Some kind of wonderful (20 page)

"Jack!" Carol's breath heaved in and out of her lungs as she stared up into the eyes of a stranger. Wide and glassy, those pale blue eyes didn't even see her. Carol knew that to him, she was just another part of the dream that he was still fighting free of. His jaw tight, his mouth a thin slash of fury, he hissed in air through gritted teeth as his hands tightened on her upper arms.

Backlit by the moonlight, his silhouette was dark and huge. Sitting on her abdomen, his weight pressed her down into the mattress, and Carol realized that she was way out of her depth. But still, she wasn't scared. Not of him. Never of him. "Jack," she said softly, as soon as she got her breath back. "It's me. Carol."

His grip on her shoulders loosened slightly, but he made no move to get off her.

"It was a nightmare, Jack," she said, her voice softer now, soothing, as she tried to ease him down from whatever visions were still clinging to the edges of his mind. As she watched, breath caught, his eyes cleared, slowly losing that wild, almost feral gleam.

"Carol?" He shook his head. "What the hell... ?"

"I heard you shouting—"

"Dammit." He let her go and sat back, still straddling her hips.

"I had to make sure you were all right."

"I'm fine." His voice sounded like a tightly strung wire close to snapping.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"You shouldn't have come in here," he said and eased off and away from her. He rolled to one side, then slipped off the edge of the bed in one smooth action. It was only then she noticed he was naked.

He grabbed his jeans off a nearby chair and tugged them on, keeping his back to her as if he couldn't bear to look at her—or for her to look at him. But naturally, she couldn't take her gaze off him. Carol sat up on the mattress, pushed her hair back and out of her eyes, and told herself to breathe. Just breathe. Not an easy order to follow when Jack turned around again to face her. Chest bare, his jeans unbuttoned at the waist, he braced his feet wide apart and faced her with his chin up as if daring her to take a punch at it.

Moonlight slanted over his skin and spotlighted him like an actor on a stage. His broad, muscled chest looked as though it had been carved in marble by a master sculptor. And even in the dim light, she saw the shadows in his eyes. Felt the chill of his ghosts still haunting the room.

"I scared you."

"Surprised me," she corrected, needing to let him know she hadn't been scared. Worried about him. Concerned. Startled, when he flung her over his body onto the mattress. But not scared.

He reached up and shoved both hands along the sides of his skull as though trying to keep his head from bursting. When he let his hands fall to his sides again, he just stared at her. A long, heavy sigh slid from his lungs as he hunched his shoulders and looked at her steadily. "Did I hurt you?"

Carol's heart twisted. Was there anything harder to see than a strong man brought to his knees? Guilt shimmered in the air between them, but she wouldn't let him suffer over this. Whatever else was happening here, he was trying to keep his private demons from touching her. She wouldn't add to the misery stamped on his features, so she resisted rubbing her upper arms where bruises were probably already blooming in the shape of his fingerprints. "No. You didn't."

"Thank God." He scraped one hand across his face, as if trying to wipe away the memory of the last few minutes. Then he inhaled wearily and folded his arms across his chest. "Go home, Baker."

"Jack—"

"I mean it. Get out."

Oh, he meant it. She could see that in every furious line of his body. Tension shimmered off him in thick, dark waves that reached out long tentacles to tug at Carol's heart. How could she walk away from him when he was so alone already, it tore at her?

"Not a chance." It might have been the smart thing to do, but she could feel his pain from across the room and couldn't pretend she didn't. No matter how much easier it might have been. "You were having a nightmare."

He snorted a laugh that sounded like sandpaper on a chalkboard and turned away from her, staring out the window at the dark beyond the glass. "Yeah, you could say that."

"Who's Will?"

He snapped her a hard look over his shoulder. "What'd I say?"

"You warned him to get down," she said, scooting to the edge of the bed and then off of it. Standing up, she walked through the patch of moonlight to stand beside

him. She laid a hand on his forearm and felt him flinch. But he didn't pull away. Maybe he needed the contact too much to pull back, even though that was clearly what he wanted to do.

"Who's Will?"

"Doesn't matter."

