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“Always,” she sobbed.
Always, and forever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ace drove her to the airstrip.
Hank and the plane were already there, engines idling. Ace brought the truck to a skidding halt and turned toward her.
“The boys want me to tell you how much—how much we liked havin’ you here,” he said. “Not jes’ the cookin’, though that was great. We liked havin’ you around, Ms. Lissa. You was—you made things better. Happier, especially for the boss.”
Lissa’s throat constricted. The last thing she wanted to do was break down. Poor Ace would be devastated.
“Thank you,” she said. “You tell them that I loved being here. You’re a fine bunch of men.”
“I hope you’ll be back, ma’am. We all hope it.”
She nodded. “I hope so, too.”
Ace stepped down from the truck. So did Lissa. She reached for her suitcase, but he kept a grip on the handle.
“Ma’am?”
“Hurry up,” Hank yelled. “I don’t know how much time we have before some jackal of a reporter finds this place.”
Lissa looked at Ace. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I have to—”
“What you did for the boss—for Nick—was wonderful. He’s a good man with a good heart. An’ you found that heart inside him jes’ when we all feared he’d forever lost it. We jes’—we all want you to know that.”
Tears rose in Lissa’s eyes. She leaned forward, hugged Ace, kissed his grizzled cheek. Then she grabbed her suitcase from him and ran blindly for the plane.
Hank took her luggage and helped her on board.
“Sorry to rush you,” he said, “but the story about Nick is exploding. He wants you kept out of this. He says if you want me to fly you someplace other than LAX—”
“No. No, LAX is fine.”
It wasn’t fine because Nick wouldn’t be there, Lissa thought as she buckled her seat belt, but where else could she go? El Sueño? Not there. Maybe, if she was lucky, nothing about this would get that far.
She’d go back to her L.A. apartment and wait to hear from Nick.
He’d phone her as soon as he got away from the people Ace had so accurately described as jackals.
* * *
Except, he didn’t.
Her phone never rang during the flight and when she checked for missed calls or messages or texts, there were none.
She understood.
Nick was besieged; he had no time for anything except dealing with the mob camped out on the Triple G. He’d call when he could, and that might take a while.
The question was, how long?
There was still nothing from him when the plane landed, nothing as she hurried from the terminal. She queued up for a taxi and while she waited, she took out her phone again and went online. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? There might not be anything there about him, not yet, but still—
Lissa gasped in shock.
