Lise jumped, her heart doing double-time. Joshua wrapped her up against him, hugging her tight, and she leaned into his big body, clinging to his warmth and strength in a way she would not normally allow herself to do.
His hand rubbed up and down her back. “It was just the detonator, honey.”
“I wasn’t expecting it,” she mumbled into his coat.
“I didn’t feel like risking the odds again when I could let it go off without hurting anyone or anything.”
Nitro’s explanation made sense and she pulled from Joshua’s arms to tell him so, along with giving him her thanks. “You risked your life for me.” Her watery smile encompassed Hotwire, Josie, and Joshua, too. “You all did. Thank you.”
Hotwire shrugged, his blue eyes twinkling with Georgian charm. “It’s all in the job description, ma’am.”
Nitro’s dark face came as close to smiling as she’d ever seen it. “I disarm bombs in my sleep. It was no big deal.”
Lise could not quite tell, but she thought maybe he was actually kidding her. She grinned. “I’m sure you do.”
“No doubt,” Josie drawled, her anger with Nitro as obvious as a Brahma bull in the middle of a herd of Hereford steers. “And you didn’t need my help, either. You don’t need anyone.”
She turned to Joshua. “I’ll go back to the house and call the authorities while you wrap up out here.”
“I’ll go with you. I’ve got buddies in the FBI that we should call. Jones crossed state lines to perpetrate his stalking and attempted bombing and that puts him under federal jurisdiction.”
Joshua nodded. “Good—take Lise with you.”
She wasn’t sure if she was going to argue or not.
He didn’t give her the chance and pulled her to him for another quick but mind-numbing kiss. “It’s cold out here. I want you inside.”
She didn’t argue that he was no more impervious to the cold than she was because in this case it was just possible he was right. She was shivering despite wearing her winter coat, and he didn’t look chilled at all.
“What about him?” She nodded toward Ed Jones, who still had not awakened.
“Nitro and I will bring him in when we’re done.”
“Okay.”
The next few hours were harried ones.
The bombs had to be disposed of.
Afterward, Ed Jones was transported to the hospital because when he finally did wake up, he complained of pain in his chest. It could be bruising from the hits through the Kevlar, but his skin tone had been pasty and she wondered if it was his heart. Lise had learned that he’d made a full confession on the way to the hospital, apparently feeling the authorities would believe he was justified in his hatred of her.
Although Hotwire’s friends helped to deal with the local law enforcement, there was still a lot of red tape and questioning to get through. Joshua had to explain why he hadn’t brought law enforcement in to begin with and from the looks on the officers’ faces, Lise didn’t think they liked his reasoning.
After answering questions for hours for two sets of authorities, she was finally able to relax. She curled up in an armchair in the living room to wait for Joshua and the others to finish, too.
He found her there and scooped her into his arms without a by-your-leave.
“Your caveman tendencies are showing again.”
He smiled down at her. “I’m beginning to think that’s a permanent condition when I’m around you.”
“Hmm…Where are the others?”
“Nitro left with the bomb unit—he’ll be back later. Josie’s packing and Hotwire is still talking with his FBI buddies.”
“I’m glad it’s over.”
“Me, too, sweetheart. I’ve never had a job that stressed me out so much.”
She laughed even as her heart filled with hope. Earlier, he’d said he wanted to discuss their relationship and now he was telling her that protecting her had impacted his emotions. Those were two very good signs. Certainly making it worth sticking around to find out if they had a future.
She floated through the next few days in a strange sort of limbo, not wanting to discuss her future with Joshua until the present was more settled. She and Joshua spoke to the FBI twice more and the prosecutor’s office once. They slept together and made love, but by tacit agreement, they didn’t talk about their feelings or their future.
She finished her book and sent it off to her editor, hoping what she’d been through while she was writing it had made the book stronger, not a jumble of incomprehensible words. That done, she decided the time had come to confront Joshua about their relationship.
She was soaking in the hot springs, celebrating making her deadline, when Joshua walked into the jungle room. “You’re not writing.”
He sounded puzzled and she grinned up at him. She had spent pretty much every daylight hour, and plenty of the dark ones besides, working on her Dana and laptop Hotwire had brought with him when he’d come.
“I finished the book and sent it off to my editor a little while ago.”
“Are you going to take some time off before your next one?”
Was he going to invite her to stay in Vermont with him while she did? “That’s my plan.”
“How long?”
“I usually like to take off a week or so, but this time I want a real break. I’m not starting anything new for a month.”
He started peeling out of his clothes. “That sounds about right.”
