THIRTY
November 1, All Saints Day, New Orleans
The miniature city of the dead was quiet as the morning sun crept across dew damp grass and carved stone toward the Hastings’ family crypt. Dani put a bouquet of daisies in the fixed vase on one side of the steps, then turned and traced her daughter’s name where it was carved into the stone above Richard’s name.
There were a few other family members filtering into the cemetery to pay their respects, but none were close by.
Dani slid her capacious purse off her shoulder and sat on steps still cool from the November night. In a few minutes the sun found her. She smiled wryly. She and the sunrise were still greeting each other, despite the seventy times she’d tried to miss it since she left the mountains and Matt’s mile high city.
She was back in her apartment, back in her life.
Too bad she wasn’t the same person. She didn’t fit it anymore, her only hope that she would grow back into it in time.
She opened her purse and found the bag of M&M’s and soda she had tucked inside. Opened both and relaxed against the warming stone, her cheek against her daughter’s name. “I’m trying to do better this time, Meggie. I’m trying to live my life, not just trying not to break.”
She put one M&M in the vase, one in her mouth.
“Liz is still pretending I don’t exist. I miss her, but I’m okay with it. Don’t feel too bad about your dad. A short stint in jail is good for him.”
She added some Diet Dr. Pepper to the vase. “I shouldn’t let you drink this stuff, but you’re ten now, so you can have a taste.” She took a drink. “Did I tell you that my book is going to be a Valentine release? The cover is awash with hearts and ribbons, but I’m trying not to notice. At least there aren’t any breasts larger than mine pressed against a manly chest. They’re in the step back cover. That’s right, a step-back cover. I’ve hit the big time. They’re even talking about releasing my next book in hard cover. That’s the one I just finished. Pat thinks it could make the NYT list.” Dani smiled. “Kelly says if I make the list before her, she’s going to have her dentist fill my tooth without Novocain. That’s right, I have a cavity. At my age. You’re lucky you don’t have to worry about them.” Dani saw movement among the crypts and her smile widened. “Speak of the devil, here she comes.”
Kelly picked her way to Dani. “I thought I’d find you here. Trying to avoid the relatives from hell, are we?”
Dani moved over. “Watch your language in front of my kid.”
When Kelly was seated, Dani offered her the bag of candy. They both munched for a bit, then Dani said, “Isn’t today your anniversary?”
Kelly smiled. “Three years. I’m telling you, Dan, dentists are the best kept secret of the modern world.”
“It makes sense, I mean the guy is used to operating in small spaces.”
Kelly’s smile turned wicked. “If he treats me any better, I might have to give up my beyond bitch status.” She helped herself to a drink of Dani’s soda, then asked, “Do you still miss him?”
Dani didn’t look at her. She stared at the tomb across the path. Saw Matt’s face the way it was when they were hanging in space. “Yeah. Silly isn’t it?”
“You should have jumped his bones. At least you’d have some memories to keep you warm during our one cold night a year.”
Dani smiled. “I have a good imagination. I’ll make up some memories.” Dani’s smile faded. “They want me to do a Valentine’s tour. Six cities in seven days.”
Kelly took the soda can. “Any city in particular?”
“The last one is Denver. I told them I didn’t think I could do it and got a homily on getting back on the horse.” She looked at Kelly. “I thought it was the hero that was supposed to ride the horse?”
“It’s all this politically correct crap. It’s messed everything up.” Kelly hesitated, “So, are you going?”
“If I don’t, they’ll think I’m a wuss. If I do—”
“Matt will think you’re chasing him.”
Dani sighed. “Yeah. Maybe by February, I’ll be over him?”
“Yeah, and maybe all the world’s men will figure out how to make us happy.” Kelly twisted to look at Dani. “Have you ever thought about just telling the guy how you feel? It works in our books.”
“I did tell him—kind of.”
“So go beyond kind of.”
