Chapter 56: Rookie Attempt
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They didn't tell the rest of the household about the proposal just yet. They wanted just one night to themselves. It took a lot of self-restraint for Rachel not to burst with her news when she walked through the living room, watching where Scott and Fletcher were excitedly shouting out answers to Jeopardy in front of the television. Crystal shared the sofa with Fletcher, no longer too shy to lay her head on his shoulder. The sight warmed Rachel so deeply that she felt her eyes well up with tears again.
She had expected Frank to take her up to their bedroom, but he had instead taken her to the sunroom which faced the backyard of the house. Despite the walls being solely comprised of glass with thin panels of wood to separate each, there was no means to see into the room from the inside of the house. If someone took one step outside to roam about the yard at dusk, however, the room would offer little privacy. Rachel knew there was a risk to it, but she was not shy when it came to taking risks.
The room was dim, as the sun had just set, but there was just enough light left for Rachel to discern that the room had been nearly fully furnished since the last time she'd seen it. In the center of the room was a rustic looking coffee table, flanked by two flat cushioned sofas, so broad they could have easily served as daybeds. Draped over the sofas were several intricately knit blankets, and along the surface of the table were several recently lit candles.
Rachel pursed her lips to hide her smile as she looked at him suspiciously. "Did you rope Crystal into all this, too?"
Even though he was smiling, Frank looked slightly offended. "No," he said, guiding her over to the sofa. "I did this myself."
"I thought you weren't romantic, Farmer."
His eyes glistened with humor. "It's about as romantic as a power outage, don't you think?"
She gave him a shy smirk as she settled against him, and he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
"I guess I should stop calling you by your last name since we're engaged now," she murmured.
"You'd better not."
There was a pleasant darkness to his voice which drew her in. She tilted her head back with the slightest question in her gaze, her palm roaming across his chest.
The sharp scent of fragrant smoke from the candles was intoxicating as he grasped her head in both his hands and pulled her into a deep kiss.
"I don't remember ever being this happy," Rachel sighed.
"You said that when we were living in Leona Valley," he reminded her with a teasing smile.
"Well, you hadn't asked me to marry you yet."
Just having his eyes locked on hers was the most devastatingly intimate experience she could withstand.
"Make love to me," she whispered, her voice already weak from anticipation.
"Why do you think I brought you in here?" he asked, tipping her back onto the cushions.
There should have been nothing different from this time and the last time they'd made love. But there was. It was a subtle difference, but she could feel it. The most unassuming shift from relationship sex to engaged sex. And if the shift from engaged sex to married sex was anything close to what she was experiencing now, she might not make it out alive.
It wasn't rough. It wasn't even adventurous. It was quiet, simple, even what she might have once called 'vanilla.' It was the 'eye of the hurricane' kind of sex, where everything around them could have been in chaos, but they would not have had a care in the world to acknowledge it. She was so consumed by her feelings for him, so overtaken with love and adoration, that she had not a single worry for the future as she lay in his arms.
She allowed him to have what he wanted – slow sex. Painfully slow sex. The kind of slow only he could handle. She submitted all autonomy over to him and let him savor every inch of her with tender fingers. He touched her as if it were his last time touching her.
They had arrived at the point in her pregnancy where only certain positions were feasible, but Rachel was not upset about it. He always found a way around it. With barely an ounce of integrity left within her bones, she found herself splayed across his lap, her limbs arranged artistically around his body as he held her half-upright with his arms behind her back.
She had no escape from his gaze when he held her that way. With each languid thrust, she felt her heart melting beneath her breast. She closed her eyes as he carried on, his every breath deep and calm, just like the motions of his hips against her. Her head lolled back, all strength lost, and his hand was ready to catch her.
For such an observant man, she would have assumed he could see quite clearly that he was destroying her. Maybe that was why he continued with that same, achingly slow pace, stretching and gliding against every tender spot within her.
She lost track of the time in the midst of his sweet torture, until he finally uttered one soft, awe-filled, half-formed word as he watched her.
"...What?"
As if he were asking her to explain her sighs of obvious pleasure.
As if he didn't know the reason.
As if he expected her to be able to form words in return.
He may now have been her fiancé, but he was still a bastard.
She stuttered under her breath as he continued the relentlessly slow rhythm against her. "I'm just . . . you're just . . . it just feels so . . . it's . . . blissful."
He clutched her tighter.
"I can go for a long time this way," he whispered. There was a warm edge of warning in his voice.
She did not doubt it. And that was why she climaxed immediately.
He watched her, his lips parted, completely breathless, with that obscenely adoring look on his face. With every shockwave of pleasure she tugged him in deeper until he drowned right along with her.
From the way he held her from that point forward, she knew he would never let her go.
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He slept well for the first time in months.
Frank had forgotten what it felt like to enter deep sleep. It was such a foreign feeling to him that it took several loud noises to rouse him from slumber in the middle of the night.
He blinked and looked around the dark room, wrapped in the stillness of silver moonlight through the large windows.
Then he heard it again. Almost like the rustling of an animal looking for shelter.
Frank bolted up in bed, eyes alert, scanning the glass walls of the sunroom for any sign of movement outside.
Nothing.
But the sound came again.
And damn it all, he didn't know where his gun was.
Frantically, he began to stir the blankets with his hands, pushing pillows off onto the floor. Rachel whimpered in her sleep and nestled her head further into the back of the sofa.
The sounds were louder now.
He clamored out of their safe cocoon, a chill consuming his naked body as he dropped on hands and knees to the ground and sifted through his discarded clothing to find his pistol buried beneath.
When his hand collided with the cold metal, he let out a temporary sigh of relief.
