Her eyes came open in a flash. "What did you say?"
"I asked you to marry me."
"I don't know, James. I'm already married."
"I'd forgotten that. Sally, please don't move. Do you want to take your arms off my neck?''
"No, not really. You're warm, James, and I like your weight on me. I feel safe and like everything just might be all right. Somebody would have to go through you to get to me. They'd never make it, you're too solid, too strong. Please don't roll off me."
Solid and strong was he? He turned even harder. "You're sure you're not afraid? After what happened to you at the sanitarium, I won't want to scare you."
She frowned even as she tightened her arms around his neck. "It's odd, but you never scared me except when you came roaring through Amabel's door like a bull that day, that day when my father called me for the first time. But after that, not at all, not even when you walked in on me and I'd just come out of the shower."
"You were so beautiful, I thought I'd lose it for sure."
"Me? Beautiful?" She snorted, and he was charmed. "I'm a stick, but you're nice to say it."
"But it's true. I looked at you and thought, She's perfect. I really like that little black mole on the side of your belly, just beside your left pelvic bone."
"Oh, dear, you saw that much of me?"
"Oh, yes. A man's eyes can move real fast when the motivation is there. Why don't you dump Scott Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Brainerd and then you can marry me?''
"I don't think he'll mind at all," she said after a moment. "Actually he's already dumped me, despite those pleas he made on TV." She was rubbing her hands over his shoulders and upper back. His skin was warm and smooth. "Shortly after we were married, I knew it had been a mistake. I was as busy as he was, always on the go, always going out to meetings and parties and functions in the evenings, always talking to people on the phone, always having people over. I loved it, and he seemed to at first.
"Then he told me he'd thought I would give all that up when we got married. Evidently he expected me to sit around until he got home and then feed him and probably rub his back and listen to him talk about his day, and then strip if he wanted sex. At least that's what he'd expected. Where he got that idea I'll never know.
"I tried to talk to him about it, but he would just shake his head and tell me over and over that I was a crummy wife, that I was unreasonable. He said I'd lied to him. That wasn't true. It came as a total shock to me after we were married when he started pitching fits over my schedule. While we were dating it had been just the same and he'd never said a word. Once he even told me how proud he was of me.
"When I finally told him that I knew he was having an affair and that I wanted out, he said I was imagining things. He said I was being silly, at least at first he said that. Then just days later he said I was losing it, that I was paranoid but that he wouldn't divorce me because I was going crazy. It wouldn't be right. No, he wouldn't do that to me. I didn't understand what he was talking about until about four days later.
"He was sleeping with another woman, James, I would bet my life on it. After I was locked away in Beadermeyer's sanitarium, I don't know what he did. I was kind of hoping that I'd never have to see him again. And I didn't. Just my father came. But Scott had to be in on it with my father. He was and is my husband, after all. And he had told me I was nuts."
Interesting, he thought. "Yes," he said. "He was in on it, up to his little shyster's ears. Who was he having an affair with?''
"I don't know. Probably someone at work, at TransCon. Scott's big into power."
"I'm sorry," he said, dipped down and kissed her ear, "but you're going to have to see him again, at least one more time. Good thing is, I'm your hero and I'm even official, so you don't have to worry.
"Sally, maybe Scott killed your father. Maybe your mother is protecting him."
"No, Scott's a worm. He's a stingy, cowardly little worm. He wouldn't have the guts to kill my father."
"All right." So much pain, he thought, too much. It would all work out, it just had to.
He leaned down and kissed her mouth this time. Her lips parted, and he wanted more than anything to go deep into her mouth, just as he wanted to go deeply inside her body, but he realized her world was spinning out of control right now. He didn't want to add any more confusion to her life. Good Lord, he'd asked her to marry him.
"Perhaps that would be good," she said and pulled him down so she could kiss him.
"What would be good?" he said in her mouth.
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"To get married. To you. You're so normal, so big and normal. You didn't have a screwed-up childhood, did you?"
"No. I've got two older sisters and an older brother. I was the baby of the family. Everyone spoiled me rotten.
My family wasn't particularly dysfunctional. No one hit anyone. We kids beat the crap out of each other, but that's normal enough. I was big into sports, any and every sport, but my passion was and still is football. Sundays were created for football. I always go into withdrawal after the Super Bowl. Do you like football?"
"Yes. I had a woman gym teacher at my school who was from San Francisco. She was nuts about football and taught us the game. We got very good. The only problem was that there wasn't another girl's team around for us to play. I don't like basketball or baseball."
"I can live with that. I'll even play touch football with you."
She kissed his neck. He shuddered as he felt her opening even more beneath him. He said quickly, "My big screw-up was marrying Teresa Raglan when I was twenty-six. She was from Ohio, seemed just perfect for me.
"She's a lawyer, just like your husband and dear old dad. It turned out she fell in love with a guy in the Navy who was selling secrets to whoever was interested. I was the one who caught him. She defended him. She got him off, then left me and married him."
"That's pretty amazing, James. What happened to her?"
"They live in Annandale, Virginia. She's got two kids, the guy's some sort of lobbyist, paid really well, and they seem to be doing just great. I see them every once in a while. No, don't romanticize it and pretend that I was a brokenhearted wreck. I wasn't. I was shocked and furious for a while, before Dillon pointed out the absurdity of it all.
"The good guy catches the bad guy. The good guy's wife defends the bad guy and gets him off and then marries him. Pretty deep stuff to walk in. He was right. The whole thing was like a bad melodrama or a TV soap."
"James, you're wonderful. Even in all this mess, you can laugh and make me laugh, and you weren't angry that I poked a gun in your stomach and stole your car. I had to just ditch the car, James. Then I bought the motorcycle. I had to get away. I think if you could forget who you are and come to Bar Harbor with me, everything would be better than what it's going to be soon. I used to love life, James, before-well, that's not important right now."
"It is important. You want to know something else? Something else that will prove how great I am?"
"What's that?"
"I didn't even get pissed when you pulled my gun on me the second time."
"Well, that settles it then, doesn't it?" She moved beneath him, and he thought he'd lose it for sure. He was hard against her, and his heart was pounding deep and fast against her chest.
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He hadn't intended to let things get this out of hand, at least he hadn't before she shifted beneath him, her legs wide now, his legs between hers.
He kissed her, then said into her mouth. "You're beautiful, and you can feel how much I want you. But we can't let this happen. I don't have any condoms. The last thing you need is to get pregnant."