Then they were gone.
Until two seconds ago, when that blue Buick topped that rise, and Thomas had a flashing image of Newt Garnier’s rocklike profile, his gaze trained with focused intensity on the road that led straight to Sophie.
He shoved the ignition into reverse, but someone slapping their palm against the window stopped him from stomping on the gas.
What he saw outside the window caused a sensation as though all the blood in his head had rushed to his legs.
He lowered the window.
“You left Sophie alone?” he bellowed.
You’re the one who left Sophie alone, you asshole, he admonished himself.
“I’m here to protect you, not Dr. Gable,” Agent Fisk said, clearly set off balance by Thomas’s greeting.
“Fuck.”
He started to back up, but Fisk held onto the window frame and staggered after him.
“She’s there all alone,” Thomas shouted. “I just saw Newt Garnier pass in a car. Just now. He’ll kill her without thinking twice.”
He thought Fisk might have let go of his car willingly then, but Thomas was too agitated to even notice. The vision of Sophie looking up at him with those dark eyes . . . eyes that were pleading with him to remember.
It was the wrongness of accusing her, of forsaking Sophie that had caused all the memories to explode to the surface. How could he want to block out that night in his father’s office if it meant erasing a single second with Sophie?
Which is exactly what he’d done.
He saw her standing there in her kitchen, her breasts looking so soft and firm beneath the thin bikini top, her dark eyes full of compassion and concern as she handed him a glass of lemonade. He remembered holding her in the guest bedroom, her scent filling his nose, soothing him and arousing him to a fever pitch at once.
Sleep with me, Sophie. I need your cleanness so much right now.
She’d rebuffed him then, but later, when he’d awakened after hours of healing, dreamless sleep, he’d staggered down the hallway to her bedroom, Sophie’s presence calling out to him like siren song.
He’d opened the door and murmured her name. A lamp from the living room cast enough light down the hallway for him to see her curled on her side at the edge of the bed. Her eyes shone in the dim light. She didn’t look surprised or startled at his intrusion into her private sanctuary.
“Do you feel better?” she’d asked quietly.
He’d just nodded, unable to remove his gaze from her face. How the hell had he ever succeeded in staying away from her before?
“Let me feel your forehead,” she’d whispered.
He’d gone to her and knelt next to the bed, a supplicant before her beauty. Her hand had felt cool on his skin. Her scent enveloped him: sex and flowers and clean cotton.
When their gazes had met, she’d put her hands on his shoulders and silently urged him toward her.
And now, as he hurtled down the road toward her lake house in rising panic, he recalled how later they held each other fast as their tears mingled on their cheeks and his cock grew soft in the snug, warm sanctuary of Sophie’s body.
It’s going to be all right, Tom. I promise you. Someday, it’s all going to be okay again.
He’d made love to her again and again on that night, and she’d given herself repeatedly, let him restrain her, let him find solace from his anguish in her sweet, soft flesh. Those hadn’t been wet dreams he’d been having about Sophie; they’d been reality.
He’d never spoken to her of what had happened to him; his mind had blocked it from him even as he sought her out like a wounded animal. But somehow, she’d sensed the parameters of his fury, his loss . . . his grief.
Somehow, Sophie had known.
“It’s going to be all right, Tom. I promise you. Someday, it’s all going to be okay again,” she’d whispered.
Oh God.