Tasting Fear (17 page)

He grabbed Enid’s shoulders so hard, she squeaked. “Did he go with her? Where did he go?”

She goggled at him. He gave her an impatient little shake.

“Do you mind?” she sniffed, wrenching away. “He went after her, toward the restaurant. She’s welcome to him. Rude son of a bitch.”

“What does he look like?” Liam demanded.

“Hey!” the butthead Peter blustered. “Don’t touch my wife!”

“Fuck off,” Liam said, not bothering to look at him. “What does he look like? Hair color, eyes? Talk to me, goddammit!”

Enid was starting to look scared. “Um, black hair?” Her voice had gotten small and uncertain. “A goatee, and, um, a black leather jacket.”

He lost the rest, already forging through the crowd amidst shouts and grunts of protest. Fear propelled him toward the restaurant.

He’d lose too much time if he stopped to get the gun and load it. He jogged through the restaurant, checking all the tables. No Nancy.

Think, meathead.
Think.
The door to the kitchen burst open. A harried-looking waitress came bursting out. Behind her, there was some sort of commotion in the kitchen. People were yelling. Good enough for him. He pushed his way through the swinging door. A woman caught sight of him and ran forward, holding up her hands to bar his way.

“Hey! No customers in here!” she yelled. “Get back!”

“What happened in here?” he demanded.

“It was gross,” a round-faced girl standing near the entrance confided. “This lady was sick to her stomach, and the guy gets the bright idea to drag her through the kitchen? That’s so unhygienic! The Board of Health could shut us down for—hey! Where are you going?”

Liam barreled through the people. He slipped, arms flailing, in a long, harrowing slide down the straight-a-way between two rows of range tops, in a slippery skid of yellowish sauce, barely keeping his feet.

He pitched out the door, reeling. Loading bay, garbage. No movement. He took off, heart thudding, for the parking lot.

A harried mother pushing a stroller. A young couple. A retirement age man and his blue-haired wife getting out of a sedan, arguing. Their voices floated over. A big guy in a yellow fringed coat rolling a string bass behind him. No black-haired guy, no black jacket. No Nancy.

He looked again. Nothing else moved. The man and his wife passed. Their babble did not penetrate his mind. He stared at the parking lot, feeling with all his senses. Doubts niggled. Maybe Nancy was in the hall, safe and sound, conducting her business. And he was out here chasing phantoms created by his own overheated brain.

And maybe not.
Big fat guy. Bad breath.

He gave the yellow-coated man a second look. The guy slowed to a stop and looked around. Sun glinted off his mirrored sunglasses. He looked at Liam for a second, and turned away, but when he started to move again, he was moving slightly faster. Dragging his big instrument case. It rattled and bumped behind him.

The case. The fucking
case.
Oh, sweet suffering Christ.

He took off running. The guy was opening the hatchback of an SUV. He heaved the instrument up and into the back of it, slammed it shut. Glanced at Liam racing toward him. Dove for the driver’s seat.

The motor roared. Brake lights came on. Liam was shouting, screaming. The SUV started to pull out. It had to stop and correct. Liam flung himself at the back of the vehicle, yanked at the latch of the hatchback.

It opened. The guy had been in too big of a hurry to lock it. Liam flung himself inside, next to the case. It lay there like a deformed coffin in a hearse. The guy screamed back over his shoulder.

Liam scrabbled for something to grab on to as the guy backed up again, with a violent burst of speed, and then braked abruptly.

Liam slid out the back, dragging the case with him. It toppled, rolled, rocked on the asphalt.
Bam,
the asshole took a shot at him. Liam flung himself to the side.
Zing,
another bullet ricocheted off the asphalt.

A car window exploded. Glass rattled, tinkled. The case was still lying right behind the vehicle’s tires. The SUV had stopped moving.

Liam guessed the filthy fuck’s intentions and leaped to heave the case out of harm’s way right before the SUV roared into reverse and ran it down. They landed between parked cars in the opposite row. He flung himself onto the case, landing with a bone-wrenching thud, in case the bastard stopped to shoot again. Shouts, screams. People had heard the gun.

