by Kira Archer
Jenny shook his head. “That’s plenty long enough. Dad said he knew Mom was the one for him before their first date. From the first moment she smiled at him. I’m not saying you have to run off and marry her. But you are one stupid son of a bitch if you let her get away.”
Rick glared at her. Then zeroed in on what she had said. “What do you mean, let her get away? She’s the one who ended it.”
“And how hard did you try to convince her otherwise?”
Rick gripped the steering wheel. The truth was he hadn’t tried. Because he’d known there was no future for them. Why fight for something that you knew wouldn’t work out? But…what if he’d given up too soon? No, they hadn’t known each other long, and yes, they drove each other batshit crazy. But they also made each other happier than they’d ever been before. At least that was true for him. And he’d be willing to bet it was true for her, also.
“Do you love her?” Jenny asked, her voice gentle and soft, all trace of teasing gone.
He took a deep breath. “I think so. Yes.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here with me?”
“Trying to spare us both a lot of pain when our relationship eventually crashes and burns.”
Jenny sighed. “You can’t know that’s going to happen, Rick. Look,” she said, heading off his next comment before he could make it. “I know people say you need more than love to make a relationship work, but I don’t think that’s true.”
Rick cocked an eyebrow. “I’m the one usually saying that.”
“I know. And I think you’re wrong. Even people who have everything in common are going to fight about something at some point. But those people have the same thing in common that you and Gina have. You love each other.”
“I don’t think…”
“She loves you, Rick. Believe me. It was written all over her face every time she looked at you. And that love you have for each other is what will help you overcome anything that comes your way. You could have the exact same personality, the same interests, the same dreams and hopes for the future, the same everything, and sooner or later, something is going to piss you off. Your love is what’ll keep you coming back. You and Gina might have more opportunities to take your love for a spin, that’s all.”
“Oh, that’s all, huh?”
Jenny smiled at him and took his hand. “I want you to be happy, Ricky. And I have never seen you as happy as you were when you were with her. Or as miserable as you are now without her. Am I wrong?”
Rick’s mind flooded with images of Gina. Her laughing. Her rolling her eyes at him. Her arguing over something ridiculous. Her smile. Her gazing up at him while they made love, her eyes dark with passion.
“No,” he said quietly, “you’re not wrong.”
“Well…”
Before he could answer, his phone rang. Jenny picked it up from the console and looked at the display.
“Speak of the angel,” she said, turning the phone around so he could see that it was Gina.
Rick answered it and put her on speaker. He’d rather not have the audience while talking to her, but after giving both Jenny and Gina tickets for the whole phone thing, he couldn’t really violate that law himself. Besides, he’d been to too many accidents due to distracted drivers on their cells to not use the hands-free option.
“Hello?”
The only answer was some background noise, laughter, lots of voices talking, the faint sound of music.
“Hello?”
Jenny glanced at him. “I think she butt-dialed you.”
His eyebrows rose. He should probably hang up. She’d obviously not meant to call him. Then she spoke, though her voice kept cutting out.
“I’ve always wanted to live in Paris…I applied for a two-year culinary program there. It’s an amazing program, learning from the best pastry chefs…”
Whomever she was speaking with mumbled something. Rick looked at Jenny, shards of panic shredding through him. Yes, they’d decided to break up, or not see each other, or whatever the hell they were doing, or not doing. But she’d never said anything about leaving the country. Maybe he’d misunderstood, though the sympathetic look on Jenny’s face meant she thought the same thing he did. Gina was leaving.
Gina’s voice again: “That sounds wonderful, I’ll definitely check that out…tonight actually…excited to get started. Right after the party…”
“What?” Rick said. Tonight? That couldn’t mean she was leaving tonight. Could it?
“Gina,” he said, hoping she’d hear his voice through whatever material her phone was shoved in. No response.
He took the phone off speaker and held it to his mouth. “Gina! Gina!”
“Um, hello. Hands-free while driving,” Jenny said. He totally ignored her.
“Gina!”
“Hello?” she said. “Who is this?”
“It’s Rick. Where are you?”
“At a fund-raiser Eric’s parents are throwing. Sorry. I must have accidentally dialed you. Didn’t mean to bother you.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“What?”
“I said, that’s okay.”
“Oh, good. Well, look, I wanted to…”
Her words continued but Rick couldn’t really make out what she was saying.
“Gina? Hello?”
“Rick? I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time hearing you. Kind of noisy in here. But I want to talk to you. Maybe we can…”
“Gina?”
“Hello?”
“Gina?”
“Can you hear me now?” Jenny mumbled. Rick glared at her.
“Sorry, Rick, I’ve got to go. Not sure if you can hear me. I’ll try to call you later…”
The phone clicked off before he could say anything else.
“Shit!” He tossed his phone at Jenny, who yelped at the unexpected device flying at her. “Call Street Treats bakery and ask to speak to the owner. He won’t be there, but maybe they’ll tell you where he is. I’ve got the number in my contacts.”
