Heartbreaker (28 page)

"You're very lucky, Mr. Rafferty,"
Dr. Norris said, looking over his glasses. "Your cheekbone seems to have
absorbed most of the impact. It's fractured, of course, but the orbital bone is
intact. Nor does there seem to be any damage to the eye itself, or any loss of
sight. In other words, you have a hell of a shiner."

Michelle drew a deep breath of relief,
squeezing John's hand. He winked at her with his right eye, then drawled,
"So I've spent four days in a hospital because I have a black eye?"

Dr. Norris grinned. "Call it a
vacation."

"Well, vacation's over, and I'm checking
out of the resort."

"Just take it easy for the next few
days. Remember that you have stitches in your head, your cheekbone is
fractured, and you had a mild concussion."

"I'll keep an eye on him," Michelle
said with a note of warning in her voice, looking at John very hard. He was
probably planning to get on a horse as soon as he got home.

When they were alone again John put his hands
behind his head, watching her with a distinct glitter in his eyes. After four
days the swelling around his eye had subsided enough that he could open it a
tiny slit, enough for him to see with it again. His face was still a mess,
discolored in varying shades of black and purple, with a hint of green creeping
in, but none of that mattered beside the fact that his eye was all right.
"This has been a long four days," he murmured. ''When we get home,
I'm taking you straight to bed."

Her blood started running wild through her
veins again, and she wondered briefly if she would always have this
uncontrolled response to him. She'd been completely vulnerable to him from the
start, and her reaction now was even stronger. Her body was changing as his baby
grew within her, invisible changes as yet, but her skin seemed to be more
sensitive, more responsive to his lightest touch. Her breasts throbbed
slightly, aching for the feel of his hands and mouth.

She had decided not to tell him about the
baby just yet, especially not while his eyesight was still in doubt, and had
been at pains during the past four days to keep her uneasy stomach under
control. She munched on crackers almost constantly, and had stopped drinking
coffee because it made the nausea worse.

She could still see the hard satisfaction
that had filled his face when she'd told him she loved him, but he hadn't
returned the words. For a horrible moment she'd wondered if he was gloating,
but he'd kissed her so hard and hungrily that she had dismissed the notion even
though she'd felt a lingering pain. That night, after the lights were out and
she was lying on the cot that had been brought in, he had said,
"Michelle."

His voice was low, and he hadn't moved. She'd
lifted her head to stare through the darkness at him. "Yes?"

"I love you," he had said quietly.

Tremors shook her, and tears leaped to her
eyes, but they were happy tears. "I'm glad," she had managed to say.

He'd laughed in the darkness. "You
little tease, just wait until I get my hands on you again."

"I can't wait."

Now he was all right, and they were going
home. She called Nev to come pick them up, then hung up the phone with hands
that had become damp. She wiped them on her slacks and lifted her chin.
"Have you heard if Deputy Phelps has found a lead on Roger yet?"

John had been dressing, but at her words his
head snapped around and his good eye narrowed on her. Slowly he zipped his
jeans and fastened them, then walked around the bed to tower over her
threateningly. Michelle's gaze didn't waver, nor did she lower her chin, even
though she abruptly felt very small and helpless.

He didn't say anything, but simply waited,
his mouth a hard line beneath his mustache. "I eavesdropped," she
said calmly. "I had already made the connection between the phone calls
and the guy who forced me off the road, but how did you tie everything
together?"

"Just an uneasy feeling and a lot of
suspicions," he said. "After that last call, I wanted to make certain
I knew where he was. There were too many loose ends, and Andy couldn't find him
on any airline's overseas passenger list. The harder Beckman was to find, the
more suspicious it looked."

"You didn't believe me at first, about
the blue Chevrolet."

He sighed. "No, I didn't. Not at first.
I'm sorry. It was hard for me to face the fact that anyone would want to hurt
you. But something was bothering you. You didn't want to drive, you didn't want
to leave the ranch at all, but you wouldn't talk about it. That's when I began
to realize you were scared."

Her green eyes went dark. "Terrified is a
better word," she whispered, looking out the window. "Have you heard
from Phelps?"

"No. He wouldn't call here unless he'd
found Beckman."

She shivered, the strained look coming back
into her face. "He tried to kill you. I should have known, I should have
done something."

"What could you have done?" he
asked roughly. "If you'd been with me that day, the bullet would have hit
you, instead of just shattering the windshield."

"He's so jealous he's insane."
Thinking of Roger made her feel sick, and she pressed her hand to her stomach.
"He's truly insane. He probably went wild when I moved in with you. The
first couple of phone calls, he didn't say anything at all. Maybe he had just
been calling to see if I answered the phone at your house. He couldn't stand
for me to even talk to any other man, and when he found out that you and
I—" She broke off, a fine sheen of perspiration on her face.

Gently John pulled her to him, pressing her
head against his shoulder while he soothingly stroked her hair. "I wonder
how he found out."

"Bitsy Sumner," Michelle said
shakily.

"The airhead we met in the
restaurant?"

"That airhead is the biggest gossip I
know."

"If he's that far off his rocker, he
probably thinks he's finally found the 'other man' after all these years."

She jumped, then gave a tight little laugh.
"He has."

"What?" His voice was startled.

She eased away from him and pushed her hair
back from her face with a nervous gesture. "It's always been you,"
she said in a low voice, looking anywhere except at him. "I couldn't love
him the way I should have, and somehow he…seemed to know it."

He put his hand on her chin and forced her
head around. "You acted like you hated me, damn it."

