It All Falls Down: Rose Gardner Investigations #7 (Rose Gardner Investigatons)

by Denise Grover Swank

  A jolt of heat shot straight to my core.

  He pulled out a foil wrapper and tossed the box into the still-open drawer. A predatory smile spread across his face as he closed the distance between us.

  I reached between us and took him in my hand.

  He released an agonized groan, then ripped the wrapper and pushed my hand away as he quickly slid it on.

  He stared down at me with hooded eyes, his chest rising and falling. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait until it’s more romantic?”

  “No.” I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his mouth to mine.

  His hands found my breasts, his thumbs brushing over my nipples. A wave of need washed through me as the ache between my legs grew.

  “Joe. Please.” It came out as a whine, but I didn’t care. I needed him. I’d needed him for months, and the need had only grown stronger.

  He grabbed my butt and lifted me as he pressed me against the wall, holding me up as he slowly entered me, the sensation so intense my legs might have buckled if he hadn’t been supporting my weight.

  “Are you okay?” he grunted, his face buried in the crook of my neck.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist. “You better not stop now.”

  That released something inside him, and he drove into me hard and wild. I met him every step of the way, pleading for more as the pressure built and climbed, sure I would shatter. But he pushed me higher and higher, to a height so dizzying I was sure I would die. My arms and legs were wrapped around him, so the only things holding me up were the wall and Joe, and then the wall was gone as he struggled to get deeper, and I fell apart, crying out his name over and over, and then he was right behind me. Holding me just as tightly as I was holding him, and I knew that from this moment forward, I wasn’t on my own.

  Joe would be with me every step of the way.

  Chapter 18

  When my senses returned, I realized that Joe had moved us into the bathroom and partially closed the door. I was amazed that he’d had the presence of mind to do so.

  We got dressed, me back in my dress and Joe in shorts and a T-shirt. We left Hope sleeping in her bassinet and went downstairs to face a red-faced Witt.

  “Are you plannin’ on stickin’ around tonight?” Witt asked Joe.

  “I won’t be leavin’ Rose’s side,” Joe said.

  Witt gave him a questioning look.

  “I’m heading into my office to write up my resignation and email it to the sheriff, the county, and send out a press release. Effective immediately.”

  Witt’s mouth dropped open. “Say what?”

  “It’s my understanding that Rose has backup in dangerous situations,” Joe said, his tone gruff and unyielding. “Jed. Dermot. You.”

  Witt gave me a bewildered look, and I nodded. “Uh…yeah,” he stammered, still caught off guard. “Jed was her bodyguard when she was workin’ for Skeeter, but Dermot’s been takin’ over his job more and more. When she needs big guns, I go too.”

  “I’ll be joinin’ whoever is assigned to protect her from here on out,” Joe said. “Tell whoever needs to be told.” Then he went into his office and shut the door.

  Witt’s mouth still hung open. “What just happened?”

  “Joe has joined our side.”

  “Do you think that’s really a good idea?” he asked, incredulous.

  “From what standpoint?” I asked. “From the fact that he’s no longer keepin’ the county safe? No, it’s a great loss. Or are you asking whether it’s safe for him to show up as my bodyguard? I’m not sure about that either, but he doesn’t want to trust other people to protect me. He wants to be more proactive.”

  He made a face. “Dermot’s not gonna like it, and how are guys like Denny Carmichael gonna react when he shows up? They’re bound to know who he is, and there’s a good chance they’ll kill him, thinkin’ he’s there to spy.”

  “I suspect that’s why he’s sending it to the newspaper. To sell it.”

  Witt shot a glance toward the closed office door and lowered his voice. “Do you think he’s really quittin’? Is this just a ploy to find out what you know?”

