“I want to get out of here.” She could only be this honest with Matt, who understood. Who got her, time and time again.
“But you’re not,” he said calmly. “You’re staying right here and taking the praise.”
She laughed. “You’re an incurable optimist. But I will stay. It helps that you’re here.”
He pulled out a dozen red roses from behind his back. “Got luckier this time, because I planned.”
“Thank you. They’re beautiful.” She took them and went into his arms, such a safe and warm place to be.
“Hey, Sarah.”
This was from Hunter, dressed as she never saw him: slacks and a button-up shirt. Not even looking pissy about it, either. “Hey, so glad you’re here.”
“This is way cool. Someone did a painting of a huge spider. And then someone else attached a string to a cup. Is that art?”
“Anything can be art,” Sarah said. “As long as it makes you think.”
“Huh. Mission accomplished.” Hunter wandered off in the direction of the door another artist had painted black, after one of his favorite songs.
“Maybe my art is boring,” Sarah said. “Maybe I should—”
Matt pulled her in for a kiss. “Shut up, babe. I love your stuff. Especially Woman in the Garden.”
One of her favorites, also, and had taken the better part of two long months. Inspired by one of her personal favorites, Van Gogh, the painting of a woman alone in a garden of sunflowers was a fair effort at impressionism. She hoped. Matt grabbed her hand and tugged her toward her paintings.
“Wait. I don’t want to.” Sarah almost dug in her heels. “What if—”
“Shhh,” Matt said, squeezing her hand.
As she was pulled along by Matt, she heard voices drifting toward them. Several people stood in front of her paintings.
“I like the way the artist uses the medium to emphasize and express her happiness. Contentment.” Emily’s soft voice.
“I like the way your lips look when you talk. Which is pretty much always.” This was from Stone, right before he grabbed Emily and kissed her full on the lips.
Sarah stifled a laugh and glanced up at Matt who had a sexy grin on his face. In the past months he’d seemed to get more attractive to her every day, even when she doubted that were possible or feasible. More than likely, she grew more relaxed every day about what they had together. Waking up next to Matt every morning in a house which would soon belong to both of them equally was no wish or dream. It was her new reality, and better than any of her fantasies.
After advising the Fort Collins PD that she would no longer be available as a forensic sketch artist, Sarah had put her condo up for sale. She’d tried to pay Matt back at least for the materials, but he’d refused. So instead she’d paid down her loans, put some savings aside for the roof replacement looming, and set up a college fund for Hunter. And then, just to be difficult and stubborn, she’d deposited a good chunk of money into a separate account for Matt to do with as he pleased. Speechless, he hadn’t been able to complain. Much.
So this is what starting over looks like.
Sarah was in brand-new territory. She might be walking on a high wire with no net, but it was worth it. She was happier than she’d ever been, spending days at the airport, part owner of a business she fully intended to continue to be a part of. She might not be crazy about flying, but she loved the heck out of the pilots. All three of them. Make that four, if she counted James Mcallister, because even if he was no longer among them, she did love her father. Always had, and now she understood that he’d known it.
A long time ago, Sarah’s mother had told Sarah to start over with a clean slate. Leave the ugly past in her rearview mirror. Start over. Once, she’d run from her past, but now she ran toward her future. That future was with Matt at her side.
“Hey!” The tornado that was Molly Parker approached, Dylan in tow. “I haven’t seen the ring yet. Let me see.”
Before Sarah could lift up her left hand, Molly had already pulled it up. “Oh my God! It’s blinding me. Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” Sarah said, and admired the shimmering diamond solitaire for possibly the millionth time.
Matt’s arm snaked protectively around her waist and he pulled her close.
He’d proposed a month ago, using far too much of the money she’d deposited into his account to buy her the ring. Stubborn man. She would have given him hell for spending so much money on her, but she’d been crying too hard to argue at the time. With Stone’s help, Matt had arranged for the proposal to take place at the Airborne Bar & Grill, the very first place they’d ever laid eyes on each other. Surrounded by her family and friends, all that had come out of her mouth was yesyesyesyes.
“When’s the wedding date?” Molly asked.
“Working on it,” Matt said, bringing up their joined hands to his lips. “As far as I’m concerned we can elope.”
“Right,” Stone said. “You should hurry before she changes her mind.”
There was laughter among her group of friends as Matt made a move to shove Stone, and Emily giggled and got between them.
“Sorry, you can’t kill him. I’m going to marry him.”
Sarah gazed at the faces of the friends and family she loved. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d felt alone, or had thought there was nothing left for her in Fortune. Everything she’d ever wanted was right here. Right now.
And she couldn’t think of any other place on earth she’d rather be.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, don’t miss
Stone and Emily in book one of
Heatherly Bell’s
HEROES OF FORTUNE VALLEY series:
BREAKING EMILY’S RULES
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from SHELTER IN THE TROPICS by Cara Lockwood.
