortable to find out how vulnerable, and fragile, she really was.

 

The ambulance arrived when the police cars did. They were accompanied by a man in a black suit who had the look of a federal agent. It didn't surprise Cecily that he went right up to Tate and drew him to one side.

While Cecily was being checked over by a paramedic, Gabrini, who'd already been loaded onto a gurney, was being watched by two police officers.

Tate came back to Cecily while the federal agent paused by the police officers.

“You can take him to the hospital to have his ribs strapped,” the man told the ambulance attendant. “But we'll have transport for him to New Jersey with two federal marshals.”

“Marshals!” Gabrini exclaimed, holding his side, because the outburst had hurt.

“Marshals,” the federal agent replied. There was something menacing about the smile that accompanied the words. “It seems that you're wanted in Jersey for much more serious crimes than breaking an entering and assault with a deadly weapon, Mr. Gabrini.”

“Not in Jersey,” Gabrini began. “No, those other charges, they're in D.C.”

“You'll get to D.C. eventually,” the federal agent murmured, then the dark man smiled. And Gabrini knew at once that he wasn't connected in any way at all to the government.

Gabrini was suddenly yelling his head off, begging for federal protection, but nobody paid him much attention. He was carried off in the ambulance with the sedan following close behind. Cecily and Tate filled out the police reports over cups of coffee in the kitchen while one of the officers closed the window and secured it with a small curtain rod crossways at the top.

Tate stared at her over his second cup of coffee with quiet, proud eyes. “You kept your head,” he said. “I'm proud of the way you handled yourself. Were you afraid?”

She smiled at the rare praise. “Terrified. But I didn't know you were still in town. I thought I'd go down fighting.”

“I underestimated that few seconds of head start he had. I could have dropped him with one shot, but I had to consider that he might have had time to put a bullet in you before he fell.”

“You saved me.”

“You helped.”

She sipped her decaf. “Mr. Gabrini was afraid of you,” she said.

“He should be. I have some ties that he doesn't know about,” he added. “He won't come to any harm as long as he leaves you alone.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

“The danger's over. But I'd still rather have you back in D.C., where I can keep an eye on you.”

She hesitated. He'd saved her tonight. He did care about her, too, in his own way. But if she went back, he'd feel obliged to look after her constantly. She knew how he felt about marriage, because he'd made his attitude perfectly clear. He lived alone and he liked it. She'd had a good look tonight at the world he occupied, a world of violence and dangerous people, a world in which he excelled. He wasn't going to be able to give up his work because she might worry about him. And what sort of life would she and the baby have, on the fringe of his life? He'd love his son, certainly, but someday he might find a woman whom he could love. She'd cheat him by clinging. She'd had her perfect night with him, a night she'd dreamed of most of her life, and she had his child growing in her body. She could live on the past all her life.

“I want to stay here,” she said quietly.

He drew in a short breath, still full of adrenaline from the violence and still fuming because she was rejecting him.

He looked into her eyes. “My parents want you to come home so that they can be near their first grandchild.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “That's a new angle,” she said. “Pulling out all the stops, are you?”

He glared at her. “Don't think I can't live without you, even if you are carrying my son.”

She shrugged, not letting her sorrow show. “I've never thought that, Tate,” she said with forced cheer. “How could a mere woman compete with covert ops?”

“I don't do that anymore,” he muttered.

“You do that every day,” she countered. “You did it thirty minutes ago. You're very good,” she added with a measure of fascination in the eyes that searched over his lean face. “I never knew how good until I saw you in action. You live for those adrenaline rushes. I've never seen you as happy as you were when you came back from rescuing Pierce Hutton and his wife in the Middle East. It's quite a change from the nuts and bolts of daily routine around D.C. And you think you could give that up to marry me…”

“Marry you!”

She could see the shock in his face and misunderstood it. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I know you wouldn't do that. I don't want marriage, either,” she lied glibly. “But even though we'd be living apart, I don't want to raise my child in a combat zone with prospective assassins at the door every night. I feel safe here, now.”

He was reeling from the way she'd discounted marriage. She'd always wanted to marry him, and now that she was pregnant, she didn't? He was staggered by the knowledge.

