“Oh my God, Aron.” I clung to his shoulders as I rode him, the hot pool of bliss spreading from my stomach and creeping through my veins. “Oh fuck, it’s too much.”
My body pumped and pulsated, my insides flapped, my heart pounded noisily…and then the tsunami of bliss crashed over me, causing me to buckle and shudder violently. Aron held onto me, he cared for me and looked after me even now, so as he cried out I kissed him hard, swallowing up his screams, hopefully doing the same for him.
It was strange, the man who I thought could never be mine was here, in my arms, loving me in every way possible. I had to be the luckiest woman on the whole damn planet.
Epilogue
“How’s the presentation going?” Aron asked me, as he kissed all over the back of my neck and snaked his arms around my waist. His touch still warmed my heart, even after all this time. I didn’t think I’d ever get bored with having him around.
“It was going well into you came in here,” I mock moaned as a reply. “You are always such a distraction.” I lolled my head to one side and slid my eyes shut for a moment, just enjoying the sensation of having his wonderful, plump lips all over me.
“You shouldn’t have come to live with me then!”
Well, that was true. I should’ve known that living with him would turn out this way. We had been together for a year before he asked me! By that point it was my own fault, I knew how he made me feel and how challenging it was to remember that there was a big wide world outside those doors.
“Fair enough.” I spun in my chair and planted my lips up against his. Then I rested my forehead against his and I lost myself in his warm, dark eyes like I seemed to do at least once a day. “It’s going well, I think today will be good for me.”
Now that things had calmed down at the hospital, and everyone was used to me and Aron being together, it felt strange to recall that he was ever just a fantasy man. Actually, all the years I’d spent thinking about him really didn’t do him any justice. The Dr. Turner that I’d created in my mind was wonderful, but the Aron that I got to be with every single day is fantastic.
Still, I needed to use the difficulties of that experience to help others. It was what drove me every single day, just like being a nurse did.
“It’s got to be better having Nancy by your side?” he asked me nervously. Even though a long time had passed, Aron still found the subject of my complex friendship a difficult one to tackle.
“It is,” I answered honestly. “And not just because we’re friends again now, but because it shows another side of things. Workplace bullying often goes undetected because people don’t think it can happen out of school, and she’s living proof that you might not even realize that you’re doing it. I’m glad she’s working on my charitable foundation with me.”
“Well I’m proud of you too, and Edna would be as well.” Aron knew that I still liked to remember Edna, even though it had been a long time since she passed. She touched me and affected me in ways that no one else ever would. She was special to me, and would always be in my mind somewhere. “I bet she’s looking down on you now, thinking how well you’ve done.”
“I doubt it! I bet she’s spending time with her husband again, she missed him too much after he died…what are you doing?” I suddenly trailed off as I noticed that Aron was no longer standing next to me, but he was on the floor instead.
On one knee.
Holding out a small jewelry box.
Oh. My. God.
“Speaking of husbands…” he announced with that wonderfully wicked smile of his. “I think it’s time that you made me yours. You already know that I love you and that I’d do anything for you, and I hope I show you how happy you make me every single day. I want to make it official, I want to world to know that I’m yours.”
I could barely breathe, this was all so unexpected. One minute we were just having a normal conversation, and now he was asking me to marry him? He was insane!
Then again, his spontaneous nature was one of the things that I loved about him.
“So, will you do me the most wonderful honor of being my wife?”
“You’re insane,” I gasped with tear flooded eyes. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Well, I’m sort of hoping that one of the words you’ll say will be yes,” he chuckled, but there was a definite awkwardness there. “That would be ideal.”
“Yes, you idiot! Of course, yes!”
As he jumped up and he scooped me up into his arms, I felt my heart thunder in my chest. Dr. Turner was the man who could never be mine, who was always at arms-length, but now Aron was forever mine and all I wanted to do was weep.
“I love you, so much,” I gasped, while crashing my lips into his for a second.
“I love you too, even if you did call me an idiot after I proposed,” Aron smirked back. “And I’m glad to be yours forever because you honestly are the best person I’ve ever known.”
A happy ever after for me, who would’ve ever thought it?
THE END
= Bonus Book 12 of 17 =
The End Game
Book 1: The Fumbling Football Player
Detective Lilly Bruce sat at her desk, eyeing the stack of reports sitting on her desk.
“Rethinking this whole Detective thing, are you?”
Lilly rolled her eyes, slapping her new partner with a file folder playfully. She was annoyed, but not for the reason he thought.
“No. I’m glad I changed careers. But I just wonder what the new Medical Examiner is doing. Did they hire someone straight out of school or is he just that careless?”
“You wanna know what I think?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I feel like you’re patronizing me.”
