“Unfortunately, right before the party. And a bit of additional bad news.”
“I don’t know if I can take it,” I say. “What?”
“A big investor wants me in New York City now. He’s flying me out after the party.”
I gamble on my trust in Gabriel and try really hard to sound devoted to Gabriel. “Can I go?”
“I wish you could, but no. He insists this be one-on-one.”
“Who is he? Is he really worth leaving after the party? And how reasonable is he to expect that?”
“Grayson Bennett. The Grayson Bennett who owns an empire of hotels and business, that now includes part of an NFL team. And football is about as strategic a vehicle I could get to spread the campaign messaging. That’s part of why I was calling you. I was eager to tell you.”
He’s trying to make-up. It’s not possible. “What happened to your big investor you told me about? What’s his name? I can’t remember.”
“Ted Pocher. He’s behind about every political success in the last twenty years, but he’s all about outside money and lots of it. And he could do a man like Grayson Bennett lots of favors.”
“I don’t think my stomach can handle hearing what that means.”
“That’s right, my sweet angel. I like you like that. You can’t get in any trouble that way.” A female voice sounds behind him. “Monica wants to go over a press briefing we’re putting out in the morning. I won’t call again and wake you up. I love you, buttercup.”
I cringe at the nickname that I’ve come to hate and almost as much as the way he lingers to hear the words returned by me. I have to say them. Lord help me I have to say them. I lower my voice. “I love you, too.”
He hangs up and suddenly Rick is sitting next to me. He heard. Of course, he heard, but he’s not only sitting next to me, he’s close, that wonderful, earthy male scent of him teasing my nostrils. But he’s not touching me. I tilt my head in his direction, and he does the same to me. “You heard?”
“I heard,” he agrees softly, and there’s no anger in him, but the turbulence, the pain is right beneath his surface, and I get it. If I’d left and come back to him being engaged to another woman, I’d have been destroyed, even if I brought it on myself.
“The Grayson thing is all set-up,” I tell him.
“I got a text.”
I wet my lips. “Right. Thank you for making sure he leaves after the party.” I reach over and cover his hand with mine. “I love you. I never—”
He leans in and kisses me. “I know. And I love you, too. The ice cream is in the bedroom getting melty. Let’s watch the movie in there.”
“That’s it?”
“You did what you had to do, Candy. And after tomorrow night, you’re mine and this is behind us. And nothing, especially that pencil dick Honest Gabe, is going to stop that from happening.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Candace
The ice cream really is melty by the time we eat it because Rick is far more interested in me than the ice cream once we reach the bedroom. We end up pulling the extra pints from the freezer and start sampling while he talks to Adam and makes plans with the Walker team to come to my house tomorrow morning.
“Can’t we go to them?” I ask when he disconnects. “What if Gabriel decides to come back early?”
“We’ll know,” he promises. “We’re watching him. What we don’t want is for someone to visit here and you not be around to answer the door.”
I swallow hard. “Right. Of course.”
“Ice cream and me, baby. Let the rest go for right now.” He samples my ice cream and I sample his and for now, the rest of the world fades away.
We start rolling the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, sneaking glances at each other, as we eat and watch. I wonder now, living in this comfortable, wonderful moment in time with him, how I settled for anything less than what this feels like, what we feel like. I wonder how I convinced myself this had never been real. This is real. We are real. We laugh. We smile. And Rick commentates the movie with comments like “cute little blue beast” and when Sonic puts on a hat as a disguise to dance in a country bar he says, “no they are not acting like a hat makes him look human.” Of course, Jim Carey is the bad guy and Rick calls him the “Crazy Ace Ventura Motherfucker” but the most Rick Savage comment of all is his observation about the fancy van Jim Carey drives in the movie. He wiggles his eyebrows at me and says, “we could get pretty damn kinky in that van of his, baby.”