  I could have gotten pissed at him for asking, but I understood why he might think that. In the past, Joe had acted in the way he saw best, without considering he might be wrong. But I’d seen the fierce protectiveness in his eyes earlier. He hadn’t been pretending. “It’s not. He’s terrified something’s gonna happen to me, and I don’t think he could live with himself if he wasn’t there doin’ everything he could to protect me.” I cast a glance to the door. Plus, he knew if he lied to me, we would be over. He wouldn’t risk it.

  Joe was being truthful. I was betting my life on it.

  He came out of the office twenty minutes later, looking less certain than he had when he’d gone in. I got up from the sofa, where I’d been anxiously waiting, and went to him. Wrapping my arms around him and burying my face into his chest, I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” he said gruffly.

  “What excuse did you give him for quittin’ so abruptly?”

  “I said I felt targeted because of my position and that it felt unsafe for my family. But the official statement will be that my priorities have changed and the hours are too demanding for a man who wants to spend time with his family.”

  I nodded.

  “And now that I’m officially no longer an officer of the law, it’s time to tell me everything you can.”

  Witt’s brow rose. “I think I should be goin’.”

  Joe moved out of my embrace and extended his hand to Witt. “Thank you for everything you’ve done to protect Rose and Hope. I’m not sure I can ever repay you.”

  Witt made a face, refusing to take Joe’s hand. “You might want to wait until you hear what happened when Carmichael paid Rose a visit about a half hour before you got home before you go thankin’ me.”

  My chest tightened. “Witt.”

  He gave me a hasty hug, then headed out the front door.

  Joe stared at me in disbelief. “Denny Carmichael was here? Did he come in the house?” His voice pitched with anxiety.

  “When you say you want to know everything…”

  “Was he here or not?”

  I took a deep breath. “I think you’re gonna need a beer or two to listen to all of this. I know I definitely need a glass of wine.” I headed into the kitchen, calling over my shoulder, “Dr. Newton said it was safe to have a glass every so often.”

  Joe followed me into the kitchen and headed straight for the security box and turned it on. “Was Denny Carmichael in our house or not, Rose?”

  I opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of beer for Joe, then scanned the shelves. “Damn it. I haven’t had alcohol since last summer. Why would I think I’d have some in there now?”

  Joe set his beer on the table, then headed to the basement. I considered following him and asking him what he was doing, but I needed to start trusting him, just like he needed to trust me. I only hoped he caught up to speed quickly enough.

  When he emerged from the doorway, he was holding a bottle of champagne, but he still looked grim. “I was saving this for tomorrow night.”

  “To seduce me?” I asked with a half-smile.

  “I will spend the rest of my life seducing you, Rose,” he said with an intensity in his eyes I wasn’t used to seeing. “I will never take you or us for granted.” He grabbed two juice glasses and set them on the table, still carrying the champagne bottle. Then he opened it with a loud pop and poured it into the glasses. “We don’t have champagne flutes,” he said as he picked up both glasses, handing one to me.

  “We don’t seem like champagne flute kind of people,” I teased, but then I realized Joe used to be a champagne flute kind of person. His parents had been very well off and flaunted it. “But maybe you want to be…again.”

  He held his glass in his hand. “I’ve never felt more me than when I’m with you, Rose. You know I hated that life.”
/>   “I had to be sure,” I said softly.

  He lifted his glass and gave me an adoring smile, even though I could see the worry in his eyes. “To my beautiful wife-to-be and our many years together.”

  I touched my glass to his and held it there. “And to my incredible soon-to-be husband. No more secrets.”

  Joe drained his glass, but I took a sip and made a face. “Maybe I’m not a champagne person either.”

  Joe released a hearty laugh and pulled me into a hug. “Noted.”

  I gazed up at him, still in awe we had reached this place. “I love you, Joe.”

  He gave me a soft, lingering kiss. “I love you too. Now quit stalling and tell me about Denny Carmichael.”

  “I think I need to start at the beginning.” But which beginning? How far back did I go? For Joe to be part of this, he needed to be fully aware of what he was getting mixed up in. It wasn’t lost on me that maybe this should have occurred to me before he quit his job. I looked up at him, stricken as what he’d done hit home. “You quit your job. You love your job.”

