by Peggy Jaeger
Rick wrapped a hand around one of her arms and squeezed.
“If it really was his son who killed Marty and attacked the judge, even Castle, that means I’m probably next since the first time failed.”
“It makes the most sense.” God, he’d do anything to rid her of the fear he felt bounding beneath his grasp.
Abby swallowed, her eyes glazing over.
“But he’s not getting close to you, Abby.” He pulled her into his chest and wrapped both his arms around her, the briefcase still in his hand. “Not anywhere close to you.” He kissed her temple. “Not while I’m around.” Not ever, he added to himself. “I’m sticking to you. Every minute. Every day. Until this entire mess is over.”
She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. After a moment, her shaking abated, and she moved out of his embrace.
“I know he won’t,” she said. “I know down to my soul, Rick, that you’ll keep me safe.”
“I’ll protect you with my life, Abby. That’s a promise. ”
With a nod, she started down the steps.
****
“I don’t know, El. I’m pretty swamped with getting prepped for court cases right now,” Abby told her sister. She had the phone braced on the kitchen counter, the speaker engaged, and a pot of stew meat browning on the stove. While she diced carrots and baby potatoes, Rick was seated at the counter, typing away on his laptop, and, she knew, listening to every word.
Two days had come and gone since she finally accepted the danger she was in. With the Edwards men in the wind and Genocardi still on the loose, Abby was doing her best to get through each day without succumbing to the stress. Only when she was behind the locked doors of her apartment with Moonlight sauntering between her legs and Rick looming about was she able to relax.
“Come on, sis,” Ellie said. “We haven’t been out in ages, and I’ve finally got an evening off. I don’t want to spend it on my couch trolling through Netflix and eating junk food all alone. That’s pathetic.” Abby refrained from telling her it sounded like the perfect evening at home to her. Especially if her current houseguest was snuggled next to her on the couch. “I want to go out, with you, and have some fun. You remember fun, don’t you? It was that thing you use to have before you turned thirty and turned into a fuddy-duddy.”
“I’m not a fuddy-duddy.” When Rick sniggered behind her, she turned to him and stuck out her tongue. “I’m just busy.”
“So am I, but I still make time to enjoy myself. Come on. One drink.”
“Eleanor Louisa, I know you better than that.”
“Okay, maybe more than one drink. And maybe even a dance. Or two. I promise I’ll have you home before you turn into a pumpkin. What do you say?”
She flicked her gaze to Rick, the plea in her eyes. He shrugged and mouthed up to you.
The rat. She’d wanted him to say she couldn’t go, that the danger was too much, and she should stay home for the duration. She truthfully wanted him to forbid her from going anywhere, and wasn’t that a kick in the keister? Abigail Laine, queen of independent single girls everywhere, actually wanted this man to tell her what to do. When the heck had that happened?
And more importantly why wasn’t she angry about it?
“All right.” Abby sighed. “One drink. One dance, maybe. But then I’m leaving. I’m not staying out all night with you, barhopping. I’m not old, but I am smart, and I don’t want my clients to think I’m unreliable if I show up the next day with railroad tracks in my eyes, looking like death warmed over. Deal?”
Eleanor laughed. “You’ll never look like death warmed over. You’re too gorgeous. And yes. Deal. I’ll see you at Grayson’s about eight thirty.”
“See you then.” Abby disconnected and sighed.
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?” Rick came around the counter and took the knife from her hand.
“Really? You wanted me to say, ‘Sorry, El, but I’ve got a father-and-son killing team gunning for me and a knife-wielding husband of a client who’d probably like to slice me from stem to stern, so I think I’ll pass on the girl’s night out for now?’ You honestly expected me to worry her like that?”
Rich shook his head. “No. You’d never tell any of your sisters—or anyone else connected to you—you were in any kind of trouble. I know that for a fact.”
“So what did you expect me to tell her?”
Rick shrugged. “I think if you’d pleaded the I’m-still-tired-from-being-sick card, she would have given up.”
