Avenging Angel (22 page)

“How’s the senator?”

“He’ll come out in one piece, unless the Ethics Committee decides to actually do something.” Watkins laughed, a deliberately wry sound. “Given that, if I was a betting man, I’d bet he’ll come out in one piece and probably enjoy many years of continued service to the American people, except for the particular citizens he’s giving us to hang on the Bridgeman cross.”

“She’s out of it, though, right?”

“You mean Johanna Lane?” Watkins asked.

“You know who I mean.”

Watkins lowered his gaze for a moment before meeting the other man’s eyes. “If everything you’ve given me pans out, she’s home free. But it’s going to cost you your job.”

Now it was the man’s turn to laugh as he pushed away from the table. “Don’t do me any favors, like trying to get me reinstated. Okay?”

Watkins watched the man walk the length of the downtown Chicago restaurant, his stride taking him past highly polished dark wood tables laden with linen and crystal. Dressed in a suit and tie, he fit into the popular businessmen’s lunch spot and watering hole like a hand into a glove. But Watkins knew it was all a facade. What he didn’t know, what he would probably never know, was whether Dylan Jones had gone bad with his ex-partner and managed to cover his tracks, saving himself from Leavenworth by the skin of his teeth, or if he’d really been out there on his own for all those months.

* * *

Johanna hung the last ornament, a fragile crystal star, on her Christmas tree and stood back to survey her handiwork. She should have gone to Chicago. She shouldn’t have stayed in Boulder with only Henry and his mother to fill in the empty places. She’d made some friends in the last few months and had a number of parties coming up, some social, some political, some business, most all three. She’d had her first Colorado date three weeks earlier, with a Boulder real-estate developer, an occupation, he’d explained, that made him a living contradiction. Everybody who moved to Boulder wanted to close the door behind them and shove home the dead bolt.

The date had been fine. The man had been charming, intelligent, and funny. He had not been Dylan Jones.

She was seeing a therapist again, trying to come to grips with a plaguing sense of loss, trying to find closure where there had been none. It was a long process at a hundred bucks an hour.

She took another step back, but it didn’t help. Her tree looked exactly as it had the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that. She should have gone to Chicago.

The phone rang, and she reached behind her to answer it, keeping a critical eye on the tree. She was sure it looked exactly as it had the year before, which should have been impossible. Maybe she needed new ornaments.

“Hello?”

“Johanna.”

The voice coming over the phone was unique, soft and gravelly, and it made her knees buckle. Her hand came up to her chest. She slowly lowered herself to the floor, before her legs gave way completely.

“It’s Dylan,” he said when she didn’t say anything.

She nodded as if he were in the room.

“I’d like to see you.”

“When?” she managed, forcing the word out around the million and one questions whirling through her mind.

“Tonight. Now. I’m only a block from your apartment. Did you have other plans?”

“No.” She felt breathless. Dylan was alive.

“May I come over?” he asked after a short hesitation.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll see you in a minute.”

He hung up on his end, but Johanna forgot to do the same until the phone started beeping. Her hands shook as she placed the receiver back down where it belonged.

There were a hundred things she could do to get ready, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to prepare herself for seeing him again. In the end, nothing won out, and she was still sitting on the floor when her buzzer sounded.

She scrambled to her feet and raced for the intercom.

“Yes?” she asked, pressing the button down.

“It’s Dylan.”

She rang him up and stood by the open door, waiting for the elevator. When he stepped out, her knees weakened again.

It was Dylan.

She covered her mouth with her hand to keep back a sob. Then he had her in his arms, holding her, the two of them rocking together, with her crying and him talking to her softly.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” he said. “I wanted to call you so many times.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked between the tears. “If you were alive, why didn’t you come to me? You promised you would call.”

“For a long time I didn’t have a phone.”

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. He wasn’t lying to her. There was nothing in his gaze except honesty and regrets.

“Why? Where were you? What happened that night?” Her questions tumbled over one another.

“Can we go inside first?” The barest smile touched the corners of his mouth.

They walked inside, still holding each other, and when the door was closed, she turned to him.

“If you want to kiss me, you better do it now, Dylan,” she said, “because I’m going to be too damn mad at you later.”

In answer his mouth came down on hers. He shrugged out of his overcoat and let it fall to the floor while he wrapped her in his arms.

It was a homecoming, the smell, and taste, and feel of her. She was everything he’d been without for too long. So he kissed her, and he kissed her again, and when she didn’t resist, he slid his hands up under her shirt. He held her breasts in his palms, caressing the heavenly weight and softness of her, and he told her once more that he loved her.

She whispered his name and sparked a need inside him he didn’t want to fight.

He hadn’t intended to walk into her apartment and ravish her. He wanted to talk with her, and hold her, then make love with her if everything felt right. He wasn’t sure what they had together, and he didn’t think it was possible for her to know either.

But the heat of her response told him that like him, she needed more than a kiss to remake the closeness they’d shared. The warmth of her skin beneath his hands was the sign of life he’d sought in his mind all those months without her, and the way she trailed her lips over his face and neck was more than a physical gesture of desire.

“Shh,” he whispered, kissing the tears off both her cheeks. “I’m not leaving until you ask me to leave. We have all the time you’re willing to give.”

“I missed you. I missed you so terribly, and now you’re here, and I can’t believe it, and it hurts. I’m so angry I could hit you.”

She was babbling, her head buried into the front of his shirt, but she was entitled. They needed time. He held her and kissed her face and let her go on and on.

