by R. K. Lilley
“Only a little. It didn’t take much. I saw you having dinner with your boys, and I knew I’d seen enough. Dair couldn’t do better than you. I knew I wasn’t better. I know I’m as fucked up as Heath, in my own way.”
“He couldn’t do better than you, either,” I told her gently. “Any man would be lucky to have a woman like you.”
And she had her pick. Just about every man within ten miles from my sons to her bodyguard were more than a little smitten with her.
But just any man wasn’t an option for Iris. She was devoted to Dair, whether he was a lost cause or not. She was a go down with the ship kind of girl.
And it wasn’t all pining and sadness for her. We had our share of fun.
We both loved to dance. Whenever we were feeling particularly stir crazy, we’d put on some music, turn it up loud, and have an impromptu dance party.
Her obsession with Beyonce, or as she called her, Bey, was contagious. We drove my boys crazy, randomly singing the lyrics from her latest album.
And we loved to coordinate pranks.
Bubble wrap on the toilet seat, the mayo jar refilled with vanilla yogurt, just to name a few.
The two of us pregnant at the same time was not something anyone would want to mess with.
And we were both obsessed with bad reality television. The worse the better. We’d binge watch it together, though I was pretty sure it lowered both of our IQs.
We kept each other busy, which was good. We both needed to stay busy to stay sane.
My husband was still a mystery to me, one I’d have liked more time to analyze. He was gone more often than not.
“Where does he go?” I asked Iris.
“Heath is taking care of some things that need taking care of,” Iris told me solemnly.
“Care to elaborate?”
“I’m so sorry that you were dragged into this, but he’s not just doing this for me anymore. We have made enemies that will never let us live in peace, that will use anything to hurt him. You’re in as much danger as I am now. Some key targets need to be eliminated if we’re ever going to have a shot at making it through this. Long story short: He’s making it so we can live a normal life again, someday.”
Well, hell, it was darker than I’d thought, but I had asked.
Heath came home whenever he could, and though his visits were erratic, he usually managed to stay for a few weeks at a time.
Those weeks were what I lived for. We even got to squeeze in the occasional date.
Those dates were never dull.
“You make me crazy, and I’ll be honest, I’m not sure that’s a good thing; I was already crazy enough,” Heath told me on our first such date.
We were out to dinner at the only French restaurant within a hundred miles of our remote, temporary home. It was crowded to bursting, but Heath managed to get us a table without a reservation.
“You’ll be fine,” I assured him.
“Me, maybe. And you, definitely. It’s everyone else you should be worried about.”
I laughed, though I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, I could tell he was being his version of sweet. “How so?”
“You make me want to go around the room and make every fucker in here kiss your feet, just for the privilege of being in a fucking room with you.”
God, I loved him. Every screwed up, quirky thing about him got to me in the best way possible. “You do understand you’re being romantic right now?” I told him.
“I’m not sure the world can handle my flavor of romantic. Let’s hope it doesn’t increase my body count.”
He wasn’t exaggerating all that much. His flavor of romantic was possessive to the point of violence. God help any man that stood too close to me while Heath was watching.
It was definitely a rough edge of his that I had to work hard on softening.
Which was hypocritical of me. I had a jealous streak where he was concerned that was a whacked out mile long. He got as much female attention as I did male, and I hated it.
I never had to do anything about it, though. Heath was about as flirtatious as an angry rattlesnake. If some poor woman was crazy enough to approach him, he never hesitated to set them straight.
I fucking loved that.
I secretly got a kick out of watching him shoot these poor girls down. He was rather brutal about it, and the more aggressive they were, the more mean he was when he let them have it.
“I’ve got no patience for that shit,” he told me once, right after a smoking hot blonde had approached him while he was ordering popcorn at the movies. “None. What the hell was wrong with that twit?”
He was mean and magnificent and completely oblivious to every woman on the planet but me, and I adored every inch of him.
When I was about six months pregnant, he went off the radar for longer than usual.
Long enough that Iris and I were starting to get nervous. We usually heard something from him.
Even the other agents didn’t have any word for us.
When he came home, at last, I couldn’t help it, I cried like a baby.
I told myself it was the hormones, but he had a hard time keeping his composure, as well.
He came to me first thing when he got to the house, taking me in his arms, face buried in my neck, one big hand rubbing my belly.
He was gasping, fighting for air.
“I didn’t think I’d make it back to you this time. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
That broke me. God, did it hurt. The helplessness was excruciating.
He dropped to his knees, face nuzzling into my belly.
I stroked his hair and tried to comfort him, tried my best to put on a brave face, because this time I could see he needed that from me.
It was long time before he let me go, and when he did, he went straight to Iris.
He wrapped her in those huge arms of his, nearly making her disappear.
She stood stiffly, though it was only because she knew him. He was affectionate with her, and she was an extremely affectionate girl, but she knew better than to touch him back.
