The Waterfall
Page 25
“Good.”
“I will, too.”
She swallowed, kept walking. “Back to Wyoming?”
“Yes. I have things I need to sort out, Lucy.”
“I know you do. I’ll be here.”
He smiled and said nothing, and Lucy decided not to tell him Plato had had his cabin bulldozed.
“Lucy has a good life here,” Sidney said, “a damn good life.”
Jack nodded, holding Sidney’s hand as they sat on the back steps waiting for Lucy, Sebastian and the kids to return from their trip to Joshua Falls. “Yes, she does. I’m happy for her.”
“But you weren’t, not for a long time.”
“No,” he admitted. “I guess I thought if she stayed in Washington and didn’t move on with her life, somehow it kept a part of Colin alive. I miss him, Sidney. Some days it’s so hard, even now.”
She turned his hand over and kissed his palm. “You’ll have those days for the rest of your life. Be grateful for them. They tell you how much you loved your son. They tell you that you don’t have to be afraid you’ll ever forget him.”
“I couldn’t protect him, Sidney. I couldn’t protect Eleanor.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
He smiled and brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “How did you get to be so smart?”
She laughed, her dark eyes crinkling. “By not really and truly falling in love until I was fifty. Now.” She sprang up and dusted off her bottom. “If you don’t mind, I’m not your romance-in-the-country sort of person. Too damn many mosquitoes.”
“You’re not going to want to move to Vermont?”
“God, no.” She grinned, and Jack’s heart melted. “Don’t look at me like that, Senator Swift. I am not making love to you in the pumpkin patch.”
He pulled her close. “Does this mean you’re willing to hang your panty hose in my bathroom?”
“Jack, Newsweek has us as an item. The cat’s out of the bag. I’ll hang my panty hose in your Senate office.”
“I don’t know about that.”
She laughed and kissed him. “I do.”
His heart jumped. “Sidney?”
“Yes, Jack. I’ll marry you.”
“Goddammit, Plato,” Sebastian said two days later when he arrived back in Wyoming. They stood in the dust where his cabin had been. “You bulldozed my place.”
“Not me. I’m the boss. I delegated the job.”
“To whom? I want a name.”
“I promised anonymity.”
Sebastian glared at him. They’d met in Washington to visit Happy Ford, now recuperating at home, and Plato had never mentioned the cabin. “My stuff?”
“Packed up.”
“Where?”
“In your truck. I figure you’ll have to drive back to Vermont. The yellow Lab won’t take to flying.”
Sebastian nodded. “I’ll need a truck in Vermont.”
The other two dogs rolled on their backs in the dust. They wouldn’t do well with kids and easterners. Definitely western dogs.
Sebastian grinned at his friend and partner. “I’ll let this one go, seeing how you got shot in the head.”
“That barely counts as a bullet wound. Now, the one in my arm hurt. Lucky there was no nerve damage. Do you know that crazy bitch thought she was an expert marksman?”
“Ms. Allen had a lot of lofty ideas about herself.”
“She operated according to a logic all her own.” Sebastian knelt beside the shepherd and rubbed the old dog’s stomach. He breathed in the cool, dry air. He loved this place—it had restored his mind and body. But his soul wasn’t here. “If Lucy hadn’t shot Mowery in the ass, I’d have killed him.”
“If you had no other choice. You’re a professional, Sebastian. This was personal, but you kept your cool. Your mistake,” Plato said, “was in letting Mowery take the credit for thwarting that assassination attempt all those years ago.”
“Thwarting?” Sebastian got to his feet, grinning at him. “What kind of word is that?”
Plato’s eyes darkened. “You know what I’m saying. Darren Mowery didn’t have it. The instincts, the keen sense of right and wrong, the ability to stay focused and not get cynical. He just didn’t have it.”
“He wanted to, at least in the beginning.”
“You, on the other hand. You never wanted it.”
“No, I never did. I wanted to be happy the way Daisy was happy, with a patch of dirt, her birds, the woods.” He squinted out at the incredible Wyoming landscape. “I suppose I needed the last twenty years to sort that out.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not throwing in the towel. I figure, a nice addition to Lucy’s barn, and we’ve got our eastern leadership training center. Invite me to the wedding?”
“I’ll need a best man.”
Plato rocked back on his heels. “You have a ring? You can’t be asking Lucy to marry you without a ring. I know she does all this adventure travel stuff, but she’ll want a ring. Trust me.”
Sebastian sighed and dug in his jeans pocket, producing a simple diamond ring. “There.”
Plato frowned. “That’s it? You can afford a bigger rock than that.”
“It was Daisy’s. My grandfather gave it to her. They didn’t have much money.”
