Before Sunrise Page 16

  “Kay. Look at me, babe.”

  Liam clenched his buttocks and pumped harder and faster.

  She managed to open her eyes. Good, he loved to look into her eyes when he was inside her. He pushed one of her legs back and she whimpered. He kept going with his thrusts, fast and furious. She never complained. He hit her core from every angle, rocking and swinging her hips before he could stand it no more and exploded inside of her.

  Kay probably hadn’t come. Liam dropped on her. He panted, unable to apologize. “Kay. Kay….”

  “Yes, Liam?”

  “I love you. I want you always.”

  She shoved at his chest and looked up at him, shocked. “What did you say?”

  He smiled. “I love you, Kay. I love you.”

  Kennedy squealed and kissed his face. He let go of her legs and lay on her, kissing and suckling her lips. He couldn’t lie. Kennedy Washington would his, forever and always.

  Chapter Ten

  Kennedy sat on her bed in the dark. Phil had left an hour ago and she hadn’t stopped crying. The only thing she seemed capable of was more tears. She remembered when he’d first said he loved her. How excited she’d been. From that day forward, a day never went by when the words didn’t pass between them.

  Kennedy released a sad sigh. Being separated from him would be torture. She would have to find out if she was pregnant. Soon.

  The door to her room pushed open. Her little girl walked in, rubbing sleep from her eye with her fist. She noticed Mackenzie had returned to her thumb-sucking habit in full force. Given the circumstances, Kennedy thought she’d allow it for a few days. She’d grant her baby girl anything to give her comfort. Her poor, sweet Mac must be so confused.

  “Come here, baby.” She extended her arms.

  Mackenzie wandered over with her wild curls in her face. She climbed atop the bed and went directly into her mother’s embrace.

  “You hungry?” Kennedy asked, smoothing out her daughter’s hair.

  Mackenzie shrugged sleepily and Kennedy smiled. Mothering her was what they both needed. Before she could get out of bed, the phone rang. Reaching for it, she saw on the caller ID it was the Marriott Suites.

  Phil, she thought. She worried over answering in front of Mackenzie, who had no idea he’d left. Why is he calling so soon? “Hello?”

  “Kay…um, it’s me.”

  “Liam? Uh, hi.”

  “I didn’t call to upset you…I just wanted to say, well I wanted to know if Mackenzie was okay. I scared her this evening.”

  “She’s okay, Liam. She’s right here with me. She’s fine.”

  “Oh. Good. Um, good, okay. I just wanted to tell her goodnight.”

  “Hold on.”

  Kennedy put the phone to Mackenzie’s ear. She could hear Liam say good night to her daughter. But Mackenzie said nothing. He said he loved her and couldn’t wait to see her again. Mackenzie didn’t respond.

  “She’s sleepy, Liam.” Kennedy said. She cuddled Mackenzie to her breast and tucked the covers around her.

  “I’m sorry I called so late.”

  “No, I’m glad you called…I mean, I wanted to say goodnight to you, too.”

  “There’s something you should know,” he said. Immediately her chest tightened with dread. She held her breath and braced for the news.

  “Okay?”

  “The media has learned about my rescue. Tomorrow might be crazy. I don’t want you blindsided.”

  “Thanks for the warning. How do you feel…I mean you’re on a cane. Did you get hurt? That’s silly, I’m sure you got hurt…but do you need anything? Anything I can do?”

  “My leg feels fine compared to my heart. You want to fix that?” he asked in that husky voice that always made her weak.

  Kennedy closed her eyes. Oh my, how she enjoyed the sound of him. She’d missed it, she missed all of him. Suddenly she felt giddy as her mind absorbed the reality that her man had returned.

  “Liam….”

  “It’s okay, I get it. I was wrong to lash out at you like this. I know you’ve been through hell, too. I don’t know, Kay. Things just aren’t how I thought they would be. Does that make sense?”