“Or she would have told me some cockamamie medical reason I should go out to build up my immune system or something.”
She scraped the potatoes into another pot and scooped in the browned meat.
“Why did you say it was up to me whether we go or not?” she asked.
“It’s not my call. She’s your sister.”
“I’m calling bullshit on that, Bannerman.”
“Why?”
“You’ve ruled every move in my life for the past week. I haven’t gone anywhere without you glued to me. I haven’t made a phone call you didn’t listen to that wasn’t a confidential client conversation. You sleep in my bed every night and go before me through every door, and you’ve never once asked me if any of that was okay with me. You’ve just gone ahead and done it. Why the sudden change?”
Rick placed the knife down on the counter, then fisted his hands on top of it. It was her first clue he was furious. The second was when he lifted his gaze to nail her with a glare as angry as it was panty-dropping.
“And now you’re mad at me because I said all that.”
“I’m not mad at you,” he said instantly. “Everything I’ve done has a reason. To keep you safe. I won’t apologize for it.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
He took a breath, then picked up the knife again. “I hate having my hands fucking tied and not being able to do anything constructive.” He cut through a carrot with a little more force than was necessary.
Her annoyance flew as sympathy drenched through her. Rick Bannerman wasn’t the type of man who sat around and waited for something to happen, and that’s what he’d been forced to do for the past few days. She understood his frustration with being on the sidelines of both investigations. He’d like nothing more than to be on the hunt, using his exemplary skills to find Edwards senior and son. He’d vowed to protect her, though, with his life, and she knew the words were true the moment he put a period on the end of the sentence. He wouldn’t leave her side, even if forced to. Rick was the type of man for whom a promise given was a promise to be kept. She loved him all the more for it.
Abby’s body stilled.
Loved him.
Did she? Really? Her refusal to ever give herself to any man who could potentially hurt her and destroy that love, as her father had, had protected her for most of her life.
How had she let Rick slip through all her walls and defenses?
Okay, well, that was a stupid question. He hadn’t slipped through; he’d barreled through, never giving her a chance, a moment, to resist him.
“Want me to toss these in the pot?” he asked, pointing the knife at the carrots.
Instead of answering him, Abby reached over, took the knife and gently placed it on the counter.
Confusion swam in his eyes. “Abby?”
She spread her palms across his cheeks. “You are doing something.” Her eyes grazed over his face, the face she’d gotten used to seeing stare back at her from her pillow every morning. “And it’s very constructive. You’re protecting me from a very real threat, and I just now realized I haven’t even thanked you.”
Rick cupped his hands over hers. “You don’t need to thank me, Abby. It’s my j—”
“No. Don’t tell me it’s your job, Rick, because we both know you’ve gone way above and beyond any scope of your job description.” She trailed her hands down to his shoulders and rested them there. “You’ve changed your life to be close to me, to make sure I’m safe,
and I’ve been nothing but mulish and irritable about it.”
One corner of his mouth twitched while he snaked his hands around her waist and pulled her in closer. “In your defense,” he said, “you were sick for a few days. And I can’t fault you for being irritable when you’ve got people who potentially want to harm you walking around out there.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
Abby leaned into him and laid her head down on his chest. “I notice you didn’t question the mulish description.”
The deep, soothing rumble in his chest comforted her more than she could ever have imagined. “Mulishness is part of your charm,” he said. He placed his chin on top of her head. “It’s what makes you a good lawyer.”
“There’s a left-handed compliment in there, I think.”
They stood for a few moments, holding one another.
“I want this all to be over,” Abby said, pulling back and staring up at him.
“Hopefully, it will be. Soon.” He kissed the tip of her nose again. “Then I’ll be out of your hair, and your life will go back to normal.”
Is that what she wanted? Him gone and she alone again?
It was a question the lawyer in Abby hated asking, because she didn’t know the answer.
Chapter Seventeen
“Isn’t this place great?” Ellie asked.
