Fifty-five seconds.
Isabel’s grip was loose. She was dying.
Light! Faint, barely perceptible. He aimed his face up and pulled as hard as he could.
Fifty-eight seconds.
Joe broke the water on a huge gasp, just as Isabel went loose in his arms.
His head swiveled as he looked up at the bridge where the men had angled the headlights to shine over the water. Jack was shining a powerful flashlight into the water.
“Rope!” Joe screamed just as a rope hit the water five feet from him. He was bearing Isabel’s full weight now. Her eyes were closed and through chattering teeth he started praying.
Don’t die on me, honey. Don’t die. Don’t die. Please God, don’t let her die.
He wrapped the rope three times around his forearm, his other arm around Isabel. She needed to get the water out of her lungs but he couldn’t do it here. He had to get her onto that bridge where Metal could work his magic. Metal had saved men’s lives countless times. He’d saved lives other medics couldn’t save. He knew what Isabel meant to him, he’d save Isabel.
He had to.
The four men pulled them out of the water, Joe hanging from the rope, holding Isabel tightly to him.
Her eyes were closed. She looked like she was sleeping. He couldn’t do anything—one hand was holding on to the rope pulling them out of the water and the other was grasping her. All he could do was stare at her face, willing her eyes to open.
His gasps were clouding the frigid air with steam but there was no steam coming out of Isabel’s mouth.
Oh God.
And then they were pulled over the bridge onto concrete and Metal was bending over Isabel and Joe was on his knees, gasping, coughing out water. Blood pooled around his leg. Metal looked over at him, big hands compressing Isabel’s chest, but Joe waved him away.
“Take...care...of...Isabel.”
Metal was counting under his breath, big hands compressing Isabel’s chest hard. Isabel was so cold and still, beautiful face deathly white.
And then—the most glorious sound he ever heard. Isabel, coughing. Metal put her on her side as she weakly coughed out the water she’d swallowed. She looked ice white and battered. The most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
Joe’s leg wouldn’t bear him so he crawled over to Isabel, putting his arms around her, holding her tightly, patting her back as she coughed. He pulled back and looked down at her face, wanting his face to be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes.
Her eyelids fluttered, she coughed again, then opened her eyes.
“Is he dead?” was the first thing that came out of her mouth.
Joe laughed weakly, and it turned into a cough. “Yeah.” His voice was gravelly. “He’s dead.”
“Good.” Her eyes closed again.
Joe tapped her cheek. “Honey. Honey, don’t go off just yet. There’s someone you have to see.”
“Don’t want to see anyone,” she said, her voice drowsy. She was falling into hypothermia. They’d wrap her up in their jackets and get her to a hospital fast but first—first she had to know something. Joe lifted his hand and beckoned to Jack. Jack hunkered down on his haunches next to Isabel.
Joe turned her face toward Jack. She blinked. Blinked again.
“Jack?” she whispered, holding out a hand.
Jack grabbed it, put it against his filthy, stubbled jaw. “Sis.”
Tears welled, fell down her face. “You’re alive!” Her mouth formed the words, though there was no sound.
She gave a sob, then another, then lifted from Joe’s arms to throw herself into her brother’s arms, crying and laughing at the same time.
Metal stood. “Gotta get her warm and to a hospital,” he said, but he didn’t stir. It was an incredibly moving moment. Jack’s head was bent over Isabel’s and though he wasn’t sobbing, tears were falling down his cheeks into his beard.
Jacko and Nick held out their hands and lifted Joe. He couldn’t put weight on his right leg, but they were strong men and they were there for him. Everything in Joe’s world felt heavy with the sense of rightness.
His woman, in her brother’s arms, crying out her happiness. His buds, holding him up.
It was going to be all right.
Isabel turned her face, held out a hand. Jacko and Nick shuffled forward with Joe between then until he could reach her, take her hand.
“You—alive. My brother—alive. Blake—dead,” she whispered. “Happiest day of my life.”
Epilogue
The Grange, Mount Hood
Two weeks later
It was a great party. The place was fantastic. It was a sunny day and the place was filled with light. Built of wood and glass the reception hall was huge, airy, magnificent. A cathedral to the art of living well.
And eating well.
There were whole stretches of time when the entire ASI crew—a rowdy bunch normally—fell completely silent as a new dish appeared on the fifty-foot-long table. Isabel had designed the menu and had done some of the cooking and it was spectacular. She’d absolutely refused to rest after near drowning and had been working round the clock on the menu.
Joe glanced over at her for the billionth time. So far there’d been ten toasts to her and she was rosy and smiling and so goddamned beautiful it nearly blinded him. She’d begun her blog again—just a few posts so far but the reaction was overwhelming. Each post now clocked up a hundred thousand hits and the numbers were climbing fast. She’d dusted off the file of the book on food she’d been writing. Joe let her be, didn’t push her in one direction or another, because she was finding her own way back just fine. But he was incredibly proud of her.
