by Angi Morgan
They left their shoes in the bedroom and silently raced to the pool, sticking their feet in the cool water. She could hear music from across the patio and saw a silhouette of a couple dancing.
“Your parents are cool.” She grinned from ear to ear hearing the music of Frankie Valli. “So what’s the story on you singing to me?”
“That’s a family joke. Strictly need-to-know basis.”
She really wanted to know. In fact, she had a theory and needed to discover the inside story of the person she loved.
Yes, loved.
There it was...she said it—or thought it. There was something about Bryce that she’d fallen in love with from the moment she watched him jerk his shirt over his head and get it caught on his ear.
She hoped it meant he cared for her, but she let it go. “You have a nice family. I’m looking forward to their jokes.”
“Good thing, since you’ll be staying with them awhile.” Bryce splashed the water. It didn’t seem to matter that the bottoms of their jeans were getting soaked.
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
“That will never happen. They’ll love the company. You’ll be lucky if the entire family’s not here within a couple of days. Which means I should probably stick around to protect you from any and all accusations thrown your direction.”
“I’m looking forward to getting that family secret out of them, but why would they come?”
“I’ve never brought anyone home before. Ever. Now I’ve done it twice in a week. They’ll be curious.” He reached into the water, splashing it on her face.
Cool. Refreshing. Playfulness. She wanted it all, especially him. “Maybe you can let them know this is for work and head them off.”
“Kylie.” He tangled his foot with hers, reminding her of when he yanked her into his pool. “If you want this to stay professional, then I need to take you to Company F tomorrow and hand you off to someone else. I want you to be safe, but I didn’t bring you here just to protect you.”
“What a relief.” She laughed and lay back against the tile. “I was hoping this wasn’t all one-sided.”
The man she’d fallen so fast and so hard for cupped her cheeks with his cool palms. Tilting her head to look past her eyes into her heart.
“Is it too soon to say I love you?” he whispered before devouring her lips.
She wanted to fall into the pool with him and mesh their bodies as close as possible. She almost did just so he could get her out of her clothes, but a look over Bryce’s shoulder revealed his parents watching from their patio door.
Wait. The word repeated in her head while she kissed him. But she didn’t care if his parents watched. She didn’t care that someone else was discovering Rosco’s motive or that Xander might have been involved.
Nope. All she cared about was kissing Bryce. She was a little frightened to stop capturing the sweet taste of his mouth. If she stopped, he might answer his own question. Might say it was too soon to talk about love. Then again...they’d come so close to losing each other before ever being together.
“Damn, you are so beautiful. Inside and out. I see my soul tangled with yours when I look into your blue eyes.”
“And I see my future in yours. I wouldn’t have had one if you hadn’t come looking for me. I’m so happy you did.”
That was all the encouragement he needed. She wrapped her arms around him and planned to end each of her days there for the rest of her life.
Epilogue
Four years later
Kylie sat under an umbrella on the porch watching Bryce mow the lawn. Four years with him and it still felt strange to go sleeveless and not cover the scars—even if they had been smoothed a bit by surgery. His confidence and effortless love for her is what made it possible.
The spring air was warm and she couldn’t wait to get the pool stabilized and running. Fred and Richard had the teens come by for some work. The men taught them how to put in a small fence. Babyproofing the yard for their godchild had been on their minds all winter. Now it was done and Bryce was determined to get everything ready for the barbecue baby shower next weekend.
That is, if they made it to next weekend. The baby kicked and her muscles tightened. “Shush, baby. Those silly Braxton Hicks contractions are getting to me, too.” She smoothed her tummy, receiving another kick for her efforts. “You are going to be just as demanding as your daddy.”
Even through her sunglasses she could tell he was getting red. It was the first time he’d been in the sun this season. They went through the same thing every year. She waved at her husband and got his attention. “Bryce, hon. Come and let me put sunscreen on your back and shoulders before it’s too late.”
“I’m nearly done.”
“Bryce, come on. I came outside to put this on you and have been waiting. We haven’t bought any aloe yet. Don’t come to me when you’re blistered and suffering. I’m not running to the store at midnight.”
He shrugged and continued mowing. He’d done all the yardwork without a shirt and without sunscreen. She’d come out to sit in an uncomfortable chair to spray his back. But when he’d switched lawn tools she had been inside making lemonade. She shifted in the cushioned swivel chair attempting to get comfortable.
It was impossible.
The mower’s buzz hushed and Bryce joined her, plopping tiredly into the chair next to her. The false contraction came again with a wallop. The baby was demanding attention, acting crowded.
