“Look, honey, you’re right. We did fight,” he admitted. “More often than I like to remember. But I don’t lock my doors or my files because of it.” He shook his head. “No way, and . . . and I . . . was hoping . . . oh, Christ, Marla, you could have died in that accident, left me and the kids all alone and I was hoping, shit, I even prayed that you and I, we could find our way past all this.” He spewed out a long stream of smoke. “We have two children. They didn’t ask for any of this mess we created.”
“No, no, they didn’t.” She felt miserable about the kids and yet she wouldn’t let this man or any man for that matter tramp all over. “You can’t expect me to just . . . sit here in this house, to not try to find out who I am, to not try and remember.” Hot tears burned her eyes and she looked down, her fingers laced as her hands hung between her knees. What was wrong with her? Why did she feel the need to fight with him, to assert her independence? She remembered her response to Nick in the garden and closed her eyes for a second. What kind of woman was she, lusting after her brother-in-law, while she felt nothing for this man she’d vowed to love, honor and obey. Well, she was having one helluva time with the obeying part. It just wasn’t her nature. She knew in her gut that it never had been. “I’m sorry for starting the argument,” she said, lifting her eyes and fighting the tears that were determined to slide down her cheeks. “But I . . .” She lifted a hand. “I’m frustrated.”
“I know, I know.” He flicked ashes into the fire. “This is going to take some getting used to. For all of us. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. The police seem to think that Charles Biggs was murdered. They’re certain of it. Someone posed as an intern and suffocated him and walked out of the hospital. Got away clean.”
Marla felt cold inside. “Why?”
“Who knows? Probably some nutcase.” Alex was tense. Worried. “It probably has nothing to do with you, or the accident, but I think we should err on the side of caution. I want to beef up security around the house.”
“You think someone’s going to try and do us harm?” she asked, rubbing her arms as if suddenly cold as she thought of Charles Biggs, a man she’d never met, a man she’d unwittingly helped to his grave.
“Frankly, I don’t know what to think,” Alex admitted and she thought of the figure she’d thought she’d seen lurking in the window.
“I thought I saw someone in the house today.”
Alex’s head snapped up. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I convinced myself it was my imagination or one of the servants. I was in the garden and felt someone watching me, when I looked up, there was someone in the window, but I couldn’t recognize him . . . or her.”
“Jesus, Marla,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I wasn’t sure. It could have been one of the staff.”
“But it freaked you out.”
“A little,” she admitted. “I blinked and he was gone.”
“That does it. I’d rather err on the side of safety, okay? I’ll tighten security and we’ll try it with the nurse, okay? In a few days, or weeks, when you’re stronger, when things calm down, I’ll give him a paying job at Cahill House or pull some strings at the hospital to get him a job.”
“You can do that?”
“Oh, yeah.” He drew hard on his Marlboro, then jettisoned the butt into the fire. “One thing Dad taught me was that money can buy just about anything. Take Nick for example. If our old man hadn’t bailed him out way back when he’d probably still be behind bars.”
“He was in jail?” This surprised her.
“For eight hours. Assault charges. Someone got fresh when he was dating you. Nick didn’t take kindly to it.”
She sat still, stunned.
“He had a temper back then,” Alex added. “And he’s damned lucky he didn’t end up pulling five to fifteen.” Alex lifted a shoulder. “Water under the bridge now. He’s cleaned up his act.” He walked to her, placed his hands on her shoulders once again and this time the pressure was urgent but not painful as he drew her to her feet. His breath was smoky, his expression unbending. “Now . . . come on . . . Tom stays. For a while. Just for a while. Until you’re better. Okay?”
Wondering if she was making a mistake of epic proportions, she nodded slowly, allowing him to draw her to her feet and pull her into his embrace. Her cheek rubbed against the fine wool of his jacket and her eyes closed for a second. “All right. For a while,” she agreed, trying to dig deep and find some feelings of love for this man, her husband, the father of her children. All she needed was a little spark of passion, a kind memory, any damned sensation that there was something special between them. She fought tears and a tightness in her chest that told her this was all so very wrong.
She placed a chaste kiss upon his smooth cheek, hoped that she could somehow reconnect the frayed strands of their relationship. Alex’s arms surrounded her, held her tight against him and again she felt nothing. Not one damned thing. Her fists clenched in futility and slowly she opened her eyes.
Looking over Alex’s shoulder, she spied Nick standing in the archway, one leather encased shoulder propped against the wall, arms folded over his chest, his hair still wet and gleaming beneath the chandelier. Blue eyes regarded her with cold accusation and she remembered their meeting in the garden, the passion that had lurked just beneath the surface of his gaze. Now, his mouth twisted into a wry, self-deprecating line, as if he’d walked in on a scene he’d been expecting for quite a while.
“Marla,” he drawled with more than a touch of sarcasm, “welcome home.
Chapter Nine
If he had any brains at all, he’d leave now, get out of Dodge and reclaim his life, Nick thought as he grabbed a beer from the minibar, snapped on his laptop and checked his e-mail. There it was. Walt Haaga’s report, ready to be downloaded. Fine. Much as Nick hated the electronic age, how he’d sworn to never again be a part of the Internet community, he was, while here in San Francisco, a slave to it.
As he waited for the transfer of information to his disk, he popped open the cap of his beer and glowered through the window. What had he been thinking today when he’d found Marla in the garden seated in that child’s swing, swaying gently as the mist had seeped through the vegetation. He should never have let himself be alone with her, never have touched her, never have considered kissing her.
But he had. And while he’d fought the urge he’d remembered in vivid Technicolor the way her burnished hair had fallen over her naked shoulders, the soft rise of her breasts with their dark nipples, the way her long legs had come together beneath a perfect thatch of springy curls.
“Idiot,” he ground out and tossed back another long swallow. What was it about that woman that got to him? She’d changed over the years, matured, and her face was different, still scarred from the accident. The hot, sexy intensity in her gaze had been replaced by a different kind of passion. Deeper. Emotionally dangerous. But just as captivating.