“It’s awfully loud,” Abby answered.
Ellie stared at her for a beat, then rolled her eyes and laughed. “What part of being a fuddy-duddy were you arguing about with me earlier?”
Abby shook her head and snaked a glance over her shoulder at Rick. The quick swipe of his hand over his mouth made her back stiffen.
“Come on. Let’s grab a table.” Ellie gripped her sister’s hand and tugged her though the crowd of drunk-or-getting-there twenty and thirty-somethings who were packed into the West Side’s trendiest new nightclub. Abby let herself be yanked along, shouting multiple “excuse us’s” along the way as she bumped into people. With her hand in Ellie’s, she turned to make sure Rick was still with them. He towered above most of the patrons, and his bulk made it hard for anyone to stand in his way as he cut a swath behind them.
By some miracle, Ellie found an empty table close to the dance floor.
“Yay. Now we have a base of operations,” she said, loud enough to be heard above the techno music pumping around them. “I think they have table service here.” She turned from side to side, spotted a waitress, and waved.
“ ’Can I get’cha?” the girl asked.
“Virgin sex-on-the-beach for me,” Ellie said. “Abs?”
“Pomegranate cosmo, extra sweet.”
When the girl’s eyes lit on Rick and widened with appreciation and interest, Abby almost growled. Ellie’s head whipped around to face her, and that’s when Abby realized she hadn’t almost growled but actually done it. Loud enough, apparently, to be heard.
“Water.” Rick smiled at the enamored waitress.
“You want some lemon with that, hon?” she asked, bending down to give him a better view of her more-out-of-her-blouse-than-in-it breasts.
“I’m good.”
“I’ll say you are.”
Rick smiled when Abby said, “About our drinks?” loudly to the girl.
With a glaring side eye at Abby, she left them.
Eleanor stared at her sister.
“What?”
Ellie tilted her head and slid a side glance at Rick before coming back to her. When she widened her eyes in a question, Abby’s narrowed.
“Stop,” she told her little sister. “Just…stop.”
When Rick and Abby had arrived at the club to meet Ellie, the first thing the intern had done after hugging her sister and telling her she looked dynamite in her short, silver dress was cock her head toward Rick and ask, “Funny how you seem to be everywhere Abby is lately. First taking care of her when she was sick. Then at the hospital when Kandy delivered. Now, here.”
Rick flicked a glance at Abby, then shrugged.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Come on.” Abby took her sister’s arm and led her up to the bouncer. She pulled her ID out of her purse, paid the entrance fee for the three of them, and went through the door the bouncer held open.
Again, the same quizzical look Ellie had slanted them with at the door played across her face now. If Abby was considered dogged, her youngest sister was ten times more relentless when it came to information gathering. It was a trait that served her well as an emergency room physician, but not as a sister.
“Why did you order a virgin cocktail? You said you wanted to cut loose because you’re off duty tonight.”
“The last couple o’ times I drank alcohol it had a weird antagonistic effect on me.”
“What? It made you want to fight with somebody?” Abby asked.
Ellie laughed. “Antagonistic is a medical term meaning it had the opposite effect to making me sleepy. I was wired for hours, so I figured since I’d actually like to sleep tonight, no booze would be better in the long run.”
“Our family has such weird things happen to it. No one’s normal. Come on,” Abby said, rising and pulling Ellie with her. “You said you wanted to dance. Let’s go before the drinks come.”
Since the dance floor was a mere five feet from their table, Abby knew Rick would be able to watch over her.
The thunderous beat of the music combined with the roar of the crowd made talk impossible, as Abby’d hoped.
After a few seconds, the beat invaded her body and she closed her eyes and let the music consume her. She didn’t think about the possibility a father-son killing team could be after her. She forgot all about Joseph Genocardi. She was even able to let the sadness of Marty’s death drift away for a few minutes. On her own little two-by-two space of dance floor, she let all her nerves and anxieties simply fade away while she swayed, jumped, and gyrated to her heart’s content.