  “Me either. Liam, I prayed so hard. I prayed so hard and so long until I just couldn’t function. In my heart, deep in my heart I knew you were out there. I’m so happy you’re back.”

  “Right,” he snapped and the bitterness in his tone stung.

  She needed to find her backbone. Stop groveling with him. She was mad at him, too. She’d had time to think. He’d gone over to Mackenzie’s school. Phil was right, he’d been out of that hellish desert for some time and she didn’t know. No one had breathed a word of it. How was that fair? Had Liam watched her from afar, not trusting her enough to tell him the truth? If two months ago she’d known he’d returned to her, he would have come home to a different welcoming. Hell, twenty-four hours would have made a huge difference. He’d robbed her of so much.

  “How long have you been back, Liam? How long?”

  He didn’t say a word.

  “Did you show up at Mackenzie’s school?”

  “Yes.”

  “How could you do that? How could you go there and see her without coming to see me? Do you know how much that hurts?”

  “Actually, I tried to decide if you would give a shit.”

  “Oh, stop it. You should have had them call me the moment they rescued you. Tell me that you were alive so that I could prepare for you to meet your daughter, so I could….”

  “Leave Phil? Is that what you were going to say?”

  “So I could prepare. The second they found you I deserved to know.” Kennedy sniffled. “They had an obligation to me. They owed me that, even if you forgot.”

  “Why? You’re married to another man.”

  “Liam, you have to let me explain this.”

  “I know, but I’m angry with you, Kay. I don’t know where to put that anger. See it from my point of view.”

  “I do.”

  “No. You don’t. No one does. Five years of my life is gone. Mac was born and I wasted away in my own shit. She took her first steps and they were torturing—”

  “Oh, Liam….” Kennedy felt the tears well and threaten to pour again.

  “I said I wasn’t going to do this,” he mumbled.

  She believed him. But if he needed to get it out, she would take it. As long as he gave her a little forgiveness, too.

  “You need to talk to someone. I want to be that person. I want to know everything, be part of your healing process.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I miss you even now, Liam.”

  He said something but it came out as a grumble. She smiled. She could see the dark fury in his eyes and the stubborn set to his jaw. He was the same Liam.

  Then he spoke. “I can’t get my emotions under control, Kay, but I’ll try. I swear it.”

  They remained in silence for several minutes, just listening to each other breathe.

  “I want you to know I didn’t forget, sweetheart.”

  “Forget what?” he asked.

  “Before sunrise. I just didn’t know it would take five years for dawn to break.”

  Liam chuckled. He actually laughed. Kennedy smiled, too. “Yeah, I guess we’ve both been living in darkness waiting for dawn to break. I’m sorry for that, Kay.”

  “Don’t apologize. Not anymore.”

  “I need you, Kennedy. Not just because you are my wife, which you are, no matter what that man lying next to you says.” The bitterness in Liam’s voice pricked at her heart. “I need you because you’re a part of me. Your love helped me survive. If I lose it now, I have nothing to live for.”

  Kennedy nodded. “You don’t understand. You haven’t lost me. You never lost me. I’ll be yours again soon.”

  “Not if you’re with him!”

  “Liam—”

  “We won’t go through it tonight on the phone. But I have a request.”

  “Ok
ay.”

  “I want to see Mac again. As soon as possible.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can she miss school?”

  “I guess a day won’t hurt.”

  “Good. I will come and get her tomorrow. What time do you go to the office?”

  “I’m not going.”

  More silence.

  “Good night, Kay.”

  “Liam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sally, does she know?”

  “No one but you until those media assholes got wind of it. You and Mac were all I could think of when I came back.”

  Kennedy nodded not wanting to the end their conversation. “Call her. Call her next, Liam. She’s been through a lot.”

  “Hmpf.”

  Smiling, she held the phone and listened to the soft sound of his breathing. “I love you, Liam. You may not believe this, but I’m so happy you are home.”

  He hung up.

  “Good night,” she said softly to an empty receiver.

