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Well, maybe not quite as much.
One of the officers orders him to drop his weapon and get down on the ground as the rest of the cops move in en masse with weapons trained on him, ready to fire. I watch in astonishment and relief as they take him down and handcuff him.
Only Nick seems less than surprised to see the police reinforcements.
“You knew,” I say as he wraps me in his arms and holds me close. “You arranged this?”
“I had a little help.” He nods toward the walkway, where Andrew Beckham is striding toward us.
The tall, darkly handsome lawyer offers me a nod as he approaches us. “Everybody okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine,” Nick replies. “Thanks for the assist on short notice.”
“What are friends for?” Beck shrugs, but his expression is full of relief. “This whole thing almost went sideways when Coyle pulled out that gun.”
Nick grunts. “It was a surprise to me too. But now he’s got a weapons charge on top of all the rest of them.” He reaches into the front pocket of his pants and withdraws his phone. He hands it to Beck. “I trust the recording will give you everything you and the police need.”
Beck nods. “Consider it done.”
Now that the business of dealing with Rodney is handed over to his attorney and the police, Nick turns the full power of his attention onto me. As strong and confident and formidable as he is, I feel the faint tremor in his hands as he cups my face in his palms and draws me to him for a kiss.
Wordlessly, he gathers me against him, holding me tight for one long, desperately intimate moment.
“It’s over now, baby,” he murmurs softly into my hair. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 22
We don’t speak during the short drive back to the penthouse. Neither of us seems to have the words or the breath to make them.
Nick holds my hand as he navigates the BMW down to the garage below the Park Place building. He only lets go long enough to meet me at the passenger door and help me out of the car, then his fingers find mine again, linking us together as if he understands how deeply I crave our connection right now.
Maybe he needs it too.
We could have lost hold of each other any number of ways in the time we’ve been together, but none more permanent than at the killing end of Rodney’s gun.
The shock of what we’ve just been through doesn’t fully settle on me until we’ve entered the apartment. Then the images swarm in front of me all over again. The terror and the pain. The anguishing, very real possibility that my past sins could have cost Nick his life today.
The weight of that realization makes my legs go weak beneath me. I shudder, my steps faltering. But Nick’s strong hands don’t let me fall.
“Hey,” he says, drawing my shivering body against him. “Jesus, you’re freezing cold, Avery.”
“No.” I shake my head weakly. “I’m afraid, Nick. God, I’ve never been so terrified in my life. You might have been killed today. Because of me. I might have lost you.”
“I’m right here, baby.” He pulls me away from him slightly, his fathomless blue eyes intense, solemn. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Nick.” My voice quivers, but there’s no helping it. My heart is too raw. The fear inside me is still too real, too consuming. My guilt for what I put him through today is even more crippling.
“Come with me,” he says, brushing a kiss over my trembling lips.
Threading his fingers through mine again, he brings me into the spacious master bathroom, parking me on the edge of the tub as he walks over and starts the shower. With the water hissing behind him and silvery clouds of steam beginning to roil up toward the vaulted ceiling, he walks back and settles into a crouch before me.
“Nick, you don’t have to take care of me,” I murmur as he slips my feet out of my flats and sets the shoes aside.
He ignores my protests, standing up to lift my shirt off me then unzipping my jeans and pushing the dark denim off my hips along with my panties. My bra comes off last, and as he removes the lacy cups, he pauses to caress me in his warm hands. Hands that move with an artist’s grace over the creamy swells of my breasts and the taut pink buds that crown them.
His dark head lowers, and as his mouth closes over one nipple, then the other, I moan with the pure pleasure of it. As wrung out as I am from the trauma of everything that’s happened to us today, Nick is a force of strength and calm.
He is my rock, my anchor . . . and my wings.
