If he felt this way, just from hearing the story, how in the hell did she feel? He wanted to run. She couldn’t get away. It was there, inside her head. It was never wedded bliss, she’d told him at the department. It was a nightmare. And God forgive him, he had yelled at her in the truck when she’d tried to tell him how nervous she was. What a prince he was. All he’d been able to think about was the insult she’d dealt him, never stopping to consider what the hell had happened to fill her with such dread.
Well, he wasn’t going to let her down again. He would stay, and he would listen, and somehow, he would deal with it and help her to deal with it.
“What did he do with the gun, Meredith?”
“You know what he did!” she cried.
He also knew she had to say it. “Tell me.”
Anger was interlaced with the pain in her voice when she cried, “While he was—doing that—he held it to my head! And when he was going to—you know—he pulled the trigger. I never knew if the gun would fire, so every time, I thought I might die. I was so terrified. Sweating. Couldn’t breathe. When you think a bullet is about to explode into your brain, your whole body tenses. He—liked it that way.”
Heath realized he was hugging her so hard he was about to squeeze the life out of her, but he couldn’t unlock his hold. To his surprise, she wrapped both arms around his neck and pressed even closer, clinging to him as if she were about to plunge to her death and he was her only salvation.
“Ah, Merry. I always sensed my weapon made you nervous. Now I know why.” He smoothed her hair, aching for her. “Is it bothering you that I’m wearing it right now? I really shouldn’t take it off, you know. Chances are, no one will come up here, but—”
“It’s all right, Heath. My rational side knows you’d never hurt me with it.”
He wasn’t asking about her rational side. Bless her heart, no wonder she was skittish. He’d seen war veterans who got the shakes if an explosive sound startled them. He’d seen abused women and kids who ducked or flinched every time a man gestured with his hands. Her fears really weren’t anything personal against him, but instinctive reactions she couldn’t control. I’ll do my best not to be difficult. God, he’d been such a jerk, and he was damned lucky she’d forgiven him for it.
“Never is right,” he whispered, his voice throbbing. “I’d rather cut off my arm than hurt you or frighten you, Merry girl. I’m so sorry if I ever have.”
“Oh, Heath, I love you.” She shuddered and clung to him more tightly. “I didn’t want you to know about the gun. Not ever. I was afraid you’d be disgusted.”
He was disgusted, all right, with some of his fellow men. “I think you’re the most wonderful lady I’ve ever met, and nothing you ever tell me will change that.”
The entire story poured from her then. Every nightmarish, sordid detail. For some reason, the point that lingered with the most clarity in Heath’s mind was about the spiders, probably because it was so representative of Dan’s cruelty. The man had to have been insane, his mind diseased. No normal human being would do such things.
Meredith had always been afraid of spiders, the phobia dating back to childhood, and good old Dan loved to torment her with them, putting them under her pillow or between the sheets, perching one on her shoulder when she was preoccupied, sometimes slipping them into her clothing before she dressed. If she did something to displease him, that had been one of the ways he punished her, with spiders.
“To this day, I can’t crawl into a bed without checking it first,” she whispered. “Not even if Sammy’s watching. I’m so ashamed of that. A good mother doesn’t set that kind of example or risk making her child afraid of something silly. But I can’t stop doing it. I’ve tried, and after I get in bed, I think I feel them crawling all over me.”
“Merry, you’re a fantastic mother. Sammy’s not phobic about spiders. I think she understands it’s something you can’t help. You’ve taught her to be compassionate.” Repositioning his arms around her, Heath buried his face in her hair, not speaking for a while. When he finally did, he asked, “Where the hell did Dan get so many spiders?”
“He bought them by the dozen at a pet supply store. They came in little cardboard containers, sort of like Chinese take-out.” She laughed tremulously. “Needless to say, I never eat Chinese take-out. One look at those white boxes, and I lose my appetite. He used to have—sex with me while spiders crawled over my skin.”
Heath cursed under his breath, the shock in his voice unmistakable. Meredith heard revulsion in his voice as well and tried to move off his lap. His arms tightened around her like steel bands.
