Private Dancer (22 page)

“B.J.? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “It must have been something I ate.”

He looked as though he wanted to laugh. “I’ve been told I have a strange effect on women, but I’ve never had one throw up on me before.”

“It’s nothing, really. Just a touch of ...” She checked the phrase on her lips, glancing up at him.

He said it for her. “Morning sickness?”

A highly unladylike word slipped out of Bev’s mouth as she stared at him. “You know about the baby?” He knew about the baby. Why wasn’t she surprised? “Harve told you, right?” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Where is he now? Waiting out in the car with a sawed-off shotgun?”

“Harve has nothing to do with the reason I’m here, B.J. I came to see you.”

His expression had the grave, handsome cast to it that she had found irresistible during their cruise. Not only that, his baby-blue eyes were imploring her to be reasonable. He was using every weapon in his arsenal, but Bev wasn’t in the mood to be won over so easily.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

“Yes, we can talk, Sam,” she said quietly. “You’re darn right we can talk. And you can start by answering a few questions.” She eyed him suspiciously, a trial lawyer cross-examining a reluctant witness. “What are you doing here, looking like that? Clean-shaven? Flowers?”

“What’s wrong with the way I look? And since when can’t a man bring a woman flowers?”

“Any other man, maybe, but not you. Sam ‘The Wild Man’ Nichols with a bouquet of daffodils?” She shook her head. “What’s next? You’re going to propose to me?”

He looked startled, a man caught in the act.

Bev gaped at him. “Oh, no! I don’t believe this!” She crossed the room and did an about-face, still incredulous. “You actually have the nerve to come over here, knowing I’m pregnant, knowing I’m carrying your child, and ask me to marry you?”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s worse than bad, it’s humiliating! You didn’t come of your own free will. You’re here to do the ‘right thing.’ What did Harve do? Threaten you with a paternity suit? Or maybe murder by means of castration? That sounds more like Harve.”

Sam stepped over the threshold, suddenly very serious. “I’m here because I want to be here, B.J. Get that straight.”

Bev took a deep, shaking breath. She’d been secretly thrilled to see him, but she wanted nothing to do with this cowardly act of conscience. “Well, I want you to leave. Get that straight. I’m not marrying a man who feels indebted to my father.”

“That debt was paid with the Covington case. I’m here because—” His jaw flexed painfully, and his eyes narrowed to a dazzling slash of light. “Because I love you.”

Bev’s heart took off like a skyrocket. She folded her arms to hide the explosion of inner trembling. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected to hear such a thing from him. Never. She wanted desperately to believe him, but in her heart of hearts she couldn’t. If she’d ever seen a man painfully determined to do his duty, it was Sam Nichols.

She felt weak from shock. Her head was spinning and so was her stomach—again. For one horrible second she thought she really might lose her oatmeal right there in front of him. “I think you’d better go now,” she said. “And go quietly. Because I’m not feeling well.”

“If you’re sick, I should stay.”

“If you stay, I will be sick.” Bev waved him out the door, and when he refused to budge, she unleashed her ultimate weapon. “I know you don’t want to do anything to upset me, Sam,” she said firmly, “because that could be bad for the baby.”

She had him over a barrel and they both knew it.

He set the daffodils down. “All right, the first round is yours, Slugger,” he said, his voice a vibrant whisper. “But don’t think the match is over.” His gaze drifted to her belly and then he tossed her a wink. “Was that quiet enough for you and Sam, Jr.?”

More daffodils arrived the very next day. A beautiful bouquet greeted her at work in the morning. Another enormous bunch of flowers was waiting for her on her doorstep when she arrived home in the afternoon.

The cards made Bev laugh, and occasionally they made her cry. Sometimes there was a line of poetry by Shelley or Byron that brought tears to her eyes. Sometimes the poetry was less exquisite and more to the point. One card read:

Roses are red, daffodils are yellow.

Bev should marry Sam

because he’s a sweet
guy
fellow.

She laughed
and
cried at that one, especially since he’d so plainly proved her wrong about his being a poet.

But the card that broke her heart had one simple line. “I’m sorry.” Her chin trembled and tears burned her eyes as she read it. She almost gave in, but something wouldn’t let her. It was too much too soon. She was afraid to trust his sudden turnaround, and she wouldn’t have a man marrying her out of obligation.

