“Might not have been a compliment,” Dave said, although his tone belied the words. “You took a hell of a chance.”
“Nah,” Cooper said, hugging her again. “I had backup handy.”
The man smiled. “That you did.” He looked at Nell and smiled. “And the video came through perfectly. Even he—” he thumbed a gesture at the now-reviving Jeremy “—isn’t going to be able to grease his way out of this one.”
Nell fingered the small flower pin fastened to the collar of her jacket. She knew such things as the little wireless camera existed, but she’d never expected to be wearing one.
But then, she’d never expected a lot of things that had happened in the last couple of weeks.
Including falling in love.
Especially falling in love.
Even by evening, Cooper was surprised his pulse rate had returned to normal. He’d thought it might stay permanently elevated. It had leaped into overdrive when Brown had pulled that gun on Nell, and it had been all he could do not to jump the guy right then. Only the knowledge that she could too easily be the one who got shot had kept him in control.
He’d wanted to do this alone, never would have risked Nell, but she’d been adamant. And he’d wondered for an instant, when she’d insisted on not wearing a bulletproof vest because it would give them away, if she was feeling suicidal.
“Never less,” she’d told him, and something in her eyes as she had looked up at him had sent a shock wave through him. A tumult of emotions, fear, admiration, desire, need and, he was afraid, love, all tangled up and tagged with a label that said forever, which scared him even more. But there it was, and he’d known that when they got through this, he was going to have to face it.
And now it was here, and he was so damned glad she was okay that it didn’t seem scary any longer, just inevitable.
She seemed to have relaxed the moment they stepped back aboard The Peacemaker, which pleased him. They were tied up in a guest slip connected to the condo building Dave lived in. His father’s old partner had come through on all fronts, proving the truth of what Cooper had told her. The one thing he could bring to this that somebody else couldn’t always get. As the son of a cop killed in the line, he could always get a hearing, even for what appeared to be an outlandish story.
“Cooper? Are you all right?”
He grimaced, didn’t look at her as he went about the business of securing The Peacemaker for the night. “As all right as a guy can be who finds out he got picked for a job because he has a rep for being lazy.”
“You’re not lazy. Far from it.”
“Careless, then.”
“Casual, maybe,” she said.
She was trying so hard to make him feel better it warmed him. “I let myself slide through,” he said flatly. “I promised my mother I’d never become a cop, and then I used that as an excuse to not really become anything else.”
“But you are,” she insisted. “Look what you just did.”
“You did it,” Cooper said. “I just called in backup, and I could only do that because of my father. Who would,” he finished with grim certainty, “be ashamed of me.”
“I don’t believe that for one second,” Nell said. “But even if it were true, Dave is right. Your reputation is stellar now. You’re going to have all the business you want after this, with your name all over the news.”
He couldn’t deny her point, since it was already happening. He’d always relied on word of mouth, and he’d gotten a ton of it in one day, with more, he was sure, to follow as the story spread wider. He hadn’t really thought about that aspect of it, and wasn’t proud that his first thought had been, Whoa, not sure I want this!
“Thank you for being a buffer for me, handling all the reporters and nosy types.”
“No problem.”
“Thank you for saving my life. Again.”
“Back at you,” he said. “That was a heck of a dent you put in ol’ Jeremy’s head with that bucket.”
“Thank you for…believing me.”
He stopped fastening down the last porthole window in preparation for the storm predicted to pass through tonight. Turned to look at her, remembered the expressions he’d seen flitting across her face as he played his part to Jeremy in that hotel room.
“You had your doubts there at the end, didn’t you?”
“For a moment,” she admitted, lowering her eyes.
“But you went ahead anyway.”
She lifted her gaze back to his face. She drew in a breath, as if she were having to steady herself to speak. When she did, he understood why.
“Because if I had to believe you would betray me, I would rather have been dead anyway.”
His own breath caught in his throat. He pulled her into his arms. “Never. Not you. Not ever.”
“I know.”
It was much later, when the rain began to fall and they were warm and sated and spooned together in the master berth, that Cooper, comfortably, wonderfully tired, finally spoke of the days ahead.
“It’s going to be nasty,” he said. “He won’t go down without a fight, even with all we’ve got on him.”
“I know.”
