by Michele Hart
And Elissa would never forget the sight of it.
“Yeah,” Elissa lied, wiping away a racing tear. What was one more lie for all she’d told? “I’ll be around.”
Around a thousand miles away in Quantico. It would hurt less at that distance.
Chapter 16
Elissa leaned her back onto the arm of the exit door, a box of her belongings in her ungloved hands, and she passed through the front atrium of the training center, her mood depressed. Patty, a fellow Academy cadet, followed in her wake, probably hoping to soften the blow. The walk from the dorms to the parking lot was icy and seemed to last forever.
“Well, it’s over,” Elissa repeated for the fifth time to her friend. She halted her stride and turned to look at the snow-draped FBI Training Facility behind her, her heart stabbed and stomped.
“My dream, the one desire of my life, is now washed away. I’d given up everything to get here.” Her thoughts immediately went to Greg, the man who’d awakened every part of her. She hoped Sissy and Greg were very happy.
After all the initial fallout of the case, Elissa had stopped calling Greg and hadn’t returned his calls. Her bills had been mysteriously paid, her tuition fulfilled anonymously, and she knew it was Greg who’d done it. She wanted to call him and cuss him out for it, damn him to Hell for his generosity and nerve, but she feared she couldn’t speak to him without tears, so she talked herself into covering it all up in her head.
She noticed she was getting good at that, ignoring what was before her eyes and in her face, a bad trait for an investigator. But she wasn’t going to be an investigator anymore, anyway.
“Give yourself some slack, Elissa,” Patty pled. “Look at all the good you’d done before you even began full training. Jerry’s up for murder, kidnapping, racketeering, and international smuggling charges. With all the evidence irrefutable, he doesn’t have a rat’s-ass’s chance of an acquittal. He’ll do twenty-five to life in a federal prison.”
That part was nice. Elissa was glad to have been a part of that.
“I pressed Jerry’s surgeon for a little information, easy with a flash of my county badge. He reports it’s taken a couple of surgeries on Jerry’s knee to make it workable again. He’ll have a terrible limp for the rest of his life to remind him of his crimes if the bars weren’t enough.”
Elissa smiled a little, taking her pace cautiously in the freshly fallen snow, not wishing to slip and bust her rump for the uncounted time. The box kept her from watching her boots as she paced and she regretted having misplaced her gloves.
“He deserves it for threatening Sissy and me with sale on the black market. Sick pig.”
“All of it led the police to ferret out bad guys with badges who’d made the freight disappear from lockup, and close a local wing of the Mob. And you took out a gangster involved in the wholesale murder in Africa.”
Even more to the positive turn, sources inside the Mob sweet on the police had learned little about the Agent’s missing freight. The cops speculated the Agent himself had been in trouble for having lost control of the diamonds and had promised their return to higher-ups without confessing his man Jerry had lost the shipment to the police.
It appeared no one in the Mob above the Agent had heard Greg’s name nor put an identity to the instigator of the entire case. To Elissa’s great relief, it appeared Greg was in the clear, his family safe.
“It worked out well, didn’t it?” Elissa muttered, let down by her failure.
“Made for a smashing FBI application file.”
“Except for the end.” Elissa gave a humorless snicker to taunt herself. “It all had gone far in making me look like a good candidate for Academy. Back then, I’d’ve never guessed my path would turn like this.”
Patty looked sympathetic.
“Get out of here, Pats. It’s a bitter cold. I’ll call you tomorrow for a last get-together.”
Patty hugged Elissa around the box in her arms, and then she returned to the procedural law class she was missing.
Looking up from the salted asphalt and snow of the training facility’s furthest parking lot, she spotted the second biggest shock of her life.
Greg leaned against the V-dub, his arms crossed over a thick, brown leather, wool-lined coat. His eyes lit up at her approach. He was still the best-looking man she’d ever seen in her life, and he’d just grown cuter over the last six months, his hair a little longer and curling around his neck in little wisps. A visitor’s pass issued by the main gate of the marine base hung from his pocket.
