by Julie Miller
He needed to know. His twisted-up heart needed to know.
She ran to him, caught his shoulders in her arms and sank to the floor with him. “Shut up. Just shut up.”
“Is that a yes or a no?” Damn, it burned. Worse than the chest wound, but not as bad as the knee.
Kelsey had him in her lap, his cheek pillowed against one of those beautiful breasts. She ripped open his shirt, placed her cool, bare hand against his belly. Oh, Lord, she was crying. He tried to reach up and brush the tears away from those soft brown eyes.
But she was groping around his pockets now. “Where’s your phone?”
“Backup’s downstairs. They’ll have heard the shot.” He grabbed her hand and brought it back to his heart. For the third time in his career, he’d been in a shoot-out. He knew the drill by now. Take out the bad guy, save the girl. But this was the first time he’d gotten the second part of that equation right. “It hurts like hell, believe me.” He idly wondered if she could sense everything he felt through the tips of his fingers. His relief, his love. His physical pain. T cringed. Oh, man, he didn’t want her to feel that. “It’s not life threatening, sweetheart. I’ll be okay.”
“Dammit, T, this is not okay.” She moved her hand back to the wound and pressed. Ow. Hell. The images she must be seeing. “Where’s your backup?”
“Jeesh. I’m running out of places to get shot, you know. One of these times, I’m going to stop—”
Kelsey cradled his jaw in her hand and smothered his complaining with a heart-deep kiss. Automatically, his arms went around her.
Hmm. The pain seemed to recede exponentially when she showered her attention on him like this.
“I love you, T,” she whispered against his mouth. “Don’t you ever joke about getting hurt again. I love you.”
She kissed him again.
What did she say?
T found the reserves of strength to wrap her up and take over the embrace as best he could. He barely remembered the pain of being shot. He did remember the fear of losing her feeling a hell of a lot worse than the bullet in his belly.
Hmm again. When she’d said that love stuff, he couldn’t seem to think of anything much but her—and how good, how right, how perfect it made him feel to hear those words come out of her mouth.
“Oh, yeah. Banning’s hurtin’ real bad.”
As soon as Kelsey heard Josh Taylor’s voice, she pulled away, demanding medical attention immediately. “He’s hurt. He’s been shot. You have to help him.”
T nodded an okay to the two armed detectives standing in the doorway, waiting for an all clear to enter. “You’d better cuff Wingate before he comes to. And get a crime-lab team up here. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of circumstantial evidence to go along with Siegel and Halliwell’s testimony.” He glanced up at Kelsey. “Right?”
“You figured it out, too?”
He reached up to finger a strand of that bright red hair, that didn’t detract for one moment from what a beautiful, brilliant, special woman she was. “We figured it out, sweetheart. We’re a team, remember?”
Kelsey nodded. He truly hoped she believed in what he was saying.
Before the paramedics swarmed in to separate them and treat their respective injuries, T palmed the back of her head and insisted on one more kiss. “I love you, Kelsey Ryan. Put your hands on me and feel that. Put your faith in me and know that my heart is yours.”
He clutched her hand, lacing their naked hands together, skin to skin. “Can you feel what I feel? Do you believe me?”
She brushed her fingers across his jaw and smiled. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you. You don’t have to prove a thing to me, T. Just love me.”
He smiled back as her sure acceptance made him whole again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Epilogue
“Are we really snowed in?”
Kelsey cinched her robe around her waist as she dashed to the window and pulled the curtain aside to peek through the lacy crystals of ice that clung to the panes of glass. The early-morning sunlight was bright and magical, reflecting off the coat of ice that turned the bare branches and rolling hills of southwest Missouri into a winter wonderland.
Two strong arms wrapped around her waist and snuggled her back against the warm wall of T’s bare chest. “More like iced over. Great way to celebrate the New Year, hmm?” For a moment, Kelsey relaxed in the security of his embrace. But muscles began to tighten and nerves started to tingle when he dipped his head to nuzzle along the side of her neck, punctuating every point with a sensual kiss. “We could have gone for some fun in the sun. Florida, the Bahamas. But you insisted on a lake cabin in the Ozarks. In the off-season. During the worst December storm they’ve had in a decade.”
