Honest and simple, he’d practically chanted every time his mind ran to more complicated, intricate scenarios. And in the end, honest and simple was exactly what it was.
“I love you, Tess Marqueza Machado.”
There was a barely perceptible hesitation before she lowered her gaze, answered, as if he’d meant it in the same way he always had. “I love you, too. You know that.”
“Tess,” he said gently, “look at me.”
She raised her eyes to his. And for an instant something flashed in those dark, endless depths, something that spoke to the feelings that had roiled in him in the past—had it really only been a day? But what he saw in that flash of emotion told him what he needed to know.
“I love you,” he said again. “You’re the one I want by my side, in a fight or every day. The one whose intelligence, spirit and courage I always rely on.”
“I’ll always be there,” Tess whispered.
Josh had built a lot of his empire on his skill at reading people. He’d just never had to very often with Tess, because with him she was so open and forthright. But now she was hesitating, and he thought he knew why.
“I know you loved Eric,” he said. “As much and as deeply as I loved Elizabeth.” Tess’s breath caught audibly, sharply. Josh frowned. “Are you in pain? I should have waited, let you rest—”
“Joshua Michael Redstone, don’t you dare stop.” He blinked, then smiled. Tess’s indomitable spirit had definitely reawakened. “I loved Eric. There is an empty spot in my heart and soul that will always bear his name.”
As she so perfectly described his own hollow place, he wondered yet again how he could possibly not have realized how he felt long ago. How he couldn’t have realized how endlessly he’d been fascinated by her, knowing her so well and yet continually surprised by some new facet of her he hadn’t known.
“But,” Tess added, “I didn’t bury my heart with him. But I—we all—thought you’d buried yours with Elizabeth.”
“For a long time, I thought I had. But it’s here, alive and awake again, for the first time in so long…Tess, I love you.”
It was the third time he’d said it, but the first time he was certain she understood how he meant it. He saw her eyes widen slightly, saw the faintest tinge of color rise in cheeks that were still too pale for his comfort. And then, slowly, like the sun coming over the horizon on a fresh spring day, she smiled.
“Are you saying you slipped up and drank the Redstone water?”
“I’m saying,” he answered, “I’ve been drinking it all along, but I was too stubborn to acknowledge the effects.”
“I prefer the word determined,” Tess said with a smile. It was one of the small quips she always made that had told Josh from the beginning that she shared his ideas and views, and his drive and ambition.
She wasn’t hiding anything now, it was all there in her eyes, in the way her hand tightened around his, those delicate fingers surprisingly strong even now. And in the sudden seriousness of her tone when she spoke again.
“You’re sure? It’s not just the adrenaline hangover?”
“That’s long gone,” Josh said. “It vanished about the second hour of your surgery. But…there is one thing I don’t get. We’ve been through so much together, so many times before, we’ve been in danger before…why now?”
“Your heart wasn’t ready until now,” Tess said quietly, once more gripping his hand. “I knew that, I’ve always known it, because I loved her, too, Josh.”
That the answer was so simple surprised him, but he couldn’t deny the truth of it. That the answer had come from Tess didn’t surprise him at all.
It was only then that he realized that, for all his impassioned declaring, she hadn’t said the one thing he needed to hear.
“Tess, do you— You haven’t—”
“It is a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?” she asked. “You are, after all, my boss.”
Josh nearly laughed at that. “No one is your boss, Machado,” he said with a crooked smile. “You just allow me to give you planes to fly.”
“As long as we have that clear,” Tess said. Then she took a deep breath. “But I do need to tell you something.”
Josh opened his mouth, then shut it again without saying a word. Whatever she had to say, it would determine the course of the rest of his life, and he resisted the urge to hold his breath.
“If I had died,” she began, and he couldn’t suppress a shiver at the thought. She shook her head and started again. “If I had died, it would have been with my most secret wish granted.”
Josh blinked. “What?”
She tightened her hold on his hand. On his heart. “Your face would have been the last thing I ever saw.”
Josh’s heart wrenched in his chest, swelled until he ached with the pressure.
Leave it to Tess to not say the words themselves, but say everything they could possibly mean in a way he would never, ever forget.
Chapter 26
“Odell is not your fault, Josh. Not in any way, shape or form.”
Josh looked at St. John wryly. “Getting downright wordy, aren’t you?”
“Liked me better when I never met a full sentence?”
“It had its benefits,” Josh said drily.
This was the first time he’d set foot back in his office, and he was only here because Tess had demanded he go; she wanted to whine and cry her way through her first session of physical therapy and rehab in private, she told him.
“It’s still not your fault,” St. John insisted.
Josh sighed. He’d been wrestling with this ever since Draven had finally, three days after the fact, when Tess had been moved out of ICU and was on the road to recovery, told him about Brad Odell.
“I turned him down, and he killed himself.”
“And you did nothing to put him in the position where he felt that was his only way out. He did that all by himself.”
Josh studied St. John for a long, quiet moment. “You once thought it was your only way out.”