“This chair was a lot more comfortable when we bought it last year. Or maybe I just fit it better then. Along with my clothes, my shoes... I even think my toothbrush fit better then.”
Bryce laughed, then tipped back the lemonade she’d brought out on the same serving tray she’d used when they’d first met. What else could he do but laugh? She was the grouchy one. Even though the false labor had them both on edge, he still grinned at her. Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks. Two practice runs to the hospital had made them both feel like overanxious beginners.
“Ow.” She rubbed her belly. “Seriously, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
He set the glass on the tray next to the pitcher. “Probably all of it. You’re going to be a great mom.”
“You know just what to say.”
He leaned forward and talked directly to the baby. “Hey, little man. You’re giving your mom a hard time. I think you both need a nap.” Then looking up at her. “What do you say? Is it— Wow. Was that a real contraction for once?”
“Just one of those silly Braxton Hicks. They’ve been coming all day.”
“As in every couple of minutes all day?” He looked at his watch.
“No. Or I don’t think so. I try to ignore them.” Now that she was thinking about it, the pain was a little more in her lower back. “Owwww. Okay, that was pretty close to the other one.”
“Too close. How do you feel about having a baby today?” He didn’t sit back. Instead he spread his hands across the baby and kept them there, waiting.
“But it’s three weeks earlier than they thought.”
“It’s not an exact science, Kylie. I think we should go.”
“You don’t want to call the doctor? Ask an opinion? Wait to see if it’s just indigestion?” She smiled at him, trying to get him to smile. He looked too dang serious for either of their sanity. “Come on, Bryce. Both trips to the hospital, they said my water would probably break. That hasn’t happened. I don’t want to be sent home again.”
“Hon, I can do a lot of things, but delivering my own baby is not one of them.” He popped up from the chair. “You stay here. I know where everything is.”
“Babe, my bag is already in the truck. You put it there two days ago.”
“Right. Do you want to change clothes or anything? Should I? I should since I probably stink. Do we have time for that?” He was taking a step toward the house, then back to her and then toward the house.
“Are you okay? You look really nervous.” Kylie laughe
d, ignoring the discomfort.
“I’m, ah...yeah, I’m fine.”
“How about a sho—wer. Oh boy, that was rough.” She wanted to huff and puff her way through it. “Maybe you’re right and we should sort of hurry.”
“That was about a minute and a half after the last one.” He helped her to her feet. “Let’s go. I’ll call the doctor’s service on the way.”
“Sweetheart, you really do need to change.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“But I won’t. I’m not going through six hours of labor with you standing next to me smelling like a wildebeest.”
He raised his arm—just like a man—and sniffed. “I guess I do smell sort of rank. I don’t want to put this off.”
“At least grab some clean clothes, hon. Please? I’ll wait for you in the truck.”
Bryce took one more sniff and unbuckled his shorts, dropping them on the way to the pool, hopped over the three-foot fence and jumped into the icy water.
Kylie watched, sort of in shock, until another contraction hit. Dripping freezing water, Bryce came back to her at the end and helped her limp to the truck.
“What made you think of a wildebeest?”
“We took the boys to the zoo and there was that awful smell.” Kylie leaned on Bryce to get in the truck. No choice there. She wasn’t only nine months pregnant, she was also midcontraction.
“That was a skunk, babe.”
The contraction was tighter and lower and following more quickly. “Uuuh...just hurry with those clothes.”
Then the smell of fried chicken permeated her nostrils. She looked in the back and sure enough, there was a sack. Bryce had a habit of leaving his lunch bones in the truck so Honeybear couldn’t find them in the trash.
The smell in the truck, the pool, the stress, the worry...it all brought back the reminder of how far they’d come in four years. The first time she’d had Bush’s chicken she’d been falling a little bit more in love with the man she couldn’t live without now.
The Tenoreno family couldn’t hurt them anymore. Daniel Rosco had been prosecuted for the murders of her friends. His confession and the evidence on the flash drive sent him to prison for life. He’d taken a video of their bodies as proof he’d completed the job. Then lost the Cadillac in a bet that she would die. She shivered, not wanting to think about it again.
On a happier note, the teen and senior program she’d begun in Hico had an interim director while she’d be home with the baby. And on their last trip for pie, they’d run into the Fenley family. Darla was doing well and had tried to stretch her arms around Kylie’s growing baby belly—something Bryce joked about being unable to do all the time.
“We’ve had such a wonderful life already, baby boy. You are going to make it completely full. Oh...goodness.” That contraction felt a little more intense. She leaned her head out the window. “Bryce! Hurry!”
