She's Gotta Be Mine (30 page)

What? She didn’t know? Worse. She simply hadn’t given her love for Warren a thought for so many years, she couldn’t even begin to count. Despite what Warren had done, that had been her crime against him. It wasn’t about love; it had all been about her and what she wasn’t getting from him.

“It’s not his fault, you know. He’s a good man. He always tried to do his best.”

But he’d stopped wanting her. All she’d wanted was to make him start again. At some point, love had ceased to be the issue. “He’s trying to prove to Cookie that he’s worthy. But I won’t let him sacrifice himself.” She swiped a tear before it overflowed her eye. “It isn’t because I hate Cookie. This is about Warren.”

Nick towered above her, expression implacable. “He isn’t a child, Bobbie. You can’t wave a magic wand and make all his troubles go away. He’s the only one who can solve his problems.”

“Don’t you see?” She stared up at him, needing him to understand for some inexplicable reason. “That’s how this whole thing got started. Because I
did
let him solve his own problems. Because I let him make all the decisions whether I thought they were the right ones or not.” And because she’d been afraid to make the decisions herself. She was a coward. They hadn’t had kids, not solely because of Warren, but because
she
was afraid to have another human being depend on her. She’d never taken responsibility for anything.

“And look what happened,” she whispered. “He’s in jail for a murder he didn’t do.”

“Maybe he did it. Maybe this was important enough for him.”

“No.” Her vehemence clogged her throat. She swallowed. “I know him. He wouldn’t.” She bit her lip. “He couldn’t.”

Nick was unrelenting. “Because it would mean he loved her more than he ever loved you?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Warren had never loved her the way he’d loved Cookie. His high school sweetheart had lived in his dreams, his midnight fantasies. Roberta had been a substitute. Always. To chase away the chill in her fingers, she tucked her hands between her knees. The mattress sagged beside her. She tilted toward Nick, her shoulder brushing the warmth of his. She wanted to crawl into his arms.

But nothing could warm her insides.

“Let him do it his own way,” Nick’s gentle murmur wafted against her ear.

“I always let him do it his way.” If the wall had been within striking distance, she’d have smashed her fist through it. Instead, she glared at Nick, aiming her fifteen years of rage straight at him. “He was in love with Cookie in high school. She left him. I helped him find her. So that he could get over it.”

There was so much more to it, but Nick didn’t ask. He simply took her wrath unblinkingly. She looked down at her hands, avoiding the pity in his eyes.

“We subscribed to a search service and wrote every woman who fit the age range.” And she’d pathetically kissed Warren every time a letter came back unopened. “I never told him how much it hurt to help him look for her.” She clutched her stomach, the ache fresh.

Nick’s hand twitched, as if he wanted to touch her but decided against it. “So, you helped your husband look for his old lover?”

God, this was like admitting to ax-murdering your family. Then going into all the gory details just so they’d know how really
really
evil you were. Or stupid.

“I know how bad that sounds. But it’s not like you think. He was going to this psychiatrist, and she said that Cookie’s abandoning him was just some sort of symbol for how worthless he felt he was.” Roberta hadn’t been just your garden-variety stupid; she’d been colossally stupid. Brain-damaged.

“The doctor said that if he faced Cookie and found out she wasn’t this big monster—” She laughed then, feeling on the edge of hysteria. The Cookie Monster. Oh, that was rich. “What I mean is, if he faced that Cookie’s dumping him didn’t mean he was this awful person who deserved to be abandoned, he’d be able to get over her.” Deep down, Warren was afraid she’d be a rich woman with a wonderful husband and that she really had done so much better than she could have with him.

Nick moved, hunkering down in front of her. Pulling her hands from her knees, he engulfed them with his own. “So you helped him find his old girlfriend. That doesn’t make everything your fault, Bobbie.”

“You don’t understand. I was desperate. I would have done anything. He was on those drugs, and he hadn’t made love to me in—” She cut herself off, digging her teeth into her lip as if the physical pain could outweigh the emotional. “The psychiatrist said it was the drugs. Decreased sexual desire, side effects and all. But—”

Oh God, she couldn’t even bear to think about it, yet she couldn’t stem the tide of words pouring out of her mouth. “But I never told him how much it hurt. How abandoned
I
felt. I let it go on and on until I just sort of convinced myself I didn’t need sex anymore. I’m one of those terrible people who lives with the status quo because they’re afraid that whatever is out there has to be worse.” She let the tears flow freely down her cheeks. “Do you know how long it’s been since a man has made love to me?”

Had a man
ever
made love to her? She wasn’t sure what she and Warren had done even qualified.

Nick shook his head, put his hands on her shoulders and stroked.

“Five years,” she whispered. “Five
years
. What kind of woman lets her husband avoid making love to her for five years? And never even does anything about it?” Begging didn’t count.

She should have made him go to marriage counseling with her. Something, anything. Instead she patted him on the back when he got depressed, made him a cup of tea, and handed him more pills.

“I was afraid he’d leave me if I made a fuss. But he went off the damn drugs for her and left me anyway.” A tear dribbled past the corner of her mouth. Nick whisked it away with the pad of his thumb.

She drew a shaky breath and risked looking at him. “Isn’t that the most pathetic thing you’ve ever heard?”

His hands dropped to her legs, rubbing her from knee to thigh while her hands twisted in her lap. “Not the most. A few of my own stories would sound worse.”

