Stars & Stripes (34 page)

“Run it through for me, okay?”

Ty nodded again. He held up his hand and pointed a finger to count. “He knew Stuart’s name in the bar. He tried to throw you off the scent by telling you about LeJeune. He dogged my steps out there, tried to convince you and I to go after the tiger instead of the poachers, and he’d have access to the kind of information and type of tranqs he needed through Annie’s vet practice.”

Zane looked at Ty’s hand, now displaying all five fingers with the points he’d listed. “Jesus, Ty,” he said, and he ran his hand through his hair.

“I’ve been wrong before.”

Zane shook his head. “How are we going to explain to Sadie that her daddy’s in jail because Uncle Z put him there?”

“She’d have you, Zane.”

Zane met his eyes and took in a deep, shaky breath. “I don’t know. I’ve never really been around kids. I’m not sure I’d know what to do.”

“They’re just little people. They can be charmed like anyone else. Be a little silly, let them know what they’re saying is the most important thing in the world, teach them right from wrong. You’d be fine.”

Zane met his eyes, thoughtful. “You like kids, don’t you?”

“Some of them, yeah,” Ty answered with a shrug. “I love the little ones, when they still look at the world with stars.”

Zane smiled wistfully at the sentiment. “I’ve seen you with Elaina. And now with Sadie. She’s an outgoing kid, but she took to you like glue. You’re really good with them.”

Ty just nodded, wondering why Zane was lingering over it.

Zane glanced away, then back to meet his eyes. “Did you think about having kids?” He paused a moment before adding, “With Ava?”

Ty blinked at him. Ava
Gaudet
had been a near-miss of Ty’s while undercover in New Orleans. Probably the last serious relationship he’d had before Zane. He was glad Zane had asked, though. There was too much between them they still kept hidden, either on purpose or subconsciously. It was high time they started asking each other questions any normal couple would ask.

Ty nodded. “She wanted kids. Not when we were together, but eventually. It was never really an option for us, though.”

“Well, you were still undercover. And hadn’t told her about it.”

Ty winced and looked past Zane’s shoulder to the ceiling. “That didn’t really factor in.”

Zane frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“When I was younger, I took a bullet in the wrong place.”

“Is there a right place to take a bullet?” Zane asked with a smirk.

“No, but for the purposes of having kids, there is definitely a wrong one.” Ty pulled the hem of his shirt up and pushed his pants down to show Zane a faded white scar, right at the juncture of his hip, that he knew Zane had seen before. Hell, Zane had licked it before. “Even if I wanted kids . . .” He shook his head and put his hands under his head again. “The doctor that did the surgery said nothing doing.”

Zane’s eyes widened before his expression settled into something sadder. “Tytanium,” he whispered as he ran his fingertip across the scar. “You can’t tell me that doesn’t bother you.”

Ty shrugged. “It did for a while, at first. I mean hell, I was twenty-two. But I never lived the life of someone who could be a good daddy. It was never in my cards.”

“I guess that’s true,” Zane said before turning his gaze toward the windows.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Zane.”

Zane inhaled deeply and let it out in a soft sigh. “Becky and I never talked about having kids,” he said. “Not real seriously. We were both working a lot. I was a rising star, she was doing charity work.”

“Did you want them?”

“That’s what I was just thinking about. I don’t know. We never really did see ourselves as parents.” He shrugged and met Ty’s eyes. “And then she was gone, and I didn’t have any reason to think about it anymore.”

Ty pursed his lips and laid his hand across Zane’s where it rested on his chest.

“You’d make a great dad, you know,” Zane said, his voice quiet and melancholy. Ty glanced up, eyebrows climbing high. “I think I’d almost like to see it.”

“Are you saying you might want kids one day?”

“I don’t know. Tonight was literally the first time I truly thought I might.”

Ty gaped, at a loss for words. Was
this
what Zane had been thinking about all night?

Zane remained quiet, watching him for several breaths before echoing, “Tell me what you’re thinking, Ty.”

“Uh . . . I’m thinking . . . I love you. And I’m glad things didn’t go to plan when we were both younger.”

Zane slid his fingertips across Ty’s lips. With a blink, his expression changed, and he was gazing at Ty with such longing and love that he might as well have screamed it at the top of his lungs. “I wouldn’t change it,” he rasped. “Any of it.”

He leaned his hands on both of Ty’s shoulders, right on top of the cougar scars, and bent down to kiss him.

Ty hummed and let the warmth of Zane’s demanding hands spread through him. Zane’s lips gave against his. He moved one hand to tug Ty’s T-shirt up, and then slid it under to smooth across Ty’s side and lower back. Ty winced when Zane’s fingers dragged over the scrapes and bruises he’d earned from being keelhauled by a goddamned tiger, but it didn’t stop him from grabbing a handful of Zane’s hair as they kissed.