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Shelter in the Tropics
by Cara Lockwood
CHAPTER ONE
St. Anthony’s Island, the Caribbean Sea
WELCOME TO THE Island of Lost Causes.
Tack Reeves couldn’t help but shake his head at the sign that greeted him at St. Anthony’s baggage claim. Looking around at the crowd of tourists in T-shirts and flip-flops, nothing seemed very lost about this tiny Caribbean airport. He grabbed his old faded olive g
reen seabag from the ground near his feet and moved with the tourists, though his jeans and plain black T-shirt looked out of place in the sea of neon around him. People herded together like this reminded him of the markets in Kabul, Afghanistan, where it was impossible to tell the citizens in the crowd from the insurgents. He felt that old familiar steel ball of unease at the center of his stomach.
One redhead wearing too-high platform sandals bumped into him, making him flinch. She looked up, smiling sheepishly as she apologized for the accidental contact. The old Tack, the one before his sixth deployment, would’ve found time to talk to the twentysomething in the barely there sundress. Maybe even had the clothes off that fit little body before she’d managed to get her first tan lines. But those carefree days were long gone.
Besides, he had a job to do.
It was probably another dead end, like the dozens he’d run down in the last year. His target, Cate Allen, was like a ghost. Her billionaire husband had hired him to find her and his son, but after nearly a year of working the case, he was starting to think seriously the woman might be dead.
At the very least, she really, really, didn’t want to be found. He was following the latest lead to this small island, hoping this time he’d finally get a break. But it was a long shot. Cate Allen was a missing wife to a famously reclusive billionaire. He’d quietly offered ten million dollars for her return, but nobody knew about this except a chosen few. How he’d kept it out of the news was anyone’s guess, but Tack figured money had something to do with it. He steered clear of the other tank-top-clad college coeds on their way to spring break. At the end of the gleaming steel baggage carousels stood a group of drivers, holding up signs. One of them bore his name: Reeves.
He looked up at the woman holding it and for a second nearly froze in his tracks.
Could it be...?
On the surface, this woman looked nothing like Cate Allen, the dazzling, overly made-up brunette socialite, always in designer stilettos, Chanel suits and bright red lipstick. This woman screamed quintessential beach bum with the long blond hair in a loose braid down her back, the aviator sunglasses perched casually in the neckline of her scooped tee and the flip-flops on her feet exposing toes that lacked nail polish. But Tack had memorized the photos he’d trolled through online. He knew every laugh line, every little quirk of her face. His gut told him, This was her.
Nobody else had a dimple like that on her right cheek, that flirty “dare you to ask me to dance” upward quirk of her pouty lips. And no matter what she did, the woman couldn’t hide the fact that she was gorgeous. No matter how much she dressed down.
She hadn’t seen him yet, and for that Tack was grateful. He needed a minute to compose himself. He’d been hunting this woman for almost a year, and she’d stymied him at every turn. He couldn’t let himself be carried away. This could still be another dead end, the welling of hope in his chest just another precursor to disappointment.
And everything was riding on this case.
Her eyes met his then, and his knees locked up. They were greener than her photographs—a clear blue-green, like the Caribbean Sea. Damn, but she was so much more beautiful than her pictures. And they were near a perfect ten. He was just a few feet from her. She smiled at him, hesitant.
“Mr. Reeves?” she asked, and then her eyes widened a bit as he took another step closer. “You’re...tall,” she managed.
“Six-four,” Tack said. “Got my dad’s height and my mother’s forearms, just don’t tell her that,” he joked as he always did when people asked him why he was built like a tank. His mother was a big-boned woman who, years ago, didn’t mind getting after her boys with a wooden spoon when they got out of hand. The tough love apparently worked as she was now the proud mother of two marines and an army ranger.
Cate smiled, and the brightness of it took him by surprise. She certainly didn’t look like a woman with a backyard full of buried secrets. But then, the best liars always believed their own tales.
“You’re...?” He deliberately paused, studying her face.
“Cate. Cate Dalton, St. Anthony’s Resort,” she said, not missing a beat, the lie coming out of her mouth as smooth as silk.
Cate. The woman hadn’t even changed her first name. Now it all seemed so obvious, but before, when he’d been rummaging through hundreds of records, he never would’ve guessed she would’ve done something so careless. Everything else, every bit of her trail, had been so carefully scrubbed. She’d left hardly any clues. But she kept her first name.
He wanted to know why.
A little scar barely the length of a nickel ran across her chin. It hadn’t been in the photographs he’d pored through, and he wondered what it was from. “We spoke on the phone. This is your first time to the Caribbean?”
