Sage had long ago found that going to the store with Joel was an exercise in speed shopping. He had his list organized by aisle in the grocery store; he went in, bought what he needed and got out again in record time.
She had expected similar treatment in the jewelers, but he took his time studying the rings, checking the cuts and clarity, asking about the stones and settings.
“This one, is it big enough? He asked Sage, showing her the two-karat marquis cut diamond set in platinum.
“Too big,” she said, shaking her head. “And dangerous. I’d probably cut up my client’s feet while I worked with them.”
The woman behind the counter stared at Sage. “I’ve never heard a woman say the diamond was too big before.”
Joel grinned and wrapped an arm around Sage’s waist. “That’s because you’ve never met my girl before. She’s special, all on her own.”
“So, no marquis,” the clerk said. “What would you like instead?”
“Round, I think. Or maybe heart-shaped. Nothing with sharp edges or corners.” Sage had considered it while Joel looked at the trays of diamonds.
The woman pulled out another option. It had a round center stone with channel-cut baguettes on each side. “Better?”
“Much better.” Sage nodded and smiled as Joel slid it onto her finger.
“What do you think?” the woman asked.
“It’s nice,” Joel said, then frowned a little. “But it needs more color. Do you have anything like this with her birth stone on the side?”
“What is it?”
Sage answered for him. “Sapphires.”
“I think I have just the thing.” The clerk returned the ring to the case and locked it, then disappeared into the back for a moment.
Her stomach turned and a feeling of wrongness slid into her, then out again, leaving a shadow of itself behind. Something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. She wondered if it had anything to do with Mick, but surely they would warn her if they released him, wouldn’t they? And Joel hadn’t become any less paranoid since Mick’s arrest, so it was bound to be fine. She shook it off, deciding it wouldn’t do any good to worry about it now. “I didn’t think you would linger in a jewelry store for this long,” Sage said.
“It has to be perfect, because it’s for you,” he countered.
“Do you dither over your antique firearms this much?” she teased.
“Of course. You can’t be too careful.”
The click of high heels alerted them to the clerk’s return. “This was made for another client who was unable to follow through with the purchase.”
She held out a ring with an oval stone, set in gold with alternating, channel-cut sapphires and diamonds ranging halfway down each side of the band. “You know, sapphires hold the powers of protection from envy and harm.” The ring was too big, but would be perfect when it was resized.
“Good, you could use extra protection—every man I know is going to be jealous when they realize you picked me.” He watched her until a blush rose on her cheeks, then turned to the clerk. “I think we have a winner.”
Occasionally he knew just what to say.
Their quick trip to Denver stretched into the full day while the ring was resized. They picked out a few furnishings for the house, and she bought a dress to wear at the wedding—though it wasn’t anything like the traditional number Cami had purchased for herself. They stocked up on kitchen necessities, and made the inevitable stops at the army surplus store and whole foods market that characterized their trips to the city.
It was getting late when they pulled up to his house in the Range Rover that night. Sage corrected herself, remembering that it was their house now, not just his. The thought made her feel just a little bit giddy. The wedding was only seven days away and there were a million things to do, but she wasn’t worried. All of her sisters were banding together to plan, they had the hotel kitchen at their command, and more important than the trappings of the event—her mom and at least a few of his SEAL buddies were going to be there. Dozens of phone calls to let everyone know had been another thing they’d worked into the past two days.
“I’ll grab the produce, but let’s leave the rest out here for the night,” Joel suggested when he opened the passenger-side door to help her out.
Sage was happy to agree and stopped to look at her ring again before getting out of the SUV.
They carried the perishables inside and stowed them in the fridge, then he slid his arms around her, pulled her close and began kissing her. “I’ve been waiting to get you home alone again all day,” he said.
“Yeah? I’ve been a little anxious about it myself.” Sage melted against him, following his lead as he walked them toward the stairwell. His cell phone beeped as they headed up the stairs, kissing as they went, but neither of them stopped to acknowledge it.
