Finger Prints (26 page)

“It’s funny, but I
feel
like me, too. Now, if I can get over the next hurdle….”

“Which is?”

“Seeing Ryan.” She was a bundle of nerves. Not only was she strung taut over all that had happened in Chicago, but, realizing now the depth of her feelings, she was all the more burdened by guilt.

“You spoke with him last night?” Sam asked, steering her toward the parking garage.

“Oh, yes.” Her sigh was wistful. “I told him my father was better and I’d probably be flying back on Thursday. I didn’t dare say I’d be in today; he would have insisted on meeting the plane. Anyway,” she rationalized more lightly, “now I can surprise him.” The thought of it caused a thread of excitement to weave slowly through her discouragement. She caught sight of a wall clock. “Hey, you may be able to make Sara’s party after all.”

“If the traffic’s with us, may be.”

The traffic was with them. Carly was home by four. Dropping her bag on the bed to unpack later, she showered, put on a pair of slacks and a sweater, took a steak from the freezer and made a huge salad. Then she called Ryan at his office. Or tried.

The receptionist answered promptly. “Miller and Cornell.”

Heart pounding, Carly made her request. “Mr. Cornell.”

“One moment, please.”

It was more than one moment—Carly counted every second—before Ryan’s secretary finally picked up the phone. “Mr. Cornell’s office.”

“This is Carly Quinn. Is Mr. Cornell there?”

“I’m sorry, he’s not in his office. I expect him back shortly. May I take a message?”

“Uh…uh, yes. Would you tell him I called?”

“Certainly. That’s Carla—”

“Carly. With a
y
. Carly Quinn.”

“And the number?”

“He knows it.”

“Fine. I’ll see that he gets the message.”

Replacing the receiver, Carly sank into one of the director’s chairs by the kitchen table. She felt deflated. Not only had Ryan not been there, but also she’d felt like a stranger when she’d called the place so very dear to his heart. Wondering why she’d never been to his office, she realized with a jolt that it wasn’t for lack of invitation. Ryan had suggested it several times; on each occasion she’d declined the offer. In a small way it had to do with her aversion to lawyers, in a larger way with her aversion to exposure. The former was truly absurd, she knew, given her love for Ryan and the respect she’d felt for those of his partners and associates she’d met. And as for the latter, it had dwindled noticeably in the past few weeks.

Pushing herself from the chair, she wandered into the living room and perched on the windowsill over-looking the river. It was dusk. Even as she watched, one, then another, pair of headlights flicked on. Chewing nervously on the inside of her cheek, she glanced at her watch and wondered when Ryan would call. Then, resting her head back against the window frame, she tried to relax.

Indeed she was more confident now about “being seen,” and in large part she had Ryan to thank. It was strange; before she’d met him she’d thought of security only in the physical sense. But there was more. She realized now that part of her public reticence had been induced by self-consciousness, by the fear that her disguise was so transparent that anyone and everyone would see through her.

Ryan had changed that. When she was with him, Carly Quinn had a full identity; his love, it seemed, provided the final piece missing from the puzzle of her daily life. He believed in her, so she had to believe in herself.

Her future was something else. Now that she’d admitted to herself that she was in love with the man, things were more complicated. To confess her love and still hold back the truth of her past was unacceptable. Yet she couldn’t tell him of that past. Not yet. The Barber-Culbert case was still far too active. And she knew Ryan. If she told him she loved him, he would push for a commitment she was simply unable to make with that other still hanging over her head.

Glancing again at her watch, she crossed the room and sifted through the mail Ryan had brought in during her absence. When she found nothing but meaningless ads and not-so-meaningless bills, she thrust the pile down and paced to the television. Flipping it on, she retreated to the sofa. She rarely watched television. It bored her. But she was unsettled enough to try anything.

It didn’t work. Within ten minutes the television screen was black and she had gone in search of her needlepoint. That helped for a time, though more to keep her hands occupied than her mind, which seemed suddenly prone to review the events of the past two days in grand detail. She recalled landing at O’Hare and being driven into the city, passing sights that were heart-wrenchingly familiar, yet different in a “you can’t go home again” way.

It had actually been enlightening. She’d felt awkward, a stranger, in the city she’d thought of as home for so long. It was
there
that she’d felt conspicuous and in disguise. And rightfully so, she realized. The woman who had returned to Chicago was only part there. Her heart had remained in Boston.

Her mind skipped around, and for a moment she was in her hotel room again—that cold, lonely place with a bodyguard in the adjoining room. Shivering at the thought, she set down her needlepoint, wrapped her arms around her middle and relived those intense, exhausting hours in the state’s attorney’s office.