And on and on.

Eventually they moved to the couch, then Dylan managed to make a pot of coffee in her very fancy kitchen while she took a bathroom break. Later on they made sandwiches together. He told her about being shot in Pike Street Market and falling down the stairs, the concussion, the pain when he’d come around and found the agent in charge leaning over him, trying to decide if he’d live or not.

She told him Rodrigo Aragon had taken her out of the market the other way, back up the hill. They had cordoned off the stairs, refusing to allow anyone through. Henry had shown up the next morning and immediately asserted her rights.

“They took me to a Seattle hospital,” Dylan said. “I was there for a week before they moved me to Chicago.”

“How did your stitches heal?” she asked, curling her feet under her on the couch and taking another sip of coffee.

“Pretty good.”

“Can I see?” She touched the front of his shirt, and his hand came up to cover hers.

“If you start taking my clothes off, counselor, I’m going to want to take you to bed,” he told her, his voice growing husky.

A trace of color spread across her face, and she withdrew her hand. It wasn’t the reaction he’d hoped for, but it was the one he’d half expected. She did have a shy streak, and that was okay. Life was stretching out before him brighter than it had in years. He could wait.

“What happened in Chicago?” she asked.

“Basically I was arrested. But they didn’t have good evidence against me, and I had a whole lot of information they wanted. I told them I would give them everything they needed to get the senator talking to them, if they would give me you.” He looked down at her and ran his hand over her shoulder. “I think I made a good deal. Of course, the Feds don’t like their own people cutting deals with them, so I’m officially unemployed.”

“I wondered why I hadn’t heard from anybody about Morrow Warner,” she said.

“You will, but only to a point. If it goes beyond verifying information, I can get it stopped.”

She lowered her lashes and was quiet for a long time. “Where do we go from here, Dylan?”

“Nowhere, I hope.”

Her startled gaze flew up to meet his, and he hastily explained.

“I mean that literally. I want to stay right here, on this couch, in this apartment, with you. But I know that’s a lot to ask.”

“You want to stay here with me?” she asked, surprise evident in the lift of her eyebrows.

“It’s crossed my mind a few times,” he admitted, then added slowly, “Especially tonight, though not necessarily on the couch.”

Her color deepened, and he brushed his mouth over the tender skin between her cheek and ear.

“I’d like the chance to get worn-out making love to you,” he said, kissing her even more softly. “I’d like the chance to get real bored watching you brush your teeth, and to reach my limit on sitting around reading with your feet in my lap. I’d like the most exciting thing in my life to be the moment I wake up and realize you’re lying next to me . . . preferably naked, and warm from where I’d held you all night.”

Johanna turned in his arms and settled her parted lips over his for a searingly intimate kiss. God, he was heaven to touch. She loved the differing textures of his skin, from the light raspiness of his cheek to the silken fullness of his tongue in her mouth.

He groaned, and she let herself lean more deeply into him. She wanted him in ways she’d never wanted another man, totally, possessively. When she lifted her mouth from his, she straddled his hips and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“Are you sure you want this?” she asked, looking at him through half-closed lashes.

“I’m sure,” he said, so quickly she knew he’d misunderstood.

A smile teased her mouth. “I mean, are you sure you want to move in with me? I don’t want to ruin us by going too fast.”

“Johanna,” he said, his eyes turning darkly serious. “I believe in love at first sight, and I believe that’s what we’ve got going here. I was willing to die for you. I’m sure as hell not going to pass up a chance to live with you.”

“Okay then, Dylan,” she answered, finishing with his shirt and moving to the front of his pants. She undid the buttons at the top first, then slowly slid his zipper down, leaning forward to whisper in his ear. “Be sure and tell me when you get bored.”

* * *

Three months later Johanna dragged herself into the kitchen early on a Friday morning. She was wearing his baggiest, most stretched-out T-shirt, which looked like it had been slept in for a very good reason. She had on her own sweatpants and sweat socks. The ensemble was covered with a terry-cloth robe and topped with three sizes of hot curlers wound through her hair.

“Hey, houseboy,” she said around a yawn. “Did you find a job yet?”

“Not yet, but I’m getting close.” He held his cup up for a refill without lifting his eyes from the sports section of the newspaper.

She poured his coffee and got a cup down for herself. “What’s for breakfast?”

“We’ve got my good cereal, which I would be willing to share. Or you can have your healthy cereal.”

“I’ll take the Frosty Crunchers.” She sat down and inhaled the fuel-injected steam of Dylan’s coffee while he poured her a bowl of cereal and milk.

“I like the porcupine look,” he said. “It’s very attractive, but you’re losing a couple of quills on the left side.”

She reached up and tightened the loose curler. “Are you bored yet?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, snapping the paper back out. “I thought I’d watch you brush your teeth this morning. See how it works out before I make a commitment.”

She grinned and waited for his eyes to appear over the headlines. She didn’t have to wait long.

“What time do you have to be at work?” he asked.

Her smile broadened. “Don’t you even think it. You know how Henry gets when I’m late.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “But I also know how you get when I make you late.”

“Save your strength for the weekend,” she suggested, dipping her spoon into her cereal bowl.

“How would you like to be married to a lawyer?” he asked out of the blue.

She paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth. “I don’t know,” she said carefully. “I suppose it would depend on the lawyer.”

He’d never mentioned marriage before, to anybody. She’d thought about it, though, a hundred times at least.