Loves Me, Loves Me Knot

Purl 10

Thanks to a lot of well-mimed signals and hand gestures, Gage got the hint that Jenna and Ronnie were carting an emotionally battered Grace off and away from causing any more damage at Zack’s apartment. He took the stairs to the lobby while they headed down in the elevator, then followed at a discreet distance as they made their way out of the building and along the sidewalk-at one point skirting piles of broken, torn, and otherwise bedraggled items that looked as though they’d once belonged to Zack-to the parking lot.

Jenna gently set her keys on the roof of her yellow VW Beetle, silently leaving them for him as she passed by and climbed into the back seat of Grace’s car with a much-worse-for-wear-looking Grace. Zack’s dog rode shotgun in the front beside Ronnie, strapped in and for all the world acting like the human he thought he was.

It was funny, he thought, as he squeezed himself into his ex-wife’s sorry excuse for a motor vehicle, that Jenna was suddenly leaving bread crumbs for him when only an hour before she’d been telling him off and insisting he wasn’t welcome at her aunt’s farm or to follow her back to town for this girlfriend crisis intervention.

But that was his Jenna. She might not want him around, but she would never abandon him downtown and without a viable mode of transportation, either.

Then again, she knew how much he hated riding around in her tiny tuna can with wheels. She was probably sitting in that back seat, laughing her ass off over the image of him stuffing himself inside. Steering wheel bumping his chin, knees pressed to his ears. He felt like he was driving a freaking clown car.

Despite his discomfort and wish for his bike, he followed behind Grace’s much larger, more sensible sleek silver Lexus halfway across town to her equally sleek apartment complex. Taking his time, he parked a few spaces away from them, then sat and watched as the foursome piled out of the car and trailed into the building.

As soon as they disappeared, he climbed out of the bug to stretch his legs… and arms and hips and back and neck. If he’d had a cigarette, he probably would have smoked one, but since he tried to limit them to his undercover work only, he leaned his arms on the roof of Jenna’s yellow jelly-bean car and tapped out a bored rhythm with the sides of his thumbs.

The thing about being a cop and working vice was that he was used to waiting. Nine times out of ten, his job involved sitting around doing not much of anything, watching for that one moment when he had enough evidence and the opening to make an arrest.

He used the time-most of it, anyway-to go back over the details of his cover and make sure there were no holes that might get him dead. Or to map out all the ways a bust might go down, also in hopes of minimizing casualties and not getting dead.

And sometimes, after he’d gone through all of that, he’d think about why the job was so important to him. The fact that he was making a difference and taking scum off the streets so they couldn’t hurt innocent people like Jenna.

The only problem was, the longer he worked undercover and the more immersed he became with society’s lowlifes, the more he came to think that what he was doing wasn’t really making that much of a difference, after all. No matter how many thieves, murderers, sex offenders, or drug dealers he took down, more seemed to crop up. They were like the mythical Hydras; sever one head and another-maybe even two more-grew in its place.

So what was the point? If he wasn’t really making a difference, if he wasn’t truly keeping the streets safe for his wife and citizens like her, then why bother?

It wasn’t that he didn’t like his job or being undercover. There were parts of it that were downright invigorating. The secrets and lies. The role-playing. The delicate web of deceit that had to be woven around the criminal element. The heightened anticipation of the chase and eventual take-down.

When Jenna filed for divorce, though, it had made him stop and analyze his life, his decisions. He’d thought he was protecting her, keeping her at arm’s length from what he did and the ugliness he saw on a daily basis.

But if what he was doing to keep her safe ended up pushing her away, then was any of it really worthwhile? It felt an awful lot like oiling the squeak in a hamster’s wheel after the animal had already gone paws-up.

And with Jenna no longer around, he couldn’t even be sure she was safe. He couldn’t know where she was or what she was doing.

Oh, he wasn’t one of those men. The possessive types who had to know where their women were every minute of every day for fear they might actually exchange a word or two with another human being. But he did like knowing that she never had any reason to wander into areas where she didn’t belong and could get seriously hurt.

And yeah, if he could have cocooned her inside their house while they were married, he would have. Not to keep her in, but to keep every bad, negative element out.

She’d never understood that about him; his almost obsessive need to protect her. She’d thought he was simply becoming sullen, distant… that he didn’t care enough.

Christ, could anything have been farther from the truth? He’d have taken a bullet for her. Still would.

What he wouldn’t do was bring a child into the world-a world he was all too familiar with-when there was no way for him to guarantee that child’s safety until he was old enough to take care of himself.