For what? Did he think their relationship would have run its course by then? Her thoughts splintered as he finished undressing and she sucked in air at the sight of his naked body.
“I don’t think mercenaries are supposed to blush, but if you keep looking at me that way, I’m going to.”
She laughed softly. “I can’t help it. You’re so sexy.”
He looked down at his body and then at her with a grimace. “I’ve got more scars than a Hollywood stuntman.”
She waited until he’d joined her in the water to answer and then she traced a mark that had obviously been a knife wound. “Call me nuts, but I like it. It’s all part of what brought you to be the man you are.”
He shuddered at her touch, his eyes turning to dark fire. “Whatever turns you on.”
She leaned forward to lick the thin ridge of white flesh she’d been touching, loving the scent and heat of him. “I get a definite charge out of knowing you got these marks defending and saving people.”
He made a sound of pure masculine pleasure and pulled her into his lap, their naked thighs sliding against each other. She felt an immediate response in both her heart and her inner flesh at the sensation.
He leaned down and kissed her.
Slowly and thoroughly.
When he lifted his head, his expression was so serious it would have scared her if the warmth in his eyes wasn’t just as intense. “Will you find a security consultant as sexy as a warrior?”
Her heart tripled its beats per minute. “You’re retiring?”
Joshua’s smile was as gentle as the hand caressing her hip. “Nitro, Hotwire, and I think maybe it’s time.”
She could barely believe what she was hearing. They had to be talking about the future here.
“Security is a much safer profession than being a soldier of fortune,” she said with deep approval.
“There’s still some danger, but nothing like rescue operations.”
“Or catching bomb-wielding stalkers.”
Ed Jones was still in critical condition. His heart had an arrhythmia and the stress of no sleep and eating convenience foods while he stalked her had exacerbated the problem to deadly proportions. Other tests had shown he was suffering from liver cancer, too, most likely linked to inhaling the fumes while making napalm. The advanced stage of the cancer indicated that even if they got his heart stable again, he probably wouldn’t live long enough to go to trial.
To her way of thinking, the most ironic thing about the whole mess was that the Joneses’ daughter had been so concerned about her mother, she’d given her Lise’s book to read. While Mrs. Jones had called one of the crisis numbers in the front, Lise had no doubt that her daughter would have found another way to get through to her mother if Lise’s book had not worked.
Ed Jones had brought about his own demise…in more ways than one.
Lise shivered. “He could have gotten counseling, been willing to change. He didn’t have to lose his marriage and his family.”
“He made the choice,” Joshua said, proving he knew who she’d been thinking about. “We all do.”
“Like you choosing to retire before you’re maimed,” she said with definite satisfaction.
“It’s not exactly retirement.”
“It’s close enough.” And she kissed him to show how much she liked that.
When she was done, he rubbed his cheek against hers. “I always figured a husband and father should put his family first. A mercenary can’t do that.”
“Husband?” she asked, breathless, her eyes now glued to his while her heart beat a nervous tattoo. “Father?”
“I know I’m not the best investment you could make when it comes to picking out a mate.”
The man really did see things in very primitive terms. Mate indeed.
“I’ve done and seen a lot that I wouldn’t wish on another person, but I need you, Lise, and I don’t think I can let you go. I’m hoping you feel the same way.”
From going full throttle, her heart seemed to stop beating altogether and she could barely breathe. “You want to get married?”
“Yes.”
“But…”
“You said you love me. Did you mean it?”
After all the times she’d said it, she couldn’t believe he had to ask that. “Of course I meant it. What do you think, I go around saying that kind of thing to lots of men?”
Under the circumstances, she could be forgiven a little sarcasm. Her feelings had never been in question.
At least not to her.
“No, but have you considered that it could be gratitude?”
Did he really think she couldn’t tell the difference between sincere thankfulness and love? “If it was, then I’d have a case on Nitro and Hotwire, too, not just you.”
He did not like hearing that, his whole body tensing around her while his eyes burned down at her with censure. “I’m not just talking about the Nemesis mission, but a lot of women think they love the first man they have sex with.”
And he thought their circumstance was the same? Man, he had a lot of insecurity she would never have guessed he was capable of feeling.
“Most of them are right. Just because the relationship doesn’t work doesn’t meant they didn’t love those men. Anyway, you weren’t the first man I made love with.”
“In a way, I was.”
She knew immediately what he was getting at. He was the first man to give her the kind of pleasure most women would kill for. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s really not the same.”
“Are you sure about that?”
For such a smart, logical, and usually rational being, he was certainly leading with his emotions on this one.
