Kept

by Jami Alden

  “I’m begging you,” he repeated, “to give me another chance. I love you.” His eyes were intense, focused. He pressed a kiss against the pad of her index finger. “I can’t stop thinking of you.” He moved onto her middle finger, grazing the tip with his teeth. “I want to be with you all the time, have you next to me so I can reach out and touch you any time I want.”

  Alyssa swallowed hard and didn’t respond. But a warm glow had taken root inside her and was unfurling like ribbons through her limbs.

  “When I thought you were dead, I felt like my world had ended,” Derek said, all teasing gone from his voice. He leaned over her and kissed her, first on the mouth and then on each cheek and the tip of her nose. “I love you, Alyssa.” He lifted his head and smiled at her. “Now, I know I don’t deserve it, but how about you forgive me for being such an asshole and tell me you love me back?”

  She was silent for several long seconds as though seriously considering her decision. He swallowed hard, and despite his stoicism, she could see real fear lurking in his dark eyes.

  “Forgive him,” Farris said.

  Derek rolled his eyes, stood up, and grabbed the guy by the collar. “Okay. That’s enough. Take it to People magazine and run with it.”

  “Your welcome, Charlie!” Alyssa called as Derek shoved him out the door.

  “You know him?” Derek asked, puzzled.

  “Let’s just say this will be the second time I made his career.”

  He came back to the bed and took hold of her hand. She tried not to gloat at the faint tremble in his fingers. He sank again to the floor. “I can see it now. Cover story of Us Weekly. ALYSSA MILES’S MYSTERY MAN BEGS HER NOT TO DUMP HIM ON HIS SORRY ASS.” Deep grooves framed his tight lips despite his attempt at humor.

  His gaze was unwavering as he waited for her answer, and she couldn’t keep from reveling for a few more seconds in the fact that she had brought big, tough, impervious Derek Taggart to his knees.

  Finally she let her smile break free and tugged her hand from his. She curved her fingers around his neck and wove them through the short, silky hair at his nape. “I love you back. And if you stay on your best behavior for the next fifty or so years, I’ll think about forgiving you. Deal?”

  His dimples creased his cheeks, and the love was evident in his face as he let the last piece of the wall around his heart fall away. “Deal.”

  Six weeks later…

  Derek jumped up from the couch as soon as he heard the car pull into the driveway. He was out the door and on the driveway before the driver had unloaded Alyssa’s suitcase. He opened her door himself, pulling her off her feet and into his arms before she even had a chance to get out of the limo.

  He was being ridiculous, but didn’t care. She’d been gone for two weeks in Africa. Right after she’d gotten out of the hospital, she’d worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and, using the information in Martin Fish’s notes, she’d located Marie Laure and her baby in a refugee camp in Kinshasa. Determined to help Marie Laure and victims of southern Africa’s civil wars, Alyssa was working with UNHCR and UNICEF and made the trip to help the foundation bring the plight of the region’s war refugees to the world’s attention.

  As Martin Fish had envisioned, with Alyssa’s name attached, the world, or American media at least, took notice.

  Derek had hated to let her go. Bad enough she’d barely escaped getting killed a few weeks before. Now her first trip away from him, she’d had to go to one of the most dangerous places on the globe. He could barely stand to let her out of his sight for a few hours, much less two weeks, but he knew how important the trip was, both to the foundation and to her.

  Now, at least, he could get some sleep, something he’d done very little of in the time she’d been gone. He had nightmares about the night she’d been shot, but in the dreams more often than not, she didn’t survive. He’d wake up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, convinced he was going to roll over and find her lying in a pool of her own blood. Only the sight of her, sound asleep on the pillow next to him, was enough to calm him down enough to fall back asleep. The nightmares, combined with the ongoing stress of not knowing if one of the bodies found in the mountains belonged to his mother, had made sleep a scarce commodity in the past two weeks.

  This was new to him, needing someone. He still wasn’t sure he liked it, but it was his reality, and he was working with it.

  But he didn’t begrudge Alyssa her time away. She needed this, maybe as much as he liked to think she needed him. After drifting aimlessly through life, Alyssa seemed to find purpose in using her celebrity to better the world.

  She’d even made peace, of sorts, with her uncle Harold. At least, she’d apologized publicly for accusing him of murder. Though Harold hadn’t been involved in the plot to kill Oscar Van Weldt or Alyssa Miles—that was all on Kimberly, Richard, and Abbassi—he wasn’t entirely innocent. He’d willingly looked the other way when it came to Abbassi and to taking the man’s money. And when the shit had hit the fan, he’d let Kimberly take the blame for setting up the deal. Anything to save the family business and his position in it.

  Which of course backfired horribly. After the ensuing scandal, Van Weldt’s retail sales dried up. After nearly seventy-five years in business, Harold Van Weldt was trying to find a buyer for the business. So far there had been no takers, as other jewelers were quick to disassociate themselves from the stain of contraband diamonds.

  Alyssa, however, was still in the jewelry business and was busy developing a line of jewelry made only with gemstones and precious metals that came from environmentally sound sources with good working conditions for the miners. The first line wouldn’t be out until later next year, but they already had thousands of buyers on the waiting list.

  “Two weeks is too long,” he grumbled, barely even noticing the sound of shutters snapping and shouts of “Alyssa, look over here!” coming from the other side of their gate. He’d gotten used to the paparazzi tailing them in the weeks since the Van Weldt blood-diamond scandal—as the press had dubbed it—had exploded in the media.

