I ran my fingers through his hair, brought his lips back to mine, and tried to erase that hell from his mind, at least a little. "I love you," I whispered urgently. "Are you okay with the whole lottery thing, though? I know some guys don't like a wife worth more than they are."
"I'd love you if you had more money than Donald Trump, just the same as I'd love you if you were broke and living in a homeless shelter. Marry me," Chance growled, nipping at my bottom lip.
I had just opened my mouth to answer yes, yes and oh, yes, please, when there was a loud "ahem" from the door. "Mr. Atkins, while I'm not too old to appreciate a very fine-looking behind, yours does not belong in this room."
Chance stiffened, an embarrassed flush climbing up his neck as he reached back to find that yes, his ass was hanging out of his hospital gown, and a scowling, middle-aged nurse with a twinkle in her eye was checking out every inch of it.
"Find me a Salvation Army thrift store," I called out when he got to the door, "Get me that ring, and have somebody check us out of this place in the morning. We're in Vegas. Let's find an Elvis preacher and get married tomorrow."
Chapter 42
The next morning, a few visitors paraded through, bringing flowers and all kinds of surprising revelations, letting me piece together what happened in Dominick's dungeon. The first two were official, but very welcome. Angela, dark FBI suit back in place, hair trying to spiral free from the neat bun at the back of her head, and her face creased in a bright smile, and Nate, who was on crutches but with his face more relaxed and his dark eyes a lot less haunted than the last time I'd seen them.
They were full of good news. Angela hadn't gotten in too much trouble, she claimed, after our escape. Or if she had, it was at least temporarily buried under all the excitement of the day before. Also, the FBI's search of Dominick's villa had turned up another secret room and they'd be very busy for the next few weeks going through the computers, flash drives and extensive records he'd obligingly kept on the inner workings of his organization. Dominick's demise would be kept hushed for a while longer yet while they took down some big players, especially the ones involved in the sex trafficking ring.
The best news of all was that the blonde women that I'd seen locked up in Dominick's workshop had been Tanya and Ashlynn. Tanya had been treated for minor injuries, kept overnight for observation and was planning to go on leave for a while to recover from her ordeal. Ashlynn was being treated for a variety of hurts, both physical and mental, and would probably need some extensive psychological therapy, but she was expected to be okay, too.
The burning question of what had actually happened when I heard the shot and passed out, giving myself up for dead, I got to hear from the horse's mouth. Betty showed up with a huge bouquet of daisies and a smile beaming with happiness.
"Ain't this just some shit," she rasped cheerfully, hugging me carefully so she didn't hit my bandaged-wrapped arm. I'd been told the cut underneath came from Dominick's jigsaw, and had taken seven stitches to close, but that the leather jacket I'd been wearing had actually kept the laceration from being a lot worse.
"You're looking a lot less dead than the last time I saw you."
"How's your chest?" I asked. "You didn't break any ribs?"
"Nope, the flak jacket took all the impact. I've just got a big bruise there this morning as a souvenir. Guess my ex wasn't so crazy for buying those things in bulk."
"Did you guys meet Betty?" I asked Angela and Nate, who were hanging back, looking amused.
Betty spun around, frowning nervously. "Sorry, I didn't know you had company. I can come back."
"That's okay," Angela said. "Agent Whiteford and I were just getting ready to leave. I'm sure we'll see you again soon, Mrs. Tuttle. You, too, Lucky." She winked.
Betty heaved a relieved breath after they'd left. "Cops make me nervous," she added unnecessarily.
"You met Angela and Nate?" I asked curiously.
Betty pulled one of the visitor chairs up closer to the bed. "You bet I did. Bound to happen when I was the one that blasted Dominick to hell. I dragged my sorry ass down those stairs just in time to save yours. The badges showed up right after that, but by then, the party was already over."
Betty left too, after I'd extracted a promise from her to stay in touch. I gave in to fatigue from my mostly-sleepless night and dozed for a while. Around noon, a doctor came in and checked me over a last time. It was the first time I'd seen my own injuries uncovered. The gouge on my arm was no big deal—I'd ended up with a worse-looking cut after I'd actually tripped while running with scissors when I was eight—but the hatchet wound was something else altogether.
