Waiting for You (14 page)

She rocked against him, and his breath hissed through his teeth. She rocked again, and he groaned. “Erin…”

When he thrust inside her this time, her hips rose to meet his.

Then there was no more holding back. Jake drove into her with fierce urgency, and every time their bodies came together she felt a burst of pleasure. There was no explosion this time, but when Jake cried out her name and shuddered out his release, she was suffused by a wild tenderness, something primal and elemental.

He was still afterwards, his head on her shoulder and his body covering hers, and she could feel his breath and his heartbeat as if they were her own.

***

Jake didn’t want to move. Lying there with Erin, a peace he hadn’t known in years was seeping into his bones.

He’d never experienced anything like this. He tried to tell himself it was just that he hadn’t been with a woman in so long, but he knew better.

It had nothing to do with his long drought and everything to do with Erin. Being with her was like being in paradise, inside a garden of warmth and sweetness that touched places inside him he’d forgotten even existed.

Her hands were moving softly over his back and shoulders, her touch erotic in a way no other woman’s had ever been. He wished they could stay like that forever. But he knew he was too heavy for her, so he rolled them onto their sides.

He needed to pull out of her and take care of the condom. In a minute he would. But it felt so good to be inside her that he closed his eyes, not willing to separate their bodies just yet, and telling himself he was in no danger of falling asleep.

“You lucky son of a bitch.”

He and Dan were standing behind the dubious shelter of a mud wall, watching the disposal team use a plastic explosive to detonate the IED that should have killed him. They hadn’t figured out what had gone wrong with the device, other than the fact that the damn thing hadn’t gone off when Jake had stepped on the pressure plate hidden in the soil.

The guys in the patrol were slapping him on the back, pumped up that for once, the fortunes of war had turned up pocket aces for one of their own.

He should have felt the same way, should have been the happiest man on the planet. But it bothered him that the disposal team hadn’t found an explanation for why the bomb hadn’t gone off.

Maybe it was because he’d seen too many people die in the last ten years, but he wanted a reason other than dumb luck for still being alive.

Then came another day and another patrol. Most of the men in Charlie Company would cover twenty miles on foot that day, except for two soldiers who would take a helicopter to another base to pick up supplies.

Jake was slated to be one of them. But Dan had just gotten over a stomach bug and still felt like crap, and Jake suggested he go, instead.

Dan grinned. “I’m not going to take your charity. Let’s leave it up to lady luck.” He pulled out a quarter and tossed it into the air. “Call it,” he said, and Jake called heads while the coin was still spinning.

It landed tails.

“Lucky son of a bitch,” one of the other men had muttered while they watched the copter take off.

It rose only high enough to crash.

All Jake could think about as he ran towards the downed copter was the picture of Angie and Paul that Dan had showed him the night before. Dan couldn’t be dead. The crash wasn’t that bad. There could be survivors. If he could get there before the fuel—

The explosion knocked him to the ground.

“Jake! Jake!” He heard someone shouting, but it didn’t sound like his voice. After a few confused seconds he realized that Erin was shaking him awake, her face pale and a red mark starting to show on her cheekbone.

“Oh, God,” he said in dawning horror.

“It’s all right. It’s nothing. You had a nightmare, that’s all.”

But her voice was trembling, and he could see shock in her eyes.

He pushed himself away from her and off the bed. Heart pounding and nausea rising, he stumbled out of the room and into the hallway, finding his way to the bathroom.

He bent over the toilet, his hands braced on the seat, but he didn’t throw up. After a minute he went to the sink and splashed his face with cold water.

How could he have let this happen? How could he have fallen asleep? He knew how dangerous that could be.

How dangerous he could be.

Turning off the tap, he looked at himself in the mirror. He’d taken Erin’s virginity and hit her in the face. It was time to go back and give her the chance to throw him out of her house.

He was a little calmer when he went into Erin’s bedroom again. She’d pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms and a tee shirt and was sitting on the edge of her bed.

The red mark on her face looked worse.

She spoke before he could say a word. “Please don’t worry about it. I flail around in my sleep, too. Especially if I’m having a bad dream.”

A bad dream.

The taste of it was still in his mouth, like dust and ashes.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I knew I …God, Erin, I’m so sorry.”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes, and then went around to the other side of the bed for his clothes. He kept his back to her as he pulled on his boxers and jeans.

“Can you tell me what you dreamed about?” she asked softly.

“No.” The word was jerked out of him. As badly as he felt about what had happened, there was no way he was talking about the memories that haunted him.

“You don’t have to leave,” Erin said after he pulled on his tee shirt. “It’s not even eight o’clock yet. We can still have dinner. I can cook something if you don’t want to go out.”

“No. I need to head home.”

He had to get the hell out of here. He’d stop by his apartment first, and then leave town tonight instead of tomorrow morning. He’d ride until he couldn’t stay awake anymore.

Once his boots were on he went to the door, and only then did he turn and look at Erin again. Her bruise looked worse, and his jaw tightened. The sight of that mark on her face made him feel sick.

It was what he’d been afraid of all along. The reason he’d tried so hard not to get close.

Because he knew he’d end up hurting her.

“Jake,” Erin said gently, closing the distance between them. “Jake, it’s okay.”

Why the hell was she looking at him like that? Like he was the one who’d gotten hit, and not her? He didn’t deserve her sympathy. He didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.

He shook his head. “It’s not okay. I had no right to let down my guard like that. It’s my fault for falling asleep.”

For letting himself believe the peace he’d felt was real. That it was something he could hang onto, even for a little while.

For letting himself believe he could hang on to
her
.

Looking at Erin now, he remembered how she’d felt in his arms. So much softness, so much beauty.

