by Karen Anders
He’d been deployed only two weeks after she’d moved to California. This current two-week mission was complete, but he’d taken a short leave to make this delivery to Raffi and Afsana. He would be heading back to Coronado tomorrow. He couldn’t wait to see Piper.
“You came all this way to give us goats?”
“Yeah.” He winked as she invited him inside. “Seems FedEx doesn’t deliver.”
She laughed as the door closed behind him.
Ocean Beach, California
Piper was all finished making this beach house she was going to share with Dex as much a part of him as it was of her. She’d moved all his stuff in and replaced all the furniture. She’d loved his Moroccan headboard and a lot of his possessions that he’d picked up during his travels.
She didn’t know where he was or when he was coming home, but he was right here with her. She could feel him and she knew he could feel her, the bond traveling across distance and time. She bolstered him every day with her thoughts, knowing that the soft pink talisman he carried protected him.
Her term had expired a month ago and she should have been feeling elated, but she was having a hard time keeping things down and she’d wake up in the morning all queasy. She hoped she wasn’t getting the flu. She’d been feeling run-down for days, and achy.
She was due to start her new job as a fund-raiser for the International Humanity Foundation, an organization that worked to educate and feed children in Africa and Asia. Dex had suggested she try something like this with her background in raising money for Brad’s campaign, and it had all just clicked together with very little effort. She was so excited to use her skills to help people.
She picked up the head scarf that she’d had framed and hung it over the bed, Dex’s bars still pinned to the cloth. As soon as she stepped away, her stomach twisted and she ran for the bathroom.
She used the toilet, giving a sigh of resignation when she saw the dime-size stain in her panties. No wonder she was feeling so moody. She didn’t have anything here and decided she’d have to run to the store. While she was walking to the register, she passed the pregnancy tests and felt wistful for a second, then she went stock-still, a fizzling sensation coursing through her. She counted back in her head, then closed her eyes, the fizzling sensation turning into a cold rush. Tired. Tears.
She couldn’t be.
It was impossible. The scarring.
The complications.
She numbly stood in the aisle, suddenly so shaky she wasn’t sure her legs were going to hold her.
She grabbed two pregnancy tests, eager to get home, trying not to get her hopes up too high.
As soon as she got in the door, she was back in the bathroom and it was an excruciating five minutes until the test showed her the double pink lines.
She was pregnant. Suddenly too shaky to stand, she sat down on the edge of the tub, trying to remain rational. She hadn’t bothered with birth control because her doctor had told her she couldn’t get pregnant.
But by some miracle she was going to have Lieutenant Dexter Kaczewski’s baby. Elation washed through her in one fantastic rush, and she started to cry and tremble all over. Sliding to the floor, she drew up her knees and rested her forehead against them, so weak from shock that she felt light-headed. A baby. She couldn’t be more thrilled—or more scared.
So many emotions were cartwheeling through her she couldn’t tell one from the other.
“Babe,” he said softly, and she opened her eyes to find Dex bending over her with an anxious expression on his oh-so-handsome face. A perfect time for him to return from deployment. “I hope these are tears of joy and not oh-crap-I-made-a-mistake tears.”
“They are. Tears of joy.”
“Good, that’s all I need to know.” He hauled her up against him, making a choking sound and crushing her roughly against him, holding on to her as if she were his next breath. God, she loved him so much. He’d given her life, a future.
His chest heaved, and he clutched her tighter, his voice raw and shaking. “Ah, God, Piper,” he whispered raggedly. “I love you, babe.”
“Welcome home, Dex.”
* * *
Night sounds filtered in through the open windows, and the clock on the bedside table said it was late. Piper shifted her head on Dex’s shoulder, then slowly smoothed her hand up the thick wall of his chest. He trapped her wandering hand beneath his, and she smiled, finding it incongruous that someone as big and as male as Dex should be ticklish. He caressed her hand, then raised it to his mouth and kissed her fingertips. “What are you smiling about?”
Rising up on one elbow, she looked down at him, glad that she could see his face in the muted illumination from the streetlights. “I’m smiling because I’m happy, and I’m smiling because I’m so glad to be here with you. And I’m smiling because I’m done with politics.” She leaned down and kissed him on the mouth, running her free hand back up his rib cage. “And I’m smiling because you are so darn cute,” she whispered against his mouth.
He gave a huff of laughter and caught her hand again, holding it secure against his chest. “Stop it, or I’ll throw you in the pool.”
Shaking back her hair, she grinned down at him.
“You’re on,” she said, and then she leaned over and kissed him, settling her mouth on his while he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close—and Piper was in heaven.