St. John didn’t deny it. “Yes. The difference is, I didn’t do any of it to myself.”
Josh smiled. “I know. Just wanted to be sure you did.”
“Then so should you know the difference,” St. John pointed out.
“My head does,” Josh said. “My gut…not so much.”
“You’ll get over it. You—”
“Shouldn’t feel sorry for him,” Draven put in from the doorway. “Except maybe for being married to the most twisted, manipulative woman I’ve come across in a long time.”
Josh drew back slightly as Draven walked into his office. “Diane? Manipulative, yes, and overbearing, self-centered and nasty, yes, but twisted?”
Draven took a seat on the battered leather couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table; Josh didn’t stand on ceremony here any more than he did anywhere else.
St. John got there a moment before it occurred to Josh. “She was behind this?”
“But why?” Josh asked. “Money?”
“And anger, is my guess,” Draven said. “Apparently, she was furious about what her husband had let happen to her family’s company. Ironic, I thought, since she’s the one who schmoozed their local politician into granting them special status when it came to getting handouts.”
“Which is what landed them in this mess,” Josh said.
“Exactly. So she reached out to a disavowed distant cousin who had been ostracized from the family when he got arrested for extortion a few years back.”
“Brown Shirt,” Josh guessed. Draven nodded. “Extortion? So he had the inclination to begin with.”
“And he recruited the hapless Pinky.” Draven smiled. “Tess does have a way. Giving your enemies an insulting nickname is a great way to keep them down to size in your head.”
Josh didn’t even want to think about the little slug; it still infuriated him to think of the way the man had pawed Tess, and the image of his stubby fingers grabbing at her breasts was o
ne he wanted to be soon rid of.
“He’s the one,” Draven went on, “who was most…helpful. With the right stimulus, of course.”
“Which was?”
“Tony Alvera had some time with him before we handed him over to the sheriff.”
Josh smiled. That would do it, he thought. The thought of the dangerous-looking Tony Alvera intimidating the little pink man was enough to wipe that other image right out of his mind.
“With what he told us, we went to work on Rich Reid. The cousin,” Draven said.
“And how long did that take?” Josh asked wryly.
“Not long,” Draven said. “Especially when he realized Diane was going to throw him under the bus, and disavow any knowledge of what was going on.”
“What, exactly,” Josh said, “was going on?”
“You want just what we can prove, or my suspicions?”
“Your suspicions have a funny way of ending up proven,” Josh said wryly. “Go.”
“All right. Here’s how I think it went down. Diane ordered Brad to approach you. I’m guessing she wanted him to just get you to bail them out. From something Mac said, I think Brad, at least, insisted he had to offer you something of worth.”
Josh grimaced. “The irony of that is that had that land not been encumbered by being in the company’s name, I might have taken him up on it. It’s beautiful, once you get on to the western slopes.”
Draven only nodded; Josh knew he understood his affinity to the wilder places, places to retreat to when the business side of Redstone started to drive him crazy. Tess often joked that he’d rather be back in that hangar he’d lived and worked in, with nothing in his mind but the design that would begin it all. And as usual, she was right; he was good at running Redstone, but he did long for the days when the designing—the challenge of it—was the be all and end all.
“I don’t think Odell had the guts to say no to her,” Draven said.
Josh couldn’t picture Brad Odell finding the spine to stand up to his supercilious, manipulative wife, either.
“He sent a text before we headed down the mountain,” Josh said, remembering. “A very short text.”
“No is only two letters,” Draven said drily.
“So…that’s when she set her plan in motion?”
Draven shook his head. “They’d already started. She’d had them standing by, although according to Pinky it was a very hastily pulled together operation. But they got tired of waiting out on the tarmac, decided they’d be more comfortable on board. Impatient, it seems.”
“Ya think?” Josh drawled.
Draven smiled. “So how tough was it to talk like the rest of us all that time?”
“I have a new appreciation for Australian actors who don’t sound it,” Josh said drily.
Draven chuckled, then went on. “Anyway, just the day before, she sent this cousin instructions.”
“I didn’t confirm with Brad until then,” Josh said.
Draven nodded. “I figured. She told them the day and place, and e-mailed a photo. The Langston photo.”
That stiffest, most formal and most unlike him portrait, Josh thought.
“It’s no wonder they didn’t recognize you,” Draven said, “when you came out of the mountains looking like Sasquatch.”
“Did Diane try and call it off?” he asked, suddenly remembering the later text message and Brown Shirt’s reaction to it.
“Not the way you mean. She did try and back out, but she was just furious with them for jumping the gun, not waiting for her go ahead. And for not responding to her communications. A bit of a control freak, our Diane.”
“She didn’t know Josh has always sworn publicly that no ransom would ever be paid?” St. John asked.
“She’s not admitting anything, so this is only speculation, but I’m guessing she assumed we’d override your wishes and pay up. That we wouldn’t stand up for the principle, not when your life was at stake.”
