Witness (43 page)

From inside the house, they heard the soft, sweet strains of piano music. Jeannie's song. Manton knew. And he was paying tribute to their love.

 

J
EANNIE KICKED THE
sand with her bare toes. Sam rubbed suntan lotion on her delicate skin, coating her back and arms thoroughly, then starting on her legs. Beautiful, silky legs. But physically weak, unable to fully support her slender weight. He kissed her inner thigh. She ruffled his thick blond hair.

Sam looked up at her and smiled. “I promise you, my childhood was boring and meaningless. I don't know why you want to hear about it.”

“Because I picture you as this serious little boy who went around with a frown on his face.” Jeannie giggled when he tickled her foot. “Come on, tell me. This is called getting to know each other. You go first.”

Sam completed his suntan detail, recapped the bottle and tossed it on the blanket beside the picnic hamper. “My father was a career soldier, so I didn't see much of him, even before he died. After our mother's death, James and I lived with an aunt and uncle, and I stayed on with them when James joined the marines. Aunt Harriet and Uncle Pete are both gone now.”

“Were you a happy child?” Jeannie rummaged around inside the picnic basket, retrieved a bottle of wine and two clear plastic glasses. She handed the wine to Sam.

He opened the bottle, filled their glasses, then reached around Jeannie to place the wine back in the hamper. “I guess I enjoyed my childhood as much as any kid does, but I never had a lot of friends. I was a bit of a loner.” Jeannie handed Sam a glass of wine. “I idolized my father. So did James. I thought my dad was a real hero. I wanted to be just like him.”

“I never knew my real father.” Jeannie placed cheese, apples and wheat crackers on a plastic plate. “My mother got pregnant when she was sixteen. She was only twenty-two when she married Randy Foley.” Jeannie shook her head from side to side, making her long ponytail bounce from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. “Julian and Manton have both been like fathers to me.”

“Yeah, well, when our old man died, James became my
substitute father. I followed him into the marines as soon as I turned eighteen. And when he got married, James's wife told me that their home would always be mine. Sandra was a special lady.”

Jeannie clasped Sam's hand. “It's all right to still feel sad about their dying so young.”

“Elizabeth was only twelve. She really needed her parents, but she was lucky. She had a great-aunt who understood what it meant to be psychic. Legally, I was Elizabeth's guardian, but her great-aunt Margaret was the one who raised her.”

“You love Elizabeth dearly, don't you?”

Sam brought Jeannie's hand to his lips, kissed the open palm and laid it over his heart. “She's the only person I had in my life to love.” He gazed down into the wine, sighed, then took a sip. “But she's a grown woman now, married and a mother. Every time I look at her little boy—”

“You want a child of your own, don't you, Sam?” She sensed the need in him, tapping into his emotions simply by touching him. Big, macho, hard-edged soldier, government agent and bodyguard, Sam Dundee had a central core of goodness, a wellspring of pure golden love just waiting to be lavished on a child.

He jerked away from her, spilling his wine. Standing, he faced the sun, then shaded his eyes with his big hand. She watched him, his broad shoulders moving slightly when he breathed.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I couldn't help picking up on what you were feeling. I didn't mean to intrude on something that's obviously painful for you.”

She knew! Dear God, she knew. She had gotten that deep inside him.

Sam willed himself not to think about what had happened six years ago, about what had happened to the child who might have been his. “Your childhood was pretty rotten, wasn't it?”
he asked her, deliberately changing the subject. “Until you went to live with Julian and Miriam Howell.”

“You can't imagine.” Jeannie sipped the wine slowly. “From when I was six and Mama married Randy Foley, until I was thirteen and they died in the car crash that crippled me, I lived in pain every day of my life. Except…”

Sam sat down again on the quilt beside Jeannie, cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face upward. She stared into his eyes. “Except when you came to Le Bijou Bleu for vacations.”

“This island was my heaven. And Manton was my guardian angel. He was the first person I communicated with telepathically. I never told Mama and Randy. It would have been one more thing they would have tried to exploit. And I didn't try to develop the talent. It never happened again until Miriam became sick and…” Tears gathered in Jeannie's eyes; she bit her bottom lip. “I loved her so dearly.”

“Cancer can be a horrible way to die,” Sam said.

“She suffered unbearably near the end.” Jeannie swallowed her tears as the memories of Miriam's final days flooded her memory.

“And you shared that suffering. You made it bearable.” He pulled her into his arms, stroking her back, resting his head atop hers, his cheek brushing her hair. “It must have been terrible for you.”

“Yes and no. It would have been worse for me if I hadn't been able to absorb some of her pain, to take away the suffering for just a few hours, to give her a little relief. There came a time when the drugs didn't help.”