“No really,” she said, a touch of sarcasm in her voice. “I always try to take advice on my former career from people who are afraid to step into the morgue.”
“For the last time, I’m not afraid. I wasn’t feeling well when I came to work and it got the better of me at a bad time.”
Lilly smiled, biting her lip to keep from laughing. She knew that it was very likely that Detective Adam Tremaine had indeed come to work sick that day, but that logical explanation wasn’t as fun. The image of big, burly Adam, with his slick blond hair and striking blue eyes passing out near the autopsy table was too good to pass up.
So like everyone else, she constantly gave him grief over it, especially since it had happened while she was still the Medical Examiner for the small suburb of Fort Worth, Texas.
“I guess I’ll never get the image of you face-planting inches from the drain out of my head.”
“Back to the problem at hand,” he said, trying to steer the conversation away from his most embarrassing moment.
“Sure. Please, tell me what you were thinking.”
“I was thinking that he keeps doing that so that you’ll come down there and you can talk to him.”
“No way,” Lilly said. “That’s asinine.”
Adam shrugged.
“Whatever you want to think. But I’m a man, and a man knows these things.”
“Based on what, my stunning good looks?”
Lilly laughed, shuffling through the papers and trying to make sense of the garbled notes on the page.
“Exactly.”
“Please,” Lilly chided him. “There’s no way.”
“Is your mirror broken?”
The Sergeant walked by, dropping another folder onto Lilly’s already piled up desk.
“I hate to cut this little love story short, but we have a dead body at the football stadium in Brook Ridge. I need you two lovebirds out there ASAP before the scene is destroyed. The coach is getting antsy. Seems a dead body in their locker room on the first day of Spring Training is cramping their style.”
Lilly grabbed the folder, which held only a fax from the department that had sent the case over after the 9-1-1 call and a grainy cellphone picture of the body stuffed into the equipment cage.
“I hope no one disturbed the scene,” Lilly mumbled.
“Someone always does, Lil,” Adam said.
“That’s Detective Bruce,” Lilly corrected.
“We’re partners. I’m not calling you ‘Detective’ anything.”
“Don’t call me Lil.”
“Fine.”
Lilly grabbed the keys to their department issued car and headed to the parking lot.
“It’s my turn to drive,” Adam said, trying to snatch the keys out of Lilly’s hand.
“No way. I let you drive once. I almost ended up on the slab myself. I’d like to make it home in one piece.”
“I’m a great driver.”
“You’re a terrifying driver. It’s a wonder your license hasn’t been revoked yet.”
Adam scoffed.
“Says you. Maybe you’re not cut out for police work. You’re too prissy.”
Lilly spun around, jabbing Adam in the chest with her finger. She was short, her head barely coming up to his collar bone, but she was a force of nature. Curly black hair seemed to have a life of its own as it settled on her shoulders. Jade green eyes flashed with anger at his words.
“Don’t ever say that to me. I’m just as qualified as you are, perhaps even more so. You’re a horrible driver, but that doesn’t give you the right to question whether or not I belong here.”
Adam put his hands up and took a step back.
“Whoa, sorry. Didn’t mean to touch a nerve there.”
“Well, you did. I’m not here to take crap for being a woman. If you don’t like it, get another partner. Heaven knows I can work this job alone.”
“I’m sorry, really.”
“You don’t sound sorry,” Lilly said, unlocking the car and getting into the driver’s seat.
“I am sorry; I just don’t know how to deal with you.”
“Treat me like one of the guys.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not like one of the guys.”
“Pretend I am if you have to. Do whatever it takes, just don’t call me Lil and don’t question my ability to do this job.”
Adam slouched in the car seat, arms folded and mouth set.
“You’re such a diva,” he mumbled under his breath.
“What did you call me?”
“A diva. I said you’re a diva. I’m not the only one who says it. People have been calling you that for a while; long before you became a detective.”
Lilly pulled to a stoplight and took the opportunity to give Adam a withering glance.
“They called me a diva?”
“Not just a diva. Diva of the Dead.”
“Huh.”
“What do you mean ‘huh’?”
“I think I actually like that. Diva of the Dead. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Why not?”
“It feels like a trap. Regardless, we’ve all been called worse. You need a thicker skin.”
Lilly shrugged and pulled into the parking lot of the football stadium. They had work to do. They could pick up this conversation later.
***
Lilly strode into the locker room, following the sound of crime scene investigators collecting evidence in the equipment room. The smell reached her long before she passed through the locker room.
The football players sat in silence in the locker room, but she could feel their eyes on her as she passed by. There were a few low, breathy whistles, but Lilly couldn’t tell where they were coming from. To be honest, she didn’t really care. The Brook Ridge Railroaders were a minor league football team with aspirations of joining the national league. There was a lot of ego in the room, not an ounce of it earned, and Lilly wasn’t about to give them the reaction they were looking for.
