On second thought, appreciation was much too weak a word for what he was feeling. He looked down into her eyes and knew he loved everything about them. Especially when they were warm and loving, but also when they were sparking fire. This was not a woman who would make for a comfortable, easy life. A life he wanted more than anything else. That realization didn’t even shake him. No, a life with Ashley wouldn’t be typical.
But he would never be bored.
“It wasn’t only a job from the first moment I saw you,” he said. And he would have kissed her if they hadn’t been standing in her father’s study, with him on the phone and her mother just a few feet away. A mother who was already watching their embrace with a pointed interest that made Ty even more aware of what he had yet to face.
Ty’s phone chimed an incoming text, and he was thankful for the momentary reprieve from a set of, at the moment, hovering parents watching him carefully.
“That’s Mitch,” he said to Ashley. Reluctantly, he released her to pull out the phone. She didn’t protest, but stayed close. He glanced at the text and let out a long breath. He looked back at Ashley. “Elite found Sanderson. Called the police in and turned him over. And he’s talking.”
He heard a small sound from Ashley’s mother, and a low heartfelt oath from her father. But all he could see was Ashley looking at him with those eyes...
“Dear?” It was her mother, and Ty looked up in time to see she was gesturing to Mr. Hart. “I think these two need a little time alone. And frankly, unusual though it is, I find I need a drink.”
“I hear that,” the man answered fervently, and came out from behind his desk. He stopped beside them and gave Ty an assessing look. “You’ll be staying for dinner.”
Ty swallowed, felt Ashley’s gaze upon him. But he steeled himself and faced the freaking richest man in the hemisphere. The man whose daughter he’d fallen for like the proverbial ton of bricks, no matter how unprofessional it was.
“Yes, sir,” he said respectfully.
“Thank you,” Ashley said after they’d gone. “For not arguing with him. As you can imagine, my father is not used to it.”
“Except maybe from you?”
She grinned at him. “Maybe.”
He smiled back. “This wasn’t the time, not after what nearly happened here.” One corner of his mouth quirked. “Besides, the respect was for your father, not Andrew Hart.”
She tightened her arms around him again, and he knew he’d somehow found the right words. They stood there for what seemed to him a long time, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want to move. It felt delicious, and he wanted to savor it. He was feeling a steady, rather fierce throb from his side, but he didn’t care about that, either. In fact, it felt right, very, very right, to be standing here with the woman who had kept that from being a fatal wound.
“I won’t stop my work,” she said, almost in a warning tone.
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” He grimaced. “And now that my sister’s convinced there’s a connection between Dad’s company and the cancer cases, I see your point. Things like that need to be investigated.”
She looked more pleased than he would have expected. “And I need to be more aware of the unintended harm—like that poor man’s suicide—that can be done.”
He gave her a crooked smile, the best he could manage at the moment. “Compromise?”
“Deal,” she agreed, smiling back.
He was only vaguely aware that he was feeling a bit fuzzy around the edges, as if the world around him was blurring. No, as if the world outside them was blurring. And that didn’t seem wrong at all. As long as she was here and bright and alive with all her Ashley-like sharpness and wit, the rest of the world could just blur away and he wouldn’t mind.
But he needed—desperately—to kiss her. It had been too long, and they were alone now, so there was no reason not to, was there? He leaned in, already anticipating the sweet feel and taste of her. But the blurring suddenly expanded, engulfing him.
“Whoa!” Her sudden yelp startled him. He felt her move, quickly, felt her hands on him as if propping him up. “Don’t pass out on me again.”
“I’m fine,” he said, but even he didn’t believe it. She was urging him to move, although he didn’t know to where. Didn’t care where. This was Ashley and he’d go wherever she wanted him to.
“Sit down before you fall down,” she said. They were next to a long leather couch. When he didn’t immediately move—his processing seemed to have slowed down—she urged him with some gentle pressure on his shoulder. “You’d better rest up, Mr. Bodyguard. I have detailed plans for that body of yours later.”
“Oh, I hope so,” he said, giving her a crooked grin.
Then he sat, rather lopsidedly as his side jabbed him with pain again.
“On second thought, lie down,” Ashley urged, and he didn’t feel like arguing with her. It was belatedly starting to register that his wound coupled with an adrenaline crash was not something that he was going to be able to slough off as nothing.
Ashley moved away. He frowned. He didn’t like that. He heard her quick footsteps, then, over what sounded like a weird sort of soft static in his ears, he heard her yell from the doorway.
“Mom! Mom, we need you in here!”
He liked that we.
It was all he had time to think before he went under.
Chapter 36
Ashley hadn’t expected to be spending Thanksgiving this way, but now that she was, she was delighted. After Ty had rested up for a day, he was talking about heading home. But then her mother had stepped in, at first simply offering the invitation to stay and join them on the holiday, but following up with her best nurse’s orders that he needed to rest longer, anyway. Ty had clearly felt a little awkward about accepting, but when he’d found out it would only be the four of them, he’d given in.
