His eyes darkened. “As soon as I realized where it was going, I stopped watching. I swear.”
“And you think—”
“I wasn’t going to intrude on your privacy that way,” he rasped, his voice thick. “Much as I enjoyed the view, I wanted to be in the picture with you.”
She frowned. The last time she’d taken care of business had been after their first kiss. Should she be offended that some stranger assumed they’d hook up? Or should she be flattered that a gorgeous secret agent assumed they’d hook up?
Cripes, thinking was hard work sometimes.
“You were kind of sure of yourself, weren’t you?” She rested her head against the wall, wanting nothing more than the day to be over.
“No, Heather, I wasn’t sure. I only knew what I wanted.”
Sirens approached. Red, blue, and white lights strobed through the windows. Tony opened the door and let what seemed like a dozen people in. Luckily the first group were a couple of paramedics pulling a stretcher. They invited her to lie down.
“That guy’s been shot,” she said, hoping there was another ambulance on the way. She really didn’t feel well.
“Yes, ma’am, other folks are looking after him.”
She gave up arguing and breathed a sigh of relief once her head touched the little pillow. The cute blond EMT strapped her in while the Denzel Washington look-alike opened his bag.
“I think my wrist is broken.”
Denzel smiled. “I think you might be right. We’ll get a drip started and give you some painkillers before we move you. Okay?”
“Very okay.”
The light was blocked out, and she looked up. Tony crouched down and put his hand on her leg, giving it a gentle squeeze. “You doing okay?”
She nodded, but couldn’t keep the floodgates closed. “Thank you for saving my life,” she sobbed, blinking away the tears to keep him in focus.
“You’re very welcome. I’d say I was just doing my job, but—”
“I’m really sorry I didn’t check to see who was out there before I opened the door. I know you told me over and over again to—ouch.” She turned her head to watch Denzel finish taping the IV to her good arm. “A little warning next time, ’kay?”
“Sorry, didn’t want to interrupt. Just give me another minute here and you’ll be feeling a little sleepy.”
“Sleepy will be good.”
She turned back to Tony. “Are you okay? Are you in pain?” She winced as a blanket touched her wrist. “I guess you’ll need to stay here a while.” It seemed she was always being taken away from him. And then always waiting for him to show up again.
“I’m fine, but yeah, ’fraid I’ll need to stay for a bit.”
Her eyelids got astoundingly heavy. “Oh man, that’s powerful stuff. I’m not sure…”
Tony smiled, that sweet smile that made his dark eyes twinkle and started a fire in her nether regions. “Just go with it, sweetheart. I’ll stop by the hospital as soon as I can.”
She blinked, but couldn’t find the strength to open her eyes.
Oh well.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The taxi pulled up in front of the little house, and Tony paid the driver.
“Heather, sweetheart, we’re home.” He didn’t want to shake her too hard, knowing she’d be sore.
She muttered something about croissants.
Damn, he’d gladly carry her across the threshold, but he wasn’t in the best of shape.
He got out and opened her door, hoping the cold breeze would help rouse her. “Sweetheart, you need to wake up now.” He stroked her cheek and kissed her forehead.
Her eyelids fluttered open. “What—where—?”
“We’re home. You’ll need to walk. I can’t carry you.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” She climbed out, swayed a bit, and grabbed hold of the car door.
“Take my arm, sweetheart. We’re almost there.”
He sucked in a breath as her elbow came in contact with his bandaged side. A few steps had them to the door, then they were inside. He helped her off with her boots and guided her to the couch.
“What do you need?” He crouched, chafing her hand, wishing there were a bit more color in her cheeks.
She dug a pill bottle from her front pocket. “I need to take one of these.”
Tony got a glass of water and waited while she took one of the heavy-duty painkillers. He made note of the time—she wouldn’t overdose on his watch.
She set the empty glass on the coffee table. “Now I’d like to go to bed.”
“Damn.” He grinned. “I wish you meant that in another way.”
“So do I.”
His heart skipped a beat. They’d have to wait until she was less medicated. “Come on then, let’s get you settled.”
He figured he’d better hurry or she might pass out on the stairs. As it was he was holding her upright for most of the way. He pulled back the comforter and helped her climb into bed, then tucked the covers under her chin.
“I’m cold. Can you warm me up a little?”
“Sweetheart, I’ll be happy to set your pants on fire, but I want you to be conscious.”
She giggled. “Fabulous. Crawl in here for a minute, just until I warm up.”
He kicked off his shoes and slipped under the covers. She snuggled as close as her purple cast would allow, a contented smile on her face. “Mm, you’re nice and warm.”
Stroking her hair, he moved his legs until they touched hers. “You’re nice and soft. And just plain nice.”
“I’m glad you found me at the hospital. Oh—” She pulled back enough to see his face. “What happened to Laroux?”
He kissed her nose. “He can’t be questioned until tomorrow. And I don’t want to talk about him. Is that pill working?”
“Yes, I think so.” She frowned. “But it’s not knocking me out like that stuff the paramedic gave me.”
