by Ladew, Lisa
“If you forgive me for not telling you he was my uncle,” Dani said softly, surprised when the words came out of her mouth.
“Done.” JT said, and held out his hand. Dani took it. JT pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed it lightly. “I’m so sorry.”
Dani felt the stone that had weighed her heart down for three months crack in half and poof out of existence. She laughed a surprised laugh at the lightness she felt suddenly. Applause started in the audience, somewhere near the back, and it crackled and popped weakly before dying again. Dani looked at her parents. Her mother had her hands clasped to her chest. Her father’s face was split in a wide grin.
Kirk Kussler cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something, but JT spoke first, clearly and strongly.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for the last three months. Will you go out on a date with me?”
Dani felt warmth flood her body and happiness fill her heart. “I would love to, JT.”
And this time when the applause started, it picked up quickly and thundered through the room. Waves of warm feelings flooded in from the audience and Dani felt her eyes fill with tears. What she hadn’t quite been able to do with a horrible story, JT had done in an instant with an expression of remorse and emotion.
JT stood and pulled her up too. “Is right now OK?” he asked, struggling to be heard over the applause. Dani glanced at Kirk and giggled. “Right now is perfect.”
JT blew a kiss to the audience and yelled “Thank you!” and the noise level from the applause doubled. Dani looked out at them and knew that, thanks to JT’s charm, the only one who would feel cheated in the room was Kirk. She was OK with that.
Chapter 32
JT pulled Dani to the left side of the stage and down a small hallway lined with people who applauded, every face lined with a smile, some women even crying openly. Dani yanked her microphone equipment off and pushed it into someone’s hands, then she pulled JT’s off too. He squeezed her hand and kept leading her through the maze of backstage.
Dani wondered if he knew where he was going. She decided he did when he pulled her down the last hallway that would lead to an exit in an alley behind the building. He gave her a goofy smile and said, “I have a car out here.” He almost looked embarrassed. Dani raised an eyebrow, but followed. As he pushed the exit door open she saw a black limousine waiting in the alley. She looked at it curiously, expecting JT to pull her past it to his car. But he stepped to the back door and opened it, motioning for her to enter before him.
She felt a fluttering in her belly. “JT, is this for me? What if I had said no?” she breathed.
“Yes it’s for you. And if you had said no, I don’t know what I would have done. I tried not to think about it.”
She bent and slid into the leather backseat, admiring the clean and cozy compartment stocked with refrigerator, champagne glasses, a microwave, and what looked like a full bar. JT slid in after her and took her hand again. “Thanks for not saying no.”
“I can’t believe you did this. I don’t need this, JT. We could have gone in a regular car.”
“I know you don’t need this. But you deserve it, Dani. I wanted to do it for you. I want you to relax and enjoy yourself for once. I know the last few months have been hard on you. And I just wanted to do something special and fun for you.”
Dani smiled and sank back in the seat. “Well … thanks,” she said, suddenly aware of her arm against his, his skin touching hers.
“Any time. Can I take you to lunch?”
“Yes.”
“Great, we have reservations at Cafe Lucali.” Again he smiled that goofy, embarrassed smile at her as the car rolled forward out of the alley and turned right onto the main street.
She raised an eyebrow at him again and the smile widened. “I just wanted to be prepared. I hoped and prayed you would say yes. And if you’d said no … shot me down on live TV, well, I guess I would have just canceled the reservations.”
Dani nodded, glad he’d asked. Glad he’d taken the chance. She felt like she was floating. Like he had done the one thing that could have made it all better. If someone had told her yesterday that the mixture of shame and guilt and anger and frustration and betrayal she’d felt around the subject of JT could have been burned away in an instant - just like that - she wouldn’t have believed it. She would have laughed and said it was too complicated for that. But it wasn’t too complicated. And it was gone. Now when she looked at JT’s handsome face and lost herself in those sparkling blue eyes, all she felt was peace and happiness. Joy and anticipation. And trust. She checked inside herself. Yes, trust. Those feelings of complete trust she’d felt in the desert were back. Back when she’d given her heart to him and he hadn’t even known it.
JT caressed her hand as the car bounced over a pothole. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“I was just thinking how glad I was that you asked. I’ve thought about you a lot over the last three months too.”
“Yeah? I really did act like an ass in that car, so I hope you didn’t focus on that.”
“Well, I thought about that sometimes, a little bit, but no, that’s not all I thought about.”
JT stared into her eyes, his face serious. “I thought about our kiss in the cave. And how easily we could talk to each other. And how brave and strong you were,” he said.
Dani felt her eyes fill with tears. She could have said the exact same thing to him. She tried to forget a lot of things about that trek out in the Sinai Desert, but that night in the cave was special to her. She still held it close to her heart. And sometimes she dreamed about it. The memory always made her warm, but today with JT so close, it stole her breath too.
The car stopped and Dani heard the driver’s door open. She dabbed her eyes with her finger, trying to get the tears to spill without disturbing her makeup. JT offered her a tissue and she took it gladly.