When the evening ends, and we settle into bed to sleep, and in what I hope is a sign of better days, the recent storms have passed, and the moonlight has turned the room from the inky black of late to a dim gray glow. Laying there in Rick’s arms, the thrum of his heartbeat beneath my hand, I have the realization that we leave tomorrow. This may be the last time we share this bed. “I don’t want to sell this house.”
“Of course not,” Rick says immediately. “It was your grandmother’s. It’s a connection to your mother. We can use it as our Texas getaway. And we’ll hire someone to maintain it.”
It’s a perfect answer. We’ll be back. Together. It’s also a statement that assumes that is possible because Gabriel will no longer be a problem. I don’t know if that means he ends up in jail or dead, and guilt stabs at me when the idea of him being dead comforts me. But the man used me and convinced me he didn’t. The level of deviousness is hard to ignore. He’s former CIA. He has deeply rooted resources. Will him being in jail be enough to keep us safe?
At least it’s a barrier between us and him though. He has to go to jail.
I drift into the haze of sleep and the past, not to a past with Gabriel but to a moment in time with my father and just a few weeks after my mother’s death.
Weeks of my father’s withdrawing has me worried and today I’m going to do something about it. I arrive at his house with a boxed chocolate cake in hand and the hope that I can get my father to actually come back to life. I check the lock to his door and it’s open. Stepping inside the foyer, I call out “Dad!” but the creak of wood and the whisper of a ceiling fan is all that greets me.
Hurrying through the house the low rumble of his voice has me pausing outside the cracked door of his office to find him behind his desk on his cellphone. “Tonight. No deviation.” He’s silent a moment. “No. This has to happen tonight. You know the orders. They were clear. He can’t be given a chance to leave the country. No. The directive is to do it in DC during the PR stunt. Everyone will be thinking about football.”
My brows furrow. Football? I don’t understand what I’m hearing. Unless, wait. Are the Superbowl winners headed to the White House?
“Do the job,” he growls angrily, and then he hangs up, standing as he does. He grimaces, and leans forward, pressing his hands to his desk, as he draws a deep breath.
Unease rolls through me. Whatever this was I wasn’t supposed to hear it. Whatever this is brings a side of him out I don’t know, but he’s a General. I’m quite aware of how demanding that is, and how hard he must be at times. I back up almost to the living room and call out, “Dad! Dad!” I near the office and he steps into the hallway. His eyes light immediately. “Honey. What are you up to?”
I indicate the box. “Chocolate cake makes everything better. Right?”
He presses fingers to the bridge of his nose and then drops them. “If only that were true.”
“Well we will each eat half and maybe it will be true.”
My eyes open, the light of a new day lifting the darkness in the room to a haze rather than a cloak. Rick is instantly sitting up beside me. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“I had a dream.” I rotate to face him. “No, more of a memory. My mind is trying to tell us something. I’m not sure what it means, but we need to know if someone important died in DC a few weeks after my mother died.” I press my hands to my face. “And Lord help me, let this be a legit mission that somehow exposes Gabriel’s illegal involvement.”
“What else would it be?”
I repeat the incident to him and conclude with, “That was three weeks after my mother died.”
“You’re afraid it’s related to your mother’s death.”
“Yes. What if my mother was killed as payback for something my father did, and he got revenge? We need to know who died that week in DC.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Candace
In response to my fears over my dream and what it tells me about my father’s actions, Rick grabs his cellphone from the nightstand. “I think this was much more likely a part of the black ops program, baby, but I’ll get the team doing some digging.” He punches the call button on his phone to dial Asher. I hang on every word.
When he disconnects, I prod, “Well?”
“He’s looking into it.” He sets his phone aside and takes my hand. “Three weeks after your mother died, Tag wasn’t a part of the picture. Whatever you overheard, was likely a US operation.”
“Will we even know if it was official US business? What if it was just my father seeking revenge?”
“Well fuck, baby. I wouldn’t blame him. I damn sure wouldn’t if it were you. Don’t make this into something it doesn’t have to be.”
“But what if Gabriel knows? What if he can use that to ruin my father?”
