Goes down easy(35)
But Book was already nodding. “We got ’em. We knew about the Honda. Had the plates. Two vehicles that close together, this time of night, on the Lafitte-LaRose Highway? We stopped them both.”
Jack breathed a painful sigh of relief. “Della told you about the car?”
“She did. Where’s Eckhardt?”
“I don’t know exactly.” He turned, pointed in the general direction. “That way, somewhere. I was just about to hunt down a raft and paddle out.”
“You look like shit, Montgomery,” Book said, clamping a hand down on Jack’s shoulder. “You go wait in the car. We’ll bring him in.”
“He’s got to be in bad shape after all this time.”
“Yeah. I’ve already called for an ambulance.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“For what?” The detective smiled. “Doing my job?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, shaking the other man’s hand. “For that.”
FINISHING UP everything he had to do took Book forever. He knew it was part of the job. He didn’t mind that it was part of the job. He just wanted the job finished because he wanted to get to Della.
Protocol be damned, but he’d done the bulk of his interview with Jack while the investigator was having his head stitched up in the emergency room. Eckhardt was in surgery—finger aside, he and his heart were in fairly good shape. He had a broken ankle pinned and wouldn’t be giving a statement anytime soon. Jack had given Book the number, and he’d called the wife in Texas. She was on her way.
The four kids who’d snatched the computer chief were in federal holding, making for one less task Book had to finish up tonight. Tomorrow would be a hell of a long day, one better tackled after food, sleep and making love to Della.
It was late afternoon by the time he dropped Jack at Sugar Blues to pick up his ride. Not that Jack had anywhere he needed to be—or anywhere Perry was going to let him go. The minute he climbed from the car, she was out the back door, running, screaming, launching herself into his arms.
Book walked right past the younger couple. He only had eyes for the woman standing framed in the open back door. She was so beautiful, his Della, and damn if that wasn’t exactly who she was. Exactly who she’d been since the night he’d first found her sitting on the courtyard fountain, drenched to her skin.
He stopped in front of her, looking up from the step that led into the kitchen. He was still an inch or two taller, but he liked seeing her at this level. They were almost face to face. And he didn’t think he’d ever seen her eyes so dark purple.
Or so teary and red. “Are you crying?”
She nodded. “Of course, I am. Aren’t you worth crying over?”
His heart fluttered, but he frowned anyway. “I wasn’t the one in danger.”
“You’re always in danger.” She reached for him, caressed his face with her fingers. “Every day that you go to work, you’re in danger.”
“I am who I am,” he said with a shrug, her hand cool and soft and the only comfort he needed.
“I know that.” She blinked. She smiled. “I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else. I wouldn’t love you if you were anyone else.”
“Then you can live with that?” Damn voice, cracking like that. “Knowing there’s always a chance when I leave that I might not come back?”
“I know it already.” Her smile broke the dam holding his emotions. “I’ve lived with it every day for two years.”
At the sound of doors slamming and an engine roaring to life, he glanced over his shoulder and watched Jack and Perry drive away. “He’s a good guy. I wasn’t so sure about him at first.”
“That’s because you saw too much of yourself in him.”
He turned back, curious. “Am I really that cocky?”
“You can be.”
“Hmm. I’ll see about making a change.”
“Don’t you dare.”
And if that didn’t just make his heart—and other things—swell. “You like me the way I am, huh?”
“I love you the way you are.”
The swelling went on. “Then is there any particular reason you haven’t invited me in?”
“None that I can think of. As long as you’re sure this is where you want to be.”
When she said it, the brimming tears fell from her eyes, and he caught himself unable to speak. His throat clogged. His chest burned. He swore he was about to have a heart attack. And so he took her hand, smoothed his thumb over her fingers and brought them to his lips.
The kiss stopped time. It was a moment he’d never forget. She smelled of soft flowers and jasmine tea, and it was the scent he’d thought of for so long as belonging to him. The same scent he’d learned meant home.
He kept her hand in his and captured her gaze. “There is no place in the world that I’d rather be. No person in the world who means to me what you do. Della Brazille, I have loved you forever, and more than anything I want for you to be my wife.”
“I’ll marry you tomorrow, Book Franklin. I’ll marry you today. If I could marry you this moment, it wouldn’t be soon enough for me,” she said, before she wrapped her arms around his neck and cried.
He held her, feeling his heart burst open in his chest, then finally smiled against her ear and asked, “So now do you think I can come in?”
She laughed, stepped away from the door and gave him the greatest privilege of all by letting him into her life.
17
“I WANT YOU to make love to me,” Perry said, closing her townhouse’s front door and leaning back against it. She’d spent all day waiting to get Jack alone.
Hours had passed between Book’s phone call relaying news of the double rescue and his car finally turning into the alley behind Sugar Blues. Jack had climbed out aching and exhausted, his visit to the hospital behind him, more with the NOPD and the FBI to come.
She knew he was as tired mentally as physically, and she too was running on empty. But right now, she had to be with him. Nothing else mattered but feeling as if they were one.
“You do, do you?” Jack said, flopping down onto her couch and slouching back like he owned the place, legs spread wide, arms propped on the top of the plush cushions, eyes closed and head back.
“Yes. I do.” She turned the lock. It caught with a loud click. “We’re together and we’re safe. We don’t have anywhere we need to be for hours. And I don’t want to do anything between now and then but enjoy you.”
He opened his one good eye, the other hidden with a bandage, and glanced over. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but where do we need to be hours from now?”
“When it’s time, I’ll tell you.” She pushed off the door, walked to where he was sitting, stood between his legs and held out her hand. “But right now all I care about is letting you know exactly how happy I am that you are alive and a part of my life.”
He wrapped his fingers around hers and brought them to his mouth for a soft, lingering kiss before tugging her down and tumbling her across his lap. “I’m pretty happy that I’m still around to be here.”
She didn’t ever want to relive those hours of waiting to find out if she’d see him again. Watching Della get out of Jack’s SUV had started a roller coaster of emotions. The up at finding her aunt unharmed. And then, the big lunge over the summit and down. Down, down, down.
She’d thought she would never stop falling at the news of Jack being gone, had wondered if she would ever be able to eat or breathe or sleep again. And then, realizing she’d hung up the phone on his call…if there had been another more panic-filled moment in her life, her memory had long since filed it out of reach.
Looking up now into his eyes, she realized how close she’d come to losing him—a realization that made her want to hold on to him forever, to hold on to him as hard as she could.
Without smothering him, of course. Or causing him to choke. Or making him feel as if she’d stolen his will and his freedom.
“Jack?”
“Perry?”
“Do you want to be here? With me?”
She asked the question softly, because suddenly she wasn’t sure of the answer, and she had to know. They’d been through an unbelievable experience. And in so many ways, they were nothing alike.
She still didn’t think he believed in Sugar, though Della was a different matter. Yet both were so much a part of Perry’s existence it was hard to accept that her reality wasn’t the same as Jack’s.
But she would. Just as she would accept that he wouldn’t talk to her about what had happened in his past. At least not yet. At least not for a while. And probably never about all of it.
He waited so long to answer, her fears grew to astronomical proportions. And she thought she would die when he finally came back with, “Do you want the truth?”
She nodded. She couldn’t deal with anything less.
“No,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“No?” she squeaked out. Oh, no. This was not what she wanted to happen. Not what she wanted to hear. She started to sit up.
He pushed her back down, shook his head. “No. This couch is way too small for the sort of night you’re talking about. It’s the bedroom, or you can forget it.”