Almost Perfect
Page 23
“Mmm,” he moaned, a soft, strangely satisfied growl. “Let’s go.”
They made their phone call to Adams then lay together on the roof, watching planes arriving from the east and west, watching the moon, pointing out the helicopters flying in from the north, and the flash of the state troopers’ warning lights approaching from the south. And they watched Jimmy Wannamacher’s abortive attempt to escape and his subsequent arrest in the middle of what had once, in predrought days, been a wheat field. And clasped hands as a battered and handcuffed Bubba was led from the house and eased into the back of a state trooper’s black-and-white car.
Carolyn’s driveway seemed a sea of Smokey Bear hats and gray uniforms, FBI agents dressed in black jumpsuits with gold-lettered identification on the front and back, and a couple of cowboy-dressed undercover operators—Adams and Kessler—who left Pete and Carolyn alone.
The stars twinkled dimly in the full moonlight and the fields flanking her house looked frost covered and silver.
“Are you cold?” Pete asked.
“Not anymore,” Carolyn answered, snuggling against him.
“We’ll have to go in sometime,” he said.
“Mmm. But not yet.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
She knew he wasn’t referring to staying on the roof. She chuckled a little. “Very,” she said. “Very, very sure.”
“What else do you want to know about me?” he asked.
“Everything.”
“That’ll take awhile to tell,” he said, gently stroking her hair.
“I hope it takes a lifetime,” she murmured.
Epilogue
Carolyn bit her lips together as she smeared a painkilling unguent onto Pete’s naked and upraised inner thighs. She wasn’t afraid of hurting him, she was trying desperately not to laugh.
“You’re shaking the whole bed,” he said. “Why don’t you go ahead and let it out?”
She chuckled.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Laugh at your poor husband’s pain and agony.”
She dropped a kiss in a place designed to take his mind from his current woes.
“That’s more like it,” he said, reaching for her.
“It’s your own fault,” she said sternly, but continued to take the pain away with her kisses.
“I said I was going to learn to ride that damned horse if it killed me.”
“Yes, but I didn’t think you meant it literally!”
“It would have been fine, but he bounces when he runs,” Pete complained, still trying to draw her up.
“That was a trot,” she said, wiping her already numb fingers on a cloth. “If he’d run, you’d be lying in the driveway.”
“You’re awfully sassy today,” he said.
“According to you, I’m always sassy.”
“Mmm. And I love it.”
“And I love you.”
He made the grunting sound that seemed to mean anything from “me, too” to “good dinner.” It was a low, rumbling growl of repletion and every time she heard it, she felt a slow frisson of delight work down her spine.
The rumble was like his grin, crooked and low, enigmatic and slow.
She crawled up the bed and lay down beside him, settling naturally into the crook of his arm. He gave that low rumble again and drew her a bit closer.
“This is nice,” she said.
“Sure, you don’t have a broken tailbone.”
“Neither do you,” she chuffed. “Just saddle sores.”
“Great. Something new for you to tell Alec and Cait next time they call.”
“Did I tell you they’re planning on coming out here during the Christmas holidays?”
“No! Are they really?”
She poked him in the ribs and then shifted her hand to a slow caress.
“I suppose they’re planning to round up the usual suspects,” he said, followed by a hum of pleasure.
“Adams, Kessler, you, somebody named Chandler, also in the Lubbock office. And his wife.”
“Kelsey Winslow,” Pete said, and she knew from his tone that he was remembering something from his days in prison. Assignment or not, those ten years were permanently marked on her husband’s soul.
However, daily loving, daily living was making its mark too, slowly smoothing some of the harsher scars, erasing some others altogether.
“A regular FBI enclave,” Pete said. “Good thing we added on to the house.”
Carolyn pressed a kiss to his chest, thinking about all the changes that had taken place in her life the past six months. Seven, if she counted from the night she’d found her daughters in the desert with a perfect stranger.
Pete had taken an early retirement from the bureau. He’d resigned the morning after the big raid back in March. “It’s just not for me anymore,” he’d said. “I need to be as far away from that kind of life as is humanly possible.”
She’d asked him to stay on the ranch with her. In fact, she’d asked him to marry her at that moment.
“Are you sure?” he’d asked her then, as he’d asked her when they’d been up on the roof.
“Who’s ever sure?” she’d asked him back. “But I know—as Shawna would say ‘like in my soul or something’ —that we’re supposed to be together.”
It had been scary to take such a step, but there hadn’t been a single moment of regret. Not one.
He’d taken some of his incredible pile of savings and sunk the money into fixing up the ranch. But he’d done most of the work himself, not because they couldn’t afford help now, but because he enjoyed it. He said he liked the work, the being outdoors, and the transformation he could create with his own two hands.
