Ashes to Ashes

24

CHAPTER

KATE WAS STILL shaking when they reached her house. Quinn had insisted on seeing her home for the second time that night, and she hadn't argued. The memory of the screams echoed in her head. She heard them, faint but constant, as she slipped wordlessly from the truck and left the garage, as she fumbled with the keys for the back door, as she passed through the kitchen to the hall and turned the thermostat up.

Quinn was behind her like a shadow the whole time. She expected him to say something about the burnt-out light in the garage, but if he did, she didn't hear him. She could hear only the whoosh of her pulse in her ears, the magnified rattle of keys, Thor meowing, the refrigerator humming . . . and beneath all that, the screams.

“I'm so cold,” she said, going into the study, where the desk lamp still burned and a chenille throw lay in a heap on the old sofa. She glanced at the answering machine—no blinking light—and thought of the hang-up calls that had come to her cell phone at 10:05, 10:08, 10:10.

A half-empty glass of Sapphire and tonic sat on the blotter, the ice long melted. Kate picked it up with a shaking hand and took a swallow. The tonic had gone flat, but she didn't notice, didn't taste anything at all. Quinn took the glass from her hand and set it aside, then turned her gently by the shoulders to face him.

“Aren't you cold?” she prattled on. “It takes forever for the furnace to heat this place. I should probably have it replaced—it's old as Moses—but I never think of it until the weather turns.

“Maybe I should start a fire,” she suggested, and immediately felt the blood drain from her face. “Oh, God, I can't believe I said that. All I can smell is smoke and that horrible—Jesus, what an awful—”

She swallowed hard and looked at the glass that was now out of easy reach.

Quinn laid a hand against her cheek and turned her face toward him. “Hush,” he said softly.

“But—”

“Hush.”

As carefully as if she were made of spun glass, he folded his arms around her and drew her close against him. Another invitation to lean on him, to let go. She knew she shouldn't. If she let go for even a second now, she would be lost. She needed to keep moving, keep talking, do something. If she let go, if she went still, if she didn't occupy herself with some mindless, meaningless task, the tide of despair would sweep over her, and then where would she be?

Without defense in the arms of a man she still loved but couldn't have.

The full import of that answer was heavy enough to strain what little strength she had left, ironically tempting her further to take the support Quinn offered for now.

She had never stopped loving him. She had just put it away in a lockbox in her secret heart, never to be taken out again. Maybe hoping it would wither and die, but it had only gone dormant.

Another chill washed over her, and she let her head find the hollow of his shoulder. With her ear pressed against his chest, she could hear his heart beat, and she remembered all the other times, long ago, when he had held her and comforted her, and she had pretended what they had in a stolen moment might last forever.

God, she wanted to pretend that now. She wanted to pretend they hadn't just come from a crime scene, and her witness wasn't missing, and that Quinn had come here for her instead of the job he had always put first.

How unfair that she felt so safe with him, that contentment seemed so close, that looking at her life from the vantage point of his arms, she could suddenly see all the holes, the missing pieces, the faded colors, the dulled senses. How unfair to realize all that, when she had decided it was better not to need anyone, and certainly best not to need him.

She felt his lips brush her temple, her cheek. Against the weaker part of her will, she turned her face up and let his lips find hers. Warm, firm, a perfect match, a perfect fit. The feeling that flooded her was equal parts pain and pleasure, bitter and sweet. The kiss was tender, careful, gentle—asking, not taking. And when Quinn raised his head an inch, the question and the caution were in his eyes, as if her every want and misgiving had passed to him through the kiss.

“I need to sit down,” Kate murmured, stepping back. His arms fell away from her and the chill swept back around her like an invisible stole. She grabbed the glass off the desk as she went to the couch and wedged herself into a corner, pulling the chenille throw into her lap.

“I can't do this,” she said softly, more to herself than to him. “It's too hard. It's too cruel. I don't want that kind of mess to clean up when you go back to Quantico.” She sipped at the gin and shook her head. “I wish you hadn't come, John.”

