She didn’t have a place to live, he realized. Her house had taken a lot of hits, plus she couldn’t even get to it right now. The sheriff’s department had brought in a helicopter to airlift the stranded inhabitants to town, because that was deemed the fastest, easiest way.
“It looks like you,” she said with her serene smile. “No nonsense. I like it.”
He touched her cheek with one finger, lightly stroking her smooth skin. “You could stay here with me,” he offered, going straight to the heart of what he wanted.
“Would you want me to have sex with you?”
He almost fell, the crutches suddenly becoming unmanageable, but he found he was incapable of lying to this woman, incapable of looking into those blue eyes and uttering anything except the absolute truth. “Hell, yes, but I want to do that regardless of where you live.”
“You know I was a nun?”
How could she be so calm when his heart was suddenly beating so fast he thought he’d pass out. “I heard. Are you a virgin?”
She smiled, a tiny curve of her mouth. “No, I’m not. Does it matter?”
“It matters in that I’m relieved as hell. I’m fifty years old; I can’t take that kind of stress.”
“Don’t you want to know why I’m not a nun anymore?”
He bit the bullet and hazarded a guess. “Because you liked sex too much to give it up?”
She burst out laughing. She seemed to think that was so hilarious, in fact, that she ended up sitting on his couch laughing so hard she cried. He began to get the idea she hadn’t liked sex that much. He bet he could change her mind. He was slower now, and he knew a hell of a lot, and when it came to sex that was a good thing.
“I became a nun because I was too afraid of life, too afraid to live,” she finally said. “I left the convent because those were the wrong reasons for being there.”
He eased down beside her and put his crutches aside. With one arm around her he tilled her fate up. “Do you remember where we left off right before the bridge exploded and your house got shot up?”
“Vaguely,” she said, the twinkle in her eye telling him she was teasing.
“Do you want to pick up there, or do you want to go to bed and make love?”
Her cheeks turned pink and she regarded him with absolute seriousness. “Bed.”
Thank you, Jesus. “Okay, but first there are two things I want to get clear.”
She nodded, her clear blue gaze locked with his.
“I’ve had the serious hots for you for years, I love you, and I want to marry you.”
Her mouth fell open. She turned white, then pink again, he hoped with pleasure. She said, “That’s three things.”
He thought about it for a split second then shrugged before scooping her onto his lap to kiss her. “Actually, I think it’s just separate parts of one big thing.”
“You know, I think you’re right.” She wiggled against him, and ended up sitting astride his hip with her arms looped around his neck while they kissed each other crazy. After a while she was half naked and his pants were unzipped, and she was all but panting as she lay against his sweaty chest. Her hand was inside his pants and she was stroking up and down and his spine was so rigid he thought he could do a good imitation of a plank. Bed was the last thing on his mind.
“This had better be good,” she said fiercely.
“It will be,” he promised as he eased her into position.
“If I’ve gone all this lime without having sex and if this turns into another dud, I—”
“Honey,” he said clearly, getting out his last lucid thought for the next twenty minutes, “Marines don’t fire duds.”
“Cate!” Sheila flew out of the house, sobbing in relief even though Cate had called her mother immediately on reaching a phone two days ago. She had been anxious to speak to her mother before the news hit the wire services, and she’d warned to talk to her boys. They’d been in bed asleep, but Cate had insisted Sheila wake them so she could hear their sleepy protests that faded when they realized Mommy was on the phone.
With all the police questions Cal had been obliged to answer, they hadn’t been allowed to leave until just that morning. Until the electricity was on and the bridge rebuilt, they couldn’t go home, and Cate’s parents had invited them to stay with them in Seattle until that was possible.
Cate was engulfed in her mother’s arms, tightly hugged, kissed, then hugged again. Her father came out of the house and hugged her, too, very tightly, and was followed closely by two jumping, shouting, very dirty little boys who couldn’t decide if they wanted to shriek “Mommy!” or “Mr. Hawwis! so they did both.
Cal swiftly shook hands with Cate’s father, then went down on one knee and the boys all but swarmed him. Alter three years of it, she was accustomed to being abandoned in favor of the handy-man, who, after all, had taught them how to cuss. How could a mother compete with that? She found herself grinning like an idiot at the sight of him with two sets of little arms wrapped tightly around his neck while they both vied to tell him all the news of their visit with Mimi. He looked as if he were being choked, they had such tight and enthusiastic grips on him.
“I see I was right,” said Sheila, looking down at him with satisfaction.
“Right about what?” he managed to gasp out.
“That there was something going on between you and Cate.”
“Yes, ma’am, you were. I’ve been after her for three years.”
“Well, good job. Are you getting married?”
“Mom!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Cal, without a hint of a blush.
“When?”
“Mom!”
“As soon as possible.”
“In that case,” said Sheila, “I’ll let you stay here with her. But no hanky-panky with my daughter under my roof.”
Her dad looked as if he would choke with laughter. Cal was close to being choked by the twins. Cate thought she might choke on indignation. “1 wouldn’t think of it, ma’am,” Cal assured her mother.
“Liar,” Sheila said briskly.
Cal winked at his future mother-in-law. “Yes, ma’am,” he said very definitely, and she grinned.
A couple of weeks later, the man who used to be Kennon Goss, who used to be Ryan Ferris, walked casually through a cemetery outside Chicago. He seemed to walk without purpose, pausing to read names, then meandering on.
He passed by a new grave. There was a temporary marker up, and the name on it was Yuell Faulkner, with the dates of his birth and death listed. The man didn’t stop, didn’t appear to pay the grave any attention. He went by it to study the old tombstone of a child who had died in 1903, and from there to a veteran’s grave decorated with two small American flags.
One of life’s ironies, the man thought. Faulkner had already been dead that night, by a few hours. Good old Hugh Toxtel hadn’t had to die; his involuntary sacrifice hadn’t been necessary, after all. The others, either, but he didn’t care about Teague and his cousin Troy. He did wonder about Billy Copeland and that young guy, Blake, though; he hadn’t killed them, so who had?
Thinking back on that night, sometimes he thought he remembered a hint of a breeze, as if something or someone had moved close to him. Other times his common sense told him that there had been a breeze—a real breeze, caused by the movement of air. That didn’t explain why several times since then he’d bolted upright in bed, startled out of a sound sleep by this weird sensation that his dreams had conjured up, of being watched.
He was glad to his bones to be out of Idaho, but he couldn’t stay in Chicago. It was time to move on. Maybe someplace warm. Maybe Miami. He’d heard on the news there had been a series of vicious murders down there. The killer was evidently collecting eyeballs.
What were the odds?