When she didn’t respond to the flowers and cards, the custom-made postcards started coming. One had a picture of Sam on the front, getting his gorgeous black hair trimmed, and waving at her from the barber chair. In another, his five o’clock shadow was losing the battle to a straight-edge razor. The note on the back said: “Marry me before I turn into Dudley Doright!”

There was even a picture of him in a freshly cleaned apartment. He stood triumphant in front of a trash can bulging with empties, a raised broom in one fist, a dustpan in the other.

The pressure on Bev increased as the days ticked by. Sam had powerful allies, her father for one. Harve had turned into a crusader for Sam’s cause, and he’d recruited the entire agency.

“Well?” Cory would say every morning when Bev arrived. She knew exactly what he meant. He wanted to know if she’d cracked yet. With the whole office listening, she would answer, “I’m very well, thank you,” and retreat to her office.

One Saturday morning as she was trying to make room for yet another bouquet of daffodils, Bev received an urgent telegram:

Meet me at my place at seven tonight. If you still feel the same way after we’ve talked. I’ll get out of your life. Sam.

The message included his address. Her first reaction was panic, and then it dawned on her that the telegram was an ultimatum. She wasn’t caving in to his scare tactics! “I’m not going,” she said, repeating the words like a mantra even as she was contemplating what she would wear.

She was on his doorstep at seven, feeling very much like a nervous maiden entering fire-breathing-dragon country. He opened the door on the first ring, and Bev knew she must be staring. He looked like a catalog model in his pink knit sweater, khaki jeans, and Top-Siders. She could hardly believe it was Sam.

“Come on in,” he said, husky-voiced.

At least that hasn’t changed, Bev thought. He still sounded like a roughneck. She declined his offer of a chair, electing to stand between him and the front door as she glanced around his sparsely furnished, surgically clean apartment.

“Bev,” he said, imploring her with his powder-blue eyes, “I’m not going to force you into anything, for heaven’s sake. Please sit down.”

“No thanks. Sitting down is a gateway position where you and I are concerned. It leads to ... other things.”

He laughed, but she could see that he was taking their meeting very seriously. She felt caught in the gaze of his intensely blue eyes, which she knew from past experience was a very dangerous place to be. “What did you want to say to me?” she asked.

“What do I have to do, Bev? How much more do I have to change before you’ll believe I’m sincere.”

“I never asked you to change, Sam.”

“Then what do you want?”

“A man who’s honest ... a man who honestly loves me.”

A muscle worked in his jaw as though he were fighting a powerful emotion. “Oh, babe,” he said, his voice aching with husky laughter, “I wish you’d told me that before.”

“And I wish you’d asked.”

Sam Nichols hadn’t changed, she realized. The transformation was all for show, just as she’d feared. He’d sent poetry and flowers, but he hadn’t even thought to ask her what she wanted when he launched his campaign to win her over. He was still aggressive and headstrong, a man who acted first and thought about consequences later.

“B.J.—” he started, then his focus veered to a point just behind her, and his face went taut. “Don’t move,” he said, raising his hands slowly.

Bev had no idea what he was doing. “What’s going on? If this is some symbolic act of surrender, it won’t work.”

“It’s a symbolic act of cowardice. There’s a man behind you with a gun.”

Bev felt something cold and hard press between her shoulder blades. She froze as a man’s muffled voice whispered, “Do what I say, b-both of you, and nobody gets hurt.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Sam warned the intruder. “Take what you want and get out of here.”

“Thanks, I will.” The man thrust some rope into Bev’s hand and pushed her forward. “Tie your boyfriend up, lady.”

“Not again,” Bev moaned.

A half-hour later, she and Sam were tied up and laying face-to-face on Sam’s bed, while the intruder, dressed in black from his ski mask to his shoes, went through Sam’s personal effects, hurriedly filling up a knapsack.

“I don’t believe this,” Bev whispered to Sam. “Why do people keep tying us up?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“Lucky?” For a victim of armed robbery, Sam struck her as oddly casual. She also didn’t like the intimate crush of his body against hers, though that was hardly his fault. “You’re not supposed to enjoy this, Sam. You’re being robbed.”

“You can quit whispering,” Sam said. “He’s gone.”

