Fatal Deception (6 page)

“It’s an awful feeling,” she said.

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m sorry if I haven’t taken it seriously enough, that you have to live with worry the way you do.”

“I knew what I was signing on for.” He smiled down at her, seeming to study her face in great detail, before he placed one hand on her cheek and touched his lips to hers softly and reverently. “I’m thankful for every minute we get to spend together. Even when you’re driving me crazy, which is most of the time, they’re the best minutes I’ve ever spent with anyone.”

“I feel the same way, even when you’re driving me crazy with your anal-retentive freakazoidisms.”

Laughing, he maneuvered her against the wall of the shower and kissed her with more serious intent.

Sam looped her arms around his neck, pressed her breasts to his chest and hooked her leg around his. She ran her tongue back and forth over his bottom lip, drawing a gasp from him. “Make love to me, Nick.” As she said the words, Harry’s warning from earlier made her question whether she was still protected. But at that moment, all that mattered was being as close to Nick as possible.

With his hands on her bottom, he lifted her and brought her down on his erection, filling her the way only he could.

Absorbing the myriad sensations, she let her head fall back against the wall.

He took advantage of the opportunity to make a trail of love bites from her throat to her ear.

She almost warned him about leaving marks but realized she didn’t need to, because he certainly would’ve thought of that. He thought of everything.

With his hands still clutching her bottom, he took her on a slow ride.

She opened her eyes and found him watching her intently. Sliding her hand around the back of his neck, she drew him in for a kiss. “Nick,” she gasped when he went deep again. “Faster.”

He picked up the pace, and Sam had to remind herself to keep breathing as he drove her to a sudden, spectacular finish. She gripped his shoulders and held on tight when he pushed hard into her once more before shuddering in release. For a long moment afterward, he leaned against her, absorbing the trembling waves that continued to ripple through her.

“Sorry for being so rough.”

“You weren’t. I loved it.” She caressed his face and traced the outline of his sexy mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. I don’t know what happens to me when we’re together like this, but it’s never happened before you.”

Sam didn’t like to think about the women he’d been with before her. She didn’t know any of them, whereas her ex-husband had caused them nothing but trouble since she’d been with Nick. “Whatever it is, the same thing happens to me.”

He withdrew from her, and they finished their shower.

Sam dried her hair, brushed her teeth and got into bed a few minutes after him. As she did every night, she crawled into his arms and settled her head on his chest. She used to hate sleeping with someone else. Now she couldn’t bear to sleep without him.

“Are you going to tell me what was up with Harry earlier?”

“Why can’t you be one of those oblivious husbands who doesn’t pay attention to anything unless he’s getting laid?”

Nick laughed—hard. “Because you’ve already been married to that guy, and if I recall correctly, it didn’t work out so well.”

Sam poked him in the ribs, making him jolt. “That was a low blow.”

“Am I wrong?” he asked with a cocky grin.

“No comment.”

“So what gives with Harry?”

Resigned to being truthful with him when her inclination was to keep this—and almost everything else—to herself, like she did when she was married to passive-aggressive Peter, she said, “Harry was reminding me that the birth-control shot I had before the wedding is wearing off this week.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

He combed his fingers through her long hair, which Sam found comforting.

“So...what’re you thinking?” he asked after a long silence.

“It’s all I’ve thought about for months, but I still don’t know what to do.”

“I think about it all the time too.”

“I’m not as raw as I was right after it happened.” Her throat closed a bit, despite her fervent desire to keep this conversation from getting emotional. How was she supposed to ponder a potential pregnancy when she couldn’t even talk about it without bawling her head off? “But I think about our baby every day. I think about them all, but that one...”

“I know. Believe me. I know.” He tightened his hold on her, with one hand on the back of her head to keep her snuggled into his chest. “You don’t have to decide anything until you’re ready.”

“Well, we have to decide something or practice abstinence until we do.”

“I do not know this word of which you speak.”

Sam snorted out a laugh. “No, you don’t, do you?”