She never would have guessed life could get as perfect as it had been since the night she’d first cradled a mourning SEAL in her arms. The missions he went on with his team were full of risks. The SEALs operated on the cutting edge of special ops. She knew that, but she wouldn’t have him be anything other than what he was: a soldier, a warrior and hers.
The kiss was sweetly luxurious and led to the inevitable need they had for each other, for the intimacy they created and shared. His body was so hard to the touch, so strong.
She loved being with him, making love with him, being his woman—and she was all his. He slid down more fully beside her, and she intertwined her legs with his, feeling the heat rise between them. Dexter Kaczewski, the most dangerous man she’d ever met, made her feel safer than she’d ever been. She snuggled in as close as she could get, loving the smell of him and the way he felt, like a slab of granite, except warm and vital. His hair was longer now, dark and starting to curl around the back of his neck. She loved the curve of his muscles and the strength in his arms and the stubble along his jaw. After endless minutes of tasting his mouth and holding him close, she broke off the kiss and met his gaze.
“Afsana loved the goats.”
“I’m so glad. Thank you for doing that.”
“I wouldn’t want to be a goat herder, but it was a thoughtful gift, Piper.”
“She saved us. There is no price on that. The goats will help her family to prosper.” She bit her lip. “Did you see her oldest son?”
“Yeah,” Dex said. “If NCIS agent Derrick Gunn isn’t that kid’s father, I’m no SEAL.”
“Exactly.”
“I have something for you. It’s not a goat...”
“I’m so disappointed. I had ‘Nanny’ picked out as the name.”
He laughed, and it sounded...a little nervous.
“What’s going on there, sailor?”
He turned away and rummaged around on the floor, then he came back to her. He extended his hand and in the palm was a velvet ring box.
Her breath caught. “Dex.”
He opened it. “Piper Jones, my unbreakable, tough little angel. Will you marry me? I love you and I can’t imagine my life without you. I’ve never been willing to fight for the relationship I wanted, but now I’ve found a woman that I would die for. So, being a SEAL is my passion, but you are my life.”
Tears welled in her eyes and she reached out her hand as Dex pu
lled the beautiful diamond out. “Yes, you gorgeous man.” He slipped the ring on her finger. They kissed and that led to more, until they had made love three times in three hours.
“How do you feel about being a father, Dex?” she asked quietly.
He smoothed back her hair, then met her gaze, his expression interested and open. “I think it’s one of the most important things I could ever do in my life. I would tackle it like a SEAL. Why?”
“Well, you might be tackling it, oh, say, around six months from now.”
He didn’t move a muscle. He stared up at her, and when she smiled, he closed his eyes and hugged her fiercely against him. She felt his chest expand, and he tightened his arms even more. “Are you sure? How is that possible?”
She chuckled. “Dead sure. I’ve been having three months of morning sickness and the absence of my period.”
He didn’t say anything; he just held her like that and Piper could feel his heart hammering beneath her hand. She knew he needed time to assimilate the news, to digest it. She gave him a few moments, then she kissed the curve of his neck, and Dex inhaled deeply. Catching her under the chin, he lifted her head and stared into her eyes. “Babe, I can’t believe it. How do you feel?”
She smiled, running her thumb over his mouth. “Blessed. So, so blessed.”
He closed his eyes and drew her head back down against his shoulder, his fingers tangled in her hair. She felt him swallow, then he pressed a kiss against her forehead. “So do I,” he whispered huskily. “God, so do I.” His chest expanded again, and he tightened his hold on her. He held her for a long, long time—just holding her, as if he couldn’t let go, as if he needed to hold her more than he needed anything.
Finally, he eased away and raised her face, giving her a soft, searching kiss. Releasing a breath in a long sigh, he looked up at her, the expression in his eyes making her heart roll over.
“I love you, Piper,” he whispered, his voice uneven.
Piper held his beautiful blue gaze for a moment, her heart so full that it was almost too much to contain, the last knot of uncertainty unfolding in her in a joyous rush. Closing her eyes against the sudden swell of emotion, she hugged him hard, her happiness absolute and complete. Swallowing against the ache in her throat, she cradled his head tightly against her.
“God, but I love you, Dexter. So much.”
He hugged her back, his hand buried deep in the tangle of her hair. He didn’t say anything for the longest time; then he raised his head and looked at her, his eyes dark with emotion. “We’re going to have a blast, babe,” he said, his voice uneven. “And you know SEALs never go back on their word.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from
CAVANAUGH COLD CASE by Marie Ferrarella
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Cavanaugh Cold Case
by Marie Ferrarella
Prologue
Josephine Alberghetti placed an overly generous portion of lasagna in front of her daughter, then sighed as she took a seat opposite her.