It beeped again as another message came through, then rang a few minutes later from where it lay in his shirt pocket on the bedroom floor. They let it go to voice mail.
Sage lay wrapped in Joel’s arms, feeling her heartbeat slow, soaking in his heat and love, enjoying the scent of his cologne as she rubbed her nose along his neck. “Are all of those stairs really necessary?” It had taken a while to negotiate them on the way up.
Joel chuckled low and brushed the hair away from her face. “Only if we want to make it to the room.”
She tucked her cheek against his shoulder and let her mind fly free—and immediately had a strong feeling that something was not right. Her smile fell and she gripped his arm. “Joel, get your gun.”
“What?’ He looked down at her and his smiled melted away.
She remembered the feeling she’d had in the jewelers—she hadn’t said anything about it to him, getting distracted by everything else that was going on. “Something’s wrong. Really, really wrong. The stalker.”
“But Mick’s in jail, they’d let me know if he bailed out, and they said he had to wait for a judge on Monday.” He pushed back the hair from her face.
She grabbed his hand. “If you ever believed in my ability, believe now. Something’s wrong.” The bad feeling increased, climbing up her throat.
A heartbeat passed between them and he shifted up and was out of bed in a blink. He tossed her his shirt, snatched up his jeans and searched for shoes. He crossed to the closet in the spare room, twisting the lock on the gun safe and removing an extra hand gun and a rifle he kept there, then relocked it while she pulled on the shirt and snatched up her jeans.
He took in a deep breath through his nose, then stiffened as he sniffed again. “Do you smell that?”
Sage smelled the air. Burning wood, smoke. Light flickered against the dark bedroom wall. Yellow. “Fire.” Her fear skyrocketed.
He offered her a pistol
“Oh, no. I’m not carrying that,” she said as she shimmied into her jeans.
“Just take it. In case. I have to be able to protect yourself if something goes wrong.” His eyes bored into hers. “Did you find your shoes?”
With some reluctance, she accepted the firearm. Now wasn’t the time to be squeamish. Her hand shook so much she nearly dropped it, but she managed to check the magazine to make sure it was full.
She slid into her sandals—the only thing she could find to protect her feet, despite the snow outside. She handed him a pair of shoes as they headed down the stairs. The smoke grew stronger and Sage retrieved his cell phone from the shirt pocket, dialing 911 as the flames engulfed the front deck and part of the living room wall.
“Back door,” he directed. “But let me go first.” Joel’s pistol fit in his hand like part of his arm as he burst through the door, sighting in every direction, looking for danger in the brush and shadows. “Go, head into the brush to the right.”
Sage finished giving the dispatcher the address and shut the phone, hurtling herself into the darkness. There was a flash and the boom of a gun going off, but if it had been directed at her, it missed its mark. She thought of Joel and
her heart nearly stopped for several seconds when she thought the stalker might have shot him. The night was cold and there was more than six inches of snow on the ground, spilling over onto her feet as she trudged through it.
She sucked in air as she rushed for a spot in the underbrush where a pine tree had kept the ground relatively snow-free. She hear a crack and whirled around, but didn’t see anything in the flickering firelight.
Joel moved around the house, sliding into the shadows as quickly as possible. The shifting light from the fire made the shadows jump, setting him even more on edge.
He thought he caught a flash of clothes from the corner of his eyes and slid along the side of the house. His back to the wall as the flames licked around the corner, crackling and filling the air with a roar that covered any sounds their attacker might have been making.
Heat rolled toward him and he darted across the yard toward the tree line, feeling like a gimp as he limped across the open space. He sensed the danger a millisecond before he heard the report of the gun and he rolled into the bushes, wincing as he twisted his knee a little. He sucked in a breath and tracked with his bare chest in the snow.
