“Yes, you did.” Dan took a swallow of beer, watching Xenakis over the bottle. “And I’m going to keep my end. I was just waiting to make sure you’d show.”
“What happened to the money?”
“Property of the U.S. Government, with all but about two million accounted for.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Was he? Dan pushed the beer to the side. “Let me ask you a question, Con.”
He got a shrug in response.
“What do you want with Lucy?”
“Your job.”
Dan laughed. “In your dreams.”
“Then just one assignment. Consider it . . . a test run.”
There was something compelling about the guy, but Dan couldn’t pinpoint it. “Lucy already tested you, as I understand it. You didn’t pass.”
“Things change. People change.”
Dan gave him a dubious look.
“You have,” Xenakis countered, notching his head toward Maggie. “When you first walked in this place, you’da never given up your golden ticket for a woman.”
“I’m not giving up anything,” Dan said. “I’ve only gained.”
“All I’m asking for is a chance,” Con said. “If I screw up, it’s my deal.”
Dan nodded. There was something about the guy. “I do like to send in a new recruit every once in a while. And there’s nothing Lucy loves more than a test.”
“So make the call.”
Dan’s gaze drifted to Maggie, in conversation with Brandy. She laughed at something; then, as if she felt him looking, glanced at him. And didn’t look away.
He never wanted to look away.
Xenakis tilted his head toward Maggie. “You chose wisely.”
“I haven’t chosen anything yet. It’s all up to her,” Dan admitted, picking up the beer. “Pack for New York. You’ll have to interview first. You live through that, you can probably live through anything.”
“I’ve lived through everything,” he said, standing up to leave. “That’s why I want to do this.”
Dan had his phone in his hand before the door closed. Lucy wasn’t number one on his speed dial anymore, but he had her on the first ring.
“Please tell me you need a plane to bring you back,” she said.
He chuckled. “I could use it, but not for me. I found you a new Bullet Catcher.”
“Xenakis?”
Always three steps ahead of the world. “I think you ought to give him another chance.”
“I don’t know. The job is undercover salvage protection. He might fold when he sees the shiny stuff.”
“Or he might surprise you. Sometimes it takes a thief to stop one.”
She laughed, the familiar, comfortable laugh that he missed. Just as he missed talking about the business, and brainstorming solutions. He didn’t want to stop working for Lucy, but . . .
“When?” she asked.
“I don’t want to leave her.”
“You know, you can have both,” Lucy said. “There’s no law that says you have to be in New York. I have planes, there are phones, we can make this work.”
Would it be the same? Would he still be the number two man in the company?
Maggie sailed by with a tray in her hand, grazing his shoulder with her fingertips as she passed. “Ten minutes, Irish, and I’m yours for the night.”
For the night? He wanted forever.
“Just think about it,” Lucy said. “In about six months, I’m going to take a leave myself. That’ll be close to the end of Quinn’s school year. Maybe the three of you can come up here and you can run this operation for me while I tackle motherhood, then go back when I’ve got things under control.”
“As if you ever don’t.”
“Say that when there’s a nursery next to the war room.”
That made him smile. Along with her idea. “It’s doable, Luce. Assuming Maggie agrees.”
“She’d be crazy not to.” Her voice was warm. “And believe me, once you try this happily ever after stuff, you’ll be hooked. I am.”
So was he. “As always, thanks for the ear, Juice.” “Anytime. Send me Xenakis. We’ll see what he’s made of.”
As he signed off, Maggie put her hand on his empty beer bottle and angled her arm to let her bracelets slide over the neck. One, ding, two, ding, three, ding ding ding.
Then she smoked him with a look that said upside down was the special of the house.
“We can go to my house tonight. Uncle Eddie called and wanted to take Quinn fishing early tomorrow. It’s been a long time since he’s seen Eddie, and I don’t want him to lose touch with Smitty’s side of the family.”
“Home it is,” Dan said. “And if I have to help Milk Man wash dishes to hurry things up, I will.”
She laughed. “It’s Milk Dud, and I’m ready to leave now.”
Dan stood and waved to Brandy, who winked.
Outside, the temperature was cooler now. He’d planned something special for Christmas, but after the conversation with Lucy, he didn’t feel like waiting.
The house seemed quiet without Quinn and Goose, and quiet was good for tonight. While Maggie showered, Dan set to work, then poured her a glass of her favorite wine and grabbed a bottle of water for himself.
He was waiting in the chair in the bedroom when she came out.
“You know what I was just thinking about?” she asked, fluffing her damp curls, a towel tucked around her body.
“Me?”
She smiled. “How’d you guess?”
“It’s mutual. You go first.”
She took the wine he offered and curled up on the bed. “Your Chris Craft. That’s an amazing boat. Any way I could ever see it?”
The perfect opening. “You’d have to go to New York.”
She sighed. “No chance of shipping it down here?”
“Why would I do that?”
“To make Gumbo Jim and Tommy Sloane cry.” She smiled. “It’s your turn. What were you thinking about?”
“Your grandmother.”
She brightened. “How sweet. She’d like you, you know. She had a soft spot for men who made her laugh. What made you think about her?”
