Tami Hoag - Heart of Gold

She felt as if something had shattered both inside her and around her. The last of her sense of safety had been fragmented. Through all of this hideous business the one thing Faith had clung to was the knowledge that she would always have Lindy. Now that too had been snatched away from her.

She’d been forced to realize that Lindy could be taken away. In the blink of an eye her child could be gone. It hadn’t happened today. Today Lindy had simply taken herself to the beach. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen in the future. Faith could still hear that evil silky voice promising to kill the most important person in her life-her child. A shudder snaked through her body and tears welled up in her eyes yet again.

“I love her so much,” she murmured brokenly. “I’d die if something happened to her.”

“She’s all right, Faith,” Shane said softly. With a gentle grip he took her arm and drew her up from the bed and gathered her close against him, not bothering to wonder where all this tenderness was coming from. “We’ll make sure nothing happens to her. She’ll have a full-time babysitter from now on. And tomorrow you’re having a fence installed with a locked gate at the top of those steps.”

Faith looked up at him, her expression so bleak it nearly broke his heart. As the tears slipped past her dark lashes and spilled down her cheeks, she said, “I’ve never been so scared.”

“I know.”

He knew because the same fear had raked its talons through him, the force of it leaving him shaken. Not so long ago Shane had thought himself incapable of caring that deeply. He had believed the job had robbed him of that basic human quality, but he’d been wrong.

He ran a hand into Faith’s tangled curls and eased her head to his chest where she wept silently, her tears soaking into his shirt. She felt so small in his arms, so fragile, so in need of his protection.

“Come on, honey,” he murmured, leading her toward the door that connected her room to Lindy’s. “You need to get some rest.”

Reluctantly Faith went with him. She was so exhausted she couldn’t think straight. Shane was probably right, she needed rest. But the thought of being alone with her fear made her throat tighten convulsively.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

Quietly closing and locking the door that connected the two rooms, Shane turned to face her. With no thought about professionalism or detachment or objectivity, he took her in his arms and hugged her. Rubbing his cheek against the top of her head, he whispered, “I won’t leave you.”

He bent his head and softly kissed the remnants of her tears from her pale cheeks. Faith murmured his name, her trembling hands running up and down the bulging muscles of his arms. He was so strong, so solid, and he possessed the power to make her forget everything. In his arms she could lose herself, she could escape.

She tilted her face up, her trembling mouth capturing his in a kiss that was as soft and fragile as a rose petal. When she spoke, the plea was in her eyes as well as her voice. “Make love to me, Shane. Please. I need you.”

Shane’s heart ached as he looked down at her. He didn’t question her need or her motives. In truth he needed this union as badly as Faith did. She needed to lose herself in the sweetness of their lovemaking. He needed to comfort her and reassure himself that she was safe, that she was his to care for and protect.

They came together not in a blaze of passion, but with exquisite tenderness and a deep hunger that each sought to prolong. Faith savored every kiss, every caress, blocking her mind to everything but her need to be loved by this man. She focused on the incredible sensations he aroused in her body as he lavished attention on her breasts with his mouth and probed the honeyed warmth between her thighs with his gentle musician’s fingers. Desire built slowly over the foundation of desperation, until she felt encompassed by it.

“Shane.” She groaned his name as her fingernails raked the hard muscles of his back. “Now. Please take me now.”

At her command he slid into her in one powerful thrust, filling the tight hot sheath of her womanhood, reaching deep to stroke the very center of her need. Faith let go the last tattered threads of her control. Wrapping her legs around his lean hips, she surged upward beneath him, meeting his powerful thrusts and begging for more, begging for the ecstasy that would blind her to all else.

Shane felt the end rushing toward them. He wrapped one strong arm around Faith, lifting her so that her nipples burrowed through his chest hair to rub against his burning flesh. He brushed her damp hair back from her face and kissed her deeply, almost wildly, thrusting his tongue into her mouth in the same rhythm as he thrust himself between her legs, branding her as his in the most basic way he could.

Faith’s hands stroked down his back to his hips, her fingers digging into the tight muscles of his buttocks. With one last stroke he took her over the edge, and the inner pulsing that signaled her fulfillment triggered his. A hoarse cry tearing from his throat, Shane arched against her and spilled himself in her.

“I love you,” Faith whispered as Shane’s body relaxed on top of her, his weight bearing down on her with a delicious warmth. Her lips brushed across the roughness of his evening beard as she murmured the words again, then fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

Shane raised up on one elbow above her and studied her face in the soft light from the bedside lamp. I love you. He didn’t say the words aloud, but they reverberated throughout his whole being. Despite all his warnings he had fallen in love with Faith Kincaid.

He’d never felt so vulnerable in his life. And, at the same time, the truth warmed him. After years of living in cold gray shadows, Faith’s love was reaching out to him like a beacon. This sweet, good woman was offering him a chance to start over, and every weary corner of his warrior’s heart wanted to accept.

It felt as if he were standing on a threshold with the darkness of his past behind him and the possibility of a future with Faith before him. Faith was standing in that doorway as well. Their pasts were intertwined now, and until they could shut that door, until this case was over, their future would have to wait.

Still, Shane thought as Faith cuddled close against him, he had a future, and for the first time in a long time it didn’t look bleak or empty.

“WE TRACED THE call to a phone booth in Mendocino,” Shane reported, drumming his fingertips on the computer printout that lay on the table before him.

“And?” John Banks prompted, his typically sardonic tone not made any more pleasant by the fact that he’d dragged himself out of bed and onto a plane at the crack of dawn. His thick head of steel gray hair was so unruly, he looked as though he had come through a wind tunnel. He needed a shave. His disposition was as rumpled as the dark suit that covered his sturdy frame.

“No distinguishable prints. Fiber evidence isn’t worth a damn at this point-a hundred people go in and out of that phone booth every day.”

“Wonderful.” Banks pulled off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his big nose. Replacing them, he stabbed Shane with a pointed look.

“He’s playing games with us,” Shane said. “Each of the letters he’s sent has a different postmark. Each of the calls we’ve managed to trace has been from a different town-all within a fifty-mile radius. We’ve got them on tape, but his voice is either too muffled or mechanically altered to make them of any use.”

“Suggestions?”

“I want Faith and Lindy moved to a safe house,” Shane said in a tone of voice that did not invite an opposing opinion. He took a strong pull on his cigarette and leveled his gaze at Faith, daring her to defy his plan.