"I had to have some protection from
you." Her green eyes regarded him with a little bitterness. "You had
women falling all over you, women with a lot more experience, and who were a
lot prettier. I was only eighteen, and you scared me to death. People called
you 'Stud!' I knew I couldn't handle a man like you, even if you'd ever looked
at me twice."

"I looked," he said harshly.
"More than twice. But you turned your nose up at me as if you didn't like
my smell, so I left you alone, even though I wanted you so much my guts were
tied in knots. I built that house for you, because you were used to a lot
better than the old house I was living in. I built the swimming pool because
you liked to swim. Then you married some fancy-pants rich guy, damn you, and I
felt like tearing the place down stone by stone."

Her lips trembled. "If I couldn't have
you, it didn't matter who I married."

"You could have had me."

"As a temporary bed partner? I was so
young I thought I had to have it all or nothing. I wanted forever after, for
better or worse, and your track record isn't that of a marrying man.
Now…" She shrugged, then managed a faint smile. "Now all that
doesn't matter."

Hard anger crossed his face, then he said,
"That's what you think," and covered her mouth with his. She opened
her lips to him, letting him take all he wanted. The time was long past when
she could deny him anything, any part of herself. Even their kisses had been
restrained for the past four days, and the hunger was so strong in him that it
overwhelmed his anger, he kissed her as if he wanted to devour her, his strong
hands kneading her flesh with barely controlled ferocity, and she reveled in
it. She didn't fear his strength or his roughness, because they sprang from
passion and aroused an answering need inside her.

Her nails dug into his bare shoulders as her
head fell back, baring her throat for his mouth. His hips moved rhythmically,
rubbing the hard ridge of his manhood against her as his self-control slipped.
Only the knowledge that a nurse could interrupt them at any moment gave him the
strength to finally ease away from her, his breath coming hard and fast. The
way he felt now was too private, too intense, for him to allow even the chance
of anyone walking in on them.

"Nev had better hurry," he said
roughly, unable to resist one more kiss. Her lips were pouty and swollen from
his kisses, her eyes half-closed and drugged with desire; that look aroused him
even more, because he had put it there.

Michelle slipped out of the bedroom, her
clothes in her hand. She didn't want to take a chance on waking John by
dressing in the bedroom; he had been sleeping heavily since the accident, but
she didn't want to push her luck. She had to find Roger. He had missed killing
John once; he might not miss the second time. And she knew John; if he made
even a pretense of following the doctor's order to take it easy, she'd be
surprised. No, he would be working as normal, out in the open and vulnerable.

He had talked to Deputy Phelps the night
before, but all Andy had come up with was that a blue Chevrolet had been rented
to a man generally matching Roger's physical description, and calling himself
Edward Walsh. The familiar cold chill had gone down Michelle's spine. "Edward
is Roger's middle name," she had whispered. "Walsh was his mother's
maiden name." John had stared at her for a long moment before relaying the
information to Andy.

She wouldn't allow Roger another opportunity
to hurt John. Oddly, she wasn't afraid for herself. She had already been
through so much at Roger's hands that she simply couldn't be afraid any longer,
but she was deathly afraid for John, and for this new life she carried. She
couldn't let this go on.

Lying awake in the darkness, she had suddenly
known how to find him. She didn't know exactly where he was, but she knew the
general vicinity; all she had to do was bait the trap, and he would walk into
it. The only problem was that she was the bait, and she would be in the trap
with him.

She left a note for John on the kitchen table
and ate a cracker to settle her stomach. To be on the safe side, she carried a
pack of crackers with her as she slipped silently out the back door. If her
hunch was right, she should be fairly safe until someone could get there. Her
hand strayed to her stomach. She had to be right.

The Mercedes started with one turn of the
ignition key, its engine smooth and quiet. She put it in gear and eased it down
the driveway without putting on the lights, hoping she wouldn't wake Edie or
any of the men.

Her ranch was quiet, the old house sitting
silent and abandoned under the canopy of big oak trees. She unlocked the door
and let herself in, her ears straining to hear every noise in the darkness. It
would be dawn within half an hour; she didn't have much time to bait the trap
and lure Roger in before Edie would find the note on the table and wake John.

Her hand shook as she flipped on the light in
the foyer. The interior of the house jumped into focus, light and shadow
rearranging themselves into things she knew as well as she knew her own face.
Methodically she walked around, turning on the lights in the living room, then
moving into her father's office, then the dining room, then the kitchen. She
pulled the curtains back from the windows to let the lights shine through like
beacons, which she meant them to be.

She turned on the lights in the laundry room,
and in the small downstairs apartment used by the housekeeper a long time ago,
when there had been a housekeeper. She went upstairs and turned on the lights
in her bedroom, where John had taken her for the first time and made it
impossible for her to ever be anything but his. Every light went on, both
upstairs and downstairs, piercing the predawn darkness. Then she sat down on
the bottom step of the stairs and waited. Soon someone would come. It might be
John, in which case he would be furious, but she suspected it would be Roger.

The seconds slipped past, becoming minutes.
Just as the sky began to take on the first gray tinge of daylight, the door
opened and he walked in.

She hadn't heard a car, which meant she had
been right in thinking he was close by. Nor had she heard his steps as he
crossed the porch. She had no warning until he walked through the door, but,
oddly, she wasn't startled. She had known he would be there.

"Hello, Roger," she said calmly.
She had to remain calm.

He had put on a little weight in the two
years since she had seen him, and his hair was a tad thinner, but other than
that he looked the same. Even his eyes still looked the same, too sincere and
slightly mad. The sincerity masked the fact that his mind had slipped, not far
enough that he couldn't still function in society, but enough that he could
conceive of murder and be perfectly logical about it, as if it were the only
thing to do.