“Mom, you’ve been sighing like that since I walked in through the door ten minutes ago. What’s up?” Dr. Kristin Alberghetti asked her mother.
Josephine pressed her lips together, as if hesitating to give voice to what was fairly bursting to come out. The next moment, the hesitation was over, just as Kristin knew it would be. Drama and her mother were best friends.
“When you first came to me and told me that you wanted to be a doctor, I was so proud I thought I would just burst,” Josephine told her only child. “I wasn’t sure how we were going to pay for it with your father, God rest his soul, gone, but I remember being so very, very proud—and determined to help you reach your dream. I was willing to work my fingers to the bone, putting in twenty hours a day to make my little girl’s dream come true.”
Kristin knew where this was going. The same place that it had gone before.
“Uncle Gasper lent you the money, Mom,” Kristin reminded her mother patiently. “Actually, he gave you most of it.”
Though her father’s uncle had fought her, Kristin had stubbornly insisted on paying the man back. It hadn’t been easy, but she did it, taking and holding down jobs whenever she could while going to medical school. Through extreme dedication and concentrated energy, at the sacrifice of her social life, she’d managed to graduate ahead of time, thanks to an accelerated program.
But this wasn’t about her mother’s sacrifices—of which she would have been the first to say that there were a legitimate number. This was about something else. And Kristin had a very strong feeling she knew what that “something else” was.
Kristin and her mother were seated at the table in the kitchen where she had spent her first seventeen years. She had only a little time to spare and had actually popped in to visit in the middle of the morning—taking a couple of hours of personal time—because her mother had complained about being neglected. Feeling guilty, Kristin had juggled a few things, put a couple more on hold and then dashed over.
Kristin’s grandmother, Sophia, a fixture in her life for as far back as she could remember, was also there. Kristin exchanged glances with the older woman now. She knew what was coming, as did her grandmother. Out of respect for her mother—because she knew how frustrated Josephine Alberghetti felt—Kristin kept her silence. But it wasn’t easy.
“But why you took all that wonderful knowledge,” Josephine was saying, “and training and practically just threw it out the window to become a medical examiner, poking around inside of dead people, is really, really beyond me.” She looked at her daughter pleadingly. “Can’t you just go into private practice? Think of the good you could be doing.”
“I am doing good, Mom,” Kristin told her mother. This certainly wasn’t the first time they had done this dance, but her mother seemed to refuse to remember her good reasons for choosing this route. She patiently repeated one. “I’m bringing closure to a great many families who need answers.”
In response, Josephine rolled her hazel eyes dramatically. “Closure,” she murmured under her breath as if it was a dirty word.
“Leave the girl alone, Josephine,” Sophia told her daughter sharply. The family matriarch smiled at her granddaughter. “She is happy closing things. It is her life.”
“And s
he’s wasting it,” Josephine retorted. “How is Kristin supposed to meet anyone when she’s standing in the middle of a morgue, surrounded by dead people, for heaven’s sake?” she demanded.
“Did you not hear her?” Sophia asked, the volume of her voice increasing as she made her point. At nearly eighty, Sophia Moretti’s voice was as strong and loud as when she first arrived in America at the age of twenty-eight. “She is closing things for families. Maybe one of those families has a son—”
Kristin stared at her grandmother, grappling with a sudden feeling of betrayal. No matter what, her grandmother had always been on her side. “You, too, Nonny?”
Sophia leaned over the food-laden kitchen table to pat her granddaughter’s hand. “I am just trying to—how you say?—humor your mama. Marry, don’t marry, it is all the same to me. Just be happy, little one,” she said to her youngest granddaughter. “The family has enough small people already.”
“Easy for you to say,” Josephine pouted, not trying too hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “You have lots of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
Sophia pursed her lips together. “We are all family, Josephine. We share. You want some grandchildren? I will let you have some of mine.”
“Listen to Nonny,” Kristin coaxed. “We all live in Aurora. You need short people to hug, you can go over to Theresa’s or Lorraine’s or Angela’s,” she said, enumerating her cousins, all of whom were married with at least two, if not more, children, “and hug one of their kids.”
“I love those children,” her mother replied honestly, “but it’s not the same thing, and you know it,” Josephine complained. She looked at her own mother accusingly. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
Sophia raised coarse hands that had been weathered by decades of hard work and pretended to push back her daughter’s words of rebuke. “I take no sides. I just sit and listen.”
