Trouble (41 page)

His face was strained as his eyes locked with hers. “I love you, angel. More than anything else in the world.”

She looked away, fighting the sudden sting of tears.

He grabbed her chin and pulled her face back around. “I love you, Dara. You can't hide from it.”

“Mike—”

“I love you. Always have. Always will.” He held her even tighter. “I'm not letting you go again.”

More kissing. Deep, wet and hot, as incinerating as rocket fuel.

Her body blew apart, harder than before. She came again in endless waves that dissolved into even longer ripples of ecstasy, straining against him as his name poured out of her mouth.

Wrung out and limp, she saw the brief flash of a satisfied smile and the glimmering of his eyes before he circled his hips in one final thrust. There was a throaty groan as his features twisted and his eyes squeezed shut. The shudder of his body followed by absolute rigidity in his muscles.

And then, finally, stillness as the storm passed, leaving a clothes-strewn floor and uncertainty in its wake.

They leaned against the door, panting, for one delicious second.

Until Dara's bliss-drenched body began to cool.

“Oh, God,” she said, pushing against his shoulders so he'd let her down.

He did, with great reluctance, pulling out and hanging on to her while she got her feet under her again. The second she was stable, she scurried away from him, looking at the floor for her clothes so she wouldn't have to see the way his expression darkened and the bright joy dimmed from his eyes.

“What's wrong?” he asked quietly, adjusting his pants.

“That's not … that's not what I came here for.”

What have I done
, she wondered wildly, pressing her palm to her damp forehead, as if that could stop her buzzing thoughts. She'd come to tell him to leave her alone, and she'd let—no, begged!—him to screw her against the door. Finding her panties, she realized they were ruined and threw them down again. Reached for her jeans and jerked them on.

“I don't know what just happened,” she said.

“We made love. Which is normal when you love someone.”

“No. We clouded the issue. Which is that I don't know if I can count on you.”

He watched her, unmoving, with only the flicker of emotions behind his eyes to give him away. Hurt. Frustration. A renewed flare of fear. Resolve.

Hooking his thumb through the necklace, he held the ring up for her to see. “I don't know how I can be any clearer, angel. I just gave you everything I've got. I love you. In my heart, I think of you as my wife. As far as I'm concerned, I just made love to my wife. Don't let your doubts ruin this.”

She made a derisive sound. “
My
doubts? Which one of us pulled back after the gala? Which one of us panicked when their mother asked about our relationship? I don't think it was me.”

He winced, dropping his head as his face turned beet purple and he scrubbed a hand over his chin.

Turning her back to him, she quickly slipped her bra and sweater back on.

He came up behind her, pulled her hair out of the sweater's neckline and massaged her shoulders. When she didn't resist, he eased closer, burying his nose in her hair and relaxing against her.

“Nothing's ever been easy with us, but we can still do it. We have to work this out, Dara.”

She hesitated, breathing into his touch the way she always did.

“I know,” she admitted.

His breath caught as he turned her around so he could see her face.

Hope was back, gleaming bright in his eyes. “You do?”

She held up a hand before he got too excited and she caved and did what she wanted to do, which was yank that chain from around his neck and slide the ring on her finger without asking the smart questions or thinking it through.

“I need some time, Mike. I need to, I don't know—”

“Make sure I don't bail on you again?”

She shrugged. Nodded.

“Yeah, okay.” Smiling now, he took her hands and held them to his chest, where his heart pounded. Then he pulled them to his mouth, one by one, so he could press lingering kisses to her palms. “You can have whatever you need. As long as it takes.”

“Really? What's gotten into you?”

His smile turned wry. “As long as you don't cut me loose? I'm the luckiest guy in the world.”

That made her laugh. She was still grinning when he leaned in to kiss her breathless.

When he pulled back, his gaze was searching and vulnerable. “Do you love me, sweetheart?”

Something inside her seized up.

Staring at him and seeing his need made her want to give it all to him now—her love and soul to go along with her body. The pull of him was too powerful to refuse when she was in his arms.

The truth was, he already owned every part of her.

She just wasn't ready to admit it yet.

So she pulled back and turned her head away, catching an agonizing glimpse of his pain when she did. “I can't—”

“It's okay.” His shoulders drooped but he kept his voice upbeat, as though the only thing she couldn't commit to was what kind of pizza to have for dinner. “I'm not going to pressure you. I'm going to show you.”

“‘Show me'?”

“That I'm not going anywhere. That you can count on me. That it's safe for you to love me. One of these days you'll have to believe me, right?”

The only answer she trusted herself to give was a kiss pressed gently to his mouth.

“I'd better go,” she said, grabbing her jacket when she pulled back.

He nodded, looking grim, and unlocked the door for her before swinging it open. “I want to see you before you go home for Christmas.”

The night air was frigid, but she paused to glance over her shoulder and raise her brows at him as she started down the steps. “You just can't help yourself, can you?”

“When it comes to you? No.”