He couldn’t tell which direction the shot had come from, but as he quartered the area, he glanced up at the big house, just in time to see the front door open and a female figure silhouetted against the door.
“Don’t come out here,” he commanded in a voice so low he almost couldn’t hear it, never mind the woman who was a good fifty yards away.
Two more heads poked out behind hers and he hoped they wouldn’t be stupid enough to come down. It had only been two seconds at most, but Joel cursed himself for splitting his attention, even for that long. He moved up to his knees started moving again, staying low and hoping the unpredictable lighting would make things as hard for the attacker as it was for him. He’d trained for adverse conditions. Chances were his opponent had not.
He circled, creeping through the snow and wishing he wasn’t leaving tracks a toddler could follow. As he came out of the trees, he saw Jonquil running toward him.
“Where’s Sage?”
He grabbed her arm. “Get back inside. Now! There’s a shooter out here. And keep everyone else inside too.”
“But Sage—”
“I can’t keep track of all of you and the shooter. Get inside. I’ll send her in if I get a chance. Now go.”
Jonquil paused for just a second, then ran back inside. He prayed she made it okay, and locked the doors behind her.
There were no more shots, which could only mean one thing—the shooter was tracking Sage and not Joel.
Sage rolled behind some bushes, freezing in the jacket she’d snatched from the sofa as they passed through the living room. She counted the seconds as if they were minutes, waiting for another sound, watching for the movement of Joel crossing the yard, but saw nothing.
Time crept by on cat feet and she held her breath, anxious for some indication of what was to come. She stowed the gun in her jacket pocket, keeping her hand on it, and huddled in the snow for a long moment before checking the text messages in Joel’s inbox.
They were from Blake. Mick was released today. They searched his house, but there was no evidence of his being the stalker.
And, Perp is still at large, take precautions. Sheriff said your engagement could be enough to set him off.
A chill went down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold air.
Something cold and hard pressed against the back of her head. “Hey, there, Princess. How about if you stand real slowly.” A strong hand grabbed her upper arm and pulled her back against a firm chest, then wrapped tightly around her neck so she was pinned against him.
She didn’t have to ask who it was. She recognized the voice. “Damon. What are you doing?”
“I’ve come for what’s mine. You can’t think I’d let you be with him, could you? You know you belong to me. You’ve always belonged to me, since before we first met.” His face came around to her from behind, his voice low in her ear. “I know you believe in fate, in the stars. You’re the one for me, Sage. You always have been.”
When he’d interviewed with her in July he’d mentioned running into her at a spa convention. She’d pretended to remember him, but hadn’t. “Damon, you’re scaring me.” It was the gun pressed into the base of her head that scared her the most, and wondering what happened to Joel. Shouldn’t he have stopped Damon by now? Where was he? Was he okay? Had he been hit? Killed?
“Don’t be scared, sweetheart. I’ve come for you. We’re going to be happy together. I’ve waited too long to show myself. You just need a little space from him to come to your senses. He’s always around, making it hard for me to show how much I love you.”
She shivered in revulsion; he’d seemed nice. How could she have been so wrong about him? “Then why are you holding a gun to my head?”
“It’s the only way he’ll ever consider letting you go.” He nuzzled the side of her neck, sniffing there. “He’s addicted to you, like I am, but you’re mine.”
Joel’s heart nearly pounded out of his chest as he thought of the man getting his hands on Sage. He moved to the brush where he’d told her to hide and nearly lost his breath when he saw her pulled tight against Damon’s chest. It only took a heartbeat to recognize the masseur, and his heart rose to his throat in that heartbeat.
He snuck up behind the two of them, ignoring the way he was starting to shiver in the cold, the snow crumbling into his shoes and chaffing his bare ankles. He heard Damon talking to her and grew even colder as he heard the last sentence.
“You’ll always be mine.”
“Drop the gun.” Joel’s voice was low and as cold as the air around them—and it filled Sage with a relief.