“I don’t think so, and if you were thinking more logically, you wouldn’t, either.” But he wasn’t thinking completely reasonably because his heart was involved.
She wanted to sing hosannas and shout the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
“Joshua, a woman doesn’t have to sleep with ten different men to know when the right one comes along. I’ve never felt about another man the way I feel about you.”
“You loved Mike.”
“Yes, I did, but what I felt for him was so shallow compared to what I feel for you that there’s no comparison.”
“Are you sure?”
She stared at her sexy, badass mercenary and shook her head with exasperation. “Cryin’ out loud, Joshua. What do I have to do, write it across my forehead? Yes, I’m sure. I love you and it isn’t just because making love with you is so awesome. I love the deep well of integrity inside of you, I love being with you. Believe it or not, you’re peaceful to be with…for me, anyway. We fit on a level that has nothing to do with the physical. But most of all, I love the man your past has made you to be, the man who looks at the present with the eyes of a protector and the heart of warrior.”
Dark brown eyes turned suspiciously bright and he nuzzled her neck. “So, let’s get married. You’ve got a month off. We can take a long honeymoon, maybe travel to a jungle as tourists for once, or something.”
She wanted it more than anything she’d ever desired, but if he didn’t love her, wouldn’t he grow bored with their marriage?
“Are you sure you want marriage?”
“Yes.” He kissed her again, this time his lips hard and insistent, but she fought losing herself in a sensual daze.
She needed answers to tough questions and she wasn’t hiding from asking them anymore.
She pulled away, her breathing as rapid as her pulse. “Joshua, do you love me?”
He took so long to answer that she began to despair it wasn’t going to be the right one.
When he started talking, his voice was low and furred with feeling. “For a long time I thought you were making up an image in your head of someone I wasn’t, someone you could fall in love with, but you saw me more clearly than anyone ever has.”
She was glad he realized that. “I don’t love you for who you could be, but for who you are.”
“Yes. That’s an incredible feeling, sweetheart.”
“I’m glad.”
The question was, did he feel something similar?
“The first time I saw you, I wanted you.”
She smiled in memory. “I could tell. You were intense.”
“You were scared.”
“I didn’t want to lose myself again.”
“Loving someone shouldn’t make you less than what you are, it should make you more.”
“It does.” She’d finally figured that out.
“I know.”
Her heart stopped and then started beating so fast, she felt faint. “You do?”
He cupped her face, the hot water lapping around them. “I love you, Lise Barton. Please say you’ll marry me because letting you go would mean tearing my heart out.”
Emotion choked her and she could barely get the word out of lips stiff with joy. “Yes.”
His kiss was filled with the promise of every tomorrow.
They made love there in his underground jungle paradise, using love words they’d kept locked deep inside.
Afterward, they called Jake and Bella to tell them the good news. Her brother wanted them to get married on the ranch and Lise agreed without a murmur of protest.
She didn’t care where she got married so long as she got to spend the rest of her life with her Wolf.
Two weeks later, she walked out of the bathroom in their honeymoon hideaway located in the heart of the Brazilian jungle.
The bedroom was lit with candles, soft drums played outside the window, and an array of exotic orchids and other flowers filled the room with their scent. Joshua was lying on the bed, propped up on his elbow and wearing nothing but a wolf’s smile.
“Come here.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got something to give you.”
“I know you do, but I can’t have it with six feet separating us.” Then, apparently too impatient to wait for her, he came up off the bed in a rush and pulled her into his arms, into his body, into his love.
They fell together on the bed and she forgot about her present until he made a noise of surprise and grabbed the small, rectangular box from where it had fallen under his muscular butt. “What’s this?”
“Open it and see.”
He undid the ribbon and lifted the black lid off the gold box. She knew what was inside. A small white stick with two blue lines.
He looked up at her. “Is this what I think it is?”
She licked her lips. “What do you think it is?”
“A pregnancy test.”
“Yes.”
“The blue lines mean it’s positive?” he asked, his voice giving nothing away about how he felt, but the throbbing erection against her thigh was another story.
She nodded. “I’m going to have your baby.”
She found herself flat on her back and he loomed above her, the biggest smile she’d ever seen on his face, his eyes molten ingots that burned her with his pleasure. “I was right.”
She smiled up at him, her heart so full, she was afraid it would overflow in happy tears. “Yes. Our bodies are very compatible.”
“So are our hearts. I love you, Lise.”
She whispered the words back into his mouth as he kissed her with passion and tenderness that made her glad she’d taken a chance on loving a badass mercenary with a tendency to boss other people around.
As she’d told him once, some risks in life were worth taking.