Smacking his palms flat on the roof of the Volkswagen, he muttered a short, colorful curse and took a step back.

But now Jenna very well may have taken that choice away from him.

A man should have the right to make his own decisions about whether or not he became a father. He shouldn’t be dosed, bound, and used for stud service.

He’d learned the hard way, however-and on more than one occasion-that people didn’t always get their way. What he did or didn’t want was moot at this point… or at least until they found out whether or not Jenna was pregnant.

Turning, Gage leaned his butt against the car, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides as renewed anger surged inside him.

He wasn’t happy. He might never be happy about Jenna’s actions and the way she’d used him, but that was water under the bridge, wasn’t it?

The same as he’d learned that life wasn’t always easy or fair, he’d also learned that you couldn’t undo what had already been done.

So if it turned out Jenna wasn’t pregnant, that would be great. Things could go back to the way they had been before she and her friends had hatched their devious little plan.

If she was pregnant… well, then he guessed he’d have to deal, just as he’d dealt with any number of other curve balls life had thrown at him.

He wasn’t sure how, exactly, but he suspected it would take a hell of a lot of soul-searching and brain-melting mental contemplation. He’d have to pick up some parenting books, ask some friends on the force with families what to expect, what to do… how to feel. Because right now, he was fucking clueless.

Before he could work himself into too much more of a lather, Jenna appeared at the corner of the brick apartment building, moving swiftly in his direction. He straightened, but remained standing by the driver’s side door until she reached him.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Grace is sleeping. Not peacefully, and she’s got one arm wrapped around that hockey stick-which is apparently a beloved memento from Zack’s childhood-and the other wrapped around Bruiser’s neck, but at least she’s finally getting some rest.”

Careful not to touch him, she skirted past and opened the car door. “Ronnie’s going to stay, but said she’d call if they need anything.” She cocked her head, meeting his gaze. “I had visions of you standing out here all night, refusing to abandon your post, otherwise I’d still be up there with them, too.”

Sliding into the driver’s seat, she slammed the door and turned the key. Then, when she noticed he hadn’t moved to follow suit, she lowered her window to glare at him again.

“Aren’t you going to get in?” she asked. “I’d be happy to go home alone, but I don’t know what I’ll do with your bike once I get there, and it’s going to feel strange walking around without my shadow in tow.”

Face blank, he held her gaze a second longer, then started around the rear of the car. Only when he was sure she wouldn’t see him did he let the ghost of a smile play over his lips.

Good ol’ Jenna, always willing to take in a stray, even if that stray happened to be an overbearing, hulking, and thoroughly unwanted ex-husband.

It was the moans that woke him. Not sexy, encouraging moans like the last time he’d woken up in this narrow, less-than-comfortable bed in Charlotte Langan’s farm house. Instead, it sounded like someone was hurt or scared. And since the only other person in the house with him was Jenna…

He tended to be a light sleeper anyway, but given the weight of his thoughts these days, and the disturbing lack of noise out here in the middle of nowhere, he found himself tossing and turning more than usual. He’d never realized before how much the sounds of traffic several stories below, punctuated with the occasional siren or squeal of brakes, helped to lull him into unconsciousness.

Tossing off the single sheet that covered him, Gage padded barefoot down the hall, wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs. The well-traveled hardwood floor creaked as he made his way downstairs.

Stubborn woman that she was, Jenna had refused to sleep upstairs in a real bed. She didn’t want to encroach on Charlotte ’s personal space by sleeping in her aunt’s room. The only other guest room in the house was used mostly for storage and sported only a bedframe without a mattress, and he knew that much more than Hell would have to freeze over before she’d willingly spend the night with him in what had formerly been “her” room.

So she’d chosen to grab an extra set of sheets from the linen closet and sleep on the sofa in the sitting room. A sofa that had seen better days and looked about as comfortable as a bed of nails or pile of lumber.

He scratched a spot in the middle of his chest and shook his head. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never understand women… and he didn’t think he’d understand Jenna if he lived to be a thousand.

He’d have been happy to slide over and welcome her into the tiny twin bed with him. He couldn’t have promised it wouldn’t lead to anything, but he could promise that if it did, there would be condoms involved.

Stepping into what passed as Charlotte ’s living room, he saw Jenna stretched out on the red brocade settee. She’d kicked off the covers, revealing a pair of hot pink shortie pajamas with white, dime-sized polka dots all over them. The cotton-and-spandex material molded to her petite frame like a second skin, and he couldn’t help but look his fill.

He remembered when she used to climb into bed naked and stay that way all night, but the PJs weren’t bad, either. They were both cute and sexy at the same time, showing off her feminine attributes to perfection.

