The Keeper

by Rhonda Nelson

  “Two.”

  “Go ahead and shoot him,” Mackie’s mother said, shooting Jack a wink that her son couldn’t see. “But do me a favor and drag him around back. I don’t want a mess in the front yard.”

  “Mom! No, please. Mom!”

  “Three.”

  “I didn’t know!” Mackie screamed frantically. “The two jackasses took it upon themselves! I didn’t tell them to do it!”

  “Four.”

  “He’s in the trunk of my car!” Mackie wailed. “I didn’t know what to do— I needed to be able to think— I—”

  White-hot anger burst through Jack and he flipped him over and planted his fist into Mackie’s nose, then reached down and withdrew his car keys from his pocket.

  Mackie’s mother’s face was stark white. “You’ve put an old man into your trunk and brought him here? He’s been in your car the whole time?” She took her shoe off and proceeded to pummel the hell out of him right there on the front lawn, Mackie rolling and writhing beneath the blows, trying to get away from her.

  Heart pounding so hard he felt nauseous, Jack hurried around back and hit the truck release button on the keyless remote. It popped, but didn’t open completely. A flannel-covered arm popped up and pushed at it.

  “Audwin!” Jack hollered. “Are you all right?”

  Audwin glared up at him. “I was better until you rammed the back of his car.”

  Jack grabbed the older man’s hand and helped him awkwardly out of the trunk. “Did they hurt you?”

  “No,” he said. “Just got the jump on me was all,” he told him, clearly embarrassed. “Nasty characters, though,” he said. “I’ll admit I was worried there for a while. Those big bastards thought their boss would be happy that they’d nabbed me. But you’d gotten a hold of him first and put the fear into him. He didn’t know what to do with me, so he had those assholes throw me into the back of his car.”

  “But you’re not hurt?”

  “Only my pride, boy, and I reckon that’ll survive.” He looked up sharply. “How’s Bobby Ray?” He shook his head. “If he’d only told me what was going on, I could have helped the boy. I’d have given him the money to pay them off,” he said. “He wouldn’t have had to take those damned coins.”

  Jack blinked. “You knew about the coins?”

  “Not until I heard them talking about it. They were planning on going back and tearing my place apart to look for them.” His lips twisted. “They weren’t going to tell their boss about that, either.”

  “He’s gone to get the coins out of hock,” Jack told him. “And Mariette found the other one in a block of butter she’d taken up to her apartment. You’ll get them all back, Audwin.” He paused. “I’d appreciate if you’d cut the boy some slack on this. He’s spent so long between a rock and a hard place he doesn’t know what a soft one feels like.”

  Audwin scowled at him. “You think I don’t know that?” He shook his head. “I don’t know why he thought they were valuable,” he said. “I’m not an official collector. Those are just pieces that have been given to me by family members—my dad and grandfather, mostly. I’ve always had a knack for finding pennies after losing people, you know. Everyone thinks that’s an old wives’ tale, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. I’ve been finding them since I was a boy. I found several after my daddy died. It’s supposed to be their way of letting you know they’re okay, you know? That you can let them go. I’ve found half a dozen since Martha died, two of them right there on her headstone.”

  Jack had never heard that before, but was never one to doubt or question the unexplained.

  “You mean you didn’t know some of the coins were valuable?”

  He shook his head, clearly puzzled. “I had no idea. They were keepsakes, not cash.”

  Bobby Ray had gotten extremely lucky. “Come on,” Jack told him. “I’ll take you home.”

  He called Mariette first. “I’ve got him and he’s fine. Tell Charlie so she can call everyone else off.”

  “I will,” she said. He heard her relay the news to Bobby Ray and the boy’s sigh of relief was loud enough that he heard it over the line.

  “And you took care of the other?”

  “I did. He has them and is going to leave here right now and go put them back where they came from.”

  Jack darted a look at Audwin from the corner of his eye. “He knows,” he said. “But I don’t think he’s going to let on.”

  “Good,” Mariette said. “I think that would be for the best.” She paused. “I’ll see you soon.”

  It was almost, but not quite, a question, and he suddenly realized that she must think that because this case was closed, they were finished, as well. That he would just pack up his things and move on with his life as though she’d been a mere distraction, a fun little excursion on this assignment.

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  And no one was more surprised by that than Jackson Oak Martin.

  “You will,” he promised.

  CHARLIE HUGGED MARIETTE’S neck and gave her a squeeze. “I’ll see you soon,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed being down here with you. As far as assignments go, short of the one where I met my husband, this one has been the best.”

  Mariette grinned at her. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Charlie hesitated. “He’s crazy about you, you know.”