"Meh, it's nothing," Dr. Fitzgerald told me as he poked and prodded around the area. Stitches bristled down the front of my thigh. "Now, if you'd nicked an artery, that wouldn't have been any good at all, but you didn't. Just whacked through lots of skin and muscle, but that'll heal. They don't call you Lucky for nothing, huh?"
"Guess not," I said weakly, trying not to gag.
He gave me a prescription for some antibiotics and pain killers, and then I was given my walking papers and the assurance that someone would be along shortly to spring me. I hoped they brought clothes, because I was dying to get out of the hospital gown and go see if Chance was free yet.
Addy came in with a wheelchair holding a couple of bulging shopping bags a few minutes later, Jack following along behind. She was wearing a floaty, light green chiffon dress with a matching scarf wound around her neck and a pair of strappy leather high-heeled sandals. Her shiny brown hair was pulled back in a chignon. Jack was dressed in a navy blue suit with brown pinstripes and a matching tie. There was a yellow rosebud pinned to his lapel.
My eyes narrowed. "A little formal for hospital wear, don't you think? Why do you guys look like you're going to a swing dancing contest?"
Addy giggled. "None of your business. But you need to get dressed. We've got places to go and things to do today."
She carefully bustled me off into the bathroom. With some swearing and contorting and a lot of help, I got a fast shower and full shampoo with some bottles of yummy-scented things that Addy produced from one of her bags. I was pretty sure I knew where we were going with all this, and nerves and excitement fluttered together.
I was positive when Addy pulled out some cream satin underthings and a gauzy, lemon-colored confection of a dress from another shopping bag. It was tea-length, bias cut and diaphanous, and the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I discreetly checked the label and had to gulp back a happy sob. It was vintage.
"Did you do all this?" My eyes met Addy's in the mirror as she stood on the toilet, tugging and teasing my curls into a perfect braided coronet and threading small yellow roses through it.
She shrugged and grinned, dimples winking.
"I figure since you stuck by me through my bitchiest moments and that entire six months of pre-wedding nightmare, the least I could do was to help give you the surprise wedding of your dreams. Chance called my hotel late last night, and I got started first thing this morning. Vegas is a great place to get married, apparently. It was easy-cheesy to pull everything together."
She hugged me tightly around the neck, her position on the toilet giving her height advantage for the first time since second grade. I focused on deep breathing to keep from crying and ruining her makeup efforts.
"I'm glad my Addy is back," I said, hugging her forcefully.
"Oh, I almost forgot! A gift from Angela." She bounced down and dug in another shopping bag, coming up with my purse. "Can't get married without ID, even in Vegas!"
Married. The word echoed in my head.
For Pete's sake, I was getting married.
To Chance.
Addy had found some delicate high-heeled sandals that match my dress, but with my bum leg, I was wheeled out of the hospital and didn't have to worry about coordination issues. We drew stares and smiles from hospital staff and patients on our way to the front doors, especially Jack, who was
relegated to flower-carrying donkey.
Waiting for us in the patient pickup area was a gleaming white classic Rolls Royce with miles of glossy white hood. I'd pictured a car just like this taking me to my wedding a thousand times.
"You don't miss a trick, do you?" I asked Addy. She hiked a thumb at Jack and smiled proudly.
"It's a car," he shrugged, handing off the last of the flowers to the smartly-uniformed driver. "I figured that made it a guy's department."
Instead of reminding him that this girl could run circles around him as a mechanic, I pushed myself up to give him a wobbly hug. "It's perfect."
He squeezed me back, hard. "Love you, sis."
I clasped him back just as tight, and then pulled back to glare at him. "If I didn't love you back, I'd be bludgeoning you to death with this wheelchair right now."
He gave me his usual cocky grin, the mirror image of mine. "Actually, come to think of it, you owe me. I'm the one that introduced you to your future husband, after all. You could start with some cash, moneybags. You're reimbursing me for all this old-timey wedding shit."