“So quickly?” Bev craned her neck around, trying to see behind her. As she turned back, something in Sam’s expression riveted her to the spot. There was a flare of desire in his eyes that made her throat go dry. He looked like a man on the brink of something wonderful, or terrible. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I hope you meant it when you said you wanted honesty, babe. Because I have something to tell you.”

“I did mean it ... I think.”

Emotion tugged at the lines of his face, creating hollows and shadows, paring his handsomeness into something dark and gaunt. Bev couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“Your dad told me everything,” he said. “Why your husband left, what your life has been like since. Don’t be angry at him, B.J. It was what I needed to hear, and he knew it. I’ve been a selfish, self-pitying bastard for a long time now, thinking about nobody but myself.”

She shook her head. “Sam, don’t—”

“I have to, babe. I have to say this.” His eyes flared again, turning incandescently blue. “I thought I was doing you a favor back in Nassau. I told myself to get out of your life, that you deserved better. But the truth was, I was scared. I didn’t think anybody could love a holy terror like Sam Nichols. Attraction, maybe. Sex, sure. But not love.”

Pain stung Bev. “I wish you’d stop,” she said, swallowing over the blockage in her throat.

“No, I can’t, babe. Hear me out, please. As long as I’m on this honesty kick, there’s one more thing.” His voice broke slightly. “I do love you, so much it’s probably going to be the death of me. But I know I’ll die without you. I need you. I need this love I feel for you. I want you in my life, that’s all. I want our baby.”

Bev dragged in a breath, fighting a surge of sweet ache that felt as though it might burst her heart. The raw force of the emotion astonished her. She was shaking inside, coming apart. Tears soaked her face as she looked up at him.

“Oh, Sam ...” The words stuck up in her throat, then broke free on a soft sob. “I love you too.”

He bent to kiss her, and the touch of his lips was like a benediction. It filled her until she glowed with a warmth that promised to heal the hurts and nurture even the deepest, sweetest longings. She strained against the ropes, needing to be free, to put her arms around him.

“You’re sure you love me?” he asked, breaking the kiss to search her face. He looked long and deep into her gray eyes. “Very sure?”

“Yes ... why?”

“Because I’ve got one last confession on my soul, and it’s weighing heavier by the minute.”

Bev hesitated, frightened. “What is it?”

“That masked man? That wasn’t an armed robber, it was—”

“Arthur,” she breathed.

“You knew?”

She shook her head, laughing, still crying. “I had my suspicions. He kept stumbling over his lines, and once he asked me if the ropes were pinching.”

“See what I’ll do to get you back,” Sam said quietly. “See how desperate I am.”

There was love in his husky voice, there was tenderness and sincerity. He’d brought her back to life. He’d given her life, and he was exactly the man she needed. She drew in a deep breath. “If the proposal’s still good, the answer is yes. With conditions.”

“What are they?” He looked wary. “You want me to sell the ragtop? Torch my leather jacket?”

She laughed softly, joyously, and shook her head. She was going to love watching him learn to trust again, to let down his shield and open his heart. But she loved his roughness too, because she knew the rare and tender feelings it protected.

“My conditions are much harder,” she told him. “Promise me you’ll stop shaving, let your hair grow back, and chew on a toothpick once in a while. I love it when you do that.”

Suzanne Forster, the
New York Times
bestselling author of more than forty romance novels, was on a career path to becoming a clinical psychologist until a life-altering car accident changed everything. While recovering, she tried her hand at writing to pass the time and quickly found that it was her true passion. Before she was ready to return to school, her first manuscript had won second place in a contest sponsored by the Romance Writers of America for unpublished writers. Before she knew it, she sold her first novel,
Undercover Angel
(1985), and embarked on a new path.

Throughout her career, Forster has made unconventional plot choices for the romance genre, such as setting her novel
The Devil and Ms. Moody
(1990) in the gritty world of motorcycle gangs, an idea her publisher resisted for years. The hero, Diablo, an intimidating yet tender rogue in black leather who rides a Harley-Davidson, was given the WISH (Women in Search of a Hero) Award by
RT Book Reviews
. For her Stealth Commandos trilogy she chose mercenaries and bounty hunters as her heroes.
Child Bride
(1992), the first in the trilogy, became her publisher’s top-selling series romance that year. The romantic thriller
The Morning After
(2000) appeared on several bestseller lists including the
New York Times
.