sounded like a petulant child? This was her fiancé they were discussing, even if the entire conversation bordered on ludicrous.
A cocky grin canted his mouth. “You’ll get tired of him within a year.”
She didn’t appreciate his smirk in the least. “That just goes to show how little you know me.”
“Oh, I know you, sweetheart.” He leaned forward suddenly and reached across the space separating them to rest his hand on her knee. Her skin tingled.
“I know you like it on top,” he said in that low, husky voice normally reserved for late nights in front of the fireplace. “I know you like it hot and nasty.”
She shoved his hand away, not because she didn’t like him touching her, but she wasn’t exactly thrilled that her body responded to him when she was engaged to marry another man. “That was a long time ago. Besides, there’s more to a marriage than great sex.”
He rested his hands on his knees and gave her a smug, I-know-better look. “I’ll bet Atwood doesn’t make love to you like you need to be made love to, either. All you’ll get out of him will be a duty fuck because it’s the expected method of reproduction, not because it drives him crazy to see you go wild with desire. And not because he knows how to make you cry out with pleasure.”
She shot out of the chair and circled the bed. “You’re out of line, Jared. Way out of line. You don’t know me anymore.”
He was the second person in one day to make the same basic assessment of her fiancé. First her secretary and now Jared. Leland was a good man. He had staying power, and a strong sense of right and wrong. They didn’t come any straighter than Leland Atwood.
“Within a year he’ll have you knocked up and then you’ll be lucky to get laid until he’s deemed it’s time for the next kid. The picture of the perfect family to show off to the world while he waits for an appointment to the Supreme Court,” he continued. “And you’ll go along with it because of some misguided sense of what happiness is, but you know what? You’ll be dying inside. Little by little, the woman you were will disappear. Because Atwood, for all his drive to succeed, doesn’t know a thing about the woman you are, or have the first clue about what you need.”
She turned and looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Oh, and you do?”
That cocky grin was back for the sole purpose of setting her teeth on edge. “I never heard you complaining.”
“That’s because you were never around long enough,” she retorted.
His grin faded and she felt a small sense of satisfaction.
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“Even before you…disappeared, you weren’t around much.” Weeks, sometimes months would go by without a single word from him. While she was at work, occasionally her mind would wander and she’d always send up a little prayer that he was safe. But the nights? Oh, those were the longest, and the hardest. When she had nothing else to occupy her mind, alone in bed with nothing but the darkness surrounding her, she’d envisioned one horrific scene after another until he came home again. They lived together for nearly a year before he ran, but in that time, she could probably count the weeks they’d actually been together on two hands.
“It was my job, Peyton. You know that.”
“A job you never talked about. I knew what you did was dangerous, but you never once told me what it was you were doing when you’d be gone for weeks at a time.”
God, why were they even having this conversation? What did it matter to her what Jared did? He no longer had that kind of hold on her.
“You know I couldn’t talk about my assignments.”
“Something, Jared. Anything would have been preferable to the constant fear and worry that you were never coming home. When you did finally disappear, it was almost a relief because I knew then that you wouldn’t be back.”
He came out of the chair and walked toward her, his eyes as thunderous as his expression. “You sure as hell didn’t do anything to stop it. You invited the bastards into my own home. Our home.”
Once again, they’d come full circle and were back at square one. Anger nipped at her and she snapped, “I didn’t have a choice!”
“So you keep saying.”
She balled her hands into tight fists and kept them at her side as she stared him down. “If I’d let you explain, if you’d told me anything, anything, it would have been used against you. They were going to charge you with murder, Jared. The kind that would have had you strapped down to a table with a needle in your arm and a big burly guard pressing a large round green button. I’m sorry, but once the death penalty has been carried out, there’s no way to reverse it. And you are a prime candidate for lethal injection, based on the evidence I’ve seen.
“If I didn’t cooperate, they could have prosecuted me for harboring, or aiding and abetting. We weren’t married, we were only living together. Only a wife has the privilege of not testifying against her husband, which means you weren’t afforded that protection under the law.”
“I didn’t kill Dysert or Santiago,” he roared.
“So you keep saying,” she shouted back. “But where’s the evidence to the contrary? I’m a lawyer, Jared. A prosecutor for the United States. I know solid evidence when I see it.”
He let out a harsh breath. “You think I’m guilty.” He didn’t question, he stated.
She sighed and fought for a calm she was nowhere near feeling. After he’d disappeared, she’d striven for order so she could survive yet another nightmare in her life. In a matter of hours, his presence had shot all her efforts for the past three years straight to hell.
No surprises. What a joke.
Nothing too emotional. Calm and serene had become painful and chaotic all over again.
“I don’t know what to think.” She struggled for an even tone. “You haven’t told me anything. Nor have you told me why you brought me here.” She lifted her hand to stop him from interrupting. “You keep saying it’s dangerous for me, but how do you know that? Why would they come after me? As far as anyone knows, we haven’t seen each other since the night you took off without a trace.”
“They’re going to use you to get to me.”
“If that’s true, then what are you doing here?” she asked. “Anywhere near me should be the last place you’d want to be.”
“I know what they’re capable of,” he said. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at her. Pain flashed in his eyes and her heart twisted. “I’m here because I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
She sat beside him and reached for his hand. “It’s been three years, Jared. It doesn’t make sense that they’d bother with me now. Besides, after the first few months, the FBI finally left me alone. You didn’t fail me, Jared. You failed yourself, and the law.”
He laced his fingers with hers. “Yeah, it does make sense. This is a game I’ve played before. I failed then, but I swear to you, Peyton, I won’t fail this time.”
Something in his voice frightened her. Whether it was the cold determination or the hollow sense of dread, she couldn’t decide, but figured they both deserved equal attention. “I don’t understand.”
He turned his head to look at her. “No,” he said. “It’s not you I failed.”
Caution and dread warred inside her. Whatever he was about to tell her was big, that much she knew for certain. “Then who?”
“My wife.”
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