Dorian was just out the door when Conall stopped him, grabbed his hand, shook it. They gave each other one of those manly nods and then a manly pat on the shoulder and another manly nod, and then Dorian left. Smiling.
Men.
We heard sirens. Trey put his hands to his head again. "Oh, brother. Here we go again."
-5-
Outside, Conall put his arms around my waist, looked me deep in the eyes as he leaned against the brick wall. He grimaced once, tried to hide it.
"So, was he better than me?" he asked.
"Who?"
"That giant. Dorian."
"Oh, God, don't disgust me please."
"Well, was he or wasn't he?"
"No one's better than you."
"Ahhh, you learn quick. You do learn quick." He held my head to his chest. I heard his heart beating, thought about how I always wanted to hear it, every night for the rest of my life.
"We're going to have a new house guest," I said.
"Really?"
"Yes, Dani. You need to build a cottage for her, seeing as it's your fault she was abducted."
Pause. "Done."
I looked up suddenly at him. "Really?"
"Really."
"Hmmm, do I get a car as well?"
"No."
"Damn it. Worth a shot. But, um, I do hear you're actually a billionaire, not just your average indigent millionaire."
"So you were a gold-digger all along!"
I smiled, looked down at my feet. Conall moved his index finger to under my chin, lifted my head. He eased down with the stealth of an eagle, kissed me softly. "It's over," he said. "Truly and completely over."
On my left, Raphael's body was being carted out in a body-bag. Part of me wished I'd pulled the trigger, for all the pain he'd caused my friend, my sister, Kayla. Even Bianca Henshaw. And now Dani. And part of me was also glad I wouldn't have to live with that. With having killed him myself. It's one thing to say you'll do something like that. It's another to live with it, no matter the circumstances.
I hugged Conall tightly, knowing he'd have to live with it. And letting him know just how absolutely grateful I was for having him.
I thought of Bianca, thought of how she must have suffered in the end. It's true that she made her choice to be with Raphael, but so had Kayla once. Yes, Kayla had been younger, much younger, but Bianca was also young. Also naïve. I don't think any of us ever stop being young in one area or another of our lives. I don't think any of us ever fully lose all our naïveté. We live, we learn, we ask ourselves how we could have 'been so naïve.' And then we do it again. Always learning, always 'growing up.'
I listened to the ocean, considered it my moment of silence for her.
She, too, had now been avenged. Justice had finally been brought to her killer. Like Trey, I was glad for all of Conall's investigations, saw the benefit of them... Provided he ended them for good now!
Dani walked outside, hugged me, thanked me.
I insisted she stay with us. She didn't even blink. "I'll get my bags," she said.
"Trey's gonna have yet another student," said Conall.
"I think her boyfriend needs it more than she does."
Conall wrapped his arm around my back, walked me toward the wall facing the ocean. Yes, that wall. "He did look pretty helpless tied to that chair," he said.
I rolled my eyes. "Yip, that's Freckly Troy."
"Do you make up names for everyone?"
"No."
We arrived at the wall, straddled it, one leg dangling dangerously above the shingle far below, the other firmly on the sidewalk.
"Have you made one up for me?" Conall asked.
"Nope."
He waited. "What is it?"
"I don't have a name for you!"
"Then think of one now."
"Well, once you were Blue-Eyed Conall. And Mediterranean-Eyed Conall. Also Tanzanite-Eyed Conall. Statue of Zeus. Should I go on?"
He was laughing. He put his hands on my waist, moved me closer to him. "It's nice and warm out."
"It's the ocean wind."
"It's very beautiful. Maybe we should move here."
"Yeah, but now I have a job in Crawley Down— Hey, yeah, now I remember. I wanted to talk to you about that!"
"Uh-huh."
I opened my mouth, ready to pretend-complain, then changed my mind. "Actually, at first I felt a little weird about it. But then I realized I was actually just grateful. Two people survive better than one. I was stupid to think I needed to do it all alone."