He climbed out of the car and offered her a hand. As she got out, she looked up at the skyscraper that housed Cafe Lucali, one of her favorite restaurants ever. Dimly, she wondered if he knew that or if his lunch choice was a lucky guess.
In the elevator, he pressed the button for the top floor. Confused, she told him Cafe Lucali was on the 23rd floor.
“Yes, but we are eating on the rooftop today.”
“They do that?”
He smiled widely at her. “Yes, they do, if you pay enough for it.”
“JT, I can’t — you don’t need to impress me. I can’t accept this. I mean, you don’t even have a job anymore.”
“You can, Dani. It’s not that much. Besides, I do have a job. Quite an interesting one actually. I’ll tell you about it when we sit down.”
The elevator doors whooshed open and JT took her arm, leading her to the only table on the rooftop. Not that much, she thought. I don’t believe that for a second. If this cost him less than a thousand dollars I’d be surprised. And then she was lost in the view, lost in his thoughtfulness. The entire city stretched out before them, and even the Atlantic Ocean sparkled a greeting from the distance. “Oh, it’s beautiful,” she said.
JT also looked around appreciatively like he hadn’t seen the view yet. He pulled out her chair for her. She sat down, happy that she could still see the city perfectly from her chair.
“So spill,” she said, forcing her eyes to her handsome date. “What’s this new job?”
JT put his elbows on the table and steepled his hands. “I started my own company.”
The skin on Dani’s face and neck tingled. “And it’s lucrative already?”
“Yes, very.” JT laughed. “You won’t believe what kind of a company it is.”
Dani opened her hands in a tell me already! gesture.
“It’s a hostage negotiator training school called Calm from Crisis. I’m the celebrity consultant, plus I’ve hired three retired hostage negotiators. I’ve already got training contracts from most of the police departments on the West side of the country for classes fro
m basic to advanced. And groups you would never think of are paying me big bucks to come speak at their events. Last month I spoke at a Veteran’s of Foreign Wars event and at an Action Writers of America event.”
Dani spread her fingers out against her chest and stared at him in shock and approval. “You’re kidding me.”
JT held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor ma’am. It’s been an amazing couple of months.”
“What do you say?”
“I just tell them what happened. They just want what old Kirk wanted back there. And what the audience wanted. They want to hear something that will make their heart pump a little faster, and make them say a little prayer of gratitude it wasn’t them. And the veterans wanted to share their stories with me. And the action writers wanted to ask me questions to get new ideas for their books and movies.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“No, actually, it’s been interesting. The first time I told the story, it felt heavy and hard. Like there was still a lot of — I don’t know — fear and pain caught inside me. But every time I speak and every time I tell the story, it gets a little bit lighter and bothers me a little less. I almost feel like it’s really just a story I made up, and not something that happened.”
Dani nodded, fascinated. Maybe she should try it.
A waiter appeared and asked for their order. Dani already knew what she was eating. She ordered her favorite entree. JT handed over his menu, unopened, and said “that sounds good, make it two.”
JT’s face grew serious and he grasped Dani’s hand above the table. “I have a little confession to make.”
Dani’s heart gave a warning ping, and then fell silent. Nothing could be as bad as what they’d already been through.
JT seemed to have trouble getting out his words, but he finally spoke. “Let me ask you first though, why didn’t you ever respond to my letters?”
Dani sighed. “I never even opened them. It just seemed too … scary. Like I knew that you would try to apologize, otherwise why would you be writing, but I didn’t think you’d be able to fully lift the hurt that was on my heart with some words. So I was trying to get my head straight first. I knew I was being unreasonable, but I didn’t know how to stop it, know what I mean?”
JT nodded. “I think I do. I had to get my head straight too.” He dropped his eyes to the table, then lifted them again. “My confession is that I contacted your dad two weeks ago and asked him what he thought I could do to get you to talk to me.”
Dani’s mouth dropped open in a perfect O of surprise. “Really? What did he say?”
“Well at first he was surprised to hear from me, because apparently you hadn’t mentioned a word about me.”
“Yeah, they’ve been having a hard time. I didn’t want to add to it with my own issues.”
“He thought it was something like that. He said you were always a good daughter, and a sensitive one. But he’s the one who helped me cook some of this up. He told me this was your favorite restaurant.”
Dani thought of her dad keeping a secret like this for two weeks. No wonder her parents had seemed so happy back at the interview. She squeezed JT’s hand to let him know there were no hard feelings and he squeezed back, then rubbed his thumb lightly over the back of her hand, his eyes locked on hers. Dani almost gasped. That one little caress sent a shock of tingles up and down her spine. Heat flushed in her belly and pooled in her thighs. A memory came back to her. Back in that sand-covered cave, need and desire like she’d never felt in her whole life coursing through her body. Her bold exploration of him, when she’d always been almost painfully shy with other men. What was it about him? She tried to pick his features and traits apart in her mind, to get a better grasp on why she responded so powerfully to him, but her thoughts jumbled together and trailed off. Her nerves jumped and twanged and begged for JT’s hands on her body.
