by Zoe Dawson
“Oh, man, this is personal. Look, I could lose my job over this.”
“Even, we’re in, we snatch-and-grab and we’re out.” He rubbed at his forehead. “What do you say? You in?”
Even laughed and shook his head, putting his hand up for Beau to slap. “Yeah, Ragin’, I’m all in.”
Kinley stood at her father’s grave in Arlington Cemetery in DC, the second grave she’d visited in the past two days. Fog misted over the gravestones almost like it was paying homage to her father. She liked that, as she not only had made peace with his death, but with the fog that had sheltered her and saved her life.
Daniel had been laid to rest with his family and friends attending. It was a large turnout. Kinley made her peace with his death, but she was still struggling over what he had done for her.
She had thought that the pain of saying goodbye to Beau would have diminished by now, but it hadn’t. She was still raw, missing him terribly.
She knelt down in the grass and set the dozen roses on his grave. “Hi, Daddy,” she said softly. “I haven’t been here in some time and I’m sorry about that. I thought staying away and trying to block out everything would make it easier. But, of course, I was wrong.”
She rose and finally let the pain go. Let it drift over his grave and fly away on the wind. Beau. He was responsible for this. She had to be accountable for her own inner guidance. Everything she needed was deep inside her. She’d run a mission with a tough former SEAL and kept up with him. Not only had she learned to trust him, but more importantly, she had learned to trust herself.
He made her feel so safe. She closed her eyes. She looked across the full expanse of Arlington Cemetery, remembering what Beau had said about handling fear. Admitting it took away its power. She wanted to do that because she wanted to overcome this fear. Beau’s office wasn’t far from here. It was her next stop.
Suddenly, without warning, strong arms encircled her from behind. She didn’t have to turn around to discover who it was. The memory of his scent was locked deep inside her.
Beau.
He breathed in deep, sending waves of shivers down her spine and over her skin.
“Miss me?” he asked hotly against her ear.
She turned in his arms. “Yes, and you know it.”
He grinned and took a deep breath. “Back in Cuba, I made a big mistake. I thought that it wouldn’t change your mind to tell you how I feel about you. To tell you that from the moment I met you, I have been feeling you here.” He placed his hand over his heart. “I thought that I couldn’t say anything that would affect you and make you want to take a risk with me unless you already wanted to. But I was wrong. SEALs don’t give up, and I didn’t even try.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “I found a name for the last link in my chain.” He pushed up his sleeve and Kinley’s throat got so thick and tight. Her name was etched into his skin, still rough and swollen from the recent application of red ink.
“It’s you, cher, for being my world.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks and he rubbed at them with both thumbs. “I love you, Kinley. Enough to risk my heart again. Enough that the pain of living without you and saying nothing was something I couldn’t live with.”
“Oh, Beau, I was so afraid of losing someone else that I used my job as a barrier with every man I met. Just when I thought I could maybe let go, Daniel betrayed me. It wasn’t until you came along and opened me up and showed me that it was worth it.” She kissed his mouth, pressing her lips against his, that sense of urgency subsiding.
“You helped me to not only make peace with my father’s death, but you helped me to make peace with myself, to trust myself. I love you, too, Beau.”
He pulled something out of his pocket. The gold of it caught the light and she recognized it right away. Her breath caught.
“You’re giving me your trident? Beau…”
“No, it’s not mine. It’s…your father’s.”
She cupped her hands around his, her heart so full of his love for her. “What? How did you… Oh my God. You went after him, didn’t you?”
He pressed his forehead against hers. “I went back, and I ran that bastard to ground. He wouldn’t give up, so that’s one more dead terrorist we don’t have to worry about anymore. I got this back for you. I went there not because he was on the watch list, but for a brother in arms and for you, Kinley, for your justice and your closure.”
“Thank you,” she said, wiping away fresh tears, her throat so tight. She buried her face into his throat and wrapped her arms around his neck, squeezing him close. Then she kissed him, his mouth responding to hers just as frantically, with the same need.
When they parted, he took a deep breath. “So, I hear you got promoted and got your own team here in DC. I’m guessing you might need a place to live.”
“Was that the little bird who also told you where I would be today?” she asked, smiling through more tears.
“Taking the Fifth,” he said. He gave her a sly, slick salesman look. “Well, there’s this amazing apartment in this old building with so much charm, overlooking this amazing city. The view is breathtaking. There’s only one small problem.”
