Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [122]
“Maybe she wasn’t as happy as you thought. Maybe she only really became happy when she divorced your father and married her second husband.”
“Maybe.” She crossed her legs and rested her elbow on a raised knee, cupped her chin in her hand. “Oh, I’m sure that was it. She just didn’t have to make it so damned obvious that Evan and I were part of the bad baggage she was only too happy to leave behind.”
“Did you live with your father then?”
“We did. Through his second and third marriages, then we both went to college.”
“You still talk to your dad?”
“Sometimes. Not the way I wish I could talk to him, or the way I wish I could talk to my mother, though.” She brushed away the tears. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I hadn’t planned on talking about me.”
“I’m glad you did.” He reached out and took her by the wrist, pulled her into his lap and just held her.
“Well, this is pretty pathetic, wouldn’t you say?” she tried to joke. “Talk about your dysfunctional families. There’s not one solid parent figure between the two of us.”
“And yet we’re both pretty solid, responsible people,” he told her. “How do you suppose that happened?”
“Some people just have something inside. You just want to be better than what you could have been.”
“That might be it.” He held on to her, feeling her soft breath against his throat.
“Do you think it’s possible to overcome all that, to move beyond it all and be truly happy, to fall in love?”
He didn’t respond at first. Then finally his fingers tightened on hers, and he said, “I think it’s not only possible, I think it’s necessary. I think in the end, we all want to believe the future will be better than the past. You just have to be willing to take a chance, you know? Roll the dice and go with it.”
They sat in silence for a very long time.
Finally, she pushed herself up wearily and said, “I’m falling asleep. I have to get home.”
“I think you’re too tired to drive,” he said, his lips brushing the side of her face. “I think you should stay here.”
“Oh, let me guess.” She grinned, sitting up and making a point out of looking around the sparsely furnished house. “His and hers sleeping bags here at Camp Mercer?”
“Hey, I have a bed.” He tried to look wounded.
“Right. One of those inflatable mattress things, I’ll bet. Now, do you have the kind you blow up with a bicycle pump, or the kind that inflates itself?”
“Why don’t you come on upstairs and find out?” With one motion, he picked her up, rose from the chair, and swung her over his shoulder.
“Looks like I’m about to do just that . . .” She laughed as he headed toward the steps.
Amanda closed her eyes and held on to the moment. Maybe, just maybe, Sean was right. Maybe the future could be better than the past.
She was more than willing to roll the dice.
Vince Giordano sat on the edge of the hard wooden seat, his hands cuffed behind him, and looked around the infirmary where he was about to have his intake physical. He had spent an hour with his lawyer that morning, then spent the rest of the day facing reality.
This time, there would be no reprieve.
No one was coming to step forward with proof that a member of the law enforcement team that brought him in had planted evidence or had lied in their report. After all, half the Broeder police department had been at Crosby’s house—plus that hot FBI agent—when he’d been taken down.
Not even a chance of crying police brutality. He didn’t have a mark on him. They’d barely touched him.
Well, that was that. He’d had a good run, hadn’t he? And he’d come this close to his final target. He wondered if Channing had felt this same sense of letdown when he’d realized that that last target had eluded him.
And he wondered if Archer Lowell would do even as well, if he’d be equal to the task. He wondered if Archer Lowell would even try.
Well, shit, this was all his idea. He damn well better try. He damn well better succeed. He owes Curtis Channing. He owes me. . . .
It occurred to Vince that Lowell should be getting out