The SUV peeled away, tires squealing. It tore out of the parking lot, ran a light at the corner, and was gone.

Liam slid off the case onto his ass, shaking. His face was wet. His nose streamed with blood. He turned the case gently right side up and unlatched it with trembling hands, his heart in his throat.

Nancy was curled inside the padded interior, hair over her face. He felt her throat, rejoicing at the pulse. Scooped her out into his arms and cradled her. He brushed the hair off her forehead, murmuring her name over and over. Alive. Not shot. Not broken. Not taken. Oh, God.

He was crying. He couldn’t stop. He just sat on the ground, while the commotion buzzed. Rocking her. Holding her.

Until they pried her out of his arms and took her away from him.

N
ancy stared out the window of her apartment from her seat on the couch. It was full dark, but she couldn’t be bothered to turn on the light. And she was too tired to wrestle the couch down into a bed.

She should be at the cathedral uptown, where Novum Canticum, her Gregorian chant choir, was having their big New York debut concert. It was an important gig for them, their first well-established classical concert series, and she should be there to support them.

But she couldn’t get off the couch. Her ass was weighted down.

They would understand, of course. Everybody was extremely understanding these days. They were treating her like blown glass.

She’d tried to stay too busy to be miserable. How could a woman wallow in self-pity when her cell phone never stopped ringing, and her e-mail in-box never had anything less than twenty new messages? She was surrounded by people who needed her. The hub of frantic activity.

The Jericho gig had been a smash. Peter and Enid were besieged with offers. Record companies that had previously disdained them were making unctuous overtures. Nancy boosted concert fees by a judicious 50 percent and passed out promo packets right and left, wondering why she wasn’t happier. It was finally coming together, and that was something, wasn’t it? All that heroic effort had paid off. Hadn’t it?

No. It hadn’t. The horrible events in Boston had laid her pathetic emotional stratagems bare. She’d been scrambling for love all these years. And she only knew that because she’d finally gotten some of it. Just enough to know what it felt like, anyway. And now it was gone.

She’d been better off before. Not knowing.

No, she hadn’t earned any love from all her heroic efforts. Love couldn’t be earned, or God knew she would have more of it. She finally understood Lucia’s impulse to matchmake. Her mother had wanted so badly to find Nancy someone solid. A man she could lean on. The joke was on them, though. Liam was so solid, he was like an outcropping of volcanic rock. Immovable. A cosmic joke, but she wasn’t laughing.

She flopped down onto her side, curling around the empty space inside her. Liam had saved her from the guy with the reptile eyes. He’d come to her rescue as heroically as ever, but after snatching her from the jaws of death, he’d decided that his duty as a righteous dude was fulfilled. He’d shaken the dust off his boots and walked into the sunset.

Not a word from the man. Not a call. Not a peep.

She was having nightmares, crying fits every night. She’d stayed with her sisters for the most part, but she’d slipped away from everyone tonight. She needed to be alone. Scary though that was.

The doctors said that it would take a while for the anxiety to ease. The pills they’d prescribed rattled in her purse. She hadn’t taken them. All she had were her feelings. She didn’t want to cut herself loose from those, too. And she wanted to be sharp, if Reptile Eyes came calling.

She thought constantly about calling Liam, but something always held her back. She’d told him that she loved him, so technically, the ball was in his court. But this was no game. She was too raw, too sad for games. She just wanted to go to him, hold out her heart and say, “Take this. It’s yours anyway, you great big idiot. So take it already.”

The intercom buzzed. She leaped up, her heart in her throat.

Her sisters both had keys. And Reptile Eyes would not buzz. He would transform into fetid slime, ooze under the crack in the door, and reconstitute himself on the other side like the über-evil Terminator III.

She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Just as well she’d left the light off. She curled into a tight ball, and gave the intercom the finger.

Buzzzzzz,
it rang, loud and long and demanding. Persistent bastard. She waited. Two minutes. Three.
Buzzzzzz,
again. Curiosity laced with fear dragged her to the window. She leaned out to peek.

Liam stood on the top of her stoop. Her heart leaped, thudded heavily against her ribs. Her legs started to wobble.
Buzzzzz,
he hit the intercom again. He looked up into her eyes, and held out his hands, palm up, in silent entreaty. She shuffled to the intercom like a zombie and buzzed him in.