  She laid Mackenzie next to her and pulled the covers up over them both. “Daddy’s home, baby, and mommy’s going to make sure we’re a family again.” She settled into the idea of getting a pregnancy test, one of the ones that told you early. As soon as she proved she wasn’t pregnant she’d tell Phil the truth. She wanted her Liam back. She just had to stay cool, calm about it, to make sure Liam didn’t cue in to her concerns. That news would kill him.

  She felt less desperate after forming a plan, after their talk on the phone. Though Liam remained impatient with her, he was hers. She was his. That could never change.

  Kennedy yawned as sleep came.

  “I love you, too,” she mumbled, drifting off.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nightmares. Kennedy drowned in the worst of them.

  Lost in a desert of blistering heat and scorching red sands, she chased the fading sounds of a crying infant. Could it be Mackenzie? She wasn’t sure. A mother knows her child’s cry and this baby’s pain pierced her heart with regret. Kennedy ran with rubbery legs up and down dunes of sinking sand, panting against the humid, hot air that filled her lungs. Sweat pooled and ran in rivers down her face and neck. The hot grains quickly dissolved into sinkholes under her feet. Pockets of loose sand closed around her submerged feet and slowed her down.

  Soon, exhaustion got the best of her. She dropped to her knees, reduced to crawling as the sun seared her with boiling rays that punished her skin. It melted from her bones. Kennedy continued, because the infant’s cries demanded so. And finally she found herself at the opening of an army tent. She imagined rescue, hope, help would be found behind the camouflage flap. The loud wails of her child drummed a beat of panic through her skull. Summoning strength she didn’t know she could harness, she rose to her feet and stumbled inside. Phil was dressed in fatigues, with his shirt open and his dog tags gleaming off his well-defined upper chest. He paced with the baby and tried to calm him or her, then turned fully to face Kennedy. It was then she saw the infant wrapped in a blanket like the one Mackenzie had when she had been born.

  The sweet child squealed and Kennedy felt her breasts ache, her nipples leak. To her horror the front of her dress had stains forming while the urge to nurse left her trembling. “Whose baby?” she asked with a shaky voice.

  Phil turned the child to face her. One look at the baby with its smooth, caramel skin and fat cheeks, Kennedy knew exactly who.

  “Is that our baby?”

  Kennedy wept. She took a step toward them and Phil stepped back. The earth split with a loud cackle of thunder. Under their feet, sand poured into a sinking hole from which the wails of tortured souls drifted upward and out. Kennedy stumbled to avoid slipping in. The sandy ground continued to cave inward and a hole the size of a car spread between them. Kennedy cried out when flames shot up from its depths. The acrid smell of sulfur and burning flesh singed her nostrils.

  “There she is, the woman who abandoned us both,” Phil said, his voice cracking with emotion. He narrowed angry, unforgiving eyes on her. “You don’t want our child, then neither do I.”

  To her horror, Phil Freeman threw the infant into the flames.

  Kennedy woke upright in the bed, a strangled scream in her throat. Gagging, she grabbed her chest in fright. She sucked down deep breaths and tried to shake off the nightmare. The fear, the terror, the guilt had her heart pounding furiously. She squeezed her eyes to shut out the screams in her head. “It’s only a dream, a dream, a dream, a dream,” she whispered.

  The chant began to ease her into reality. Her heart stabilized.

  Kennedy reopened her eyes and searched her room. She remembered: Liam, Phil, Mackenzie, sleep—where had Mackenzie gone? Her side of the bed was empty. It may have been irrational, but after what she’d seen in her dream, Kennedy needed Mackenzie in her arms immediately. She snatched back the comforter and hurried to her daughter’s room. She wasn’t there. Chilled to the bone, Kennedy rushed on shaky legs to the stairs. The death of an innocent dream-baby remained front and center in her mind. On the brink of tears, she started down the stairs, hand to the wall. “Mac? Mac where are you?”

  “In here with daddy!” she heard Mackenzie call out.