Dani shook her head. “Love isn’t about what you want—or it isn’t love. I think he loves me, but is afraid of hurting me, of not being what I need. It’s sweet, but if he can’t figure out that as hard as it is to make being together work, it’s still better than not being together. If he won’t ask me to be part of his life, if he doesn’t know I would in a heartbeat and that I want to be with him more than I want to be at sea level, then he isn’t right for me.”
Kelly sipped some soda and handed it back. “Too bad we can’t mix a little more reality into our fictional men and a little more fiction into our real men.”
Dani dumped out the last of the candy, offered part to Kelly. “Yeah, too bad.”
“What you gonna wear to Denver?”
Dani smiled. “Something red.”
“Good choice. If you can’t get him to bite the big one with you, you ought to make him regret it for as long as he lives.”
Dani looked at Kelly. “That’s the plan.”
* * * *
January. Denver, Colorado
It was the start of a new day, but the end of a long, hard night for Matt. He should have headed home, but he didn’t. He didn’t like climbing the stairs to his apartment. He didn’t like looking at the window seat at the end of his hall and remembering Dani sitting there. He didn’t like opening the door and walking down the hall to where she’d danced wearing his robe, hated passing into a bedroom where she slept in his bed. He couldn’t escape her in the mountains or in the cabin that had been his refuge. She’d even stopped by the office before she left, bearing chocolate chips cookies and thanks for everyone who helped her—leaving the fresh scent of coconut behind.
She was everywhere he went.
She was in New Orleans, he reminded himself, where she wanted to be. Get me home, she’d asked him with words and with her big green eyes. He had booked her flight and driven her to the airport. Watched her walk away from him, endured her last look back. He had kept his promise, though it had been a near thing. He still broke out in a sweat thinking about Hayes trying to take her with him to the rocks. Night after night, in his dreams, he tried to change the outcome. Night after night it played out the same. He had to watch her slide away from him. Then he had to hold her just long enough to get addicted to the feel of her in his arms and against his body.
And every time she slid away from him, every time she walked onto that plane, his heart followed, no matter how hard he tried to keep in his chest.
It didn’t make sense. He had known her one week, seven days plus one to say good-bye. Spent just over two days of that time face to face with her. She didn’t belong to him. She didn’t belong here. She was sea level. He wasn’t.
So why couldn’t he forget how it felt to spin at the end of a rope with her in his arms? Why had she felt so right when they were so wrong for each other?
He tossed his briefcase on his desk, dropped in his chair and looked at the pile of papers waiting his attention, saw them stretching out into a future turned bleak by a romance writer with a smart mouth.
“Matt, what are you doing here?” Alice stopped in front of his desk, her brows bracketing the surprise in her eyes.
“My job.” He grabbed a handful of paper, stared at it without seeing a word.
Alice shrugged. “Just thought you’d be catching up on your z’s. Heard you guys had a rough night.”
He didn’t look at her. She might notice how bloodshot his eyes were. “Got some stuff to do first. What is this?” He shoved the papers at her.
Alice looked at them, turned them right side up and handed them ba
ck. “Try it now.”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“No problem.” She started to turn away, then stopped. “Do you remember Dani Gwynne?”
Did he?
He forced himself to look up and say casually, “Uh, yeah. The romance writer, right?”
“That’s right.” Her voice was ironic.
The look in her eyes made him want to shift in his chair and look away. His pride wouldn’t let him do either one. Did she suspect the romance writer had almost made a believer out of him? He looked down at the sheets in his hand. “What about her?”
“I’m on her Christmas card list.”
Why wasn’t he? He’d only saved her life.
“Just got this flyer from her. She’s coming back to Denver for a book signing.”
She was coming back. She’d be here. Not New Orleans.
Here. He could see her again. Yeah, and an alcoholic could walk into a bar. Didn’t make it good for him.