“No way,” he whispered.
She pressed her face against his shoulder again. She had no more tears left to cry, so she simply lay there against him, her emotions oddly numb.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” His hands moved over her as lightly as butterfly wings. “I wish I had known you then, that I had been there to help you.”
Meredith could detect no note of disgust in his deep voice, no harsh judgments, only a heartfelt regret that she had faced it all alone. It was the most beautiful feeling. A shimmery, warm glow that moved all the way through her. He loved her. He truly did. A no-matter-what kind of love, the kind that would last a lifetime. It made her feel so incredibly good and safe. His strong arms. The steady thud of his heart. The heat of him surrounding her. She kept her eyes closed and wished she could melt into him, that she would never have to move away, that she could just be absorbed by his strength and never be alone again.
“What would you have done?” she asked. “Tell me, like in a story, and after this, whenever I remember, I’ll pretend it happened just that way, that you came and made it all stop.”
His chest rumbled as he spoke, the vibration moving through her body, the deep, gravelly timber of his voice soothing her like a healing balm. He spun a tale, much like the ones she told Sammy, of him coming to New York and walking the streets until he found Dan’s house where she was imprisoned. Of him kicking down the front door, storming in to find her, and encountering Dan as he searched the rooms.
Meredith thought that was going to be her favorite part of the story because Heath kicked Dan’s butt. Pummeled him, and made him crawl. She really, really liked that part.
“And then what?” she caught herself asking, just as Sammy did when she paused for breath while telling her a story.
Heath sighed. “Well, then, I went up the stairs.” He looked down. “Were there stairs?” At her nod, he continued. “And I searched all the rooms until finally I opened a door, and there you were, so beautiful and sweet that I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared.”
She giggled.
“Hair the color of honey shot through with sunlight. Skin like fresh cream. Lips the faint pink of new strawberries on the vine. And the most gorgeous brown eyes I had ever seen, the color of chocolate caramels.”
Meredith pinched him. “Blue! My eyes are blue.”
“Shit.” He tucked in his chin to scowl down at her upturned face. “They are blue, aren’t they? Those damned contacts go. Right now. A man’s got a right to see his woman with her real eyes on.”
She pushed up, using her elbow against his chest for leverage, which made him grunt. After she popped out the contacts, he took them from her palm and tossed them on the floor. Then he framed her face in his big hands and gazed at her for an endless moment. “Gorgeous blue, rimmed in red.”
She gasped. “That’s not romantic!”
“Neither is a red nose, but I still think you’re pretty damned cute.” He patted his shoulder. “Back down here. I’m just getting to the good part.”
She snuggled against him again, keeping her head tipped back so she might watch his dark face and the changing expressions that flitted over his features. He got a distant, tender look in his eyes and a half smile played upon his lips.
“Anyway, there I stood, frozen to the spot. She was so beautiful, I couldn’t stop staring. A little lady, the
biggest thing about her these gigantic blue eyes and a belly that stuck out like a twenty pound watermelon.”
“Heath!” She pressed a hand to her waist. “It doesn’t!”
“It did then! You had to have been pregnant most of the time you were with the asshole. We’re in the happy ever after part of the story now.”
“You’re going to make me pregnant?”
He glanced down at her and raised his eyebrows. “Can I?”
She made a face.
“Anyway, I just stood there, totally hypnotized by this beautiful little lady with a great big whopper of a belly.” She giggled. “Once I recovered from my initial disbelief, I stepped closer. And with every step, I got a stronger feeling that there’d never be any turning back, because I loved her. So I swept her up into my arms and carried her down the stairs to the—”
“On the way out, let me stop and punch Dan,” she inserted.
“—living room,” he continued, barely missing a beat, “to let my lady fair punch Dan Calendri’s lights out.”
“I want to kick him, too.”
He threw her a startled glance.
“Well? If I’m going to refer back to this story, I want to remember myself getting even!”
He grinned. “After she punched his lights out, she kicked him, over and over again, from his head to his shoulders, until he was lying there on the floor, a bloody pulp. And then I gave her my knife and she whacked off his—”
“Ear!” she injected.
