Unfinished Business (33 page)

“Let’s go.” Wendell nodded to the doors, and
the rookies filed in that direction, with nods to the rest of us,
and gentle punches in the shoulder for Rafe.

“Take care, man.” Jamal grinned. “When’re
you coming back to the mat? I might could take you now.”

“If you can only take him when he’s got one
arm in a sling,” Wendell told him, “we gotta work on your
hand-to-hand some more. Move it, boy.”

He shooed Jamal ahead of him toward the
sliding doors. Jamal grinned and went.

“They seem like nice boys,” I told Rafe when
the doors had closed behind them.

He nodded. “Not somebody you’d wanna meet in
a dark alley, but yeah. They’re good kids.”

“They chose the TBI over a life of crime.
That has to count for something.”

“It ain’t a tough choice,” Rafe told me, and
I guess he ought to know, since he’d been asked to make it. “They
tell you they can get you out in two weeks if you’ll just do’em a
little favor, or you’re staying in for three more years. It don’t
take much brains to know which one to pick.”

“Were they all in prison?” Grimaldi wanted
to know, starting to make her own way toward the sliding door. We
fell into step with her, and Rafe shook his head.

“Just Clayton. Stupid kid got caught working
in a chop shop. He told somebody he had information about a
statewide system for moving stolen cars, so he got tossed to us.
Jamal’s kid brother went down to gang violence, so he wants to do
something about the Bloods and the Crips, and José just wanted to
be in law enforcement. Kid’s fluent in Spanish, so he’ll be useful.
You never know when someone might set up another SATG.” He
grinned.

If someone did, then José could deal with
it. I looked at Grimaldi as we passed through the door and into the
sticky humidity of the parking lot. “I guess you’re headed back to
Nashville.”

She nodded. “I thought I might stop by your
brother’s house on my way.”

Sure. Never mind the fact that Dix’s house
is almost thirty minutes in the opposite direction of the one she
was going.

“I’m sure he’d like that,” I said. “You two
barely had time to say a word to each other all weekend.”

She shrugged. “You two going back to your
mother’s house?”

I said we were. “She informed us she’s
spending the night with Bob Satterfield.”

“She came and got him,” Grimaldi said.
“Determined lady, your mother.”

“It’s the Southern Belle thing. We always
get our way.” In a very polite and ladylike fashion, but we get it
nonetheless. Just as I was about to get mine with Rafe, once we got
back to the mansion.

“Enjoy your visit with Dix,” I told
Grimaldi. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“See you then.” She headed for her car. We
turned in the other direction for mine.

“Do you want me to drive?” I asked when we
got there. “That arm must be hurting.” After being stitched up
twice in twelve or fifteen hours.

“I ain’t proud.” He walked around to the
passenger side. “You sure you’re all right?” he added when he’d
gotten in.

“I’m fine.” I turned the key in the
ignition, and the Volvo purred to life. “I’ve still got some lower
back pain from when I hit the floor, and a low-grade headache, but
just knowing that the baby’s all right and that no damage was done,
makes me feel better.”

He nodded. “When I walked into that room and
saw you on the floor, with blood all over your stomach...”

He had thought the worst had happened. Of
course.

“It was his blood,” I said, heading out of
the parking lot. Ahead of me, I could see Grimaldi’s police issue
sedan. It took a left out of the hospital entrance and zoomed south
on the Pulaski Highway. “Hernandez’s. But I’m sure it looked
awful.”

“I thought he did what he said he was gonna
do, and cut you open.”

“He tried. He didn’t succeed.” We pulled up
to the stop sign and looked both ways before following Grimaldi.
“I’m all right. The baby’s all right. David and Mother are all
right. You’re even sort of all right.”

“I’m fine,” Rafe said, apparently thinking
nothing of the Death of a Thousand Cuts.

“Sure.”

He slid me a narrow glance. “Ain’t nothing
wrong with the part of me you’re interested in.”

“I’m interested in every part of you,” I
said, “although I admit at the moment, one part interests me more
than the others.”

His lips curved. “Uh-huh.”

“I thought I lost you. When you weren’t
there in the morning on our wedding day, I thought you wouldn’t be
coming back.”

He didn’t respond to that.

“We should be married by now. We should have
been on our honeymoon this weekend. And instead we’ve had to deal
with this... this... this!”

“Sorry, darlin’.”

“I’m not blaming you,” I said. “God, Rafe.
It’s not your fault that some nutcase comes after you. Or after me.
You did your job. You saved a woman’s life four years ago. Little
Ginger got herself straightened out and went away to college.
Grimaldi told me.”

“Good for Ginger,” Rafe said.