  Daddy? Liam? Kennedy’s heart began to pound. She arrived at the bottom step to find Phil at the breakfast table, pouring flakes into Mackenzie’s bowl.

  “Hi, mommy.” he glanced up.

  Kennedy stopped cold. Phil winked at her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “He come home to fix me breakfast before he go to work, right, daddy?” Mackenzie said.

  “I never miss breakfast, cupcake.” He kissed the top of Mackenzie’s head.

  Kennedy approached them both. She gripped the top of the dinette chair and glared at her husband. Phil sipped his orange juice, holding her stare over the top of his glass. The accusation in his eyes remained the same as the dream and her anxiety pitched another degree. Kennedy tried to act as if things were normal, but Phil’s return left her incensed, and for the first time a little fearful. “I asked you a question.”

  “How did you sleep, beautiful?”

  “M’kay, I guess.” Mackenzie answered, as if he was speaking to her.

  “You going into work today?” he asked pointedly of Kennedy.

  “No. What are you doing here?”

  “I came to warn you.”

  Kennedy saw Mackenzie scoop hefty spoonfuls of cereal into her mouth. Milk dripped down her chin. She looked so happy, basking in the affection Phil showered upon her. All of it knifed at her heart. She gave Phil a nod to meet her in the living room. She went to the sofa and sat on it, and waited. She had no idea when Liam would show up, but she felt too drained for another incident between these men. Besides, the nightmare still had her reeling.

  Phil sauntered across the carpet and settled onto the ottoman with a very serious look on his face.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “When I got to the base last night, things were crazy. Eric is back, and Alexa showed up with a team from the Pentagon. Looks like the media knows about Liam. They’ll swarm this house today, Mac’s school, the firm. You’ll need me here to—”

  “No.”

  “Kennedy, I—”

  “No. Phil, we talked about this. I asked for space.”

  “Yes, but this is different. Those people are vultures. And there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “I was debriefed. The terrorists that had Liam may be targeting you and Mac. Now do you understand why I came back? I have to protect you, sweetheart.”

  “Stop.” She put up her hand. “Fine. I get it. But, is there a way we can just get a man posted here, to watch over the family or something?”

  Phil heaved a defeated sigh. He shifted against the ottoman, not answering.

  “Phil, you said you understood.”

  “I lied.”

  “I need this.”

  “There are men posted outside. Alexa and Va
squez have already arranged it. Still, I think if there is danger I need to be here.”

  “I know you do. I know. But we will be fine at least for the next couple of days. Besides, you said the media will be swarming. I won’t be leaving the house.” Phil rose and came over to the sofa. Kennedy cut her eyes away but didn’t object when he sat next to her. He put an arm around her and his hand to her tummy. She ignored the implication. Phil wouldn’t leave it alone.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve had nightmares,” confessed Kennedy.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No,” she said sadly.

  “And the baby?”

  “We don’t know if I’m pregnant.”

  “Miracles happen, Kennedy. Liam’s proof of that. I think another one has happened, too. I think all of it is destiny.”

  “I would never have an abortion, Phil, if that’s what you’re thinking. Never.” Kennedy’s eyes welled with tears.

  “I know you wouldn’t, sweetheart. You’re a good mother and we will be good parents.”

  Though she knew he was right, she closed her mind to the prospect. They’d been actively trying for weeks. There was a strong chance she was pregnant. What then?

  “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”

  He tried to turn her face to kiss her, but she turned away. She rose, crossing her arms under her breasts. “I think you should go. Now.”

  From the corner of her eye, she registered Phil’s anger, which he controlled with a thin smile.

  “Okay. I’ll come back tomorrow evening.” He rose and stepped in close.

  “Call first.”

  Phil stood there as if he wanted to say more. She prayed he wouldn’t. One more word and she was liable to scream at him. He remained mercifully silent. He kissed her brow, then her cheek, and he was gone. Kennedy stood perfectly still, staring at nothing. She didn’t move until the phone rang. She didn’t even hear it ring until Mackenzie called her name.