“No.” He didn’t release her. Instead he dropped into the nearest chair and carefully arranged her legs on either side of him until she knelt over his lap, her lower legs wedged between his thighs and the soft overstuffed arms of the chair. “You got enough room there?”
She nodded. Then she patted her fingers over his face and stroked his eyebrows with her thumbs when he raised them at her. “I had quite a bit of wine when I got home,” she confessed. “I want to make sure I’m not having a drunken dream here.”
Wrapping his fingers around her wrists, he brought her hands down to press against his chest and his heart beat hard and fast beneath her palms. “Feel that? This is no dream. And you’re not drunk. Or if you are, you disguise it pretty damn well.”
Then he hesitated. Took a deep breath. And eased it out.
“You’re right, though, my attitude is a turnaround. One I didn’t even know I was going to make when I came over here. No, don’t pull away.” He flattened his palm over her hands, still stacked over his heart. “It’s not like I’ve had some sudden big change of heart. It’s more that I finally quit lying to myself.”
He laughed suddenly, a huge, uninhibited head-thrown-back guffaw that bounced off the walls of her cramped little living room. “God, I feel—I don’t know—a hundred pounds lighter! I thought I came here to make sure you were okay so I could go back to my ordered world. But when I saw you, with your joy and your generous heart, something inside of me just cracked wide-open.
“And I knew you were right, Blondie. I built a box an eon ago to keep my de Sanges impulses under lock and key. And knowing I had those walls around me helped—it kept me on the straight and narrow. But what you tried to tell me—what Murphy’s been telling me for years—is even truer. That cage is every bit as ironclad as the state pen that my dad and grandpa and—well, not Joe, I guess, since he’s out right now—but the entire de Sanges line except me has been locked in.”
Bringing her fingers to his lips, he kissed the tips that stuck out beyond the loose fist he’d wrapped around them.
Poppy’s butt hit his thighs with a soft plop, and she realized she’d been half up on her knees, which were suddenly weak, weak, weak with happiness.
His dark eyes locked with hers. “You’re the key to getting me out, Poppy. I was so fucking scared when you went in that building—so terrified when I saw you in Arturo’s clutches.”
“You didn’t look scared.” He’d looked cool and competent and detached.
“Because I shoved my emotions in that box in order to do my job and get you the hell out of there in one piece.”
“Is Arturo dead, Jason?”
“I don’t know. They took him to Harborview and I haven’t heard yet if he made it. I hope to hell he did. I don’t want his death on my head.”
“It’s on his head, not yours!”
“I know, sweetheart. But it’s never easy knowing you took a life.”
Poppy’s heart felt so full she thought it might explode. “I love you, Jason. God, I love you so much.”
“Oh, man. I love you.”
She grinned at him. “So, you gonna move your suits back in?”
“Yeah. We might have to find a bigger place eventually, but for now, yeah.”
“Your place is bigger. I could always move in there.”
He went very still. “You’d do that?”
“Well, sure. We’d have to rearrange some of your stuff so I can put my stamp on the place, too. But Murphy is there and your apartment has quite a bit more room than I’ve got here. Maybe I could carve out a place to work on my greeting cards in a section of your second bedroom or office or whatever that extra space is so we could actually eat from a table for a change.”
“You can have the whole damn room if you want.”
“Nah, I just need a worktable and maybe a cupboard or some shelves or something. It’d be very cool to have a place to organize my stuff.”
He carefully pushed back a curl that had flopped over her eye. “Maybe we oughtta get married.”
Heart hammering, she stared at him. But she forced herself to be practical. “We’re barely even back together. Maybe we should wait a bit to see how we do with the living-together part first.”
He seemed fascinated with the finger he was running down her thigh. Then suddenly his sooty lashes raised and he gave her an intense look. “But you’re not totally against the idea?”
“Are you kidding me? My first inclination was want that! But I’m impulsive—you know I’m impulsive. And this is too important to rush into without giving it the thought it deserves.”
She squealed in surprise when he abruptly surged to his feet. He whipped her around in his arms, then carried her with long-legged strides to her bedroom.
“You’re right,” he said as he tossed her onto the bed. “Let’s be responsible. Hell, that’s my middle name—I ever tell you that?”
Staring down at her, he pulled his tie through his collar, put his gun on the highest surface he could find and reached for the buttons on his shirt. “So we’ll talk about it again next week.”