When she reached him, she steeled herself to keep her head. She was glad she held the box between them.
“Greg, what brings you to the DC area?” She wished she’d said it with more joy at his appearance, but the results of the day pressed down on her.
“Sissy, Julian, Penny, and I are in town to put the finishing touches on the new Rubia’s Restaurant.” His smile was bright.
But then he must’ve noticed her lack of zeal. She’d been too slow-witted from depression to cover up the loss the day had brought her. He took the box from her hands, and she opened the car door with her remote. He set the box in the back seat, then turned back to her, closing the door and leaning against it.
Cautious as though the subject might bite him, he asked, “So, how’s life as an FBI agent?”
Elissa drew in a dread-filled heavy breath, now cognizant of the slow motion of her blink, and she exhaled into her cold hands to warm them, exhausted emotionally.
“What timing you have. I just resigned.”
Greg’s brow rose in surprise. “You quit? After all you’d gone through, all the study and training, and you quit?”
Elissa faced him, sagging against the guard rail beside her car at the end of the parking lot. For a while, she watched the falling snowflakes land on her boot and melt right away.
“I resigned because they were about to boot me out. I failed the psychological stress tests.”
Greg was quiet for a moment. “Why did you fail, Elissa? You’d kept such a calm head in both the house robbery and the warehouse kidnapping.”
She sputtered another tiny humorless laugh.
“Every time I was put under stress during the tests, all I could see was the memory of shooting the Agent and feeling the horror of it all over again. I wasn’t able to shake it, failed every single test.”
“Maybe you weren’t meant to be an FBI agent, Elissa.”
She broke into untamed tears for having failed, and Greg guided her into his arms, letting her soak his nice blue silk shirt under the open coat. He radiated heat, forgiving her faults.
Then he pulled her to the length of his arms and gazed into her soggy vision with his intense eyes, wiped a runaway tear with his thumb. “It’s not the end of the world, Elissa.”
They were pretty words even if totally untrue. She wiped fresh tear tracks from her cheeks. “Of course, it’s the end of the world. The end of my world. I’d given up a lot to be here, and I just flunked out.”
“Yeah, you gave up me.”
Elissa didn’t wish to face his emotional pecan eyes, dark chocolate when he melted her, nor did she wish to relive the blame of having never even parted with him in person.
Six months ago, she couldn’t look him in the eye to tell him goodbye or confess aloud that she’d given him up to resume her dream of being an FBI agent. The words just wouldn’t come from her mouth. They didn’t need to discuss it. He’d known it was her path, had acknowledged it in his last voice mail to her.
She’d wished she’d had the strength to face him a last time then, to say goodbye bravely and honorably, but she didn’t trust herself to remain tearless. Even now, it was still difficult to look upon him, his beautiful and faithful eyes on her.
“Sissy and Penny are here, you say?” Elissa said to change the subject, and her eyes went to him before he noticed her reservation. He reminded her of all the good things she’d foolishly traded, to end up with failure.
He
nodded.
“Are you and Sissy happy?”
Greg smiled big. “Yep. We’re working hard on our expansion. Sissy’s pregnant, you know. She’s completely thrilled.”
Sissy was pregnant. Penny hadn’t told her that in her letters, and there could be only one explanation for that. “I wish you guys the best of luck.”
Greg eyed her strangely, but then said, “We’d all like you to be around. We’re nothing like the FBI, can’t promise you worldwide diamond smugglers to catch. Well, we can’t promise you any more. It’ll be boring and severely lacking in danger and action.”
Elissa held firsthand knowledge, Greg was full of action and danger.
“I’ve gained a new respect for monotony, of late,” Elissa muttered, wiping the last tear and watching her breath in the cold winter air. “It looks as though I’ll be heading back home to re-evaluate my life, just in time for Christmas. Mom will be happy to see me.”
