With Every Breath (34 page)

dangerously, but it was the strongest, only instinct she seemed to have anymore.

"Baby, your dad died last night after we ran away from him."

She thought she saw the barest flinch. But she was overwhelmed in that moment with her own terror of saying the wrong thing, of leaving some kind of indelible scar upon him. She was loath to say anything that would haunt him and skew his thinking for the rest of his life. Oh, the responsibility, she thought helplessly. It felt like a boulder between her shoulder blades.

Then she realized that she felt a strong instinct to tie it in with what had happened to him last month, to use this horror somehow, to give him some sense of the nightmare ending. She went with it.

"Do you remember," she went on carefully, "how I told you once that God will forgive you if you do something bad, just as long as you say you’re sorry and really mean it? We don’t have to be perfect as long as we know we’re not perfect, and we try to do better." Josh kept staring at her. "Okay, well, I think what might have happened here is that ... maybe your dad wasn’t sorry for killing that policeman. God had to take him up to heaven to have a good, long talk with him." She was shaking, she realized, looking at her hands. She clasped them between her knees so Josh wouldn’t notice.

"I don’t think God would do that for something minor," she went on, "for something like stealing or telling a lie. I think then He just sits up there in heaven and shakes His head and makes a mental note to mention it the next time He sees you. But there are some really bad things a person could do, like taking another life. In fact, that’s probably the worst thing of all. And that’s what your dad did, and we both know that it was awful. What makes it really
bad was that it was

someone you loved so much who did it, right?" She paused, struggling. "So your dad did something really bad, and God had to call him up to heaven to straighten him out. Because you just can’t go around killing people, and not have to account for it somehow."

Josh closed his eyes. What does that mean? she wanted to scream. Was he okay with it? Did he understand?

She was reasonably sure that she had covered all the bases. She hadn’t told him anything wrong. God was forgiving, and killing somebody was terribly bad. Those were things she wanted him to grow up believing.

"It’s sad," she rushed on. "I know you’re sad, baby. But the important thing to remember is that your dad’s finally happy now. He’s in heaven—" Is he, Maddie? Is he?
"—and once he talks to God and gets this straightened out, he’ll be at peace. I don’t think he was happy here on earth, baby, or he wouldn’t have done what he did to that policeman."

Josh finally looked at her again, and this time she saw tears in his eyes.

"Oh, Josh." She moved up to the headboard quickly to hold him. "You’re such a strong little man. You’ve done so good with everything that’s happened to us lately, and I’m really proud of you. But sometimes even strong men cry, Josh."

She let it go at that and began singing a lullaby.

She was gone long enough for Joe to start worrying. He made them a couple of drinks and finished his own, then he finally moved quietly up the stairs. He paused halfway, listening.

He heard a lot of what she said.

He wanted to kill the man who had done this to

them, but that man was already dead. He wanted to nail the one who had killed him and had no true idea who it might be. He wanted to hold her, hold Josh, somehow make it okay, and it was a straining need that made his muscles hurt. Then he realized something almost overwhelming, and he smiled to himself.

Maddie Brogan had a few interesting theories of her own.

He turned to go back downstairs again, and then she began singing that lullaby.

"Dance, little baby, dance up high. Never mind, baby, your buddy is by. Crow and caper, caper and crow, there, little baby, there you go!"

Joe froze. The hairs on his nape lifted. He stood there, listening, until long after she had stopped, and wondered what the hell was it about that song that bothered him.

"Joe?"

He turned around hard and fast. "Hey, babe. I was just getting worried about you two."

"We’re fine," she said shakily, and started down. "He’s sleeping."

Joe realized that he was going to have to check that song out in the library. He’d ask Flannery about it. Or maybe Doe Carlson would know something about nursery rhymes and lullabies.

"What’s the matter?" Maddie asked, stopping on the tread above him. His expression was odd.

Joe shook himself. He took her hand and laced his fingers through hers, going the last of the way downstairs. "Where’d you learn that song?" he asked finally, leading her into the kitchen to give her the drink he had made her.

Maddie sipped and closed her eyes, letting the warm-cold sensation of the liquor and ice hit her stomach. She frowned, thinking about it, then she groaned.

"I guess it’s one of those cracks in the wall. I don’t know."

He’d figured as much.

"Is it important?"

Joe shrugged carefully. "I’m not sure, but that’s another thing we might want to find out."

She’d finished the drink. He took the glass from her hand. "Tomorrow. Does Josh always sleep soundly?"

"Hmm?" Maddie looked at him vacantly, then her breath fell short at his expression. She nodded slowly. "Usually."

"Good. Because I want you in my bed. And this time, for a while, at least, I don’t want to stay on top of the covers. And I don’t want to wear clothes."

Something expectant and excited scrambled in the area of her heart. It seemed impossible, she thought wildly, that she could react to him like this in the face of everything that was happening. She wondered again if she was reacting like this because of everything that was happening.

Only time would tell, she reasoned, trying to breathe again.

He leaned forward and kissed her without touching her with anything but his mouth. Slowly. Deeply. And she knew that for her, at least, the attraction would be there forever. If he ever decided that he no longer desired her, then it would just be a different kind of feeling. It would be a gnawing, endless ache.

She leaned into him. He caught her hands and pulled her back toward the stairs again.

Later, she would have no recollection of moving up them. They were in the kitchen, and then they were simply on his bed, his hard body pressing her down, and the time in between was a blur. He braced one elbow and tangled his hand in her hair, and he kissed her again

as though he had lived all his life for this one moment and had no intention of ever moving on to anything else. He kissed her deeply, then softly, nibbling, then sweeping his tongue through her mouth.