He smoothed his long fingers over his coffee cup. “I thought marriage was the one thing you did want.”

“Your mistake,” she said without meeting his eyes. “I'm happy with my life the way it is. I'll love the baby,” she added softly. “You can see him whenever you like…Tate?”

He was out the door before she could finish the sentence. He closed the front door with a hard jerk and she heard the lock fall into place. By the time she reached it, she saw Tate at the curb talking with a police officer and gesturing toward the house. The other man nodded. She was going to be watched, apparently.

She went back and cleaned up the kitchen. Well, he had what he wanted now, an excuse not to offer her marriage. She felt empty and alone, but she couldn't trap him into a marriage that he didn't want with a child he'd never intended to give her in the first place. It was going to be a lonely life, but she had the baby. Tate had his job, and his freedom, for the first time in eight years. With Cecily out of the way, and safe, he could take up his life where her place in it had begun.

Sure enough, the next morning a police officer came by with a telephone technician to fix her phone. Mr. Winthrop, the officer related, had gone last night and made arrangements for a private security firm to look after Cecily. It was no surprise that he hadn't called to say goodbye. She hadn't expected him to. She thought of all the long, lonely years ahead and hoped her new job and the baby would compensate for what she'd lost.

C
olby Lane and Pierce Hutton had the manager of Tate's apartment building open his door for them. They knew that Tate had come back from Tennessee, and that he'd saved Cecily from Gabrini, but nobody had seen him for almost a week. His answering machine was left on permanently. He didn't answer knocks at the door. It was such odd behavior that his colleague and his boss became actually concerned.

They were more concerned when they saw him passed out on the couch in a forest of beer cans and discarded pizza boxes. He hadn't shaved or, apparently, bathed since his return.

“Good God,” Pierce said gruffly.

“That's a familiar sight,” Colby murmured. “He's turned into me.”

Pierce glared at him. “Don't be insulting.” He moved to the sofa and shook Tate. “Wake up!” he snapped.

Tate didn't open his eyes. He shifted, groaning. “She won't come back,” he mumbled. “Won't come. Hates me…”

He drifted off again. Pierce and Colby exchanged knowing glances. Without a word, they rolled up their sleeves and set to work, first on the apartment, and then on Tate.

 

Tate was sprawled across the bed in his robe early the next morning when the sound of the front door opening penetrated his mind. There was an unholy commotion out there and his head was still throbbing, despite a bath, several cups of coffee and a handful of aspirin that had been forced on him the day before by two men he'd thought were his friends. He didn't want to sober up. He only wanted to forget that Cecily didn't want him anymore.

He dragged himself off the bed and went into the living room, just in time to hear the door close.

Cecily and her suitcase were standing with mutual rigidity just inside the front door. She was wearing a dress and boots and a coat and hat, red-faced and muttering words Tate had never heard her use before.

He scowled. “How did you get here?” he asked.

“Your boss brought me!” she raged. “He and that turncoat Colby Lane and two bodyguards, one of whom was the female counterpart of Ivan the Terrible! They forcibly dressed me and packed me and flew me up here on Mr. Hutton's Learjet! When I refused to get out of the car, the male bodyguard swept me up and carried me here! I am going to kill people as soon as I get my breath and my wits back, and I am starting with you!”

He leaned against the wall, still bleary-eyed and only half awake. She was beautiful with her body gently swollen and her lips pouting and her green eyes in their big-lensed frames glittering at him.

She registered after a minute that he wasn't himself. “What's the matter with you?” she asked abruptly.

He didn't answer. He put a hand to his head.

“You're drunk!” she exclaimed in shock.

“I have been,” he replied in a subdued tone. “For about a week, I think. Pierce and Colby got my landlord to let them in yesterday.” He smiled dimly. “I'd made some threats about what I'd do if he ever let anybody else into my apartment, after he let Audrey in the last time. I guess he believed them, because Colby had to flash his company ID to get in.” He chuckled weakly. “Nothing intimidates the masses like a CIA badge, even if it isn't current.”

“You've been drunk?” She moved a little closer into the apartment. “But, Tate, you don't…you don't drink,” she said.