"And so the lesson has been learned."
"Come again?"
"I told you you'd eventually learn a lesson about making it on your own. Only it seems you cottoned onto it a lot faster than I'd thought."
"The lesson being that two is better than one?"
"Something like that."
He moved in to me. The roiling waves crashed against the shingle. His lips moistened mine and he trickled the backs of his fingers across my cheek. I wrapped my arms around his neck, thinking the words he'd told me earlier: It's over, baby. It's over.
Only, it wasn't over. It was only beginning...
EPILOGUE
-1-
The first to get married of the four of us—Dani, me, Alex, Kayla—was not the one who already had a ring on her finger (Kayla) but the one who'd been in a relationship for only a month. Yes, Trey proposed to Alex at a ballroom hall that he'd decked out to look like a gym. Only it had roses and flowers and lights and chandeliers and soft tones and satin drapes. And it didn't smell like a gym. Not at all.
He had a table prepared in the mock-boxing-ring and had Smokey and Clint Eastwood ("Just Jack") waiter and cook for them. Turns out Smokey had once been a three-star chef before he dedicated his life to whatever he dedicated his life to. I'd stopped believing that this gang was just a bunch of civilians. I figured Conall was the only civilian but that the rest of them were undercover something or others.
The wedding was held in September. One of the few months in England where the sun not only shines but in which it also produces heat—sometimes. Today it did.
Alex looked beautiful. Stunning and radiant. All the pain gone. I thought of what she'd told me: Someone to bare her soul to. And it looked like she'd done just that. And she was all the better for it.
At the wedding reception Kayla kept punching Brad on the shoulder and telling him she wanted to have a wedding twice the size of this one and why hadn't they gotten married already. He told her he was saving up for a wedding four times the size of this one and then she changed her mind and said fuck it, she just wanted to get married to him even if it was a quarter the size of this one and then they started kissing like crazy and I told them to get a room and so they disappeared for a while and the next time Kayla arrived her hair was disheveled and Brad's zip was undone but they were both smiling. And so was I. Conall told him about his zip and he blushed and Conall put his arm around him and they drank at the bar like old friends.
Trey—twice the size of both of them in both width and height—joined them and they started singing Irish songs or English songs or whatever songs and soon everybody else also joined them and it felt like we were back at Jolly Roger. Even Freckly Troy was there. Only this time I wasn't the one serving the drinks, or spilling them on myself.
Once the party was well underway—read: everyone was sufficiently inebriated—Conall slunk on over to me and whispered, "You look ravishing."
He slid a hand under my arm and lifted me up from my chair, eased his other hand to the small of my back, swayed with me gently on the dance floor. I stood on his toes several times and he flinched but kept dancing, pressing against me, then kissing me...
I felt him engorge and felt my own skin heat up and moisten. He swayed and twirled me and confidently controlled every move of mine then pressed me hard against him so that there was no doubt he was aroused. And boy, so was I.
He leaned down again, whispered seductively in my ear: "I'm sure
nobody will mind if we leave now."
I looked at the singing chorus at the bar and he was right. It looked like everybody would spend the rest of the afternoon and then even the whole night here, maybe even pass out on the counter except for Trey and Alex who had a plane to catch in a few hours to the Seychelles.
I went over to Alex and kissed her goodbye and she was giddy with enthusiasm for me and for Conall and raised her eyebrows like she knew something...
I confess, it crossed my mind that he might propose to me tonight. Wouldn't it cross yours?
Conall was smirking as we got into his Merc and I started to feel giddy as well, that incessant butterfly buzzing like mad inside my chest, calling all of its family and friends to join in. Soon the butterflies became seagulls, all inside me, cawing and flapping their wings and making me shake with nervous excitement.
I smiled.
"You OK?" asked Conall.
"Um, yeah."
I noticed we weren't driving home and Conall soon informed me that "I booked us that chalet in Switzerland. It's beautiful this time of year. Your bags are packed. They'll be at the airport."