He chuckled. “Ah, come on. I want some satisfaction, too.” When he saw her expression, he grinned. “Oh, all right, his ear, then. She whacked off both his ears and fed them to the Dobermans. Before we left, I belted him one more time, just for good measure, and then made him crawl over to my lady fair and beg her forgiveness for every mean thing he’d ever done to her.”
“And she refused.”
“And she refused. She was a very bitter lady, and a little bloodthirsty, too. But I didn’t care because she was so gorgeous. So I swept her back into my arms and carried her off into the Oregon sunset, where we had a baby girl who looked just like her, and we named her Samantha, which she never learned to spell.”
Meredith laughed and sighed, thinking that was the end. But Heath looked down at her, his eyes a dark, intense blue gray, his expression one of absolute tenderness. “And I loved them both for the rest of my life,” he said huskily, “keeping my vow to protect them from any kind of harm and doing everything in my power to make them happy.”
Meredith touched her hand to his lean cheek. “I know you will, Heath.” As he had done to her, she moved her thumb lightly over his lips. “That’s a beautiful story. Like my own little fairy tale. Whenever I start to remember, I’ll think of that instead.”
“You do that,” he whispered. “Because if I had known you then, that’s how it would have happened. Only I probably would have killed him.”
Under the pad of her thumb, his lips felt like warm silk. They fascinated her, and she fixed her gaze on his mouth. “If I ask you to kiss me, will you stop if I hate it?”
“You asking?” When she nodded, he smiled. “You’re not going to hate it, but, yeah, I’ll stop.”
As he bent his dark head, she gazed up at him, committing to memory his expression, the blur of his features as he moved closer, the smell of him, and then the way it felt as his lips settled over hers. For those first few seconds, she remained separate from it all, more observer than participant, testing the feel of his strong shoulders under her palms, noting the way his hard chest tantalized the tips of her breasts when he shifted, absorbing the incredible feeling of his arms cradling her and his hands moving on her back, his fingers curling over her ribs and learning the shape of her waist and hips. It was like being traced, his fingertips the charcoal that lingered over each line and angle. Her last thought was that she was being recreated with every gentle touch, that Mary Calendri truly had ceased to exist and a perfectly new person was taking her place.
Then all she could do was feel. Drowning in golden sensation, melting into it, surrendering completely to it. His mouth was like warm, wet silk. He was hardness, then heat, and then fire, igniting her body with a yearning she’d never experienced. A trembling need pooled with electrical intensity in the pit of her stomach. She knew he felt it, too. With her backside on his lap, she could feel his hardness thrusting against his jeans—a throbbing pressure, like pulsating steel, against her softness.
For the first time in her life, she wanted. She wasn’t sure how, but somehow she opened his shirt. She ran her hands over his chest and shoulders, dived her hands down his shirt sleeves to discover the muscular bulges of his upper arms. His skin felt like satin over hard, mounded padding. Resilient. She pressed in with her fingers, testing the strength of vibrant tendons. With her fingertips, she followed the outline of his collarbone and then acquainted herself with the corded muscles in his neck. He was hers, all hers. Even his heart belonged to her. And she gloried in the experience of exploring him, marveling at the power she felt moving under her hands and wondering how on earth he could be so incredibly gentle.
As if he had magic in his fingertips, her shirt fell open. She hadn’t felt him unfastening the buttons. He was breathing hard, fast, his chest shuddering. With a push of his hands, he swept the cotton off her shoulders and down her arms. Then he settled his hot mouth over the pulse at the base of her throat, drawing hard on her skin as if he meant to imbue himself with the very essence of her. Reaching behind her, he unfastened her bra. His palms slid up her back, his calluses like fine sandpaper and tantalizing her flesh, his fingers slipping under the cotton straps and lifting them away.
The next instant, she felt his arms coming around her, one at her waist, the other behind her knees, and before she could blink, she was flat on her back with Heath Masters looming over her like a broad canopy of oiled bronze. His eyes were storm dark, the glint of them like spikes of lightning, and she felt the shock as his gaze settled on her breasts. Her nipples went instantly hard and started to throb with every pulse beat.
