Two Hearts Read online

  “I knew I could count on you.”

  “Yeah. You always could.”

  “I’ll, uh, be needing a best man.”

  JW lifted his head. “Do I have to use a pseudonym?”

  “Knock it off.”

  “So how long before I get the incomparable joy of breaking in a new partner, buddy?”

  Jack licked his lips. This had been the toughest conversation of his life. But at least this part of it wasn’t going to feel like a betrayal. “Not until we bag, tag and deliver that scurvy little dealer, JW. I won’t bail on you in the middle of a case this big.”

  Jack could almost see his partner slump a little bit as the air left his lungs. Relief. But then JW frowned. “How the hell you gonna manage that? The wedding’s in two weeks!”

  “Doesn’t matter. As much as I hate to lie to Grace…it would be worse to walk out in the middle of this. No. I’ll stay on until we wrap it.”

  Jack had been having nightmares. Of course he hadn’t told anyone. Who could he tell, anyway? Not Grace; she didn’t know the truth. And certainly not JW, since he was the one getting blown away by some punk who thought himself a kingpin in the recurring dream that had been haunting Jack since he’d made this decision.

  He didn’t know if the dream meant anything. He only knew he couldn’t walk out on his partner in the middle of a case this volatile, because it could happen. And Jack couldn’t live with that.

  * * *

  “What do you mean, you’re quitting?”

  Charlie sat on the foot of Gracie’s bed, gaping at her. Hope sat on the far edge, and Grace was curled at the head, pillows pulled around her as if she needed something to cling to.

  “He is marrying a delicate, society miss, not a jock who spends way too much time at a smelly gym on the bad side of town, Charlie.” Grace sighed, lowering her head. “Besides, all that stuff was…childish. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a grownup. I’m going to be a wife…and a mother, eventually. I mean, how many mothers do you know with black belts, anyway?”

  “Not nearly enough,” Charlie said.

  “But…but Grace, what about basketball?” Hope asked.

  Grace shrugged at her sister. “What about it? I played on a college team. College is over. It’s not even an issue.”

  “Well, of course it’s an issue. Grace, you’re good. You love the sport too much to just…just let it go. What about those kids, huh?”

  “What kids?” Then Grace’s brows went up. “You mean, those girls from the gym? How the hell do you know about them, Hope?”

  Hope looked guilty. “One of them called for you yesterday while you were out. And we…talked.”

  Grace got to her feet, taking a pillow with her and flinging it to the floor. “How did those kids get this number? Good grief, what if Mom had answered the phone?”

  Charlie picked up the pillow, plumped it and settled it back on the bed. “You need to stop being so afraid of what your mother might think, Grace. You gotta be honest. Those girls were starting to depend on you.”

  “I didn’t ask for that,” Grace said, battling a surge of guilt. “I was just trying to be nice, giving them some pointers when they showed up at the gym.”

  “Yeah, and then they started showing up three times a week, same as you, just like clockwork. And you started ‘giving them pointers’ for an hour before you went about your business every single time.”

  “So?”

  “So, you were coaching them, Grace. Maybe it wasn’t official, and maybe you were never asked, but that’s what you were doing. And you know it, and I know it.”

  Lowering her head, Grace closed her eyes. “Maybe…I can keep going down there a couple of times a week…for the girls.”

  Hope smiled. “You should, Grace. I don’t think those kids have much else to look forward to.”

  “Yeah, and I think you were enjoying it as much as they were,” Charlie put in.

  Grace nodded. “Yeah, I guess I was. Besides, Jack doesn’t have to know about it.”

  Hope looked at Charlie and rolled her eyes.

  “Stop it,” Grace said. “You guys just aren’t getting it, are you? I love this man. I love him.”

  “So you love him! So what? Does that mean you have to lie to him?” Charlie demanded.

  “I am not lying to him!”

  “You are so!” Charlie snapped.

  “Grace, she’s right,” Hope whispered, putting her soft, perfectly manicured hand over Grace’s. “You can’t start out married life pretending to be something you’re not.”