Something scraped just outside the walls of the house. The scrape repeated until he was one hundred percent certain the sounds were coming from a human with a very specific intention for intrusion.
He cocked the pistol, rose to his feet, and the security alarm went off.
There were two choices he had in that moment: fire a burst of blind shots and sacrifice all the windows of their new house, or shield Rachel's body beneath the blankets until the police came.
In an uncharacteristic move, Frank chose the option that did not involve his pistol.
He could hear Rachel's muffled cries of terror, her helpless repetition of "What's happening? Oh, God, what's happening?"
He hushed her through the blares of the alarm, instructing her to stay down.
A minute or so after the alarm had gone off, he heard the frantic footsteps of Scott, Crystal, and Fletcher upstairs. Scott should be armed. Fletcher was possibly armed. Although compromised in terms of lack of attire, Frank was technically armed as well. He knew that their obscure location would delay the cops once Scott confirmed no false alarm through the system. It seemed ages before the welcome echo of police sirens sounded off from the road.
Still hovering over her, Frank raised his head to squint out the window, seeing nothing but blackness pierced by blue and red lights.
"Get dressed," he murmured, tossing her the closest articles of clothing he could find on the floor.
Trembling all over, she did as he said, slipping back into her leggings and pulling his sweater down over her torso. He quickly donned his pants and undershirt, and stuffed his pistol into the back of his waistband.
Firmly taking her hand, Frank opened the door to the hallway and found the cops standing in the brightly lit foyer with Scott, Fletcher, and Crystal.
"Oh!" Crystal cried in relief when she saw them emerge. "We checked your bedroom and you weren't there! We didn't know where you were!" She ran over to Frank and Rachel and threw her arms around them.
"What happened?" Frank asked Scott as he came upon the group.
"Break-in attempt," he muttered gravely. "Cameras picked it up. Looked like a teenager."
Frank's stomach sank. There was no way it was a coincidence. "They're targeting us again," he blurted.
The cop gave him a dubious look. "Sir, this is a very nice house, out in the middle of a very unpopulated area. If a kid from the nearby town would be targeting anything, it's your valuables." He chuckled. "This was obviously a rookie attempt. He tried to get in using a baseball bat against some unfinished siding."
"My fiancée is a celebrity," Frank said, ignoring Fletcher and Crystal's reaction to his casual use of the new title. "Maybe this 'rookie' singled out this house because they somehow found out Rachel Marron was here."
"As if she's hidden here," the cop scoffed, with a wary glance at Rachel. "All they'd need to know is her name to find out where she lives. Someone's residence is ultimately public domain."
"This land was purchased under an LLC," Frank said hotly. "What celebrity signs real estate papers these days?"
Rachel gently tugged on his arm in warning.
They obviously weren't accustomed to high profile residents in Coarsegold, Frank thought.
Every conversation he'd had with law enforcement since entering a relationship with Rachel Marron had been disappointingly discouraging.
Frank watched the security footage back twenty times that night before attempting to go back to bed.
The young man's hood was up. There was no way to recognize his face.
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Frank was relieved the next morning when Tony and Ricky arrived at the house. However, their news that no further evidence was found regarding the break-in attempt at Pentecost Manor put a damper on things. Frank took the opportunity to regroup with Rachel's team, laying out every suspicious event that had occurred between Leona Valley and last night, hoping someone would offer an explanation. He told them that the incident with the mutilated wardrobe in Chicago and the personal information being leaked about him to the media were the doings of his ex-wife. However, the ransacking and both break-in attempts were still a mystery. It was possible that they could be coincidences, yes, but Frank had not been trained to ignore his gut, and in this case, his gut was screaming that the attacks were targeted. If one thing gave him hope, it was that they were getting closer by process of elimination – but no one else on Rachel's team had any suggestions for what to do next.
It had occurred to him that Tina Brennan's presence was the precursor to their location being discovered. He did not want to discount that as a possible suspicion, as much as he now felt emotionally conflicted about the woman. Part of trusting Rachel as his partner was allowing her to keep the friends she felt she could rely on. But there was always Devon…
Frank had already cried wolf on the young man before, but he could see in Rachel's eyes now that she had her own suspicions regarding him after what Tina had shared. If it was true that he was cheating on Tina, that might explain his shiftiness, but it would not explain everything that had happened to Rachel. But what if it was all tied together somehow? What if there was just one detail missing that would break the case wide open? He had the feeling it had something to do with the phone number which had been written on their wedding invitation. But where was the invitation? Rachel had told him that she'd given it to Crystal so that she could have the date put on the calendar – but then Crystal told him she couldn't remember if she'd thrown it away or if she'd packed it away in one of the many suitcases they had still yet to unload. Frank's photographic memory was pretty good, but it wasn't that good. He could recall a short series of numbers, probably not more than three or four at most. He told Crystal to try to find the invitation as soon as possible.
To his regret, Rachel still had obligations as a celebrity, and Crystal had been the one to remind him of it. Frank was insistent that Crystal cancel everything on the calendar, but she challenged him, saying that it might make things worse if they continued being so secretive.
Rachel was in agreement.
"I think the best move right now is to get ourselves in front of the media and tell our side of the story," she told him earnestly.
"This isn't about the public wanting to hear our story, Rachel," Frank protested. "This is about our safety."
"Exactly. And we're obviously not as safe out here as we thought we were," she said darkly. "If we can use my connections to our advantage, then I really think this is a time when going on air might help us."
On air. Even the two tiny words put a lump in his throat.
He hadn't dared to read any tabloids or scan any articles for months. He was scared to know what rumors had been circling around about them in Hollywood without his knowledge.
His silence gave Rachel all the ammunition she seemed to need. With a look of confidence, she nodded. "I'll call Sulley."