Jenna had always been self-conscious about her figure, he knew. She thought she was too short, too thin, and that her breasts were too small.

Gage had never been nearly as critical. Yeah, she was petite, but he liked that. He liked the fact that he towered over her, and that when he wrapped his arms around her and tugged her close, she nearly disappeared. It made him feel big and strong and powerful, like he could take on the world and protect her from anything.

And her breasts might not be as large as those most often seen in men’s magazines, but he’d never had any complaints. They suited her, and had kept him plenty occupied when they made love.

Filed at the top of that invisible box of things he would never understand about women was the absolute perplexity that Jenna didn’t recognize how totally hot she was. Even now, after the divorce, the whole forced seduction/baby issue between them, and with her sound asleep and him still groggy, she turned him on. The evidence of that was making itself known in the tenting at the front of his underwear.

He was about to turn around and head back upstairs, reassured that Jenna was fine and apparently just mumbling in her sleep, when she moaned again and thrashed slightly on the sofa. Her arm flopped out to the side, nearly smacking into the edge of the coffee table. Her legs jerked, almost as though she were trying to run. And her head rolled back and forth on the pillow stuffed into the corner of the settee.

For a minute, he debated over waking her. It might put a halt to whatever bad dream she was having, but then she’d know she’d been crying out and that he’d heard her. He didn’t want her to be embarrassed, and he most certainly didn’t want her to notice the effect she had on him, even from a distance and while she was still asleep.

But if he left her alone… She jerked and groaned again, this time sounding even more frightened, more desperate.

Okay, enough was enough. Striding forward, he stopped beside the sofa and put his hands on his hips. “Jenna,” he said, hoping the sound of her name alone would startle her out of her nightmare.

When she continued to struggle, he leaned down, fitted a hip onto the edge of the settee beside her own, and slid a hand around her shoulder. “Jenna,” he tried again, giving her a small shake. “Honey, wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”

She stilled, her eyes popped open, and a second later, she was in his arms.

“Gage. Oh, my God, Gage.” Her voice was thick with emotion, her chest heaving as she fought for breath. She pressed herself against his chest, arms squeezed around his neck like tentacles.

He didn’t know what was going on or why she was suddenly so willing to touch him when only hours before she’d insisted they sleep on completely different floors of the house, but he wasn’t a man to toss aside a bit of luck when it came his way. Pulling her closer, he held her tight, his hands stroking her back while he inhaled the fruity scent of her hair where it tickled his nose.

“Aw, sweetie, it was just a nightmare. Nothing that should have you so worked up.”

She pushed away a couple of inches to meet his gaze. Her face was pale except for two splotches of pink that colored her cheeks, and her eyes were damp and glossy with tears.

Raising a hand, he ran a thumb along the bottom of one eye and then the other, wiping away the wetness as best he could.

“What’s wrong, honey?” he asked softly. “What were you dreaming about that was so bad?”

She shook her head and swallowed hard, fresh tears swelling to balance precariously on her lower lashes.

“It was you,” she said in a watery voice. “I couldn’t find you, and then when I did…” She took a hiccupping breath. “… you were dead.”

He froze at her words, an unwanted but automatic snake of trepidation wending its way down his spine. Every cop knew that the end could come at any moment. They knew it, lived with it, but didn’t let it keep them from doing their jobs.

Second only to his fear that something might happen to Jenna, though, was his fear that something might happen to him, resulting in her being left alone. Not just alone without him, but alone without someone to watch out for her and keep the bad things from touching her.

They might be divorced, which put him at a bit more of a distance than he had been before, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still keeping an eye on her. He kept his ear to the ground, had surreptitiously convinced Zack and Dylan to watch out for her, and checked up on her himself when he could.

Without letting her know, of course. If Jenna found out he was still acting like an invisible commando bodyguard where she was concerned, she’d have his biscuits in a bag hanging from her belt… or attached to the ends of one of those fluffy boas she liked to wear.

So he didn’t let her catch on. He remained at a distance, pretending he was a-okay with the divorce, and far removed from anything that had to do with her.

And whenever they bumped into each other or were forced to spend time together because of their mutual circle of friends, he played it cool, pretended she meant no more to him than any other woman he might pass on the street. He hoped he was pulling it off, because it was about as easy as sucking on a lemon and not making a face.

Still, he figured anyone, cop or not, would get the willies from being told they’d died in a dream. He only hoped her vision was the result of a vivid imagination and a spicy midnight snack, rather than any fortune-telling genes she may have inherited from the slightly wacky Langan side of her family.