  “That’s just it. I’m not pretending. I’m…I’m changing.” Grace paced the room slowly, turned and paced back. “I can be the kind of woman Jack thinks I am. The kind he fell in love with. I know I can. And it’ll be fine. I promise you guys, it’ll be just fine.”

  Charlie sighed, lowering her head and shaking it slowly. “Where did I go wrong?” she muttered.

  “I blame myself,” Hope said.

  “Knock it off, you two. We’ve got tons more to do than discuss my retirement from sports, at the moment. I’m getting married in two weeks.”

  Hope sighed, ignoring her sister’s attempt to change the subject. “He’d love you, anyway, you know. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That he wouldn’t?”

  Grace stared at her sister for a long moment, struck by how hard she’d hit the mark. Their mother’s love had always been conditional. Be what she wanted, act the way she wanted, do what she expected, and you would be showered in her love. Yet always, always, both girls had kept parts of themselves hidden away, secret, out of fear they would lose that love if they revealed themselves to be less than the image their mother demanded. Grace had led a double life, and she sensed Hope, too, was hiding more than anyone knew.

  But understanding why she felt the way she did certainly did nothing to change the feeling or make it go away. Jack had fallen in love with the belle of the ball that night. With the elegance and grace she’d had to practice for hours to pull off with any degree of success. He was always telling her how sweet she was, how delicate and pure. Those were the qualities he loved in her. And she loved him so much…he was the only man she’d ever felt this way about.

  No. She couldn’t risk everything, not now.

  She wouldn’t.

  Two weeks later she stood near the swan pond on the grounds of her parents’ home and vowed to love, honor and respect the man who’d stolen her heart. And he promised to do the same in return. When he kissed her, her heart melted and her blood warmed.

  And it was all pretty much downhill from there.

  CHAPTER 5

  Grace had bought a naughty black teddy, all but transparent, with garters and lace and a built-in push-up bra—and a pair of high-heeled slippers with fuzzy tufts of black at the toes. She had even packed them.

  But she couldn’t wear them. Oh, she might fantasize about slinking across the hotel room while Jack’s eyeballs popped. But he wasn’t like that.

  He was…above that kind of carnal decadence. It must have been bred out of him, or trained out of him, but either way, he was above it. A gentleman. His every touch, every kiss, had always been gentle, respectful, careful.

  And he thought she was some kind of an angel.

  So, with a sigh of reluctance and a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach, Grace stuffed the black lace back into the very bottom of her suitcase, and she put on the long, white satin nightgown instead. It was sexy, too, but in a clean, virginal-bride sort of way.

  She was no virgin bride. He was going to know that, but he would be too much of a gentleman to ask about it.

  She almost wished he would. A spark of jealousy, a burst of anger, would reassure her somehow. Because though she loved him, and she knew he loved her, there seemed to have been something missing in their relationship so far.

  Passion.

  Jack tapped on the bathroom door. “Are you all right in there, Grace?”

  Closing her eyes, she shook away her
foolish notions. It was wedding-night jitters and nothing more. “Fine, darling. I’ll be right out.”

  She looked one last time at the suitcase that held her hidden fantasies tucked away in the bottom. Then she closed the lid with a decisive click and, turning, opened the door.

  Jack smiled gently when she did. His eyes skimmed lower, to her feet, and up again, and he said, “You look like an angel.” With one hand, he stroked her outer arm, shoulder to wrist. “Almost too beautiful to touch.”

  Not exactly the reaction she’d been hoping for.

  They had never made love before. Jack had never even suggested it, but Grace had seen fleeting, all-too-brief glimpses of the fire buried deep inside him once or twice. When their kisses had become heated, when she’d forgotten for an instant the role she was supposed to be playing. She’d told herself he was holding his passion inside because he was a gentleman and because he respected her enough to want to wait until they were married. She’d told herself it would be loosed tonight. That his restraint, so obvious she could feel it tugging at him every time they touched, would fall away. That he would take her to the very heights of ecstasy tonight.

