by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
There it was, he thought, his steps halting as the cabin came into view. A movement caught his eye. And there she was. Nina stood on the deck. She wore yellow, a brighter dot in the midday sunshine that flooded the island. One hand shaded her eyes as she looked out over the water toward the mainland. Probably heard the engines. Jip's boat was already a speck in the distance. Ryan watched as she gave up and turned to go inside without even glancing in his direction.
He hurried then, the urgent need to see her kicking in full force. By the time he reached the path from the beach up to the cabin, he was running full tilt.
She stood in the doorway, a look of shock on her face. God, she looked so good.
"Ryan?"
Half out of breath, he took her in his arms and kissed her with a hunger he'd been suppressing since the last time he had seen her. No, since the last time he had kissed her.
He never wanted to stop. Mouths still joined, feeding the need that leaped between them every time they touched, he backed her into the cabin and toward the sofa.
"Please," she gasped, her arms locking around him as he took her down to the cushions and half covered her with his body.
He hesitated only a moment, trying to gauge what the plea meant. Stop? Hurry? Hurry, he decided instantly, feeling her press harder against him. He renewed the kiss, running his hands over her body, feeling nothing beneath the thin yellow beach wrap but the strings of her bikini. The vision of her in that red one teased him, aroused him further.
He pulled back, still kissing her, but only enough to rake at the wrap's ties and shove the fabric from between them. He reached around her, unclasping the top to her bathing suit as she wriggled out of the bottom.
One-handed, he stripped off his shirt and she unsnapped his cutoffs. The fevered efforts left them panting as they came together in a rush of heat, mating urgently with no preamble, no words, and no finesse.
Dimly, Ryan felt the bite of her short nails on his shoulders, his arms, his hips as he plunged again and again, harder, faster, racing toward a release, willing her to keep up.
Suddenly, she tensed, cried out and shuddered, gripping him so fiercely, he lost it completely. His mind blanked of everything but keen, almost painful pleasure centered on her. In her. In Nina. He thought it would never end, hoped it never would, and yet it was over all too soon.
They lay suspended in a haze of exhaustion for a while, content to do nothing, say nothing. Ryan finally forced himself to roll them to one side to take his weight off of her.
She drew in a slow deep breath and released it as she looked up at him and smiled. "You came," she whispered.
Ryan sighed. "You noticed."
Her laughter sounded lazy, satisfied. "Hard not to. You know what I mean. What are you doing here?" He hugged her closer and buried his nose in the curve of her neck. "Making love to you. This is where I
live now."
"Savannah? You'll be living in Savannah?"
"Right here," he clarified. "In your arms, on this sofa, in this minute. Let's not ever move."
Her hand brushed over his hair. "All right," she whispered and snuggled closer.
Ryan realized somewhere in the back of his mind that he was now out of work, had no place to call his
own, no car to drive, no retirement plan and no firm commitment from the woman he loved. But he knew he
had never felt so good in his entire life.
* * *
Nina woke first. It was still early afternoon. Ryan slept so soundly, she didn't even have to be all that careful not to wake him. Jet lag, she figured.
She got up, took a quick shower and dressed in a pair of shorts and shirt, one of several outfits Trish had bought for her at a local discount store.
Barefoot, hair slicked back behind her ears and wearing no makeup, she padded into the kitchen area to make coffee. While it perked, she watched Ryan sleep. He lay on his stomach, naked as a newborn. The ceiling fan above him stirred the hair on his forehead, making him frown in his sleep.
He looked younger than thirty-seven now. He needed a haircut, but she loved the sun streaks mixed in the sandy brown waves. Those wouldn't be as evident if he cut it very short.
His lean, athletic body was tanned from frequent swims in the waters off Montebello. She smiled at the marked tan lines that showed the brevity of the swimsuit he liked best. The good ol' boy gone cosmopolitan. He sure had the body for it.
She turned around and poured her coffee, deliberately denying herself the sight of him, since she was overheating. Instead, she stared out the window above the sink and watched the waves roll in. Why was he here?