"You were shouting at him in your sleep." She tightened her grip on his arm when she felt the muscles beneath her hand clench. Tipping her head back, she tried to look into his eyes, but he kept his gaze on the window in front of him and the night beyond. His eyes narrowed, his brows drew together, and she knew he was seeing it all again. The images from his dream were still with him. Still hurting him. "It matters."

He closed his eyes briefly. "Leave it alone, for crissake."

She couldn't. Wouldn't. This was as close as she'd come to discovering the reasons for the shutters in his eyes. For the secrecy. For the emotional distance that radiated around him like a circle of barbed wire, keeping out trespassers. "Because leaving it alone's done you so much good, right?"

He slanted her a quelling look from the corner of his eye. "What the hell do you know about it?"

It was going to take a lot more than a replay of his snarling and sniping to keep her from trying to reach him. That growl of a voice of his had become a part of her everyday world. She knew it as well as she knew the deep-throated rumblings from Quinn. And she knew that neither of them were as dangerous as they liked to think.

Carol stepped out in front of him, forcing him to look at her instead of the night that had him so damn fascinated. When he finally met her gaze she steeled herself against

the echo of pain she read in those icy blue depths. Pulling off a bandage—especially an old one—hurt. But pulling it off quickly was bound to ease the pain in the long run. He'd been tugging at the edges for too long. It was time for a quick yank.

"What do I know?" she asked, challenging him. "I know that you're making your family nuts with worry." She poked him in the chest with the tip of her index finger and had the satisfaction of seeing him scowl in response. "I know that you're miserable. That you avoid coming home—the one place most people run to when they're hurt or in trouble. But not you. You lock yourself away and turn into a crab-ass to keep everyone at a distance. And when you do come home"—she poked him again for good measure—"you act like being here is a punishment. I want to know why."

"And I should tell you because ... ?"

"Because I'm Switzerland," she said, reaching up to smooth his hair back from his face. He flinched again, pulling away from her touch, but when she followed his movement, he gave it up and allowed the tenderness. "I don't have a stake in your life, Jack. I'm not family, m—

One eyebrow lifted and a small, almost wistful twist of his lips gave her heart a little jab.

"Yeah?" he asked. "You're what, exactly, Baker?"

"An innocent bystander?" she offered.

His eyes went cold and dark again as he said, "Haven't you heard? It's always the innocent bystanders that get the shaft."

"I'll take my chances." She wouldn't let go of this. Old wounds were tearing at his soul. And she had to at least try to help.

He sighed and fatigue seemed to fall on him like a

shroud. His body slumped, shoulders drooping. His eyes closed, then opened again so that he could look at her. "Go home. Take care of the baby."

"Got her covered," Carol said and unhooked the baby monitor from her pocket. She set it down on the table beside her, turned up the volume, and then looked at him. "Spill it, Reilly. Who knows, maybe it'll make you feel better."

Jack stared down at her and wished he could share in that lollipop-and-roses outlook. But he knew damn well that talking about a nightmare only made it more real. Gave it definition. Gave it life beyond the dream world where he'd fought to keep his own personal demons locked away. If he let them out now, there'd be no shoving them back into the shadows.

They'd be here.

In the room with him.

With Carol.

And what, he wondered, would she say if she found out about him? Would she still give him that wide-eyed look that turned his insides into a churning mass of need and confusion? Would she still be so damn willing to look on the bright side, when she found out his best friend was dead because of him?

Hell. If the truth chased her off, then maybe that was what he should do. He'd tried to stay away from her for all the good it had done him. Maybe if he could prove to her that he was a son of a bitch, she'd catch on and stay away.

And if she did?

Well, it would be no more than he deserved, though God knows, he'd miss her. Miss arguing with her. Miss hearing about her weird devotion to science fiction movies. Miss seeing her with Liz.

Just miss her, dammit.

His eyes felt gritty and his throat as dry as an August night. His heart still thundered in his ears and felt as though it was about to jump out of his chest. And it wasn't just the aftereffects of the dream, this time. No, this was a whole new set of variables.

Because this time, Carol had been there. Carol had seen him at his worst. Hell, he'd thrown her onto the damn bed and held her down like she was a street punk. Groaning internally, Jack scraped his palms over his face and wished to hell he could wipe away that memory. But he wouldn't be able to. It would stay with him. It would become just one more brick to add to the wall surrounding him.