Damon startled and twisted, putting her body between him and Joel. “No way. She’s mine, and if I can’t have her, neither will you.” He pulled back harder on the arm wrapped around her throat, making her choke a little. “I don’t think you’re willing to let her die, so you’ll let us go safe and sound.”
Sage felt her whole body shake at the thought that Damon would rather see her dead than with Joel. “You tried to kill him with Mick’s car.” Her heart sped to a gallop, her hands began to shake and her breathing became ragged as another panic attack hit her. She would be helpless in his grasp once the panic took over. What would she do?
There was a low chuckle. “That idiot was making a real pain of himself in the spa. I wanted to get rid of him—and if I could be rid of both Mick and Watts at the same time, all the better. But that was when Watts was just a thorn in my side, making me stay a step back. Now he’s brainwashed you into thinking you care about him, it’s time for him to go.”
“You’ll never get away alive,” Joel said, his gun pointed at Damon, his hands steady. He circled around them, making Damon keep shifting so she was between them.
Sage knew he’d been in bad situations before; he was far more used to high stakes. He would get them out of this, somehow. He had to—but if he couldn’t, she wasn’t going to let him die because he was protecting her. Nausea churned in her gut and she fought to keep air moving in and out of her lungs. Tears streaked her face but she tried to stay in the moment, tried to focus on Joel and the hard, cool-headed expression in his gaze.
“That’s okay, neither will you—or her, if you push me.” Damon shifted further behind Sage, using her for cover.
“Sage, how are you doing, baby?” Joel asked without taking his eyes off of Damon.
“Don’t call her that. She doesn’t belong to you,” Damon snarled, he yanked her tighter to him, his gun sliding along her head until it made contact an inch or two behind her temple.
“Yes I do.” Sage’s words were barely more than a whisper, but she felt them, believed them all the way to her core. “I belong to him in a way you could never understand.”
“No. You’re mine.” Damon’s voice became fevered. “I loved you before you ever met him. You belong with me.�
�
“You’re both wrong,” Joel said, circling around them, forcing Damon to turn as well to keep Sage between them. “Sage belongs to herself. She’s strong and independent, and she has razor-sharp elbows.”
With that reminder, Sage pushed past the terror that was causing tears to roll down her face. She took advantage of the adrenaline causing havoc in her system and remembered what Joel had taught her. She brought her left elbow down into Damon’s ribs, lifting her right hand to push the gun barrel away from her head. She stepped on his insole and when he reflexively loosened his grip—just a little bit—she bent forward to kick at his knee, but didn’t get a good angle. Still, it knocked him off balance and he slipped on the snow and the hand holding the gun dropped to the side, though he didn’t release her.
Sage managed to get to the gun in her pocket, but rather than cocking it and turning it on him—which would have been nearly impossible at this angle and proximity anyway—she slammed it into the side of his head, making his arm loosen even more.
Joel pulled the trigger and Damon slumped over her, pushing them both into the snow. Panic took over as her face planted in a drift, making her hyperventilation even worse as she struggled to breathe. The warm wetness trickling along her head and neck didn’t help as she realized it was his blood.
Damon’s weight was lifted off of her as the sound of sirens split the air. Police, fire and ambulance sirens all blared, moving closer.
Joel grabbed Sage and pulled her into his arms, checking her for wounds. “Are you okay, is it all his blood? Did he hurt you?” There was panic in his voice as his hands skimmed over her arms and face.
“I’m fine, I’m not hurt.” Tears poured down her cheeks and she fought to break through the lump in her throat.
Joel held her tight as if he could cocoon her inside himself, ignoring the blood on her coat. “Oh, baby, I thought I was going to lose you. I couldn’t stand it if he’d hurt you. You’re everything to me.” He pressed kisses to her face as the sirens stopped in front of the house and men piled out of the vehicles.
SEALed With Love (DiCarlo Brides book 2) (The DiCarlo Brides) Page 21
