by Tara Janzen
Besides, he had another concern right now, more pressing than whether or not Skeeter was going to smoke the competition at the Doubles.
Kid had rings.
Two of them. Gold.
Reaching up, he slipped the chain holding the rings off over his head.
“Nikki, do you remember the night we met?”
She lifted her head from where she was resting against his chest and looked up at him.
“Yes.”
“And the story you told me, about the pony and your parents?” Her parents had died in an earthquake while excavating Inca ruins in Peru, and as a young child, Nikki had thought she could save them, if only she’d had a pony to take her to South America.
“Yes.” She tilted her head to one side, her expression growing more curious.
“I never forgot that story.”
“The pony story.” She let out a small laugh. “Kids think the craziest things, don’t they.”
“Not so crazy, Nikki,” he said. “Having a pony really helped.”
She grew very still in his arms, then her gaze fell on the rings in his hand.
A tremor went through her, and she brought her hand up to her mouth.
“They’re yours now, Nikki, yours, and Regan’s, and your grandfather’s.”
“Oh, Kid.”
“They’re pretty scratched, and I didn’t disturb them any more than necessary, your parents, I mean,” he said, feeling her tremble, watching disbelief turn to understanding and then sadness in her eyes. “I only lifted their fingers, just a little, just enough to get the rings off.” A lot more than that had happened, and he’d tell her grandfather everything, about how unstable the dig had been, about how the whole thing had damn near slid down the mountain while he’d been in the grave site where Rob and Lisa McKinney had died. Wilson would want to know, but not Nikki. She didn’t like bones, and she wouldn’t want to hear about the ones that had been broken, or about how her mother’s hand had been crushed. He would protect her from that much—because he loved her.
She reached for the rings and took them into her hand, letting the chain slide through her fingers.
“You did it, Kid.” Awe turned her voice soft, tremulous.
“Yeah.” He had. Against the odds, when it seemed that he wouldn’t be able to do anything else for her ever again, he’d found her parents and salvaged their wedding rings. It had been harder than he would ever tell her, but looking at her face, it was all so simply perfect.
“Oh, Kid,” she said, closing her hand around the gold bands and holding them close to her heart. “How can I ever thank you?”
And the answer to that was also so simply perfect.
“Marry me, Nikki. Be mine.” He cupped her cheek in his palm and smoothed his thumb across her soft skin. “Be mine forever.”
CHAPTER
25
ISN’T THIS GREAT, honey?”
Nikki peeked out from under a pile of blankets and quilts and felt the cold, frigid air settle over the top half of her face, the only part of her she’d dared to reveal. Even her hair hurt, it was so damn cold.
“We’re in a yurt, Kid.” A yurt, in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road, even more miles from anything that remotely resembled civilization, and her husband was standing in the open doorway, in what she had to admit was some very fine-fitting black long underwear, grinning like a fool.
God, he looked like a piece of sculpture, a long back, buns-o’-steel, thighs that made her melt, the whole six feet of him encased in some special, high-tech, warmth-retaining spandex stuff.
Well, it worked. She was starting to retain a little warmth just by looking at him.
“Yeah, a yurt. Isn’t it cool?” He turned back to look out the door, at snow-covered mountains, and snow-covered trees, at the snow piled up outside the door and their snow-covered skis, and at more snow falling from the sky, big, fat flakes. “I always wanted to do this, like since I was ten years old. I couldn’t believe it when you said you wanted to go camping in a yurt. I mean, it freaking amazed me.”
She’d freaking amazed herself, too. She’d never considered herself a very good liar, but she’d sure pulled this one off. He’d obviously forgotten the night he’d let his heart’s desire for this particular adventure slip.
She would never forget it. Not the whole wild twenty-four hours. He’d saved her life, hers and Fast Jack Spencer’s, who was incredibly darn lucky to have ended up in juvie instead of the state penitentiary. Skeeter had worked some magic there, along with Christian Hawkins, to keep Jack out of the slammer. But his debt to society was a long way from being paid. He was going to be stuck in the ragged wasteland of western Colorado for the summer, digging dinosaur bones for her grandfather in his jobs-training program for criminally convicted juveniles. The rest of the Rats had been picked up and were in the social services system. It was going to be a long process getting them all sorted out, or in many cases, getting their family situations sorted out. A few of the older ones had simply disappeared, slipped free, unwilling to be wards of the state, even more unwilling to go back to the bad family situations that had put them on the street in the first place.
Secretly, Nikki thought Jane Linden and Fast Jack deserved some kind of medal for feeding and housing all those kids with little more than their wits and sticky fingers to get them by.
Jane, of course, had not been charged. All she’d tried to do was help a bad situation that had long since been out of her control. Nikki didn’t know what was going to happen between the girl and Travis, but she was hoping they could work through the gulf seeming to separate them. At least that had been her hope before she’d gone to Panama. Since the night the Aztec had burned, and what had happened there, Travis had become more and more withdrawn, spending more time with Christian Hawkins than with anyone, even disappearing for days on end sometimes. For the first time since they’d become best friends, he was holding himself apart from her, keeping his own council, his own secrets. The last few times she’d tried to paint him, it had been hopeless.