“It’s okay,” he murmured to her. “You can hug me back.”
She did, slowly, tentatively, her eyes going straight to me, big fat tears in them and huge helpings of gratitude, like I’d just granted her a long wished for gift.
Later that night in bed I got a look at his body.
“Oh, darling, what have you done to yourself?” I asked him softly.
He’d been shot again. Twice, in the gut. The wounds were still fresh, but from the placement, I assumed that at one point they’d been nearly fatal.
“What I had to, to make it back home to you.”
Iris had her baby soon after that. It was a boy that she named Alasdair Cameron after his father.
We called him Cameron, or Cam for short.
And a few short months later, I had my own.
Heath made it home just in time to be there for the birth of our son. We named him Gerard, after my father, who, God willing, he’d someday get to meet.
Fatherhood was good for Heath, I saw right away. It softened some of his rougher edges.
And he was a good father. What he lacked in practice, he made up for in effort. It more than balanced out.
Heath doted on both of the babies, as did Rafael, Gustave, and even Mason.
With all of that adult attention, Cameron and Gerard lacked for nothing.
When little Cam was just a few months old, Iris and Heath had to leave for a long stretch.
It was time for the trial of the century.
It was excruciating for Iris, as it would be for any new mother, to leave her baby for so long, but she knew I’d care for Dair Jr. like he was my own, and so it eased some of that great burden for her.
We watched the trial on TV. It was intense, watching a determined Iris take down one of the most powerful politicians in the country.
Her grandmother wasn’t the VP anymore by that time, but it was a technicality
. The woman still had pull in Washington.
I knew this because I was glued to the television twenty-four/seven, and all anyone did was talk about her.
Iris didn’t get to come back to see us for the duration of the trial, not even for a visit. It was just too dangerous for her, and for us.
Even Heath only came back once, right as the proceedings were coming to a close.
It was a bittersweet reunion, because he’d been gone for months and could only stay for one night.
That goodbye was one of the worst of them all.
He cupped my head in both hands, making me look at him, straight into his eyes. “Listen,” he urged in his soft, gravelly way.
I couldn’t hold back tears. Something horrible was going to happen on this trip. I just knew it. Something that would break me. I could see it in every line of his tense face.
“Listen,” he repeated. “We’re going to be separated for a bit. We just are. I can’t say for how long.” He swallowed, and I watched his throat move, his big Adam’s apple bobbing in a way that reminded me just how young he was. “But listen, and I mean this, do not turn on the TV. You are not to watch the news, you understand me?”
I nodded that I did and promised that I wouldn’t.
That lasted about three days.
It was on every channel. Francis Baker, as Iris was known to the public, had been assassinated in broad daylight, mere days after the trial was over.
The story went that at a stoplight, a van pulled up beside the car she was transported in, and six men in ski masks jumped out of said van.
She was dragged from the car, and her driver and one of her bodyguards, who were both wounded in the attack, witnessed her being shot at point blank in the temple. One of her bodyguards was also reportedly killed, a big blond man, they said, though no name was divulged.
Heath knew this was coming, I told myself. It has to be fake. It has to be. How else would he have been so sure it was coming? Why else would he have asked me not to turn on the TV?
I wanted to believe it was all a lie, but it hurt like it was the truth.
I held our babies close and prayed that they would come back to me.
TWO MONTHS LATER
We’d moved again. The second place in as many months.
Raf and Gus took it well, considering that we kept uprooting their lives. I was eternally grateful to them for handling this all with grace, for going so far out of their way to keep from adding to my already vast burden of guilt.
We were somewhere in Arizona, in the middle of freaking nowhere, of course, in a large house, on a huge property with high gates and lots of land.
Our guards had been doubled since the incident with the van. We had men on the perimeter as well as in the house.
I had the babies both in high chairs, feeding them tiny spoonfuls of green mush when I heard the front door open.
This wasn’t unusual. With all of the agents roaming around, people were coming in and out at all hours.
Still, I called out, “Hello!” and wondered why no one answered back. The agents assigned to us were usually very good about announcing themselves.
I didn’t have to wonder long.
Heath and Iris, looking tired but healthy and whole, came striding into the room.
I started to shake, every bit of me, top to bottom, from the marrow of my bones to the very outer layer of my skin, shaking. Trembling like I had a fever.
But it wasn’t a fever, it was a rush of relief so profound and pure that it knocked the breath out of me.
I’d wondered over the last two torturous months what I’d do if I saw him again. If I’d scream and rail at him for putting me through this, or if I’d embrace him and weep, be so relieved to see him that it’d trump all of my anger at the pain and uncertainty he’d put me through.
But after one devastating look at him, it wasn’t even a question.
I launched myself at him, running across the room, flinging my arms around his shoulders as I jumped up against him, legs snaking around his hard thighs and gripping.