“I’m fine,” he told her, running his fingers through the short, black hair at her temples. He kept stroking her face and hair until she looked at him fully and the panicked, glazed expression started to fade from her eyes. “See. Flesh and bone and very much alive.”

At that, her eyes began to water again and the petal-soft bow of her lips quivered. “I couldn’t find you, and I couldn’t find the baby, and then I did find you, and…”

He tensed at her mention of a baby. She hadn’t said anything about that before, but apparently her dream had also contained an infant. Not so surprising, considering they both had baby on the brain these days.

“I was afraid I was going to find the baby dead, too, and I just couldn’t handle that. I couldn’t lose you both,” she finished on a sob.

He grabbed her up and cradled her tight at the same time she threw herself against him. “Shh, it’s okay. Nobody’s going to die.”

“You don’t know that,” she mumbled into his neck. “You always used to say that, but you don’t know nothing’s going to happen. You can’t be sure.”

His brows crossed at her sudden assertion. They weren’t just talking about her dream now. They were talking about his job, and their failed marriage, and any number of thoughts and feelings and conversations that had passed between them over the years.

“Why are you worried about me now?” he asked softly. “We aren’t even married anymore.”

Jerking back, she fixed him with a hot, angry glare. And then she smacked him. Open hand, right across the bare chest.

“That doesn’t mean I stopped loving you, you big lug. Or that I don’t still care.”

Her eyes blazed fire, and color was coming back to her face.

“I worry about you every day, on the job and off. Why do you think it was so important to me that we start a family?” Her voice was still sharp, but now it was tinged with emotion, as well. “I want children, yes, but I also wanted a part of you growing inside of me. A little boy with dark hair, quiet intensity, and a dimple in his right cheek just like you have when you smile. A little girl with brown eyes, a sharp mind, and a stubborn streak two miles wide.”

Something clenched tight in the area of his heart.

Maybe it was everything all rolled together and thrown at him out of the blue that caused his conscience to pinch, his chest to throb, and a knot of what he thought might be regret to grow in his gut.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the words stuck in his raw, dry throat. He had to swallow and lick his lips before trying again.

“You never said you worried about me.”

Jenna rolled her eyes as though he were at the head of a class of dunces. “Of course I worried. Your job is dangerous, and it kept you away for weeks on end. Weeks when I never knew where you were or what you were doing. How could I not be concerned about you? How could I not have nightmares when you were away from me?”

“You’ve had this kind of nightmare before?” he asked, truly perplexed.

He’d never known her to have nightmares; not often, anyway, and not over anything more substantial than a scary movie they stayed up too late to watch. Then again, she was right about his undercover work taking him away from home for long stretches of time. How was he supposed to know how she slept when he wasn’t in bed beside her?

It broke his heart to think of her crying out in the middle of the night, with no one there to comfort her.

Without him there to comfort her.

Dammit, he should have been.

He should be.

He’d always had regrets about their ruined relationship. But if he’d been sorry before, he now felt like a first-class heel.

He’d thought the reason for their breakup was based mainly on her desire for children and his refusal to give them to her. On the slow detachment that the recurring quarrel had caused.

Had he missed the bigger picture? Had there been more going on beneath the surface that he’d never seen, never known was there?

How many nights had she stayed up, wondering if he was all right and fretting over his safety?

How many times had he come home from an extended undercover case and not sat down to talk to her? Not hugged her, kissed her, filled her in on what he’d been up to or asked how she’d spent the days he’d been away?

On his part, he hadn’t wanted her to know some of the specifics of what his job entailed. She didn’t need to know that he’d just spent a month living in a crack den, peddling meth or heroin or cocaine to junkies on the street. Or that he’d spent days on end picking up prostitutes in sting operations and tracking down killers.

But it probably wouldn’t have hurt for him to tell her that everything had gone fine and the bad guys they’d been after were now behind bars.

She’d married a cop, so she knew the basics of what being on the force entailed. Sharing some of the lessgory details wouldn’t have been so bad. It wouldn’t have scarred her any more than hearing about one of her students stuffing glitter up his nose or throwing up macaroni and cheese after lunch had scarred him.

Great. He’d been an idiot, and now that he’d figured that out-not his proudest moment ever-it was too late to do anything about it.

With a sigh, he ran his hand over her hair, kissed the side of her face, and then scooped her off the sofa and into his arms. Cradling her against his chest, he got to his feet and started across the room, back the way he’d come.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice still sounding thick and slightly hoarse from her crying jag.

“Taking you to bed,” he said, and he didn’t intend to take no for an answer.