“What if you went back to Tampa, finished your doctorate, and taught criminology at USF? You could stick around, play with a baby, dress nicely at parties from now on. You could come over to my place and swim any time you wished.”
She smiled just when he wanted her to. Every time they’d gone swimming, they’d ended up in his bed. She just had to laugh, remembering her terrible outfits, unbrushed hair, and the snotty looks his rich friends had given her.
“The thought of teaching tickles my mind. I’ve never considered teaching.”
“That’s a way to shape many future minds to catch the bad guys. That would feel good. Give them your sense of justice. Turn them into superheroes.”
Still, she didn’t know if she could be near Greg and Sissy, and not feel a big hole in her soul where he’d taken up space for a very short time. In fact, it hurt just to be in his presence now. A baby? How would Elissa sit on the sidelines to watch that bliss?
“I did have one more theft after you left.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and would’ve made a short goodbye of it, but he leaned against the door of the car.
“I really need a good detective on the case.”
Refusing another tear, she looked over to his pecan-brown eyes full of his attention. “What was stolen?” she asked half-heartedly, not wishing for much more time with him if she couldn’t look at him without pain.
“About six months ago, a woman walked away with my heart. She didn’t ask for permission, just took it with her when she fled town. I’ve missed it, haven’t been myself since then.”
“Why not dive into Sissy, Greg? She loves you.”
“She better love me,” he replied arrogantly. “She’s my only sister.”
Elissa blinked a few times, then paraphrased before her inner brake could be engaged. “Sissy’s your sister.”
Greg gave her the oddest look. “What did you think she was to me?”
“I met her father at the party, and he spoke of your father. He’d said your father and he had coached the baseball teams when you were kids.”
Greg looked stunned for a second, then burst into a know-it-all chuckle. “Tall man with a receding hairline? His name is Joseph?”
She nodded.
“You met our priest.”
“Your priest?”
Elissa’s stomach sank, and she felt like an idiot. She thought through every situation, every conversation, every individual thing she’d thought of as evidence of Greg’s and Sissy’s past involvement. Sissy’s clothes in his home, her mournful recollection of Sergio Moretti’s death like a great tribute, but she hadn’t called him father once. Sissy’s love for Greg’s house and missing it had seemed to play into Elissa’s emotional wall she’d worked hard to construct.
Sometimes things were nothing like what they appeared to be. Everything Greg and Sissy had said might’ve been taken two ways if Elissa hadn’t been seeking an escape from Greg and what could well happen between them. She’d probably blocked recognition of contradictory evidence, so bent on not caring for Greg and protecting her heart from anything that might change her steadfast goals.
Idiot me. Sissy had mourned Sergio Moretti’s death not because he was her father-in-law and a lifelong friend, but because he was her father.
Elissa laughed at herself for all of a second. Had she been so needy of a reason to run away from Greg that she let false leads carry her to a reason she felt better accepting? That someone Elissa cared for would want Greg even more than she already felt for him.
Unfortunately, Greg must have read the flash of different emotions over her face and put the hints together. “Elissa, did you think Sissy and me unrelated and past lovers?”
Elissa worked up a dumb expression under his examination, and Greg leaned back for a great laugh, enjoying her cluelessness.
“Elissa,” he announced, “You’re the worst detective I’ve ever known.”
Her shamed smile slowly rose into life. “You never said she was your sister. I feel stupid.”
He reached out and gently tugged Elissa into his embrace, guiding her arms inside his wool jacket and around his hot body. He pressed her against him as if she were a precious teddy bear in the arms of a three year old.
Elissa melted into his body heat, as warm as a furnace with snow outside, and she’d forgotten how his warmth was the most exciting thing on Earth, even more so in the cold. He smelled like sandalwood, and she hadn’t realized how much she missed his scent until this moment. She’d done all possible to forget him, and like FBI training, she’d failed there too.
Elissa was a miserable failure.
