Tammy

“Death. I thought it would be gardens, perhaps. Beautiful countryside with cool streams. It's only blackness. Nervous and dark. There is no rest there.”
― Robyn Carr, Chelynne

“Roark reached for the 'link again, cursed himself for a fool, then turned away from it.
He wasn’t going to keep calling her, her friends, her haunts, hoping for a scrap.
Bugger that.
She’d be home when she came home. Or she wouldn’t.
Christ Jesus, where was she?
Why the hell was she putting him through this? He’d done nothing to earn it. God knew he’d done plenty along the way to earn her wrath, but not this time. Not this way.
Still, that look on her face that morning had etched itself in his head, on his heart, into his guts. He couldn’t burn it out.
He’d seen that look once or twice before, but not on his account.
He’d seen it when they’d gone to that fucking room in Dallas where she’d once suffered beyond reason. He’d seen it when she tore out of a nightmare.
Didn’t she know he’d cut off his own hand before he’d put that look on her face?
She bloody well should know it. Should know him.
This was her own doing, and she’d best get her stubborn ass home right quick so they could have this out as they were supposed to have things out. She could kick something. Punch something. Punch him if that would put an end to it. A good rage, that’s what was needed here, he told himself, then they’d be done with this nonsense once and for all.
Where the fucking hell was she?
He considered his own rage righteous, deserved—and struggled not to acknowledge it hid a sick panic that she didn’t mean to come back to him.
She’d damn well come back, he thought furiously. If she thought she could do otherwise, he had a bulletin for her. He’d hunt her down, by Christ, he would, and he’d drag her back where she belonged.
Goddamn it all, he needed her back where she belonged.
He paced the parlor like a cat in a cage, praying as he rarely prayed, for the remote in his pocket to beep, signaling the gates had opened. And she was coming home.”
― J.D. Robb, Innocent in Death

“I had that hole in me, that empty space. I could have lived my life with it, content enough. I wasn’t an unhappy man.” He kept his eyes on hers as his thumb brushed lightly over the back of her hand. “Then, one day I felt something—a prickle at the back of my neck, a heat at the base of my spine. And standing at a memorial for the dead, I turned, and there you were.” He turned her hand over, interlocking fingers. “There you were, and it all shifted under my feet. You were everything I shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want or need. A cop for Jesus’ sake, with eyes that looked right into me.” He reached out, just a whisper of fingers on her face. And the quiet touch was somehow wildly passionate, desperately intimate. “A cop wearing a bad gray suit and a coat that didn’t even fit. From that moment, the hole inside me began to fill. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop what rooted there, or what grew.

The tears came now. He watched them drip down her cheeks, wondered if she were even aware they leaked out of her. “She was part of my life. You are my life. If I have a regret, it’s that even for an instant you could think otherwise. Or that I allowed you to.”
― J.D. Robb, Innocent in Death

“He lifted his glass, smiled over the rim at Eve. And when someone said his name, and he glanced toward them, Eve saw something come into his eyes, just a flash of it. A something she'd only seen when he looked at her.

It was gone, shuttered down into polite pleasure. But it had been there. Very slowly, Eve tracked her gaze over, and saw her.”
― J.D. Robb, Innocent in Death