by Alison Kent
"I'll tell you what will make me feel better," she said, one of her brows going up and saying thousands of words she didn't need to say.
He understood her perfectly. With both his body and his heart. He undressed her slowly and laid her back, shucking out of his own clothes before covering her and kissing her and, several long minutes later, sliding into her.
And as had been the case for all of his life, loving her more today than he had yesterday, but not as much as he would tomorrow.
Epilogue
Two days later
Neva stood in the field behind her house, loving the sweeping sense of the wide open spaces, the beauty of the horizon and Guadalupe Peak, the feel of Mick's arms around her. She could breathe. She could think. She could lean back against the man to whom her heart belonged and draw on his strength.
He'd been gone for a week the second time, after finding her, putting an end to Ed's madness, bringing Jase and Liberty home. That day ... It was hard to believe it had happened, though not as hard as it was to have experienced those grisly moments. To have turned around there in the mouth of that cave and found that Holden Wagner, whom she'd so long despised, had given his life to save hers.
To have been an unwitting victim of Ed Hill's obsession, one to which three innocent girls would never know they had sacrificed their lives. To have witnessed Mick putting an end to it all with one shot. So much unnecessary bloodshed in order that she might go on living. She would never forget. She would carry the weight of that debt forever.
Yet the hardest thing she'd ever faced was waiting alone for Mick to return—strange, when she'd been on her own forever and had never been lonely before.
She'd known he had a job to finish that had nothing to do with her. Not with saving her life. Not with being with her. Not with loving her. It was about doing the things that made him who he was, the things he hadn't yet told her, the ones that he claimed defined him as not a very nice man.
She didn't think he could be any nicer. Especially after today. She'd been in the kitchen washing up from lunch— Candy having returned to work already—when she heard car wheels on the gravel road and looked up. Breathless, anxious, hopeful. The sight of his Range Rover pulling to a stop beside her pickup had done her in.
Sobbing, she'd slammed through the back door, knocking the screen off its hinges, and ran around the side of the house, launching herself into his arms just as FM had clambered over him and Mick had climbed from his seat. He'd whooshed out a breath and grunted; she'd apologized with kisses for knocking him senseless, then burst into tears.
She'd tried to stop and couldn't. He'd walked her out here and held her while she cried, as if knowing how much she had to tell him about who she was, how many things she had to say about where she'd come from before she would ever be able to ask him to stay.
She took a deep breath now and started. "The first time I saw this place, I fell in love. All this room to roam. No dark alleys or shadowed streets. I knew I'd never have to fear turning a corner. Or fight my way out of tight spots. If anyone wanted me, I could see them coming for miles."
A shudder ran through her when she paused, and Mick rocked her side to side, his voice low and gruff, his breath warm against her ear. "You can tell me about it, you know. I'm not going to leave because you've been through something ugly. And I'm sure as hell not going to judge you."
She knew that. Knew that she could trust him. With her present, her past. With her secrets, her life. "My mother died when I was a toddler. My father raised me. I was an only child and he never remarried."
Hissing out a sharp breath, Mick tightened his arms around her middle, drew her back into his body until it seemed their hearts beat with the same rhythm and they wore the same clothes. "He abused you."
"No." She shook her head, then turned her face into his cheek and closed her eyes. "He was the perfect father to raise a daughter alone. But we did live in an area that wasn't all sweetness and light. And I went to school with a lot of kids who weren't as lucky as I was. I also went to school with boys who'd grown up being taught by example that girls were no better than possessions."
Mick stopped her then. Brought his fingers to her lips and shook his head. "And treated them as such. Or worse."
"Worse is an understatement." She thought back to the abuse she'd seen inflicted on her friends. The bruises. The breaks. The tears. How even though she hadn't suffered she'd still been afraid of the dark, where she knew so much of the damage happened. "That was where it all started for me. Too many girls 1 knew thought they deserved what they got. That it was their lot in life. I knew better. It wasn't. My father taught me that."
"And you set out to save the world," he said, swaying with her from side to side, rock-a-bying his baby's worries away.
"Not really. Not until Candy. I'd forgotten so much until she reminded me." Neva sighed, held tight to his arms, losing herself in all that he offered, everything he made her feel. Safe and secure and protected, and above all else loved. "And I knew then what I had to do. Even if I only helped a few girls. I had to do what I could to get them out of situations that might escalate, and away from their abusers."
"You did a good thing."
She breathed deeply of the fresh air representing her freedom. "I wish I could do more."
She fell silent then and Mick followed suit, doing nothing but holding her. It was all that she wanted. All that she needed. Being here with him forever .. . And then she felt it. A shift in the wind. A murmur of discontent. He stopped rocking her. And he began to talk.
"I've killed men for doing less than abusing women, Neva. I've killed men because they knew something they weren't supposed to know. Because there was the possibility they might talk. Because they opened a door into a room and saw a handshake they shouldn't have seen."
She wasn't sure which of their pulses she felt thundering in her veins. "Do you do that now?"