EPILOGUE
I feel like the sun is shining out all my pores!
Memorial Day
POPPY CAME TO an abrupt stop at the top of the stairs that connected Ava’s Alki beach penthouse condo to its lushly planted rooftop terrace, suddenly unable to concentrate on her friends’ chatter behind her. Her gaze was locked on Jason doing the guy thing at the grill with Murphy and Dev and Finn. Jase’s head was tossed back as he roared one of his rare, full-throated laughs and her heart swelled so fast and furiously she thought it might burst.
“Ooh, someone’s got it bad,” Jane murmured, stopping beside her. She removed the tray from Poppy’s hands. Then she abruptly set the load down on the beautifully appointed table with an uncharacteristic disregard for Ava’s careful staging. Fruit bobbed, sangria sloshed and crystal glasses chimed like soprano bells as their delicate edges rattled together.
“What’s this?” she demanded, her shiny dark hair swinging forward as she bent her head to stare down at the antique white-and yellow-gold diamond ring on Poppy’s finger. “Ava! Have you seen this?”
“Well, it’s about time,” Poppy said. She’d been filled with suppressed excitement ever since waltzing through Ava’s door, just waiting for her best friends to notice.
“Damn right,” Ava muttered. “I’ve been waiting since Friday to see this ring.”
Jaw dropping, Poppy whipped around to stare at her friend.
So did Jane, only she added the Kaplinski—no, Kavanagh now—evil eye. “You knew she was getting an engagement ring?”
“Detective Sheik asked me to hook him up with a couple of estate dealers. He didn’t want to get her some big, new-age rock that she’d have to spin around to keep from feeling like she was rubbing it in the face of her low-income kids.” Ava strode over to join them. “But once past the introductions, he wouldn’t let me have any input. In fact, the bum made me stand across the room while he made his selection so I wouldn’t know which one he’d bought until Poppy saw it first.” She grabbed Poppy’s hand. “So let’s see it.”
She inspected the ring’s octagonal setting and flush-set round diamond, then breathed, “Oh, God, it’s you.” She looked up at Poppy. “I guess he’s good enough to marry you, after all.”
Jane bent over it as well. “It’s beautiful, Poppy. It looks very old.”
“It’s Edwardian—from around nineteen-ten or so,” Poppy told them. “Mom says it has an aura of being well-loved.”
“She’d know.” Jane slowly straightened. “So let me get this straight. Everybody knew about this before I did?”
“My first impulse after I got my breath back was to call you both,” Poppy admitted. “But then I decided to see how long it would take you to notice. So I dragged Jason over to my folks’ instead.”
“I would have exploded if I’d tried to keep my engagement a secret for even an hour,” Jane said.
Poppy lau
ghed. “I thought I might. And you,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Ava, “you could have put me out of my misery a half-hour ago.”
“I was too busy trying to sneak peeks without you seeing. And I must say, wondering why the hell you didn’t come in screaming and flashing your hand.”
“And here I thought I was flashing it and you two were just too slow to pay attention.” Her gaze drifted to the built-in barbecue area where the men were grilling salmon. She felt a fatuous smile crooking the corners of her lips as she cocked her chin in their direction. “What do you say we join them?”
Jane gave a little wiggle. “Works for me.”
“Of course it does,” Poppy heard Ava mutter as they crossed the terrace. “What’s not to work when mad-foryou hunks are waiting for you?”
A few yards away, Jase tipped back his beer bottle, took a swig and decided he was having a pretty damn good time. The Kavanaghs were turning out to be decent guys and they’d included him and Murph seamlessly in today’s barbecue. He had a lot to celebrate. Arturo had survived not only his gunshot wound but an attempt on his life in the hospital, which had convinced him to testify against Schultz after all. Considering a good portion of Jase’s caseload had been invested in the rash of Arturo-led jewelry heists, it had lightened significantly. Several new cases had already taken up the slack and they’d probably never round up the kids who’d been involved—but it had been nice seeing so many cleared at once.
The icing on the cake—at least for Poppy and, okay, maybe for him as well—was that Cory and Danny G. had been to the Wolcott mansion several times in the past month to help Poppy paint. It had given them the chance to see that the girl was recovering well from her ordeal.
Things weren’t generally wrapped up so tidily in his experience. But he could get used to it.