“I do now. The mother of my child won't marry me,” he said simply.

“I said you could have access…”

His black eyes slid over her body like caressing hands. He'd missed her unbearably. Just the sight of her was calming now. “So you did.”

Why did she feel guilty, for God's sake, she wondered. She tried to recapture her former outrage. “I've been kidnapped!”

“Apparently. Don't look at me. Until today, I was too stoned to lift my head.” He looked around. “I guess they threw out the beer cans and the pizza boxes,” he murmured. “Pity. I think there was a slice of pizza left.” He sighed. “I'm hungry. I haven't eaten since yesterday.”

“Yesterday!”

After all she'd been through, the thought of Tate starving chased all her irritation right out of her mind. She took off her coat and walked past him to the kitchen and started doing a visual inventory of the refrigerator. She made a face. “The milk is long since out of date, the bread all has mold and I think you could start a bacterial plague with what's in the crisper here….”

“Order a pizza,” he suggested. “There's a place down on the corner that still owes me ten pizzas, paid for in advance.”

“You can't eat pizza for breakfast!”

“Why can't I? I've been doing it for a week.”

“You can cook,” she said accusingly.

“When I'm sober,” he agreed.

She glowered at him and went back to her chore. “Well, the eggs are still edible, barely, and there's an unopened pound of bacon. I'll make an omelet.”

He collapsed into the chair at the kitchen table while she made a fresh pot of coffee and set about breaking eggs.

“You look very domesticated like that,” he pointed out with a faint smile. “After we have breakfast, why don't you come to bed with me?”

She gave him a shocked glance. “I'm pregnant,” she reminded him.

He nodded and laughed softly. “Yes, I know. It's an incredible turn-on.”

Her hand stopped, poised in midair with a spoon in it. “Wh…what?”

“The eggs are burning,” he said pleasantly.

She stirred them quickly and turned the bacon, which was frying in another pan. He thought her condition was sexy? She couldn't believe he was serious.

But apparently he was, because he watched her so intently over breakfast that she doubted if he knew what he was eating.

“Mr. Hutton told the curator of the museum in Tennessee that I wasn't coming back, and he paid off the rent on my house there,” she said. “I don't even have a home to go to…”

“Yes, you do,” he said quietly. “I'm your home. I always have been.”

She averted her eyes to her plate and hated the quick tears that her condition prompted. Her fists clenched. “And here we are again,” she said huskily.

“Where?” he asked.

She drew in a harsh breath. “You're taking responsibility for me, out of duty.”

He leaned back in his chair. The robe came away from his broad, bronzed chest as he stared at her. “Not this time,” he replied with a voice so tender that it made ripples right through her heart. “This time, it's out of love, Cecily.”

Cecily doubted her own ears. She couldn't have heard Tate saying that he wanted to take care of her because he loved her.

He wasn't teasing. His face was almost grim. “I know,” he said. “You don't believe it. But it's true, just the same.” He searched her soft, shocked green eyes. “I loved you when you were seventeen, Cecily, but I thought I had nothing to offer you except an affair.” He sighed heavily. “It was never completely for the reasons I told you, that I didn't want to get married. It was my mother's marriage. It warped me. It's taken this whole scandal to make me realize that a good marriage is nothing like the one I grew up watching. I had to see my mother and Matt together before I understood what marriage could be.”

“Your childhood was terrible,” she recalled.

“So was yours,” he returned curtly. “I never told you that I beat the hell out of your stepfather after I took you home to my mother, did I?” he added.

She bit her lip. “No. I really don't know what would have become of me if it hadn't been for you. After Mama died, my life was a nightmare.”

He toyed with his coffee cup, his eyes black with angry memories. “That night, while you were asleep, I unbuttoned your pajama jacket and looked at what he'd done to you. Afterward, I drove back to his house and very nearly killed him. If he hadn't started crying and begging me to stop, I…” He let out the angry breath. “That was when I realized how I felt about you,” he added, his eyes meeting hers. “A man wants to protect what he considers his own. It started then, that night.”

She was surprised by what he was telling her. “You…looked at me?”