Her stomach knotted, then unknotted, then twisted again. She looked at her watch, leaped up from the sofa and moved aimlessly around the room before checking her watch again.

It was nearly six. Ryan should have called, she reasoned impatiently. Curling into the armchair, she hugged her knees to her chest and tried to define
shortly
. That was when his secretary had said he’d be back, and that had been ninety minutes ago. She swallowed and propped her chin on her knees, realizing that he’d probably been held up in court, or had bumped into a colleague on the way back to the office, or had simply taken a detour along the way.

Another twenty minutes passed. She shifted in her chair, eyeing her front door with trepidation as she began to wonder if something might be wrong. What if he’d been hurt somewhere—if he’d been in an automobile accident or, more bizarre but nonetheless possible, if one of his less reputable clients had attacked him. He wouldn’t just
not call
. Would he?

After another thirty minutes of silence, her thoughts took a gruesome turn. She imagined Gary Culbert’s henchman making the connection between Ryan and herself and setting out to silence her by injuring him. It would be one of the lowliest forms of emotional blackmail, and it would work in a minute.

She shuddered and moaned, squeezed her eyes shut to exorcise the image and ran her hands up and down her arms to ease her inner chill. The phone didn’t ring. The door didn’t open. She began to feel as though her world was caving in on her.

h
EAD DOWN, RYAN CAME UP THE COURTYARD
walk, let himself into the building and dispiritedly started up the stairs. It was after eight. The past two nights she had called at nine. He had missed her once today; he prayed she would call again.

If he’d had her number he might have called her back as soon as he’d returned to his office. But he didn’t have her number. She hadn’t given it to him. He’d thought to call Des Moines for information, but…
Johnson
? It had to be one of the most common names in the book.

That first evening after she’d hung up, he’d scoured her apartment for an address book. There had been nothing. No jotted scribbles tacked to a bulletin board. No crumpled listings of friends or relatives. No evidence of her world before Boston. He’d even flipped through her mail in the hopes of finding a handwritten return address, but still he’d struck out. It was like Christmas again. Then he’d simply phoned the wrong place; perhaps, he told himself, he wasn’t looking in the right place now. Nonetheless he couldn’t quite shake the eerie feeling he had.

Climbing slowly to the third floor, he thought about the power of desperation. This morning, wanting to contact her and having run out of alternatives, he had actually swallowed his pride and called Sam Loomis, who, after all that, was away on business.

Flipping Carly’s key from his key case, he fumbled distractedly with her lock. He’d barely pushed the door open an inch when he paused. The light was on, slivering gently into the hall, yet he was sure all the lights had been turned off before he’d left early that morning.

In the instant he conjured three possibilities. The first, that someone had broken in, drew his muscles taut. The second, that Sam Loomis, the only other person with a key, had stopped by, would have set his teeth on edge had he not known Sam was out of town. It was the third that got his heart beating double time. Holding his breath, he pushed the door open, then burst into a broad grin at the sight of Carly curled in a chair across the room.

He slammed the door behind him and tossed his coat on the sofa in passing. “I didn’t realize you were home! I thought you’d called from Des Moines!” He was on his haunches in front of her before he realized that the wide-eyed look she wore was not one of delight, but terror. His grin vanished, his pulse rate faltered. “Carly?”

“My God!” she exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, pressing a hand to her chest to still her thudding heart, “I thought you were a thief! It sounded like someone was picking the lock! I’ve been waiting so long for you to call—I didn’t expect you
here
!”

“I didn’t expect
you
here,” he countered, taking her cold hand in his. “I assumed you were still in Des Moines.”

“Didn’t you get my message?”

“The message said you’d called. That was all. I was furious when I got it—I couldn’t have missed you by more than half an hour. Had my secretary been there, I would have wrung her neck for not forwarding you to the office where I was. But she’d left for a dental appointment, so all I could do was hope that you’d call again at nine. I’ve been stewing for the past three hours.”

“So have I,” she whispered, and suddenly something snapped inside her. It had been building from the moment she’d seen Sam at her classroom door on Monday and had been fueled by the extraordinary tension she’d been under since then. That, and missing Ryan and hating herself for having to lie to him and realizing in these past few hours how much she loved him….

As he watched, her composure crumbled. Her eyes filled with tears, her chin began to quiver. Before she had time to do more than fall into his waiting arms, she was crying. Endless sobs shook her body. She clutched at the lapels of his coat. “Oh, God, Ryan…”

“Shh….” He pressed her head to his chest and rocked her gently. “It’s okay, babe. It’s okay. Shh….”