Greg brought her chin up and planted a passionate kiss on her mouth that titillated every cell into recalling all the bliss in his arms. When he parted from her, he swept his hands all down her back as if reminding himself of her terrain, then slipped his hands into the waistband of her jeans, bringing back every sensation he’d drawn from her before. He sent a firestorm through her, and he said, “You’ve never felt better to me.”
“You get to wear the I’m-with-Stupid shirt.”
Unbidden, all of Elissa’s walls rose again, all the negative things she told herself at night to try to sleep and not think of him. She’d etched those self-protective feelings into her heart, never to be forgotten.
“I don’t think I’m the type of girl you want, Greg. I’m not a debutante from a wealthy family. I don’t throw parties where the best chef in town caters. I’m K-Mart; you’re Macy’s.”
He smirked until he seemed to realize that she wasn’t kidding, and then he shook his head as though she were a burdensome sack of grain he had to carry home.
“We’ll not worry about where to shop. There’ll be a Rubia cooking for us on a daily basis. If I wanted you when you looked a mess, imagine how much I’d want you every day after this. You should see yourself now with a cold red nose, your paprika hair rolling down your shoulders just like I like it.”
Greg took up a snowflake-dotted lock of her hair Elissa had taken down for warmth. With a dilatory speed, he slid his hand down until he lost the lock. “I haven’t seen you more beautiful than you are right now. I noticed too well that you were gone.”
Greg kissed her warm again, and the relief of being returned to his arms spread through her, waves of sunshine breaking a storm. If she let herself, she could feel all the feelings she’d suppressed for him, like she’d lost control of her emotions and fallen into a wave of sudden harmony.
“C’mon. You’re coming with me, you know,” he prompted, “Let’s go to the new restaurant. Julian’s cooking up a private feast to celebrate the grand opening, and he’s keeping Penny on the run for ingredients. If you don’t show up for dinner, he’ll call in the police.”
“It’s not like he hasn’t done it before.”
Elissa smiled and felt herself rebuilding on the inside, despite the crash of a lifetime, as if she were able to heal now with Greg’s appearance. He’d appeared from nowhere on just the right day to catch her heart from a long, crushing fall.
/> He took her over to the passenger’s side of the car. When she looked up to him for guidance, Greg opened the passenger door for her. “You’re stuck with me. I had a taxi bring me here so that you’d have to give me a ride back to the restaurant.”
“Clever boy,” Elissa volleyed back, in awe of his determination to seek her out.
When he landed in the driver’s seat beside her, and he adjusted the seat for his greater height, she admitted, “I should avail myself of Julian’s magic. I haven’t had good cooking in a while.”
“Think about starting a new life,” Greg suggested, starting the V-dub’s engine. She looked into his soft brown, lively eyes she knew held the keys to her soul and watched them gazing upon her lips with a wanton expression before he turned back to check for any cars coming, and pulled away from the parking space.
She was surprised to see her whole life turning better, though she’d lost her lifelong hopes today. “You know, I’d’ve never guessed the day I went to the store looking my worst would turn out to be one of the luckiest days of my life.”
“Looks are deceiving.”
“Don’t I know it. So Sissy and Allen are off making babies, you say?”
He nodded, his smile warm as they drove through foreign streets. “You can always stick around to find out.”
“It’s a worthy cause. I suppose I can talk to Penny and see if she’d mind a roommate for a while.”
Greg cleared his throat guiltily. “Yeah, about that. I’m privy to some knowledge that Penny and Julian may be moving in together so I don’t know if counting on Penny is a good plan. They’ve become pretty attached to one another.”
Elissa smiled for her friend. “That’s what her e-mails have said. I’m glad to hear they’re happy. But that leaves me with going home to Mom for a while, building a new plan for life.”
Greg and Elissa filled the conversation with small talk until they arrived at the brand-new Rubia’s Restaurant located some ten blocks away from the White House, not yet open for business.
“It’ll be easy for the President to stop by.”
“That’s what we’re shooting for, but I imagine him more of a take-out guy, considering everyone who has to go to dinner with him.”