“Because that’s the way it is in her world,” Josh said. “Principles are…fluid.”
“Yes,” Draven agreed. His mouth quirked. “And Reid had very specific preconceptions of a ‘corporate big shot’ as Pinky put it. How they’d look and act. And you met none of the criteria.”
“Story of my life,” Josh said, the drawl even more pronounced now.
“Lucky for all of us,” Draven said.
“Indeed,” St. John said.
Josh looked at the men who were two thirds of the Redstone triumvirate. And finally gave in to the need to get back the other third.
Both of them understood. He’d known they would.
“Are you all right?” Josh asked his copilot.
“If you ask me that one more time, you won’t be,” Tess answered sweetly.
He grinned. His Tess was definitely back.
“And,” she reminded him pointedly, “I’m flying home.”
“That was the deal,” he agreed.
Inwardly he was reveling in the newness of it, and delighted that the change in their status hadn’t changed her ability to treat him exactly as she always had; he’d been almost afraid she’d go mushy on him. He should have known better. Tess was who she was, and she wouldn’t change. Ever.
Even after this trip.
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel of the Jeep just as they frequently had on the control yoke of the Hawk V on the way here. The plane had been scrubbed and scoured nose to tail, and bore no trace of what had happened. Tess hadn’t shown the slightest hesitation about boarding her again, indeed had laughed at the notion.
“You think I’d let those slugs keep me off her? Absolutely no way.”
She’d laughed, and he’d reveled in the sound of it.
“It’s different,” Tess said now, “coming in on the ground.”
Josh nodded. He knew the last time she’d been here was to fly in Jessa Hill, when she’d run out of patience waiting for St. John to work through the aftermath of his father’s final downfall. It was a good place for that—isolated, peaceful, and beautiful in a misty, cedar-scented way matched in few other places.
In the days of Tess’s recuperation, they’d worked through all the baggage, said everything they’d needed to say about where they’d been and where they were going. But it had all been done amid the hovering mass of Redstone, where it seemed everyone on staff anywhere felt the need to show up and say how grateful they were that they were all right. And that they’d finally awakened to what they all, of course, had known all along.
It no longer seemed odd, having such thoughts about Tess. It no longer seemed strange, but inevitable to want her the way he wanted his next breath, a way so elemental, so deep in the core of his being that he wondered if on some level it had always been there. That made him feel vaguely guilty until Tess, as usual, summed it up neatly.
“Guilty is for when you act on a feeling you shouldn’t act on. You never did. I never did. Ergo, no guilt.”
“I love you, Tess,” he said now, rather urgently.
“Back at you, my love,” she said, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm as he wrestled the Jeep up the rough, gravel road. She glanced out at the rapidly darkening sky. “Maybe we’ll get snowed in.”
“Little early in the year.”
“Maybe we can pretend we’re snowed in.”
Josh grinned. “Now that is an idea with potential.”
She went quiet for a long moment, an odd expression on her face. He wondered if she were having qualms.
“If you’re not ready yet,” he began.
“Not ready?” She turned on him almost fiercely. “Not ready? I’ve been waiting so long for this, it’s grown so deep into my mind and heart, that I think I will truly die if we don’t get there in the next five minutes.”
As a declaration of love, it was utterly Tess.
As a declaration of passion, had he been standing it would have put him on his knees.
“How about five seconds,” he said, wheeling the Jeep in
to the last turn on to the track that led to the isolated cabin where he’d sent St. John to dig himself out of the pain his father had left behind. Where he’d often come himself when he needed peace above all.
Where he wanted to be now, with Tess.
Draven took a sip of his plain, black coffee as he sat down across the small table from Captain Dave Chen. He hadn’t planned on being back here just yet, but when Chen called, there had been every bit of command in his voice, and Draven knew something was up.
The man, even in civilian clothes, still had the military bearing, his hair was still short, his body still lean and hard.
“I need to know,” the man said, not wasting any time in formalities, “what’s going on.”
Draven had known he’d owe the man a full explanation; he’d given them total cooperation without knowing the details, he deserved them all now. Especially since shots had been fired and people wounded in his jurisdiction. So Draven gave them to him in the best way he could think of to keep the man out of trouble.
“They never asked for a ransom?” Chen asked.
“No. We didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with. We still don’t,” he pointed out.
“You should have called us in.”
“You and your hostage negotiators? No, thank you. This was a Redstone matter.”
“John—”
“It all took place on Redstone property, technically speaking.”
“Redstone property that was parked in my county,” Chen countered.
“True enough,” Draven allowed. “But in the end, my security team only picked up the pieces. Josh Redstone defended his airplane, himself and his pilot from two armed threats. You going to make a case out of that?”
Chen sighed. “No. But it’s gotten more complicated.”
Draven frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Odell,” he said.
“He needed money,” Draven said, and relayed St. John’s in formation and Mac’s deductions.
“Thanks,” Chen said. “But I’m afraid it’s more than that.”
Redstone Ever After Page 17