“She was very fortunate to have you.” Sam kissed the side of Jeannie's face.

She slipped her arms around his waist, touching his naked skin beneath his loose cotton shirt. “I was fortunate to have her for a mother for so many years. She was an extraordinary
woman. Beautiful. Brilliant. Compassionate. I would have done anything for her.”

“And you did.” He soothed her with his hands, caressing her tenderly.

“Can't you understand?” She looked at him, asking him to put himself in her place. “If you saw someone you loved in excruciating pain, wouldn't you want to make the pain go away? Wouldn't you, if you could, suffer that pain for them?”

Sam kissed her. Hot. Fierce. Demanding. Yes, he understood what it meant to care so deeply for someone, to be willing to die for that person if necessary. When he released her mouth, she gasped for air.

“Sam?” She'd felt it, that tiny kernel of emotion called love. It was there, buried so deep within Sam that he wasn't even consciously aware it existed. All these years, there had been no one to keep love alive in Sam, no one except Elizabeth.

But Sam had never been deeply in love, had never bonded with a woman. Not until— But their bonding was incomplete, despite a week of making love and sharing private thoughts and feelings. He wouldn't allow himself to love her. The risk was too great. And as much as he wanted a child—even if he denied that great desire—he had not made love to Jeannie again, after that first night, without using protection.

And just who was he protecting, she wondered, her or himself?

Sam peeled off his shirt, dropped it on the quilt and nodded toward the ocean. “How about a swim before we eat lunch?”

Jeannie held up her arms to him. He lifted her, carried her across the beach, and together they dived into the water. Within minutes, his dark mood lightened and the sadness left her eyes. They frolicked in the Gulf like two playful children. Later they sat in the shade of a huge old live oak with branches that drooped to the ground and had taken root. They ate the cheese and fruit, drank the wine and made slow, sweet love.

With each passing day, with each shared intimacy, Sam and
Jeannie's joining became stronger. If Sam could ever bring himself to love her, truly love her, they would become one. Every beat of his heart, hers. Every breath she took, his. Her thoughts, her emotions, her feelings, would belong to him, and his to her. How deep the bonding would go, even Jeannie did not know.

J
EANNIE CUDDLED IN
Sam's arms. The late-afternoon sun was behind them, the ocean breeze soft and warm on their bare skin. With an occasional backward sweep of his foot, Sam kept the wooden porch swing in slow but continuous motion as he held Jeannie close. Caressing her shoulder with one hand, he rested his cheek against the side of her head. Her fresh, clean smell surrounded him. Turning her head just a fraction, she glanced up at him and smiled. Bringing his mouth down on hers, he kissed her with the wonderful sweetness of familiarity. In the twenty days they'd spent on Le Bijou Bleu, Sam had allowed himself to drown in the pleasure of loving Jeannie, of being at her side night and day, of discovering the incredible sensations of having his lover experience his every emotion, just as he was beginning to experience hers.

They hadn't spoken about what was happening to him, the fact that he was becoming more and more attuned to Jeannie's thoughts and feelings with each passing day. Although Sam didn't scoff at the idea of psychic powers, having been exposed to Elizabeth's psychic talents for so many years, he'd never experienced any himself. Until now, with Jeannie. Although whatever was happening to him was on a limited basis, he had to admit that he could communicate with Jeannie telepathically, to a certain extent. And each time they made love, the sensation of feeling what she felt grew stronger and stronger. He couldn't imagine what it was like for her, experiencing his fulfillment and her own.

Manton's piano music drifted through the open French doors.
Every afternoon, without fail, the gentle giant of a man played his sentimental compositions.

“Listen,” Jeannie said. “That's something new. He's never played it before.”

The tune seeped into Sam's mind, and for some odd reason, its sweet, vibrant melody resurrected long-buried memories. That night six years ago, a three-piece band had played on the riverboat nightclub owned by Louis Herriot, a man the DEA wanted badly enough to place Sam and new agent Brock Holmes in a dangerous undercover operation. And everything had gone exactly as planned, until Connie Bell inadvertently walked into the middle of things as the sting was coming down.

“Sam?” Jeannie touched his face.

He jumped, then stared at her, suddenly aware of where his thoughts were leading him. “I'm all right.”

“No, you're not.” She caressed his cheek.

Closing his eyes, loving the feel of her, he covered her hand. “There's no point in talking about what happened. It's over and done with, and I'll have to live with the consequences the rest of my life. All the talking in the world won't change anything.”

“Talking might help you deal with the grief and the guilt.” She sensed his resistance, his fear, his guilt. Several times she had been right on the verge of telling him she was aware of the terrible pain eating away at his soul, but he'd sealed himself off from her, and she had respected his privacy.

