Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(5)

Sophie, on the other hand, cried and cried and cried.

Couple of months, I tried to tell her. Hardly any time at all. Just a matter of weeks.

Life was duller with Brian gone. An endless grind of getting up at one p.m., retrieving Sophie from daycare by five, entertaining her until her bedtime at nine, with Mrs. Ennis arriving at ten so I could patrol from eleven to seven. The life of a single working mom. Struggling to stretch a dime into a dollar, cramming endless errands into an already overscheduled day, fighting to keep my bosses happy while still meeting my young daughter’s needs.

I could handle it, I reminded myself. I was tough. I’d gotten through my pregnancy alone, I’d given birth alone. I’d endured twenty-five long, lonely weeks at the live-in Police Academy, missing Sophie with every breath I took but determined not to quit because becoming a state police officer was the best shot I had to provide a future for my daughter. I’d been allowed to return home to Sophie every Friday night, but I also had to leave her crying with Mrs. Ennis every Monday morning. Week after week after week, until I thought I’d scream from the pressure. But I did it. Anything for Sophie. Always for Sophie.

Still, I started checking e-mail more often because if Brian was in port he’d send us a quick note, or attach a silly picture of a moose in the middle of some Alaskan main street. By the sixth week, I realized I was happier the days he e-mailed, tenser the days he didn’t. And Sophie was, too. We huddled together over the computer each night, two pretty girls waiting to hear from their man.

Then finally, the call. Brian’s ship had docked in Ferndale, Washington. He’d be discharged the day after tomorrow, and would be catching the red-eye back to Boston. Could he take us to dinner?

Sophie selected her favorite dark blue dress. I wore the orange sundress from the Fourth of July cookout, topped with a sweater in deference to the November chill.

Sophie, keeping lookout from the front window, spotted him first. She squealed in delight and raced down the apartment steps so fast I thought she’d fall. Brian barely caught her at the end of the walk. He scooped her up, whirled her around. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

I approached more quietly, taking the time for a last minute tuck of my hair, buttoning my light sweater. I stepped through the front door of the apartment complex. Shut it firmly behind me.

Then I turned and studied him. Took him in from eight feet away. Drank him up.

Brian stopped twirling Sophie. Now he stood at the end of the walk, my child still in his arms, and he studied me, too.

We didn’t touch. We didn’t say a word. We didn’t have to.

Later, after dinner, after he brought us back to his place, after I tucked Sophie into the bed across the hall, I walked into his bedroom. I stood before him, and let him peel the sweater from my arms, the sundress from my body. I placed my hands against his bare chest. I tasted the salt on the column of his throat.

“Eight weeks was too long,” he muttered thickly. “I want you here, Tessa. Dammit, I want to know I’m coming home to you always.”

I placed his hands upon my breasts, arching into the feel of his fingers.

“Marry me,” he whispered. “I mean it, Tessa. I want you to be my wife. I want Sophie to be my daughter. You and her should be living here with me and Duke. We should be a family.”

I tasted his skin again. Slid my hands down his body, pressed the full length of my bare skin against his bare skin. Shivered at the contact. Except it wasn’t enough. The feel of him, the taste of him. I needed him against me, I needed him above me, I needed him inside me. I needed him everywhere, right now, this instant.

I dragged him down to the bed, wrapping my legs around his waist. Then he was sliding inside my body and I groaned, or maybe he groaned, but it didn’t really matter. He was where I needed him to be.

At the last moment, I caught his face between my hands so I could look into his eyes as the first wave crashed over us.

“Marry me,” he repeated. “I’ll be a good husband, Tessa. I’ll take care of you and Sophie.”

He moved inside of me and I said: “Yes.”





3



Brian Darby died in his kitchen. Three shots, tightly clustered midtorso. D.D.’s first thought was that Trooper Leoni must’ve taken her firearms training seriously, because the grouping was textbook perfect. As new recruits learned at the Academy—never go for the head and never shoot to wound. Torso is the high percentage shot and if you’re discharging your weapon, you’d better be in fear for your life or someone else’s, meaning you’re shooting to kill.

Leoni had gotten the job done. Now, what the hell had happened to drive a state trooper to shoot her husband? And where was the kid?

Currently, Trooper Leoni was sequestered in the front sunroom, being tended by EMTs for an ugly gash in her forehead and even uglier black eye. Her union rep was already with her, a lawyer on his way.

A dozen other state troopers had closed ranks outside, standing stiff-legged on the sidewalk where they could give their Boston colleagues working the scene, and the overexcited press reporting the scene, thousand-yard stares.

That left most of the Boston brass and most of the state police brass to squabble amongst themselves in the white command van now parked at the elementary school next door. The homicide unit supervisor from the Suffolk County DA was presumably playing referee, no doubt reminding the Massachusetts State Police superintendent that the state really couldn’t oversee an investigation involving one of its own officers, while also reminding the commissioner of Boston Police that the state’s request for a state police liaison was perfectly reasonable.