“Dave is already digging. He said this would be the perfect big case to retire on, so he’s going to be all damn-the-torpedoes on it. We’ll bury him in the end.”
“Yes.” She said it with a quiet confidence that said volumes.
“You faced them down, Nell. All your demons. They’re gone.”
“Not all, but most. What about yours?”
He quashed the urge to make light of that. “My biggest one is myself. I’m working on it.”
“I know. And you’ll succeed.”
“Such faith.”
“Yes.”
Again that quiet confidence. In him. “Nell?”
“What?”
“I…” He chickened out. “Shall we head back in the morning, after the storm? I know you talked to Roger, but he’d probably like to see for himself that you’re okay.”
She moved, snuggling herself into the curve of his body, and setting off a chain reaction that would have him hot and wanting her all over again in a matter of moments.
“Thank you. I’d like that. And you need to get your bike, too.”
“Mmm-hmm.” God, she was so incredibly sexy, all tousled and warm and soft against him.
“And after that…”
Her voice trailed off, and he reined in his eager body. “You have things to deal with there, I know. But then…whenever you’re ready…”
She went still as he fumbled for the words. “Whenever I’m ready, what?”
“We should point The Peacemaker south. A nice long sail, so you can get your head together while we get you back to L.A. So you can…properly say goodbye to Tristan.”
In the darkness he heard her breath catch. “I…don’t even know where he is.”
“He’s next to your mom.”
She jolted up on one elbow. “What?”
“The name Alex Ayala ring a bell?”
“Tris’s best friend.”
“He saw to it.” At her questioning look he added, “I made a couple of calls while Dave was sorting things out. Didn’t take long.”
“You really are good,” she said.
“Say that again in about ten minutes,” he whispered against her ear, slipping one hand down to cup her breast.
“I usually do,” she teased right back.
There was indeed something different about her now, a lightness, a freedom she expressed with a fierce eagerness that took his breath away. And before it was over he was glad of the pounding rain, because it would muffle the shout of her name that he didn’t even try to stop.
And much later, when she quietly thanked him yet again, he found the words and the nerve. And when she shyly returned his unpracticed declaration, the knot of tangled emotions slipped apart easily and seemed to wrap around them both, binding them inextricably in a way that was, to his surprise, not c
onfining but freeing.
Amazing what a simple “I love you, too” could accomplish, he thought.
In this case, it changed his life. And if a land-bound office or house—or home, he corrected—was in his future, well, it was suddenly a lot more appealing.
But for now, he had Nell and The Peacemaker and the sea was calling.
Epilogue
This third time would be her last visit to Tris’s grave, at least for now. That flock of vultures some called the media had made it too difficult, for her, for the small cemetery and for Cooper, who tried to keep them at bay with a constant litany of “She has no comment.” So today she’d come in the predawn hour. And finding the place as she’d hoped, empty, Cooper had retreated to give her peace and privacy, this time to say goodbye.
She didn’t think she would ever get used to his intuitiveness, his concern for her thoughts and her feelings. She’d spent too long with a man who cared nothing for either to take his perceptiveness for granted. And whenever she wavered, felt weak, he reminded her that no weak woman could have done what she did, gone through what she did, and come out whole.
She hadn’t told him, yet, that he was the only reason she had gotten through the last weeks.
The leisurely sail down from Seattle had been a glorious respite. There were so many things hovering, including what on earth she was going to do with herself when this was over. Cooper just held her and said she could figure that out later, and that as long as he was in the picture, he didn’t care what she did. Or if she did anything. And then he’d made such sweet love to her that the future seemed almost impossibly bright.
He had kept her insulated from the reality she knew she’d have to deal with later, keeping her apprised himself, but only if she asked. Cooper had shown her one picture that came close to encapsulating her wish. Jeremy, in handcuffs, being marched past a crowd of reporters, looking furious and…worried. She’d never seen him look like that, and it gave her a jab of satisfaction.
It had been when they’d gotten close, after a brief stop in Santa Barbara, that Cooper had warned her the story was still the top of the news, and that her whereabouts was near the top of every story.
She’d known the case would be high profile down here, where Jeremy had been headquartered, but she hadn’t really realized how massive the interest would be. At least one news outlet had had somebody watching the cemetery where Tristan was buried next to their mother. Cooper had kept him occupied, trying to give her time and space to grieve as she’d never really had the chance to before.
