Hearts Awakened (7 page)

His cell phone’s shrill shriek pierced the air, and he jerked. He pulled it from his belt and flipped it open, not looking at the screen. “Cook.”

“Hey, it’s Tick. Y’all there yet?”

“Yeah. We just checked in.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. He was supposed to be watching out for Tick’s little sister, not kissing her. With his luck, Tick would hear the guilt in his voice.

“Good.” A pause hovered on the line. “Tori okay?”

Okay? She was unreal. Mark cleared his throat. “She’s fine. We stopped at an antique mall on the way down.”

“Lord help you.” Tick laughed, but the sound seemed artificial. “You got a minute to talk?”

Mark frowned. “Sure. We’re going to grab a bite in a little while, but we both needed to clean up first. What’s going on?” Foreboding gripped his gut. Oh, hell. Maybe something had gone wrong with Falconetti’s pregnancy. “It’s not Falconetti, is it? Or the baby?”

“No. She’s actually sleeping right now. I just…I need to talk to somebody, Mark.”

Mark. Tick calling him Mark was not a good thing. The other man had only done so a handful of times in the years they’d known each other—the day a fellow officer had died, the horrific night when Mark had had to inform Tick about Tori’s attack, a couple of times teasing and once that awful day when Tick thought he’d lost Falconetti for good.

“You can’t tell Cait about this either. I need you to swear it.”

“What’s wrong?” Suspicion nipped at him. “God, Tick, tell me you didn’t cheat on Falconetti. If that’s what it is, I don’t want to know. I like her and I’d have to kick your ass.”

“What? No! Hell no.” Tick’s sigh carried over the long-distance connection with crystal clarity. So did the tension and irritation in his voice. “Why would you think that, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because you haven’t had sex in forever and lots of guys cheat on their pregnant wives?” He never had. He’d been too wrapped up in Jenny and his awe at their baby growing inside her to even look at another girl.

“Yeah well, I’m not one of them. So swear this is between us.”

“Okay, I swear.” Mark rolled his eyes. “What’s up?”

Another long pause passed. Tick cleared his throat. “I saw Jay Mackey this morning about my back.”

“About time. What did he say?”

“He, uh, he sent me over to have a sonogram done. Then I spent the afternoon at Dr. Gurley’s office.”

Gurley? Mark didn’t know the name, but other than the extra weight he was working on peeling off, Jay Mackey had always declared him disgustingly healthy. He hadn’t seen a specialist since he’d broken his wrist wrestling a suspect down and that had been almost three years ago. The tension and banked fear in Tick’s voice was raising the hair on Mark’s neck, though.

“Tick, man, just spit it out. What did they say?”

“I…Mark, it’s cancer.”

Mark’s breath whooshed out and his lungs refused to pull in new oxygen. Son of a…the cigarettes. Damn Tick and the pack-a-day habit he’d finally kicked a year ago. “What? Are they sure?”

“Yeah. They’re sure.”

“Your lungs?”

“No. Kidney. A tumor.” Tick’s voice thickened, and he coughed. “I’ve got to have surgery to remove it and they’ll make any decisions on chemo and radiation from there. Depends on if it’s spread.”

Mark rolled to sit on the side of the bed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay. I’ll get Tori and we’ll head back—”

“No.”

Ah, hell. Stubborn son of a gun. “Want to explain to me why you’re not telling your wife this?”

“Damn it, why do you think? We need a couple more weeks. Babies delivered at this time have problems. His lungs aren’t developed yet. Her obstetrician said no stress. None. What do you think is going to happen if I tell her this?”

“When does this Gurley guy want to operate?”

“Tomorrow. I told him no. This tumor’s obviously been there awhile. What difference can two weeks make?” The words shook with uncertainty.

A lot. Mark rested his forehead in his palm. When they’d found his old man’s cancer, it had spread so far it’d killed him in less than a month. “You have to tell her and you have to have that surgery, as soon as possible.”

“Don’t you get it? We’re talking about Cait and my child here. I can’t risk her. Or him. Do you understand what losing this baby would do to her? Two weeks. I just need two weeks.”

“How about if Tori and I come home anyway?” Maybe Tori could talk some sense into him.

“No. She’s worked hard to get ready for this presentation. I don’t want her to know yet.”

“Have you told anybody?”

“You’re it. Swear you won’t tell, Mark.”