As much as she had wanted him—and the ferocity of her need surprised her—Nina realized this was temporary. She had gone missing and he had worried enough to come looking for her. Or maybe Bill had called him. If she'd been smart, she would have phoned Joe Braca sooner to let them know she was all right and planned to take care of herself from now on.
"Nina?" he said, his voice gravelly with sleep. "C'mere."
She turned and saw that he had pulled on his shorts and was sitting on the sofa watching her. Somehow, she made herself smile and speak. "Coffee?"
"Sure," he growled, got up and ambled over to the counter where she stood. His arms slid around her, but she moved away, breaking his hold.
"Uh-oh," he said softly, his brow furrowed as he raked a hand through his tousled hair. "Too much, too soon, huh? Manners took a back seat, I'm afraid. I'll make it up to you, Nina."
"Have your coffee. Then we'll talk."
"Uh-huh." He looked at her, his blue-gray eyes intense. "This where we lay down ground rules?" He nodded as he stirred two spoons full of sugar into his cup. "You're right. Gotta have those rules." He took a sip, then winced. "Marriage. Gotta have that. My rule number one."
Nina crossed her arms over her chest.
"No?" he asked, then sighed and drank some more of his coffee. "Sorry, that one's not negotiable."
She leaned back against the counter and looked him squarely in the eyes. "I can't marry you, Ryan."
"Sure you can. I'll wait awhile, though, if you don't want to rush into anything." He glanced over at the sofa and smiled seductively. He did it well, too. "Don't want to rush, now do we?" he added.
She wanted to stamp her foot. "Will you be serious?"
He put down his mug and placed his hands on his hips. His head tilted slightly as if he were studying her. "I am serious, but I can see what an idiotic way that was to propose. No excuse except that I'm a little punchy."
He shrugged, then he came toward her and dropped to one knee. "Will you marry me, Nina?" he asked, looking up at her. Not smiling.
"No!" she exclaimed, stepping back. "And for goodness' sake, get up."
He did, bracing himself with one hand on the edge of the countertop. "I need to take lessons in this, don't I?"
"I would have thought you'd had practice," Nina snapped. "This isn't your first time, is it." Not a question.
Ryan stilled. "Dad told you."
"No, Dad didn't tell me. I saw the pictures. But that's neither here nor there. I only said it to emphasize how little I know about you, Ryan. Sure, we're good together in bed, but you know as well as I do there's more to it than that. A lot more."
"Do you love me?" he asked.
She refused to answer, but she could see he knew without her saying anything. "Beside the point."
He picked up his mug and downed the rest of his coffee. "Okay, here's what we'll do. We'll sit down over there where our explosion happened a while ago and we'll talk. Anything you want to know about me, I'll tell you. We'll communicate."
"Don't be snide. I hate that. You can be very snide." But she was warming to it. Even snide, on Ryan, had its charm.
"Snide's out," he agreed. "Sit."
She sat. He sat right next to her, their bare legs touching, the golden hairs on his tickling the smoothness of hers. Nina moved, putting space between them. She braced in one corner of the sofa and
motioned for him to take the other end. "Now then, tell me. When are you leaving to go back?"
"I won't be going back," he said as he shook his head.
"The investigation's not over. I called Joe yesterday. Have you heard something from him since then? Have they caught—"
He was shaking his head again, smiling at her, but tentatively this time, as if he was unsure of her reaction. "No. The case is still open. Joe is running it, under Lorenzo's supervision. Looks good, though."
Nina couldn't believe it. "You didn't give it up," she accused.
"I did. I resigned. I'm going into the boat-building business." A lie. She could see it on his face. He relented, wearing a guilty expression as he tugged at the ragged fringe on the leg of his shorts. "Okay, I'm doing that only if there's no opening in my precinct." He looked up at her. "But I promise you, work will be secondary. No, further down on the list than that. Fifth or sixth maybe. I'll quit at five o'clock, even in the middle of a stakeout. Leave my thermos for the crooks when I take off. Scout's honor."
