Lady Liberty (35 page)

She stopped near the staircase, secretly thrilled that he had called her by name. Not that it meant anything. But it could mean something, couldn’t it?

Good God, you’re neurotic. Clutching at straws.

She looked back over the slope of her shoulder at him.

“When you can, give Gabby a call. I’m sure word that you’re alive will be all over the news soon, if it isn’t already—the president might even have called her—but she probably needs to hear your voice.” Longing lit in his eyes. “I would.”

If their positions were reversed, so would she. “I will.”
Gabby would be obsessing, but how did Jonathan know it? “Jonathan, how often do you and Gabby chat?”

“Every couple weeks.” He leaned against the door frame. “Being a judge is hard on her.”

“It is,” Sybil agreed. “She’s used to a far more active life.”

“She’s hooked on danger,” he amended, putting it more bluntly. “So we talk, she gets it out of her system, and then she goes back to her courtroom, grateful for her quiet life.”

Jealousy and envy streaked through Sybil. It stunned her—that she felt it at all, much less so intensely, and—of all people—toward Gabby. “You two are close then?” He clearly knew she was assigned to covert ops.

“We’re friends.” Jonathan grunted. “Frankly, the woman’s a pain in the ass.”

“She’s my best friend, Westford.” Sybil gave him a warning glare. “The closest thing to family I have.”

“True, but she’s still a pain in the ass.” He didn’t seem fazed by her tone or her glare. Actually, he seemed to find both amusing.

“Excuse me?” Was he teasing her? Unable to tell for sure, she followed a hunch. “You like her.”

“About as much as an aching tooth.”

An aching tooth?
Totally lost, Sybil searched for an explanation, and hoped his next remark wouldn’t be as confusing as his last one. “She annoys the hell out of you, asking questions you don’t want to answer?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Ah, now she had it. “But when she stops nagging you, you miss her.”

He nodded. “Yourself aside, have you ever met anyone else as opinionated or bossy? Or as full of spit and vinegar?”

Since he’d put Sybil in the same category, she resented that remark. Or she would, if she understood it. Yet coming on the heels of an aching tooth, it didn’t sound like the
words of a man toward any woman he considered a romantic interest. That lifted her spirits. “Spit and vinegar?”

“Sorry. Parental influence,” he said. “She’s sassy”

Gabby was sassy. “And sloppy.” Sybil smiled. “I used to hate wading through her clutter. Wherever she took something off, that’s where it fell and stayed until I read her the riot act.” Now Sybil lived alone, and nothing was ever out of place. She hated that, too.

“She’s not happy”

“She hasn’t mentioned being unhappy. I’d understand her hating Florida’s humidity. Honestly, Jonathan, the weather there is miserable. But I thought she loved being a judge.” Sybil stuck to Gabby’s cover.

“She does. She’s damn good at it, too.” He said it too quickly for it to be anything except an innate reaction.

“You sound shocked.”

“I was,” he admitted. “She’s as opinionated as a bullet, Sybil.”

She was, and always had been. So had Sybil.

“But, to tell you the truth, I’ve been a little worried about her.” He leaned a shoulder against the wall. “She really is unhappy”

He definitely knew Gabby was a covert operative under Conlee’s command. But they hadn’t ever worked together. Sybil knew that as fact. Gabby was kept separate from everyone in and outside the system and only worked special projects. How had Jonathan found…? Ah, of course, Conlee would have shared her bio. Jonathan was ready to step in for Conlee, should the need arise, and Gabby had spent time with Sybil and Austin while Jonathan had been assigned to her detail. “When I call her, would you like to say hi?”

“No, I’m not in the mood for an inquisition. You tell her we’ve been in the swamp for a couple days, and she’s going to nag you to death with questions.”

Did Gabby pull her matchmaker-from-hell routine on
him, too? Wishing she knew exactly what he meant, she wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t get nagged. I’m the veep. Too many secrets.”

“Right.”

Sybil smiled at his sarcasm. Nothing so mundane as her position would keep Gabby from nagging or plying her with questions. “Can I give her a message from you?”

He thought a moment. “Tell her I’m breathing and she owes me fifty.”

“You made a fifty-dollar bet with her?”

“I won.” He smiled. “That’ll drive her nuts.”

“I’m going to have to work on you to be nice to my friend.”