But Erin could never be his. He’d always been wrong for her. She was too young, too sweet, too innocent.

He was still wrong for her. She didn’t belong anywhere near the hell that lived inside him.

And he’d make damn sure he didn’t forget it again.

Chapter Nine

One month.

It had been a month to the day since Jake had roared out of her life so fast he’d left skid marks.

Actual skid marks. If you looked closely, you could still see them in her driveway.

It had been a strangely empty month, even though she had several new clients—including a politician up for reelection and one of her favorite country bands.

But she had never been more aware of how solitary her chosen profession was.

And now, at two o’clock on a beautiful June afternoon, she was holding her cell phone open in her hand and willing herself not to dial Jake’s number.

She’d deleted him as a contact, so at least she couldn’t call with one push of a button. But she knew his number, and at least once a day she had to force herself not to punch in the ten digits.

They’d talked once since he’d gone away. He’d called her from San Antonio to let her know he’d gotten there safely, and to ask about the bruise on her face.

The weight of all the things she wanted to say made for a pretty stilted conversation. When he apologized “for what happened” she knew he meant the nightmare, but it felt like he was apologizing for making love to her, too. But she couldn’t ask him about that. She’d told him that all she wanted was that one moment, that she wouldn’t expect anything else—and she was going to keep that promise.

One of the many, many reasons she shouldn’t dial his number.

But she had to call someone. She’d spent way too much time alone lately, and if she didn’t talk to someone else soon—someone who wasn’t a client—she was going to go crazy.

Allison picked up on the first ring. “Erin! I haven’t heard from you in forever. And you must have read my mind, because I was just about to call you!”

Her voice was vibrant and joyful, and Erin smiled at the phone. Allison had always been contagious. “What’s going on? You sound like you’re ready to jump over the moon.”

“I am. Oh, Erin, I’m pregnant!”

“Allison! That’s fantastic. I’m so happy for you…and you’re going to be the best mother in the whole history of mothers.”

“Well, I’ve had a lot of practice over the years. I feel like I already have kids, you know?” Allison ran a foundation that supported families dealing with childhood cancer, and she worked with hundreds of children. “I’m due on December 12th, so I’m fourteen weeks along now, which my doctor said is the best time to announce that you’re pregnant, since the riskiest period is over. It was so hard to wait, but—”

Allison was going on, bubbling over with excitement, but Erin suddenly stopped listening. A cold feeling rushed through her. And for the next few minutes, while Allison was talking, she was calculating.

She was ten days late.

Her period had never been regular. Sometimes she was a couple of days early, sometimes a few days late…and that was why she hadn’t thought about it until now. She never paid that much attention to when her period was due, since it was never predictable.

But ten days?

She knew the date of her last period was May 3rd, because that had been the day of her big presentation at the senator’s office.

And she knew that she and Jake had made love two weeks later, on May 17th.

And now she was ten days late.

***

An hour later, she was sitting in her bathroom looking at a positive home pregnancy test.

For the first few minutes after she saw the little plus sign, she didn’t have any coherent thoughts. She just sat on the toilet lid, holding the test stick but not really seeing it, and conscious only that her life had changed completely. It was like an explosion had blown her sky high and she was floating now, weightless, looking down at a world that would never be the same.

There were flashes of joy in her awareness—a joy that seemed bigger than she was.

And then there were moments of fear, fear that nearly overwhelmed her.

Real thoughts began to articulate themselves, like questions surfacing slowly to the top of a magic eight ball. And eventually all her questions coalesced into one.

What was she going to do?

From the time she was a teenager she’d planned out her life like a general waging a campaign, with short and long-term strategies carefully laid out. She’d be self-employed, so she could be her own boss and decide when and where and how she worked. She’d live alone, so she wouldn’t have to depend on roommates or housemates for anything.

And she would never be like her mother, who lived at the mercy of her whims and impulses—and the vagaries of male desire.

She’d achieved her goals. She had everything she’d planned for. She could hold her life in the palm of her hand—everything under control, every unknown variable contained.

Jake was the only unpredictable force in her carefully managed existence. When it came to him, all her common sense went out the window.

Now one night of passion had changed her life forever—and Jake wasn’t even here. He’d left Iowa—and her—without looking back.

She put her head in her hands.

She couldn’t blame Jake for this. He’d been up front with her from the beginning. He’d told her he didn’t want a relationship—he’d even told her he couldn’t stay the night. And after what had happened, she understood why.

Even now, with the fabric of her life torn to shreds, her memory of that night slammed into her like a tsunami. His hands, his mouth, his body on hers…despite the painful way things had ended, when morning came, she hadn’t regretted what had happened. At least she’d had one moment of glorious madness in her life, one passionate encounter to remember and cherish.

She would always be glad that her first time had been with Jake.

Her first and only time. And she’d gotten
pregnant
?

Sudden indignation at the unfairness of it made her sit up straight. She looked at the pregnancy test one more time before dropping it deliberately in the trash. Then she got up off the toilet seat and went to pace her living room.

How had this happened?

They’d used protection…but they’d also fallen asleep while Jake was still inside her. Had the condom leaked? Or…

Condoms sometimes broke. If theirs had, would she even have known? She didn’t have anything to compare the experience to.

Suddenly sick of her empty, silent house, she went out the front door and sat down on her steps. It was quiet outdoors, too, but at least she could see further than the four walls surrounding her.

She sat there for a long time.

It was a beautiful day. How long had it been since she’d just sat still like this, looking out at the world?

It was easy to forget how big the sky was…how far the horizon.

She took in a deep breath. The truth was, she’d never know why this happened. She only knew that it had.