As she dialed, he grabbed her purse and dug her phone out.
“Hey,” she said, but he ignored her.
“I need to call Joe.”
Someone must have picked up on the other end of his phone, because she turned her attention to talking. He quickly dialed Joe’s number. He should probably pull over. He might be going in the opposite direction of where he needed to go. There really wasn’t anywhere to stop, though.
A car honked, and he swerved back into his own lane. Yeah. That was another reason he should really pull over, but there was no time.
“Joe!” he said the second his partner picked up. “I need to know if there are any big functions tonight that required extra security or something.”
Rick didn’t know too much about Eric and his family, but he knew they had extensive contacts, so surely a fund-raiser they were throwing would be a big deal.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Over at the W. Some bigwig raising money for a charity. The captain was bitching because the guy throwing it had wanted extra patrols, but we’re short-staffed tonight since it’s the ball. Speaking of, shouldn’t you be here already?”
“I was on my way, but I’m going to be late. Need to make a stop first.”
He hung up, ignoring the twinge of guilt at cutting his partner off. But he didn’t have the time to deal with all his questions at the moment.
Jenny shook her head. “All they’d tell me was that the owner and his wife were at a fund-raiser tonight but wouldn’t say where.”
“That’s okay. I think I know where they are. Hang on.”
Jenny’s whoop of excitement changed to a terrified shriek when Rick gripped the wheel and zoomed across two lanes of traffic to make an illegal U-turn.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting Gina.”
Jenny clutched the oh shit bar and hung on for dear life. “Okay, while I’m all down for that, shouldn’t we be going to get her at a nice, leisurely, legal pac
e?”
Instead of slowing down, Rick applied his foot to the gas pedal and shot ahead of the slow-moving minivan in front of him.
“No time for that. I’m not even sure how long she’ll be there, and it sounded like she was leaving straight from the party. Try calling her again.”
Jenny looked at him like he was crazy, amusement and fear flashing across her face in equal parts. He knew how she felt. On the one hand, he’d never been so exhilarated. He was going to go get the woman he loved. And nothing was going to get in his way or slow him down. On the other hand, he was going a good fifteen miles over the speed limit and was about to break a few more traffic laws.
And he really didn’t give a damn.
“Rick!” Jenny pointed out the window at the light, which had turned a lovely shade of yellow.
He blew through it. He knew he should slow down. But the urge to get to Gina burned through him too fiercely to take it slow now.
“Are you crazy?” Jenny screamed.
“Did you call?”
His sister stared at him like he’d lost his mind. He probably had. He’d worry about it later.
“She’s not answering. Don’t you have one of those red light thingies you can slap on the roof?”
“I wish. Then maybe people would get out of my way!” he shouted at the car in front of him before he zoomed around it.
Finally, after a near miss with a taco cart, two taxis, an SUV, and a little old lady walking her dog, they reached the W. Jenny stumbled out of the car.
“You’re insane.”
Rick laughed. “Guilty.”
“Go get her,” she said, grinning at him for all she was worth.
Rick was already running inside. The man at the front desk started shouting for him to stop the moment he opened the doors. Rick didn’t slow down but did reach into his pocket to pull out his badge.
Apparently running into a building like a madman and reaching into your pocket was frowned upon. He only got three more feet before a security guard came out of nowhere and clotheslined him.
Rick landed flat on his back, groaning at the impact. He blinked up at the two very large security guards who were screaming at him to put his hands up while brandishing locked and loaded Tasers.
Well, shit.
He slowly raised his arms and tried to calmly, but forcefully, get their attention.
“Gentlemen!” he finally shouted at the top of his lungs.
They stopped yelling briefly enough for him to yell, “I’m a cop!”
They both frowned at him, but lowered their Tasers a fraction of an inch.
“I’m going to reach into my pocket to get my badge, okay?”
He waited for them to nod before he slowly withdrew his badge and handed it up.
One of the guards took it and went to call it in. The other, thankfully, let him up. Which began a five-minute process of trying to explain that he had a very good reason for running into their building like his pants were on fire and no, they did not include anything terroristic, sadistic, or otherwise nefarious. He might have had one guard almost convinced, but the other guy was definitely trigger-happy.
Jenny finally managed to push through the crowd that had formed to watch the fiasco. It took her all of two seconds to size up the situation and then, bless her meddling little heart, she dropped to the floor in a dead faint, taking several people with her for good measure.
The moment the guards’ attention turned to her, Rick bolted, sprinting past them and sliding into the elevator before they had a chance to follow. Jenny cracked an eye open and gave him a wink as the doors closed.
Rick stopped a few floors up, to give him a bit of a head start. The goons downstairs had definitely called for reinforcements, though hopefully they’d realize he was, indeed, a cop… Shit! He’d left his badge with them. He hadn’t let that out of his sight since the day he’d gotten it. He’d worry about it later. At the moment, he had a crazy woman to keep from flying out of his life.
