Sexy Silent Nights

by Cara Summers

  She raised her chin. “You were my client. I did my job.”

  “I heard what you said to him. You invited him to kill you.” He gave her another shake.

  “He didn’t. I wouldn’t have let him. You didn’t let him.”

  He dragged her back against him and this time covered her mouth with his. As her taste poured through him, some of the fear inside of him eased.

  Someone whistled, others applauded. This time when Jonah drew back, he saw that Finelli was loading Robert Baxter into a patrol car that had pulled into the mouth of the alley.

  Gabe moved toward them. “She’s right, you know. She did her job. Not only do we have Robert Baxter in custody, but very few people at your party even know what went down. She’s the best.”

  Jonah turned and looked at her. Gabe was right. And she’d been right. She was the best. “We need to talk. Right now I have to tell Glenda and Stan what happened out here.”

  Then he turned and walked back into Pleasures.

  FOR THE NEXT TWO HOURS, Cilla found herself fighting off boredom. Jonah hadn’t let her stray far from his side except for the short time he’d spent in his office talking to Glenda and Stan Rubin. Even then, he’d told her to stay put outside his office and he’d asked Gabe to keep her there within sight. And since then, if he wasn’t directly at her side, Gabe or Nicola or Father Mike was.

  Both Gabe and Nicola flanked her now as Jonah announced the results of the silent raffle that had been going on all evening. Cilla had to stifle a yawn. Now that the excitement was over, she was finding that a Christmas charity event, even at Pleasures, was about as exciting as a silent-movie marathon.

  And it wasn’t just boredom she was feeling. It was nerves. So far Jonah hadn’t spoken even one word directly to her.

  Not since he’d looked at her in the alley and said, “We need to talk.”

  “He’s still pissed at me,” she said to Gabe.

  “He nearly lost you. It’ll take some time for him to come to terms with that.”

  “I just did my job.”

  “Exactly,” Nicola said. “And he knows that.”

  “I’m not sure what to do next.”

  “I may have an idea for you there,” Gabe said. “I found something interesting when I ran the background checks you asked for on the original backers for Pleasures. Then we focused in on the Baxters and I put it aside.”

  Cilla felt that tingling feeling again. “What did you find?”

  “Carl Rockwell worked for various government agencies up until his retirement six years ago. But everything he did is classified. I would have pushed further if I hadn’t had to focus on the Baxters. Jonah will be able to find more.”

  Cilla turned to look at Carl, who was talking to Father Mike. “And he’s been backing Jonah’s investments ever since he retired from secret government work.”

  Gabe nodded. “That’s what I thought was interesting. You might want to mention it to Jonah.”

  She looked at Gabe and Nicola. “The two of you stay right here. I’m going to mention it to Carl.”

  Striding across the room, she made excuses to Father Mike and then drew Carl with her to Jonah’s office. Once they were inside, she closed the door and gestured him into a chair. Then she came right to the point. “Why did you leave Jonah and his mother twenty years ago and never come back?”

  Carl focused his eyes on her. “Well, you don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  No denial. Cilla sat on the edge of Jonah’s desk and regarded him steadily. “No. Maybe you should stop beating around the bush and answer my question.”

  Carl raised his hands to his face and rubbed his fingers against his eyes in a gesture so like Jonah that her heart tightened.

  “I’ve just been having this same conversation with Father Mike.”

  “Why didn’t you come back?” Cilla pressed. “That’s the question Jonah’s going to ask you.”

  He glanced up, met her eyes. “I couldn’t. The op I was working on went on longer than it was supposed to. Then it went south. I was injured badly. When I woke up, I found myself in a hospital. Years had passed. I’d spent nearly four of them in a coma, and at some point I’d had to have some reconstruction done on my face.”

  “Why didn’t you come back then?”

  “I did. I found out where he was and I read the accident reports on my wife’s death. I went to Father Mike first, and I was supposed to meet him that evening in the little prayer garden next to the St. Francis Center. I was just outside when Jonah screamed a prayer that he wanted to kill me.”

  Cilla pictured it in her mind, the man standing in the shadows, the angry boy screaming that he wanted his father back so he could kill him.

