“Here,” he said, handing me a Kleenex.
Mortified that my mascara had run, I started to mop at my face.
“Don’t do that!” Nick shouted.
I jerked back. “What?! What did I do?”
“That’s not for your face. It’s for you to read.”
My forehead formed its familiar pattern of a bazillion furrowed lines and I consciously tried to erase them before they became permanent. “What is it?”
Nick searched with his fingers for the dome light and punched it on. “Read it, Katie.”
It wasn’t a Kleenex. It was a crumpled cocktail napkin with writing on it.
Oh.
The napkin.
I couldn’t believe he had kept the damn thing. My mouth fell open. Fly-catching position, I realized. I shut it.
Nick ran his hand back through his hair.
Ah, the hair scrub, I thought. He was nervous.
I read the words written in blue ballpoint pen above, below, and around the Eldorado Hotel & Casino’s logo.
Can’t happen now/you stop my heart
I want to do this right
Wait for me
I smoothed the soft bar napkin and tried to take it in. When we’d talked last summer in Shreveport, he had only gotten through the “can’t happen” part before I launched a defense in my weapons-of-mass-destruction mode. My brain struggled to process the new information.
“Stop my heart”—that was good, right?
Mine felt like it had just stopped, as a matter of fact. I searched his face for information.
He said, “Can I tell you what I should have said in Shreveport, Katie? What I meant to say?”
I nodded, because I didn’t think I could even speak. Strong fingers of emotion were wrapped around my throat and were squeezing it shut. From past experience, I knew this was probably for the best.
He cleared his throat. “There were three things I was going to say to you,” he said, gesturing at the worn paper. “What I didn’t get out after the ‘this can’t happen’ part, at least before you got upset, was the word YET, and . . .” Here he stopped and muttered, “You can do this, Kovacs,” so softly that I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him or if it was only the wind.
My words broke through the grip around my throat. “And what?”
He laughed, breaking the tension. “Slow down, this is important.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and then looked straight into mine. “That my heart stops whenever you walk into a room.”
He waited. Here was the part where I was supposed to say something.
I sat still as granite. I didn’t want to mess this up with the wrong words, and I couldn’t find the right ones. But in my confusion over what to say, I left a silence that I didn’t mean. Nick frowned slightly, but he went on.
“And so the second thing was that I wanted to do this right. I wanted a real relationship with you, not just a wild weekend.”
Again, he waited for my response, and again I sat stricken mute.
He dragged his hand back through his hair. “But my third point was that I needed to ask you to wait, because things were too crazy in my life right then. I needed time because I didn’t want the beginning of us ruined by all of that.”
Finally, I could speak.
“Oh, my,” I said in a squeaky whisper.
That was it. But what I felt? I would have crawled on my belly across hot broken glass to hear those words from him.
The little voice in my head chimed in. “But he hurt you. He was cold and mean. He could have said these words to you one thousand times over before now.”
Shut up, I said back. This is the good part. Where was the voice to cheer me on and wish me happiness?
Nick spoke. “But that night, everything went to hell. I got so angry at you that—”
I found my breath. I had to get something out before I did something foolish, like listen to the little voice that wanted to sabotage this for me. “Nick, stop. I have to tell you before you say another word: I am so sorry. I lied to you. You were right, I did tell Emily I was in love with you, and I knew you’d overheard us on the phone. But when you started with ‘this can’t happen,’ I was mortified. I got defensive and I was . . . I was . . . well, I was awful. And I was wrong.”
Nick released a giant breath. “It’s OK. I know I blew what you said out of proportion. I wasn’t as mad at you as I was at myself for messing it up—my life and that conversation—but I blamed it all on you. I was a shit to you, and I know I hurt you. What happened is my fault. You coming to St. Marcos is my fault. That damn McMillan trial fiasco was my fault. It’s taken me months to get up the courage to come here. But I had to say all this just one time. I had to try.”
Those. Those were the words I needed to hear.
Chapter Five
I didn’t exactly want to be reminded about the humiliation of losing the rape trial of basketball superstar Zane McMillan, but other than that, his words were perfect. Bart’s face flashed through my mind again, but I refused to feel the guilt I knew would come. I’d deal with it later.
“Come on,” I said, jumping out of the truck. My heels sank into the ground, so I took them off and tossed them into the bed of the pickup.
Nick was standing beside me trying to soothe the dogs. Sheila, a rottweiler, hung back. Cowboy, the alpha male, muttered in dog-speak under his breath. He gave Nick a thorough sniff-over before he let the others check him out. Nick stood his ground and I let the dogs do their thing. If he didn’t pass their muster, I’d rethink this.
The night air was singing its song of coqui frogs and leaf-rustling breezes, brushing my cheeks with its soft, damp kiss. I put out my hand to Nick, and he tucked it into his. He leaned in toward my face, which prompted a whine from Sheila. I ducked away from him, lifted the side of my long, voluminous skirt and flipped it over my arm, then loped toward the house, tugging him behind me.
