Totally, Sweetly, Irrevocably(60)

Jenny shook her head. “All they’d tell me was that the owner and his wife were at a fund-raiser tonight but wouldn’t say where.”

“That’s okay. I think I know where they are. Hang on.”

Jenny’s whoop of excitement changed to a terrified shriek when Rick gripped the wheel and zoomed across two lanes of traffic to make an illegal U-turn.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting Gina.”

Jenny clutched the oh shit bar and hung on for dear life. “Okay, while I’m all down for that, shouldn’t we be going to get her at a nice, leisurely, legal pace?”

Instead of slowing down, Rick applied his foot to the gas pedal and shot ahead of the slow-moving minivan in front of him.

“No time for that. I’m not even sure how long she’ll be there, and it sounded like she was leaving straight from the party. Try calling her again.”

Jenny looked at him like he was crazy, amusement and fear flashing across her face in equal parts. He knew how she felt. On the one hand, he’d never been so exhilarated. He was going to go get the woman he loved. And nothing was going to get in his way or slow him down. On the other hand, he was going a good fifteen miles over the speed limit and was about to break a few more traffic laws.

And he really didn’t give a damn.

“Rick!” Jenny pointed out the window at the light, which had turned a lovely shade of yellow.

He blew through it. He knew he should slow down. But the urge to get to Gina burned through him too fiercely to take it slow now.

“Are you crazy?” Jenny screamed.

“Did you call?”

His sister stared at him like he’d lost his mind. He probably had. He’d worry about it later.

“She’s not answering. Don’t you have one of those red light thingies you can slap on the roof?”

“I wish. Then maybe people would get out of my way!” he shouted at the car in front of him before he zoomed around it.

Finally, after a near miss with a taco cart, two taxis, an SUV, and a little old lady walking her dog, they reached the W. Jenny stumbled out of the car.

“You’re insane.”

Rick laughed. “Guilty.”

“Go get her,” she said, grinning at him for all she was worth.

Rick was already running inside. The man at the front desk started shouting for him to stop the moment he opened the doors. Rick didn’t slow down but did reach into his pocket to pull out his badge.

Apparently running into a building like a madman and reaching into your pocket was frowned upon. He only got three more feet before a security guard came out of nowhere and clotheslined him.

Rick landed flat on his back, groaning at the impact. He blinked up at the two very large security guards who were screaming at him to put his hands up while brandishing locked and loaded Tasers.

Well, shit.

He slowly raised his arms and tried to calmly, but forcefully, get their attention.

“Gentlemen!” he finally shouted at the top of his lungs.

They stopped yelling briefly enough for him to yell, “I’m a cop!”

They both frowned at him, but lowered their Tasers a fraction of an inch.

“I’m going to reach into my pocket to get my badge, okay?”

He waited for them to nod before he slowly withdrew his badge and handed it up.

One of the guards took it and went to call it in. The other, thankfully, let him up. Which began a five-minute process of trying to explain that he had a very good reason for running into their building like his pants were on fire and no, they did not include anything terroristic, sadistic, or otherwise nefarious. He might have had one guard almost convinced, but the other guy was definitely trigger-happy.

Jenny finally managed to push through the crowd that had formed to watch the fiasco. It took her all of two seconds to size up the situation and then, bless her meddling little heart, she dropped to the floor in a dead faint, taking several people with her for good measure.

The moment the guards’ attention turned to her, Rick bolted, sprinting past them and sliding into the elevator before they had a chance to follow. Jenny cracked an eye open and gave him a wink as the doors closed.

Rick stopped a few floors up, to give him a bit of a head start. The goons downstairs had definitely called for reinforcements, though hopefully they’d realize he was, indeed, a cop… Shit! He’d left his badge with them. He hadn’t let that out of his sight since the day he’d gotten it. He’d worry about it later. At the moment, he had a crazy woman to keep from flying out of his life.

The elevator doors opened and he peeked his head out. Coast was clear. He booked it to the stairs and ran back down to where the banquet rooms were located. Rick sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the staff who’d stuck the big signs outside each room indicating what was being held inside. He ran past the Friedmans’ Bar Mitzvah and the Chesters’ 50th Anniversary party and barreled this way through the doors of the Schneider Foundation fund-raiser.