Kill Me Again (28 page)

“It's okay, boy. You're a good dog. You're a good,
good
dog, Freddy.”

Tears burned in her eyes. She felt it when the door opened, whispers were exchanged, and Sam slipped out of the room as Adam replaced him. She knew it was him without even looking. She felt him there, felt him moving closer to her, felt his hand slide over hers in the dog's gorgeous brindle fur.

“Adam's here, Freddy. We're both here. We're fine.
You made sure of that. Now you just need to rest.” She spoke very softly but cheerfully, so her dog would know that all was well. “I love you, Freddy. You're
such
a good boy.”

A thump, followed by another, weak but unmistakable, drew her eyes to his tail. He wagged it again, thumping the table twice more.

She smiled, and tears streamed down both cheeks. “Did you see that?” she whispered.

“I sure did.”

“He's going to be okay. I know he is. God, what a dog. He's going to be just fine.”

“I believe you. But how about his owner?”

She blinked, finally turning to meet his eyes. “I just don't want to leave him.”

“You don't have to. I promised the clinic a hefty donation.”

She gaped at him.

“Well, I had this half mil lying around that no one else knew about. Considering what it was supposed to buy, I thought the best thing it could be used for would be this.”

The tears returned. Grateful ones, this time. “Thank you. You didn't have to do that.”

“After all I've put you through? Yeah, I kinda did.” He put his hands on her shoulders, looked her squarely in the eyes. “I want you to know something, Olivia.”

She lifted her brows in question.

“I've got my memory back. There are a few spotty places, but it's pretty much intact.”

She smiled. “That's great news, Adam. I'm so glad for you.”

He nodded. “Me, too. Did you know you were my last job?”

She frowned. “I was?”

“Yeah. I planned to quit after this one. Find something boring to do for a while.”

She smiled softly. “Boring sounds pretty good to me right now.”

“Me, too. Another thing I know is something I've kind of suspected right along. There's no woman in my life. No wife, no fiancée, no girlfriend. Never has been anyone serious.”

She felt goose bumps rise on her arms and had to avert her eyes. “No?”

“No. No one who's ever made me feel…the way I've been feeling since I looked up from that blank slate that was my mind and straight into your brown eyes.”

She did look at him then. “Adam…?”

“Look, I don't know if you're going to have charges to answer. If you do, I expect the system to be lenient. You've been through enough. But either way…either way, I'd kind of like to be there.”

“Be…where?”

This time he was the one to lower his eyes.

“Back at the cheese factory,” she said, “when everything was going down, you called me your woman
and Freddy your dog. Do you really feel that way about us?”

He looked at the giant animal lying so still on the table and said, “I love that oversize mutt so much I can't even believe it. I mean, he's a dog, for cryin' out loud.”

“Shhh,” she whispered. “He'll hear you.”

“Yeah. Well, even so…it's nothing like the way I feel about you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“So how
do
you feel?”

“Oh, well, my head's taken a few too many hits, and my wrists are raw from those cuffs, but aside from that—”

She punched him lightly in the arm. “About me,” she said.

He smiled slowly, turning her to face him, his arms around her waist. “I'm madly in love with you.”

“You are?”

“I was given those letters to read—the ones you'd written to Aaron Westhaven. Bryan says Corinne got them from Skinner, who'd been intercepting pieces of your mail that interested him ever since he found out you were alive. He sold them to Corinne as a way to get to you. She gave them to Bruce, and he gave them to me as part of my research on you, to prepare for the job. Accepting the speaking gig, pretending to be Aaron, that was just to get close enough to you to tell you what was really going on.”

“Uh-huh. Could we get back to the part where you're in love with me?” she asked.

He smiled and kissed her forehead. “I kept reading them. Over and over, until I knew them by heart. The way you bared your soul, talked about your losses—no specifics, but I could feel that you'd been through hell. And that you didn't believe in love or happiness anymore. And I wanted you to. I wanted to meet you and talk to you, and make you believe you could be happy again. I wanted to take away all the pain I felt in those words you had written.” He looked over at the dog, sleeping on the table. “Instead, I only brought you more.”