“Try,” she said, laughing.

“Dinner? Tomorrow?”

“I'll see what I can—
oh, my God!
”

A hulking man, silent as the moon's rays, slid out of the shadows by the metal trash cans a few feet away and pointed a gun at her. A dark hoodie obscured his face until he pushed it off like he wanted to make sure he got full credit for what he was about to do. The porch light hit him just right.

It was Johnson.

Dara gasped, staring at him. There was no sign of the charming womanizer. His eyes looked chalkboard flat, as though no light could penetrate or escape those soulless pupils. If she'd had any modicum of doubt that he was a murderer, seeing him now killed it.

Just as, she instinctively knew, he was here to kill Mike. Unless she warned him.

“Mike!”
she shrieked.

But Mike was already on the job, racing off the steps toward her. “Dara, get down!”

Pop!

Mike knocked her to the ground and was on his feet again in an instant, lunging for Johnson. The men struggled with the gun while Dara frantically grabbed a trash can lid so she could smash Johnson over the head.

Another
pop
, followed immediately by the instantaneous and sickening thud of three hundred pounds of flesh hitting the ground. She spun back around to see what had happened.

Unmoving, Johnson lay on his back and stared up at the sky, a bullet through the middle of his chest.

“Oh, my God,” she said into the sudden silence. “Mike?”

Swaying on his feet, Johnson's gun dangling from his hand, Mike looked to her. He blinked hard, as though he needed to clear his vision, then staggered back a step.

She noticed there was a strange smudge on his shirt.

“Mike?”

Without warning, he dropped to his knees, fell to his side and settled on his back.

“Mike!”

Disbelieving, even when she saw the stain bloom, dark and wet, across his side, she sprinted over and hit the ground beside him.

He couldn't have been shot. Not Mike.

He stirred, moving his hand weakly.

Automatic pilot kicked in, telling her what to do.

She kept her face blank as she covered him with her jacket and pressed down hard on the wound.

Mike yelled with pain.

“Sorry,” she told him. “I have to.”

His chest labored for breath. “You okay, sweetheart?”

Pressing her lips together, she struggled not to cry. “Am
I
okay?
You're
the one who's been shot.”

“Better me than you,” he said, his eyes rolling closed as he slipped away from her.

“Let's talk in here.”

The grim-faced surgeon pulled off his sweat-soaked green cap and ushered Dara and Mrs. Baldwin into one of the tiny conference rooms adjacent to the waiting area, where they sat at a small table. Mrs. Baldwin, looking suddenly much older and haggard, leaned heavily on Dara's arm. Despite her own exhaustion and fear, Dara had spent the last several hours hovering over her—that, and trying to reach Sean, who wasn't answering his cell--determined that nothing would happen to Mike's mother on her watch.

“He came out of surgery about as well as we could have expected,” he said.

Gasping, Mrs. Baldwin grabbed Dara's hand and squeezed tightly.

Dara nodded dully. One persistent thought penetrated her numbness:

I didn't tell him I love him
.

“The bullet nicked his pulmonary artery,” the surgeon continued. “That's why he had such a massive bleed. We had to give him four units.”

Why didn't I tell him I love him?

“He's in the ICU. You can see him there.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Mrs. Baldwin asked tearfully.

The surgeon hesitated, which was answer enough.

And all Dara could think was that she'd foolishly and hurtfully refused to tell Mike she loved him when she had the chance.

Now he could die and she'd never get the chance. If he did, she'd have to live with that crippling regret for the rest of her life, when she could barely breathe with it now.

She'd also have to live with the image of him voluntarily taking a bullet to protect her mere seconds after she'd said she didn't know if she could count on him.

“We need to see how he does in the next several hours,” the surgeon said. “He's young and strong, so that's good.”

I have to tell him I love him
.

Toward dawn of the longest night of Dara's life, the nurse let them see Mike in one of the dimly lit, glass-encased rooms of the ICU.

The sight of him released the sob that'd been lodged in her throat for hours, forcing her to clap her hand over her mouth to stifle it. She was not going to fall apart. She was not going to add to Mrs. Baldwin's burden now. She was not going to risk letting Mike hear her.

With God's grace and the sheer force of her will, she swallowed her emotions and got it together by the time she made it to his bedside.

There didn't seem to be much Mike left under all the stark white linens and medical equipment, and what was there looked awful. His skin had turned a ghostly brown from blood loss. A tube that looked like it rightfully belonged to a set of scuba gear was taped to the side of his slightly open mouth. The IV lines taped to his arms made it almost impossible for her to believe those same arms had lifted and held her so easily last night. Various monitors and pumps hummed and beeped. Kindly nurses bustled in and out.

He didn't move. Mrs. Baldwin sat on the other side of his bed. Dara pulled up a chair, sat and stared at his closed eyelids, willing them to flicker, to show some slight sign that Mike was still in there somewhere.

They didn't.

She took his hand. It was cool. Unresponsive.