And make him a partner in this slow suicide? No way. “I’m not swearing anything. You’re not thinking clearly—”

“I know exactly what I’m doing.” The angry words sounded as if Tick spoke through clenched teeth. “Protecting my family. I just needed to get it out and I thought I could count on you.”

“Tick, come on. Don’t ask me to do this.”

“Two weeks, Mark. Swear it.”

“You have to—”

“Swear. Damn it, Mark, I’m trying to put the safety of my wife and our baby first. I figured you of all people would understand. Now swear.”

Anger exploded in Mark’s chest. If Tick wanted to kill himself slowly, that was his problem. Selfish bastard. “Fine,” he snapped, the words emerging on a snarl. “I swear, okay? I won’t tell.”

But he’d sure as hell find a way to make Tick do it. And soon.

“Look,” he said, still cradling his head in his hand. “I need to grab a shower. Think about this, Tick. Falconetti’s going to need you around a lot longer than the next two weeks. This kid is going to need a daddy. You can’t do that if you’re dead.”

“Thanks a lot, Cookie. I knew I could count on you for support.” The sarcastic rejoinder held more weariness than humor. “But I’ll think about it.”

“You do that.” The line went dead and with slow movements Mark flipped the phone closed and dropped it on the nightstand. “Stupid,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. And not just Tick. Him too, for agreeing to keep the damn secret.

The hotel phone jangled, red message light flashing wildly. He reached for it. “Hello?”

“Hey.” Tori’s voice bubbled into his ear. He closed his eyes, envisioning her bright smile and sparkling eyes. If anything happened to Tick, it would kill her. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He rubbed his eyes again. “I, uh, haven’t made it in the shower yet. Give me fifteen minutes.”

“All right. Just come get me when you’re ready.”

Any other time, that “come get me” would have fantasies going off in his head. Now, he was painfully aware that keeping his promise to Tick already had him lying to her. He straightened. It wasn’t like he had a future with her to jeopardize anyway. However, he had a past with Tick that demanded his loyalty. A guy always kept his partner’s back.

He swallowed. “Fifteen minutes. Be ready.”

Tick let himself in the house and replaced the cordless phone in the charging cradle. The fear and anger roiled through him in a seething mass. The silence pressed in on him and he ran both hands through his hair, needing relief from the awful tension. Why was this happening? He was supposed to be strong, someone for Caitlin to lean on.

He didn’t feel strong.

Strong was doing the right thing, putting Caitlin’s needs, the baby’s needs above his own. Instead, one corner of his mind screamed in panic, wanted to be on the operating table
now
, wanted the intruder out before it killed him. His heart whispered differently.

He eased toward the bedroom, keeping his footsteps quiet on the wooden floors. In the big iron bed, Caitlin slept on her side, one hand curved over the top of her swollen stomach. Against the pallor of her skin, her hair seemed even blacker. Dark circles under her eyes spoke of the strain this pregnancy was putting on her.

They were so close. A couple of weeks, and the baby resting under her hand would have a greater chance at survival. What harm could two weeks do?

You can’t do that if you’re dead.

Damn Cookie’s pessimistic attitude anyway. Everything would be all right. He just had to keep telling himself that, keep reminding himself of the one-in-a-million miracle he already had. Caitlin bearing his child wasn’t supposed to happen at all.

He simply had to hold on to her, to them, and everything would be all right.

Compelled by a need he couldn’t deny, Tick stretched out beside Caitlin, careful not to jostle her. He rested his cheek and hand against the bulge of their baby, his feet dangling off the side of the bed. A slow, rolling movement greeted his touch.

“Hey, in there,” he whispered, his chest aching. Crazy how he could love someone he’d never met this much already. “It’s Daddy.”

A flurry of motion under his palm brought a half-smile to his mouth. How did she sleep with all that going on inside her? The smile died. Life growing in Caitlin’s body, death brewing in his.

He pressed a kiss to her stomach. “Stay right there a little bit longer and get big and strong. You hear Daddy? That’s an order.”

“You’re absolutely demented, Lamar Eugene.” Caitlin’s fingers sifted through his hair and his body hummed under her touch. He closed his eyes. Dear God in heaven, he loved her. “But I love you anyway.”

“Like you don’t talk to him.” He rubbed his cheek against her, enjoying the rhythmic caress of her fingers on his scalp. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t. You keep saying ‘he’ and ‘him’. Do you know something I don’t?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell. You said you didn’t want to know.”