“Don't you know you can share anything with me and I'll understand? If you'll only let me, I can ease your suffering.”

Releasing his hold on her, he moved away, then stood, keeping his back to her. He thrust his hands into the front pockets of the cutoff jeans he wore. “Like you did the day you saved my life?”

She shivered with the force of his anger as it spiraled inside her. Reaching for her cane that rested against the wall, she slid to the edge of the swing. “Yes, like I did the day I found you on
the beach. You felt guilty for two people's deaths. You didn't think you deserved to live.”

“Yeah.” Sam walked down the veranda, stopping several feet away from her. “I thought I was dying, and when I came to and saw you, I thought you were an angel.” He emitted a grunting laugh. “Ironic, isn't it? As it turned out, that's exactly what you were.”

“You can't spend the rest of your life blaming yourself, hating yourself, letting that guilt destroy your ability to live and love.” Positioning her cane, Jeannie stood and took several steps toward Sam. She laid her hand on his back. He flinched.

“Don't do this,” he said. “I don't want you to suffer for me. I don't want you to know what it feels like.”

“Please trust me, Sam.” She slipped her arms around his waist, holding tight when he started to withdraw from her. “You must know how much you mean to me. You're the one person in this world I most want to help.”

His unrelenting guilt hit her with shattering force. She clung to Sam, resting her head on his back. Dear God, the pain inside him was unbearable. Dark, bitter rage simmered in his soul. Damned forever. Oh, her poor Sam. A lesser man would never know such guilt.

“Stop it!” He realized what had happened, what he had allowed to happen. Dammit, he wasn't going to let her absorb any more of the tormenting grief from which he could never escape. His grief and guilt were his punishment, not hers. She was innocent, so very innocent.

“Talk to me about what happened. Let it go. Give it to me and let me share your burden. Allow me to help you.” While she held him with the fierceness of that abiding protective devotion, she gave those very feelings over to him, allowing him to experience the great depth of her emotions.

“I don't want your help!” Jerking out of her embrace, he stalked off the veranda and across the wide expanse of lush green lawn.

Jeannie stood on the veranda and watched him walk away. Tears filled her eyes, ran down her cheeks, trickled off her nose and over her lips. She couldn't force him to come to her, expose his heart's deepest emotions and bare his soul. But neither could she let him suffer alone, as he had done for the past six years. If he would not allow her to take away his guilt and grief for a few hours, she could still be at his side, supporting him while he grieved anew.

She took one step down from the veranda, then heard Manton call to her. Turning around, she saw him standing behind her.

Did you like the new composition I played for you and Sam today?
he asked telepathically.

It was lovely, but—

It made Sam very sad, didn't it?

Yes. It made him think of something he would like to forget.

I wrote the song for your child, Jeannie. For your and Sam Dundee's child.

Jeannie stared directly into Manton's piercing green eyes. Several days ago, she had made the first connection with the new life growing inside her. If she had not been so overwhelmed with all the new feelings she'd experienced the first time she and Sam made love, she would have known immediately that she had conceived his child.

“I knew I couldn't keep the child a secret from you,” she said, her lips moving silently.

You should not keep her a secret from her father, either.

Jeannie laid her hand tenderly over her flat stomach. Sam's child. The most precious gift God could have given her. She had been given so much. Dare she ask for Sam's salvation from guilt and grief? Dare she ask that he be freed from the past so that he could open his heart and love her? Perhaps she had been blessed with more than enough. Perhaps what she and Sam had already been given was all heaven would allow.

I can't tell Sam now. It's too soon. He has to deal with his old grief first.

Then go to him,
Manton said.
He will never be able to come to terms with what is destroying him without your help.

Jeannie embraced Manton, her heart filled with love for him. He was the dearest of men, his soul so pure that it was on its final journey to completion.

She walked down the steps and into the yard. She knew where Sam had gone. Back to the beach where he had washed ashore six years ago.

She found him looking out at the ocean, his body statue-hard, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes, his face etched with tense lines of agony.

When she approached him, she didn't touch him, but he sensed her presence. Turning around, he looked at her with dead eyes, eyes of pure gray steel. She took a tentative step forward; he didn't move. Another step. And another.

He watched her, his gaze fixed to hers. She stood directly in front of him, one hand holding her walking stick, the other clutching the side of her peach gauze skirt. A muscle in his neck throbbed. His lips parted. He sucked in a deep breath.

Tearstains marred her face. The hand with which she held the cane trembled, the movement barely discernible. She looked at him with eyes of love and understanding and compassion. His big shoulders slumped ever so slightly. His eyes softened from steel to blue-gray.

He was losing this battle, and he knew it. He might be twice Jeannie's size, his body far more powerful, but inside that fragile body, within that enormous heart of hers, lived a strength for which Sam was no match.