“On Valentine’s Day.” She held out the pink sheet. Matt eyed it for a moment before accepting it. Was it his imagination that made it smell like coconut? Too many hearts and flowers mixed in with the copy. The book was called One Near One. Under it was a quote by Robert Browning. “If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one… One near one is too far.”
In the margin next to the cover, she’d scrawled, “My publicist thinks I need to get back on this particular horse or be doomed to forever live in fear of your mile high city. She obviously doesn’t know her Kafka. My “fear” is my substance, and probably the best part of me. But she’s the one who calls the tune, so the worst part of me is coming. Can we do lunch or cookies while I’m there?”
She had signed her name and inked in an emoticon grin. Her handwriting was like her, nearly indecipherable.
Sebastian came up and read the flyer over his shoulder. “Cool. Can I come, too?”
Henry, seated at his desk, looked up. “To what?”
Sebastian explained. Henry wanted to go, too. So did Riggs. Matt couldn’t believe it. Dani brings them a box of cookies, smiles and thanks them, and they all forget how much trouble she was. Maybe Luke was right. Maybe she was a witch.
Less than six weeks until her broom landed here. Less than six weeks to figure out how not to care.
Easy. If you routinely did the impossible.
* * * *
Valentine’s Day. Denver
Dani wasn’t the only author signing books in six cities. Her publisher was calling them the Valentine’s Six Pack. By some strange twist of fate, she was the only one who chose to wear red, the others having opted for virginal white.
It was harder than she expected to land in the mile high, to walk off the plane without hoping he’d be there waiting. Happy endings paid her bills. It was a good thing her finances didn’t depend on the lonesome lawman. He wasn’t there. Caroline was.
“You don’t look like you’ve been through hell,” she had said with a broad smile after they had hugged.
“If you could see under the make-up you wouldn’t say that,” Dani had answered. There was a radio interview. She became an actress again as she assured the citizens of the city that she didn’t hold them responsible for Spook’s rampage and loved their city. When asked how she researched her sex scenes, she smiled and said, “Very carefully.”
During the drive to the mall Dani played the part of a woman catching up with an old girlfriend. Alice met her inside. She lunched with her and all the guys—minus one—still acting at a level worthy of an Oscar nomination.
Alice walked with her to the bookstore, both of them chuckling over how quickly the men sheared off, after giving Alice money to buy books for their wives and sweethearts.
She was running out of time to ask about Matt. Decided she wouldn’t, her mother always used to tell her not to pick at wounds or they wouldn’t heal, but the words came out anyway. “So, how’s Matt and Luke?”
She endured Alice’s glance with composure, but was glad when it was over.
“I hear Luke’s dating someone. I haven’t seen Matt today, but he’s fine, too. I think he took some comp time so they could go climbing. A couple of real romantics.”
Dani smiled, shook her head over the foibles of the male sex, and in her head plotted his castration. Couldn’t even face her. The coward. She earned two Oscars signing and smiling, while cursing the cooling off period that kept her from buying a gun. She looked up to hand a woman her signed book and there he was.
Standing smack in the middle of a bevy of romantic women, holding a heart-shaped box of chocolates, a bottle of coconut perfume and a single red rose.
With a face like the storm on the mountain.
Their gazes connected like thunder on that mountain.
Dani rose to her feet, her mouth curving in a smile edged with evil. This was going to be good.
It was the hardest walk of Matt’s life. Harder than walking into a den of Uzi toting drug dealers. There were women everywhere he looked, all wearing that knowing look that made him want to swear or worse. He wasn’t a romantic guy. Didn’t want to be a romantic guy. If he hadn’t finished her book, he probably would have just waited until she was done signing and said something normal like, “Want some dinner?”
If he hadn’t read that book. Put a lot of pressure on a guy to keep up with a hero straight out of a romance writer’s brain. As far as his could tell, the only thing he had in common with the guy was that they were both male.
And they were both in love.
It still made him wince to admit it. He had given up trying to get over it. It was an incurable disease. Probably terminal, too. He’d almost bought a book of love poems before he caught himself. Since he couldn’t get over it, he might as well offset the misery with some of the benefits.