She tightened her fingers on his hair in retaliation for his teasing before resuming the slow stroking caresses. “We’re actually going to make it this time, aren’t we?”

For the first time since they’d confirmed this unexpected pregnancy, hope wavered in her voice. Over the past months, he’d heard fear, stress, pain, all engendered by the losses before this baby, but never this quavering optimism. He closed his eyes for a second on a swift prayer of thanks before he lifted his head to meet her dark green gaze, washed with a crystalline glaze of tears. “Yeah, we are. He’s going to fine. Beautiful and healthy and strong and just fine.”

“You really believe that.”

He reached for her hand and placed a kiss in her palm. “I do.”

She stretched her fingers along his jaw in a sweet caress. “You said ‘he’ again. You peeked at that part of the sonogram, didn’t you?”

A quiet laugh rumbled up from his chest, squeezing past the lump in his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He rested his cheek on her belly again, in time to feel the soft sigh that shivered through her. “We can name him Lamar Eugene III, but we are not calling him Lamar because then everyone will refer to him as Little Lamar and you know why I would have issues with that.”

Damn it. One stupid late-night conversation in a squad car as a rookie and a guy was never allowed to live it down. He managed to hold in the shudder that tried to work over him with the idea of how little time he might have to live anything down. His throat worked in a painful swallow. “Cookie has a big mouth.”

She ignored him. “And you are not gifting this child with a weird nickname.”

“Deal.” Peace settled deep in him and he let his lids fall once more as her soothing touch returned to his hair and nape.

Silence stretched between them and Tick relaxed further.

“What did Jay say about your back?” The idle question slammed into the quiet.

Every muscle in his body tensed and he forced them into looseness before she noticed. “Pulled muscle. Nothing to worry about.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Not getting too old for the job, are you?” A teasing note suffused her husky voice.

“No.” He was going to get a lot older, watch his son grow up, give Caitlin the seventy years or so he’d promised her.

Under his cheek, a knee or foot or elbow poked at him. He shifted closer to her. All he was doing was protecting his wife and child.

Cookie of all people should understand that.

None of the usual nervousness brought on by the night tugged at her, although she’d figured out it had less to do with the soft suffusing of light than with Mark’s presence. He made her feel safe.

He stood a few feet away, cell phone pressed to his ear. He’d excused himself politely to take the call, and the interlude gave her a welcome opportunity to pull her confused emotions together. She spent a lot of time reading people, well, reading other women, but she couldn’t get a handle on Mark to save her life. Which one was real? Surely not the man hiding behind a string of women and a stinging dry wit. Maybe the one who’d told her she was gorgeous, who’d touched her and kissed her as if she were precious, priceless, desirable. Please not the polite, withdrawn stranger who’d shared her dinner table and who was now showing her the sights of St. Augustine’s historic district as if he’d rather be anywhere but with her.

Water splashed behind her and a mournful guitar solo drifted down. A couple passed, heads close together in conversation. Dragging in a deep breath of salty air, she watched them until they disappeared into the jewelry shop a few feet ahead. Disappointment twisted through her. She’d expected something tonight, like when she was seven and had wanted an Easy Bake oven for Christmas. Santa had brought her a Barbie doll instead and she’d been crushed. No wonder she refused to learn how to cook.

All the time she was dressing for dinner, anticipation had been building within her, a kind of breathless waiting to see if he’d be different with her after that kiss. He was, but it wasn’t the kind of change she’d wanted.

Obviously kissing her was like popping a fresh piece of gum in his mouth—no different from the last one and without significance.

Tori tilted her head back and stared up at the sky, dark purple, the stars obscured by the city lights and low cloud cover. So she was the equivalent of discarded, flavorless gum. Her eyes burned and she blinked, striving for the positive. “At least I’m not stuck on the bottom of his shoe.”

“What?” Mark’s voice interrupted her misery and she jumped. He was close, cell phone clipped to his belt again, his face a polite mask.

She tossed her hair back. “Nothing.”

He hitched his thumbs in his belt. “Anything in particular you want to look at? There’s just about any kind of shop you can imagine along here.”

What did she want to look at? Her hotel room, but that was the same as running home to Mama. She met his shuttered gaze head-on. “It’s my turn to ask a question.”

A frown jerked at his brows. “What? Ah hell, Tori, are you still wanting to play that game?”