“That’s right.” He could lie, too. No need to tell her he’d been hopping from island to island for the last four months, on one goose chase after another, starting to think he needed to rethink his new career as a private eye. “Need a little R and R.”
“You’ll find it here. Where are you from?” she asked, beaming at him as she put on her sunglasses.
“Seattle.” The lie came smoothly. No need to tell her he lived in Chicago now, the same city her ex-husband, the real estate mogul, called home these days. Tack’s younger brother lived in Seattle. He visited often enough, and he’d be able to bluff his way through any further questions.
She nodded and beckoned for him to follow as she moved to the exit. She headed out the first sliding door to the bright tropical sunshine. Tack couldn’t help but watch her hips sway like a palm tree on a breezy beach. The sunlight shone on her tanned thighs, the bleached denim cutoffs hitting right at his favorite spot.
“Great view, isn’t it?” she asked him, nodding at the big blue sky above them and, in the distance, the sparkling aquamarine sea.
Tack, who couldn’t take her eyes off Cate’s just-short-enough shorts, nodded once. His view was spectacular.
Distant alarm bells in his brain told him his thoughts were wandering into dangerous territory. He needed to keep this all business. He had a job to do. A job that had more riding on it than just money.
They made their way to the small airport parking lot and an old, slightly battered minibus with St. Anthony’s Resort in faded blue paint on the side. She wasn’t exactly living the luxury resort life he’d thought she would be after taking off with so much cash. Clever, he thought. Wouldn’t be good to be flashing money around that she’d taken. Maybe she was smarter than he thought.
He stuffed his seabag into the luggage caddie behind the bus driver’s seat and settled into a worn blue bench where he could watch her drive. She climbed up into the big bus seat and looked like a child trying to reach the pedals.
“Okay, just want to apologize in advance,” she said. “I don’t normally do shuttle duty. My driver, Henry, is out today.”
Henry the driver? Maybe the socialite hasn’t wandered so far from the money, after all.
“He had to take his wife to the doctor, and I’m all left feet when it comes to driving the beast.”
“The beast?”
Cate patted the old, cracked dash affectionately. “This old girl doesn’t know how to quit, but she does know how to give one heck of a bumpy ride. You might want to fasten your seat belt.” With that, she threw the bus into gear and they launched out on the road, with Tack nearly flattened against the bus window as they jostled down the bumpy asphalt.
“Are you all right there, Mr. Reeves? Hope you don’t get carsick.”
“Nope. And call me Tack.” He stared at her decidedly not manicured nails and felt a flicker of doubt. He was 90 percent sure this was Cate Allen. But that left 10 percent uncertainty, and he didn’t like it.
He met her gaze in the oversize rearview mirror above her head.
“Sure...Tack. Unusua
l name.”
“Nickname, for tactical, I guess. You could say I’m a planner.” Nobody went over a mission like he did. He thought of every possible scenario far in advance. His unit thought he was crazy, but when the shit hit the fan, he was ready. He was never without a backup plan. “My parents named me Thomas, but nobody calls me that.”
“Tack.” His name sounded good coming from her pink lips. “I like it.”
He ought to be friendly, try to fish out some information, but he didn’t feel like letting down his guard. This woman, if she really was Cate Allen, was cunning and dangerous, he reminded himself, no matter how pretty her smile happened to be.
She shifted gears on the bus, and the beast protested with a black puff of smoke out the back. Tack wasn’t 100 percent sure they’d make it to the resort in this old clunker.
“You in the marines?” she asked nonchalantly, as if somehow his service were emblazoned on his forehead like a tattoo.
“Why do you say that?” He knew he sounded overly defensive. He needed to calm down. There was no way she’d be able to trace him to his employer, no way she’d find out what he was really doing on St. Anthony’s.
Cate glanced at him in the rearview, surprised. “Your luggage,” she said. “The seabag? My dad was a navy man. Let’s just say I saw a few of those in my time.”
Tack glanced at the olive-colored knapsack, wondering if he should lie, but decided not to, remembering the cardinal rule of deep cover: the truth was easier to remember. “Yeah, I used to be in the marines.”
“Where’d you serve?”
“Six tours of duty in Afghanistan.” And a dishonorable discharge. Tack wasn’t proud of that. Who would be? But if it came down to it, he’d do the same damn thing all over again. He’d take that court-martial, again and again. Sometimes, principle outranked rules.
“Well, thank you for your service,” Cate said.
He knew she probably meant well, but he wished she hadn’t said that. He’d served his country, and he’d gone through hell, so what? Lots of guys did. Lots of good men died. Some men served America who weren’t even in the armed forces. He thought of his brave translator, a local Afghan named Adeeb, who’d saved him more than once. Now, he was the one in trouble.
Airman to the Rescue Page 26