She felt his hardness pressing against her. "Been thinking about this?" she managed against his mouth, stroking him through his jeans, and somehow, impossibly, she realized she could smile.

"A little." He grinned halfway. "Yeah. Off and on. All day."

She crooked an elbow around his neck and pulled him back for more.

His hand moved under her sweater, sliding over skin. And then she realized something else. She would never have believed that the scowling man who had walked, limping, into that real-estate office a lifetime ago could be this infinitely gentle, this tender, so good.

"Forget," he said. "Forget it all, Maddie. For a while, for tonight. If you can."

She could.

He pulled her sweater up over her head, and she lifted her shoulders to help him. She knew from last night that she would have to act fast, immediately, or she would be too far gone in a moment to thoroughly appreciate what she was doing. Before he could find the clasp of her bra again, she dug her fingers into the front of his shirt and pulled.

Buttons popped. She gave a sound that was a sigh, a sound like, "Ah", and it got inside him, under his skin, and turned to fire.

He dragged at the clasp of her bra, finally breaking it. Her breasts spilled out into his hands.

She pushed his shirt back off his shoulders, yanking impatiently when it got caught up on the arm that was still bearing his weight. He rolled a little to the other

side so she could pull it the rest of the way. His mouth dived for her breasts. She stopped him. She put her hands between them, her Fingers tangled in the black hair on his chest, and when he looked at her quizzically, she pushed him back enough so that her own mouth could roam.

Her tongue flicked over one of his nipples and she felt him tremble. She was overwhelmed. In that moment, her pictures came flooding back to her. They were all of his face, his eyes.

So good, Joe thought, and enjoyed with pure amazement the sensations that rippled through him, already, so easily, with all promise and no pain.

Ah, but there was pain. He was so hard it hurt, and he could no longer fight it off, pull his mind back from it, as he had all day. Her tongue moved over him and he closed his eyes, dragging blindly at her jeans.

Satin, lace, just another barrier, he thought, ripping at the last of her clothing.

She couldn’t get past his belt. She needed to look at it and didn’t want to, was too lost in the taste of his skin, the texture of it beneath her tongue. Then his fingers moved against her, inside her, and she fell away from him, back against the pillows again, gasping.

"Don’t think," he said hoarsely.

"No," she gasped.

His fingers stroked and teased and circled and slid away. Josh. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth so that she wouldn’t cry out aloud. Don’t think. Joe’s mouth fell to her breast again, his tongue hot, rough, circling, too. Her hands found his hair, and she tried to hold him there, but he was strong, and he had purpose. His tongue dipped into her navel, and he paused long enough to watch her face, then he moved on.

She would die, there and then, Maddie thought. She couldn’t take anymore, and couldn’t bear to end it.

His tongue touched her intimately, and she forgot Josh, didn’t think, cried out. Again and again, there was warm, wet heat, and she found his shoulders, dug her nails in, arched back in a timeless plea for more, for an end to it, because some things in life really were so good as to be unbearable.

"Joe," she whimpered, and he pulled away from her. "No!"

Her eyes flew open again and she reached out for him. But he was only standing beside the bed, wrenching at his belt, hopping on one foot to pull out of his jeans. He came back to her and she stroked her hands down the length of him, loving him, and she felt the hardness of him probing, needing, and her own body yielded. He sank into her and went still for one precious moment.

He looked down into her face. She saw so many things there. Need, fear, wonder.

And then he started moving inside her, and she knew that whatever else happened to her on Candle Island from then on, she was never going to be the same.

When Joe woke again, just before dawn, she was sitting up. Her back was against the headboard, and this time she was the one who was dressed. She had her knees drawn up, and her arms were braced tensely upon them.

He barely had time to assimilate all that before she spoke.

"All my life," she said softly, "I’ve fought off thoughts of my parents because it ... they ... always left a bad, sour feeling inside me. And I always thought

that that was just because I didn’t want to be like them, and because they hurt me."

Joe pulled himself up against the headboard as well to watch her. Her eyes were distant, not quite focused on the far wall.

"Aunt Susan told me that they’d just ... walked off," she went on. "I carried the blood of two people who could abandon their only child, apparently on a whim. I couldn’t think about them because I was so repulsed by the idea of turning out to be just like them."

"You’re not selfish," he said, his voice still husky with sleep. "You’re not whimsical or cold."

Her eyes flashed to him, then away again. "No. I don’t think so, not now, because ..."

Maddie trailed off. She couldn’t bring herself to say that she loved him, not aloud. That was irrevocable, and she had been wrong about it once before. She had said those words to Rick because she had so desperately needed to believe she was capable of loving. But she hadn’t been, and that had caused its own despair.

At least, she’d never really loved Rick.

That time, that relationship, had been nothing like this. She had never felt before the way she felt with Joe Gallen. She took a deep, shaky breath.

"When I had Josh, I knew I wasn’t completely like them, because I loved him with all my heart, from the first time I saw him—even before then, really. The first time I felt him move inside me, I loved him. And nothing, nothing,
could ever make me leave him."

"But your parents didn’t run," Joe said slowly. "They didn’t
just walk off."

Her eyes darted to him again. "That’s just it, Joe. It’s possible they didn’t. But something still makes me hurt on a gut level whenever I try to think of them. Why?"

He thought about it, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.