9
As she stood on her toes to see if she could actually look in the peephole, Jenna saw that it darkened. Sam had come to the door.
It swung open. He stood there, still damp from the shower, wrapped in his robe, feet bare, a rigid and wary look on his face and a gun in his hand.
“Hey, I come in peace!” she told him.
“I doubt that,” he said drily, turning from her. “If you’re coming in, lock the door behind you.”
He’d headed off toward one of the rooms to the right side of the stairway. Jenna walked into the foyer and stood uncomfortably, then turned and locked the front door.
Had she come in peace?
Why had she come?
She didn’t have to answer her inner turmoil; he reappeared, the gun now gone. Her heart was fluttering and she couldn’t seem to breathe correctly, and worst of all, it felt as if there were a burning sensation that stirred in the center of her core and shot down her thighs.
“So, what do you want?” he asked flatly.
The dead blunt question took her by surprise. She was disappointed that she couldn’t quite lay it on the line.
“You’re a jerk,” she said.
“This couldn’t have waited until tomorrow?”
“No.”
She walked over to him and shoved him on the chest. “No, it can’t. You almost put your arm down my throat to make sure that I didn’t speak this afternoon. What? You were afraid that I would just sit there and blurt out to the repressed New England cop that I see and speak to ghosts and that I can also relive certain experiences sometimes by being somewhere?”
“Were you?” he asked.
She laid her hand against her own breast. “I am a Federal officer, Sam Hall, with all the rights that go with that title, and I did all the running, jumping, history, science and arms training that went along with becoming official. I worked hard, and I’m real.”
“You just see ghosts,” he said.
“Hasn’t anything in your life been anything other than a Jaguar? Oh, probably a tailored suit!” she mocked. “Guess what? You can’t take them with you. You, me, everyone dies, Sam. And sometimes there’s a pain, a loss, something that can’t quite let you go. And you know what? Those left behind are here because of their hearts and their souls, things you can’t see in the living. Good God, I’d never expect you to see them in the dead! You see nothing that isn’t completely tangible, nothing that makes the rest of us human! And, for your information, Mr. High-and-Mighty bring-in-the-big-money Hall, I’ve done a hell of a lot more toward finding out the truth in this case than you have. And-” she came toward him again, poking a single finger at his chest “-you mark my words, the killer was wearing a horned god costume!”
He caught her by the shoulders then, his hands not rough, but something of force about him as he backed her against the wall. “You listen! You came to me to defend a kid covered in a blood-the kind of evidence that leaves the prosecution dancing in the streets. You can’t begin to imagine all the motions that had to be filed, and you still can’t imagine what it’s going to be like to find the right jury, and most of all, how dare you? I don’t speak to the dead-dead is dead and gone, and therefore, no! They don’t answer questions for me, not in a court of law. I believe the last time that was tried innocent people were killed for ‘witchcraft.’ And if you’re so brilliant and precious and understand the psyche of everyone living and dead, why the hell haven’t you just asked Abraham Smith who the hell it was who murdered him?”
She stared back at him, speechless for a minute.
“Yeah, right,” he said softly.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. It’s not dial-a-ghost and connect to the right spirit. No, no…but we’re close to the truth and I know it. I know what I have seen, I know what I’ve learned, and it all has to do with that damned costume, and the fact that people still don’t understand their neighbors, after all these years. We still don’t see each other clearly. We can’t tolerate, we can’t forgive strangeness…but it’s there, and we are close and…”
“And we’re just about going to have to pray that someone runs into the middle of the common and screams, ‘Hey, I’m guilty!’”
“Sam-” Jenna began.
“Shut up!” he cried. “What?”
“Shut up!”
“You shut up!”
“I’m trying to!” he shouted.
She stared at him, stunned. And then she noted the look in his eyes, and he was suddenly close against her and she could feel the damp fire of the length of him, and she opened her mouth to speak but she couldn’t.
“I didn’t want you to try to explain anything to John tonight, that’s true. But I was behind you. Whether I believe or understand or not, I was behind you. And you’re not really angry with me.”
“The hell I’m not.”
“That’s not why you’re here.”
“Why am I here?”
He lowered his head and found her mouth. His lips captured hers, and his kiss was firm and coercive, his mouth forming over hers with a liquid fire, desire seeming to burn in the very way that he touched her. She felt the incredible vitality and supple strength of the length of him as he pressed her there against the wall, and she was grateful for the wall, thinking that, for her, it had been far too long since she had let herself even begin to feel such sensation.
His tongue moved into her mouth, again strong and coercive and seductive, and she was even more grateful that he pinned her there. This was what she had wanted, yes, but she hadn’t imagined that she would feel so deliriously weak, and so at a disadvantage. He was a good lover, she thought, because he was a practiced lover; she had seen from the beginning that he moved with a confidence and ease that meant he would hold everything an alpha male held, power unto himself, the physical arrogance that was undeniably attractive. She felt like an inexperienced teen again, unsure and uncertain, and afraid she was far out of her league.
His lips broke from hers, and his mouth remained just inches away, but she could see his eyes again, and she was stunned that they seemed to be a clear gray, hiding nothing, offering something that might have been honesty and even humility.
“Is this why you came?” he asked hoarsely. “Because, dear Lord, I think I might have simply burned to a cinder, longing for you and not knowing how to even begin to ask.”
She nodded, not trusting her voice, and felt the brush of the back of his fingers on her cheek. She was astonished to see that his fingers trembled.
She moved against him, burying her face against his chest, then lifting her head and finding his mouth again. She felt his arms around her, lifting her more tightly against him, and through clothing and terry, she could feel the rise of his sex, he was so instantly aroused. She slipped her hands beneath the terry of the robe, fumbled at the belt, and drew more flush against him. He backed away, and together they pulled off her sweater, and she realized then that his clothing was strewn about. She looked at him, puzzled for a moment.
“Cold shower when you left me!” he told her.