Nick didn’t get it. Nothing could be worse. She set out to show him, as if revealing every pathetic thing she’d done, thought, or felt would somehow release her. “He kept this box of mementos. One of those little Hallmark books that talks about loving and never leaving. Cards she gave him. She even made him this jean shirt that had a big tiger embroidered on the back. He asked me to wash it, and I made all the colors run.” Talk about passive-aggressive. “But he didn’t throw it out. I think he took it with him when he left. Maybe he thought she could fix it. Or make another one.”

Nick gripped her fingers again. “Your hands are cold.”

Her hands had been cold for fifteen years, as if all the feelings turning her insides to ice spewed out her fingers. “I just wanted him to stop talking about her,” she whispered. “I was so sick of hearing about her and the things they used to do
togeth
—” She sliced through the word. God, there were some things that should
never
see the light of day.

Nick’s grasp tightened almost to the point of pain. “Why didn’t you just leave him?”

“Because.” She stopped for a big sigh and a little sniffle. More pathetic truth she hadn’t wanted to face. She told Nick anyway, just to get it all out. “I didn’t want to be alone.”

He chafed her hands. “Did you ever think that you wouldn’t be alone for long?”

Now that was a thought. It had never occurred to her. “No.”

“Maybe you were wrong about that.” He tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear.

She tried not to compare him to Warren, to compare Mary Alice Turner to Cookie. She concentrated on confessing.

“I’ll never know. All I do know is that I let him make some very bad choices for our marriage.
I
let him. He was a crazy person on drugs. And he’s still crazy. I’ve got nothing left to lose but my self-respect.” God, had any self-respect even survived? “If I let him go to prison”—she shut her eyes—“or die, because I don’t think I can make a difference, or I’m afraid of the consequences, or because I want to make him pay for hurting me, then I’ll just keep on being pathetic Roberta Jones Spivey for the rest of my life.” She opened her eyes to look at Nick. “I can’t do that.”

His irises had softened to warm brown. Dark hair fell across his forehead. His gaze rose from her lips to her eyes. “You call yourself pathetic. But I don’t think I’ve ever known a more loyal woman.”

Kind words. Her fingers trailed his jaw, then his lower lip. For now, she’d let him believe what he wanted to. “I don’t intend to sacrifice you either. I’m going to prove Cookie masterminded it all. She’s the one who killed
Jimbo
, then she told Warren some big lie to get him to confess. She’s the one setting you up, too. I’m going to prove it even if it kills me.”

Which it might very well do. But then she’d only been half alive for the last fifteen years.

Chapter Thirteen

Her husband was a freaking bastard. Five years? Nick found it hard to believe. Bobbie must be damn near ready to explode. But now wasn’t the time to think about it.

Or maybe it was. Tears stained her cheeks. Confession, while good for the soul, had left her eyes bleak and a tremble on her lips.

Roberta Jones Spivey hadn’t had a man make love to her in five years. He might not be good for a hell of a lot else, but that, Nick could give her. Maybe even restore a little of the self-respect she was looking for. Damn Warren Spineless Spivey for taking it away from her in the first place. The asshole should rot in jail for what he’d done to his wife. Or hadn’t done.

Nick framed Bobbie’s face with his hands. “I want to make love with you.” He could have called it any number of things, but there was only one she really needed to hear.

“You do?” The tone of a nonbeliever desperate to be convinced.

“Yeah. Real bad.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “Couldn’t you tell Sunday night?”

She thought she was weak, a failure. He knew better. She was devoted, tough enough to stick it out, optimistic. There was nothing he could do to make her see that. He could, however, show her what an idiot her husband was.

He started with her shoes, the slip-ons plopping to the carpet when he tugged on the toes.

Still hunkered before her, he spread his legs along the outside of hers and dropped his hands to her knees. Stroking up her thighs, he reached under her to squeeze. “You’ve got a gorgeous butt.”

She blinked, then let her gaze fall to his thumbs tucked in the crease at the tops of her thighs. He knew she wanted more.

He lifted a finger to trail from the hollow of her throat to the
vee
between her breasts. Then he toyed with the fourth button of her uniform, the one she’d kept buttoned. “Your breasts are perfect.”

She took what he gave, no more questions asked, no more doubts raised. Her hands sank into the bedspread. He slipped the button loose, found the front clasp of her bra, then bypassed it for the next button. The starchy material spread to reveal the edges of lacy white. She stared at him, eyes wide, a deep bottomless green he could lose himself in.

He slipped another button, then another, until the top half of her uniform sprang open. She sat up straighter, sucking her stomach in self-consciously. He bent his head and kissed her abdomen just above the apron, giving her flesh a lingering trace with his tongue. “You smell good.”

“It’s mango.” Her voice, barely a whisper, shivered down his spine.

Her fingers clutched his mother’s ancient spread, her knuckles almost white. She waited. He wanted her an active participant. “Undo your bra.”

Watching him, her hands unfurled, rising slowly to further push aside the material. His gaze greedily followed her progress. The clasp undone, the bra eased, but didn’t reveal her breasts. “Let me see you.”

He leaned in to prod the lace with his tongue, then retreated. Her nipples peaked. His mouth watered. One ripe bud beckoned. He teased with the tip of his tongue, encircled her with his lips, nipped. Not quite a moan, her intake of breath became a gasp as he sucked hard. Then let go.

“Take it off.”

She did, arching back to push the sleeves of her uniform and bra straps down both arms. As the scrap of lace fell to the bed, he swatted it to the floor. “What do you want me to do to you?”