Nina couldn't help but laugh. "Ryan, you're hopeless."
"No, hopeful," he argued, and warned slyly, "I'll wear you down."
She huffed, crossing her arms over her breasts, hiding her response to his slow, sexy grin. This was a side of Ryan she found entirely too hard to resist. Now was not the time to cave in. He still hadn't told her about his marriage. She instinctively knew he didn't want to discuss it, but she had to ask.
"Will you tell me what happened the first time around?" she asked, venturing what she knew might end with Ryan stalking away from her.
He sobered instantly, his grin fading to a frown. "Yeah. You need to know. I was sort of hoping Dad had told you. It... it's hard for me to talk about."
Nina nodded, encouraging him to go on.
He took a deep breath and released it slowly. "Okay. Six years ago I was working day and night on a case where this guy was knocking off prostitutes. He'd killed two. The call came in that he'd popped another one.
"My partner and I met at the scene around nine that night. Took longer than we figured. We got a tip at the scene that the guy was holed up just down the hall in one of the vacant apartments. He'd gone out the window when we entered the room and was just pulling out of the alley. We chased him into the next county and finally caught him. Just like that, we caught him wearing the evidence. Blood all over him and the pros's datebook in his pocket."
"And?"
"Give me a minute," Ryan said, rubbing his hand over his face. His breathing had grown ragged. He steadied it, then nodded as if to himself. "Something happened while we were gone. This time, at my address. We were booking the perp when somebody told me. I didn't believe it." He paused, biting his bottom lip, his eyes glazed with a memory.
Nina feared what he would say so much that she held out a hand to stop him. He ignored it, or simply didn't see it.
His voice roughened. "When... when we got there..." He stopped, cleared his throat. "Half my house was gone. Just... gone."
Nina held her breath. He wasn't through.
"Sometimes when I worked late, Chrissy would sneak in and bunk down with Kath in our bed. She was only five. Scared of the dark a little. That night Kath went to her room for some reason. Otherwise, the blast —" He fell silent, made a movement with his hand, then fisted it and pounded once on his leg.
Nina couldn't speak. It was a little like watching a train wreck. You knew what was about to happen, but couldn't stop it. No way to stop it.
His chest heaved and he made an attempt to speak clearly, concisely. "The bomb had been planted earlier. Timed device. Nothing sophisticated, but certainly effective. Our bedroom was completely gone, bathroom, the den, most of the kitchen." He paused, then looked at her. "In Chrissy's room... the outer wall fell in. The brick wall. Death was instant."
"Oh, God!" Nina reached out, but he shied away.
"Not yet. Hear it all. I held it together that night, did what I had to do." Ryan pinched his lips together for a full minute, thinking, before he spoke again. "It wasn't until the next afternoon that I went off the deep end. I had to go to the morgue to... see them. Sam had to drag me out of there. I don't remember much about the rest of that day."
"How awful, Ryan," she whispered. Words seemed inadequate.
"Later, I must have seemed better, all right maybe. There were questions to answer, stuff to take care of. The captain put me on leave. Suspension, I guess. I had too much time to think. Imagine what it was like for them. If they weren't asleep."
"Don't, Ryan," she pleaded.
"It got to be too much. Nightmares hit," Ryan said, calmer now that he was past the crucial point in the telling. "I couldn't sleep, so I drank. I honestly don't remember anything that happened for nearly a year. Must have functioned on some level, I guess. Helluva blackout."
"Amnesia," Nina guessed. Hoped.
"Nothing as pretty as that. I was drunk. I woke up one morning in a holding cell in some podunk town in Mississippi with nothing to drink. By the time they let me out, I had realized I was killing myself. How I'd stayed alive that long, I'll never know."
"What then?" Nina asked, certain she had heard the worst. Nothing could be worse than the tragedy he had related. "What did you do?"