Kayla and Dani and Alex had apparently liaised on what clothes I should take, disagreed a lot and, so, it seems I had three huge suitcases waiting for me. And even though Conall wouldn't care about the weight limit on a commercial flight the point was moot because...well...he'd decided to stop hiding his billions and bought himself, um, cough, a private fucking jet!
I was sweating like a pig from the sticks and couldn't think of a more embarrassing time for him to propose to me and what if he wanted to make love afterwards and then I was sweating like a cow and—
"Rest," he said, easing me into a luxurious chair that felt like it belonged in a hotel, not on an airplane.
"What about work?" I asked.
He smirked, cocked an eyebrow. "Phil Richardson at the Crawly Inn? Oh, he gave you paid leave."
I laughed and Conall kissed my head, eased me back into the chair, told me again to rest.
I didn't. Not a wink.
In Switzerland, he hired a helicopter like last time and forty minutes later we were at Zermatt. It was still sunny even though it was technically early evening and I wished I had rested because I started feeling a little tired.
Our bags were taken to the chalet and when we arrived there—
"Oh, God," I said, my hand to my lips, my eyes swimming as I stared at the red and white rose petals covering the entire floor of the lounge, the kitchen...the bed. All of them scattered around like confetti at, well, a wedding!
My chin was trembling with joy and happiness. My heart thumped like a hammer.
"Shower," he said. "There's something there I'd like you to put on."
I did, and what he wanted me to put on was lingerie. White and sexy. But no underwear. I dressed. When I got to the bedroom, his statuesque body was on the rose-covered bed. Nude. He was hard, dazzling, muscular and golden. Candles lit the room. A warm breeze blew in from an open sliding door, causing the white gauze curtains to billow gently.
"How do I look?" I said.
Conall smiled, poured a flute of champagne that was lying on a table next to him and handed it to me. I walked over to him, the sweet scent of roses making me light-headed. The room was warm from the fire burning in it.
I sat by his supine body. "To us," he said, and we touched glasses.
I didn't care about the proposal anymore. Only about us. This was perfect. This was all I ever wanted.
He eased himself up, his abs turning to bricks in the process. He kissed my neck, dryly, slowly. Shivers ran down me. The glass trembled in my hand and he grabbed it, moved it to the side table.
He kissed my shoulder, eased the strap of my lingerie off. Kissed my arm, eased his hand under my breast.
I whimpered, felt my body tremble. Lightning fired across my skin and up my neck as his index and thumb twiddled my steel-hard nipple.
I gushed. Opened my legs.
He eased me back onto the bed, got on top of me, not bothering to take my lingerie off.
I opened for him, felt him ease himself into me, filling me. He placed his hands on either side of my head and seared me with his lustful gaze. My eyes closed. My hands caressed the hills of his back and my legs tightened around his butt. I heard myself whimper at every thrust of his into me.
I held him, and he moved his chest closer. My arms were now around him and I tightened them, never wanting to let him go, never wanting to stop feeling him inside me. I kissed his ear and he kissed mine. We sped up. I heard the rush of the river below as we both began to tense. Groans became louder and he started to roar. He moved faster, faster. And when I said, "Yes, baby," I said it in a way that I'd never meant it before because I meant YES. YES, baby!
"Yes!"
I was saying yes to him, to me, to us, to who he was and to who I was and to the combination of the two of us, forming one. I was saying yes as if it were a declaration to the universe that YES we belonged together. YES this felt so incredible. YES I want to be with you all my life.
"Yes! Oh, God! Yes."
The mountain cracked.
Then I heard nothing.
And then the detonation.
The river below was an explosion of joy, the Matterhorn was a mere speck of dust that we were looking down upon as we both, together, rose and came and shook and shuddered so that the earth tilted.
And then, it wasn't over, even though it was.
I smiled, rocked against his pelvis as I felt his warmth inside me and he rocked back, getting softer, but not quite. He eased in and out of me, pushing, thrusting, so delicately and gently that I felt I was still being made love to even though my physical needs had been satiated.
