The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [64]
Finally receiving proper guidance, the bullet fired straight and true. It buried itself into the outer ring of the target.
“Oh, my God, would you look at that!”
“See,” his voice rumbled in her ear. “It’s not so hard.”
She whispered, “Again.”
She emptied the clip. Each time, his body contracted around hers, halting her natural flinch, compensating for her mistake. They went through another clip, and the hay bale took a beating.
“Good,” J.T. said. He stepped back, but his hands remained on her shoulders. After a moment his fingers squeezed her stiff muscles, rubbing her down like a star athlete. She closed her eyes and let her head fall forward. He made her feel relaxed, he made her feel loose. He made her feel as if she could do anything.
“All right,” he said. His hands fell away. She tried not to moan. “Now it’s time to try solo. It’s just like before. Stay relaxed. Point and shoot. The gun is just a tool in your hand.”
“A tool,” she repeated obediently.
“A tool. You own it, Tess, you control it. It doesn’t control you.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled through her nostrils. She positioned her feet and raised the gun. She closed her eyes.
The gun was a natural extension of her hand. Her tool, for her to control, for her to use. She didn’t have to pull the trigger unless she wanted to. That was strength. The power to choose.
She chose to pull the trigger. One, two, three, four, five.
And the paper target went flying.
She stared. She was so stunned, she couldn’t even move. And then she turned to him, and she smiled with one thousand watts of triumph.
“Did you see that!” she cried, and pointed with her left hand just in case he’d somehow slept through the occasion. “Did you see that!”
He smiled at her calmly and nodded. “You hit it. All on your own, you hit it.”
And then he did something she never would have imagined him doing. He reached over and shook her hand.
She couldn’t say a word. She felt his firm, reassuring grip. She returned it with one of her own. Bad ass to bad ass. She’d done it.
Then she grinned at him and whooped. “I killed the hay bale! I killed the hay bale!”
She unceremoniously handed him the gun and raced to the long-suffering straw to inspect her work.
J.T. WATCHED HER go. She hunkered down beside the bale of straw and promptly stuck her finger in a blackened hole like a little kid. Her hair burned like copper wire beneath the sun. It matched her smile, bright, brilliant, and intense enough to make a man look twice.
She found another hole and poked her finger in that one too. God, the grin on her face!
When had she become so beautiful? She looked over at him and smiled again. Then she rested her head against her big-game trophy and he had to blink his eyes against the tightness in his chest.
In this moment she looked perfect, the way she should have looked from the beginning. She was vital and radiant, earthy and innocent.
It was the kind of moment a man should record on film and carry with him in his pocket to remember on other, darker occasions.
His mind, relentless and ruthless as always, filled in the other snapshots to come. Tess sprawled facedown on a carpet, face bruised and pulpy from a baseball bat. Body outlined in white chalk. Clothes torn and ripped.
He looked away. He focused on the dirt.
No, he thought. It won’t come to that. She was tougher than that. The police were smarter than that. Hell, maybe Jim Beckett was already out of the country, sipping planter’s punch in the Bahamas.
But he didn’t believe any of it.
Goddamn, he wanted a drink.
He thought sobriety was supposed to be good, making a man clear-headed, sharp, focused. For him it was the opposite. He couldn’t sleep at night. He was constantly edgy, and his mind was drowning beneath the weight of images he could no longer control.
Maybe a guy like him was meant to be drunk. Maybe a guy like him could only really function with the edge worn off.
He noticed things like Marion’s cutting comments. He remembered things like the dreams he’d had when