It was a while longer before she could catch her breath enough to talk. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, blotting her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to break down like this.”

He held her away and saw the dark smudges under her eyes. “You look exhausted. You couldn’t have slept the whole time you were gone. How is he, Carly? There wasn’t a—”

Setback. Her father. “Oh, no. He’s fine.” She grew self-conscious. “I guess everything just built and built till I couldn’t hold it in anymore.” She sniffled. “I wanted to surprise you today, and when you didn’t call back I began to imagine all kinds of awful things.”

Ryan caught her face between his hands with sudden vehemence. “I’ve missed you.” Then his lips were on hers and something burst within them both. He couldn’t kiss her hard enough or deep enough; she couldn’t take enough of him or give enough of herself. Hands were everywhere, clutching, stroking, reassuring with a fervor not to be denied.

Shifting her to the floor and moving down over her, Ryan kissed her neck, then shoved up her sweater, tore aside her bra and took her ripe nipple in his mouth, sucking strongly and drawing it to a peak before moving hungrily on to its mate.

No less feverish, Carly blindly grappled with the buttons of his vest, then his shirt, spreading the material, running her hands over his warm flesh in wordless stake of her claim.

The air was rent with moans and hoarse urgings. Carly tugged at Ryan’s belt and attacked the zipper of his trousers, while he ravaged the fastenings of her slacks. Parting only long enough to strip off their lower garb, they returned to each other in a fluid motion that joined their bodies fully.

With a growl of possession, Ryan surged against her. He was without gentleness, for Carly’s writhing body demanded force, and he wasn’t sure if he could have taken her any other way, so desperately did he need to put his mark on her, to weld her to him, to make up for the loneliness of their time apart and clear every thought from her mind but the fury of his love. If he was punishing her for having flown so suddenly, so be it. He was out of control, mastered by his own rampant desire.

Carly took it all and then some with unabashed greed. Her body held his, tightened around him to keep him, rebelled each time he withdrew by capturing him all the more deeply at the next thrust. She had never felt such a powerful need to be bound to another person—or to blot every thought from her mind but the frenzy of Ryan’s formidable strength.

The climax they reached was simultaneous, hard and mind-shattering, punctuated by loud cries of exultation. Bodies slick, they collapsed on each other, gasping for breath, moaning at the sweet pain each bore.

When finally he rolled to her side, he gathered her to him in an embrace every bit as fierce as their coupling had been. There were no apologies. The stinging spots on his back where she’d dug her nails told Ryan that she’d taken him as forcefully as he’d taken her. He found great satisfaction in that.

It took Carly longer to get her bearings. Raising her head at last, she blinked. Held snug against Ryan’s chest, she lay on the rug at the foot of the chair in which she’d been sitting. Her sweater and bra were bunched somewhere just above her breasts. Ryan’s shirt and vest flared from his shoulders.

“I can’t believe we did this,” she whispered.

He grinned down at her, his breathing still heavy. “Decadent again. But I love it.” He placed a kiss on the tip of her nose, then, when she raised her lips, on her mouth. “I did miss you. If you ever, so help me,
ever
take off on me that way again, I’ll make you sorry you did.”

She saw the teasing in his eyes and hoped it would last, for she knew that there well
might
be other times when she would have to take off. Unable to think of that now, she sat up, tugged her sweater to her waist, then looked at her naked lower torso indignantly. “Look what you’ve done to me, Ryan Cornell. I’m a mess!”

“You’re not a mess. You’re gorgeous.”

She glanced at his own naked body and smiled. “So are you.” Then, reaching for her clothes, she began to dress. “Ryan?”

“Hmm?”

“I’d like to see your office sometime.”

He lay on his back, arms pillowing his head, unfazed by his nakedness as he watched her reach beneath her sweater and ease herself into her bra. “You would?” His voice was higher than usual; something pleased him. She wasn’t quite sure whether it was what she said or what she did. Before she’d decided, he sat up with a grin, reached behind her and fastened the bra’s catch. Then he relaxed back once again.

“I want to be able to picture where you are when you’re working.” Balancing first on one foot then the other, she slipped on her panties and straightened. “And I want that secretary of yours to be able to picture
me
when I call.”

Ryan savored the flashing of her eyes, so different from the gut-wrenching look he’d seen there when he’d first come home. “She’ll feel awful about the mix-up,” he murmured distractedly, watching her step into her slacks, zip the zipper and fasten the tab. “She’s really very good.” Sitting up again, he caught her hand. “Where’re you rushing to? I want to hear about your father.”