“Hey,” Ellie shouted close to her ear. Abby opened her eyes. “Our lusty busty waitress just brought our drinks.”
Abby’s nostrils flared at the sight of their server bending low again to Rick, trying to whisper something in his ear. With her blood pounding in her ears, the dance forgotten, she stormed from the floor back to the table. With a none-too-subtle hip check, she maneuvered herself between them, forcing the waitress to stand tall so her chest wasn’t planted in Rick’s face.
“Thanks for bringing our drinks so quickly,” Abby said, a completely insincere smile across her face. “We’ll let you know when we need a refill.”
Since Abby wasn’t going to budge an inch until the server moved away, she planted a hand on her hip and inched closer to a seated Rick. The waitress scowled at her, then flipped her blue-tipped hair over her shoulder and went off to another table.
Abby slid into her seat.
“Wow,” Ellie said after taking a giant chug of her drink. “I’ve never seen you do that before.”
“What? Shoot down a rude waitress?”
“No.” Ellie shook her head and grinned. “Mark your territory.”
Rick laughed in the middle of sipping his water, choked, and sputtered liquid down his chin.
The tips of Abby’s ears burned, the heat shooting down her throat and neck. Her sister’s description, crude though it was, had been exactly Abby’s intention. The waitress’s outright ballsy flirtatiousness had sent a quick spark of jealousy through her. She wanted the woman to know Rick wasn’t up for grabs. He was taken.
By her.
Where in the name of all that was holy had that idea come from? Rick wasn’t any more hers than she was his, and boy, did that burn.
Rick caught her eye across the table, his heartthrob grin gracing his face. The fact she wanted to belong to him was equal parts maddening and thrilling.
“This hits the spot.” Ellie licked her lips after taking a long draught of her drink, closed her eyes, and smiled.
“Even without alcohol?” Abby asked.
“Shush. I’m imagini
ng it’s filled with vodka and peach schnapps.”
“Tough week?” Rick asked.
“They’re all tough these days.” Her smile dropped, and a wave of sadness drifted over her face. She turned her attention back to her sister. “Which is why I needed a night away from it, so even though I know you’re busy, thanks for coming, sis.” She reached over and squeezed Abby’s arm. Abby laid her hand over her sister’s and squeezed back.
“Now, really.” Ellie shot her gaze back to Rick. “What’s going on with the two of you? You never answered me.”
Abby tossed Rick a silent plea to keep quiet about her situation. Eleanor had enough to occupy her mind with work and studying for her emergency room board exams. She didn’t need the added worry her sister was in danger contributing to that stress.
The music changed to something slower. The pounding thrum of the beat pulsed inside Abby’s chest, wild and untamed. The dance floor heaved with couples, touching, grabbing, and swinging themselves about without any regard to the world around them. Abby wanted to get up and dance again, experience that freedom and mindlessness. Just as the thought popped into her head to pull her sister back up, Rick stood and offered her his hand.
“Excuse us, El, but I owe your sister a dance,” he said. With one side of his mouth tilting upward and his head cocked, his eyes smiled down at her.
“You’re about four years late,” Abby replied.
“It’s infuriating the way neither of you answers a question.” Ellie lifted her glass again. Before drinking, she bumped her sister’s shoulder and said, “Go on, Abs. Dance with the man.”
Abby slipped her hand in his and let him guide her to another tiny spot. He twined one hand around her waist, and effortlessly spun her out, then in, slamming her into his chest on the pull-back. His heart pounded under the hand she laid across his pecs. Their bodies swayed against one another from nipples to knees as they moved side to side to the beat.
Rick’s crooked smile played across his face.
“What’s with the look?” she asked.
“If I’d known how good it felt holding you like this, I would never have said no to that dance all those years ago.”
He pulled her in closer, allowing his knees to snake between hers. The loud music surrounding them floated away to a mere undertone as they continued to move, their eyes on each other’s faces.