She pushed away from the wooden railing. “Hey, it’s not my fault you wasted your last opportunity.”

He sighed and reached for his gum. “Go ahead and ask.”

Swallowing, she turned toward the row of shops and rubbed her damp hands down her outer thighs. Maybe she shouldn’t ask. Maybe she should come up with some lighthearted, pointless question. She should, but she wasn’t going to. No, she wanted,
needed
, to know this.

She looked at him again. He’d crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her with a long-suffering expression. Hands clenched into loose fists, she wet her lips and jumped in. “Why are you acting so weird? Does it have to do with kissing me?”

His eyes widened and he stopped in mid-chew. “I’m not acting weird.”

“Yes, you are. Now answer the question.”

“Technically, you asked two.”

“Mark.”

“I told you why I kissed you,” he mumbled. She rolled her eyes. He sounded like a sulky little boy having to admit he’d busted a rare vase.

“Then what’s with you tonight?” Why was she pushing this anyway? Most likely she was reading too much into that kiss. Probably because she wanted it to mean something. Oh heck, she didn’t want to be flavorless gum.

“I’m tired. Can we drop this?”

She opened her mouth, remembered his temper flaring when she’d pushed this afternoon and closed it. Shrugging, she moved away to look in the window of a clothing store. “Sure. Consider it dropped.”

The tense silence descended between them once more. Miserable and fidgety, Tori ran her hand over the whitewashed wall enclosing a lush courtyard behind another restaurant. A fountain sparkled and tinkled among the greenery. Part of the plaster had chipped away to reveal blocks of building material full of layers of tiny seashells.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Tori said, the contrast of rough and smooth tingling across her fingertips.

Mark glanced at the wall. “It’s coquina. A kind of limestone with layers of shells in it. The stuff’s practically indestructible. The Spanish built the fort out of it, and when the British fired on it, the walls just absorbed the cannonballs. There’s a reason that fort never fell.”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged and glanced down the alley beside them. “I grew up down here. Find me a kid from this area that doesn’t know that.”

Another layer. She couldn’t resist peeling them away. “This is your hometown?”

“Preston. Small town just north.”

She looked at him quickly, but he continued staring down the alley. “The place with the antique mall.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his nape.

Across the street, bubbles and New Age music wafted from the two-story building. Tori let one of the sparkling spheres land on her fingers. The rounded surface glinted a moment and disappeared with a pop, leaving a kiss of moisture on her skin. “You know, if you have family to visit, you don’t have to babysit me.”

He shrugged. “No family left.”

Her spirits dived because he didn’t deny the babysitting charge. Surely he didn’t still see her as Tick’s little sister, not after that afternoon. She eyed him. They’d stopped at a T-shirt shop and he was studying the humorous shirts displayed on a rack outside. A lonely air of aloofness surrounded him, drawing her closer.

“None at all?” she asked, keeping her voice quiet in the still evening air.

Shaking his head, he held up a Jimmy Buffet shirt and squinted at the parrot and bottle of rum on the front. “Nope. None.”

No family. She couldn’t get her mind around it. Her father was a hazy memory, but her mother centered her life. And even though she rarely saw her sister, she couldn’t imagine not being surrounded by her brothers, even when Tick drove her crazy. She shook her hair back, her chest tight. “I’m sorry.”

He glanced at her, a smile quirking at his mouth. The T-shirt went back on the rack. “Don’t be. I’ve been on my own for a long time.”

She glanced at him from beneath her lashes and lifted a shirt from the medium section. A big red lipstick mouth on the front accented a slogan about having a love affair with Florida. “How long?”

“Almost twenty years. My dad died my senior year of high school, my mom a couple years later.”

“Daddy’s been dead eighteen years and we still miss him.” She flicked a glance at the price tag.

“My old man was gone before he died.” Mark stepped away from the rack, clearly ready to move on. “He was too busy for much of anything, even seeing a doctor, and that’s what killed him.”

She fell into step beside him. “Heart attack?”

“Cancer. Waited until it was too late to do anything about it. My mom had the heart attack.”

The words were too cool, too smooth and practiced. She touched his arm, his heat seeping through his cotton polo. “Mark, you know it’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to admit that.”

He laughed. “Are you analyzing me?”

“No, I just—”

“Yeah, you are.” Without warning, he stopped, staring down at her. An audience of pigeons congregated around a nearby bench, cooing. The straggling tourists ignored them. “Do you admit all your hurts?”

