Chapter 18
One World Nation
The doorbell rings, surprising me.
“Who is that?”
“That would be Wes,” Rick answers me as he makes his way to the front door. Everything about his manner speaks of a casual, easygoing man, but there’s a way he reaches for the gun tucked into the back of his jeans that says otherwise. There is so much more to this man than I ever knew. It makes him dangerous. Dangerous to me, to my heart, and to my panties.
Immediately after declaring I was not going home, Rick steered me—like a border collie would his flock of sheep—up the stairs and toward his bedroom, making me on edge. I might not know Rick well, but even I was pretty sure he thought finding our daughter was more important that fucking around, literally.
“Relax,” he whispered gruffly in my ear. “If I was intending to fuck you right now, you’d know it.”
“You can stop talking any time now,” I replied as he started opening drawers and pulling an array of clothes out.
“Why?” he asked as he shucked his suit coat from his body, dropping it on a chair in the corner of his room before reaching for the knot of his tie, loosening it to pull it over his head. “This is so much fun.”
I watched with rapt attention, my mouth going dry as he neatly plucked at the row of buttons down the front of his dress shirt one by one. I should be used to seeing his strong shoulders and muscular arms by now. I shouldn’t have trouble schooling my thoughts at the sight of his chiseled abs, and yet I do. And by the knowing look on his stupidly handsome face, Rick knows it too.
He takes the gun from the back of his slacks and places it within reach on top of the tall five-drawer dresser where he was pulling clothes from. It was a stark reminder that our lives were not all fun and games right now. How he could find it in him to joke or to flirt at a time like this, I don’t think I will ever understand.
“You have to find light moments in the dark or else you’ll break, Cara,” he told me with a heavy sigh. “I’m afraid that when you finally break, it’ll be for good, and I won’t ever be able to get you back.”
“I don’t need to find light in the dark. I need to find my daughter.”
“As do I,” he warned me, his voice no longer friendly as he stripped off his slacks and yanked a worn pair of Levi’s up his legs, buttoning the fly as quickly as possible. “Don’t you dare accuse me of not trying.”
“I’m not,” I said quickly as he stabbed his arms through a light gray T-shirt that fit him like a second skin and pulled it down over his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing. But… it feels wrong to joke, to flirt, to—”
“Fuck?” he filled in for me.
“Yes,” I grumble.
“In my line of work, you learn that life is short and can be taken from you in a split second,” he said, snapping his fingers.
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true, honey,” he said, stepping into me and pulling me into his arms. He brushed the hair back from my face but held my head so I had to look him in the eyes. “I’m serious, and I’m also trying to be gentle with you. But you need to learn to take life as it comes. You can’t let that darkness and the fear keep you from living, because it’s the only life you’ll ever get.”
“I’m not—” I started to say, but he silenced me with a kiss. It wasn’t passionate, and he didn’t get carried away. It was just a press of his lips against mine to stop the flow of words from my mouth.
“You are,” he said before pressing his lips to mine again then taking them away all too soon. “I lived my life without you for nine years, and honey, I’m not going to do it again. And in those nine years, I’ve not only seen so much darkness, but I lived it, I thrived in it, and I absorbed it into my soul. So now that I’ve had a taste of your sweetness and your fire and your light again, I know how much I need it like I need my next breath. So I’m going to find reasons to rile you up, and I’m going to make up excuses to kiss you, and I’m not going to need one excuse to fuck you, because I need you like I need air. But mark my words—I am going to find our daughter, and I need you to trust me to do that too.”
“Okay,” I whispered, because I didn’t know what else to say.
He let go of me to reach back over to the dresser, where he grabbed one of his T-shirts, a pair of navy-blue sweats that readNAVYup the leg in yellow block letters, and a pair of thick, wooly socks. He stacked them in a bundle and handed them to me with a kiss to my temple.
“Get comfortable and meet me downstairs,” he said before checking the magazine in the gun and then tucking it into the back of his jeans, sauntering out of the room like he hadn’t just tipped my entire universe on its head.
So I quickly stripped off my summer dress and pulled on his clothes, taking a moment to sniff them, because they smelled like him, and I had almost let myself forget just how much I missed his scent. How much I missed the very man himself.
And then I walked downstairs to find out what else he had in store for me. I was just about to open my mouth to ask him, when the doorbell rang.
“Who is that?”
“That would be Wes,” Rick answers me. He looks through the window to the left of the door before pulling it open with a huge smile on his face. “Good to see you, brother.”
“It’s been too long,” the man, just as giant as Rick, says when he makes his way into the house, and I recognize him instantly. Wes O’Connell hasn’t changed much. He still has dark hair and hazel eyes, a lot like Rick, but where Wes has angular, classically handsome features, Rick looks rougher, darker, hotter. Wes is good-looking, but Rick inspires my fantasies. He has and probably always will.