She knew what had done it: the killings at the Aztec. He didn’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from his actions, but he’d been changed. She didn’t understand it, not really, even though Kid had explained it to her the best he could, before finally just giving her the quick, two-word bottom line—guy stuff—and his advice: Leave the guy alone; he’ll figure it out.
She and Kid had figured out all kinds of stuff, fun stuff, serious stuff, how to fall even more in love stuff.
“What a cool honeymoon, huh?”
Oh, yeah, it was cool. Below zero last night. She didn’t think a honeymoon could get much cooler than theirs, not and still have two live honeymooners in it.
Yurt camping.
Had she been insane?
“Are you ready for some coffee, babe?” He finally closed the door, for all the good it did.
“Yes, please.” God, what an incredible liar she’d turned out to be all the way around. She’d said “yes, please” to Kid’s coffee, as in “Please give me a cup of sludge, Kid,” except Kid’s camping coffee was even worse than his at-home coffee. It was instant, to match the milk.
Instant milk.
A small shudder went through her at the thought. What she wanted was a caramel macchiato with steamed whole milk and whipped cream on top.
He’d stoked the fire up and gotten it going before he’d decided to stand in the open door and freeze his whatevers off, and she could almost feel the tendrils of heat reaching the bed.
Almost, but not quite, not yet, but the bed, well, she had to admit there were some benefits to yurt camping, especially luxury yurt camping, like gazillion-thread-count sheets and silk-and-velvet duvets on down quilts. For a price, the yurt keepers would have snowmobiled in a caramel macchiato, but what she and Kid had wanted more than designer coffee and gourmet meals delivered was privacy—and her peek out the door had proved they definitely had privacy for as far as the eye could see.
/> There was nobody out there, not until the next yurt, or back at the lodge, which was a good three miles down the trail.
Three miles on cross-country skis, she’d discovered, wasn’t as daunting as she’d expected, even in the snowstorm that had caught them halfway to the yurt yesterday. And “Luxury Rough,” as their package was described, wasn’t all that rough, not with Kid Chaos ramrodding the expedition.
For starters, he carried all the gear and didn’t know the meaning of the word lost. Snowstorm or not, he’d guided them along a trail she couldn’t even see until they’d made it safe and sound to the yurt. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t even been able to see the yurt, until he’d opened the door. It had been such a whiteout, and she’d been so deeply huddled in her hat and coat, like a turtle, with barely her eyes peeking out, kind of like this morning. As far as getting lost, there was no such thing anymore, he’d told her, not since the widespread availability of the Global Positioning System.
Could have fooled her. She was lost, lying right there in bed with a GPS on the table next to her. She didn’t have a clue where they were, other than the San Juan range of the Rocky Mountains, somewhere outside of Telluride, Colorado.
Of course, she didn’t have his somewhat obsessive need for bearings, and positions, and lat-longs. She was with him, and that was as “unlost” as she’d ever been. She’d thought he was the storm in her life, but she’d discovered he was really the rock, the one steady thing she could hold on to when all else failed. He would go through hell itself to find her and keep her safe. She’d watched him do it, and watching Kid Chaos fight his way through hell was a profoundly amazing sight.
“You know what we could do today?” Kid asked.
Stay in bed?
“We could build a snow cave.” He was grinning like that long-ago ten-year-old.
Snow cave. Hmmm. She ran that around in her brain for a couple of seconds, but couldn’t get any further than “Why?”
There was snow everywhere, all of it beautifully arranged by Mother Nature. She didn’t really see the need to shove it around and get her mittens wet. Actually, it was too cold for her mittens to get wet, and she had special mittens now, with liners and over-mittens, and doodads for hooking them to her coat. She had a lot of things she’d never had before, like gaiters and skins and Gore-Tex. The only thing silky in her honeymoon wardrobe was her own set of long underwear, which he’d shimmied her out of early last night.
“Because the snow is perfect for packing. We could build a really nice one this morning, and then have lunch in there, or spend the night.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. He had to be kidding. They were already in a yurt, for crying out loud. They were already camping in the wilderness, and he wanted to take the whole honeymoon expedition down a notch to a . . . a snow cave?
God, even the words “honeymoon expedition” were an oxymoron, or should have been. The situation was outlandish, but oh, it had made him so happy to plan and organize and pack and repack the supplies for their wilderness ordeal.
Still, there were limits.
She pulled the covers back up over her head and uttered one word into the blankets: “No.”
“I bet you’d be good at it,” he said, his tone cajoling, as if he actually thought he could talk her out of bed and away from the fire. She could tell from his voice that he was walking back toward the bed. “You could sculpt angels at the entrance.”
That might be fun, but the rest of it didn’t sound like any fun at all.
“And we could decorate it with the cranberry juice and make a big sno-cone out of it.”
Okay. Maybe it could be fun to freeze her butt off outside packing snow into into a big hollow ball, then staining it with fruit juice and sitting inside.
She thought about it for a second, then changed her mind.
“No.” He was nuts.
“Ah, geez, Nikki. What are we going to do all day, if we don’t go out and play in the snow?”