  It suddenly hit me that perhaps this was what led to James murdering Joe—that it might have nothing to do with the sheriff’s department at all. Should I have had a vision before he gave his notice? Would whatever I saw—good or bad—have made him change his mind? Not likely.

  “It’s just a job, and I love you more,” he said without any sign of regret.

  I loved him too, but what was I willing to give up for him?

  My privacy. My secrets. I still ran the risk of sending him running, but he deserved to know the woman he was marrying.

  “You know a lot of this already,” I said, my voice a little hoarse from nerves, “but I’m going to tell you everything, right from the beginning, so you’ll know the whole story.”

  Because he deserved to know, and because I had to believe it would make him safer now that he’d left his job.

  I started with the bank robbery a year and a half ago, when a huge cash deposit for the nursery had been stolen. Mason would have needed to cash in his retirement plan to help me, so I’d gone to see Skeeter Malcolm to trade information: my knowledge about his competition in the auction (gleaned from visions) for his retrieval of my money. It had all unfurled from there. Because I’d seen James die in my visions, many times, just like I now kept seeing Joe die.

  Joe listened, asking questions from time to time, asking if I’d been scared at the auction.

  “Terrified,” I said. “Especially when you raided the barn. But James and Jed whisked me out through a hidden tunnel and got me out safely. I made it home, and the next day the cash was on my front porch. He kept his word. I thought I was done.”

  “How’d you get dragged back in?”

  I told him about the slide into working with James rather than being compelled by him. How it had begun with threats and then become a mutually beneficial arrangement. How we’d worked together to bring down Joe’s father, J.R. Simmons, who had been the source of so much tumult in our county.

  “That’s what led to my father’s arrest that February,” he said, sounding subdued. I had a feeling I knew why.

  Before that meeting, I had been kidnapped. James and Jed had saved me, but in order to keep me safe, they’d insisted on a ruse that made everyone think I was dead. Joe hadn’t handled it well.

  “I wanted to tell you that I was okay, Joe, but James wouldn’t let me. He took my phone and kept me holed up in a cabin until it was time to go meet your father.”

  “So he forced you to go through with the meetin’?” he asked, his body shaking with rage.

  “No.” I took his hand and led him to the living room, then tugged him down to the sofa. I straddled him, looking him in the eyes as I held his face between my hands. “I willingly and eagerly went to that meeting to get your father to confess. James and I didn’t agree on how to handle what happened before the meetin’, but I was fully on board with the rest.”

  He leaned his forehead against mine and closed his eyes, wrapping his arms loosely around me. “I wanted to die when I thought you were dead.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  We sat like that for several seconds before he opened his eyes.

  “They had planned to kill Mason too,” I said. “And it took near hysterics to get James to bring him to the cabin to protect him. He did, but he warned me that Mason would learn what I’d been doing and never forgive me.”

  “And he ended your engagement,” Joe said in a flat tone.

  I released a quick, mirthless laugh. “Our very short engagement. James was right. When Mason found out about my secret identity, he couldn’t handle it. After Kate’s big showdown and your father’s death, he broke up with me and went back to Little Rock.”

  “But he came back that summer.”

  “Not of his own volition,” I said with a wry smile. “He didn’t want to be here. He was chosen because of his history in Fenton County, so he decided to make the most of it. He decided to go after the man who he held responsible for breaking us up. Skeeter Malcolm.” I sighed. “By the time Mason left town, James and I had a mutual respect for each other. He saw me as a strong, capable woman.”

  “While I saw you as a fragile flower that needed protectin’,” he said.

  I didn’t respond because we both knew it was true. “Mason left me. Violet was sick and went to Texas. I had Neely Kate, but the both of you were lost in your own demons after findin’ out you were siblings, and I…I was lost, Joe. I was broken, and I needed a friend. James was that friend.”