The elevator doors opened and he peeked his head out. Coast was clear. He booked it to the stairs and ran back down to where the banquet rooms were located. Rick sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the staff who’d stuck the big signs outside each room indicating what was being held inside. He ran past the Friedmans’ Bar Mitzvah and the Chesters’ 50th Anniversary party and barreled this way through the doors of the Schneider Foundation fund-raiser.
And promptly froze as a hundred pair of eyes zeroed in on him. Wow. He could really pick his moments. The entire room had been focused on the man on the dais giving the speech. And now they were all focused on Rick. But there was only one pair of eyes he wanted to see.
“Rick?”
She walked toward him, and he was pretty sure his heart stopped. Her black gown looked painted on, the little cutout bits on the side giving him tastefully tantalizing views of the body he loved to worship. Her hair shifted every now and then as she moved, revealing the crazy colors beneath, so in sync with the woman herself it wasn’t funny. Seemingly one thing on top, but underneath all her layers, an entire rainbow of passionate personality that he couldn’t live another day without.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a hushed whisper that still echoed throughout the silence of the room.
“I came for you.”
Chapter Twenty
The butterflies in Gina’s stomach went into overdrive, and she pressed a shaking hand against her middle in a vain effort to calm herself.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Look, I know that we don’t make a whole lot of sense. You’re rash and stubborn and borderline criminal some days…”
“Hey,” she said, frowning at him, though since his laundry list of characteristics was said with that sexy half smile of his, it was hard to get too riled up. Plus, he wasn’t wrong.
“And I’m sure I’ve got a few issues of my own I could work on.”
She laughed at that. “A few?”
“But,” he said, coming closer so he could take her hands, “I still think we should give it a shot.”
Her heart pounded against her chest hard enough to bruise. Did he just say what she thought he said?
“You do?”
He nodded and pulled her closer. “Yes. I do. And I know it’s not fair that I’m bringing this up now that you’re leaving, but…”
“I’m leaving?”
He frowned, his forehead creased in confusion. “Aren’t you?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Where am I going?”
“Earlier…when you accidentally called me, I heard you talking to someone. You were talking about Paris and pastry school and how excited you were to get started and something about right after the party. It sounded like you were going to be leaving right afterward.”
“And you came down here…”
Before she could finish, guards came storming toward him, Jenny hot on their heels.
“Officer Boyd, police officer or not, you can’t go barging into private functions,” one of the guards said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us.”
“That’s all right, gentleman,” Eric said, coming up to join their group. “He’s welcome to stay.”
“Yes, sir.” He handed Rick back his badge. “Next time, maybe call ahead, Officer. Give us a heads-up or something. I almost Tasered you.”
“Sorry about that.”
Gina couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What have you been up to this evening, Officer Boyd?”
Jenny leaned in. “You mean other than speeding, running a red light, nearly taking out half the pedestrians in town, and illegally parking? The car almost got towed, by the way, until they realized it was yours,” she said to Rick. “They moved it, though.”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Oops.”
Gina started laughing. She couldn’t help it. He looked like he’d gotten caught doing something very naughty. And if she wasn’t mistaken, he’d even enjoyed it a little bit.
“You did all that to get here?”
All sense of playfulness fell away from him. “I’d do more than that to keep from losing you.”
That was it. Right there. That cinched the deal. The small part of her that had still been reluctant and unsure gave in. Surrendered. She was his. Totally. Irrevocably.
She stepped close enough that she could cup his cheek in her hand. “You broke all those laws for me. And then crashed a private function. I don’t think anyone has ever done anything so sweet for me in my whole life.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist. “Say you’ll stay.”
She frowned slightly again. “I’m not leaving.”
Now it was his turn to frown. “But it sounded like…”
“I’m not sure what you heard, but it couldn’t have been the whole conversation. I was speaking with one of Eric’s old friends who is located in Paris. I had applied for that pastry school a few years ago. And didn’t get in. He told me about a similar program in New York City. And then one of our customers at the bakery walked by and said she was excited about the wedding cake we were doing for her. I said I was excited, too, and right after the party planned on getting started on some designs I could send over to her.”
“So you aren’t going to Paris?” Rick asked.
“Not any time soon. Though I would love to go one day.”
He pulled her in closer. “Maybe we could go together.”
If it was possible to die from happiness, she was about to go toward the light. “I would love that.”
He drew her up and kissed her until her toes curled. He didn’t release her until she was breathless and trembling against him.
“I love you,” he whispered against her lips.
She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “I love you, too.”
The room erupted in applause, headed by Jenny and Nat, who were standing side by side, smiling like proud mother hens.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gina said.
“I’d love to. But we have to find my car first.”
Gina burst out laughing. “I guess our life will never be boring.”
“This is true,” he agreed.