I punched him hard in the arm and climbed into the Rolls.
Late that night, I was lying exhausted and happy in Chance's arms, floating in the afterglow of awesome marital sex and the first truly wonderful day I'd had in a long time. My wedding dress was puddled in a heap on the floor of an incredibly ritzy hotel room. Chance's yellow tie was draped over a potted ficus tree in the corner. I was spending my first night as Mrs. Atkins wearing nothing but a huge grin and a gorgeous cat's eye aquamarine.
"Did you see the way Julian and Betty hit it off?" Chance asked, absently playing with one of the rosebuds that had fallen out of my hair.
"No!" I crowed. "Are you serious?" Julian had opted to come back to Vegas for the wedding instead of leaving his safehouse for his boring old room at Restful Pines. Betty had been there already, a part of the surprise entourage.
"Yup," he chuckled. "Your mom told me the last she saw him, he was climbing on to the back of Betty's Harley."
"That is so perfect." I giggled. "I didn't even notice them. I was too busy watching Nate trip over his own crutches trying to impress Angela."
Chance rolled his eyes. "And speaking of tripping over things…"
"Hey, that wasn't a trip! You stepped on my foot—"
"Did not. You slipped on the cord to the sound system."
"—and if the Elvis preacher hadn't caught me, I'd have been sitting in our wedding cake!"
"Did you pull your stitches loose?"
"No, they're fine."
"Are you sure? I'd better check, just in case."
I laughed breathlessly as he tugged the sheet down and started kissing a path downward between my breasts, his breath hot on my sensitized skin. "Now that you mention it, it does ache a little—" I gasped as he licked my sweet spot.
"That's not my thigh," I chided.
He bit gently and I yelped and grabbed his shoulders, digging in my nails, my hips jerking upward. Within seconds, the teasing stroke of his tongue had brought me racing to the edge of another orgasm.
"Inside me, now," I commanded.
"You sure are a bossy broad, Mrs. Atkins," Chance huskily, moving to my side and leaning back against the headboard. I'm afraid my stitches are pulling a little, though, so you're going to have to come over here and sit on my lap. Wrap your legs around my waist," he ordered.
My legs were almost shaking too badly to comply and the injured one ached fiercely, but it was worth the effort to lower myself down to his straining hardness. I hooked my ankles behind his back and his hands gripped my hips to hold them still as he shifted his own upward, slowly, millimeter by millimeter, pushing deeper until he was fully embedded in my heat. I tried to rock back to take him further, make him move faster, but he held me tighter, stilling my frantic movements.
He captured my lips with his own firm, warm ones, flicking his tongue in and out in time with his gentle thrusts. "I love you, Lucky," he groaned. His fingers slipped between our sweat-soaked bodies until he found the hard little bud of sensation that was currently the center of my universe. The callused tip of his finger moved in slow circles that intensified the unbearable tension in my body until I peaked, coming in waves, my contracting inner muscles drawing out his own climax. He poured himself into me on a long sigh, still kissing me deeply. Drained, I let my head fall onto his shoulder, and he lowered me back onto the mattress. An aftershock of pleasure throbbed as he slipped free of me.
Floating in a smoky haze of fulfillment, I vaguely heard the rattle of a pill bottle. "Come on, Lucky," Chance said, softly shaking my shoulder. "Tylenol 500's all around. You'll thank me in the morning."
We washed them down with sparkling white grape juice and another piece of chocolate wedding cake and then I fell asleep, wrapped securely in Chance's arms with his deep and even breathing soft and reassuring at the nape of my neck.
Chapter 43
We stayed holed up in the hotel room for another four days, alternately sleeping and ordering room service and making love until we were too tired to move and had to start the whole process again. Chance and I finally emerged on the fifth day, when Angela called and told us to meet her in the restaurant downstairs for dinner and a wedding gift.
"Does this mean you're off the clock?" I asked when I saw her in the lobby, her killer curves sheathed in a short, painted-on black dress with crimson stiletto heels. Her hair was loose and curling down her back, and she was rummaging around in a matching red shoulder bag.
