“That’s true. That’s the way I want it.”
She nodded, waited, and when he said nothing more, turned bravely to look at him. “Well? Do you have one?”
“Not really.” He shifted uncomfortably-unaccustomed, she imagined, to being on the receiving end of probing questions-and finally muttered, “My father died when I was…young.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, but was not ready, yet, to let him go. “What about your mother? Is she alive?” He nodded, but his eyes slid away from hers. She persisted, “Do you…see her?”
His eyes were on the mug in his hands. He raised it to his lips and drained the few drops that were left before he said in a carefully neutral tone, “From time to time.”
“Really?” She couldn’t have said why that surprised her, or why speaking of it should so obviously unnerve him. But her heart quickened as she asked, “Any brothers or sisters?”
He lowered the mug and now examined it minutely. His lashes were dark curtains across his eyes. “I had a brother,” he said at last, again in that voice devoid of all expression. “Younger. He died when I was twelve. He was..about six.”
“Oh, God-how awful.” And she thought: Just about Helen’s age. Shame and regret overwhelmed her, squeezed her chest and tightened her throat, so that she whispered through the pain, “I’m so sorry. I mean, I can’t even imagine what it would be like. My sisters and I-we were so close. Even to think of losing them…”
From half a room away, Riley saw her eyes fill with tears, and saw in those tears his own escape. Maintaining control of his natural empathy-his gift, his curse-had been challenge enough to him lately, it was true; but it was a battle he waged on a daily basis and was therefore accustomed to. Watching her, he said quietly, “You miss them.”
She gave a liquid-sounding laugh, like a hiccup. He watched her lips play through a whole symphony of emotions and was as fascinated as he’d been that first day in his office. She said huskily, “Yeah, I do. And the funny thing is, until last year I didn’t even see that much of them I guess-” she shrugged, drew an uneven breath “-I was too busy. There was my job, my clinic, and then I was married and they weren’t, I had kids and they didn’t. But then, after Hal left, and I knew I was going to have to start over, and I thought about where I would go… My parents live in Pensacola Beach, I could have gone there. But when I really thought about it, it was my sister-Mirabella-that I…” her voice broke, surprising her, he thought, and she drew another unsteady breath. “So, I came here. And now-” suddenly her hands were clenched fists and her voice trembled with anger “-I can’t even see her. I can’t even talk to her on the phone. Now, when I need her the most. It makes me so angry. I feel like-” She broke off with a laugh. “You know what it’s like? Remember that day, last winter, when you saw me in court? And the judge threatened to send me to jail? I thought, I can’t possibly go to jail-no way! And now, here I am-if I’m not in jail, I might as well be!”
Unexpectedly stung, he forced a smile. “Oh, come on, is it really that bad?”
“Oh,” she said quickly, empathetic enough herself to realize how her words might be taken and anxious not to give offense, “not that it isn’t a very nice jail. You’ve done everything you could possibly do to make us comfortable-too much.” She came toward him, arms folded tightly across her waist in what seemed to him an unconscious effort to contain treacherous emotions. Instead, because of the tension in her, the effect of that determinedly subdued tone and manner was to make her words all the more poignant. “But-my life has been taken from me. Don’t you understand? I have no freedom to come and go as I please. I can’t go to work, or shopping, or to visit my family or take the kids to McDonald’s. If that’s not prison, what is the definition?”
Her face was stark, strained…the unhappiness in it so distressing to Riley, he finally had to look away. “It’s only temporary,” he muttered. “Until the bad guys are put away. And the FBI, with all its resources-”
“Can’t find one man named Hal Robey!” she broke in, anger and derision thick and hot in her voice. “You know what makes me the maddest? It’s that I’m afraid. All the time. Do you know what it’s like to live every moment of your life in fear?”
He was stunned to hear himself say, “Yes, I do.” And felt with the admission, a curious sense of lightening.
Summer’s eyebrows rose with surprise. “You?” She came back to the table at once and sat, once again close enough to him to touch, as if, he thought, his confession of human frailty made him seem less dangerous to her.
To him, though, the danger seemed incalculable. Shaken by his brush with it, he forced a smile and murmured, “I told you, you don’t know me.”
But, to his relief, she wasn’t listening, focused once again on her own concerns and reassured enough for continued confidences. Gazing at the lightening windows, she said in a musing tone, “Sometimes, you know, I think I’d rather confront the fear. Go out there and face those…those bastards! Like-I don’t know, set myself up as bait for an FBI sting, or something. Anything to get those people caught.”
“But,” Riley reminded her gently, “you have the children to think about.”
“Yes…” He heard her breath escape in a long, slow sigh. “I have the children.” Then for a while she was silent, while her whole being seemed to wilt, and grow pensive and sad. When she spoke again it was in a halting half whisper, and he knew without any doubt that she had never spoken those thoughts aloud to a living soul before.
“Sometimes…it seems like I’ve been in jail all my life-a kind of jail, anyway. Maybe not all my life, but at least since I realized that the man I’d married wasn’t ever going to be a partner, and that it was pretty much going to all be up to me-providing for us, you know, raising my children. I’ve felt…so damn lonely.” The last word came from her with rough edges, like torn burlap. “I’ve felt trapped, you know? I feel like I’ve had no choices. It’s like that story of the little boy with his finger in the hole in the dike. Like I’m all alone and trapped by the whole overwhelming responsibility for survival-everyone’s… my own, my children’s-and that everything I’ve done has been because I had to, for someone else’s sake, never because it was what I wanted to do.”
She stopped abruptly, and Riley found himself with a heart full of words he could not-dared not-say. It was a vulnerable, exposed feeling, like a thief caught with his hands full of stolen booty, pinioned in the glare of police spotlights. Did you ever in your life, Summer Robey, do something just for yourself? Take a cruise? Shop for perfume? Kiss a lover in the rain? Go dancing after midnight? Have an affair with a dashing attorney…?
The moments ticked away, counted in his heartbeats. He felt his body grow heavy and humid, with rumblings and growlings deep down inside of unacknowledged and unassuaged hungers. What would happen, he wondered, if he touched her now? If he were to reach out, reach across that small distance between them and take her hands…her strong, capable, no-nonsense hands…would he feel them tremble? Hands could tremble, he knew, for many reasons, and so could lips…and bodies. He suddenly knew that he wanted to feel hers tremble-her lips, her body-but for no other reason than desire. Not with cold, exhaustion, nerves or fear. Never with fear-never again with fear! Only desire. For him.