The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [149]
I could handle it, I reminded myself. I was tough. I’d gotten through my pregnancy alone, I’d given birth alone. I’d endured twenty-five long, lonely weeks at the live-in Police Academy, missing Sophie with every breath I took but determined not to quit because becoming a state police officer was the best shot I had to provide a future for my daughter. I’d been allowed to return home to Sophie every Friday night, but I also had to leave her crying with Mrs. Ennis every Monday morning. Week after week after week, until I thought I’d scream from the pressure. But I did it. Anything for Sophie. Always for Sophie.
Still, I started checking e-mail more often because if Brian was in port he’d send us a quick note, or attach a silly picture of a moose in the middle of some Alaskan main street. By the sixth week, I realized I was happier the days he e-mailed, tenser the days he didn’t. And Sophie was, too. We huddled together over the computer each night, two pretty girls waiting to hear from their man.
Then finally, the call. Brian’s ship had docked in Ferndale, Washington. He’d be discharged the day after tomorrow, and would be catching the red-eye back to Boston. Could he take us to dinner?
Sophie selected her favorite dark blue dress. I wore the orange sundress from the Fourth of the July cookout, topped with a sweater in deference to the November chill.
Sophie, keeping lookout from the front window, spotted him first. She squealed in delight and raced down the apartment steps so fast I thought she’d fall. Brian barely caught her at the end of the walk. He scooped her up, whirled her around. She laughed and laughed and laughed.
I approached more quietly, taking the time for a last minute tuck of my hair, buttoning my light sweater. I stepped through the front door of the apartment complex. Shut it firmly behind me.
Then I turned and studied him. Took him in from eight feet away. Drank him up.
Brian stopped twirling Sophie. Now he stood at the end of the walk, my child still in his arms, and he studied me, too.
We didn’t touch. We didn’t say a word. We didn’t have to.
Later, after dinner, after he brought us back to his place, after I tucked Sophie into the bed across the hall, I walked into his bedroom. I stood before him, and let him peel the sweater from my arms, the sundress from my body. I placed my hands against his bare chest. I tasted the salt on the column of his throat.
“Eight weeks was too long,” he muttered thickly. “I want you here, Tessa. Dammit, I want to know I’m coming home to you always.”
I placed his hands upon my breasts, arching into the feel of his fingers.
“Marry me,” he whispered. “I mean it, Tessa. I want you to be my wife. I want Sophie to be my daughter. You and her should be living here with me and Duke. We should be a family.”
I tasted his skin again. Slid my hands down his body, pressed the full length of my bare skin against his bare skin. Shivered at the contact. Except it wasn’t enough. The feel of him, the taste of him. I needed him against me, I needed him above me, I needed him inside me. I needed him everywhere, right now, this instant.
I dragged him down to the bed, wrapping my legs around his waist. Then he was sliding inside my body and I groaned, or maybe he groaned, but it didn’t really matter. He was where I needed him to be.
At the last moment, I caught his face between my hands so I could look into his eyes as the first wave crashed over us.
“Marry me,” he repeated. “I’ll be a good husband, Tessa. I’ll take care of you and Sophie.”
He moved inside of me and I sighed, and I said: “Yes.”
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