“None of this was your fault, Adam. You came here to help me. You couldn't have known you were being used to set me up.”

He studied her face, waiting, she knew, for more.

Her smile was tremulous and weak. “You already know I love you, too. And I don't want to be alone tonight.”

“Then I'll stay with you.”

She blinked and looked at her dog. “For how long?”

“Until Freddy wakes up, at least. And beyond that—well, beyond that, for as long as you'll have me, I guess.” His fingers caught her chin, turned her face toward his, and then he bent and kissed her.

Olivia gave herself over to the rush of relief provided by a pair of strong male arms and a solid, warm chest. She let go of her worry, of her grief, knowing he could carry it for her until and unless she needed it again. For
the first time in sixteen years she trusted a man enough to let her guard down completely, to lean on him, to reveal her own vulnerability in his presence without fear that he would use it against her.

She relaxed. She breathed. She loved.

Oh, God, it had taken so very long.

When he broke the kiss and she relaxed her head on his chest, nestled safe and warm in his arms, she whispered, “Westhaven's full of shit, as it turns out. Love
is
real. It
does
exist. And it's the most beautiful thing there is.”

“Third most beautiful,” he whispered. “You're second.” And then he clasped her shoulders and turned her bodily around. “
That's
the
most
beautiful.”

Freddy lay on the table with his brown eyes open, knowing and aware, looking right at them.

They moved to his side as one, arm in arm, then touched him and spoke softly to him, and told him everything was going to be all right.

And for the first time in sixteen long years Olivia actually believed it was true.

T
hey were in Carrie's backyard with a huge crowd of friends and relatives, celebrating Sam's Citizen of the Year Award from the Shadow Falls P.D. for his act of selfless heroism. The in-ground pool was perfect on the hot summer day. Some of the people in it were less than thrilled to be sharing the water with a fit and healthy Old English mastiff, but most seemed to think it added to the fun.

Freddy certainly did.

The barbecue grill was being co-manned by Adam and Bryan. Everyone in town had turned out. Once the press got wind of the story, Sam became the hero of the hour, and everyone wanted to celebrate his award with him.

A federal judge had reviewed the potential case against Olivia and dismissed it. The university had been huffy, at first—and Professor Mallory had been one of the chief instigators against her. Even though she'd reimbursed him for the Expedition that was sitting in her
driveway alongside the unclaimed Lincoln, as well as her own Escape Hybrid—it was beginning to look like a used SUV lot—Mallory had still been furious and tried to get her fired. That had spurred Carrie to dump his ass—a very good thing, in Olivia's opinion. Best of all, when word came down that she might be terminated, her students had organized a noisy protest rally that had gone on for three days and nights, nonstop, until the board relented.

Her only “punishment” was that the nameplate on her office door had been changed to read Professor Sarah Quinlan.

There had been a couple of weeks where she'd barely been able to leave her house, due to all the press coverage. That she'd taken on the identity of a dead woman and lived under her name for so many years was the stuff of media madness, and they'd been true to form. But things were finally dying down now.

The real Olivia Dupree might finally be able to rest in peace. And the real Sarah Quinlan had been resurrected and was living life for the very first time.

Ironic, that.

“He's gorgeous,” Dawn said softly. “You gonna keep him?”

“For ever and ever,” Olivia told her friend as they watched the two men bonding over burgers at the grill.

Carrie nudged her with an elbow. “We'll be planning
your
wedding next.”

Olivia smiled, loving that idea, even as Dawn said,
“Don't get ahead of yourself. We haven't finished planning mine yet—and it's next month!”

“Okay, okay,” Carrie conceded. “Come on, Olivia—Sarah—God, I'll never get used to that. We need to help serve.”

“If it's okay, I'd like to give your son a thank-you present first.”

Carrie closed her eyes. “I can't believe you're doing this. But I'm not gonna say no.” She waved an arm in a “go for it” gesture.

Olivia spotted Sam trying to wrest a deflated beach ball from Freddy's jaws, and called out to him. He got out of the pool, calling Freddy behind him.

“Would you walk out front with me, Sam? I want to talk to you about something.”

“Sure.”

He fell into step beside her, and she said, “You know, with everything going on, I never got a chance to thank you for what you did that night.”