  He didn’t.

  Oh, it was tender, their lovemaking. Tender, and gentle, and slow. More like intimate snuggling, she thought, than actual sex. She felt him trembling as he moved on top of her, his shoulders virtually quivering like a volcano of passion bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to erupt. But it didn’t. He held her as carefully as if she were a fragile porcelain treasure, and when he finally stopped, she was unsure whether he’d climaxed or not. She…hadn’t even come close.

  He kissed her cheek, rolled off her and held her lightly. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked.

  Hurt her? He’d barely touched her. “No, of course not.”

  “Good. You’re…okay, then?”

  “I’m fine.” If feeling like clawing her way up the wall to the ceiling and shrieking like a frustrated tomcat could be called fine, that is.

  “Good.” He rolled over, snagging a robe off the bed. “I’m gonna run you a nice hot bath, then. And then we’ll go out. Do something special. Okay?”

  “Sure.” She had thought that what they had been doing was something special. But it hadn’t turned out that way.

  * * *

  Maybe, Jack thought, this had been a mistake. Hell, their courtship had been torture, but the actual marriage turned out to be far worse. He tried his damnedest to be the man his beautiful young wife thought he was. All well-bred and gentle. When deep down, he’d wanted to throw her on the bed that night, tear that pristine dress off her and ravish her from her head to her toes. He’d been holding back for so long—because that was what a girl like Grace would expect. Restraint. Decency.

  Not making love to her had been bad enough. But how could he have known that actually doing it would be so much worse? His desire for the woman had been building ever since he’d first set eyes on her. No, desire wasn’t even the right word. It was more than that. So much more. It was carnal. It was hunger. It was pure undiluted lust. If he had let it loose…hell, she’d have packed up and gone home before morning. So Jack had bound himself up in chains of restraint. He’d held back. He’d vented the tiniest fragment of what had been building inside him. And all it had done was make him want her even more.

  He thought that within six months he would probably explode from the pressure within. Or go insane.

  Ah, but looking at her, looking into those innocent eyes of hers that night after he’d made love to her for the first time, he’d realized that even though he’d held himself in fierce check, the sex act had traumatized her a bit. She’d looked confused, bewildered, upset. Just think how much worse it might have been.

  He was an animal. He felt guilty for having touched her at all. God knew he wasn’t worthy.

  That night, their wedding night, had pretty much set the pattern of intimacy between them. They’d settled into a routine after the honeymoon. Sex was infrequent—because it was a hell of a lot easier for Jack to not have her at all, than to have her while fighting his own feelings and holding himself back.

  And there was more, of course. There was Jack’s work. He and JW were closing in on the cocaine supplier they had been after for so many months. But they still hadn’t caught him. Jack couldn’t leave his job to take one of the fabulous ones he’d been offered for five times the money. Not until he nailed this guy. But lying to Grace was wearing on him. Every day she would ask him something about his work, and every day he would tell a half-truth or skirt the question.

  The combination of not wanting to suffer the fiery temptation of being near her, of hating to have to look into her blue eyes and lie to her, and of wanting this damn case finished so he would no longer have to, resulted in a lot of late nights. Worked weekends. Missed dinners. And while Grace said she understood…Jack rather doubted it.

  But she was all right. She had her family. She had the house—oh, hell, the house. A wedding gift from Harry and Mitsy. Jack had to give Harry credit, though. The old man had taken Jack’s taste into account. It wasn’t a sprawling mansion enclosed in a fence. Instead, it was a redwood-and-glass modified A-frame, sitting on its own fifty acres on the shore of Looking Glass Lake. Thirty minutes from the city, and perfect. Jack had loved it on sight, but he couldn’t even think about the price tag without feeling like the world’s biggest moocher. When he mentioned that to Harry in a rare private moment, his father-in-law’s reply had been predictable, if not entirely accurate.

  “You saved my life, son. All I gave you was a house. We’re not even close to being square.”