The equipment room was dank and dark, with single, bare bulbs spaced semi-evenly along the ceiling. The result was a creepy, yellow glow that made everything in the room look jaundiced.
The smell was even worse in here, and Lilly soon knew why.
“Is he in there under all that stuff?” Lilly asked, studying the decomposed mass under a mound of gray kettle balls.
“Yep. And each of those weigh about fifteen pounds, so it’s going to take a while to clear them without disturbing the body.”
“What’s that on his hands?”
Lilly squatted down beside one arm that had slid out under the chain-link fencing that made up the equipment cage.
“That,” the tech said, eyes darting to a dark corner of the room, “is the brain-child of the first man on the scene.”
Lilly spun around, locking eyes with the man sitting on a low bench and watching everything around him with obvious interest. Her stride was long as she rushed towards him, shoulders tense.
“You put sandwich baggies on his hands?”
“Yep.”
The man seemed proud.
“What the hell, why?”
“Um, I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do so that if there’s any skin under the nails you can preserve it.”
“Did you touch the body?”
“I had to. It was a lot of work to get the bags on and tie them.”
Lilly rolled her eyes. Was this man serious?
“And where did you get the idea that it was something you should do?”
The man rattled off the names of several prime-time crime shows and Lilly groaned.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“You did several things wrong. But let’s focus on the baggies. When you jostled the hands around like that, you probably knocked any loose skin off and it’s going to be nearly impossible to find in the dust and dirt scattered on the concrete floor.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”
“Sorry doesn’t bring back evidence.”
Adam stepped into her line of vision, giving her a slight shake of the head and trying to get her to stop her angry tirade.
“Excuse me, Mr.—”
“Hathaway. Jason Hathaway. I’m the Railroader’s tight-end.”
He stuck his hand out, but Lilly didn’t take it. She walked a short distance away, standing close to Adam and talking in low tones.
“What?”
“Don’t badger the witness.”
“Why? He’s an idiot.”
“He may be an idiot, but he’s the only one cooperating. Don’t screw that up, he might be the only lead we have.”
“So that’s it? He just gets a free-pass for messing up the crime scene?”
“He didn’t mean to and I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Well, some of us are realists instead of blind optimists.”
“Regardless, we need him to come to the station with us for questioning and we have no grounds to take him in against his will. He’s going to need to come willingly or you might as well drop this one in the cold case file today. We have no leads and no idea who the guy in the cage is.”
Lilly looked at Jason Hathaway, sitting on the bench, his expression tense.
“Fine. I’ll play nice. But I’m still pissed. This isn’t a television show; this is real life.”
“That’s right, and I’m sure he’s sorry.”
Lilly took a deep breath, trying to steel herself for the show she was about to put on. She was beyond irritated with this man and his actions, regardless of his intentions. She didn’t want to cut him some slack.
“Mr. Hathaway?”
“Please, call me Jason.”
“Of course, Jason.”
Lilly painted on her best southern belle smile.
“I’m sorry I was a little harsh there a second ago. I appreciate the effort, even if the technique was a little rough.”
“I’m really sorry about that. Next time, I’ll do better.”
Next time? Was he hoping for more bodies?
“I’m sure there won’t be a next time, but in any case, please leave the evidence co
llection to the professionals.”
“I’m hoping there will be a next time. Football is just a way to pay my way through college. What I really want to be is a homicide detective.”
Is he serious? Lilly thought.
“It’s nice that you have dreams and aspirations,” Lilly said, mentally kicking herself for how off-putting her words sounded.
She’d been in the business of death for so long that she really didn’t know what to say to the living at times. This was no exception. She knew what she wanted to say, but she didn’t think that telling him that he was living in a fantasy world was a nice thing to say.
Still, it was tempting.
But there was something about this handsome football player that made her hesitate. Normally she didn’t think twice about putting a man in his place. After all, she was just over five feet tall. In her line of work, if you were small in stature, you made up for it with a big presence. That’s what had always worked for Lilly, and she wasn’t about to change.
Unfortunately, she needed to get this man to not only come back to the station, but to willingly submit a DNA sample to rule him out as a suspect.
“You know what, Jason? I think that this is perfect. I need to question you anyway to rule out any DNA you might have left on the victim when you were covering his hands, and I also need to ask you some questions. Since you were the first person on the scene and you’re an educated witness, I really need some time to pick your brain.”
“That sounds great.”
“Perfect,” she said, shocked that it had been just that easy. “Then why don’t you come with us, and we’ll take you to the station so we can get all of this out of the way.”
Jason didn’t even hesitate, shouldering his backpack and falling into step behind Lilly.
That was much too easy
***
Princess For Them Page 73