And he volunteered his time at the Almost Public School, teaching about hunting for arrowheads and taking the kids on field trips onto the MacLaine place and coming back dirty, dusty, and thoroughly happy.
All Carolyn knew was that the Leary place—technically Jackson now—changed from a ramshackle, falling-to-bits ranch a couple of miles outside Almost, Texas, to a lovely, working home and family. His magical touch could be seen everywhere, from the barn to the house, to well-behaved, happy newly adopted, on Pete’s part—daughters, to the most contented woman this side of the Pecos.
“We’ve come a long way,” she said.
“Nah. Just got started.”
She smiled. “Sometimes it seems hard to imagine we haven’t known each other forever.”
He pulled her tighter to him and lowered his hand to her breast. His warm fingers slid beneath her to cup her fullness, to mold it to his almost absent caress. But he knew her so very well. He knew exactly where to touch, where to press, how to make her shiver with desire and shudder with pleasure.
“I learn something new about you every day,” he said.
“Like what?” she asked. “I never do anything different.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, shifting to lightly tug at her already hard nipple.
She gasped and arched upward, but said, “That’s nothing new.”
“Oh, yeah?” He scooted down the bed and captured her nipple in his mouth, lightly grazing her with his teeth.
She shivered and gripped his arms in response. “N-neither is...that,” she managed to say between clenched teeth.
“What about that chess game last night?”
“What chess game?” she asked, her entire focus on the warmth of his mouth, the raw-silk feel of his tongue on her aching nipple.
He lifted his head from her breast as he slid a finger into her honeyed core. “The chess game you trounced me at.”
Her legs fell open to him and he slowly, deeply stroked her inside. “You’d just...never...asked if I could play.”
“Play? That wasn’t playing...you’re cutthroat.” He added another finger and lowered his mouth to her breast again, laving her with his tongue, sucking sharply, then gentling her while his fingers worked a wicked magic. “One minute you’re my beautiful sweet little wife and the next,
whoa, berserker mode. I tell you, Carolyn, it was scary to watch.”
She chuckled throatily. “Berserker mode...like the night...you Errol Flynned in the window at Bubba Wannamacher.”
He held her nipple gently in his teeth and talked around it. “That was rather impressive, wasn’t it?” He suckled her, then pushed her slightly sideways to find her other breast. He said, en route, “Especially considering the trim pulled away in my hand smack-dab in midflight.”
She gasped again as he found his prize. And all the while his fingers were slowly, sensuously claiming her, making her molten with renewed desire.
She tried getting out her words, though her ragged breathing and her inchoate thoughts didn’t help. “The biggest drug bust in West Texas history...and the Guiness World Record for the mo-oh-st amount...of splinters in a human hand.”
She decided she’d found a new sensual delight, that of his chortling while he suckled her.
Then Carolyn couldn’t think about the past, about the aftermath of that terrible moment, the arrests of the Wannamacher brothers, the getaway of the unknown Canadian, the capture of millions of dollars’ worth of uncut cocaine.
She could only feel the warmth of his hands, the fire unleashed by his hot, hot tongue. She shuddered beneath his touch and begged him to join her. “Please...” she called.
And he came to her with a groan, his go-around with Bratwurst holding him back, his desire for her pushing him forward. And she knew the old desert horse was forgotten as he uttered that wonderful rumble of satisfaction before capturing her lips with his own.
Later, sated, lying beneath the covers now, not because it was at all chilly, but because Jenny and Shawna were due home from swimming lessons any moment, Pete lit his invariable cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke into the air circulated by the ceiling fan.
“There’s really just one thing I want to know,” he said.
“Mmm?”
“That first morning in your kitchen...why did you get so mad when I said you didn’t have to cook for me? Was that some East-West thing or what?”
Carolyn opened her eyes, a blush working up her cheeks. “Carolyn?” he asked, shifting to see her face.
“No,” she said in a little voice.
“Then what was it?”
“Oh, you might as well know. I’d dreamed about you all that night, and when the girls brought you inside, I was rattled. I mean, there you were and you looked good enough...oh, never mind.”
Pete chuckled. “If you’d told me that then...we’d have been here a lot sooner.”
“You’d have run away.”
“Right up these stairs.”
“I love you, Pete.”
He pulled her tightly against his chest, where she felt safe, loved. Trusted.
But all he said was, “Mmm.”
Don’t miss Marilyn Tracy’s next book in the
ALMOST, TEXAS series, coming soon from
Silhouette Intimate Moments.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-7212-5
ALMOST PERFECT
Copyright © 1997 by Tracy Lecocq
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 editorial office. Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
“Your past isn’t any of my business,” Carolyn told him.
Letter to Reader
Books by Marilyn Tracy
About the Author
Dedication
An Almost, Texas Historical Perspective
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
Epilogue
Copyright