“Good, I don’t like seeing you knocked out.” He brushed a kiss across her lips. Hell, he’d never been so scared as when he’d opened her door to find Laroux pointing a gun at the woman he loved. He’d had to call on all his training not to try something stupidly heroic. He just thanked all the deities in the pantheon that he’d been able to get off a clean shot.
She made a face and covered her mouth. “Ugh, I’m sure my breath is horrible.”
“What breath?” He pulled her hand away and pressed his lips to hers again. She sighed and relaxed into him. When he tried to end the kiss, she grabbed on to his shirt.
“I’m not warm enough yet.”
He slid his hand under her shirt, the heat of her silky skin proof that she was plenty warm. But who was he to argue?
She popped the top few buttons of his shirt open and slipped her hand inside. “I’m not letting you go. You may not come back for ages.”
“I won’t go anywhere until you kick me out.” Reaching behind her back, he undid her bra.
“Why would I kick you out when I just found you?” She slipped her leg over his and pressed closer.
“I’ll do my best to not warrant getting kicked out.” He moved his hand to her stomach and traced her ribs up to the underside of her breast. Her moan of pleasure urged him further. He covered her breast with his hand, her pebbled nipple pressing into his palm. He kissed her cheeks, eyelids, earlobes, every bit of her he could get his mouth on. He couldn’t wait to get more of her uncovered.
Nuzzling her neck, he undid the button of her jeans—and that’s when she fell asleep.
Out like the proverbial light.
He pulled the covers up and let his heavy eyelids close. He awoke a few hours later and slipped from the bed. When he got back from the bathroom, she was still sleeping, her breathing deep and regular. The sky was just beginning to lighten. He’d dash home, clean himself up, feed Delilah, and be back before she woke up.
He pressed a kiss to her head. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart. Don’t go anywhere.”
…
Oh God, I’m tied up. Jeffers has—no, Laroux must have—
Then she opened her eyes and glanced around the dimly lit room.
How the heck—oh, right, a shoot-out in her front hall, and a broken wrist.
And Tony had rescued her. She smiled, her entire body filled with warmth. And love.
Yup, the daughter of an international art thief, cohort of bad men, had fallen for one of the good guys.
Pushing the covers off her face, she sat and swung her legs over the side of the bed. After a few seconds the walls stopped moving.
After a quick and awkward trip to the bathroom, including brushing her teeth with her left hand—could be a comedy hit on the internet—she tiptoed downstairs.
Thank goodness someone had cleaned up the blood in the hall. She’d scrub the floor again, a few times, once her head stopped feeling like it was filled with packing peanuts.
She shuffled to the kitchen. Samson deigned to open an eye, but didn’t move from his bed under the table.
“I don’t blame you, kitty. You had a lot of scary excitement last night. We all did. More than enough to last a lifetime.”
She turned on her phone and punched in her boss’s number. “Hey, Sally, sorry for not calling sooner.”
“Did you miss the bus? I tried calling but just got voicemail.”
Heather glanced at the cat clock. Dang, she should have been at work over an hour ago. “I’m sorry. I’m okay and I’ll tell you all about it later, but—well—my right wrist is broken.”
“Oh my goodness. Where are you?”
“I’m home now, and I suspect I’ll be sleeping most of the day. I don’t think I’ll be at work tomorrow, either.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll come by in the afternoon with a treat. And don’t worry about the bakery, we can scale back if we have to.”
“Thank you, Sally. I’ll see you later.”
Samson emerged from his nest, no doubt realizing it was time for breakfast.
“I know it’s been crazy around here lately.” Heather sat at the table and reached down to pet the cat, eliciting a faint purr. “But the bad guys are gone, I’m going into business doing what I love, and I’ve got a boyfriend.”
A giant yawn just about cracked her jaw. Time to go back to bed and sleep it off. She’d close her eyes first, just for a few minutes.
In her dream someone was building a tree house. Way high up in a weeping willow, which was a stupid place to put a tree house. But they kept pounding and pounding.
She jerked awake, sending a jab of pain through her arm. The pounding continued. She struggled to her feet and shuffled to the door. Swinging it open, she squinted against the sun reflecting off snow. “Howdy, stranger.” Turning and leaving the door open, she tromped back to the kitchen.
Tony followed, both arms filled with grocery bags. “Sorry, I couldn’t find the keys to this house.” He went straight to the coffeemaker. A man after her own heart. One with the correct priorities. He reached for a filter, and she didn’t miss his wince of pain.
“How’s your gunshot wound?” Heather slid onto a kitchen chair. “Dang”—she patted her pockets—“I’ve left my pills somewhere.”
“Stay put, I’ll get them for you.” Tony pressed his lips to hers, soft, inviting, promising. Then left the room.
Whoa, that was more than a “good morning, nice to see you” kiss.
She was still feeling stunned when the pill bottle appeared on the table. “Uh—thanks.”
“How’s the arm?” He sat across from her, looking stiff and sore.
“Hurts like the dickens. I’m afraid these pain pills knock me out, but I don’t think ibuprofen is strong enough so I’m just going to be zonked for a few days.”
“That’s good. You’ll take it easy then.” He glanced at his watch. “Yup, time for another dose.” He shook a capsule onto the table, then wrote on the bottle.