“The tarot cards. Can you read them?”
“Not as well as she did, but I think she just made stuff up, anyway.”
“All of it?”
She stood and walked toward the dresser.
“You know, I think I’m giving up the whole signsfrom-the-universe thing. I don’t need guidance from my dearly departed grandmother, who didn’t really give me anything except my silver bangles, and”—she opened the top drawer—”her tarot—”
For a long minute, she said nothing. She just looked at what he’d left there, staring at it while his heart kicked up to double time.
Finally she lifted out the jeweler’s box as gingerly as if it could explode in her hand. “What is this?”
“A gift. Something I’ve always wanted to give you.”
Holding it, she sat on the bed. “Really.” She pulled the white silk ribbon, her hands trembling slightly. “Always?”
He leaned forward, propping his hands on his knees. “Ever since I heard you jingle.”
She gave him a quick look, then lifted the lid, blinking at the contents. “Wow. They really sparkle.” Plucking the three slender, diamond-encrusted bracelets from the satin lining, she sighed softly. “These are really beautiful.”
“Not to replace your grandmother’s,” he said.
“No, but . . .” She slipped them on and shook her arm to let them ding together. “For special occasions.” Twisting her wrist, she admired them, a wistful look on her face. “Thank you. I love them.”
“I love you. I love everything about you, Maggie.”
Her eyes filled a little. “I love you, too, Dan. I love the happiness and wholeness you’ve brought to my life. No matter what you decide to do, or how often you visit—”
He was on his knees before she could finish. “I don’t want to vi
sit. I want to stay.”
She melted a little. “For however long you like.”
“Forever. When I can’t be here, you come there. You and Quinn. I won’t live without you, Maggie. I love you too much.”
She tried to speak, but struggled. Laughing it away, she tapped his shoulders. “Look at you on your knees.”
“The perfect place to be, for this.” He lifted the satin lining of the jeweler’s box to reveal one more circle of diamonds, a perfect match to the bangles. “I believe this is the traditional position to ask this question.”
She stared at the ring for a moment, then blinked, sending a tear down her cheek.
Dan reached up to cup her face in his hands. “Marry me, Maggie. Marry me and let me stay with you forever, next to you, under you, beside you. I never want to spend one day without you and your laugh and your love and your jingle.”
Her hand trembling, she picked up the ring and held it out for him to slide on.
As he did, he looked up and held her glistening gaze. “I should never have left you the first time,” he said. “I loved you then, I love you now, and I will love you for the rest of our lives.”
She took his hand and kissed it; then she held out her left hand and admired the ring.
“Now that,” she whispered, “is a very good sign.”
Turn the page
for a top secret look
at the next exciting novel
in Roxanne St. Claire’s
sexy Bullet Catchers series,
Make Her Pay
Coming soon from Pocket Books
LIZZIE’S WATCH ALARM vibrated at three a.m., when the hundred-and-twenty-foot vessel was silent but for the hum of the generators. The other divers, the captain, and crew were all asleep. She tiptoed barefoot out of her cabin.
Her feet soundless on the teak floor of the narrow hallway, she barely breathed as she glanced up the stairs to the main deck, where all was dark and silent. Pausing for a second, she pulled a dark hooded jersey around her, took a deep breath, and darted down the steps leading below.
At the bottom, the generators were louder, the engines clunking softly. Grasping the key she’d taken from Charlotte’s stateroom during the hoopla when one of the other divers had emerged from the sea holding the beaded silver chain, she headed toward the lab. In the midst of the celebration, it had been easy to slip down to the conservator’s stateroom and steal the key. She’d return it tomorrow while Charlotte and Sam Gorman had breakfast, no one the wiser.
The metal door of the cleaning lab squeaked, making her cringe, as she entered.
Inside it was dark, except for one wedge of pale moonlight through skinny horizontal slatted portholes. But she didn’t need much light. She’d been in the lab enough times to know exactly how the worktables were arranged and where the chain would be hanging on alligator clips in an electrolysis tank.
She took a few steps to the left, reached out to touch the table, and then glided her hands to the row of tanks. From her jacket pocket she pulled out a latex glove, slipped it on, and then dragged her fingertips over the thin metal bar over the stainless steel plate.
But there were no clips draped with a silver beaded chain.
Hadn’t Charlotte started the electrolysis yet? She’d naturally done the initial cleaning that afternoon, and then she should have prepped the chain for the electrolysis that would take up to twenty-four hours.
But the tanks weren’t even on; there was no soft vibration of a low-volt current. So where had she put the chain?
The nitric baths, no doubt. There were beads on the chain and it wasn’t all silver, so Charlotte probably added a wash of nitric acid as an in-between step. Damn. Getting the chain out of a nitric solution would be much tougher.
But not impossible.
She pulled the other glove from her other pocket and headed to the closet-sized room at the opposite end of the lab, where the nitric acid baths were. Lizzie slipped a pinpoint flashlight out of her pocket, because accidentally knocking over even a five-percent solution of nitric acid could cause chemical burns.
Stepping deeper into the closet, she aimed the flashlight at the tiny worktable along one narrow wall and—
Thwack!