“What’s that?”
He gave her a pained look. “Well, it comes with this guy, this annoying gung-ho dickhead that might make you get up and run with him every day and make love with him every night.”
“Hmm, those sound like pretty good perks.”
“Oh, really?” He chuckled.
She slipped her hand into his hair. He really did need a haircut. “Where is this amazing apartment?”
“Well, I could take you there right now, but I have to warn you, he might have to see you naked to make his final decision to let you stay.”
She frowned and said, “What an ass.”
He pressed his hand into hers, laughed and started to walk. “So, Kinley, I have one last question for you.”
“What is it?”
“Are you in?”
She stopped and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him again, and murmured against his mouth, “Yes, Beau—all in.”
Epilogue
Kinley held on as the old truck they were in rattled its way down a rutted and barely there path. It was reminiscent of that harrowing drive through the jungle, both going in after Maria and out again once they had her.
Only this time Beau wasn’t driving. It was his grandfather, or as Beau called him, his grand-père. He was speaking in what Kinley was beginning to understand as Cajun French. Proficient speakers used both French and English. “Nous avons pêché tout le temps. C’était la façon de garder nos bellies plein. Ces buggers rouges étaient notre groupe alimentaire de base. Nous avons well mangé presque tous les jours et vendu ce que nous ne pouvions pas manger ou il a donné à des gens moins fortunés.”
Beau translated for her, his mouth sending tingles down her spine. “We fished all the time. That was the way to keep our bellies full. Those little red buggers were our basic food group. We ate well almost every day and sold what we couldn’t eat or gave it away to less fortunate people.”
Beau was sitting on the other side of her and she was sandwiched between the two men. The affection Beau held for his grandfather was evident. She’d been here in Delcambre for just under a week.
Six months had passed since their mission to Cuba. Word had reached them that the Las Espadas leaders had all been killed and the cartel had broken up. The SEALs had done a job on the rest of el Ajeer’s followers with reports of many deaths and the rounding up of the rest to face international charges. Diego Montoya was convicted and would be sitting in a federal prison for the rest of his life.
And Maria and Kirk were…well…they were an item. He’d fallen for the Cuban beauty and had given her a shoulder to lean on, cry on, and finally to hold on to. Kinley was so glad that her boss and Maria had found each other. Talk about silver linings.
She lived with Beau in his apartment, just as he’d described it
. When Beau had invited her down to the bayou to meet his family, she’d jumped at the chance. His family was huge and didn’t only include his four very handsome brothers and his very pretty, very smart and very sassy sister, but his mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. Kinley couldn’t keep track of them all. It was so strange to be welcomed so warmly into his family when hers had been so cold. They were loud and spoke in a broken English/French language, listened to a lively music, the joy showing in their eyes so clearly that Kinley soon felt at home.
Now Beau and his grandfather were taking her crawfishing in the bayou. She was so excited.
They parked on the shoulder of the road. It was a pretty spot, the stream itself narrow and shallow with low, muddy banks and a thick growth of water weeds and flowers. A perfect haven for crawfish, or so she’d been told by Beau.
A young couple was there trying their luck. They waved as Beau and Kinley and his grand-père got out of the truck. Kinley waved back as Beau handed her a pair of rubber knee boots to wade in while stamping into his own. Grabbing several cotton mesh dip nets and three folding lawn chairs, he headed down toward the water with the nets tucked under his arm and carrying a cooler of bait in his other hand.
Beau’s grand-père tucked her arm through the crook of his and they both made their way down the bank. In his heavily accented voice, he said, “You listen to my petit-fils. You’ll be fishin’ like you were born to it. You gonna then eat yourself some crawfish, you. You so little, I could pick you up over my head.”
“Who you kidding, grand-père?” Beau said, dropping the bait and the nets near the water and turning toward him, giving him an indulging look. “You could pick me up over your head without any problem.”
“I will if need be. I might have to show him who’s boss, me.” He chuckled when Beau shivered in fear. “I’ll do it, smart aleck, ha.”
“I have no doubt,” Beau said with affection in his eyes.
Beau motioned her over and she leaned up and kissed his cheek.
He opened the bait cooler. Reaching in, he baited the nets with shad gizzard and chicken necks. They each took a net out into the water, spacing them a good distance apart. Beau worked quickly and methodically, the ritual obviously second nature to him. Kinley kept stumbling over tangles of alligator weed entwined with delicate yellow flowers and water primrose. The spot she had chosen to drop her net was choked with lavender water hyacinth that kept getting snagged on it.