She unlocked all the locks, of which there were many. She’d added three more to her collection since the Reptile Eyes episode.

She opened the door. He was thinner. Pale, drawn, and deadly serious. In the flickering light from the stairwell, she saw the fading bruises beneath both eyes. A broken nose, Eoin had said, and cracked ribs. Hanging out with her was hard on a guy’s health.

She suppressed the concern, the guilt. The desire to fuss.

Her heart was careening at such a fast clip, she felt woozy and faint. She couldn’t speak, so she just stepped back and gestured him in.

He shoved the door shut after him, blocking out the light, and she was grateful she’d left it off—until she started remembering the last time they’d been alone, in this room, in the dark. Making love.

He cleared his throat, awkwardly. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She blocked all the automatic babble-mode replies at their source. The “Oh, I’m fine and how are you” bullshit. She had nothing to lose, no reason to lie. “No,” she said flatly. “I feel like shit.”

He took a step closer. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She choked on her laughter. “Oh, are you? I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t concentrate. I’m scared of my own shadow. I am wrecked, Liam. I am roadkill. So don’t ask stupid questions. And don’t tell me that you’re sorry. Because I don’t want to hear it.”

“You’re going to have to hear it. Because I’m not done saying it.”

“Oh, yeah?” She backed up, and her thighs bumped against the couch. She was so wobbly, she sat down with an undignified thump. “Don’t tell me what I have to do, because I am so very done with all your arrogant pronouncements and your bullshit ultimatums!”

“I love you,” he said.

That cut her tirade off and left her gasping for air. She just hung there, head dangling, hands clamped over her mouth.

Liam sank down onto his knees. He pried one of her hands off her mouth, pulled it to himself, and kissed it, with reverent slowness, like a sacred ceremony. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

She didn’t know where to start. This thing between them was a maze, a confusion of entrances and exits, full of dead ends, land mines. Her heart shook at the idea that there might be a way through it.

If she could find that narrow, winding way. If they could find it, together.

“Why didn’t you call?” she blurted. The question she’d sworn she would not ask had popped up and asked itself, without her permission.

He hesitated, his face turned away. “I couldn’t. First, I was numb. Then, I was scared. Then, I was embarrassed. I was just…stuck. In a big machine. I had to shake loose of it. It took some time. But I’ll regret how long it took for the rest of my life.”

That startled a watery smile out of her. “Don’t get melodramatic. The rest of your life is a long time.” She paused. “I hope.”

“Do you?” He slid his arms around her hips and laid his head in her lap. “No matter how long it is, it’ll be too long without you.”

Whoa. Following up his advantage, the crafty, presumptuous bastard. He’d caught her in a weak moment, and now he was just waiting for her to cave. And oh, how she wanted to cave. So badly.

Nancy put her hands on his shoulders, with a vague notion of pushing him away, but as soon as they made contact, her fingers dug in. His muscles seemed leaner, harder than before. He trembled.

She couldn’t push him away. She had no strength for it. She found herself bowing down like a wilting flower. Draped over him, her hands splayed over his ribs, feeling the rise and fall of his breath.

“How’s your nose?” she asked.

“Healing,” he replied. “No big deal.”

“It was for me,” she said. “It was huge, for me. You saved my life. Again. Thanks, by the way.”

He lifted his head, and frowned. “Speaking of which. You should not be alone here. It’s not safe.”

She sighed. “Don’t start. If it comforts you, my sisters have been babysitting me. I just needed to be alone.”

He looked dubious, but let it go. After a moment, he cautiously tried again. “So. Ah, how did it all go?”

“How did what go?”

“The gig. Peter and Enid. Are they megasuperstars now?”

“Not one bit of sarcasm out of you, or it’s out the door, Knightly.”

He lifted his hands in quick surrender. “Sorry.”

She harrumphed, unmollified. “It went well,” she said coolly. “It was a big boost for both their careers. And mine, too, incidentally.”

“Ah. Well, good. I’m happy for them. And you.”