Her brother Jack was sitting on her other side. He’d cleaned up for the occasion after his months of staying under the radar, pretending to be a mentally disturbed homeless person. He and Nick had been huddled together for the past two days, planning the next steps.
The FBI had handled the removal of Hector Blake’s body back to Washington, DC, where soon the former senator would drown for the second time in a tragic accident in the Potomac. The Portland driver had been ID’d as a former member of the Clandestine Service who had quit after a fuckup in Pakistan.
Nick and Jack were patiently combing the records of former Clandestine Service members and they were being investigated for possible involvement in the Washington Massacre. They were both going back to DC tomorrow to ramp up the investigation, but they had given themselves today off. Amidst all the death, it was time to celebrate life.
There was a kids’ table and Isabel had prepared a perfect kid menu and they were gobbling food down like the apocalypse had come. Lily, Suzanne and Midnight’s amazingly gorgeous little girl, sat at the head of the kids’ table, completely in charge. At four, she was a little princess.
The servers wheeled out a huge cake that was an exact replica of the ASI compound, down to the chocolate trees with mint leaves, the walls made of something Isabel called ganache. It looked amazing and doubtless tasted amazing, too. The servers were pouring champagne.
Pretty soon Midnight would stand up and make a speech and then the Senior would, too. His bosses. For real, this time. Though Joe’s leg was going to take another month to heal, he had absolutely insisted on coming in to work and he was starting to get a handle on their workload, on their clientele and had made a couple of suggestions that had been gratefully received. And as soon as he got the doctor’s okay, he was going operational.
So everything was going just dandy, except for one thing.
He and Isabel were together. She made that clear. But she never, ever spoke about a future together, which was what Joe wanted more than his next breath.
So he was approaching it as an op. Carefully calibrated, step-by-step. He had his strategy all planned out.
First step—unite the houses. Then their lives.
Joe leaned into Isabel and refrained from taking a big sniff, like a dog. God, she always smelled so damned good.
/>
Be calm, he told himself. Relax.
This was worse than going on a mission downrange, because then it had been only his life in the balance. Here it was his heart.
“Hey, honey,” he said casually. “Look what Suzanne designed.” For us. He swallowed the words because, well, for Suzanne to design something for them, there first had to be a them.
He had his tablet with him and scrolled through the images. Suzanne was as magical with design as Isabel was with food.
She’d taken their two houses, united the gardens and built a glass walkway between the two. In the images the walkway was transparent but in actuality it would be made of one-way glass so that the long corridor got all the sunshine but nothing would be visible from the outside.
And it united their two houses into one, making for one big house with a huge garden that would be a great family home.
Isabel watched the carousel of images silently and Joe quietly began sweating. The corridor Suzanne had planned was full of hothouse plants and benches, with a living-room-like arrangement at one end, so light-filled it would be like taking coffee in a garden, even in winter.
Suzanne had called it an orangery, only he didn’t see any orange trees.
It was gorgeous, guaranteed to delight a chick. No? Isabel didn’t look delighted, she didn’t look anything.
Fuck.
Had Joe miscalculated? Presumed way too much? Was this a bad move? Shit, he thought he was being really clever, presenting united houses before proposing to unite their lives.
Maybe she didn’t want to unite their houses or their lives. Maybe she was just fine with the way things were. Maybe...maybe she was planning on moving on. Moving away from Portland.
God.
He watched her face carefully for some sign of what she was feeling, but couldn’t discern anything.
Finally the carousel of beautiful images stopped and Isabel looked up at him.
“Joe Harris!” Her voice rang out loud and clear. Everyone stopped talking and looked at them. Even the servers stopped and looked at them.
Oh fuck.
“Yes, honey?” He tried to smile.
Isabel tapped the glassy surface of the tablet. “Is this by any chance a proposal of marriage?”
Yes it was, but it was a subtle one. It was supposed to lead to a marriage proposal. Eventually. She’d seen right through it and he had no way to back down now. If she was going to refuse him it was going to be in front of everyone.
“Uh, yeah,” he croaked.
She looked severe. Disapproving. The ASI crew and Suzanne’s people watched, fascinated. Metal and Jacko were smiling sardonically.
Joe had made the mistake of putting on a dress shirt and a tie. He hated dress shirts and ties. Especially ties. They made him feel like a noose was around his neck. He loved it that ASI didn’t have a dress code. He ran a finger around his shirt collar to loosen it up a little so he could pull in some air.
Isabel frowned. “This is the most half-assed marriage proposal I have ever heard of. Do it right.”
Joe’s eyes widened. Do it right.
Okay.
