“My parents travel a lot and don’t have much time for me when they’re home,” she went on, talking softly, as if to herself. “The twins live halfway across the state, and no matter how good our intentions are, we still don’t see each other often. It’s doubtful that if I got shot back home, anyone would even show up at the hospital, unless my grandmothers managed to escape the retirement home for a few hours.” She looked up, eyes wide. “There are Deckers all over the waiting room.”
“We tend to stick close to home. I think I was the first one in six generations to move further than two hours away for more than a few years.” He hesitated, then referred back to a comment she made earlier. “I’ve got a large enough family that the kids wouldn’t notice if anyone’s missing from their mother’s family.”
She pressed her face against his chest, and her arms tightened around his ribcage. “But you’d leave them for Dallas.”
“For you.”
“What about your house? What about that amazing library I put so much work into?”
“We could find another house in Dallas, with a better library.”
She snorted at the thought. Probably rightly so. He didn’t know what kind of money she made, but he knew what he could earn in Texas, and it wouldn’t get them anywhere near the house he had now.
“There’s an assistant DA out there, along with everyone else, who mentioned that there’s going to be an opening in the DA’s office soon. You know, for a long time I wanted to be a prosecutor. Do you think I could handle it?”
AJ figured she could handle damn near anything. Like Maricci said, she was tough—and she was making him feel pretty damn weak. “Can we nail down all the details later, Mas? Right now there’s just one thing I need to know from you.”
She smiled smugly. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
“Okay, make that two.”
Levering up on one arm, she gazed at him. “You want me to say it first, don’t you?”
“You always did have that thing about leading.” Her hair fell over his right hand, and he knotted his fingers in its cool silk. “I don’t care about first. You’ve been the most important woman in my life since the day we met in the lieutenant’s office. You came into my house and made me feel at home. You make me want things I was pretty sure I never wanted. Hell, you make me crazy. I can’t stand the idea of not being with you. I love you, Mas.”
There was a sheen to her eyes that he’d never seen before: tears. He’d brought the strongest, toughest woman he’d ever known to tears, and in a good way. She moistened her lips, but before she could speak, someone else did.
“In case you’re not aware, you have a rather large audience out here,” Cate called from outside the curtain. “If you’d rather finish this conversation in private, we’ll have a room for you in about five minutes.”
There were a few groans, followed by a disgruntled comment. “You never were any fun, Cate.”
Masiela stared down at him, and he knew just what she saw. No flush, no embarrassment, just the serious steady look of the man who’d saved her life and would do it again, in both small ways and large. The man who would give up his family, his home and his job to be with her. The man she would do the same for.
She lifted herself until they were nose to nose, intense hazel gaze to intense dark gaze, and whispered, “You make me crazy, too, Decker. And I’ve loved you longer than any self-respecting woman would admit to. Loved you, love you, will always love you. Details don’t matter. You and me—that’s all that matters.”
She kissed him then, gentleness quickly giving way to hunger and greed and pure lust. As the kiss—the woman—went to his head, he was dimly aware of those voices again.
“What did she say?”
“Whispering’s not fair. We got to hear everything he said.”
Then the fluttering of the curtain was followed by a familiar voice. His mother sounded quite pleased with herself when she said, “I’m going to be a mother-in-law! Go on now, get away from here. Leave my son and the woman who loves him alone.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6616-6
PROTECTOR’S TEMPTATION
Copyright © 2010 by Marilyn Pappano
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Protector’s Temptation Page 19