“If he knew, he wouldn’t be trying to kill him.”
“But he could use it to ruin my father when he returns, right?”
“You assume he knows. I promise you, baby, they have all kinds of shit on each other. That’s why he wants your father gone.” He kisses me. “We’re going to get him home tonight. Right now, I’m going to make coffee because you like it when I make coffee. Right?”
“No, I don’t. You make it too strong. I’ll make the coffee.”
“Maybe I got better at it?”
“Did you?”
“We can find out.”
“Like I said, I’ll make the coffee.” I throw away the blankets, shove my feet into slippers, and for the first time in years, I head into the kitchen to make coffee while wearing Rick’s T-shirt. Rick doesn’t follow and I can hear the deep rumble of his voice talking on the phone.
I set the pot to percolating and turn to find Rick standing in front of me. “Was that call anything important?”
“Asher asking a question about one of the missions on the data drive. Nothing relevant right now.” He takes a step closer, and in nothing but low hung sweats, his abdominals rippling, his perfect tattooed body is a welcome distraction from my dream and the night ahead. My hand settles on his Green Beret tattoo.
His big hands capture my waist, and he closes the small space between us, our legs intimately melding together. “What are you thinking?”
“That the scar on you face, and your tattoos represent a life you lived without me and yet somehow I still know how you make coffee and you know what ice cream I like. It’s pretty amazing.”
“Yes,” he says softly. “Yes, it is.” And just that quickly he’s kissing me, and I’m against the counter with him pulling the shirt over my head and throwing it aside. His gaze skims my naked body and my nipples are instantly puckered, my thighs slick. There is no wall between us, no divide, none of the drama of last night. It’s just me and him, against the world.
My hands settle on his chest, over his thundering heart and it’s as if I turned a switch. His mouth is instantly on my mouth, his fingers wrapped around a chunk of my hair, the taste of him raw, masculine hunger. His touch is possessive, his hands traveling my body, and he’s suckling my nipple, the sensations rocking my body.
I moan and moments later, his sweats are lower, his hands beneath my naked backside, and his thick, hard cock, is pressing inside me, stretching me, filling me. A wildfire blazes between us, a sense of desperation, that consumes every touch, lick, and stroke. He’s thrusting inside me. I’m arching into him. I need him deeper. I need him harder. I need and need, and that need dominates every buck of my hips. It’s short and intense, too brisk but somehow not brisk enough. The spiral of my orgasm comes suddenly and intensely, and he shudders into release with me. We melt into each other, holding onto each other, panting and then sighing.
He eases me to the ground and helps me clean up and pull the shirt back on.
And then we just stare at each other, a collision of emotions between us that have everything to do with what we once lost and what we’ve found. And everything to do with how easily tonight could take that from us. So much so that if he tried to walk out of this room right now, I’d pull him back. But he doesn’t. He stays right by my side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Savage
Already dressed, I head downstairs to make coffee and make a call I dread. I dial my father. “Well isn’t this a surprise,” he answers dryly.
“I’m attending the party with you Saturday night. Put me on the list.”
“Why?”
“Because I am.”
“What do I get in return?”
“Nothing. Put me on the list.”
“Coffee. We haven’t had that coffee.”
“You come to New York and see me and we’ll have coffee.”
“You’re leaving again?”
“Soon.”
“You want to take Candace with you?”
“I am taking her with me.”
“You’re going to give Tag what he wants?”
And there it is. Him baiting me for information he can fed to Tag. “I’m going to get what I want.”
“I’ll meet you at the door,” he replies and hangs up.
A few minutes later, with a coffee cup in my hand, I stand in the closet and watch Candace pull on a black T-shirt and jeans, the way I used to stand in this exact spot and watch her dress. Not because I’m a pervert, though hell yeah, I’m all kind of hot for this woman, but because we always talked about the day ahead of us. And because right now, I’m trying to keep her mind off her father, I decide on a little chatter about my favorite places in New York City.