“Ah, sugar,” Beau said indulgently, reaching around her, enveloping her in his warm male scent. “You havin’ a bit of the trouble, you,” he said, his accent as thick as his grandfather’s, and Kinley giggled.
Beau helped her set the net and supported her as she waded back to shore. She lost her balance and Beau caught her against his hard-muscled, solid body. “Getting your sea legs?”
“Was this part of your crawfishing plan? Get me to stumble around out here so you could be my hero?”
“Yeah, what of it?” he said. “It was a solid plan.”
She set her arm loosely on his shoulders, playing with the hair on the nape of his neck. The sounds and smells of the bayou wrapped around her. It was as beautiful as the man it had nurtured.
When he smiled, his charm, his love for her, was evident in his face. It was evident in everything he did for her, in every moment that they interacted, even when they were arguing. She loved him so much that sometimes she got scared, so scared. Then she’d realize that he was dedicated to her. Committed so fully. Loving him was everything.
“Yeah.” He leaned forward, setting his forehead against hers. “I love you, too, ma belle.”
“Is it that evident?”
“It is, and it makes me feel like the king of the world.”
“Well, you’re king of mine.”
He laughed and roared, picking her right up out of the water, carrying her to shore without one stumble.
When they got home and he’d delivered the crawfish to his mother for dinner, he dragged her up to his room under the pretense of showering and changing before dinner.
As soon as the door closed, his hand slipped heavily down her spine, cupped her rear, and meshed her hips to his. She felt his hard, broad erection through his jeans, the heat and pressure. She crossed her arms over her chest and pulled off her shirt, then stripped him of his.
His gaze was direct, hot and lazy.
He bent to taste her, pushing down her bra strap and exposing her. “So sexy.”
His gaze slipped down over her plump breasts, smoothing the roundness with his hand, and then he leaned down. His lips closed warmly over her nipple and he drew her into the warmth of his mouth, watching her expression of pleasure. Her head fell back, her body bending to his. The motion ground her warm center to his erection, and she thrust back as he licked and scored his teeth over the soft underside. He held her gaze as he ran a finger inside the edge of her bra cup, then pulled down. Her nipple spilled into his mouth. She gasped and closed her eyes as he devoured her.
Picking her up, he took her to the bed, licking slow heavy circles around her nipple. Kinley was breathless, her body hungering for his. She ran her hands over his sleek sculpted muscles. Then wrapped her hands around him, slid her finger over the moist tip, and laughed softly when he groaned, drew in air through clenched teeth.
“Kinley,” he said and clasped her hands above her head, “I love you.”
“Prove it,” she said, and for the next hour, he did.
Later on, after a feast of fresh spicy crawfish, dirty rice and green beans, Beau turned to her. “I have something I wanted to give to you.”
Her breath backed up in her throat. “What?” she asked.
He pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to her. The tension released in one breath. It wasn’t the ring box she’d expected.
She opened it and held it up so his family members could see. They started hooting and hollering.
“He gave her a knife,” one of his brothers said.
“Yeah, that’s Beau for you,” another said.
“Means he loves her,” his sister said.
He looked over at them, then smiled. “I do love her. More than anything.”
“You got me a folding Ka-Bar.”
He looked back at her. “I do have something else for you.” This time he did pull out a ring box.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“Kinley, I don’t need another six months or a year to know what I know now. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you. You are my world. Will you marry me?”
Tears stung her eyes and a soft sob escaped her lips. “Yes, I will. You know I will. I love you, forever.”
He opened the box and she looked down at the exquisite square-cut diamond.
“There’s an inscription,” he said.
She tipped the ring and read it. All in.
She kissed him as he slipped the ring on her finger. “You and me, cher. All in. All the time.”
She breathed a soft sigh against his mouth.
“All the time. Forever and ever.”
About the Author
Zoe Dawson lives in North Carolina, one of the friendliest states in the US. She discovered romance in her teens and has been spinning stories in her head ever since. Her heroes are sexy males with a disregard for danger and whether reluctant, gung-ho, or caught up in the action, show their hearts of gold.
Her imagination runs wild with romances from sensual to scorching including romantic comedy, new adult, romantic suspense, small town, and urban fantasy. Look below to explore the many avenues to her writing. She believes it’s all about the happily ever afters and always will.
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