“You’ve spoiled me rotten in that regard, and now I have rather significant expectations.”

Sam appreciated the humor he was bringing to what was always an intense conversation.

“If you’re not ready to figure this out, get another three-month shot,” he said. “What’s three more months when we’ve got a lifetime to look forward to?”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“I’ve told you before, and I’ll continue to tell you—this is all about what you want. I want what you want.”

“And I want to give you the family you’ve never had.”

“I already have that, Samantha. If it was only you and me—and hopefully Scotty—I’d have more than I ever could’ve hoped for, more than I’ve ever had before.” He lifted her head from his chest and turned to face her while keeping one arm around her. “I need you to believe me when I tell you that. I don’t want you to feel any pressure from me on this.”

“I don’t. You’ve been your usual wonderful self about this situation from day one.”

“Will you do something for me?”

“Of course.”

“Will you talk to me about it and not keep it all inside like last time?”

Sam still felt guilty about getting the initial birth-control shot before she told him about it. But at that time, a few short weeks after the most devastating miscarriage of all, she hadn’t been thinking clearly, to say the least. “I promise I’ll talk to you. I’m sorry I didn’t last time.”

“That’s in the past. All that matters now is the future.”

“Until we decide what we’re doing, we should probably, you know, refrain...from any further nookie.”

“Wait...back up. What did you say?”

Sam dissolved into a fit of laughter at his horrified expression. “You heard me. If we decide to do this, I want it to be intentional and not something that happens by accident.”

He moved so he was on top of her. “So what you’re saying,” he said, peppering her neck with kisses, “is that until we decide one way or the other, there’s no more of this?” Flexing his hips, he entered her fully in one quick thrust.

“Nick!” she said, laughing. “We have to talk about this!”

“Yes, we do,” he said, kissing the protest off her lips. “And we will. But if we’re going on hiatus, I need one more dose to tide me over until we’re back to business as usual.”

Sam smoothed her hands over the firm muscles on his back, which flexed and strained as he made love to her. “Eventually we’ll become like regular married people and stop wanting to do this every day, won’t we?”

“God, I hope not.”

Sam floated on a cloud of amusement and desire and love, marveling at how he’d managed to get her through this difficult conversation with more laughter than tears. That was definitely a first.

He leaned his forehead against hers as his hips kept up a steady rhythm. “I’d willingly sacrifice everything I have, except for you, of course, to give you the baby you want so badly.”

“And I love you for that. If I didn’t already love you for a million other reasons, that alone would seal the deal.”

“Speaking of sealing the deal...” He hooked his arm under her leg, changing the angle. “What do you say we do this together?”

“I say give it your best shot.” Sam arched into him as the now-familiar rush of desire moved through her in a flash of heat that settled between her legs.

“You know how I love a challenge.”

And didn’t he manage, through the creative use of every tool in his arsenal, to send them tripping into climax at the exact same instant.

Sam would be tired in the morning, but as she thought of Derek Kavanaugh and his horrible loss, she held her husband a little tighter, filled with the strength his love gave her to face whatever tomorrow might bring.

Chapter Five

Long after Nick was asleep, Sam thought about Victoria, Maeve, Derek, the birth-control dilemma and a hundred other things. When her mind raced like this, sleep was all but out of the question. Moving slowly so she wouldn’t disturb Nick, she slipped out of bed and crossed the hall to her closet to find some sweats and a T-shirt.

With the help of her sisters, she was slowly but surely replacing the clothes—including her gorgeous, one-of-a-kind wedding dress—that her ex-friend Melissa had slashed during a recent investigation. Last she’d heard, Melissa was undergoing psychological evaluations to determine whether she was mentally fit to stand trial on multiple murder charges as well as breaking and entering, vandalism and a host of other counts. Sam had her doubts about the woman’s mental fitness, but all she cared about was that Melissa was off the streets after she’d killed most of the people who’d “done her wrong” in her life.