He shook his head. "Only in self-defense. Or to save an innocent life. If I take a life, there's a reason bigger than being assigned the hit. I work for a man who rights wrongs. I stopped causing them when he took me in."
They stood quietly together for several minutes, her arms holding his where he'd stacked them around her waist. Her head rested on his shoulder. His chin rested on her cheek. She couldn't believe it was the dog bounding through the field in front of them who had brought this man into her life. What he had done was in the past. This was their future. She couldn't wait to wake up to him every morning.
"Did I tell you Liberty's going to be living here and working with Candy? At least until she gets things together enough to go to school."
She felt him shake his head. "Her parents agreed?"
"She gave them a choice. Either they let her leave or she would file for emancipation. There was no way she'd lose a case once we presented the facts of her case to a judge."
"At least a judge not in Holden Wagner's pocket."
"Oh, Mick. I can't believe Holden saved my life." Even now, knowing she was safe, fear boiled in her stomach like a cauldron. "He gave his life for me. I don't know which is harder to live with. That or knowing what Ed did, and why."
"You don't have to live with either of them." He continued to rock her, to soothe her. "None of what happened was your fault. Both men acted on their own."
"Logically, I know that. But having Ed turn on me . .. He was bright, intelligent. Hell, he was brilliant. Yet because I didn't love him, innocent girls died."
"No. Innocent girls died because he was a twisted man. You did your part. You helped the girls. You got them away. They knew the risks."
"They didn't know this risk."
"No one knew this one. No one could." He released her, turned her around, cupped her face in his hands. "Listen to me, Neva. You can't protect anyone from a danger you don't see coming. Life just doesn't work that way."
His eyes were beautiful, a soft dove gray. "And to think I didn't see you coming at all. Yet every time I turn around and need
you, you're here."
"I love you. I'm supposed to be here."
She shook her head even as her heart blossomed. "No one comes to Pit Stop unless they're running away from something or have nowhere else to go. Which is it with you?"
"That one's easy," he said, and smiled. "I'm running toward the only place I want to be."
They spent the night upstairs in her bed instead of in the first-floor guest room, because this time he wasn't a guest. He was her lover, her love. He was the man she wanted to walk at her side as she went through the rest of her life.
She'd thought it would be strange to bring him here, to show him as they climbed the stairs which ones creaked and would give him away should he try to sneak up and surprise her. She'd also showed him where she kept her big bad Dirty Harry Colt .45 just in case he did. He'd laughed and added a Browning and a Ruger to her collection, keeping the SIG for himself.
Once she'd promised she felt safer with him than she had at any time in her life—a feeling that had very little to do with their arsenal and everything to do with their love— he'd undressed her and taken a slow journey over her body, tender as he explored the skin he uncovered, erotic as he left her wet and wanting more.
He barely fit in her bed. Her full-size didn't have the length of the guest room's queen. She liked the cozy dimensions when sleeping alone. He told her she wouldn't be sleeping alone again anytime in the near future, and the beds would be switched out first thing. She'd smiled and nodded. It was hard to argue with a pirate.
And then he'd told her the story of his tattoo. Of a woman in Barbados who'd wanted his babies as payment. He'd told her no can do and given her cash. She'd laughed at the idea of him being a father. But only until she'd sobered and thought about being a mother to his child.
They had time for that. Weeks, months, years. Right now was all about each other. Learning and loving. Sharing truths and trust. He wanted to take her to Manhattan, he said, sliding a palm over her belly, his fingers stroking the line of her softly trimmed hair. He wanted her to get to know more of Rabbit, to introduce her to Hank Smithson and the rest of his partners, whose names he'd rattled off and she couldn't for the life of her remember.
She pushed him onto his back and told him she'd like that. But not half as much as she'd like seeing him wearing something other than combat boots, T-shirts, and fatigues. He'd argued that she'd seen him in gray sweat shorts, and that she'd seen him in skin.
It wasn't enough. She wanted to see him in Hugo Boss or Armani. His broad shoulders filling out a custom-fitted suit coat. His eyes covered by Oakleys sans strap. His shaved head, goatee, mustache, and tattoo against the backdrop of St. Patrick's Cathedral. He told her no can do, changed it to might can do when she told him she was going to sleep.
Her cool cotton sheets absorbed his body heat like they did that from the sun when hung out to dry. She told him it seemed like she'd known him forever, not the less than two weeks that she had. He'd told her the Rocky Horror Picture Show claimed that time was fleeting, so she'd best stop counting and take advantage of his wood.
She'd slapped his ass, but then he'd tumbled her to her back and filled her in one never-ending motion. She'd taken him in, caught breathless by the sensation of loving him, his length and hardness and gentle touch, and always, always his warmth.
He'd stroked slowly; she'd pleaded for more, sweating beneath him, aching and needing and taut. He wouldn't let her come. And that was okay. She had more than all night. She had the rest of her days.
And she had the man above her, her own larger than life hero, to love.
* * * THE END * * *
BRAVA BOOKS are published by Kensington Publishing Corp. 850 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 2005 by Alison Kent
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