He grabbed my ass with one hand, my shoulder with the other, pulling me even tighter to him.
I buried my face in his neck and breathed him in. He kissed my temple.
I wanted to say so many things, but none of them seemed as important as this, just touching him, taking him in.
One of his big hands snaked into my hair and angling my face to him, he crushed his mouth against mine.
I pulled back enough to look at him. We stayed like that, panting, breathing each other’s air as I stared into his eyes.
They were still cold. They would never be warm. I knew that by now, just as I’d known that they’d never be the windows to his soul.
But it hit me then what was.
His soul was in his touch. His reverent lips, his mastering hands, his seeking body—those were the things that showed his hand and betrayed his true feelings.
His reverent lips told me that he loved me, his trembling hands told me that he needed me, and his seeking body told me he trusted me.
I soothed him, made him feel whole again.
He invigorated me, made me feel alive again.
He was mine and I was his, and no matter how long it took him to make it back to me, I’d be there waiting for him.
THREE YEARS LATER
It was late spring in Vegas. That brief time of year in Sin City where it was actually nice outside; hot out, a perfect day for the pool, but with the temperature still sitting somewhere reasonable in the double digits.
We were enjoying a BBQ at Dair’s friend, Turner’s, house.
Since we’d returned home, this had become a weekly thing. Turner loved to entertain.
It was good to be home. It had taken years, but at last, here we were.
The running was over, and we were slowly settling back into some semblance of normal a life.
A heavily pregnant Iris sat in the shade on a chaise lounge beside me while our husbands threw the boys around the pool.
She was patting her big belly, proud as punch about it, as she always was these days, when she asked me, “Are you and Heath having any more?”
I was mid sip of sangria, and I nearly spit it out.
I shot her a look, an are you out of your mind? look.
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked aloud, when I was done choking.
She laughed, and finally I laughed when I saw that unsurprisingly, she was messing with me.
Gerard was anything but a regret for me. He was one of my four biggest blessings in life, in fact, but it was no question that I was now done with the child-bearing times of my life.
We didn’t speak for a time as we watched our boys in the pool.
Heath had a giggling child in each arm and carted them around like they weighed nothing.
Neither boys were small. Gerard was bigger, Cameron taller, but they were both large and heavy for their age. When I picked either of them up, my entire body had to brace itself, and my back bowed with the burden, but they both looked like they weighed about as much as a feather when Heath was holding them.
I don’t think anyone quite expected it, but Heath was very good with kids. He was a devoted father and uncle, dedicating a great deal of his time to both boys.
He said they calmed him, which was surely strange as they were both bundles of nonstop energy.
But it was good, because he was retired now from working for the government and taking some time off to stay at home with Gerard while I got back into pursuing my passion for photography.
He talked about different jobs he could do with his vast experience and many specialized skills. He’d likely start up a security firm, sometime down the road.
But he wasn’t even worried about it now. Now, he was enjoying some much deserved and hard earned time with his family.
I was distracted briefly from my musings as Cam made a mad dash out of the pool, running for the grassy lawn, Gerard hot on his heels.
Ir
is and I shared a look. They were at it again.
Our sons were close cousins, near inseparable, so this was a fairly regular occurrence. They had near opposite personalities, but they were still best buddies.
“Gerard!” Heath barked, and our son stopped what he was doing, which happened to be pinning his cousin down for no good reason that I could tell.
“Help, Uncle, help!” Cam called out between giggling fits.
Heath pushed his huge dripping body out of the pool, and my jaw went a little slack with desire.
Iris noticed. “Ew,” she said, though she was just giving me shit for fun, because she was surely used to it by now. “You know that’s my brother you’re ogling, right?”
I ignored her, watching Heath playing with the boys. He made a show of rescuing Cam, but as soon as he got low enough to the ground, the boys both turned on him, tickling, pushing him down, using every dirty trick in the book to try to pin him.
He let them, but only for a moment, straightening when he’d had enough, grabbing a kid in each big arm, striding across the lawn, and throwing them back in the pool, much to their squealing delight.
“He needs help,” Iris mused.
I looked at her, and it took me a moment. I followed her stare to see that she wasn’t talking about Heath.
She was talking about Dair’s friend, Turner.
He was chatting with Dair and my older boys, the four of them huddled together. I couldn’t catch any of what they were saying from here, but it had apparently gotten her attention.
I’d known Turner briefly, on a professional basis years ago, and we’d become friendly again recently due to the weekly barbecues, but my knowledge of him was still superficial at best, and mostly came from what Iris shared with me.
Turner was one of Dair’s closest friends and colleagues, though they couldn’t have been more opposite if it’d been their goal.
Turner was sarcastic, snarky, and arrogant. A total and unapologetic womanizer. He was very vocal about the fact that he never intended to settle down.