Try to stay warm. The answer was so obvious, it wasn’t even a question in her mind.
“Come on, Nik. Be a sport.”
She felt part of his weight come down on the bed.
“I am not a sport,” she said inside her silk-and-velvet cocoon.
“Not a sport?” he asked, settling more of his weight on the bed. “Then what are you, baby?”
The covers lifted for him to slide inside, and she started scooting to the other side as fast as she could. Darn it. He was going to be six feet of frozen Popsicle.
But he wasn’t. He was warm, and naked, and he had her in his arms before she got even two inches from her spot.
“Umm.” He nuzzled her neck, pulling her in close to his body. “You’re soft.”
And he was hard, everywhere, even after practically standing outside in the snow.
He took her breast in his mouth and teased her with his tongue, which she absolutely loved. “You’re sweet.”
Moving up to her mouth, he sucked on her lips, then slid his tongue inside and ravished her, all the while pressing her back into the bed. She had a feeling the old snow cave was sliding down to the bottom of his “To Do” list pretty damn fast. If he was going to do anything this morning, it looked like it was going to be her, which she absolutely loved.
“Hmmm. Soft and sweet.” He kissed her lips again. “You must be a doughnut.”
She giggled. A doughnut. “You’re a doughnut.”
“Me? Soft?” He laughed. “I don’t think so, honey. I’m hard and—”
“Yummy.”
“Yummy sounds soft.” He smoothed his hand up over her knee, then higher, and she opened for him, anticipating his touch. “How about—”
“Delicious, mmmmm.” Kid Chaos had magic hands. He moved his thigh over hers, and she felt him, hot and heavy between her legs.
“No, babe. Delicious mmmmm is you. I’m . . .” He pushed up inside her, and she all but melted beneath him. It was always so glorious, the way he made love to her. She ran her fingers up into his hair and brought his head back down to hers for another kiss, moving with him, breathing him in, letting him take her higher and higher.
She was so in love.
“Taking me to Paris,” she murmured a long while later, finishing his sentence after it had trailed off.
He let out a short laugh. “Yes,” he said, slowly easing himself out of her. “Paris.”
A year in Paris for a week in a yurt, and she still wasn’t sure she’d made a good deal, except in the marrying of him. Of that, she had no doubts. She’d take Kid Chaos any way she could get him, anywhere, any time—every time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tara Janzen lives in Colorado with her husband, children, and two dogs, and is now at work on her next novel. Of the mind that love truly is what makes the world go ’round, she can be contacted at www.tarajanzen.com. Happy reading!
ALSO BY TARA JANZEN
Crazy Hot
Crazy Cool
Crazy Wild
Don’t miss
Tara Janzen’s next novel
of heart-stopping action,
nail-biting suspense,
and breathless passion.
Read on for a sneak peek of
CRAZY LOVE
ON SALE SUMMER 2006
CRAZY LOVE
ON SALE SUMMER 2006
PINK.
Sweater.
Short.
Skirt.
Long.
Legs.
Dylan Hart flipped his cell phone shut and rubbed his hand over his forehead, trying not to stare at the girl on the other side of the office. She was out to slay him, his nemesis, the bane of his existence—Skeeter Bang, five feet eight inches of blond bombshell leaning over a computer.
Jail.
Bait.
She knocked a cigarette out of the pack of Mexican Faros on the desk and struck a match off her belt.
“Put that out,” he ordered. She knew there was no smoking in the office.
�
��Make me,” she said, then stuck the Faro between her lips and inhaled, holding the match to the end of the cigarette. A billow of smoke came out of her mouth when she exhaled.
Make me?
Dylan was the boss of 738 Steele Street in Denver, Colorado, second in command of Special Defense Force, SDF, a group of tough-as-nails black-ops shadow warriors who specialized in doing the Department of Defense’s dirty work.
Make me?
“Put out the damn cigarette, Skeeter,” the man working at the last computer said. “And if you bend over that desk one more time, I’m going to paddle you.”
Thank you, Superman, Dylan thought.
The girl was out of control, but Superman, a.k.a. Christian Hawkins, had kicked more ass and taken more names than most men alive. He could handle Skeeter Bang, and honest to God, they had bigger problems, much bigger, like the phone call he’d just gotten from General Grant—and of course, there was still that little problem of the death sentence he’d picked up on his last mission. Wouldn’t want to forget about that now, would he?
Yes. Actually, he would, but forgetting about it wasn’t very goddamn likely.
“Skeeter,” Hawkins warned her again.
And the chit put it out, just like that, without batting an eyelash or missing a beat. Though who the hell would know if Skeeter batted her eyelashes? The girl always wore sunglasses, and a damn ball cap Dylan was about ready to burn, literally, put it in a trash can and blast it with a flamethrower.
He was hardly ever at Steele Street to see her, and then even when he was there, he couldn’t actually see her—which was all for the best. Just the way he liked it.
Except now he had this walking time bomb thing going, and if it turned out that things weren’t going to go his way and the whole damn shooting match was going to be over, well, if that’s the way things were going to be, maybe he should tell her how he felt.