  Mariette’s gaze flew to hers. “What? Who?”

  “Don’t play coy,” she said. “You think I didn’t know what was going on from the moment the two of you laid eyes on each other?”

  Mariette blushed. “Charlie, I—”

  “See?” she said, laughing softly. “I can’t even bring him up without your face turning six shades of red. And Livvie’s got it right. You do look gooey. She told me so earlier today.”

  “Gooey?”

  “Like the middle part of the brownie,” Charlie told her. “Warm and gooey and good.”

  She certainly felt like the middle part of the brownie when she was with Jack, that was for damned sure. Except for when she wasn’t wound tight with desire, a desperate throbbing nerve of need.

  She’d never felt this way before, Mariette thought. She never needed, admired or craved a man the way she did Jack Martin. Was he handsome? Certainly. Hot? Most definitely. But he was so much more than that. He was a man who cared enough about the happiness of a less-fortunate boy that he’d done everything he could possibly do to pave an easier way for him. That took character, it took heart, it took…a real man.

  Charlie gave her another squeeze. “I’d better go,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “I’d hate to delay your spanking.”

  And with that parting comment, she turned and walked away.

  Mariette looked around her suddenly empty shop and felt an odd pang. For the first time in her life she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself.

  Thankfully, she didn’t have an opportunity to dwell on that, because Jack chose that moment to stroll into the shop. The bell above the door jingled, signaling his arrival and there was something almost providential in the ring this time. Something that made her smile.

  He strolled determinedly to her, then wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. He breathed her in, savored her mouth, tangled his tongue around hers as though somehow the act seemed to trigger a reset button, a way to get back to who they were.

  “I have some bad news,” Jack told her, pulling back to stare into her face. His gaze was soft and tender, his blue eyes rife with an emotion she hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not going to be run off as easily as Nathaniel,” he said. “In the first place, you’d have to find somebody bigger and, short of the real Jolly Green Giant, I don’t think that
’s going to happen. In the second place, I’m not as easily intimidated and have a thicker head than anyone you’ve likely ever gotten involved with before.”

  Mariette blinked up at him and smiled. “What gave you the idea I wanted to get rid of you?”

  “Nothing yet,” he told her. “I’m just making a preemptive strike. Letting you know where I stand.” He paused. “Where do I stand, Mariette?”

  On the threshold of her heart, Mariette thought. And she had no doubt that he would knock and pummel and batter the door down until she let him in.

  “With me,” she said simply. “I don’t know what this is,” she admitted. “And don’t have the experience to know what should happen next. All I know is that I want to be with you. As much as possible, whenever possible.”

  He nuzzled the side of her neck. “That can certainly be arranged.”

  “Your sister knows about us,” Mariette told him.

  He chuckled. “I never doubted it. That’s why she filled your ears full. She didn’t want you toying with my affections.”

  She blinked up at him. “What?”

  “Charlie’s protective,” he said. He swallowed. “And I wasn’t myself when I came home. I… I lost a couple of men. In Baghdad. I’m sure she told you that.”

  Mariette squeezed him. “She did. I’m so sorry, Jack.”

  His gaze turned inward, reliving a nightmare she couldn’t see. “It was hell,” he said. “But there was this one guy, Johnson… I really liked him. He was young and smart.” He released a breath. “Bobby Ray actually reminds me of him. They have that same spirit of goodness, you know?”

  She nodded.

  “Anyway, when the blast hit he’d been talking about what he wanted out of a woman,” Jack told her. He shook his head. “One of the other guys had just made some jackass comment about—” He blinked. “Never mind what it was about. But Johnson’s reply was wholesome, innocent. He just wanted a woman who knew how to cook.” His gaze tangled with hers. “And then I found you.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she said, her heart crowding into her throat.

  “He died in my arms, Mariette, and as horrible as that was, he kept trying to tell me something before he died. He was shouting it. He grabbed me and shook me and repeated himself until he couldn’t anymore. And I couldn’t hear him.”

  Oh, Lord…

  Because of his ear. No doubt the force of the blast had rendered him temporarily deaf and… She swallowed, held him closer.

  “I can see his face, every move of his lips—everything about that few minutes—plain as day. But I still haven’t been able to figure out what he was trying to tell me. And it was important, Mariette. He spent his last breath trying to share it with me.” He paused again, looked down and his tortured gaze tangled with hers. “I’ve been taking lip-reading lessons trying to learn the technique so that I can figure it out.”

  She blinked, astonished. “You have?”

  “It was important to him, whatever it was. I need to pass the message along.”

  So simple and yet so profound. Sweet heaven, had there ever been a better man? “Have you made any headway on it yet?”