“What did you expect, a formal dinner for a small glitzy group of fifty?” she’d asked him. And at his sheepish, guilty grimace, she’d teased him unmercifully about those assumptions again.
They spent the intervening days mostly together, although Ty had a lot of reports to file, which she was happy to loan him a computer for. “You’ll notice,” she said with an arched brow, “we have an excellent WiFi signal, even here in the mountains.”
He’d merely grinned at her. “I noticed you’re not living with your phone in your hand anymore.”
“I had it surgically removed,” she joked right back. And silently looked forward to endless days of this.
Not at all to her surprise, even over Thanksgiving dinner, her mother and Ty got along famously. Mom had said Ty had told her his mother was also a nurse, and she expressed a rather pointed desire that they meet soon. All Ashley could say to that, rather dryly, was that if her mother didn’t mind, she’d like to meet Mrs. Colton first.
Her father had apparently done a little nosing around, as she should have expected. He had a couple of cogent questions about the information he’d gathered about both the discovery of the two bodies in the wall of a Colton building—which Ty had tactfully said he couldn’t discuss—and the shutdown of Colton Construction due to the link to several cases of lung and esophageal cancer.
“My sister Bridgette works for the state in public health. She was the one on that case,” Ty said flatly. “She’s certain there’s a connection to the renovations in the historic district. She had to recuse herself because of our father, and now she’s as ticked off at him as I am about it. And he’s upset because her investigation resulted in Colton Construction being shut down until it’s resolved.”
She was a little surprised at how honestly and openly he answered, but she smiled inwardly. It was just another level of that respect for her father he’d mentioned.
Ty had told her about the man Bridgette had fallen in love with—the man’s father was one of those who had contracted
cancer. His concern for his sister had warmed her, and she found herself eager to see his family. Except, perhaps, his father. She didn’t care much for how he’d made his oldest son feel.
If Ty understood he was getting a subtle third degree from both her parents, he didn’t let on. He simply continued answering honestly, as if he found nothing amiss in being practically interrogated over the traditional turkey and cranberry sauce. This, too, was an expression of that respect.
She couldn’t deny that she took a secret pleasure in how openly he declared his long-term intentions, the plan of a life together, which they had discussed in the late-night hours when she’d slipped down to the guest room her mother had lodged him in. Ashley hadn’t missed the glint in her mother’s eyes. She knew her mother fully expected there would be some hall traffic between that room and Ashley’s own. Ashley had agreed to be that traffic when Ty had, half-seriously, said he didn’t want to be the one to make her father mad. Since she wasn’t certain she was ready to try to sleep in the room that had been—albeit via her own slacking off—invaded by that lunatic, she’d been more than happy to snuggle up to him in the guest room.
When the meal was done, down to the pumpkin pie, Ty leaned back in his chair, thanked them for the meal—much of which she and her mother had prepared together, leaving only the turkey itself to the cook—and casually asked her father if he’d passed.
Ashley almost laughed aloud at her father’s startled, then rueful look. “Lost a little subtlety, did I?”
“She’s your daughter, sir. I’d expect nothing less.”
Her father nodded approval at that. But they’d still been cautious. Her father had been, anyway. “Then you won’t take offense if I ask Ashley—” he turned his gaze on her “—you’re certain? This happened fairly quickly, under stressful circumstances.”
She was ready for that. “I did the math. We spent ten days together, round the clock. That’s two hundred and forty hours. An average beginner date might last a couple of hours, a serious one four hours, so compromising on three hours, and assuming dates on both Friday and Saturday, plus an extra during the week, that works out in the end to nearly six months of normal dating. And we—”
She stopped herself before the next words came tumbling out. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ty gaping at her. She seized on that to escape what she’d nearly said, and turned to look at him. “Problem?”
“I just never thought of it quite that way. How very...Ashley of you.”
He was grinning at her now. Somehow she sensed he knew exactly what she’d almost said. And she grinned back, wondering what her parents’ reaction would have been had she gone ahead and finished with, And we didn’t have sex until the last day, so that’s really waiting a long time.
When she looked back at her parents again, they were both smiling. Ty looked at them, too, and told them yet again he didn’t want their thanks. “I only want your acceptance. Because I am crazy in love with your daughter.”
He said it easily, but her pulse kicked up anyway, as it always did when those words came from him. And she believed them, because the man hadn’t just told her repeatedly, he’d proven it by risking his life yet again. So that was three times, she’d told him teasingly. Once at the cabin, and twice here in the mountains, first when he’d come over that balcony and then again when he’d faced her parents, the power couple who intimidated world leaders.
“And I’m crazy in love with him,” Ashley echoed.
Her parents simply smiled more widely. “We noticed,” her mother said. “You look at each other the same way we did at your age.”
“Got news for you,” Ty said fearlessly, “you still do.”
And in that moment, at the look on their faces, Ashley knew he’d won them over completely.