His shoulders straightened. "Got myself together, cleaned up. Went home and visited their graves. Spoke briefly with Dad, then Sam. After that, I knew I couldn't stay there. A friend asked me to go to Amsterdam on a courier job. I did runs like that for almost three years, stayed out of the country as much as I could, well away from Georgia where the memories were. Then I met Max Ryker, Lorenzo's brother. We got to talking. He said he'd give me a recommendation if I wanted to settle in Montebello. The rest is history."
He looked at her, his eyes weary and red rimmed, though he hadn't wept. Not one tear. "Any questions?"
Then he smiled, a sad smile. "Of course, you have questions. To answer the first one, yes, I loved Kathleen, but I do know she's gone now. I've let her go, and what I felt for her doesn't affect my loving you at all. In fact, I believe I know more about love now than I did then."
He went on without pausing. "Chrissy was my heart. I don't think I'll ever get over her. You might as well know up front, Nina, I won't have any more children."
Nina's intake of breath was audible in the silence after that statement. Ryan's gaze intensified, dropping briefly to her flat stom ach, then reconnecting. She remained silent, probably looking guilty as hell.
"You're not," he said softly. "You can't be."
She could see a muscle working in his jaw as he clenched it. A vein throbbed in his temple. She couldn't look at his eyes.
"We were careful," he insisted. "You're mistaken."
Nina couldn't bear seeing him this upset. This quietly upset, as if he couldn't imagine anything worse than the prospect of having another child. And she understood.
"I expect you're right," she said. "At any rate, it's not going to be a problem for you. Or even for me, if it's true," she added quickly. "You don't have to be involved."
"Are you crazy?" he asked, angry now. "I am involved! Whether you're pregnant or not, I am so totally involved with you. I can't live without you, Nina!"
"Sure you can!" she argued. "You don't even have to know whether I'm pregnant or not. Look, get me off this island and I'll be gone. You can pretend we never met."
He was up now, pacing erratically. "Wait right here!" he ordered, pointing at the floor as he slammed out the front door.
Well, she didn't have much choice about that. She had seen Jip and Mackeral taking off in their boat earlier, and Ryan was probably headed straight for his. Unless there was someone else here at Point Tipsy that she didn't know about yet, she was stuck waiting right here until somebody came for her.
Nina knew better than to sit and cry. It wouldn't help a thing. But she did it anyway. She curled up on the sofa where she had made love to him and cried for Ryan, for his beautiful wife and the sweet little girl with t
he dimples.
She wept for Bill and Trish, and for her own parents while she was at it. Even Desmond. Last of all she allowed a few tears for herself and the baby she might be carrying. Poor little thing whose parents were afraid of it.
Eventually, she had cried herself out and decided it was time to be an adult again. She washed her face and downed a glass of juice to rehydrate. When she had herself together, she went looking for Ryan. He had been alone too long.
She found him down the beach, building a sand castle. For a long time, she crouched there in the sand nearby and watched him work. Finally, she risked speaking. "You're building it too close to the water. High tide might wash it away."
"I can build another one," he said, making a window in one tower with his index finger.
"It wouldn't be the same," she told him. "The new one would be altogether different."
"I know. Even better maybe. And I would have learned not to build so close to danger."
"You think we could build something together, Ryan?"
He smiled and looked out to sea, sitting back on his heels and dusting the sand from his hands. "Yeah. I know we can. I haven't given you much reason to think so today, but I will."
"You need me, Ryan. And I need you. I do love you, you know."
"I hoped," he said, meeting her eyes with his steady blue-gray gaze. "Because I certainly do love you."
She hesitated, watching him closely. "And a baby, if there is one?"
He got up and came over to sit beside her on the sand, picking up a handful and letting it sift slowly through his fingers. "I've been sitting out here for three hours now thinking about Chrissy. She was a happy kid, Nina. I think I did a good job as a father. If you don't count that one night when a bastard I had arrested got out of prison and decided to take his revenge, I don't have any regrets about the kind of life I gave her."
He looked up again. "I promise you won't ever have cause to worry about anything like that happening. I won't go back to the job. I'll work with Dad or do something else. Something further back from danger."