Dev pointed out a sailboat on the Sound but when Jase turned to look, he saw Poppy skimming toward them ahead of her friends and he gave her his immediate undivided attention. Catching himself about to simply walk away from the men without a word, he excused himself and skirted one of the many huge urns full of spiky greens and lush flowers to meet her.
She looked so pretty in her red dress, little white sweater and radiant smile. She must have kicked off her sandals in Ava’s condo because her feet were bare even though the sun kept going in and out of the clouds and it was only warm up here part of the time.
“Hey,” he murmured, bending his head to give her a kiss. Then he twirled her around and pulled her back against his chest. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he rested his chin atop her warm cloud of hair and looked out at the view of salt water and soaring mountains, cupping his fist around her left hand so he could rub his thumb over the diamond he’d put on her finger last night.
He felt happy, peaceful and possessive and grinned with no-bones-about-it exhilaration first at Jane as she whizzed past, headed for her husband, then at Ava as she brought up the rear. This little diamond said Poppy was his.
Ava stopped in front of them. “Okay, I admit it. That ring shows you pay attention and that you know who Poppy is.” She glanced at Poppy’s face and Jase assumed she was seeing the same luminous smile he’d been seeing all day, for the redhead’s eyes went soft and remained that way when she turned her attention back to him. “You did good.”
“I’m going to take good care of her, you know.”
She studied him for a minute, then nodded. “Yeah, I think you probably will. Good thing, too. Because you hurt her, and Jane and I will see to it that you talk in a high, squeaky voice for the rest of your natural life.”
“Av!” Poppy remonstrated, but Jase merely tightened his arms around her and nodded at Ava.
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Hey, congratulations, de Sanges,” Dev called from the barbecue. “I hear Poppy’s put a ring through your nose.”
“Yeah, she saw Jane leading you around by yours and thought it looked like something she’d like to try herself,” he agreed, smoothly shifting Poppy beneath the drape of his arm as he turned them to face the group around the barbecue.
A grin splitting his face, Murphy came over to shake Jase’s hand and thump him on the back. Then he pulled Poppy in for a hug. “Congratulations, kid,” he said over her head. “You gonna tell Joe?”
“Already did. Ava said to invite him today, but he had plans with his girl’s family, so I told him over the phone.” He’d had mixed feelings when he’d issued the invitation, but it turned out he wouldn’t have minded having his brother here now to share in his happiness. “He seems to be doing well, Murph. Maybe he really is serious about staying out of jail this time.” He sure hoped so.
The salmon came off the grill and the women brought out salads, bread and veggies. They dished up from a buffet that looked more uptown restaurant than your average, basic picnic, but Jase figured that probably had to do with Ava’s occupation. Once they were all gathered around a boomerang-shaped table that allowed everyone to sit Last Supper-style facing the spectacular view, Ava poured anyone who didn’t have a beer a glass of sangria. Toasts that were sometimes sentimental but mostly rude were made to his and Poppy’s engagement.
Sitting with her shoulder pressed against his arm, Jase listened to the conversations going on around him and felt so content he barely recognized himself. As if she knew what he was feeling, Poppy gave his knee a squeeze under the table.
He leaned in to her. “I knew I wanted you the minute I clapped eyes on you,” he murmured in her ear. “But I sure never knew I could love somebody like this. I thought that—and being happy, really happy—was for other people. Real people.”
“You are real people,” she said with a fierceness that caused the conversations around them to stumble. Then Murph said something to Dev that made the Kavanaghs laugh and the volume picked up again.
“I know,” he said in a low voice. “That didn’t come out right. I guess what I meant was that I thought it was for people from families like yours. Not for guys with my kind of messed-up background.”
She tilted her head back to look at him. “I don’t care what your background is. I don’t love your antecedents, Jason. I love you.”
“Aw, Poppy.” He rested his forehead on hers for a minute. Then he gave her a soft kiss and his lips curved up in a smile against hers. “That day I walked into the merchants’ meeting to settle Cory, Danny and Henry’s future?” he said tenderly. He snapped his fingers. “Luckiest day of my life, doll.”
Poppy’s lips curved to match his. “Mine, too,” she said softly. “Mine, too.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3536-0
BENDING THE RULES
Copyright © 2009 by Susan Andersen
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 publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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