The Marrying Kind
Page 27
“Our biggest problem was his shock, and a fairly significant blood loss. Once we got him over that, we were able to operate. He’s out of recovery now. Who wants to see him first?”
Tessa took an automatic step, then she remembered his parents, Angela, a scattering of people who had loved him and known him forever. She held back.
Tonie Gunner nodded at her and urged her toward the door. Somehow Angela had stopped pacing and had ended up behind her. She gave Tessa’s shoulder a gentle push.
Tessa took off like a shot. She was well down the hallway before the doctor even came through the doors behind her.
“Right there,” he called out after her. “The door to your left.”
Tessa darted inside, then her footsteps slowed. She approached the bed cautiously and groaned. He was so pale. He was sleeping. She put a trembling hand to his cheek and one of his eyes cracked open. She finally breathed. She hadn’t believed it, couldn’t really believe he was reasonably okay, until she saw it with her own eyes.
“Guess... this... proves it,” he said, and his voice was like sandpaper.
What was he talking about now? “Proves what?” she asked dazedly as her eyes and hands frantically sought other wounds, other bruises, something a plethora of doctors might have missed.
“You’re different, Princess. I never took... a bullet...for a woman before.”
Her eyes filled. “Oh, Gunner.”
“I surely do love you, Tess,” And in the end, he thought, it was so easy to say.
Her heart swelled until it ached. She had been right. A tear spilled over. Funny how, from the time they had put him in the ambulance, she had not been able to cry.
Gunner’s eyes closed again.
There was so much she had to tell him, everything she had realized in these past few interminable hours. But now wasn’t the time.
“Don’t you die, John. Don’t you dare die on me before we finish this, or I’ll kill you.”
He held his arms out to her without opening his eyes. She bent and went into them carefully, avoiding tubes and cables and moles that were no more.
Her head was tucked against his shoulder, and she didn’t see his smug half smile.
Kennery called them into his office almost as soon as Gunner was out of the hospital. Tessa bit her lip and glanced nervously over at him as Kennery picked up a pile of papers from his desk.
Their captain took the first stapled bunch and slapped it down hard. “Twelve thousand, nine hundred and eighty six dollars for the unmarked that got wrapped around a traffic light,” he said harshly. He took the next bunch and his gaze swiveled directly to Tessa. “And you. Thirteen thousand and fifty four dollars for the one that took out the tollbooth! Both of them beyond repair. Totaled. Which is not to mention this little estimate.” He waved another paper. “Thirty some odd thousand for the tollbooth. And this one.” He smacked his big hand down on the last bunch of papers. “Over six thousand for a civilian’s car — a citizen’s car — left in the middle of oncoming traffic, smashed six ways to Sunday. So what have you got to say for yourselves?”
Gunner cocked a brow and shifted his weight uncomfortably in the opposite chair. “Good work?” he suggested mildly, and Tessa laughed, earning a glower from Kennery.
Then, finally, Kennery cracked a smile, too.
He was feeling mellow. Benami was behind bars, and it had happened before Monday. Kennery touched his wallet, satisfied.
“The safe-deposit box in question contained a second rope, which Forensics is currently working on, trying to match it to the fibers found on Daphne’s body. It also held various memorabilia from both wives, and lots and lots of Bemami’s fingerprints.”
“That’s great!” Tessa breathed.
“The guy actually dressed up as a woman to get into it. Can you believe that?” Kennery was grinning widely now. “A bank clerk managed to identify him by way of some clever work on the part of our police artist. Faced with that—and the bloodwork that matches what was under Daphne’s nail—The Great Basil English The Fourth has resigned from the case.”
Gunner laughed aloud. “No wonder he’s so good. He doesn’t take cases he can’t win.”
Kennery nodded. “So that leaves me with the last, little problem of what I’m supposed to do about you two.” He paused, his gaze swinging between them. “Internal Affairs is irritated, to put it mildly, although they can’t in good conscience put any of these cars on your records. But you might end up working on foot from here on in, assuming you’re still partners.”
“Yes,” Tessa said immediately.
“Nope,” Gunner said at the same time.
“No?” Her gaze jumped to him. “What do you mean, no?”
“Protocol,” he said.
“Protocol,” she repeated, confused. “What kind of protocol? What are you talking about? And since when have you cared about protocol?”
Gunner looked at Kennery. “Don’t we have some rule that says partners can’t be married?”
“Married?” Tessa lost her breath. Her eyes widened. She stared at him.
Kennery grinned and touched his wallet again. Easter? He’d put his money on Valentine’s Day, and baby, was he going to collect.
“Don’t know,” he said enigmatically. “I’d have to look into it. It hasn’t come up in my unit before.”
“Well, it’s up now.”
Tessa shot to her feet. “Gunner!”
“What’s the matter, Princess?”
“What’s the matter?” Was this his idea of a proposal?
No, she thought, getting a grip on herself. It certainly couldn’t be. She had obviously misunderstood. Nobody caught John Gunner. The rumors hadn’t even turned out to be true. No one in city hall had even dated him.
She knew that, had no expectations otherwise. She’d spent many of the past nights in his arms, and she was content with that, knowing him, knowing it wasn’t ever likely to become anything more.