  “Just a little.” He glanced down at her. “It’s much more difficult than I’d anticipated. For instance, ‘I love you’ could easily be mistaken for ‘olive juice’ or ‘elephant shoes.’ See, give it a go. I’ll mouth it and you try to guess which one of those phrases I said.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  She watched his lips, her heart beating strangely in her chest. He did it and she stared at him, completely at a loss. He was right. He could have said any one of those lines. “Olive juice,” she guessed.

  “No,” he told her, dragging her closer to him. “I said ‘I love you.’”

  “Oh.”

  “On purpose, Mariette,” he said. “You think I’m insane, don’t you?”

  Mariette didn’t know that this much happiness could occupy a single body, let alone hers. She flushed with joy, felt it permeate every cell, making her glow inside.

  “Then I’m going crazy with you,” she said, lifting up on tiptoe to give him a kiss. She drew back once more, framed his dear face and slid her thumb along his jaw. “It wasn’t your fault, Jack,” she said.

  He frowned at her, a line wrinkling his brow.

  “Baghdad.” It might not be her place, but dammit, he needed to hear it. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  He went chalk white and staggered back against the display case.

  “Jack?”

  “Say that again,” he said, his gaze fastening on her mouth.

  “It’s not your fault, Jack.”

  Jack passed a hand over his face, his big body trembling. A dry bark of laugher erupted from his throat and he shook his head, but he wasn’t amused. She didn’t know exactly what he was, but…

  “That’s what he said,” Jack murmured. “All this time I’ve been worried about making sure his message was delivered and it was for me,” he said, his voice cracking. “‘It’s not your fault, Oak,’” he’d said. He glanced up at her. “That’s what they called me. Mighty Oak, actually. It’s my middle name.”

  Tears burned the backs of her lids and blurred her vision. “I know. Your sister told me.”

  He rolled his eyes, snorted. “Of course she did. The little blabbermouth.”

  She rained gentle kisses on his face. “Yes, but you olive juice her.”

  He chuckled weakly. “I do,” he said. “And I olive juice you, too.” He threaded his fingers through hers and then tugged her toward the staircase. “Come on,” he told her. “I believe I owe you a spanking.”

  That he did, Mariette thought. And she’d happily take her punishment for as long as he’d dole it out.

  And she hoped that was forever.

  Epilogue

  One month later…

  THE SURGEON WALKED INTO the waiting room and said, “Bishop family,” in carrying tones.

  Five former Army Rangers, a pregnant security agent, a dairy farmer, a girl with Down syndrome decked out in Hello Kitty attire and a pastry chef all stood.

  The surgeon’s eyes widened at the imposing, eclectic group.

  Audwin stepped forward. “How’s my son?”

  The surgeon smiled. “He came through with flying colors, sir. I’m confident that this surgery will smooth out those scars and make him feel much more confident in his appearance. He’s in recovery now and will be moved to a room—”

  “A private room,” Payne interjected. “On my wing.”

  Payne’s wing was actually labor and delivery, but the surgeon knew better than to argue with him, Mariette thought, smiling as she and Jack shared a look.

  “As you wish, Mr. Payne,” he said. “It’ll probably be a little while before he’s awake. I’ll have someone notify you when we move him.”

  Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. It hadn’t taken much to convince Bobby Ray to have the corrective surgery to repair his face. What he’d balked at was the cost, but Audwin had insisted that he couldn’t think of a better way to spend his money. He’d sold every coin worth any value, had only kept the ones he’d found on Martha’s headstone.

  Bobby Ray had moved in with Audwin and the change in the boy since being taken under the older man’s wing—and that of all the rest of them—was nothing short of phenomenal. He planned to start taking college classes in the fall, once he’d finished healing.

  Jack, meanwhile, had moved in with Mariette and home had never felt so right. She went to bed with him snuggled up to her back and woke up in the same fashion. She felt cherished and appreciated and generally adored, and there was nothing quite so wonderful than being unconditionally loved.

  She squeezed his hand, looked up at
him and smiled. “Olive juice,” she said, saying it for the first time so that he could hear her. The emotions were there, but for whatever reason, the words had been more difficult to say.

  But she needed to say them and, more importantly, he needed to hear them.

  He grinned, bent down and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Olive juice you, too, sweetheart.”

  Charlie shot them both a perplexed look and rolled her eyes. “The inside jokes are getting a little old,” she said. “Olive juice? What does that even mean?”

  Jack tugged Mariette up against his side and gave her a squeeze. “It means we’re happy.”

  Yes, Mariette thought. That, and so much more.

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 9781459220461

  Copyright © 2012 by Rhonda Nelson

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