When the drizzling sensations of warmth seeping through her body made her knees weak, Kelsey turned and wrapped her arms around T’s neck. “I find this much more cozy than lying on a beach. Don’t you?”
The heat in his green eyes seemed to agree. “This is the second time we’ve celebrated New Year’s Eve like this. It’s a holiday tradition I could get used to.”
“Me, too.” Kelsey feathered her fingers across his lips and was delighted as he kissed each one. The images that crossed her mind were happy, positive, hopeful—and she owed that to the faith and acceptance this man had in her.
It had been a hell of a year since that awful night in the attic of the Wingate Mission.
As if sensing the darker turn of her thoughts, T’s hands began rubbing slow, comforting circles against her back. And the patience in his handsome expression was every bit as evident as the desire inside his jeans.
He gave her a moment to touch and explore and reflect. Kelsey brushed her fingers across his shoulders and felt his strength. She touched the old scar on his chest and gently caressed the newer, pinker scar on his flat belly. A knot tightened inside her chest as her mind replayed that horrible moment when she knew T had been shot. That he was bleeding, maybe dying, for her.
“Don’t.” T’s voice—in the here and now—whispered against her ear. He framed her face between his hands and tilted her gaze back up to his. “Feel the good things, too. Feel the love.”
Kelsey flattened her palms against the scorching planes of his chest and nodded. “I do.”
And as his mouth closed over hers in the tenderest of kisses, Kelsey’s mind filled with other images. Memories of her own. T’s memories. T’s love.
Ulysses Wingate could preach in prison to his heart’s content—until his death penalty appeals ran out. But thoughts of the trial and sentencing hearing, of T’s recovery in the hospital and at home, were quickly pushed aside by images like the welcome-back party at the precinct office—where Captain Taylor had laughingly presented T with an engraved plaque that read Bullet Magnet, and Kelsey had traded a hug and kindled a genuine friendship with Ginny Rafferty-Taylor. She saw the private celebration she and T had had at his apartment later that night.
Then, of course, there was the wedding. This one happy and full of pride and hope—and she was the bride standing beside T at the altar. And now, with T’s precision hands inside her robe and her senses stirring with much more than psychic impressions, they were making new memories—new images she could see in her mind and treasure.
Kelsey was ready to thank him in the way he liked best. But she had to give credit where it was due. “It was awfully nice of your mother to watch Frosty for the weekend so we could finally have some kind of honeymoon.”
“Are you kidding? The way she spoils that dog, you’d think we’d already given her a grandchild.”
Reluctantly pushing his lips from the dip at the base of her throat, Kelsey demanded that he look at her. “Is that something you want to work on? A grandchild for Moira?”
His answering smile was pure seduction.
Though her body leaped in eager response, she felt compelled to warn him. “You understand that my psychic abilities are an inherited trait? Lucy Belle had them. I do. A child of
ours might, too.”
Detective Logic’s eyes narrowed and she knew he had more than one way to convince her that they really did have a future together. “What are you saying? That I couldn’t handle a special child?”
“No. You can handle anything the world throws at you.”
“Because I’m that unique mix of Atticus Finch and Dirty Harry?”
“Because you’re Thomas Merle Banning. A damn good detective. An intelligent, caring man. And my husband.”
“Husband. I like that.” He kissed her. Firmly. She liked that. “Any child we have would be special to me.” His arms tightened around her and he kissed her again, teasing her in a way that would never hurt. “Besides, I’m sure there are numerous books I could read on raising a psychic child, Web sites I could check—” he zeroed in for a kiss that would seal the argument “—personal interviews I could conduct.”
In a matter of minutes, they were on top of the cabin’s down-filled comforter, well on their way to making that special baby.
Kelsey was no longer afraid to touch, no longer afraid to ask for what she wanted, no longer afraid. Because of this man who loved her. This cop. This skeptic. This hero.
“Partners?” She pulled him down on top of her, invited him inside, welcomed him home.
T smiled. “In the very best way.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6755-2
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Copyright © 2005 by Julie Miller
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, Canada M3B 3K9.
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.
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