“I started being nice to her
because
she was your friend,” he countered. “But Gabby grows on you.”

“So does bacteria, but that doesn’t mean you like it.”

“I like her.” He looked from the doorway back to Sybil. “She loves you.”

“It’s mutual. She’s been an important person in my life. My best friend.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “So who should I remind you to call so they can hear your voice and know you’re okay?”

“No one.” He looked away, studied the ceiling. “With the job, I don’t have much time to develop friendships.”

No one? He had no one? “Crazy hours, huh?”

“Bitchy bosses.”

He
was
teasing her. “Those, too.” And he was trying to change the subject. Jonathan did that a lot, whenever she got too close to the bone of something he didn’t want to look at up close. “I’m sorry you haven’t had a Gabby in your life.”

“Me, too.” He looked vulnerable, hurt, and he trusted her enough to risk letting her see it.

Taking a leap of faith, she walked back to him, lifted a hand to his forearm. “I’ll be your friend, Jonathan.”

He stared at her a long moment, looking torn between
opening up and totally shutting down, and then he sighed. “I’d be the luckiest man alive if it were that easy, Sybil.”

The hallway light shone on his face. He dipped his chin to look at her, casting shadows on the wall, on her, and she had the strangest feeling that he had loved long and hard and the woman had never known it. Could anyone really be loved like that and not know it?

Maybe, but it wasn’t going to be her. She was going to risk the fall and settle this woman versus the veep debate inside her head. “But it’s not that easy between us, is it?”

He hesitated, closed his eyes, then opened them and looked down at her with regret. “No, it’s not. It never has been, and it never will be.”

Was that why he had left her detail? Because he cared for her and felt he shouldn’t? It was possible; she had been his married boss. She wanted to know but couldn’t ask him. Not now, not yet. She needed a better grip on their relationship, and he needed to overcome some of the pain in his eyes. “I’d want to know you were okay” She moved closer, lifted her arms, and then hugged him hard. His arms wrapped around her and he sighed against her neck. A long moment later, she screwed up her courage and admitted the truth. “Actually, I’d need to hear your voice, Jonathan.”

He lifted her chin and met her gaze, trailed a fingertip along the line of her jaw, then dropped a kiss to her forehead. “Me, too.”

Swallowing hard, he backed away, shutting her out as clearly as if he had stepped behind a wall. “You’d better get moving. We need to get back. Your feet need medical attention.”

“Later. For God’s sake, Westford. You don’t say, wait, hold the crisis while I tend to my feet.”
We’re not in the swamp anymore.
“Give me twenty minutes,” she said, then wound through the house to her bedroom.

Two minutes later she stood in the shower, swallowing
rapidly again and again. He couldn’t see them being friends and he’d kissed on the forehead, not the mouth, so he didn’t want more than friendship, either. She was important to him, but what exactly did that mean? They weren’t in the swamp anymore. So he wanted to back off from her now? So the near-death trauma had worn off and he’d gotten his needed dose of affirmation of life?

Whatever his reasons, she should be grateful. Relationships were messy. One between them would make their lives even more complicated. He was being wiser about this; thinking with his head, not his heart. But she didn’t feel grateful or relieved. She felt… hollow.

She lifted her face to the stream of water and tried to imagine what it would be like to be loved by him, but even with her hormones running amuck, she couldn’t imagine it. That was just as well, considering. He’d been pretty clear that he didn’t want to imagine it.

But she did. And she knew she would.

Resentment burned in her stomach. Fear joined it. The last time she dared to love a man she ended up lied to, married to him, lied to again, deceived and betrayed and humiliated, and it still wasn’t over.

You ended up called on the carpet and blessed out by the likes of Cap Marlowe, for God’s sake. He called you a corrupt fraud, and you had no idea what he was even talking about. Wouldn’t he be pleased to know he had actually caused your divorce? Wouldn’t he just love it?

She snagged a bar of soap and scrubbed her arms, wishing she could wash away those memories and that the water would stop stinging her cuts and scratches. That confrontation with Cap Marlowe wasn’t one she would ever forget. But living through it once was bad enough. She didn’t want to relive it again and again.

After rinsing, she soaped again and wondered how long it would take to get the smells of the swamp out of her pores. Jonathan had been right to apply the brakes. He’d go on to
another detail, and she’d go on with her work. It didn’t feel great, but it was for the best. She had a promise to keep.