She smiled at me, dark eyes sparkling. "Maybe I have a hot date later."
"Woohoo! Is it Nate?" I asked.
She scowled. "Hell no, he is the last man on this earth I'd hook up with. He's still hung up on someone else." The irritation on her face cleared as she came up with a ring of keys on a Marilyn Monroe keychain. "Voila."
I recognized them immediately and wanted to jump up on the table and dance. "The Roadmaster!"
"Yes ma'am. The FBI even had her washed and detailed as a little token of thanks for your part in bringing down the bad guy. Half the guys in the field office put in on a pool to see who got to drive it. I won," she grinned charmingly. "Bribed the office manager into picking my name. Best fifty I ever spent. That car is a dream."
"Don't ever say the FBI didn't do anything for you," Chance told me with a smile. "A wash and a detail?"
Over dinner, Chance and I decided to check out the next day and start driving back toward Kalamazoo to settle things up there, but taking a meandering route through Alabama to see his mom, Kentucky to check on things at his horse farm, and then Ohio to visit his brother and sister, maybe even with a crazy jump over to Iowa at some point see R.J. I'd already called him to make sure he was doing okay, but I thought it would be fun to get that cup of coffee he'd promised us. We figured we'd make it an extended honeymoon, taking our time, splitting stays between fancy hotels, cozy bed and breakfasts and occasional nights in the Boles Aero at out of the way campgrounds. We'd have some much-needed alone time and, hopefully, in the meantime the media circus would move on to another freakshow.
Later, I was glad we got the visit with his mom out of the way first. Chance was still pretty tight-lipped about his home life as a kid, but I thought I knew enough about him to guess his relationship with his mom. I was wrong.
Chance's dad was currently a guest of the county, courtesy of his sixth DUI in as many months, so we didn't have to worry about running into him when we showed up in front of his parents' singlewide, situated on a scraggly plot of land about an hour outside of Mobile.
We pulled in the drive and Chance shut the engine off, staring distantly at a screen that had fallen off one of the windows and was resting against the front corner of the trailer. It probably had happened a while ago, judging by the weeds that had grown up around it. The yard was a mass of them, almost hiding the chained-up, overweight basset hound that was sprawled out on his fat belly. He gave a half-hearted woof as we approache
d, but didn't trouble himself enough to actually struggle to his feet.
"Some guard dog," I joked.
Chance just grunted, climbing the rickety front porch and knocking on the screen door.
I plucked self-consciously at the sleeveless, full-skirted white summer dress I was wearing with its lattice print of fat purple cabbage roses. It was one of my favorites that I'd bought in a whirlwind shopping trip with Addy before we'd left Las Vegas, and it had seemed like a perfect "meeting the mother-in-law" dress when I'd put it on this morning, but now I felt tacky and overdressed, like I was showing off or something. Oh, well, I had to wear it while I could. The waist was already fitting more snugly than the first time I wore it.
"You look good," Chance murmured, taking my hand. "Mom won't notice what you're wearing anyway." His smile was forced and a little ball of dread formed in my stomach.
The front door opened with a loud crack, making me jump. A pale, gaunt woman smiled up tentatively at Chance for a moment. Then her eyes flicked to me and back to Chance, and her face slid back into a sullen frown.
"Jesus, Chance," his mom muttered. "I thought you were Lee. Well, you might as well come in." With that gracious invitation, she let the door swing open the rest of the way, turned her back on us and walked inside.
"We won't stay long," Chance said in a low voice, his back stiff as I followed him in. I wasn't sure if he was reassuring me or his mom.
I came here prepared to be openminded, knowing what little I did about Chance's parents, but I was starting to really not like Tricia Atkins. She seemed to like Chance even less. She had flicked off the TV and was standing there watching him with an unfriendly look on her face, ignoring me. Rude. My annoyance with her ticked up a notch and without waiting to be asked, I plopped down on her threadbare orange couch. A little puff of dust rose up.
Lucky in Love Page 17