Her scent nudged at him . . . making him remember other things, sweeter things. Like the feel of her in his arms, where she fit against his body like the last piece in a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Like the soft sigh of her breath on his neck. Like the warm, welcoming heat of her body when she'd brought him in from the cold.

And maybe because of that night, the night when he'd found peace—for a while—he owed her the truth.

He stared down into her eyes, and even in the moonlight, he saw the golden shine of them and wished— "Fine," he said sharply, forcing the words past an ever drier throat. "You want to know what's going on. I'll tell you."

He tore his gaze from hers, because he couldn't look into that warmth and say what he had to say. Better to stare out at the cold, black night. At least it was familiar.

"It was nearly two years ago. Christmas Eve."

She sucked in a breath and held it.

"I can almost hear the rain, even now." His voice went soft, hazy, as memory took him, pulled him deep

into the nightmare he normally fought to stay clear of. "Pounding, driving rain. Water slamming into the street, splashing against the windshield in waves.

"I had the graveyard shift. Couldn't get out of it. My wife was pissed about it, wanted me to call in sick. Said we had to talk." He choked out a laugh that felt like tiny knives digging at his throat. "Told her I couldn't, that we'd talk in the morning. But she talked anyway." God, he could see her, standing in the small living room, hands clasped at her waist, fingers locked and squeezing until the knuckles were white. He swallowed, but his mouth was dry, so it did no good.

"She told me she was pregnant. I remember grabbing her, swinging her around, proud. Happy. Then I noticed she wasn't celebrating."

He felt Carol's hand on his arm again and was grateful for it. But he didn't stop. Didn't think he could, now that he was finally saying it all out loud. It was as if the long-bottled-up words were chasing each other in the effort to be said. They came in a rush. Even the hardest of them.

"She told me the baby wasn't mine."

"Jack..."

"Said it was Will's." His back teeth ground together, but he kept talking. "My partner. My best friend." Betrayal sparked inside him, as fresh and bitter as it had been two years before. The sharp slap of it hit him hard, nearly doubled him over with the memory of how he'd lost everything that mattered to him in one black night.

"Oh, God, Jack." Her fingers tightened on his arm and Jack shifted his mind from the pain. He concentrated on her touch. On that anchor to help him through the rest of the nightmare. He was a blind man, stumbling

through a minefield and trusting his life to the strength of the one slim rope he could cling to.

"She said she was leaving me and that she couldn't lie to me anymore." He blew out a breath and shook his head. "I don't know why she suddenly couldn't manage it. She'd been lying to me for months with no trouble at all." Jack reached up and viciously rubbed the back of his neck, short fingernails digging into his own skin, diversifying the pain scrambling through him. "I couldn't even look at her," he admitted. "I was sick. Body. Heart. So I left and went to work. With Will. Every time I looked at him, I saw him and Kim, tangled up together, naked."

A long, shuddering sigh slipped from between his lips. "God, I wanted to hit him. I wanted to smash in the smiling, lying face I'd known and trusted for years."

A soft sigh of sound erupted from the baby monitor and he quieted, listening to the tiny snuffles echoing from the radio. Then Quinn rumbled out a dog version of a lullaby and the baby quieted again.

"Go on," Carol said, and he heard the strained thinness of her voice and wondered what she was thinking. If she was feeling pity for him. Hell, of course she was. But that was because she didn't know it all yet. Hadn't heard the worst of it. When she did, everything would change. And in one night, he'd lose everything again.

Only this time, he'd be losing the promise of something that might have been. And maybe that was worse than what he'd lost before. Maybe.

"Will knew something was wrong," Jack said, sliding back into the images rolling through his brain with the grace of a freight train. "But I didn't say anything. What the hell was I supposed to say to him?" he demanded of no one in particular. " 'Hey, congratulations. I hear you

and my wife are having a kid. You must be so proud.'?"

"Jesus, Jack—"

He shook his head and narrowed his gaze on the blackness outside the window. The dark that was even now threatening to swallow him whole. "We went through most of the shift without a problem, then we got a call. A homicide." His throat squeezed shut and he wished desperately for a drink. But alcohol wouldn't help. Christ knew he'd tried to drown himself in vats of Irish whiskey for months after that night. But he'd only surface hours later with a hangover and even more crippling pain. So he'd given it up and tried to live with the pain.