“You did so. You said thanks the night Freddy got shot.” He shook his head. “Man, that was scary.”

“It was. But it wasn't a proper thank-you. And you saved Adam's life, too, before you got around to saving mine. We figured we'd get you a really special present to show you how grateful we both are. Think of it as a birthday present, if you want.”

“My birthday was six weeks ago.”

She held up a set of keys. “Better late than never.”

Sam's jaw dropped. “What—what do you—what are you—”

She pointed, and Sam turned, staring at the red-and-black SUV.

“I thought you might like a slightly used—” she cleared her throat “—Funkmaster Flex Edition Ford Expedition.
Phew!
Do you know how often I had to practice saying that?”

He just stared. Then he shook his head. “No way.”

“Um, yes. Way.”

And then he smiled and turned and hugged her neck
while
bouncing up and down, as a round of applause broke out from all the people who'd quietly followed them around the side of the house.

“I can't believe it! I can't! Oh, God, I can't believe it! No way! For real?”

“Yeah, for real. I broke it, I bought it. And I don't really need another SUV. You seemed to like this one, and really, it's hardly a fair trade for saving our lives.”

“I can't believe it.”

“Believe it. I wouldn't have missed out on the life I'm living right now for anything in the world,” she said softly, as Adam came up beside her and slid an arm around her shoulders. “It took a long time for me to start living again, Sam. Without you, I wouldn't have had the chance.”

“You're awesome, Prof,” he said. “God, I don't even know what to say.”

“Say you'll be careful with it. Now go check it out already.”

“All right!” He took the keys and ran, a dozen other almost-juniors stampeding behind him.

Smiling, she turned into Adam's waiting arms. “That felt great. Just what I needed today.”

He frowned. “Why today?”

She lowered her head. “Today's the day the real Olivia Dupree was murdered. I used to think of it as my birthday. My
new
birthday. The day a cop I didn't know was actually a killer helped me be reborn.”

She closed her eyes. “Let's drink a toast to her tonight. In a way, she helped me, too.”

“Okay, it's a deal. And from now on, we'll remember this date and drink a toast to her every year.”

“That would be nice,” she said softly.

“And it won't even be hard to remember,” he said. “Six weeks after Sam's birthday.”

“Yeah, six weeks after…” She stopped speaking. She turned and stared at Sam, out there with his friends, admiring his new wheels. She looked at him.

Really
looked at him.

And she realized for the first time that he had his mother's eyes.

“Hey. Where'd you go?” Adam said.

She blinked and brought herself back to the present. Back to Adam, to her life, a life without secrets. She wished all the people she cared about could have the same.

“Nowhere,” she said softly. “I'm right here.”

“Right where I like you—by my side.”

“It's where I'll always be.”

Freddy chose that moment to force his head, followed by his big wet body, right between them, and they both laughed out loud. “Well, where I'll always be if we can get around our dog,” she said.

“Yeah, he can be a bit of an obstacle. Luckily he approves of us.”

“I wouldn't be with you otherwise,” she joked.

He kissed her, then kissed her again. “So how are we getting home now that you've given away our wheels?”

“It's a nice day for a walk,” she suggested.

He slid his arm around her again, patted his thigh for Freddy to fall in beside him, and they walked away arm in arm, turning briefly to wave to their friends.

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I really didn't believe in it, you know.”

“In what?” he asked.

“In this.” She drew a breath, closed her eyes and felt a warm bliss in every part of her being. “In loving this much. In being this happy. But it's real. It's
real,
and it's actually mine. It's my life. This wonderful, unbelievable, can't-wait-to-get-out-of-bed-and-start-every-new-day, can't-wait-to-fall-back-into-bed-with you-every-night, life is
mine
.”

She felt as if she were glowing, alive, beaming with
joy and still barely able to conceive of herself feeling that way. And yet she did. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He bent to the grassy roadside and plucked a little blue flower, then held it toward her. She frowned.

“It's a forget-me-not,” he said. “Better hold on to it, just in case.” He tucked it into her hair, and they laughed while they kissed, and Olivia would have sworn Freddy was laughing right along with them.