She was appalled to realize that she was trying not to smile at his supercareful, kid-gloves tone. “That’s very big of you, Liam.”

“I hope they appreciate you now.” The edge was back in his voice.

“I think they do. They even paid back the money they owed me.”

“No shit?” He looked impressed. “How’d you swing that?”

“I put my foot down. I admit, that approach does have its uses.”

He looked away. She couldn’t see his mouth, but she could feel that he was trying not to smile. “Funny how you should say that,” he said. “Myself, I’ve been working on the concept of compromise.”

“Oh, really?” Her heart thudded crazily. “And how do you feel about it these days?”

He shrugged. “It’s not as bad as I thought.”

They gazed at each other. She laid her fingertips against the bruises under his eyes, petting them. He seized her hand, kissed it.

“I called my father,” he offered.

She blinked, taken aback. “Wow. And? So? How did it go?”

“It was weird,” he admitted. “Awkward. But we got through it.”

“So? What did you say to him? What did he say? Tell me!”

He kissed her hand again, and again, making her wait. “I, uh, asked him if I should send him an invitation to my wedding.”

Her jaw dropped. Too much, all at once. Her throat shook.

“Ah, shit,” Liam muttered. “I’m sorry. That came out all wrong. I know I have to propose, and beg and grovel first. And I didn’t mean to sound like it’s a done deal. It was a…a hypothetical question.”

“Hy-hypothetical,” she whispered.

“Yeah. You know. In case I get lucky.”

She hid her face. He waited patiently for several minutes.

“So?” he coaxed. “You are my queen. Everything that’s beautiful and fine. I’ll spend my life trying to be worthy. Trying not to fuck this up. Please. Say yes. Be my wife.”

“I…I love you, too,” she burst out.

His grin began to spread. “That’s a yes? That means I got lucky?”

“That means I love you,” she said. “I already have two wedding dresses in storage. I don’t know if I could handle being engaged again.”

“Okay,” he said promptly. “Let’s skip the engaged part, and go straight to the married part. I got on the Internet before I came here. There’s a red-eye flight for Vegas. Tonight.”

She started to laugh, helplessly, tears in her eyes. “Oh, God.”

“We can get married by an Elvis impersonator. Spend three days on a vibrating bed. Rent a convertible, drive through the desert.”

It sounded surreal. Wonderful. “What about the invitation? For your dad?”

He shrugged. “Oh, that. We can do another wedding when we’re back. For your sisters, and your friends. This one will be just for us.”

He waited for a moment, and went on, his voice more hesitant. “Your schedule permitting, of course. I didn’t buy the tickets yet. Didn’t want to seem cocky. It can wait. If you’ve got work commitments.”

“Wow, Liam,” she said demurely. “That speech sounds rehearsed.”

“It’s so obvious?” he asked, rueful. “Give me credit for trying.”

Nancy slid her hands around his waist. “Have you been eating?”

“Hey! You stole my line.”

“I have to fatten you up,” she said. “There’s this great little Vietnamese place down the block that has killer noodles.”

“Don’t you have any noodles here? Spaghetti, linguini?”

“Are you kidding?” she scoffed. “With a name like D’Onofrio?”

“If we make our noodles here, we have the advantage of being able to get naked and sweaty while the water boils,” he pointed out.

She laughed at him, tears slipping down her face. “Um, all right.”

“That’s awesome. But you haven’t answered my proposal.”

She bit her lip. “Liam. I love you. You love me. Isn’t that miracle enough for now? Can’t we just be grateful? Let’s not push our luck.”

He looked mutinous. “I want it all. Every night. In my bed.”

“Hmm,” she murmured. “I thought you were working on the concept of compromise.”

“Yeah, but let’s not overdo it.” He touched her face, as carefully as if she were one of Lucia’s orchids. “I almost lost you forever,” he said. “It would have ripped my heart out. I love you, Nancy. I’ll never stop loving you. Push your luck with me all you want, and keep on pushing. There’s no limit to it. It’s bigger than any limits. It’s deeper than the ocean.”

Something moved inside her chest, swelling until her heart was about to burst. Until there was no more room for fear.

“Yes,” she said, and reached for him.