A Soft Place to Fall (36 page)

She slowed as she approached the top of
Bancroft Road and a flicker of alarm began in the pit of her belly.
A pair of dark cars were angled across her driveway. She gripped
the wheel more tightly to stop her hands from trembling. This
couldn't be happening, not now, not when she finally thought she
had broken free from the death grip of Kevin's gambling debts. Not
now when she was on the verge of a new and wonderful life. She
peered farther up the road and saw another pair of dark cars angled
across the foot of Sam's driveway and bile rose up into her throat
and it took every ounce of self-control at her command to keep the
contents of her stomach where they belonged.

She had believed every sleazy bookie and loan
shark in New England had found his way to her door in the weeks
following Kevin's death, all of them demanding payment. She had
known Kevin was in trouble but the scope of it was worse than she
had imagined.

And now it looked like Kevin's mistakes were
going to put Sam in jeopardy too. It was bad enough that she had
paid for her late husband's sins. She couldn't allow Sam to pay for
them as well.

She had to get to him before anyone else did,
warn him while there was still time. She would tell him everything,
the whole ugly story from beginning to end, sparing no one this
time around. The gambling, the racketeers, the threats, the long
climb back from the abyss, the sickening realization that it wasn't
over, might never be over no matter what she did or how hard she
tried. If they knew how much Sam mattered to her, they would use
him against her in ways that would haunt her the rest of her life.
The father of her child deserved better than that.

She had to love him enough to let him go.

#

The long red cedar planks had to be steamed
until they were pliable enough for Sam to urge them into the curved
line of the canoe's hull. It took patience and a lot of pressure to
ease a straight piece of wood into the unnatural shape and once he
managed to convince the planks to conform to the basic design, he
had to nail them down before they changed their minds.

He was in the process of hammering down the
third plank on the second of four canoes when he heard a familiar
vehicle crunching its way up the driveway. Max heard it too and he
leaped up from his spot in the sunlight and started running circles
by the door. Sometimes Sam felt the same way when he saw Annie,
like doing handsprings and cartwheels and writing her name in the
sky with shooting stars.

Did she know he loved her? He hadn't told her
in words. He hadn't the right, not before he knew what his future
held. There were no guarantees that things would work out according
to plan. What he felt for her ran too deep. He'd put through a call
this morning to his contact in Washington. He needed answers, a
time frame, something he could hang his future on. They reminded
him that his future hung on getting it right; the success of the
sting operation against Mason, Marx, and Daniels would help prove
his innocence.

Last night he had dreamed their future. Five
years from now, ten years – the two of them together in a house
filled with sunlight and dreams and more joy than he would have
imagined possible this side of heaven. He had dreamed a family for
them too, big healthy babies born of their love. There wouldn't be
babies for them. Annie had told him about the years of trying for a
miracle. He told her that she was miracle enough for him. She was
his home, his family, his soft place to fall when the world was too
much with him. Now that he had found her, he couldn't imagine
living a life without her there at the center of it.

"Sam!" She burst into the barn like a
beautiful tornado. Her hair whipped around her face in a froth of
curls and she looked slightly manic, slightly wild, juicy and sexy.
The woman he loved.

Max was practically doing back flips for her
attention but she didn't seem to notice.

He tossed down his hammer and wiped his hands
on the sides of his jeans. "Don't tell me," he said. "You're
ditching the flower shop and we're heading for Tahiti."

He meant it as a joke, something to make her
smile at the absurdity of the statement, but the look she gave him
was filled with so much pain and downright misery that he couldn't
pull air into his lungs.

"There's something you don't know," she said,
ducking away from his outstretched arms.

"There's probably a lot I don't know," he
said, trying to will himself into something approaching calm.
"We've both lived a full life before we met."

She dismissed his words with a wave of her
hand. "You don't understand. Nobody knows what I need to tell you,
not Susan or Claudia or Warren. Nobody in this entire town, Sam,
only me."

He felt a sharp pain in the center of his
gut. She stood not three feet away from him but she was suddenly
beyond his reach. "And you want to tell me."

"No," she said with almost brutal honesty, "I
don't want to tell you at all but I have to. They're back and they
know about you and –" She lowered her head and turned away so he
wouldn't see her tears fall.

So proud,
he thought. Strong and tough
and honorable, yet it was her loneliness that had reached out and
touched his heart.

"Who's back?" he prodded. "More Galloways on
a mission from God?"

The afternoon was so quiet. Not even bird
song cut into the silence. Then in the distance he heard the sound
of a car moving closer and in that moment he realized she was
trembling.

"You don't know what they're like," she said
as he began to wonder if she was talking about little green men in
space suits. "You can't hide from them. They'll find you no matter
where you go and they'll keep finding you until they get what they
want."

He grabbed her by the arms. "You're scaring
the shit out of me," he said, hoping to shock her back into
coherence. "Who's after you, Annie? What the hell is going on?" She
couldn't know about him. There was no way she could have found
out.

A car turned into the driveway. A second car
followed right behind.

"Take Max and go," she said, trying to push
him away. "It's me they want. I did everything I could after Kevin
died . . . I sold the house and the car . . . I worked three jobs .
. . I paid off everything, every single dime but you can't break
free of them . . . "

It was beginning to make sense. The cottage
by the water. The beat up old car. The lack of furniture. The sense
that maybe her marriage hadn't been quite as easy as everyone else
wanted him to believe.

A car door slammed shut, then another, then
two more.

"Oh Jesus!" It was almost a keening cry.
"Please go, Sam. This is my problem, not yours. You don't deserve
to –"

Four men in dark suits stepped from bright
sunlight into the shadowy barn. Annie broke free of him and stepped
forward. She was Amazonian in her defense of him and he had never
loved her more than he did in that moment.