  He’d gotten used to a lot of other things, too, like waking up with his morning erection nestled up against the sweet curve of her ass and looking over the Marketplace section of the Journal to see her thumbs flying over her BlackBerry keypad as she shot off e-mails to her manager, her publicist, or her contacts at the UNHCR and UNICEF.

  Derek could put up with a few pictures if it meant he got all the other stuff. He turned Alyssa so her back was to the cameras and grabbed her ass so they’d have something good to shoot. As he kissed her, he could see the headline: PASSIONATE REUNION FOR HEIRESS AND BODYGUARD BOY TOY.

  Danny and Ethan would have a ball giving him all kinds of hell, but he didn’t care. He’d put up with a lot of shit to have it this good.

  He let her down long enough to slip the driver a tip and grab her bag to take it to the door of the house they’d moved into right after Alyssa got out of the hospital. She couldn’t go back to the Victorian for obvious reasons, and though it was secure, Derek’s place wasn’t private enough. So they’d moved into this three-bedroom ranch house, the key selling point that it was surrounded by a fifteen-foot wall and an iron gate sturdy enough to keep out unwanted visitors.

  He closed and locked the door and followed her into the kitchen. “I missed you,” he said, kissing her hard as he ran his hands over every inch of her, assuring himself she was okay. She’d texted or called him several times a day to let him know she was safe, sent pictures of herself grinning as she held Marie Laure’s sleeping son in her arms, but he still needed to reassure himself she was here, in his arms, safe.

  “I can feel how much you missed me,” she said, cradling his erection between her thighs as he lifted her onto the kitchen table. She ran her hand down his side, coasted it over his hip, pausing at the bulge in his pocket. “What’s that?”

  His hand froze on her back for a split second. “Nothing.”

  Sh
e frowned and eyed him with mock suspicion and dug her fingers into his pocket.

  He tried to squirm away, but it was too late, she’d already extracted the black velvet box from the front pocket of his jeans. He’d picked it up earlier that morning and had meant to put it away.

  Alyssa’s head cocked to the side, and she raised one eyebrow. “Is this…?”

  “I was going to wait to give it to you later.”

  “When later?” Her pink lips quirked to the side, and with her new short haircut, she looked like a mischievous elf.

  “I don’t know.” He scrambled for words, wishing he had some slick comeback at the ready. “A special occasion.” When I was sure what your answer would be.

  Yeah, he knew she loved him because she told him all the time and showed him in dozens of little ways he would have never imagined he would have appreciated, but that didn’t mean he was ready to bet the farm and let his ass hang out to be kicked.

  She handed the box back, straightened her shoulders, and looked at him expectantly.

  “You know, this isn’t exactly how I expected this to go.”

  “I bet you never expected you’d be living with me and buying me jewelry either,” she said. She looked pointedly at the box and smiled up at him.

  He felt his mouth pull into an answering smile. He could feel the warmth radiating from her, his own private sun.

  He knew damn well what her answer would be.

  Derek flicked the box open. She gasped, her eyes widening when she saw the two-karat square-cut emerald set in a platinum band.

  “It’s gorgeous,” she breathed.

  “Yeah, I figured a diamond would be inappropriate. And besides, this matches your eyes.”

  Her eyes were wet with tears when they lifted to his, and he felt an answering tightness in his throat. For fuck’s sake. For thirty-two years you’re the iceman, and now she’s got you crying like a girl.

  Derek wished he’d had more time to prepare himself, to plan some elaborate speech that would tell her how she made him feel, how she’d brought him to life, how much he worshipped the ground under the soles of her size-six feet.

  But right now, with her staring him in the face, her heart in her eyes, all he could choke out was, “I love you. Please marry me.”

  She hurled herself at him, squealing and crying as her arms and legs wrapped around him and pulled him close.

  “I’ll take that as a yes?”

  “Yes”—both a sob and a laugh. She covered his face in kisses as he carried her down the hall.

  “Good. Now let’s seal the deal and make it official.”

  He had them naked in seconds, ignoring her protest that she was grubby from the plane. “We’ll shower after,” he said, his breath speeding up like it always did at the sight of her, naked and hot for him on their bed.

  Their bed. Where they would sleep and make love and make their babies when the time was right.

  He closed his eyes to cover the burn of tears as he fit himself against her, slid into the slick heat of her body.

  She arched to take him deep, having no shame about her own emotions as tears leaked from her eyes and her breath came in little sobs. He barely got inside her before she came, shaking around him.

  He was right behind her, coming with a speed and intensity that would have been embarrassing if she hadn’t been even quicker on the trigger.

  “I love you so much,” Alyssa whispered. “You have no idea how much.” She stroked his back, holding him on top of her, inside her, when he would have rolled aside. “You’re never going to leave me, are you? Promise you won’t stop loving me.” He could still see it, the fear of rejection, the fear she’d given her love to someone who was going to use it all up and throw it back in her face.

  Derek understood. And he would make it his mission to wipe that fear from her eyes, even if it took the rest of his life. “I promise. I’ve got you now, and I’m never going to let you go.”

  BRAVA BOOKS are published by

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  Copyright © 2009 by Jami Alden

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  ISBN: 0-7582-4019-8