The door slammed behind her just as a powerful arm encircled her whole body from behind. A warm hand smashed over her mouth, silencing her scream as the flashlight clunked to the floor.
She jerked one way, then the other, but she was no match for the mighty arms that immobilized her. She tried to see him, but all she could get was an eyeful of shoulder. Big shoulder.
“Looking for something in particular?” His voice was a low, menacing rumble, sending shivers over her skin.
She jerked hard, grunting into his hand. “Met me mo!”
“No can do, sweetheart.” He punctuated that with a squeeze, forcing her body against his, her backside right up against his hips.
White-hot terror seized her. In all the dive trips and salvage efforts she’d been on, she’d never been on a ship that had been attacked by pirates. But on this treasure hunt? Entirely possible.
She tried to swallow, tried to breathe, but he just pinned her tighter. She fought again, but he was rock solid and unyielding.
“Mwat do you want?”
“What do you want, is the question.”
She tried to wrest away one more time, but it was fruitless. She forced herself to be very, very still despite the adrenaline coursing through her, fueling her fight.
Three or four interminable seconds rolled by, her heart whacking at her rib cage in triple time.
“Good girl,” he said softly, the tone ominous enough to almost stop that beating completely. “This is a very bad room for a wrestling match.”
Yes, it was. Unless you had gloves and long sleeves on, like she did. Only her face was vulnerable. Did she dare?
What was worse, a minor burn or . . . rape and murder?
No contest.
“Now, here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, his mouth still pressed to her ear. “We’re going to back out of this closet, very calmly and quietly, before you help yourself to a single item that doesn’t belong to you. Then you’ll pay for your misdeeds, and the punishment will be severe.”
If he let go of either arm, she could grab a cup of acid and back toss it in his face. And scream like hell for help.
“Let’s go,” he said roughly, lifting her off the floor.
She had one finger free, her arm trapped under his. If she could just . . . close around his pinkie and yank.
His knuckle snapped and he loosened his grip just enough to free her arm. She went straight for the row of tiny cups, seizing one in a gloved hand.
He jerked her backward, but not before she tossed the contents of the cup over her shoulder. Instantly, he whipped them both to the right, hard enough that remaining acid splashed over the rim of the cup.
With a shriek, she flipped the whole cup just as he threw her to the floor, covering her body from the rain of acid.
“What the hell!” he grunted, writhing over her.
“Get off me!” She shoved at him, not knowing if any of the acid had touched her clothes, or his. “Get the hell off me, you bastard!”
She tried to scramble away, but he snagged her sweatshirt. “Take it off!” he insisted. “Now! Take it off!” He grabbed the zipper and started to yank.
“No!” She slammed her hands into his chest, just as she felt the air on her arm, where a hole in her hoodie suddenly appeared and grew, the acid on it centimeters from her skin.
“You’ll burn! You have to take it off!” He pushed the jacket down, stripping the sleeves as he pulled her to her feet and ripped off her cotton tank top, leaving her entirely bare.
“Your pants! Hurry, before you burn!” He seized the waistband of her sweats just as she saw two gaping holes widening over her thigh.
“Off!” he demanded, dragging them down her hips and taking her underpants with them. In one more lightning
move, he flung them away. “Water! Wet your skin!”
He pushed her to the sink and flipped the faucet on, the water shockingly cold on her arm. Then he tore his dark shirt over his head and ripped his jeans off, whipping his clothes into the same corner he’d thrown hers.
“More water,” he said, pushing her closer to the sink and cupping his hands. “Give me your leg.”
Who was this guy?
She lifted her leg and he started splashing handfuls of water over her thigh with one hand, and onto his shoulder with the other.
“Why the hell did you do that?” he demanded. “You could have blinded me.”
“That was the idea. You attacked me.”
He snorted softly, looking at her face. “I caught you stealing. Big difference.” He lifted his own leg to the sink and started splashing.
“I was not—” She grasped the side of the sink, adrenaline pumping through her like a straight shot of whiskey, her body rubbery and wobbly as she stared at the huge, dark, naked, furious stranger next to her.
“Who are you?”
“The new diver.”
Oh, no. Oh, no.
“The new . . .” Her voice gave out under the force of his laser-beam glare. Embarrassed, she looked down . . . right at the dark nest between his legs, his manhood fully exposed against the wet thigh he held up to the sink.
The new diver.
Please—this wasn’t happening to her.
She finally managed to meet his cold blue eyes again, her stomach flipping around like a hooked fish. “I thought you were going to rape me,” she said quietly. “Or . . . worse.”
He stopped splashing water long enough to drop his gaze over her body, as if he were . . . considering it.
“This isn’t enough,” he said gruffly, still studying her.
“What?” What the hell did that mean?
“We have to shower. There could be droplets on your skin, and they’ll burn. They might already be burning. Come on.”
She hesitated for only a millisecond; he was right.
“In my cabin.” He shoved her toward the door.
He really was the new diver. The one who was coming . . . tomorrow. The one who was going to sleep in the small cabin next to the lab because it was the only unoccupied bunk on the boat.