We ran lightfooted, Nick trusting me to lead the way, the dogs all around us. When we came to the door of my big yellow house, I pulled Nick inside and the dogs stayed on the front step. The electricity wouldn’t be on until Crazy got one last permit, but I knew my way around even in the dark and I didn’t hesitate. I shut the door behind us, closing out the night-blooming jasmine and keeping in the sawdust and paint. Now the only sound was our panting breath.
I pulled Nick through the kitchen, where there was enough moonlight streaming through the windows that I could make out the hulking, unfinished cabinetry and appliances.
“Kitchen,” I said without slowing down.
Onward we ran into the great room, where the ceilings opened up into a towering cavern thirty-five feet high. The moon was brighter there, shining through the second-story windows onto the tongue-in-groove cypress and mahogany ceiling and the rock and brick fireplace the original owner had installed for God knows what reason in the tropics.
“Great room,” I announced. “Watch out for the scaffolding.”
I ducked between the steel supports and made a sharp right down a short, dark hall to an empty bedroom whose magnificence echoed that of the great room. The moon beckoned through the glass panels in the back door. I stood in the middle of the room and dropped Nick’s hand and my dress to wave my hand over my head.
“My room.”
I took a step toward the balcony door, but Nick grabbed my arm and swung me back around to him, creating a collision reminiscent of the one outside the bizarre beauty pageant two hours earlier. Only this time, I didn’t bounce back from him. I stuck. Like glue.
He slid his hands from the base of my neck up into my hair on both sides and leaned his face down to mine, his dark eyes intense. “Slow down.”
I put my hands around his wrists and stood on tiptoe to whisper, breath-distance from his lips, “We’re almost there.”
He closed the millimeters between us and pressed his warm, soft lips against mine.
Oh, my merciful God in heaven.
We stood there, li
ps clinging to each other as the seconds passed, until I disengaged. I pulled his hands down gently and backed toward the door without letting go of him. I reached behind me and turned the knob, pulling the door inward and hooking it open.
“Watch your step,” I said, moving out onto the ten-foot-long red-tiled balcony. Someday soon it would have a black metal railing.
“Whoa,” Nick said as I hung right and sat down at the far end of the narrow platform, my knees up and my back against the wall. It felt like sitting on thin air, except that thin air probably wouldn’t be quite as tough on the tush. Below, and beyond the patio tiled in pavers that matched the balcony’s, the pool shimmered, the moon dancing upon it like it was the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. The moonlight was so bright that I could make out the brilliance of the dark turquoise pool tiles underwater.
The earth fell away fifteen feet past the pool, sloping dramatically into the valley that surrounded Annalise. It was like we were encircled by a moat of treetops. Rooftops off to the west marked the end of developed land on the island, and beyond them the moon glinted on white sand and the silver-streaked, undulating navy-blue sea. Three large ships dotted the horizon, one a cruise ship ringed with lights and two others, dark and lumbering.
Movement caught my eye closer in. I looked down. A tall black woman was standing on the far edge of the pool. She wore a mid-calf plaid skirt, faded but full. She lifted it with both hands and swung one foot through the water with her toe pointed, as if to test its temperature. The young woman cut her eyes up at me and did something she’d never done before. She smiled at me, then covered her mouth to hide it.
I glanced up at Nick. He hadn’t moved, nor did it appear as if he had seen my friend. He just stood staring into the distance. I looked back at the pool, but I already knew she would be gone.
“What do you think?” I asked Nick.
He came over and sank down beside me. “Wow. Just wow.” He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “You’ve got the train back on the tracks, for sure.” He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I was worried about you.”
“You mean when I had my complete and utter booze-fueled meltdown in court in front of the whole city of Dallas and tucked my tail between my legs and ran to hide in the islands?”
He kissed my hand again, then two more times in quick succession. “Yes, then.”
I sighed. “I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in two hundred and nine days.” I pursed my lips, thinking about all of Bart’s parties and how hard it was to abstain in that environment.
“Good for you.” Nick was playing with my fingers, bending them, straightening them, kissing each one. It was pleasantly distracting.
“Thank you.”
“I quit the firm,” he said. “Opened my own investigations business.”
“So I heard. Congratulations.”
“My divorce is final.” He kissed the inside of my wrist.
“I heard that, too. So it sounds like you have all those messy details in your life straightened out.”
He leaned his head back against the wall and I admired his profile. Nick is not small of nose, but it works for him. He sighed. “Not exactly.”
I curled my toes in hard, then released them. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning—well, wait a second. I don’t want to get this in the wrong order. I need to tell you something else first.”
“Ohhhhh kayyyyyy . . .” I said. Prickles ran up my neck.
“When I heard what happened to you, how you were nearly killed by the same guy that killed your parents, it knocked some sense into me. I was letting my pride get in the way before. So I got here as fast I could.”
Not very damn fast, I thought. “That was more than six months ago.”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I have challenging personal circumstances,” he said.
“Get to the point, Nick,” I said. Which sounds harsher than it came out. I swear.
“I couldn’t come because of Taylor,” he said.
My heart sank.
Chapter Six
My mind conjured up a young blonde with an acoustic guitar. No, I knew he didn’t mean Taylor Swift. But who the hell was Nick’s Taylor? I spoke through my clenched jaw. “Taylor,” I repeated.