* * *
“This is your place?” Ashley asked as the headlights lit up the big modern house with the three-car garage to one side.
Ty gave her a sideways look as he pulled into the driveway and the garage door closest to the house began to rise. “You were expecting a farmhouse, perhaps?”
She laughed, and he smiled as the sound washed over him. “Have I told you I love it when you’re a smartass?”
“Do you, now...” he drawled, giving her a suggestive slow smile.
The smile she gave him back was full of promise, and had him trying to remember how big a mess he’d left his bedroom. “It’s half the reason I fell in love with you,” she said. “You never cut me any slack because of who I am.”
“You,” he said pointedly, “do not need slack from anyone.” The look she gave him then told him he’d found the right thing to say. He told himself he’d best remember that about her. Then he added, “And that’s half the reason I fell in love with you.”
“What’s the other half?”
“Let’s get inside, and I’ll make you a list.”
She grinned at him in that happy, silly way he was coming to treasure. He’d seen it often on the drive, and that alone made it worth it. Her parents had offered their plane for the trip to Wichita, but that would have left Ty’s car there. And he thought it might be as well that they had the long drive together to talk. They had things to settle. Maybe it was the chaos that had struck his family lately, but he’d about had it with uncertainty.
He had asked her, when they were beside the car but before they’d gotten in, if she was sure about what she wanted. She’d kissed him so fiercely it left him wanting to go back inside and head for the nearest bed.
And when he’d found out she often drove herself around when she was here at the lodge, he had no qualms about turning the wheel over to her when she suggested she drive. That earned him another kiss; he wasn’t exactly sure why. She clearly had more experience with these mountain roads than he did.
He’d taken over once they were back in Kansas. It had felt good to be back.
It had felt better to be heading home with Ashley.
Are you sure you want to live in Kansas?
You know what I find amazing about Kansas? How kind and generous the people are. I’d always heard about the heartland, but never realized how accurate the name is.
That had made him smile. His Ashley was ever and always willing to learn and change. Can I take that as a yes?
I want to live with you. The rest is just details.
He’d asked it as they crossed the state line, and her answer had come quickly and decisively, easing his nerves about the idea of Ashley Hart of the Harts of Westport settling down in Middle America. He was still working on the idea of he himself being connected to them, although the warm welcome of her parents had done a lot to alleviate his concerns on that score.
She insisted on carrying her own bag inside, teasing him that when he was fully healed, she’d expect him to do it, along with a few other more athletic things, words that sent his mind racing all over again.
When they were inside, she looked around with great interest, while he watched her a little nervously. He’d called in his mother for help with the furnishings, while he focused on all the electronics and connected devices that made the house state of the art. Thankfully, his mother knew him well enough to know what he didn’t like, and so he’d ended up with things he found comfortable and thought looked good.
“I love it!” Ashley exclaimed, standing in the middle of the great room. “It’s not ornate, not starkly modern. It’s just homey and welcoming.”
“Thank my mom for that,” he said. “She picked most of it out. I just told her what I needed function-wise and approved her choices.”
“I want to thank her for more than that,” Ashley said, coming over to him. “She raised a wonderful son. When do I get to see her?”
“I...” He stopped, suddenly uncertain, as he understood he was on the cusp of changing his entire life. What had happened in Colorado had been sort of connected to his job of
protecting her, but this...this was just them. He saw something change in her expression, realized he was giving her agile mind too much time to think. “I hadn’t thought about when, yet. I just wanted to get you here, then...organize everything.”
“At least you said when, not if.”
Her tone was a little dry, enough that it bothered him. Hastily he said, “Let me show you the rest of the place.”
She was impressed by the media room and his well-equipped office. Glanced at the guest room, which he explained was purely his mother’s taste since this is where his parents stayed when they came to the city.
“She has good taste,” Ashley said.
He felt a little awkward when they reached the double doors leading to the master bedroom. It was plainer than the rest of the house, a little too uber-masculine his mother had said, but he’d wanted it that way. Then.
And he had left it in a bit of a mess. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I was in a hurry.”
She smiled at that and looked around. But said nothing.
“Uh...there’s plenty of room in the closet,” he began, then remembered who he was dealing with, and that she probably had a wardrobe that could fill the entire sizable walk-in closet that he himself only used about a third of.
She walked over and looked, but only nodded, still saying nothing. He was starting to get nervous.
“The bathroom’s pretty nice,” he said, sounding lame even to himself. “And there’s a sitting room over there.” He gestured toward the glass French doors that led into the space just big enough for the couch and small desk he had there for late-night ideas or contact with the office.
She nodded.
“Look, I know you’ll want some changes.” He was now thoroughly into uneasy at her lack of reaction. “If you want, we can gut the place and you can make it how you want. Or we can move, if you’d rather.”
She turned to face him, then. “I was just...absorbing. This is a special place, the...lair of the man I love, if you will. It has meaning to me.”
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