"Let him go, " she said in a voice far
stronger than he had ever heard before. "He's nothing to you. I'm
the one you're looking for."

The four men exchanged puzzled glances and
Sam knew it was all over. His idyll in Shelter Rock Cove had come
to an end. He took her gently by the shoulders and moved her back
into the shadows.

"I'm the one you want," he said, wishing with
all his heart there had been a way to make this easy for her.

"Sam Butler?" One of the men stepped forward
from the pack.

"I thought you'd call first," he said.
"That's what I was told." First a phone call, then an agent would
arrive to bring him back to New York under protective custody. That
was the way it had been explained.

"Check your cell phone," the man said. "We
tried but you never picked up."

A warning bell went off deep inside his
gut.

He pulled his phone from the back pocket of
his jeans and pressed the power switch., then cupped his hand over
the display so they wouldn't see the glowing green numbers. He
quickly touched the button again to shut it off.

"Dead as a doornail," he said.

"See?" asked the man. "Couldn't get
through."

What the hell was going on? He'd had enough
dealings with the feds over the last year to know when something
didn't feel right. Only one explanation made any sense: Mason,
Marx, and Daniels had gotten wind of the sting and Sam's place in
it. They weren't big enough to stop the government but they sure as
hell were big enough to stop Sam Butler.

Annie's eyes were wide with fear. He wanted
to take her in his arms and tell her everything, walk her through
his days and his decisions, shoulder the guilt that belonged to him
and even some that didn't, if only it could take them back to where
they had been just an hour ago before the real world came
calling.

But the less she knew, the better. All that
mattered to him now was keeping her safe from harm.

He tossed the phone onto the work bench. "So
where do we go from here?"

"Sam Butler, we have a warrant for your
arrest on charges of embezzlement. You have the right to remain
silent . . . "

Annie cried out and for a moment Sam wanted
to pull her into his arms and lie to her. But he couldn't do it. He
couldn't do one goddamn thing but hold out his arms for the cuffs
and let the silence between them say everything and nothing at
all.

Max growled as the men approached his master.
Sam met Annie's eyes and the look of anguish in them almost dropped
him to the ground.
This is what you did to her, Butler. This is
how she'll remember you. Can you live with it?

He wanted to fight the bastards. He wanted to
slam his fist into their smug faces then grab Annie and run as far
away as they could. He'd never been one to give up in the face of
trouble but this time there was no choice, not if he loved her.

Annie wrapped her arms around Max's neck and
held him by the collar. Poor old Max whimpered a little but she
couldn't help the tears that streamed down her cheeks and darkened
the dog's yellow ruff. The men weren't there for her. They had
nothing to do with Kevin's gambling debts. For the first time in
years, she wasn't the one running scared from strangers who showed
up on her doorstep and turned her life inside out.

The funny thing was, Sam hadn't seemed
surprised. Startled, maybe, but not surprised. All of that talk
about phone calls – it was almost as if he had been expecting
this.

Good going, Galloway. You really know how to
pick them. Bad enough the first one was a compulsive gambler, now
you've snagged yourself a criminal.

She refused to believe that. Sam was a good
man. She knew it deep inside her soul.

Kevin was a good man, too, but that didn't
stop him from almost ruining your life.

Apples and oranges. You couldn't compare the
two of them. Kevin operated from weakness while Sam operated from
strength. You only had to look at him to know he was the kind of
man who took charge of situations. The kind of man who would be
there for you, no matter what.

Wishful thinking, Galloway. Don't listen to
all of those nesting hormones because they'll lead you astray.

Sam was the finest person she had ever known.
He had taken on the responsibility for his five brothers and
sisters at an age when most guys were looking to get drunk and
party. Because of Sam, his siblings were well-educated, productive
men and women instead of the statistics they might have become if
Sam hadn't been willing to step up to the plate.

Besides, she owed him her life. If he hadn't
broken down her door that night, she wouldn't be there right now
with a miracle child growing inside her belly and more happiness
inside her heart than she had ever believed possible. Could she be
that wrong about a man who had revealed so much of his own heart to
her?

Warren had said that Sam was like a son to
him.
They don't come any better than Sam,
he told her one
day when Sam was out of earshot.
I'd trust him with my
life.

So would I,
Annie thought as she
rested a hand on her belly.
I'd trust him with two
lives.

Maybe it was crazy. Maybe she was heading
down the same disastrous road she'd walked with Kevin but she was
willing to take that chance. What was the point of loving someone
if you weren't willing to put yourself on the line when the going
got rough?

Her gaze swept the barn. She saw the canoes
swaying from the ceiling, the one in progress on his workbench. The
elegant curves of wood. The mountain of nails. Shavings of red
cedar spiraled on the floor. The cell phone resting on the bench of
the canoe in progress. Her heart beat so hard that it hurt. The
phone, that was it! What was it he had said –
dead as a
doornail.
But it wasn't. She had seen the faint green glow
seeping between his fingers as he cupped his hand over the display
as if to hide the light from their visitors.

They had lied to him and he knew it and now
she knew it too. But what on earth was she supposed to do with the
information?

"Ready?" one of the suits asked Sam.

"Now's as good a time as any," he said. He
looked toward Annie. "You'll take care of Max?"

"Of course I will."

"Don't worry," he said with a jaunty smile.
"I'll be back before sunset."

She favored him with a big smile. "Ciao," she
said. She held her smile until he turned away. She refused to let
any of those bastards see her cry.

She held onto Max by the collar and they
watched as the suits helped Sam into one of the cars then drove
away. The pain inside her heart was almost more than she could bear
but she didn't have time for pain or disappointment or questions.
She counted to ten after the last car disappeared then grabbed for
the cell phone on the work bench.