“Yes. Taylor. He’s fifteen months old.” Nick squeezed my hand.
Not a woman. A baby. Only a slight improvement. I had an instant headache.
“A baby.”
“Teresa is with me, too.”
Teresa. This just got better and better.
“Really.”
What the hell was he doing here with me, then? I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t release it.
“Katie, let me finish.”
He had divorced recently, and I thought I knew it was because he and his wife didn’t like each other, but I had always wondered if there was more. A baby would definitely be more. “Go on.”
“He’s my nephew. His mom, Teresa, is my little sister. Didn’t I ever tell you about her?”
“No.” The relief made me lightheaded. Taylor was neither a woman nor his baby. “That’s great!”
“The father, Derek, is a loser, a spoiled rich kid who went from rehab to dealing to prison right after he knocked my sister up, and now he’s on parole. Teresa was living with my parents in Port Aransas, but the loser was too close to them, less than an hour away in Corpus Christi, and he kept showing up, so she and Taylor came to stay with me when he was about three months old.”
I pondered Nick as a big brother with a troubled little sister. I got the loyalty part. My older brother exemplifies apple pie and baseball. If anything, I’m the cross he bears, especially after our parents died. Little sisters can be hell. I hadn’t expected a baby in Nick’s life, though, no matter whose it was.
“So?” Nick asked. “Any thoughts?”
I counted to ten.
I didn’t know what to say.
My dreams of Nick involved sexy times and happily ever after, not him an ocean away with a little sister and a toddler in tow. I restarted my count.
My hair had long since come loose, and I tucked it behind my ears. I licked my lips. I kept counting.
A gust of wind tore across the balcony so strongly that I grabbed Nick to anchor myself. Dirt whirled up from the bare earth beyond the pool and shot into the air like a dancing geyser. When the wind changed direction and spun the funnel across the yard to the patio below us, it pushed me back against the wall.
“What the hell?” Nick yelled, jumping up and pulling me to my feet. He stepped in front of me and a smile broke across my face.
Yes, Annalise, exactly. That’s just how I feel inside.
“I think my jumbie says it way better than I can,” I said.
The funnel backed off slightly and spun on the patio, the top of its cone just out of arm’s reach. I looked down into its dirtless core and my hair floated up like I was underwater.
“Your jumbie? Like a ghost? Yer shittin me, right?”
“Nick, meet Annalise. Annalise, this is my charming friend, Nick.” I let go of Nick and put my hands on my hips. “She must like you at least a little, or she’d have sucked you in there by now.”
I turned toward the wall and put my face and hands on her yellow stucco. “I think he gets it,” I said. “Thank you.”
The funnel stopped spinning and the dirt dropped to the patio with barely a whisper. The gentle breeze resumed. The night was eerily quiet and the smell of dust lingered. Annalise’s display had energized me, excited me. If this was all I got of Nick, so be it. I’d make the most of it.
Nick was staring at me. “That was wild. And you,” he said, and his voice grew rough, “you are the jumbie.”
I put my hands on his chest and rubbed up and out, across his collarbones, over his shoulders.
His eyes gleamed in the dark. “That was friendly.”
I slid my hands up the dark skin of his neck, then pulled it down just enough that I could bite the base of it where it ang
led down into his broad, chiseled shoulders. I nudged the neck of his t-shirt aside to get just the right spot. And another, and another, up and around the back. I had wanted to do this since the first time I saw him, and it was even better than I’d imagined.
“Holy shit, you’re not a jumbie, you’re a vampire.”
And then he pushed me against the wall, his hands following a path on me much like the one mine had on him. When he reached my neck, he grasped my face under my jaw and around the back of my head and held me still while he kissed me like it was a contact sport. If it was, I’d started it—and as far as I was concerned, I was winning.
Mother Goose and Grimm, I wanted to eat this man alive.
“Katie? Is that you?” a voice called out.
And just when we were getting to the good part.
Chapter Seven
I jumped, colliding teeth with Nick and biting his tongue. “Ow!” he said.
“Sorry about that,” I whispered. I wiped a drop of blood from his lip.
I yelled, “It’s me, Rashidi. I’m on the balcony outside my bedroom.”
“Who the hell is Rashidi?” Nick said, pressing his fingers against his mouth.
I came up on my toes and kissed Nick one last time, sucking his lip as I lowered myself down, pulling his head with me, which had the effect of starting the whole oral-gymnastics exercise over again. Nick pushed his body against mine, hard, dragging himself against me.
I pulled my mouth away and his followed mine. “We have to stop.”
“I don’t like this Rashidi,” Nick said against my mouth.
“Good evening, Katie, Bart,” I heard from somewhere down below.
Woopsie. “Hi, Rashidi.” I wriggled out from between Nick and the wall and reached for Nick’s hand. I peered down at Rashidi. “But this isn’t Bart.”
Rashidi John and my five dogs were standing on the side patio between the pool and the hill leading up along the back of the house and out to the driveway. His long dreadlocks were tied back neatly in a tail, his skin darker than the night sky around him. He craned his head up toward us, and the five dogs did too, six dominoes in a row.
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 3
