She had thought that she had overcome the sexual magnetism that had so shaken her. She had coolly separated her emotional and physical feelings from logic, instinct, and reasoning. Had she just been fooling herself?
No, she wouldn’t accept that she would deceive herself just to get what she wanted. The desire might still be there, but it wasn’t what had caused her to embark on this search for Jacobs.
But it could get in the way, dammit.
And Gallo wasn’t going to try to tamp it down or walk away from it.
She stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel from the rack.
That was okay. She’d do whatever she thought was right for her and let Gallo please himself. She was only responsible for her own path. Catherine had never asked anyone for help except Eve. But there had been no question that she would ask Eve to help her find Luke. Her son was Catherine’s life, and she’d been willing to sell her soul to find him.
And she hadn’t called Luke for the last three days, she realized. It had been toward the end of the hunt, and she’d been completely obsessed with capturing Gallo. Which was another reason why she should distance herself from him. Nothing should keep her concentration from her son. They had not been together for nine years; she owed him all her attention.
She threw on a pair of black pants and white T-shirt and was toweling her hair dry as she opened the door.
Gallo was still lounging in the easy chair, his legs stretched out before him. “Now you smell of lavender. Pleasant, but I miss the—”
“Rotten leaves,” she inserted. “I wish I’d never told you about them.”
“I’m not. It fascinated me learning about Hu Chang and your Hong Kong connection. I studied your dossier before I met you, but it’s the details that create the 3-D image.” He added, “I ordered sandwiches and coffee from room service. Would you like anything else?”
She shook her head as she took out her phone. “I’ll eat later. I have to call my son.”
“It’s nearly ten. He won’t be asleep?”
“He’s a night owl. I don’t try to force him into a neat little cubbyhole. He lived a rough life while he was away from me. I’m just grateful he’s doing as well as he is.” She was dialing as she spoke. “And that he lets me stay in his life.”
“Would you like me to give you a little privacy?”
“Why? I’m not ashamed of our relationship. It is what it is. We’re working our way through it.” She spoke into the phone as Luke picked up. “Hi, how are you doing? Are you reading?”
“No, I was having Kelly teach me about how she does her patterns.” He paused. “I don’t understand it. I don’t think I’m dumb, but she sees things that I don’t see.”
“You’re not alone. Kelly is extraordinary. Her professors say that she’s another Einstein. She can start at the beginning of a theory or puzzle and forecast exactly where it’s going to go.”
“I know all that.” Luke’s voice was slow, thoughtful. “But she says that if I go back and tell her all about the years that I was away from you, she’ll draft a pattern that will help me see things clearly.” He added haltingly, “And if I understand it, then I’ll be able to forget it.”
Catherine had known that Kelly was going to try to help Luke in that way. It was the next best thing to psychological therapy, and Catherine would be eternally grateful if it worked. “Maybe not forget it, but it may help you to let it go. Sometimes, bad things help you to grow, and you wouldn’t want to give up the growth. That would mean you’d gone through it for nothing. I don’t think Kelly would want you to do that. She’s gone through some rough times herself.”
“She told me her father was murdered. She saw it.”
“And she’s trying to learn from it. So maybe she’s the right person to talk to you about all of this.” She paused. “Unless you want to talk to me. You know I’m here for you, Luke.”
“I know.”
But he still couldn’t talk to her, she thought in pain. No matter how much she loved him, she was part of the problem. She cleared her throat and changed the subject. “How are your studies going?”
“Okay. I finished Midsummer Night’s Dream. But I didn’t care much for it. I’ve started Julius Caesar, and I understand that better.”
“Yes, I can see you appreciating Julius Caesar.” Ambition and murder and revenge. Luke would comprehend all of those nuances of character from his own experience. “Midsummer Night’s Dream would have a little too much whimsy for you.”
“Maybe I’ll go back to it later and read it again if you want me to.”
“I don’t want you to read it to please me. It doesn’t matter.”
“I … want to … please you.”
“That’s good, I want to please you, too. But let’s work on kindness and understanding instead of trying to shape each other’s tastes.”
“Okay.” Another pause. “Are you … well?”
“I’m fine. I should be able to get home soon.”
“I’d like … I know Kelly wants to see you.” He added, “Do you want to talk to her, should I go get her?”
“No, don’t bother her. Tell her I can’t wait to see her and give her my best. I’ll let you go now. I just wanted to check in and make sure you were all happy. I love you. Good-bye, Luke.”
“Good-bye.” He hesitated. “I want you to be happy, too, Catherine.” He hung up.
Someday, he would say he loved her. Someday it would happen.
“You said you were working your way through it,” Gallo said quietly. “It appears that sometimes it’s straight uphill.”
“You think that I mind that?” She swallowed hard to rid herself of the tightness of her throat. “We’re doing fine. Do you know what he went through? Every day that Luke was held by that son of a bitch, Rakovac, he was told that I was to blame. Every time he was whipped or thrown into a solitary cell, it was all my fault. It’s a miracle that he managed to realize that I wasn’t to blame. But there have to be residual effects from all that brainwashing. He can’t trust me even if he wants to.”
“What a bastard,” Gallo said grimly. “He’s dead, I assume?”
“Yes,” she said. “Slow and painful.”
“Good, then I won’t have to offer to do it for you.” He was studying her face. “You had to deal with finding him alone? Your husband?”
“He was murdered the night my son was kidnapped.”
“So you had to handle it by yourself. You might have had to do that anyway. He was in his sixties, right?”
“Yes, but I don’t know why people keep bringing that up,” she said impatiently. “Terry was a good man and great father. That’s all that matters.”
“If that was all that mattered to you.”
“Venable turned me over to him after I was recruited, and Terry taught me everything he knew about being an agent. We were good together.”
“As partners or as husband and wife?”
“Both. I wasn’t some romantic kid who didn’t know what was important. We had a good, solid marriage and had a beautiful child together. I couldn’t ask for anything more.” She defiantly met his gaze. “So it wasn’t anything like what you had with Eve. She said it was crazy and pure sex and nothing else. But in the end, it wasn’t about what you were together, it was about the child you had.”
“And was that what it was about with you and your husband? Your child, Luke?”
She was silent a moment. “I don’t know. We were together for such a short time. Terry wanted a child right away, and that was okay with me. But then, after Luke was born, my son was everything. I guess children change everything.”
“Yes.”
“You agree with me, but you never knew Bonnie,” she said. “I can’t believe all that ghost business, you know. You had me going for a little while, but I’m too hardheaded to really think that could happen.”
“Hardheaded.” He repeated the words reflectively. “What would happen if you’d lost your Luke, and he’d suddenly ‘returned’ to you? What if he was so real to you that all your doubts were crashing down around you? Would you reject him? Or would you let down the barriers and invite him back into your world?”
She shied away from even thinking about Luke taken from her in that most final way. Yet she’d had to face that possibility for the entire nine years of Luke’s captivity. It was clever of Gallo to bring the comparison with Luke into her rejection of the concept of the spirit Bonnie. “I don’t know what I’d do.” No, that wasn’t honest. “I can’t imagine a situation like that, but if it existed, I’d never shut Luke away from me even if it meant being locked up in the booby hatch.”