He came barreling under the garage door as it started to close. Shooing Honeybear back underneath with his socks and boots in his hands.
“I’m using the lights.”
She grabbed her stomach, breathing hard. “I think you should.”
He pushed his hair back out of his eyes, looked through the pile he’d dumped on the seat and found his glasses. Then put the truck in gear. “I love you.”
Each time he told her it was special. Each time he made her feel like it was the first time he’d ever admitted that he loved anyone.
“I love you, babe. Now get this truck moving.” She squeezed his hand and flipped the flashing lights on herself.
Bryce grinned and ran the first stop sign. “Time for baby Johnson to make his debut.”
* * * * *
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Lawman on the Hunt
by Cindi Myers
Chapter One
Special Agent Travis Steadman studied the house through military-grade field glasses. Situated on a wooded escarpment above a rushing stream, the sprawling log home afforded its occupants a sweeping view of the snow-dusted Colorado mountains and the golden valley below. Sun glaring on the expanse of glass in the front of the house prevented Travis from seeing inside, but the intel reports told him all he needed to know. The two men and one woman who had rented the house two weeks ago looked like wealthy second-home owners enjoying a quiet mountain retreat, but the FBI suspected they were part of a dangerous terrorist cell.
“One car leaving. Looks like Braeswood and Roland.” The crisp words, from fellow agent Luke Renfro, sounded clear in Travis’s earpiece.
“I see them,” he replied as a black Cadillac Escalade nosed out of the steep driveway. Through the side windows he could make out Duane Braeswood’s sharp-nosed profile and Eddie Roland’s bullet-shaped shaved head. “They’re turning left, toward the highway to Durango.”
“Here comes the woman and her driver,” Luke said. “I wonder why she didn’t go with them.”
“Maybe she’s going shopping. Or to get her hair done.” Travis tried to keep any sign of tension out of his voice, even as he raised the glasses again to focus on the Toyota sedan that halted briefly at the bottom of the drive. He could just make out the silhouettes of the male driver and the woman beside him, but he didn’t need the glasses to fill in the details about her. Leah Carlisle was twenty-seven years old, with thick dark hair that curled when she didn’t straighten it, which she usually did. Her brown eyes, the color of good coffee with cream, were wide-spaced and slightly almond-shaped, and she could convey a score of different emotions with merely a look. She had a good figure, with a narrow waist and a firm butt, and small but round and firm breasts that were wonderfully sensitive. She enjoyed sex, and the two of them had been really good together...
He lowered the glasses and pushed the thoughts away. Leah’s car also turned left, toward town. Maybe she was going to meet up with her partners in crime in Durango. He ground his teeth together, fighting the old anger. To think she had left him to be with scum like Braeswood and Roland.
“Did you say something?” Luke asked. “Transmission’s a little fuzzy on my end.”
Travis feared he had growled or made some other sound to signal his frustration. He needed to get a better grip. Only Luke, his closest friend, knew about his former relationship with Leah, and he had kept this information to himself.
Travis had admitted to their boss, Special Agent in Charge Ted Blessing, that he was acquainted with Leah. After all, they were from the same hometown, and it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out they had gone to school together. But no one knew he had planned to marry her. “Looks like she’s headed to Durango, too,” he said.
“Give them ten minutes, then we move in.” Blessing’s voice, deep and sonorous as a preacher’s, shifted Travis’s focus to the mission. He and Luke and Blessing and the other members of Search Team Seven were moving in for a “sneak and peek” at the interior of the cabin. They had wrangled a warrant that gave them onetime permission to go inside, look around and plant a couple of bugs that would, they hoped, provide the evidence they needed to arrest and convict Braeswood, Roland and Leah of terrorist activities.
The Bureau suspected the trio had ties to a series of bombings that had exploded at two major professional bicycle races around the world. Blessing and his team had stopped a third bombing attempt in Denver last month, but the bomber had died before he could give them any more information about his connections to these three.
Travis stowed the binoculars and prepared to move down from his lookout position in the rocks across from and above the house. When the signal came, Luke and Blessing would move inside with the rest of the team and Travis would station himself at the end of the driveway, alert for the premature return of the house’s occupants.
“Recon Three, you hear me?” The flat, Midwestern accent of Special Agent Gus Mathers came across with the question.
“You’re loud and clear,” Travis answered.
“Best-case scenario, we’ve got an hour,” Mathers said. “I don’t like the looks of that drive—too steep and narrow, and situated in the curve of the road like it is, we won’t have much warning if someone comes. You’ll have to stall them at the bottom of the drive. Tell them we’ve got an explosive fuse or something.”