He could still hear her voice on the radio saying she researched her sex scenes very carefully. She looked up and saw him, her eyes widening into pleasure, sucking the air right out of his lungs. She stood up and his heart stopped beating, too. Her dress, so red it made his eyes bleed to look at her, hugged her body everywhere he had fantasized about hugging her.
Her mouth, the mouth he’d dreamed about for six, long months, widened into a smile that parted the waiting women like the Red Sea. Made it easy to walk toward her.
When only the table separated them, Dani put her hands on her hips. “Well, well. If it isn’t the lonesome lawman.”
His throat went dry with wanting her. He dumped the crap he had bought on the table. Shoved the whole thing aside, vaguely aware romance writers were scattering like startled white chickens. He stepped in close, let his hands settle on her shoulders. The relief of finally touching her almost took out his knees. He slid his arms around, pulled her in that last little space that separated them. Her head tipped back so he could see all of her face.
He took a minute to compare memory with reality. Reality was better. All the things he had rehearsed, liberally plagiarizing from her book, went right out of his head. All he could remember was that he loved her. He wanted to marry her more than he wanted to live. He wanted to make a life and babies with her. Wanted to grow old with her. He opened his mouth to say it, but all that came out was, “I give up.”
The sighs of thirty romantics ruffled Dani’s hair. She had written, then rewritten this scene every day and night since she left him standing in the airport. She’d never written it like this. This was real. Matt was real. She could see in his eyes all the things that went with his surrender.
Awed by the tender desperation in the way he held her, she touched his cheek. Because she finally could, she spread her fingers across skin, found it both soft and rough. Felt how ragged her touch made his breath, how fast it made his heart beat. Hers accelerated to keep up.
“Of course you do.”
When her smile turned cocky he had to do something about it. Her green eyes were sizzling with enough anticipation to melt rock. Fine. He could take anything the romance writer could dish out.
First he was going to take care of that smile.
He bent his head and erased it.
* * * *
BYTE ME
Book two in The Lonesome Lawmen series.
PROLOGUE
Overhead, tiny pinpoints of light gave depth to the moonless night sky, while thirty stories down, miniature streetlights made a path for the occasional car to follow. The silence was so deep, Phoebe Mentel heard her own breath whispering in and out of her lungs. She leaned on the parapet and studied the tower across from her and her companion, taking the moment to find her focus and quiet her mind.
“You ready?” he asked. She turned as he dropped his bundle of equipment at her feet and knelt to extract the rocket launcher. He was dressed to steal in deepest black. Only his eyes gleamed out of the dark, eyes far too blue to be true.
Lucky for her, she didn’t need true. She needed there.
“I was born ready.” She pitched her voice low, but her voice, laced with her mother’s Southern charm, sounded loud in her ears. Also dressed to blend with the night, she’d covered her chin length hair with a black stocking cap and smeared her face with blacking until only her brown eyes were visible.
His smile came fast and white, cutting into his dark silhouette like a lost Cheshire cat before fading back into the night. He readied the launcher, then used the parapet to steady his arms as he sighted in on the shadowy outline of the tower opposite.
A pop. A hiss. A double strand of rope snaked across the gap between the two buildings in a gleaming, silver arc. A muffled clunk found its way back to their ears.
He tugged on the rope until the grappling hook resisted, tested it for give. There was none. He leaned back, using his full weight. It still held. He secured their end with brisk, practiced economy, then bent to check his climbing harness. When he’d shouldered his pack and was anchored to the rope, he looked at her.
Phoebe adjusted her earpiece. “You receiving?”
He nodded. “You?”
“Soft and clear.”
“Catch you on the flip side.” He gave her a cheeky salute and vaulted over the parapet into space. The double rope sagged but held as he disappeared into the night. After a time the tension on the rope eased.
The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy Page 32