Her 24-Hour Protector(72)
“What…do you mean?”
“I can see it, in my mind. So real. Small—tiny in fact—nothing like The Tears of Quetzal. But it’s pure, Jenna. A tiny faultless blue-white. As clean and real and enduring as I want things to be for us. And when I do find that little stone, I…” His voice caught. “I want you to wear it.”
She stared up at him, eyes beginning to mist in the darkness.
“Will you, Jenna? Just try it on for size while you see if you want to be my wife?”
He felt a small tremor shudder through her body. Tears began streaming down her face again. “Lex—”
Worry wedged into his heart.
“Only while we try, Jenna. Promise me—”
“Lex,” she whispered. “You’re pumped on adrenaline, anger…maybe…maybe this should wait until—”
“I don’t need to wait.”
“It’s only been four days, how…how can you possibly be sure?”
“I’m as sure, Jenna, as I was when that clock struck midnight in the great Ruby Room, that I wanted nothing else but my casino princess. But if you’re not ready—” he hesitated, unsure of what the hell he’d do if she said no.
“Oh, God, no I am ready, Lex. I’ve been waiting for you all my life. I…I just didn’t know it. I just couldn’t believe that…you…that you would want me.”
“Is that a yes?”
She leaned up on tiptoe, met his lips with hers. “That, Agent Duncan, would be a yes.”
He kissed her, hard and fast and desperate in the thick desert night, and Jenna thought her heart would burst with sheer love. He’d freed her, come riding into her rarefied life like a knight in shining armor, and he’d shown her how to be real.
How to be true to the self she’d so long ago buried inside.
He’d given her herself.
Himself.
And the promise that came with a small true blue diamond—a future, together.
“Do you think it’s true, Lex?” she whispered, lips burning from the raw possessive passion in his kiss.
“What?”
“The legend…the curse of The Tears of the Quetzal.”
Lex laughed, feeling a strange tingling chill even as he did, recalling the words of the skydiver. “It’s Vegas,” he said softly. “Anything can happen here.”
Even magic.
And he kissed her again under the desert stars, the quietly strobing lights of police vehicles nearby, the glow of a burning building.
And he’d never felt more centered. More whole. More at home, than with this woman in his arms. He’d found family. His own.
Epilogue
With Lex and Jenna off celebrating their engagement on a small and isolated Caribbean island with no electricity, no glitz, no glam—simple and real like they’d said they wanted it, Rita Perez had been asked to temporarily take over as lead agent on the Candace Rothchild homicide case.
Harold Rothchild’s lawyers had cut a deal with the feds, handing over the notes he’d kept hidden from police, along with an earth-shattering old video of Frank Epstein brokering a mob deal back in the 1980s—evidence that would ultimately help the FBI dismantle the entire Epstein empire.
In turn, Rothchild’s lawyers were seeking immunity for their client on other possible charges. It looked like Rothchild would walk free.
People with money got away with murder, thought Rita as she hung up her dishcloth, and put the last of her dinner dishes away. It also turned out that Rothchild’s little trophy wife, Rebecca Lynn, while acting suspiciously, had just been gunning for Jenna, insanely jealous of Harold’s affection for his youngest daughter.
Mercedes Epstein, on the other hand, was in the hospital, the prognosis not good. But she had confessed to the murder of Tony Ciccone. And Frank Epstein, in trying to save his own neck, had given up everything he had on the dead Roman Markowitz. The 30-year-old cold case—Sara Duncan’s homicide—was thus finally solved.
Epstein had also offered up the names of two contract killers who’d handled several jobs for Markowitz—including the murder of Marion Robb, aka Lucky Lady.
Rita flipped off the kitchen light, her head beginning to hurt again. Dinner with her niece Marisa and her man Patrick Moore had been wonderful, and Rita was real happy for Marisa, but she was worn out and needed sleep.
But before going to bed, she unlocked her gun safe and removed a small box. She just needed to see the contents just one more time.
Pulse quickening, Rita opened the box…and an ice-cold nausea swept into her chest.
The diamond was gone!
Rita stared at the empty box, her heart jackhammering, sweat forming over her body. She should never have brought The Tears of the Quetzal home. She couldn’t even articulate why she’d done it, but she had.