“I thought you didn’t take anything of Daisy’s after she died.”
Sebastian shrugged. “I didn’t. I appropriated this from the attic before I left.”
“You mean you stole it?”
“It wasn’t stealing. Daisy meant for me to have it, only I was too stupid to take it.”
“You never thought Lucy would fall for you,” Plato said. He shook his head. “You’re right, you were stupid.”
“Keep it up, Rabedeneira. I’ve already got you earmarked for kid duty during the honeymoon.”
“Ha. Me and what army?”
“They adore you.”
“Yeah, well, those two get me shot again, that’s it for me and kids.”
Sebastian arrived in Vermont unshaven, jittery from too much road food and sick of his damn dog. The dog was sick of him, too. When Sebastian opened the door of the truck, the dog bounded out and immediately laid ruin to Lucy’s hollyhocks and daylilies.
Well, what the hell. They’d plant more.
Lucy walked down off the front porch. She had on a long sundress and sandals, and her hair was down, shining in the late-afternoon sun. “I heard you were in town.”
“Spies everywhere.”
“You stopped at the store for something. My spies wouldn’t tell me what. They recognized your Wyoming plates. They didn’t recognize you. They said you were—” She pretended to search her memory. “Disreputable looking. That was it.”
“Am I?”
“Around here, disreputable is a euphemism for sexy.”
“Ah. I see.”
She glanced over at the yellow Lab, now chasing a gray squirrel across the yard. “Think he’ll ever learn the rules?”
“Not a chance.”
“Hell of a nerve, bringing your dog.”
Sebastian leaned against his truck. She wasn’t twenty-two anymore, and neither was he. But she was the woman he’d always loved. “Where are the kids?”
“Rob and Patti Kiley took them to their place for the night.”
“Convenient.”
“Hmm. The feds have finally left us to our own devices. The media have decamped. The bad guys are in jail without bail.” She smiled at him. “I’m alone.”
“No, you’re not.”
He kissed her, long and slow and gently, and after a while he got the champagne out of the truck. It was what he’d bought in town. He’d told the woman at the counter, who had a spying-for-Lucy look about her, to keep her mouth shut. It was probably all over town by now—Daisy’s grandson and the Widow Swift having champagne together up at the old Wheaton place.
They went into the kitchen, and he popped the cork and filled two glasses.
“What are we celebrating?” Lucy a
sked.
“Well, we can celebrate anything we want. We can celebrate getting the bad guys. We can celebrate living another day. Or,” he said, “we can celebrate Lucy Blacker falling in love again, or making love again, or anything you want, because I’ll take whatever you can give me.”
She smiled. “Can I celebrate all of the above?”
He didn’t think he could manage to carry two glasses of champagne and her, but it wasn’t far to the bedroom. Then she threw back her head and laughed; it knocked him off balance and the champagne spilled all over her. Both glasses. He started to lay her on the bed.
“My antique quilt,” she said.
He whisked it off, the old wedding-ring quilt Daisy had stitched so long ago.
Lucy dangled her arms around his neck. “I smell like champagne.”
“You taste like champagne, too.”
“You taste like…dog hair.”
He laughed, kissing her. “Do you want me to shower first?”
“No, shower second.”
“We’ll shower together.”
“I was just kidding.” She rubbed the back of her hand on his beard stubble. “You taste like a man who’s driven hard across country to—” She smiled, her eyes alive, happy. “To make love to me.”
“It’s all I’ve thought about for days.”
“Years, I think.”
He could see the shape of her breasts against her champagne-soaked dress. “You’ve a fine opinion of yourself, Lucy Blacker.”
“Of you,” she said. “I love you, Sebastian. I think I always have in one way or another. You’ve been there for me all along. It’s different now. I love you as a partner, not just as a friend. I love you as an equal, not just as my protector. I love you up close.” She pulled him to her and said as her mouth found his, “Never again from a distance.”
He licked the champagne from her throat, and when they dispensed with her dress, he licked it from her breasts and stomach, until she was quaking with urgency. He made short order of his clothes, too, and when he came back to her, curving his hands over her hips, her stomach, her breasts, he could feel his own urgency, his unstoppable desire for this woman he’d loved for so long.
“I can’t hold back, not anymore.”
“Then don’t,” she said, and pulled him into her.
It was cool in her room, and he could hear the birds outside, his dog panting after a fresh scent, and in the distance, Joshua Brook tumbling out of the hills. He was home, and when he made love to Lucy, he knew this was where he belonged.
“I’ve always loved you,” he whispered. “I always will.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-2887-4
THE WATERFALL
Copyright © 2000 by Carla Neggers.
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