The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [106]
She sat on the edge of the king-size bed, her knees not far from him. They had been through a lot, but neither of them knew how to put it into words. She’d slept with him, but she didn’t know how to ask him to hold her. She’d cried on his shoulder, but she didn’t know how to offer him comfort.
“Are you going to stare at me all night?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re giving me the jitters.”
“Why did we come to a hotel? Why didn’t we go straight to the police?”
J.T. was silent for a moment. “Because they’re the police.”
“You don’t trust them?”
“No, I guess I don’t. Big Bad Jim seems to know how to run circles around them. We’re better off on our own.”
“Your arm is busted, I almost died. Care to say that again?”
“And we both lived to tell the tale. So far that puts our records way ahead of the police.”
“J.T., he has my daughter.”
“We’ll find him.”
“How?” She could hear the hysteria in her voice. “Place an ad in the yellow pages? Read tea leaves?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” She was screaming at him now. She didn’t mean to scream.
“Tess, I’m not fucking Superman! I don’t have all the answers. I’m making it up as fast as I can.” J.T. slammed out another cigarette and promptly snapped it in two. “Shit,” he said, and reached for another. “What time is it?”
“Three A.M.! He has had my daughter for over twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours and we have nothing!”
“We know he’s in the area. We forced him to take a risk returning to the crime scene. Sooner or later he’ll screw up.”
“Oh, that’s a fine strategy. The police have been using it for the last three years with such success as well.”
“Fine, Tess.” Now his voice was cold. “What do you suggest?”
“I . . . I . . .” She didn’t know. She just wanted Jim dead. And she wanted to hold Samantha in her arms again.
She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and raked her hand through her hair. Suddenly she was too tired to think. The pain ran too deep, sapped all the strength from her until she was simply a hollow husk. Her daughter was out there alone. She was sitting in a cheap roadside motel, not knowing what to do. Her head hurt unbearably and J.T. was right, he was not Superman. She was foolish and silly to expect so much from him.
You have to learn to stand on your own. You have to be strong. You have to pull it together and get your daughter back.
She stood and held out her hand. “Come to bed.”
J.T. snarled, “Well, sweetheart, I do try hard to be accommodating, but even my talents are limited by the loss of an arm.”
“I didn’t ask you to fuck me,” she said bluntly. “I know you’re not angry enough to do that.”
His black eyes widened, then narrowed dangerously. “If I screw you out of anger, what makes you so hot for me?”
“Lust. Pure lust. Isn’t that what you want to hear?”
He didn’t reply. And he didn’t accept her out-stretched hand. She shook her head, disgusted with them both. Why couldn’t he understand that for a woman like her, there was no such thing as simple lust. Even when she wished there was.
She grabbed his right hand because she knew he’d never take hers, and with a fierce jerk she brought him to his feet.
He towered over her, his face no longer passive and no longer unreadable.
“I changed my mind,” he murmured. “I’m angry enough after all.”
“Like hell.” She pushed him back on the bed. “You’re going to lie there, keep that ice on your arm, and do exactly as I say.”
She placed both her knees on the bed, the mattress sagging dangerously. J.T. was still watching her through heavy-lidded eyes. She reached across to the bedside lamp and snapped it off.
“I prefer seeing,” he commented.
Her breasts were brushing his chest. She drew back carefully, not wanting to prolong the contact but not wanting to disturb his arm. “Sleep.”
“Sleep?”
“It’s as good a skill as any, remember?”
“Only until eight A.M.”
“Fine. Only until eight.”
“HE’S GOTTA HAVE someone watching Sam,” J.T. was insisting. “A relative we don’t know about. An old friend. An unwitting accomplice. He couldn’t just leave her alone to return to Difford