As Sam went downstairs, she thought of that wild afternoon here in their house during which Freddie had discharged his weapon for the first time in the line of duty. He’d shot Melissa’s hand right off her arm to keep her from detonating the bomb she’d strapped to her chest. Pouring herself a glass of ice water, Sam shuddered as she remembered that day. She and Nick along with her entire squad had nearly been wiped off the planet. Thanks to Freddie’s quick thinking, they’d averted disaster and caught a killer.

“Just another day at the office,” she muttered to herself, seeking to lighten her dark thoughts. In the study, Sam fired up Nick’s computer and logged in to her MPD e-mail account to see if there were any updates from third shift on the search for Maeve. Nothing so far. “Damn it.” The longer they went without finding the child... “Stop thinking that way. Being defeatist won’t help anything.”

Taking advantage of the quiet time to dig into the details, she began with the most basic tool available—an Internet search. She searched for Victoria Taft, Victoria Taft Kavanaugh and Victoria Kavanaugh. The first references to Victoria Taft came in press releases issued more than five years ago from Calahan Rice, a K Street lobby firm that catered to the automobile industry.

Sam wrote down the name and address of the firm and read through some of the releases that bore Victoria’s name as a point of contact. The search engines also led to the announcement of Victoria and Derek’s wedding in the
Post
and
Star
. Victoria’s parents were listed as “the late Greg and Betty Taft of Defiance, Ohio.” Sam took down their names as well.

The wedding had been at Sewall Belmont House, near Capitol Hill. Sam added a note to ask Nick what he recalled from Derek and Victoria’s wedding day to her to-do list. Harry was Derek’s best man, and a woman named Felicity Rider had been the maid of honor. Sam added her to the list of people she wanted to speak with.

She went next to the site of Bryn Mawr, a small women’s college in Pennsylvania. Sam wondered why anyone would want to attend an all-female college, but she supposed it appealed to some women. Not her, of course. When she read through the information about the school, the words became scrambled as her dyslexia reminded her that she was beyond tired. Locating the link to the alumni association, Sam looked for an e-mail address and dashed off a message indicating she was investigating a homicide and looking for information about Victoria Taft along with Victoria’s year of graduation and fields of study.

When she’d read everything she could find about Victoria, which wasn’t much, she switched over to Derek. The results of his search were many pages long, full of references to his involvement in legislation sponsored first by Senator Nelson and then President Nelson. Fighting her way through the jumble of words that swam before her exhausted eyes, she discovered that as the president’s second-ranking aide, Derek served as the White House liaison to Congress.

From everything she read about him, he seemed well regarded by congressional members on both sides of the aisle and by his boss, who’d recognized him with several letters of commendation. Derek had been the White House’s critical behind-the-scenes player in brokering the landmark immigration legislation that was the hallmark of Nelson’s first term.

The Senate had been due to vote on that same bill, sponsored by Nick’s then-boss Senator John O’Connor, on the day O’Connor was murdered. That was the same day Sam reconnected with Nick after a memorable one-night stand six years earlier. They’d been together ever since.
Hard to believe
, she thought as fatigue tugged at her, that was only eight months ago.

References to Derek dated back to his high school sports triumphs, his induction into multiple honor societies, four years as vice president of his class at Yale and a paper he coauthored while attending the JFK School of Government at Harvard. She found a link to his brother, Kevin Kavanaugh, a DEA agent.

“Wonderful,” Sam muttered, expecting the brother to show up any second and insert himself into her investigation.

Only when she couldn’t power through the dyslexia or keep her eyes open for another second did Sam shut down the computer and trudge upstairs. A glance at the beside clock told her it was 4:13 a.m. Suppressing a groan, she stripped off her clothes and slid back into bed with her husband.

Curling up to him, she sighed with pleasure when he pulled her closer to him in his sleep, as if he needed her near him even in slumber.

As she tried to quiet her busy mind, she reviewed what she’d learned about the Kavanaughs. Odd, wasn’t it, that the available information about Derek dated back to high school, whereas Victoria’s life seemed to begin with a job at a D.C. lobby firm. Before Sam could ponder that thought any further, she dropped off the cliff into sleep.