The elevator whooshed open, pushing the smell of food out to them, and she pulled her hand back from JT, dropping it in her lap and looking down. She could feel the blush on her cheeks and hoped it didn’t advertise what she’d been thinking.
The waiter placed their food on the table. Dani gazed out at the city, letting the breeze cool her cheeks. When the waiter left she retrieved her fork and began to eat with relish, trying to distract the feeling of need at her core with food so it would calm down and shut up. After a few bites she chanced a look at JT. His eyes swept the city.
“It’s amazing up here. I could look at this view all day,” he said.
“Me too,” Dani agreed, glad of the change in topic. The view seemed safer, less sexually charged.
They talked comfortably, like old friends. Dani found she didn’t have much of an appetite and couldn’t finish even half her meal. She refused dessert and so did he, as if taking a cue from her. Instead they had peppermint tea, moving to a small bench by the edge of the rooftop, sipping the brew as they sat next to each other. Dani pointed out the buildings of interest in the city to JT, enjoying the way his eyes lit up as they talked and the way he looked at her like she were the most important person on the planet. A girl could fall in love, she thought idly, then laughed at herself, hoping she wasn’t already halfway there.
“JT, do you ever think about it, you know, what would have happened if Sara hadn’t gotten us out of there?” she asked, surprised when the question came out of her mouth. She hadn’t been planning on asking anything.
“Every day,” he said, his eyes far away. “Especially when I find myself getting frustrated or angry over something. I remind myself how lucky I am to even be here right now.”
Dani let that roll around in her head for a moment.
Then she asked her second question that she didn’t know had been waiting to come out. “Do you ever wish that it just had never happened?”
“Never.” JT pulled his gaze back close and focused on her. “Because then I wouldn’t have met you.” Dani’s nerves, which had calmed somewhat in the last 30 minutes, sang out on high alert again. She shivered. He went on. “But I guess we would have met some other place, some other time, if we are really meant to be together.”
Dani’s eyes went wide. “Do you believe that?”
JT took her hands in his. He spoke softly, and that slightly-embarrassed grin was back. “I do. I think I started believing it in the desert, even when I barely knew you. Back when we first kissed. I think I thought I was trying to make the best of a bad situation, you know, so I would say it to myself, and not really believe it. But then we made it out of there. And my life changed a lot. And still I thought of you every day. When I decided to get out of the Marines, the first thing I wanted to do was tell you. And when I celebrated opening my own company, I kept wishing you were there with me. I don’t know if I believe in soul-mates, exactly, but I believe in something. True love maybe.”
The words hung in the air like diamonds, sparkling just for Dani.
Chapter 33
Dani soaked in his words, quietly thrilling at every one, heart skipping at true love. Without thinking she leaned forward and pulled him to her. Their lips met in the middle. Dani made a small noise of contentment in her throat. This was right. This was good. His lips were soft and warm and his facial hair scratched her slightly, contrasting deliciously with the gentleness of his kiss. Her mouth opened to him like a flower and she breathed in his air, tasting honey on his tongue. He kissed her lightly, but thoroughly. Dani couldn’t remember ever having been kissed like this. Desire slowly built in her body while her brain lost all thought, all reason, all restraint.
She pulled back slightly. “JT, where are you staying?” she breathed, her lips tingling.
“At the Sheraton.”
“Can we go there?”
“Dani, we can do anything you want, but are you sure that’s what you want to do?”
She nodded, feeling exquisitely naughty, but liking the feeling.
“Oh thank God,” he said and fell upon her again. Mouths entwined, he hooked an arm be
hind her and lifted her right out of the bench. She wrapped her legs around him and marveled at his strength. Under her hands, the muscles in his shoulders and back bunched and worked. She kneaded them through his shirt, thinking she couldn’t wait to get the damn thing off of him.
He carried her to the elevator, still kissing her, making her forget everything with his tongue.
“What about the check?”
He buried his face in the crook of her neck and kissed her collarbone between words. “It’s taken care of. Check and tip are included when you pay for the rooftop lunch. We could have gotten anything at the same price.”
“Oh.” Dani said. This struck her as funny and she threw her head back and laughed, partly at her silly response and partly from the joy of the moment.
The elevator ride was too short. JT backed her into a corner and put his attention on her ears and neck, occasionally nipping her lips. She put her normal properness aside and enjoyed it, soaking in the stimuli. Miraculously they made it to the bottom floor without stopping for more passengers. He took her hand and led her to the car, his eyes flashing with every glance at her.
Dani couldn’t help herself. That desire to be naughty, to be bad, remained and she glanced down at the front of his pants. His cock was fully erect, straining against the fabric, the shape of it visible to anyone who looked. Her face went crimson immediately, at the thought that she had done that to him, and the thought that there was no way for him to hide it, and at the thought of the word cock. It wasn’t a word she would normally use, but nothing else seemed relevant to JT. It was a masculine word. A serious word. And it fit. Her brain wanted to keep saying it. Her eyes wanted to see it. Her tongue wanted to— Dani buried her face in JT’s shoulder as they half-ran, half-walked towards the parking lot. She was sure her thoughts were stamped all over her face for the world to see.