Quinn sat down beside her, forearms on his thighs. “Is that what you really wish, Kate?”

Tears clung to her lashes. “No. But what does it matter now? What I wish has never had any bearing on reality.”

She finished the drink, set the glass aside, and rubbed her hands over her face.

“I wished Emily would live, and she didn't. I wished Steven wouldn't blame me, but he did. I wished—”

She held short on that. What was she supposed to say? That she'd wished Quinn had loved her more? That they had married and had children and lived in Montana, raising horses and making love every night? Fantasies that should have belonged to someone more naive. Christ, she felt like a fool for even having such thoughts and stowing them away in a dusty corner of her mind. She sure as hell wasn't going to share them and risk looking more pathetic.

“I've wished a lot of things. And wishing never made them so,” she said. “And now I'll wish to close my eyes and not see blood, to close my ears and not hear screams, to close out this nightmare and go to sleep. And I might as well wish for the moon.”

Quinn laid a hand on her shoulder, his thumb finding the knot of tension in the muscle and rubbing at it. “I'd give you the moon, Kate,” he said. An old, familiar line they had passed back and forth between them like a secret keepsake. “And unhook the stars and take them down, and give them to you for a necklace.”

Emotions stung her eyes, burning away the last of her resolve to hold strong. She was too tired and it hurt too much—all of it: the case, the memories, the dreams that had died. She buried her face in her hands.

Quinn put his arms around her, guided her head to his shoulder once more.

“It's all right,” he whispered.

“No, it isn't.”

“Let me hold you, Kate.”

She couldn't bring herself to say no. She couldn't bear the idea of pulling away, of being alone. She'd been alone too long. She wanted his comfort. She wanted his strength, the warmth of his body. Being in his arms, she felt a sense of being where she belonged for the first time in a long time.

“I never stopped loving you,” he whispered.

Kate tightened her arms around him, but didn't trust herself to look at him.

“Then why did you let me go?” she asked, the pain just beneath the surface of her voice. “And why did you stay away?”

“I thought it was what you wanted, what you needed. I thought it was best for you. You didn't exactly beg for my attention at the end.”

“You were tied up with the OPR because of me—”

“Because of Steven, not because of you.”

“Semantics. Steven wanted to punish you because of me, because of us.”

“And you wanted to hide because of us.”

She didn't try to deny it. What they'd had in their secret love had been so special: the kind of magic most people wished for and never found, the kind of magic neither of them had ever known before. But when the secrecy had finally been broken, no one had seen that magic. Under the harsh light of public scrutiny, their love had become an affair, something tawdry and cheap. No one had understood; no one had tried; no one had wanted to. No one had seen her pain, her need. She wasn't a woman drowning in grief, shut out by a husband who had turned distant and bitter. She was a slut who had cheated on her grieving husband while their daughter was barely cold in the ground.

She couldn't say her own sense of guilt hadn't reflected back some of those same feelings, even though she knew better. It had never been in her to lie, to cheat. She'd been raised on a combination of Catholic guilt and Swedish self-reproof. And the wave of self-condemnation from Emily's death and her own sense of breached morality had come up over her head, and she hadn't been able to surface—especially not when the one person she would have reached to for help had backed away, wrestling with anger and pain of his own.

The memory of that turmoil pushed her now to her feet again, restless, not liking the emotions that came with the memories.

“You might have come after me,” she said. “But between the OPR and the job, suddenly you were never there.

“I thought you loved the job more than me,” she admitted in a whisper, then offered Quinn a twisted half-smile. “I thought maybe you finally figured out I was more trouble than I was worth.”

“Oh, Kate . . .” He stepped close, tipped her head back, and looked in her eyes. His were as dark as the night, shining and intense.

Hers brimmed with the uncertainty that had always touched him most deeply—the uncertainty that lay buried beneath layers of polish and stubborn strength. An uncertainty he recognized perhaps as being akin to his own, the thing he hid and feared in himself.