Or maybe it’s me who needs to keep my mind off her father because I have a lot of fucked up feelings and insights into the man that I don’t want to share. Starting with me not believing that he had me join that black ops operation with any intent of me living long enough to come back for his daughter. Won’t he be surprised when we bring him home tonight?
For now, I stick to our talk of food. “We can hobnob with all the rich and famous in the city at the hottest restaurants, baby, but I promise—I promise you—once you have a street hotdog, you will want another.”
She laces her red Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers and steps in front of me. “Street hotdogs are disgusting.”
I catch her hip and lean in close, inhaling the fresh floral scent of her silky brown hair. “Not in New York City.”
“Do you know what they put in hot dogs?”
“They who?”
“Everyone. It’s a universally disgusting recipe for indigestion.”
“Tell me.” I nuzzle her neck and murmur. “I think it might get me hot.”
She laughs and a voice lifts from the kitchen. “We’re here!”
At the sound of Adrian’s voice, Candace jerks back, her eyes wide. “They have to know who died in DC.” She ducks under my arm and dashes away.
I know Candace and there’s no stopping her when she’s on a mission. I pursue her, and without the pleasure of any real time to appreciate her perfectly perky ass, because she’s flying like a bullet looks for an enemy. She’s about to enter the kitchen when I catch her hand and join her. We step into the room together and the whole damn rodeo is here: Adrian, Smith, Adam, and Asher. Smith holds up bags that have my nose tingling. “We come bearing gifts,” Adam says, indicating trays in his hands. “Starbucks for all.”
“And,” Smith adds, lifting the bags in his hands. “Breakfast tacos and hell yes, you Texans know how to do breakfast.”
“You know it, man,” I say, rubbing my hands together. “There was a time when I’d have danced the nake
d mamba for a good Texas breakfast taco.”
“Oh fuck,” Adam says, holding up his hand. “Do not give me that visual before I eat.”
“Any news?” Candace asks, folding her arms in front of her, clearly not appreciating our fun as shit personalities.
Asher doesn’t look at me, but he’s not Fifty Shades of Grey but rather Fifty Shades of Avoidance—okay he might be Fifty Shades of Grey, but I don’t want to know about his kink. He pats his bag where it hangs at his hip. “I’m locked and loaded to work, but let’s eat first.” He motions toward the living room. “Let’s get cozy and chow down.”
Translation: he’s hungry as a bear and if he tells Candace what he knows, he won’t get to eat. That tatted up blood model wannabe pussy backs up my assumption by heading to the living room without waiting for her approval. The herd follows all with their heads tucked low.
Candace scowls at their backs and then at me. “What was that?”
“Food before words but not fucking. It’s a thing.”
“No,” she says. “No, it is not. Not today.” She launches herself toward the living room.
I catch her wrist. “Baby—”
She whirls on me, her green eyes lit like fire. “Rick Savage—”
“Oh fuck. That is never the start of something good.” I let her go.
She’s gone in a blink, charging toward the living room. I run a hand over my face and follow. By the time I’ve caught up, Asher and Adrian are on the couch. Smith and Adam are in the chairs on either side of them. All have taco wrappers open and in their hands. Damn, I wanna have a taco wrapper open and in my hand. Better yet, I want a taco in my mouth. Or Candace, but I’m pretty sure she’s not in the mood. At present, she’s standing in front of the fireplace and the center of the room. “Who died in Washington three weeks after my mother died?”
Asher sighs and sets his taco down. I close the space between me and Candace, and stand beside her eyeing Asher and waiting for the answer he clearly knows. His lips thin and his eyes meet mine. Yes, he knows the answer. And no, Candace is not going to like that answer, because it’s going to make her father look like shit. And as one of his soldiers, even at another time and place, me right along with him. But I’m not going to stop Asher from telling her the truth. I’m done running from it. Her father ordered assassinations. I was, I am, an assassin. I can’t hide from this. Candace can’t hide from it either, not if we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.
Savage Love Page 9