Ty smiled against his lips. Zane hadn’t finished changing yet, and Ty let his fingers dig into and linger over Zane’s bare skin. He ran his hands down Zane’s sides, irritated that the cast was getting in his way. It also had sharp pieces now, both from where the knife had gone through it and the tooth marks.

For the first time, they were actually discussing their future in concrete terms. They’d both known, on some level, that they intended to spend the rest of their lives together. It felt like a solid force now, though, something as real as the hands that pressed into his back or the lips that met his over and over as they made love.

“I think we need to go to San Antonio,” Zane said. They were sitting at the little breakfast table in the guesthouse, eating cereal and watching the sunrise through the bank of windows.

“What? Why?”

“We can drop in on the field office, see if we can put a bug in someone’s ear.”

Ty stared at him, chewing his Rice Krispies.

Zane shifted under Ty’s attention. “What?”

Ty waved his spoon through the air. “Go on.”

Zane rolled his eyes and sighed. “Okay, fine. I want to take a page out of your book and use us as bait. See if anyone follows. And I figured you’d go nuts over the Alamo and I wanted to walk down the Riverwalk with you. We could spend a night there, maybe. Enjoy Texas a little before Mother’s big party on Sunday.”

They’d be heading home after the Fourth of July. They’d done all they could here without stepping on jurisdictional toes, and though there were still poachers out there, and Ty’s tiger was still on the loose, they did have jobs back in Baltimore to get to. It just wasn’t their case to work. Zane thought a side trip to San Antonio before they left was well-deserved after what they’d been through.

“So? What do you think?”

Ty smiled, one of his rare smiles that showed his dimples. They drove Zane crazy. “I’d like that,” Ty drawled in a way that sent shivers up Zane’s spine.

“We’ll head up to the house, let Dad know what we’re doing, and then we can head down there.”

“How long’s the drive?”

“An hour or two, depending on traffic and the shape of the back roads.”

Ty nodded, looking down at his cereal bowl. Zane had lived for his job for so long it was odd to think he might want something different, but he could imagine that, in ten or twenty years, they’d be able to do this every morning. Get up late, fix breakfast together, and plan their day as they ate. The thought of retirement came to him more often now.

What he’d said to his family at dinner the other night was true. The thought of asking Ty to marry him was appealing. There were obvious problems, first and foremost being that they’d have to go to another state or country to do it. But the more Zane thought of it, the more he liked the idea. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d spend the rest of his life with Ty. And after last night, he could even picture himself and Ty with kids. Not soon, because he wanted Ty to himself for a while. But it was something solid in their future.

“You’re thinking kind of hard,” Ty said. He sat back and cocked his head.

Zane took in a deep breath. He didn’t want to tell Ty what he was thinking; he wanted it to be a complete surprise when he finally did it. Ty narrowed his eyes, but Zane gave him an enigmatic grin and stood to tidy the dishes.

“Fine, keep your mysteries, Garrett. They make you fun.”

Zane laughed. That pretty much summed up how Ty saw life. He glanced over his shoulder. “This party is going to be a bitch, you know.”

“We can always abscond in the night.”

Zane pointed at Ty. “You get to face Mother after that, buddy boy.”

“See, we need to go over your definition of abscond.”

Zane turned and threw the dishrag at Ty’s head. They both laughed. “Go pack and we’ll head on.”

“I love it when you get all bossy,” Ty said with relish as he headed for the stairs.

He sauntered away. He was barefoot, had no shirt on, and his sweatpants were barely staying on his hips. How could he be so damn sexy and in such a good mood after almost getting eaten by a tiger and being in a tranquilizer-induced coma for a day? Zane couldn’t help himself; he called out, “Hey, Ty?”

“Yes, my darling?” Ty responded sarcastically from halfway up the staircase.

“I love you.”

Ty grinned and started up the steps again. “I like what Texas does to you, Zane.”

“I don’t care what you say, Harrison, or what
he
says, that man is taking advantage of our son and I will not stand for it!”

Harrison sat in his recliner with yesterday’s newspaper in his lap, unread. He was massaging the bridge of his nose and seriously considering taking a few of the painkillers the doctor had given him for his shoulder, just so he could have an excuse to go hide on his porch. Anything to get away from his wife. Their marriage had never been about love. It had all but been arranged for them, to solidify the wealth of the two families. When it had turned from convenient to intolerable, he couldn’t quite identify.

Harrison just wanted to do good by his horses and his family, and he was a happy man. But Beverly had always been driven by power, money, and status. At one time he’d seen vestiges of that same drive in his son, and he’d resigned himself to never being able to understand either of them. But something had reached inside Zane, something had changed him, and Harrison was damn sure that something had involved Ty.

“Beverly, Zane is his own man, and he’s a smart one at that. And if you’d take a minute to get to know Ty, you’d find that he’s a good man too.”

“How can you approve of them? Does it not bother you that your son, your only son, the very last male to carry the Garrett name, goes home from work every night to another man? That doesn’t offend your sensibilities?”

“Not one bit,” Harrison said. He picked up his newspaper again. “At least he looks forward to going home.”