A fine glaze of moisture covered his eyes. He blinked away the evidence of emotion, but he could not turn away from Jeannie. He pulled her into his arms. She went willingly, gladly, dropping her cane onto the sandy beach. She wrapped him in the warmth of her embrace, petting his back with gentle up-
and-down strokes. After six long years of running away from a truth that tormented him, Sam knew the time had come to exorcise the demon.

But, dear God, how could he endure watching her hurt for him? How could he, once again, be the recipient of her tender mercy?

“I knew better.” He spoke softly, the words a mere whisper on the wind. “If I hadn't been so damned stupid!”

“You made a mistake, Sam. Everyone makes mistakes.” She hugged him, absorbing his feelings.

“But not everyone's mistakes cost two people their lives.” Clinging to her, he allowed her inside his mind and heart and body. He held back nothing.

Releasing her hold around his waist, she reached up and took his face in her hands. Every muscle in his body tensed. Jeannie held his face, forcing him to look directly into her eyes. “Say it. You blame yourself for Brock Holmes's death. He was a rookie agent, and you felt responsible for him. You blame yourself for the death of Connie Bell, the woman you were having an affair with, the woman who was a nightclub singer in Louie Herriot's employ. You knew better than to become personally involved with someone while you were on an assignment. If you hadn't been sleeping with her, she wouldn't have shown up at the wrong place and the wrong time and gotten shot.

“But it isn't Brock's death, or even Connie's, that you can never forgive yourself for causing. Tell me, Sam. Say it aloud. You've never done that, have you? You keep the truth hidden so deep inside you that it's festered into a rotting sore.”

He glared at her, his big body shaking, his eyes dry, his face crumpling before her very eyes. “Dammit, she was pregnant!”

“I know.” Jeannie slid her hands down Sam's neck and out to his shoulders, gripping them firmly. “Say it. Just this once, and you'll never have to say it again.”

The pain inside him carried him to his knees, Jeannie with
him. She could feel the guilt, the anguish, the gut-wrenching pain, as it began to leave him and make its way into her.

“Don't you see, the child could have been mine? I didn't have any idea she was pregnant. After I woke up in the Biloxi hospital, I found out about her being pregnant from another agent who'd been sent in to wrap up the case. Connie was two months pregnant. That baby—” he clutched Jeannie's hands, holding them between their bodies “—was probably mine.”

“Say it!” Jeannie cried the tears Sam could not shed. The pain eased from him; she took it upon herself.

“It's my fault that child was never born. I'm responsible for the death of my own child!”

A heavy weight of guilt lifted from Sam. Pain and grief cleared from his heart and soul. He breathed deeply, drawing fresh air into his lungs, cleaning out the dark, dank recesses of his heart, allowing his soul a brief hint of reprieve.

At sunset, Jeannie sat in Sam's lap on the beach, cocooned in the security of his strong arms. Sam held her, never wanting to let her go.

“The grief and the guilt will always be there,” she said. “You know that, don't you? But now that you've faced them, you can learn to deal with them.”

“I can't change the past.”

“No, but you must learn to live with it.”

“I wasn't in love with Connie, and she wasn't in love with me. She'd just broken off with another guy, and I knew he was still around.”

“The child could have been his or yours, and you'll never know.” Jeannie took Sam's hand and laid it on her stomach, covering his hand with hers. “But the guilt is the same, because there's a good chance the child was yours.”

“If I hadn't let my… I knew better. I screwed up and it cost two…three people's lives.”

“The only way to atone for that mistake is to make the most
of
your
life. Give all that's good and strong within you to others. Forgive yourself, and find the love buried deep inside you.”

“I don't know if there's any love in me,” he said.

“You love Elizabeth and her child.” Jeannie leaned back, letting her head rest on his shoulder. “I know there's more love inside you, if you'll only release it. But no one else can do that for you, Sam. Not even me.”

No, not even Jeannie, sweet, angelic Jeannie, could save him. Hell, he wasn't sure he wanted to be saved. He had become accustomed to his guilt and remorse. To the pain. And the price of salvation was too high. If a man didn't care too much, he didn't put his emotions on the line. If caring for others to the extent Jeannie cared, and being willing to open himself up to his deepest emotions, was the only recourse, Sam knew he was damned. Jeannie Alverson was expecting too much from him. He could never be the man she wanted or needed.

Turning in his arms quickly, Jeannie kissed him. A tender, loving kiss. “It's all right. I'm not asking for more than you can give.” She caressed his cheek, knowing in her heart that her words were a lie. She wanted Sam Dundee. All of him. His body. His heart. His mind. His very soul. And she wanted him forever. But he hadn't promised her forever. All they had was today.