  “He took advantage of you,” he said in the first judgmental tone he’d used since I’d started telling my story.

  “No,” I said evenly. “We were just friends. We met every Tuesday night in secret at our usual meetin’ spot. No one knew what we were doin’, not even Neely Kate or Jed. He’d tell me about his difficulties tryin’ to rein in the lawlessness in the county, while I told him my pathetic stories about my job and how scared I was about Violet. This went on from February until June. And then Neely Kate agreed to find Homer Dyer’s stupid necklace. We thought it was a nothin’ case, but that necklace was coveted by several men in the criminal world, and a war nearly broke out over it. Neely Kate and I got our hands on it, and we declared a parley between James and Buck Reynolds and Kip Wagner.”

  “You did what?” he asked.

  I gave him another wry smile. “That was how I started being seen as a neutral party. People started comin’ to me for help, and I’d give it when I could. I was like an impartial judge, but not all criminals saw me that way, and James felt responsible for dragging me into it in the first place. Still, he respected my strength and had Jed teach me and Neely Kate how to shoot and defend ourselves, and by mid-summer, I realized I liked him as more than a friend.” I didn’t want to tell him the next part, but he needed to understand that I wasn’t a victim in all of this. I had been a very active participant.

  The emotion in his eyes shuttered, but then he said, “Go on. I can handle it.”

  I gave him a sad smile and brushed his cheek with my thumb as I held his gaze. I prayed he could handle it. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, but he had to understand. “I forced myself on him, Joe. He told me from the start that we wanted different things, and stupid me thought that we could have a fling and I could walk away. But then I fell in love with him, and I thought he felt the same way. I’ve since realized that we were living in a make-believe bubble. Then Denny Carmichael dragged me to his property last August, insistin’ I do for him what I’d done for James. I told him to forget it, but I had several visions of him. Carmichael was making a stand against James, and I was part of it. I didn’t want to believe it, but then I discovered that James was the one who’d bought the police down in Sugar Branch. They attacked me in the parking lot of that bar, just like I told you. James and I had just had a huge fight, but I called him anyway, asking him to come help me.”

  “You called me too,”
Joe said, his voice tight. “I came.”

  I pressed my hand harder into his cheek. “I called you first, Joe.”

  He covered my hand with his.

  “But I was in immediate danger, and I knew you wouldn’t reach me in time. James was closer.” I paused. “But he didn’t come. He sent Denny Carmichael instead. Denny killed those officers, but then he told me I owed him, and one day he’d collect.” I shrugged. “Today, he came to collect.”

  “Carmichael and Malcolm are enemies, even I know that. Why on earth would he send Carmichael to save you? He could have just as easily have killed you. In fact,” he said, getting more agitated, “I can’t believe he didn’t.”

  “No,” I said. “Carmichael used it as an opportunity to get his hooks into me, and James handed me to him on a silver platter.”

  “Did you ask him why he did it?”

  “Yeah, but he was his usual evasive self. He had a reason, but he couldn’t tell me. Then he said we couldn’t see each other anymore, and we didn’t. Not until I went to his pool hall in October to tell him I was pregnant. His first reaction was to tell me in no uncertain terms to get an abortion.”

  Joe was silent.

  “Around that time, Jed put together that James was working with Hardshaw. And we started those meetin’s tryin’ to unite the rest of the underworld against James. Dermot told them to follow the Lady in Black.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Those meetin’s were short-lived,” I said. “The different factions were worse than bickering children, and then Mason warned me that word was getting around that I was involved with some secret meetings with criminals. Since the meetings themselves were worthless, Dermot, Jed, and I agreed to disband them.”

  “Mason?” he asked in surprise.

  I laughed. “You’d be surprised.”

  His hands tightened around me. “One of your sources?”

  “No comment.”

  He kissed me, soft and tenderly, but I deepened the kiss, still holding his face between my hands.

  “I love you, Joe,” I whispered. “You have no idea how happy I am that I can share this with you.”