Hers were common knowledge. “Everyone already knows. What’s to hide?”

He wasn’t smiling, his eyes dark and intent. “I don’t know. How about the woman you really are? Or the one you want to be.”

She didn’t know how to be that woman. “I could ask you the same thing. Being with you is like waiting for the real Mark Cook to stand up.”

The smirk appeared. “What you see is what you get, baby.”

Frustration gripped her, a buzzing taking over her ears. He did not just call her
baby
, like she was one of his playmates. And she did not just get a tiny thrill from that single word. “Right. Tell it to someone who’ll believe that. Angel, maybe.”

She walked away, sending a sea of pigeons into flight. Why did she keep throwing that name up at him? She might as well wear a sign proclaiming her a jealous, insecure person. Aware he’d joined her, she shook her head. “You’ve turned avoidance into an art form, you know that? All those snappy one-liners, the devil-may-care attitude. Anything to keep from having a real conversation.”

“Me? What about you?”

She darted a quick look at him. “What about me?”

“You’ve been creating your own avoidance art. Tick’s a great excuse for you not to step into the big, bad world.” He chuckled, but the sound lacked any real humor. “Only problem is that he went and fell for Falconetti, made his own life, and suddenly he’s not running quite as much interference, is he?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Anger simmered, her voice trembling with it.

“You think? You’re afraid of picking the wrong guy again. The last one was a doozy of a mistake, wasn’t he? Tick won’t let you forget that and you can’t let him down, so there’s your excuse not to pick one at all.”

All of her shook now, slight tremors running through her, and she clenched her fists to steady her hands. “At least I’m selective.”

His eyes narrowed to slits of molten silver. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means the only qualifications you look for in a woman are willing and available. What are you afraid of? Why are you hiding behind meaningless sex?”

He took one step closer. “I think you forgot whose turn it was to ask a question.”

The anger lent her bravery and loosened her tongue. “You never really answered mine, but ask away.”

“Why did you let me kiss you?”

“Because I wanted you to.” The bald honesty of her answer slammed into her and left him looking as stunned as she felt. Her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths and aggravated nerves jumped under her skin.

Long moments stretched between them, their gazes locked. Finally, he stepped back, rubbing a hand over his nape. “It’s getting late. We should get back—”

“Don’t.” She swallowed, hating the note of pleading in her voice. “Don’t walk away from this yet.”

“I have to.”

Urgency filled her. She couldn’t let go, not now. The desperation with which she wanted this settled between them scared her. “Why?”

“Because there’s no point. I’d be the worst mistake you could ever make.”

“It would be my mistake to make.”

“Well, I’m saving you the trouble. You don’t want me anywhere near you, not really. Trust me.”

He believed it. The knowledge was in the tight line of his jaw, the blank desolation filling his gray gaze. Great. She finally got a handle on what she might want and he wanted to play hero. The urge to chew on her nails hit her and she crammed both hands in her back pockets. She’d given that up a year after the rape. She wasn’t going to start again now. She stared at him, her chin tilted.

She wasn’t on the same playing field as Angel or any of his other women. He had her on a plane above that and he really, honestly believed he didn’t belong there with her.

Lord, men were stupid sometimes.

He thought she was too good for a one-night stand. That was fine. She didn’t want to be. But she had to show him…so was he.

Fear sent a shudder over her. He deserved someone whole, someone who could come to him without fear and all of her hang-ups. Could she be that someone? Maybe. She
wanted
to be that someone.

That meant she had to start putting the pieces together again, form a whole woman out of the one she should have been and the shattered one Billy Reese had left behind.

She’d driven him to jogging.

With one hand, Mark cradled the stitch in his side and slowed to a walk along the bay front. Low cloud cover shrouded the horizon, but the sun peeked through in pink and golden rays. A soft breeze ruffled the palms lining the bay. He dragged in deep breaths of damp, salty air and rubbed at his gritty eyes with his free hand. For most of the night, he’d stared at the ceiling, imagining he could hear the rustle of her sheets next door. Finally, before dawn, his crawling nerves had forced him out of bed, seeking an outlet.

In his head, her voice echoed, pushing and enticing him all at once. She’d let him kiss her because she wanted it. Once she’d said that, all his willpower had ended up focused on not pulling her into his arms and doing it again. He’d wanted her close, mouth under his, hands on him.