Rinsing off the last of the soap, she watched the water swirl clear at what was left of her feet. The only parts of them that weren’t bruised were cut and now bleeding.

Damn it, she missed him already.

Her heart wrenched, and, for the first time, she admitted without fear or regret that her work wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She wanted to care for and to feel cared for by someone special who shared her life. She wanted to know that if she died, one man—
-just one man
—would mourn. Was that asking too much?

Oh, God. You’re in serious trouble here. This doesn’t sound like swamp fever.

Wrapping a thick, fluffy towel around her, she walked through to her bedroom. But even its soft peach and green decor failed to soothe her. Flustered, she picked up the phone and then flung herself across the bed and called Gabby.

Some things never change.

Gabby answered, sounding so sad that a lump slid into Sybil’s throat. “Hi,” she said. “It’s me.”

“Oh, God, it’s true!” Gabby said in a shaky rush. “I knew you couldn’t be dead. I would have felt it, and I didn’t. I told Lisa it wasn’t possible, but she thought I was nuts.”

Gabby had mourned, and her clerk, Lisa, had tried to help her through it. “Has she been threatening to lace your coffee with Prozac again?”

“Prozac, Xanax, you name it. If she doesn’t straighten out, one of these days I’m really going to fire her.”

Maybe when hell froze over. Gabby and Lisa were close, not that it stopped either of them from making threats. “Uh-huh. Then you’ll be bitchy for six months because you won’t be able to find anything.” Lisa had her own rendition of job security. Even the FBI had failed to break
the code on her bizarre retrieval system. “Remember last year when she had emergency surgery? You were nagging her for the location of files in the damn recovery room.”

“True.” Gabby’s sigh crackled static through the phone. “You should have stayed dead until this challenge is over. What’s Westford thinking?”

“He hasn’t mentioned it.”

“Why the White House? Someone caught your chopper landing on film. The word is you’re okay, but you don’t sound okay, so are you? Before you answer that, remember who you’re talking to here.”

“I really am fine—bruised and scraped from head to toe, and in a helluva hurry at the moment—but fine.”

“Tough. Let whatever it is wait. Indulge me for a few minutes. Your death was devastating, Sybil. God, I was pissed at you for dying on me—and, for the record, you’re a lousy liar. You’re not fine.”

“Go easy on me, okay?” Sybil checked the clock. She had ten minutes, but after Gabby’s comments, Sybil couldn’t not linger a minute or two. Gabby needed the idea of Sybil being alive to really soak in and become real to her. “It’s been a wicked week and I’m in denial.”

“Oh, hell. This is serious. You’ve only been in denial once since we got drunk and went skinny-dipping in old man Morris’s pond, and then you ended up marrying Mr. Snip It.” Gabby groaned. “Spill it. I want details.”

“The short version is Jonathan went with me on this trip, I fell in love with him, and I don’t want to love him or anyone else. I can’t ride that emotional roller coaster again, Gabby”

“Are you afraid you’ll be riding it alone?”

“That’s only part of it.” Sybil stared at the bottles of colognes on her dresser. “This past year—since the divorce—has been the best year of my life.”

“It’s been the safest year of your life, not the best one. You haven’t had to take any personal, emotional risks.”

“Whatever,” Sybil shot back. “I liked it. I want to feel that way again. I have enough trouble here without—” Laughter crackled in her ear and she paused to regroup. “Gabby. What is so damn funny?”

“You. Sybil, you’ve been on the Hill too long. You’re trying to legislate your heart.”

Sybil let out a sigh deep enough to rattle windows. “I’m scared spitless, you heartless bitch. Show me a little empathy, even if you have to fake it.”

“I know you’re scared.” All traces of humor left Gabby’s voice. “Mr. Snip It did a real number on you. But Jonathan isn’t like that lowlife weasel, and you can handle whatever you have to handle. You used to know that. Frankly, this promise you made David about men is turning you into one weird woman, Sybil.”

Feeling weird, and not at all sure she could handle this love business, she glanced at the clock. “I’m out of time. Jonathan said to say hi and that you owe him fifty dollars.”

“Damn.” Gabby’s sigh crackled static through the phone. “Tell him the check’s in the mail.”