She swallowed the pill with the glass of orange juice that had magically appeared and then slammed the empty glass on the table. “And when the hell will you take it easy? Can you tell me that? Or do secret agent men have some special healing ability, so that when they’re shot, with a gun, in the stomach, they can just go traipsing off to wherever the hell you’ve been?” She stopped, because she’d run out of air, and her head felt like it was shrinking.
“Hey, I’m fine. It was just a graze and the angle—”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the angle or the caliber or any of that crap. You could have died!” She squeezed her eyes shut, but a tear still managed to leak out. “How do I know it won’t happen again, and you won’t be so lucky next time?”
“For one thing, I’ll be behind a desk all day, every day. I’m taking my boss’s job because he’s retiring. I’m more likely to die of boredom than at the hands of a maniac.”
“But don’t you see? That’s what I’m afraid of. You’ll get so bored you’ll take the first opportunity to chase after a bad guy, except you’ll be rusty, and you’ll make a mistake.”
“Do you know how I know that will never happen?”
“Because you’re a super agent and you don’t make mistakes?”
He smiled and brushed the last tear from her cheek. “No, that sort of agent doesn’t exist. We all make mistakes, and the good agents learn from those mistakes.” He pulled his chair closer and carefully wrapped his arms around her.
“No, the reason I know that will never happen is because I’ll never want to make you worry, or make you sad. And I’ll do my damnedest to not make you angry. I’m ready to leave the field. I’m ready to settle down.” He rested his forehead on hers and took a deep breath. “I’m more than ready to start my life with you.”
She sniffled and dug in her pocket for a tissue.
So say something, you idiot. Tell him you feel the same way.
“I brought you a souvenir from France.” He took a cardboard tube from the counter and pulled out a rolled-up piece of canvas. With a flourish, he unrolled her portrait that had been hanging in Jeffers’s library.
“You took that?”
“In my opinion, it belongs to you. And guess what I found hidden underneath?”
“Don’t tell me it was the Fragonard.”
He grinned. “Yup, hidden in plain sight.”
“Dang. Where is it now?”
“I left it in Jeffers’s house for the French authorities to find.”
She looked again at the six-year-old version of herself, seated on a cushion with a black-and-tan puppy curled up by her legs. “I remember that dog. Her name was Bella. We had to leave her behind when we moved.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “That must have been rough.”
She stood and wrapped her good arm around the uninjured side of his waist. “I don’t want to lose anything that I love again.”
“You won’t lose me, not if I have anything to do with it.”
She leaned closer, but her stupid cast got in the way. She grinned. “We’re a couple of prime specimens, eh? I don’t think I’m capable of much hanky-panky in my current condition.”
“Between your wrist and my stitches, we may have to wait for the honeymoon.”
She pulled back and touched his face. “I’d like that. Very much. We’d better get married soon, though, because I can’t wait much longer.” She pulled him close, prepared to kiss his socks off.
“I discovered something else about your father.”
“Great way to kill the mood, Simons.” She rested her head against his chest. Dang, and here she’d thought all the skeletons had been cleared away.
“I think you’ll like this.”
She leaned back to see his face, the better to tell if he was joking. “He was an undercover good guy?”
“No, he was a baddie. But he tried to make it right. All that missing money we’ve been wondering abou
t?”
“Yeah, the big mystery.”
“Seems he paid back his victims.”
She stepped back, breaking contact, needing all her wits to figure out what the heck he was talking about. “What?”
“His journals were not only a record of his crimes, but also a receipt, of sorts. Ever since he moved here to Portland, he’s been quietly sending money to everyone he robbed.”
“So that’s why his bank statements—”
“Regular large withdrawals, until he had nothing left. Except the house. Your Uncle Henry was helping him and will tell you all about it when you’re ready.”
“Well, dang. Every time I turn around I’m seeing a different side to the man. He wasn’t a saint, but neither was he all bad.”
“Of course not. None of us are one-dimensional. And you know his greatest accomplishment?” Tony pulled her close again, cupping her face with his large, warm hands.
Not only his hands were warm. All of him was warm. And he was making all of her warm, too.
She stared into his eyes, knowing she was strong enough, and safe enough, to hear anything he had to tell her. But later.
“I think we should stop talking.” Standing on tiptoe, she wrapped her good hand behind his neck and pressed as close as she could with the dratted cast in the way.
He grinned. “I like the way you think. But just let me be romantic for a second and say that the best thing your dad did was bring us together.”
“Oh—” Her throat got tight with unshed tears. “That’s a wonderful way to remember him.”
“And you know what else I think?”
“What?”
“It’s definitely time to stop talking.”
“I love you. I need to say that while I’m still conscious.” She kissed his chin. “Now we can stop talking.”
A loud bark sounded at the back door. “Shoot, I forgot Delilah was outside.” He opened the door, and the hairy beast bounded in, spraying snow in every direction and making Samson hiss. Delilah immediately sat, her gaze on the cat, as if waiting for a command.
Heather reached for Tony’s hand and tugged him toward the door, which led to the hall. Which led to the stairs.
“Let’s leave these two to work things out. You and I have some catching up to do.”
Portrait of a Girl Page 24