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“Then go,” she commanded.
“No,” he said softly. He just...refused. Come what may, he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to go to the hospital with her, laugh with her while she ate Jello. Bring her silly crap from the gift shop. Take her home to her apartment when she felt better.
But she was right. If he stuck around, he needed to be careful. With his record, he was just too damn convenient of a scapegoat for Knoll. Well, careful he could do. He was excellent at careful.
Bottom line? There was no way he was leaving her.
He heard the cops pounding on the door downstairs, heard frantic partygoers mention the gunshots upstairs. He thought quickly, retracing his every movement. “I didn’t touch anything in this room except you, and I didn’t leave prints on the door handle. Knoll isn’t going to make any sort of statement until he’s had medical treatment and consulted a lawyer—and I’ll be out of plain sight by then.”
But right now, he kissed her again. “Adam,” she whispered, her eyes misting with pain. “Are you sure?”
Oh yeah, he was sure. “Relax, sweetheart. I’m just a concerned partygoer who found you in this condition and insisted on riding with you in the ambulance.”
She closed her eyes, and he couldn’t tell if she was still with him or not. He leaned over and put his lips to her ear. “I love you, Jess.”
Chapter Sixteen
Two months later.
Jess paced on the back porch of the rented cottage. The sunset view of the Wisconsin lake was as stunning as ever, but right now she couldn’t even see the pink and orange sky. Adam would be arriving any minute.
She should be over these butterflies, shouldn’t she? After all, they’d spent most of June and July practically living together in a place smaller than her Chicago apartment. Shouldn’t she be, oh, used to him by now? Enough so that she didn’t moon like a lovesick teenager when he went away for a few days?
Yes, she should. But apparently her heart and body were unaware of how mature adult women were supposed to grow accustomed to the men in their lives. He’d been gone for three days and she felt like she hadn’t seen him in three months.
The irony was that she’d been the one to force him to go visit Tony in prison. She’d insisted and pestered and pummeled him with logic. “He gets out in September. It’s best to know now if he actually resents you or if he’ll want a relationship.”
Adam finally gave in with a long-suffering, dramatic sigh, but it didn’t hide the fear in his eyes. She’d grabbed his hand and winked. “I’ll bet you five bucks he cries like a baby the minute he sees you. Tears of joy, all the way.”
Last night, her phone rang from a private number and she answered on the first ring. Adam’s husky voice filled her ear. “I owe you five bucks,” he whispered. “He never blamed me. This whole time he’s been blaming himself, thinking I hated him.”
Jess rolled her eyes to the heavens. Men. After some manly throat clearing, Adam laughed. “Thanks for making me go, Blondie. Yet another reason we’re so good together—you have a surprising talent for removing my head from my ass.”
She’d simply laughed with him then, just happy the reunion with his beloved uncle had gone so well. But part of her wanted to linger on the point. Yes, we’re so good together. What does that mean for next week?
Because next week, they were leaving Wisconsin. The owners of the cottage were arriving to spend the final month of the summer on the lake, and she and Adam needed to re-enter the “real world.”
Not that she even knew what her real world was anymore.
Knoll’s arrest and Jess’s exoneration had been pretty big news in Chicago. Together, the documentation Jess created detailing Knoll’s operation along with several diamonds Sedarno’s bodyguard didn’t have time to collect, allowed the DA to build a solid case. Knoll was arrested in the hospital and was now apparently working on a plea deal.
Adam stayed completely out of the madness, much to her relief. As soon as she recovered from the surgery on her shoulder, she’d escaped north with him to this remote idyll. Her family thought she was with girlfriends, recovering from the trauma.
Of course, her father did leave her a voicemail every three days wondering when she was going back to work. She got quite a lot of work-related voicemails she didn’t want to listen to: the University, begging her to take Seymour’s job; two recruiting firms who could immediately place her in brand-name corporate positions; the FBI, wondering if she’d ever considered their Cyber Division.
Strange, how she was postponing making a career decision when getting her life back had been her only priority for the better part of a year.
But that was before him. Before he changed everything.
“I love you, Jess.” She remembered his words clearly. He said it just as she fainted after getting shot. But he hadn’t said it since. He showed her—every day with his words and actions, every night with his lips and his body. She knew he loved her as much as she loved him. They just didn’t say the words.
She knew why. They didn’t speak of love because they didn’t know what came next. She didn’t hide her job offers from Adam. On the contrary, he helped her debate the pros and cons of each one. And he didn’t hide the planning of his next job from her. When they left Wisconsin next week, he was going out to California wine country to do reconnaissance on his next jewelry theft, a gig that would involve a lot of role-playing. She’d even helped him pick out clothing for his disguise, for God’s sake.
No, they didn’t have secrets from one another anymore. They just didn’t have a future together either.
She heard the distinctive crunching sound of wheels on gravel. Was that a car in the driveway? Jess raced through the cottage and burst out the front door, a wide grin on her face and her heart pounding in her throat. Oh. No, it wasn’t him. Just the neighbors from up the road driving in to town.
Jess sank to the front steps, embarrassed at how excited she’d been in that instant, terrified at the sinking disappointment that followed when it wasn’t him. She glanced down at her watch, calculating the drive time from the Madison airport...yet again. Where the hell was he?