Love’s just too confined, too stringent for my tastes. He’d said that. He’d said those very words. Okay, she thought, so they had both climbed over some fences, had both come to terms with the toppling of a few tried and firm beliefs. He loved her. She loved him. Profoundly.
But he wouldn’t want to marry her. He wasn’t the marrying kind.
Except he was looking at her, watching her, with that grin. And it would be just like him, it would be so purely John Gunner, to do something like this here, now. No traditional and romantic champagne and candlelight. No bended knee. He would do it here, now, where it bad almost immediately started the moment Kennery had assigned them as partners.
Her heart began slamming.
“What exactly is it that you’re saying?” she asked carefully.
“Marry me.”
Kennery grinned hugely and got up from his desk to lumber to the door. “Somebody get their backside in here!” he yelled. “I need a witness.”
Tessa looked after their captain wildly. “A witness? A witness? I’m not going to marry him here!”
“I got five hundred bucks says you’re going to do it somewhere,” Kennery answered, then he looked out into the hall again. “Becky? Where the devil are you? Mel, come here, you’ll do.”
This was absurd, Tessa thought helplessly. They’d had a pool about what would happen with her and Gunner? She knew there was always some kind of bet going on in the unit, but her and Gunner? Had the depth of their friendship been that obvious to everyone but her?
“Say something,” Gunner said, watching her carefully. For the first time, he was overcome with doubts.
Was he pushing too fast, too soon? Scaring her? Matt, he thought again dismally. The guy she’d been going to take a bullet for. He’d honestly believed that when she’d shot Benami, she’d put that behind her, was ready to move on again. He’d believed from the beginning that she was strong enough to do it, and that putting her in the Fifth had been a big mistake. She’d needed to face things, to deal with it all head-on. He’d believed he could work
her over the memories, and in the end win her for his own.
Maybe not.
Maybe, with a nice, traditional, hardworking cop like Matt Bryant, a cop who didn’t destroy cars, a woman never put him behind her.
“I love you,” she whispered, oblivious now to the people crowding into Kennery’s office.
Gunner got slowly and stiffly to his feet. His heart moved hard and painfully. “That’s good. That’s a start.”
Actually, he thought, it was more than good. It was damn fine. It threatened to buckle his knees and it did something odd to his throat. He’d known it, of course, from the moment on the roadside when she’d flowed into his arms. Had hoped so. Had believed it with a desperate fear that he might be wrong. But until now, she’d never actually said so.
Unfortunately she didn’t say anything else.
“But?” he prompted carefully.
You’re a cop, Tessa thought helplessly. She had come to terms with a lot of things, but her fear of that was bone-deep.
It would never go away. She knew that. Not after what had happened with Matt, not after she and Gunner had nearly died at a toll plaza, all in the space of one short year. No, it would not go away, but she could learn to live with it.
If she married him, she would live with the fear every day of her life, every time he was late coming off shift, coming home. But she could control it.
Because she would feel fear whether she married him or not.
“But nothing,” she said. She’d buy him a bullet-proof vest. And if that was too confining and stringent for him, then ... well, too damn bad. But he would wear it, she realized. No matter how silly and confining it was, he would do it for her. Because he had always protected her from hurt, from herself.
He was her knight in tarnished armor.
She watched his expression as her words sank in and wondered if she could milk this enough to get him to permanently hand over the car keys. Probably not.
“Call if you’re going to be late coming home,” she insisted. “Always. Always.”
“I can handle that.”
“It’s stringent. It’s confined. But I need rules.”
“We’ll make them up as we go along.”
Of course they would. That was what made every moment with him new, an adventure.
Someone clapped. A second person demanded, “Is that a yes? Damn it, my hundred said it would never happen.”
“It’s a yes,” Tess whispered, and then she was in his arms.
He kissed her long and hard and fully. And someone else clapped, a singular sharp, staccato beat before other hands joined in and someone whistled.
“I don’t believe this,” she murmured against his mouth. “Are you sure?”
He smiled and put his forehead to hers. “Yeah. Oh, yeah.”
“But you said—”
“I said I was twenty-five when I married Elaine, and I didn’t know love from baloney. And you asked me if I did now.”
Yes, she thought, he certainly did have a mind like a steel trap. She couldn’t believe he remembered.
“I said I hadn’t had cause to think about it in a good, long time,” he reminded, “and that I doubted if I’d ever been in it. And then you blushed when I mentioned my fingers, and it jumped up and bit me on the nose.”
“Oh.” She grinned, blushing again. “Well, they’re great fingers.”
“Thank you.”
Someone was pounding him on the back. He finally let her go and went to talk to Kennery. Becky Trumball caught Tessa’s arm.
“So,” she said wistfully. “What about his pants?”
Tessa looked at her. “His pants?”
“Yeah. You know, does he put them on one leg at a time?”
Tessa looked back at him, her heart swelling. She smiled slowly.
“No,” she said quietly. “John Gunner’s definitely not like any other man.”
ISBN : 978-1-4592-7955-1
THE MARRYING KIND
Copyright © 1996 by Beverly Bird
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
What in the world was she going to do about John Gunner? Tessa asked herself.
Letter to Reader
Books by Beverly Bird
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Copyright