But soon there were too many, and then the wheels of justice had caught her, and she’d spent hours upon hours with investigators. She found that Cooper had paved the way; he’d told them exactly why she’d run, that she hadn’t trusted them not to do what was right instead of what they might feel pressured to do with someone like Jeremy. And he’d challenged them to prove her wrong, which they now seemed determined to do. Maybe they would have been from the beginning, but she had no way of knowing.
She reached out to brush a leaf from the simple headstone that bore her beloved brother’s name. She’d thanked Alex for that, and for seeing that Tris was buried here, and she’d been thankful that he’d kept the questions to a minimum when he’d obviously been full of curiosity. Later, she thought, she’d tell him what she could.
She lay the simple bouquet of carnations—puffballs, Tris had called them when they were kids—across his name. Then she turned to the headstone beside his to lay the second bouquet, this one her mother’s favorite: lilies. Cooper had found the florist for her, who had managed both this late in the year.
She sat between the two graves. The beautiful shimmer of happiness ahead, with Cooper, was the only thing that kept her from wanting to join them. She was thoroughly alone now; the only blood family who had truly loved her lay here.
She noticed Cooper approaching, with another man just behind him. He looked to be older, maybe in his fifties, casually dressed. Another reporter? No, Cooper wouldn’t let him get close. It must be another detective or D.A.’s investigator or someone like that.
Knowing she didn’t have long, she reached out, put a hand on each headstone and summoned up their images in her mind. Her mother, before her illness, healthy, happy, with that glint of humor always in her eyes. Her brother, grinning, windblown and with that same glint, inherited as he’d inherited so much from their mother.
“I love you,” she whispered, “and I always will. And I know you love me. I will miss you both every day of my life. But I’m going to be all right. I promise you that.”
She simply sat there then, wishing for something she didn’t know how to name, some sort of feeling or sign or presence, something she would no doubt laugh at herself for later. But here and now, in this place, she couldn’t help hoping that—
“Nell?”
Cooper knelt beside her, reaching out a hand. She took it, and his strong fingers wrapped around hers, warming them in the early morning chill. The sun was clearing the hills to the east now, but it hadn’t warmed the air yet.
“I don’t mean to interrupt—” he began, but stopped when she shook her head.
“It’s all right. I was starting to get silly.”
He took her other hand. And something in the way he was looking at her told her she needed to pay real attention.
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
They’d established that rather thoroughly on the sail down here, she’d thought, but she answered anyway, simply. “Yes.”
“Remember that, if you start to get mad at me.”
She drew back, puzzled. “Mad at you? What on earth for? You’ve done nothing but help and—”
This time she stopped at the shake of his head. “I did something,” he began.
“Cooper?” she prompted when he stopped.
But he didn’t go on. Instead, he tugged her to her feet. Then he turned her around, so she was facing the man standing six feet away. He looked familiar, but she didn’t think it was from the round of sessions she’d been having with the police and prosecuting attorneys.
And then she noticed that his cheeks were wet, as if he’d been crying. As if he still was. He made no effort to wipe away tears, he simply stood there, staring at her.
With her own blue eyes.
Her breath caught.
“Hello, trout-hugger,” he said, his voice tight.
“Daddy?” she whispered, feeling for an instant like the child who had uttered that appellation with such adoration.
She saw Cooper move, start to back away, to leave them alone. This man she had once been so angry with for lying to her, and now filled her with such love it nearly overwhelmed her. This man who had stood by her every step of the way. This man who had done so much to smooth a rough, difficult path for her. This man who had made her realize the truth about her long-held anger.
This man who had now, quietly, without a word, given her back the one last remaining thread of her own family.
He was watching her warily, obviously uncertain how she would take this, if what he’d done would be welcome. As if she could ever be mad about the biggest declaration of love she’d ever seen in her life.
She met his gaze head-on.
“I love you,” she said.
She saw him let out a long, relieved breath.
“I love you, too,” he said.
“I know. More than ever, I know.”
He smiled. She smiled back, putting everything she could of what she was feeling into it.
And then she accepted his gift.
She held her hand out to her father.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0594-9
ENEMY WATERS
Copyright © 2011 by Janice Davis Smith
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*Trinity Street West
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Enemy Waters Page 20