He kissed my neck, pushed further in. My eyes lolled back, every movement of his like rich cream on an ice cream sundae.
Finally, he held me, held me with all his strength so that I felt my chest tighten as his strong arms clamped me to him.
If I could get closer to you, I would, I thought.
He moved up, smiled at me. "There's more," he said.
I couldn't stop the smile, because you better believe I was still thinking about that damn proposal! I convinced myself it was silly, that I was being foolish and childish. That this was perfect as it was.
Conall stood up, his delicious butt gleaming in the candlelit room. He opened a cupboard, pulled out a black evening gown so exquisite that the faucets in my eyes almost opened for real. He held it toward me. "Is it OK?" he asked.
I shook my head at the satin gown, lace on the shoulders and an open back. "It's...unbelievable."
"I had it designed for you. Last time we were here I, um, had one of the clothes stores keep your measurements on record."
"Conall, this is too—"
He held a hand up. "Put it on."
I did. Conall went to the other room. When he returned, he was in a three-piece suit. He held his arm out to me. I looped mine in his.
But we weren't going far. Only to the terrace. For a dinner under the stars.
I was in heaven, cloud nine, Shangri-La, all those places people talk and write about. If he was going for sweeping-off-the-feet, he'd achieved that with the rose petals. I wasn't merely swept off my feet now, I'd given up trying to stand! Which is why I sat in that chair so quickly. Because my knees were buckling.
He'd hired a waiter to serve us.
Damn it. If this dude didn't propose then I was going to!
But he did.
After dinner.
With style.
A waiter walked out with a silver platter. The ring was on it.
That's when the tears broke out. And, yeah, they poured out. My hand was to my lips, the faucets on full-blast.
But wait, there's more...
Conall got up, ignoring my total and utter failure to maintain any sort of composure. He placed a silk handkerchief on the wooden floor of the terrace, rested a knee on it.
"Oh, my God, I can't b
elieve this is happening."
He grabbed my hand, kissed it once.
"Leora Caivano..."
I sobbed, started nodding my head, yes, yes, yes!
"Leora Caivano, you brought meaning back into..." He choked up once. "Bugger, and it was going so well up to now." I saw one tear in his eye. He smiled. "OK, here we go again." He cleared his throat. "Leora Caivano, you brought meaning back into my life. Taught me that life is for the living. Made me see that there's love in it, hope, and happiness."
I got my shit together. The tears were still streaming but at least I wasn't gasping and sobbing out loud now. I squeezed his hand like it was the only connection to reality I had.
"I want to spend every minute of every day with you. I promise you I will never hold anything from you. I swear that, if anyone tries to attack us, I will tell them my wife knows Krav Maga and will beat them up for me."
I laughed.
"But that's the point: I want my wife to be the one who knows the Israeli Army Martial Arts, the one who counted so many calories in her life she could be a calorie accountant, the one...who I am looking at, right now, on this terrace.
"Leora, love of my life, would you humble yourself to becoming the wife of this—"
"YES!" I fired my hands up in the air. "YES!" I grabbed his cheeks in my hands.
"I wasn't finish—"
I kissed him! I heard him mumbling but I didn't stop and we kissed and kissed—
And then I heard clapping, down below, and cheering.
Huh?
"Well done, baby!"
That's my dad's voice. That's...
And then a Hispanic voice: "Well done, Mr. Williams Gentleman!"
Maria?
Yeah, you ain't seen crying yet. All those tears before didn't compare shit to what was happening now.
I looked down over the terrace railing, to the ground, still incredulous, thinking I was imagining things, that I was somehow in a dream. There they were, the people I loved the most in my life. Even my mom was there! Only Trey and Alex weren't but Conall was on his phone now.
"For you," he said.
"Congratulations, little sister!" screamed Alex, "I'm so fucking happy for you!"
West-End Boys (Naïve Mistakes) Page 13