Joe stood, using the table for balance. But there was no frigging way he could get down on his knee, not with that injured leg. He threw desperate glances at Jacko and Metal and they manned up. Both came around and each took an arm. They were holding almost his entire weight. That was okay. He wasn’t up to his full weight yet and even when he was, Jacko could bench-press him.
They lowered him to the floor so he could kneel on his good leg.
Ring. Jesus fucking Christ. Ring. Not in his wildest imagination had he thought he’d need a ring so soon.
The table had been set with pretty crystal napkin rings. He snatched his up and held it out to her on his sweaty palm. She picked it up, looked at it carefully, then put it on her left-hand ring finger. It was so large she couldn’t close her hand but she still held her hand out as if admiring an ordinary ring.
Isabel looked down at him and finally, finally smiled. “It’ll do. For now. Then you get me a proper one.”
Joe was breathing hard. “Is that a yes?”
She signaled Metal and Jacko and they hauled him back up.
“That is a definite yes,” she said and kissed him.
The whoops shook the rafters.
* * * * *
To purchase and read more books
by Lisa Marie Rice, please visit Lisa’s website here
or at http://www.lisamariericebooks.com/books.
About the Author
Lisa Marie Rice is eternally thirty years old and will never age. She is tall and willowy and beautiful. Men stop at her feet like ripe pears. She has won every major book prize in the world. She is a black belt with advanced degrees in archeology, nuclear physics and Tibetan literature. She is a concert pianist. Did I mention her Nobel Prize? Of course Lisa Marie Rice is a virtual woman and exists only at the keyboard. She disappears when the monitor winks off.
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Coming in September 2015 from Lisa Marie Rice and Carina Press
MIDNIGHT FIRE
Jack Delvaux is alive.
Summer Redding thought the blindingly handsome jock who’d loved and left her years ago died in the Washington Massacre. She grieved for her lost golden boy as the rest of the country mourned their dead—until she comes home to find a very alive Jack Delvaux waiting for her with a devastating secret that turns her life upside down.
No longer the carefree man he was in his youth, this Jack is dark, hard and dangerous; a 15-year veteran of the CIA hungry for answers...and hungry for her. The rich, good-looking charmer who broke her heart once before would have been easy to resist, but this man, this powerful man? Summer needs him, and he knows it.
When Jack’s mission uncovers evidence of government involvement in the Massacre—and plans for another attack—he’s primed for revenge. But he has more than vengeance to live for now, and when Summer’s life is threatened, it’s nearly Jack’s undoing. Someone’s taking shots at his woman? That’s a dead man walking.
When there’s danger lurking, count on these men to save the day.
The Midnight Series by Lisa Marie Rice
MIDNIGHT VENGEANCE
“A long-awaited return to Lisa Marie Rice’s beloved Midnight series.”
—Fresh Fiction
Morton “Jacko” Jackman isn’t afraid of anything. He’s a former Navy SEAL sniper, and he’s been in more firefights than most people have had hot meals. Lauren Dare scares him. Gorgeous, talented and refined, she’s the type of woman who could never be interested in a guy like him. So he’s loved her fiercely in secret. Until now.
MIDNIGHT PROMISES
“I’d highly recommend MIDNIGHT PROMISES to any romantic suspense reader. You won’t be able to put it down.”
—Harlequin Junkie blog, Top Pick
Felicity Ward is no stranger to secrets. Raised in the Witness Protection Program, her whole childhood was a lie. But she couldn’t have known that her family’s secrets—secrets she didn’t even know she was keeping—could spark a nuclear war. And nothing could have prepared her for the tough, sexy warrior who first saves her life and then vows to protect it, no matter what.
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Don’t miss the heart-stopping suspense and heart-pounding romance of Edie Harris’s Blood Money series!
BLAMED: A BLOOD MONEY NOVEL
Blood Money, book one
“Cinematic and compelling, reading like a James Bond movie [... a] tautly written page-turner[.]” —Library Journal, starred review
“One of the best romances I’ve read all year.” —Smart Bitches Trashy Books
Born into a
long line of spies, sanctioned killers and covert weapons developers, Beth Faraday carried out her first hit-for-hire when she was still a teenager.
That part of her life—the American spy royalty part—ended one year ago, with a job gone wrong in Afghanistan. The collateral damage she caused with a single shot was unfathomable and, for Beth, unforgivable. She’s worked hard to build a new life for herself, far away from the family business.
But someone, somewhere, hasn’t forgotten what Beth did in Kabul. And they want revenge.
As the Faraday clan bands together to defend Beth and protect their legacy, Beth is forced to flee her new home with the unlikeliest of allies—MI6 agent Raleigh Vick, the only man she’s ever loved. And the one she thought she’d killed in the desert.
Blood Money continues with RIPPED: A BLOOD MONEY NOVEL.
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