  He was wrong, though. Dead wrong. Harry had given Jack his daughter, and that was one gem Jack knew he couldn’t earn in a dozen lifetimes. Not if he saved a thousand lives.

  Things should have been unbelievably good.

  So why weren’t they?

  Jack began to suspect that maybe his precious Grace was beginning to see through him. To catch glimpses of the low-class fraud inside. He didn’t know how. He’d been so careful. He’d been studying things like etiquette and wines. All his old clothes were at the apartment, which was still his for a year no matter what, according to the lease, but he hadn’t told Gracie that. He didn’t want her seeing the way he used to live.

  Sometimes after work, Jack and JW would head over there for a couple of beers and a hand or two of poker. Watch some sports on TV. Then Jack would change into one of his new suits, and dust off his phony-baloney briefcase, and head home in the fancy new car that had cost a third of his retirement account. All his other savings had gone for the rings on his wife’s finger, because nothing but the best was good enough for Grace.

  After a very short while, though, it seemed to Jack that Grace would look at him real close when he came home late. As if she suspected the truth.

  It was eating at him. Damn, if he could just nail that dealer and get it over with. Then he could move on with his new life, in a job he wouldn’t have to lie to his wife about.

  Maybe he should just tell her.

  He loved her. And he knew she loved him, and the rational part of his mind really didn’t believe she would stop loving him if he told her the truth. The irrational part did, but that was a whole other ball game. The reasons he gave himself for continuing this grand deception were that she was too good and too fragile. It would scare her to death, for one thing, and if she got too close, it would disgust her. Seeing her husband grilling an addict while he threw up on his shoes. Watching her husband don his homeless bum costume and sit between trash cans on surveillance. Seeing the kind of scum he had to deal with day in and day out. The stress. The worry. The constant fear.

  Maybe part of it was selfishness, too. To Jack, Grace was like a haven. For so long he’d been immersed in filth. She had pulled him out of that. When he showered and put that suit on at the end of the day, it was just like washing away the slime. He never used to feel that way. He used to go home feeling as if it were clinging
to him. Like a dark cloud or an oily film that he couldn’t scrub off.

  Not now. Now he washed it away, and went home to a clean, nice place, with an angel waiting for him. And from the minute he set foot there, he never thought about work again until he headed out the next morning. Never once. So in a way, he guessed he was enjoying the game he was playing with his wife.

  He should have known better. He really should.

  After all, he was practically living two lives at once. And the wounded, worried look in Grace’s eyes seemed to be getting more and more pronounced all the time.

  It had to end. Soon.

  Late one night the phone rang, and for the first time Jack’s real world, the dirty, smelly, low-down one in which he lived every day, invaded his make-believe world—the one in which he took refuge every night.

  Jack rolled over in the king-size bed, glancing at the huge window that overlooked the lake and seeing the stars dotting the sky beyond it. Frowning, he picked up the phone and when he heard JW’s voice, he looked at Grace fast. She seemed to be sound asleep. He whispered, “God, why are you calling me here?”

  “It’s too big to wait, pal.”

  Jack sighed, glancing again at his sleeping wife. “I’ll call you right back,” he said, and hung up. Then he tiptoed out of the bedroom, closed the door quietly behind him and went down the open stairway to return his partner’s call from the living room below.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I knew it!” Gracie paced the length of her living room again and again, crossing in front of the huge fireplace she loved and barely looking at it. “I mean—I didn’t know it. I knew there was…something. I just thought it would be something else.” Her throat went tight, and her eyes burned. “Oh, God, anything else.”

  “Grace, honey, you aren’t making any sense.” Hope stepped into her path with a cup of tea in her hands, thrusting it under Grace’s nose. “Settle down, sip this and tell me again.”

  “She told you twice already, Hope.” Charlie was on the sofa, sock feet propped on the coffee table, watching the proceedings with an I-told-you-so look on her face. “He got a midnight phone call from his lover and off he went to meet her.”