“I let you go because I thought that was what you wanted. And I buried myself in work because it was the only thing that dulled the hurt.

“I've given everything I ever was to this job,” he said. “I don't know if there's anything left of me worth having. But I know I've never loved it—or anything, or anyone—the way I loved you, Kate.”

Kate said nothing. Quinn was aware of time slipping by, of a tear sliding down her cheek. He thought of how they'd come apart, and all the time they'd lost, and knew it was more complicated than a simple lack of communication. The feelings, the fears, the pride, and the pain that had wedged between them had all been genuine. So sharp and true that neither of them had ever found the nerve to face them down. It had been easier to just let go—and that had been the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life.

“We're a pair,” he whispered, echoing what she'd said in Kovac's car. “What did you feel, Kate? Did you stop needing me? Did you stop loving me? Did you—”

She pressed trembling fingers to his lips, shaking her head. “Never,” she said, so softly the word was little more than a thought. “Never.”

She had hated him. She had resented him. She had blamed him and tried to forget him. But she had never stopped loving him. And what a terrifying truth that was—that in five years the need had never died, that she'd never felt anything close to it. Now it rose within her like an awakening flame burning through the exhaustion and the fear and everything else.

She leaned up to meet his lips with hers. She tasted his mouth and the salt of her own tears. His arms went around her and crushed her to him, bending her backward, fitting her body against his.

“Oh, God, Kate, I've needed you,” he confessed, his mouth brushing the shell of her ear. “I've missed you so.”

Kate kissed his cheek, ran a hand over the short-cropped hair. “I've never needed anyone the way I needed you . . . need you. . . .”

He caught the distinction, and stood back to look at her for a moment. He didn't ask if she was sure. Afraid she might answer, Kate supposed. And so was she. There was no certainty in her. There was no logic, no thought of anything beyond the moment, and the tangle of raw feelings, and the need to lose herself with Quinn . . . only with him.

She led him upstairs by the hand. He stopped her three times to kiss her, touch her, bury his face in her hair. In her bedroom they helped each other undress. Tangled hands, impatient fingers. His shirt on the back of a chair, her skirt in a puddle on the floor. Never losing contact with each other. A caress. A kiss. An anxious embrace.

For Kate, Quinn's touch was a memory overlapping real time. The feel of his hand on her skin was imprinted on her mind and in her heart. It drew to the surface the desire she had known only with him. Instantly, in a warm rush and a sweet ache. As if they'd been apart five days instead of five years.

Her breath caught at the feel of his mouth on her breast, and shuddered from her as his hand slipped between her legs, and his fingers found her wet and hot. Her hips arched automatically to the angle they'd found so many times before, so very long ago.

Her hands traveled over his body. Familiar territory. Ridges and planes of muscle and bone. Smooth, hot skin. The valley of his spine. His erection straining against her, as hard as marble, as soft as velvet. His thick, muscular thigh urging her legs farther apart.

She guided him into her, felt the absolute thrill of him filling her perfectly, the same as she had felt every single time they'd ever made love. The sensation, the wonder of it, had never dulled, only sharpened. For him as well as for her. She could see it in his eyes as he looked down at her in the lamplight: the intense pleasure, the heat, the surprise, the hint of desperation that came from knowing this magic happened only with each other.

The last made her want to cry. He was the one, the only one. The man she'd married, whose child she'd borne, had never come close to making her feel what John Quinn made her feel with his mere presence in the room.

She held him tighter, moved against him stronger, dug her fingernails into his back. He kissed her deeply, possessively, with his tongue, with his teeth. He moved into her with building force, then pulled himself back, gentled, eased them both away from the edge.

Time lost all meaning. There were no seconds, only breaths and murmured words; no minutes, just the ebb and flow of pleasure. And when the end finally came, it was with an explosion of emotion running head-on from each extreme of the spectrum. And then came an odd mix of peace and tension, contentment and completion and wariness, until exhaustion overrode all else, and they fell asleep in each other's arms.