He nodded. His eyes narrowed. “You had the most beautiful little breasts,” he said roughly. “And they were covered with bruises. I wanted to kiss the bruises, take you into my bed and hold you, just hold you, all night long so that you'd be safe. I didn't dare give in to the impulse, of course,” he added with the first touch of amusement he'd shown since her arrival. “My mother would have horsewhipped me.”

She felt waves of surprised pleasure lance through her body. “I never knew.”

“I was always known for my poker face,” he murmured. “But it was sheer agony to be around you. The older you got, the worse it was. It was inevitable that one day I'd go mad and take you.” He sighed. “The most hellish part of the whole thing was knowing that all I had to do was touch you and you'd let me do anything I liked to you.”

She traced the mouth of her coffee cup. “I loved you,” she said quietly.

“I know.”

There was a world of pain in the words. She looked up into his black eyes and saw an answering emotion in them. “You never told me.”

“I couldn't. Until very recently, I wasn't sure I could ever think in terms of marriage. And it wasn't to maintain a pure bloodline,” he told her finally with a laugh that was pure self-contempt. “Leta didn't tell you, because I made her promise not to. But one of my Lakota great-grandfathers married a young blond white woman at the turn of the century. He was a member of Bigfoot's band.”

Her lips parted. “The band that was decimated at Wounded Knee in 1890!”

He nodded. “He moved to Chicago afterward. He hated his culture for a while, and became a detective, trying to hide his Lakota blood by living white. But eventually he regained his pride and made his background public. He married the doctor's daughter who'd nursed him after the massacre and she gave him a son and a daughter. She could speak Lakota like a native and ride and shoot like a warrior. My mother has the name that was given to her after her marriage: Warwoman.”

She was enthralled. “So the bloodline wasn't pure.”

He shook his head. “It was an excuse, like all the other excuses. I liked my life as it was. I didn't want ties, especially the sort I'd have had with you.” He looked at her with pure raging desire. “I knew if we were ever intimate, there'd be no going back. I was right. I eat, breathe, sleep and dream you, especially now, with my baby growing in your belly.”

She searched his eyes like a woman coming out of nightmare into pure fantasy.

He stood up and shed the robe without a trace of inhibition, letting her look at him for the second time in their turbulent relationship. She was so intensely preoccupied that she hardly realized what he was doing until she was standing equally nude before him. He lifted her into his arms and brought his mouth down tenderly on the swell of their child before he carried her into the bedroom.

There was only faint trepidation in her eyes, but he smiled as he eased down beside her on the king-size bed. “I'll be careful,” he whispered, bending to her soft mouth. “There's no rush. We have the rest of our lives to love each other.”

It was love, too. Every brief kiss, every light, caressing touch, was a testament to what he felt for her. In between soft kisses and tender endearments he coaxed her into the most exquisite intimacy she'd ever shared with him, so that each long, slow, sensual motion of his hips was like ballet. She felt him shudder with the effort it took to control the raging arousal that threatened to burst second by second.

“Tate,” she moaned huskily, pulling at his hips.

“No,” he bit off against her open mouth. “I want it like this,” he breathed. “I want it slow and sweet, deeper than it's ever been, so tender…that you sob…when I end it.”

She wasn't certain she could survive it. The pleasure came slowly, in great hot throbs of sensation like waves crashing onto a beach. She clung to his arms and shivered from the tension that stretched her body under the exquisite stroke of his own.

His hands were clenched beside her head on the bed, and he made a rough sound in his throat as he met her wide, glazed eyes.

“Feel how deep I am,” he whispered hoarsely, his jaw clenching as he moved roughly over her. “Feel how deep, how completely I…fill you…” His eyes closed on a harsh cry. “Cecily…oh, God, I love you…!”

She was sobbing, too, feeling as he did the great riptide of pleasure that went right over the banks of the sensual dam and broke in convulsive ripples against their straining, damp bodies.

I'll die, she thought as she cried out in a voice as alien as his sounded, as they shuddered rhythmically together.

When she could finally give up the last sweet echoes of the massive ecstasy that had trembled in her most secret places, she wept. He held her, smoothed her short hair, comforted her with words and soft kisses as he, too, shivered in the aftermath.