  “I’d failed both my wife and my son. The life of adventure I’d been leading had been more important to me than they were.”

  “So you walked away again,” she said.

  There was pain in his expression. “I went back to the life I was good at. The life that I hadn’t been able to give up even when I fell in love, even when I had my son. I wasn’t supposed to be married. I created the identity of Darrell Stone because I didn’t want the government to know that I had a family. I didn’t deserve Jonah. And look what he’s made of his life.”

  Cilla studied the man in front of her. The truth was he’d finally come back into Jonah’s life and supported him. And it hadn’t taken much trouble on Gabe’s part to find information on Carl Rockwell that would raise questions for anyone looking for a connection.

  “Well, are you going to walk away again or are you going to tell him?”

  “How can he forgive me when I can’t forgive myself?”

  “You’ve known him pretty well for six years. If you want the answers to your questions, I’d say Christmas is the best time to get them. The decision is yours.”

  When Carl said nothing, she pushed it further. “I can tell you one thing. He’s looking for you, and knowing Jonah, he’ll find you. There’s a lot to be said for making a preemptive strike.”

  HOURS LATER, WHEN PLEASURES was finally dark, Jonah led Cilla up the stairs to his apartment, and with each step, he felt the nerves in his stomach tighten. The evening had gone by in a blur, which had kept those minutes while Cilla had been at the mercy of that lunatic from replaying in his mind. But his duties as host had also prevented him from getting things settled with Cilla.

  Stan and Glenda were going to be all right. The shock of what he’d had to tell them about Dean Norris/Robert Baxter had taken its toll. They’d started to think of him as the son they’d never had. But they were going to hire an attorney for him, and Glenda had hugged Jonah before they’d left, thanking him for the idea.

  When he opened the door of his apartment, for one moment he entertained the idea of just closing it, pushing her up against it and taking her just as he’d done in that hotel room in Denver. Maybe it would ease the tension inside of him.

  But it wouldn’t solve the problem of what he was going to say to her. And why didn’t he know what to say? He always knew exactly what to say to get what he wanted.

  Dammit. No woman had ever succeeded in tying his tongue into knots before.

  He just needed a few more minutes, he told himself as he pushed the door shut and strode down the length of the room.

  Jonah was still pissed. Maybe Cilla could understand it, but he had to understand her. Flash jumped off her favorite window seat and followed him into the kitchen area. Two against one was not fair. And recalling what she’d said to Carl Rockwell about a preemptive strike, she strode after him.

  “You said we needed to talk.”

  “We do,” he said as he pulled a bottle of champagne out of the refrigerator.

  She climbed onto a stool and faced him across the counter that separated the kitchen area from the rest of the space. “I’d do it all over again.”

  “What?”

  “Push Robert Baxter into admitting what he’d done, and then getting him out of Pleasures.”


  “I know you’d do that again. That’s who you are.” He drew two glasses out of a cabinet, then began to uncork the bottle.

  A little bubble of panic formed in Cilla’s stomach. She couldn’t get a handle on what he was thinking. Why couldn’t she do that?

  He poured champagne into the glasses and handed her one.

  “We’re celebrating?”

  “I certainly hope so.” He lifted his glass and tapped it against hers. “To the conclusion of a job well-done.”

  “Done?”

  “You’re no longer my bodyguard. I’m no longer your client or your partner.”

  A mix of fear and anger shot through her. Was he going to drop her flat after all she’d done, after everything he’d made her feel?

  Over her dead body.

  She set her glass down with a loud click and leaned forward. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “You do?”

  “The job may be done, but I want to continue the partnership. I want to move in here.”

  As the words stopped his ability to breathe, something inside Jonah eased. This was Cilla talking. He took a sip of his champagne and studied her, simply enjoying the sight of her sitting at the counter in his kitchen. In the long nights they’d been apart, he hadn’t pictured her here.

  She frowned at him. “Well? What do you say?”

  “Why do you want to move in here?”

  “You allow cats and Flash has grown attached to you.”

  He sipped his champagne. “Any other reasons?”

  “I’ll be closer to the office.”

  His brows rose and he nearly laughed. “A whole three blocks closer. How about the real reason, Cilla?”