“My father’s fine and I’m rushing to the kitchen. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Sure. But we could go out. You just got back.”

“I’ve been back since four. I took a steak out and made a salad before I called you.” She slanted him a knowing look. “Don’t tell me you’ve been eating at home all week.” Her teasing hit its mark. If she’d learned one thing about Ryan it was that he had no inclination to cook. Oh, he did make coffee, and a mean cup at that, and he was more than willing to work beside her in the kitchen following her directions. On his own, though, he was a lost cause.

He reached for his briefs and pulled them on. “Eat at home? Uh, no. Not exactly.”

“I didn’t think so. Well, neither have I, so I thought we’d have a quiet dinner here.” She hesitated. “Is that okay?”

Ryan shook his head, but in amazement that she could think otherwise. “It’s more than okay. I’d like that, babe.”

Carly was mesmerized as much by the velvet warmth in Ryan’s tone as by the adoration in his eyes. She’d heard it before, seen it before, but never like this, knowing what she felt in return, knowing that it was nearly, nearly within her grasp.

Raising tremulous fingertips to his lips, she traced their firm contour, so smooth within the soft bristle of his beard. Then, eyes round and teary, she dropped her hand and offered a broken, “I’ll get dinner. It won’t take long,” before fleeing to the kitchen.

Ryan stared after her for a minute. She loved him. She
had
to love him. There was no other explanation for the way she looked at him, the way she spoke to him, the way she responded to him, the way she demanded from him—and yes, she did demand. In her quiet, gentle way she demanded strength and comfort, companionship, understanding and appreciation and passion. She seemed attuned to his every need, satisfying him as he satisfied her.
She had to love him
. But she hadn’t said so. Not once.

Retreating to the bedroom, he put on the jeans he’d left in her closet. Hanging up his suit and shirt, he grabbed his sweat shirt, went into the bathroom to wash up, emerged after several minutes in the process of tugging the sweat shirt over his head and caught sight of her suitcase lying on the bed where she’d left it when she’d first come home.

He smiled, pleased to know that her thoughts of him had taken precedence over all else. Even now he could hear her in the kitchen opening and closing the refrigerator, rattling silverware and china. Thrusting his arm through the second sleeve, he straightened the sweat shirt and approached the bed. He rubbed one long forefinger over the leather of her case, admiring it even as he dreamed of the matching set they’d buy for their travels together.

Then something caught his eye. Frowning, he reached toward the baggage-claim tag attached to the metal fastening of the shoulder strap that stretched from one end to the other of the case. CHI. Chicago? Had she returned from Des Moines via Chicago? But no. Tags were marked with destinations.

Affixed to the traditional handle at the top of the bag was the tag he sought. He turned it over. BOS, indeed. The return-trip tag. Located where it was in a corner, the first must have been missed by the airport employee who would normally have torn it off before putting a new one on.

Ryan dropped the tag and looked up. Boston to Chicago, then back to Boston. And Des Moines? He had no idea how she’d gotten
there
; he only knew that something was odd.

Enveloped in flames, she was suffocating. Through the inferno’s roar, she heard Peter’s voice, “It was your idea, all yours!” then Matthew’s, “I yelled for you but you didn’t hear!” She turned first to the left, then the right, then completely around in search of escape, but there was none. There never was. Paralyzed by terror, she stared at the snakes of fire coiling menacingly at her feet.

Carly bolted upright in bed. The flames were gone. The night was black and silent. Only Ryan lay unknowing witness to her suffering, and he stirred slowly by her side, reaching for her in his sleep, coming more fully awake when he felt her trembling. Groggy, he lifted his head. “Carly? What’s wrong?”

“Just a nightmare,” she managed to whisper, then forced herself to lie down, curl in a ball facing away from him and pull the covers over her bare shoulders.

As Ryan drew her back against him, his grogginess vanished. “You’re all sweaty. It must have been some nightmare.”

“Mmm.”

“What was it about?”

“Oh, the same thing it always is. Fire.”

“Your husband’s.” He still couldn’t remember if it was Matthew or Malcolm and was too embarrassed to ask.

“Mmm.”

“Must have been your trip that brought it back,” he murmured into her hair. “Being with family, and all.”

Carly felt like a rat. Though she didn’t lie, she didn’t tell the whole truth. It occurred to her that come the day Ryan did find out, he would have a right to be positively furious.

“Hey,” he said softly, “maybe you should put something on. You’re really shaking.”