His arms braced on each side of her, he held himself high, his chest heaving as he grabbed for breath. It looked to her as if every muscle and tendon in his body tensed. Suddenly he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, his firm yet full lips drawn back over gleaming white. The drawn, agonized expression that contorted his burnished features frightened her.
With a raspy curse, he shoved against the mattress and sprang erect beside the bed. Not sparing her another glance, he began pacing the floor, brutally shoving rigid fingers through his dark hair. With each stride, he hauled in a ragged breath, blowing afterward like a surfacing whale.
Meredith grabbed her shirt and bunched it over her naked front, stunned, embarrassed, and alarmed. Whenever he dropped his hands from his hair, he knotted them into fists. Huge fists. And he looked like a man in a rage.
When his breathing began to slow, he finally stopped pacing to rub his palm over his face. When he finally looked at her, his eyes were still shooting sparks. “I promised you I wouldn’t do that,” he said huskily. “I’m sorry for breaking my word.”
“It’s all right.” Her voice sounded faint, nothing like her own.
“It isn’t all right, Meredith.” He jabbed a finger at her. “I told you, when you’re ready. And I’ll by God keep my promise. I apologize for losing it like that, and I won’t again.”
He scrubbed at his face, then whooshed out air, making her jump. Then he strode over to the bed. “It’s late. Let’s get you settled for the night.” He bent, grabbed the quilt, and jerked it back until the weight of her rump got in the way. “Up you go.”
Meredith scrabbled off the bed like a startled crab, grappling to keep her shirt over her breasts. When she was standing, he started ripping the bed apart as if it had committed a crime punishable by death. Meredith stood frozen, gaping at him, wondering if he’d lost his mind, then concluding that he obviously had. He tore off the quilt, jerked off the s
heets, stripped the cases off the pillows. When the mattress was bare, he grabbed the corded edge, heaved upward, and flipped it over. Then he picked up the bottom sheet and snapped it in the air, the crack of the linen so loud she fell back a step.
Why was it, she wondered, that it was always her misfortune to pair up with lunatics? He turned the cases inside out, shaking them like a terrier shakes a rat, then reversing them to stuff the pillows back inside.
When the bed was completely remade, he straightened and flashed her a strained grin. “Can you sleep all right now?”
“What?”
He gestured at the bed. “Spider free.”
It took her two heartbeats to register the words, and then tears sprang to her eyes. She’d forgotten all about telling him of her phobia. That was why he’d attacked the bed. He wasn’t a lunatic, after all, but the sweetest, most wonderful man on earth. She couldn’t believe he’d done all that, just for her. Or that he loved her so much that he’d bother.
He stepped around the end of the bed to her, bending his head as he drew to a stop to plant a light kiss on her forehead. “Goodnight, sweetheart. Have sweet dreams, all right? I’ll stand watch until morning, just to be safe, and you can spell me tomorrow so I can grab some shuteye.” He moved past her to the nightstand to huff into the open chimney top of the lantern, dousing the flame. Amber light from the sitting room streaked the dark shadows that swooped down over them. “Don’t be nervous. I give you my word, nobody will get past me.”
With that, he left, softly shutting the door behind him. Meredith stood there in the blackness, still hugging her shirt. She’d neglected to tell him she was also afraid of the dark and had to have at least a night-light burning so she could go to sleep.
Tossing, turning. Onto her back. Onto her stomach. Hugging the pillow. Pushing it aside and lying flat. No matter what she tried, she couldn’t go to sleep. Maybe, she decided, she’d dozed for too long in the truck.
Liar! a little voice whispered inside her mind. You’re a spineless coward. If you had any backbone at all, you’d go after him. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a backbone. She was a pathetic fraidy-cat, phobic about spiders, frightened of the dark, and terrified of having sex. It had been easy not to feel scared with Heath’s strong arms around her. But now? The thought of going out there and asking him to make love to her made her stomach quiver.