  She narrowed her eyes on him and frowned. “Okay. Here it is. I don’t want to spend any more nights without you.”

  He looked at her and saw everything he’d ever wanted. And he was going to hold on to it. To her. Setting his glass down, he held out his hand. When she took it, he gripped hard. “Just one modification. Once you move in here, you’re stuck. You stay. I don’t want to spend any more nights without you, either.”

  Smiling, she crawled up and over the counter to wrap herself around him. “When it comes to sticking, I’m the best.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Jonah said as he lowered his mouth to hers.

  Epilogue

  New Year’s Eve…almost midnight

  “IT’S NEARLY TIME.” JONAH filled the last champagne flute on the tray, then set the bottle down on his kitchen counter.

  “This will be the first time I’ve ever toasted in the New Year with Cristal,” Cilla said.

  Behind them, guests chattered, and the large TV screen played a delayed broadcast of the partyers in Times Square awaiting the descent of the glittering ball.

  Jonah met her eyes as he handed her one of the flutes. “It’s a special night, one I want you to remember.”

  She smiled at him slowly. “I have no trouble at all remembering each and every night I spend with you.” There’d been eleven of them so far, and she didn’t intend to stop counting.

  Virgil joined them at the counter. “Let me do that.” Taking the tray, he strode away to serve the rest of the small group in Jonah’s apartment.

  A much larger party, a bash in fact, was going on below them in Pleasures, but Jonah had invited a few people up to his place to toast the New Year. Gabe, Nicola and Father Mike had returned to Denver on Christmas Eve, but the rest of the people in the room had all played some role in what had happened the night that Robert Baxter was shot and taken into custody in the alley.

  Virgil offered flutes of champagne first to the Rubins. They’d extended their stay at the St. Francis Hotel so they could make arrangements for Robert Baxter’s defense. Carmen had brought her two sons, and T.D. had brought his pretty wife. Carl Rockwell laughed at something T.D.’s wife was saying.

  Carl hadn’t waited until Christmas day. He’d visited Jonah’s apartment on Christmas Eve. Just in the nick of time as it turned out, because Jonah had been working on his computer most of the afternoon. Cilla figured another day and Carl might have missed his chance to make a preemptive strike. She’d left them alone so she didn’t know all they’d talked about that day, but when Carl left, Jonah hugged him and Carl had held on.

  “I’m glad Carl’s here,” she said.

  “Me, too. He’s my partner, and we’ve been good friends for a while. Lots of fathers and sons aren’t friends. Gabe and Nash don’t have their fathers anymore. Carl and I can’t get back the years we missed, but we have a future to share.”

  “Five minutes until the ball drops,” Ben called out.

  Jonah took her hand as she started toward the TV. “I have something to ask you before we join them.”

  When she turned back to him, she saw that he had a small box in his hand. When he opened it, all she could do was stare.

  It held a ring, and it was so beautiful it made her blink. Something fluttered right under her heart. Panic.

  “I know we have an agreement—no more nights apart,” Jonah said. “And I know it’s a big step, but I want to make what we have definite. Permanent.”

  The panic fluttered again. And she couldn’t quite get a full breath. She thought of her mother and how many times she’d walked down the aisle. Nothing was permanent. Maybe if she could just stop looking at the ring, the panic would stop. She’d be able to breathe. Think.

  But when she turned, she found herself facing a group of people and several of them had warned her not to hurt Jonah. It was Carl’s look that held hers for a long moment. He raised his glass to her. And she remembered what Jonah had said. We can’t get back the years we missed. But we have a future to share.

  “Cilla?”

  Turning back, she looked into his eyes and saw what she wanted. A future to share with Jonah Stone.

  Certainty replaced the panic. “Well, are you going to ask me?”

  “That’s my Cilla.” Grinning, Jonah lifted her off her feet and swung her around. “Marry me?”

  “I will.”

  Putting her back down, Jonah slipped the ring on her finger.

  “Happy New Year!” Everyone in the room raised their glasses and cheered.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-8178-3

  SEXY SILENT NIGHTS

  Copyright © 2011 by Carolyn Hanlon

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  mmers, Sexy Silent Nights