“But Mother isn’t the only one who needs to
reaffirm life. I was afraid I’d lost you. I thought we’d never be
together again. I need to get you naked and horizontal and have my
way with you.”

Those curved lips turned into a grin. “I’m
always up for that.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I told him, and stepped
on the gas.

The mansion was empty and dark when we got there. Mother, as she’d
told us, was nowhere to be found. Reaffirming things with Bob, no
doubt. In broad daylight, too. It wasn’t even six o’clock yet. I
wondered what Todd thought of the proceedings. He lived with his
dad, and if Mother and Bob weren’t here, then they were there. The
only other option was a room in a cheap motel out by the
interstate, and that was something I couldn’t imagine Mother
doing.

But maybe Todd was busy elsewhere. He’d been
conspicuously absent from the hospital. And the last time I’d had
any contact with him, he had seemed like maybe he had started to
look beyond me for love.

I don’t mind telling you it had been a
relief. Having him show up at the hospital this afternoon would
have been beyond awkward.

Anyway, the house was empty. We walked up
the stairs hand in hand, but hesitated in the hallway outside my
door.

“That bloody rug is still on the floor in my
mother’s room,” I said.

Rafe nodded.

“Do you think we should move it?”

“You sure you’re up for that?”

I was more concerned that he wasn’t up for
it, with his arm, although he was right: I shouldn’t lift anything
too heavy, either.

“It’s a fairly small rug. There are two of
us. And I think she’d probably appreciate if it were gone the next
time she walks into the room.”

“Anything I can do to please your mama,”
Rafe said

So we went into the master bedroom and
rolled up the fluffy rug and staggered down the stairs with it. Or
at least I staggered, with the roll of carpet on my shoulder and
one hand on the banister. Rafe sauntered, with the roll of carpet
tucked under his good arm. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “Where
d’you wanna take it?”

“Out,” I panted.

“You all right?”

“Fine.” We hit the bottom of the stairs and
started moving across the foyer. “Let’s just put it in the trunk of
the car. We can throw it away when we get home.”

“No problem.”

We headed that way, and two minutes later,
the rug was wedged into the trunk of the Volvo. Rafe slammed the
lid and turned to me. “Everything OK in there?” He put a hand on my
stomach.

“Everything’s fine. There and everywhere
else.” The rug really hadn’t been that heavy. Just big and
unwieldy. “Is your arm all right?”

He twisted it back and forth inside the
sling. “Fine.”

“You should get some rest.” Flat on his
back, with me on top of him.

His lips curved. “Prob’ly.”

I took his hand again, and we made the trek
upstairs a second time. This time, there was no hesitation in the
hallway, and no rug to remove. Nothing else to do, either. We just
went into my room, closed the door, and turned to each other.

He reached out a hand and slipped it around
my neck and into my hair. And then he tilted my head back so he
could lean down and fit his lips over mine.

I got a bit emotional. I hadn’t been sure
I’d ever get the chance to kiss him again. And when I wrapped my
arms around his waist, I must have held on a little too tight,
because he murmured against my lips, “Careful, darlin’.”

“Oh, God.” I’d forgotten that he was
injured. “I’m so sorry!”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “You
could kiss it and make it better.”

“I could.” I definitely could. “Maybe you
should just get on the bed,” I suggested. “By yourself. Carefully.
And once you’re there, I’ll come over and make you feel better.”
Maybe that way I wouldn’t hurt him.

And in fact, there didn’t seem to be much
wrong with him at all when he sauntered over to the bed and made
himself comfortable, with his ankles crossed and one arm folded
behind his head. If it hadn’t been for the sling and bandages,
visible through the open shirt, I wouldn’t have known there was
anything wrong with him at all.

“How about some music?” he suggested.

“Music?” It took me a second to catch on.
Maybe more than one. “You’re not asking me to strip, are you?”

“You said you’d do anything I wanted.”

“Yes, but...” Take my clothes off to music?
In daylight? “I’m fat.”

“You’re not fat,” Rafe said. “You’re
pregnant. And hot.” He looked me over from top to bottom. “But I
can do without the music. I like that shirt.”

His eyes zeroed in on my breasts. The blouse
was one of Mother’s, raw silk and a bit smaller on me than on her.
It was snug across my chest. Snug everywhere else, too.

In fact, it might feel good to get out of
it. I was having difficulty breathing.

Although in all honesty, that might not be
the fault of the blouse. That could just be from the way he was
looking at me.

I lifted my hands to the top button.

“Keep going,” Rafe said, his eyes turning
darker as he watched me flip open the buttons, one after the other.
When I shrugged out of the blouse and let it drop to the floor, he
smiled. “Now the skirt.”

It was tight, too, and pulling the zipper
down definitely felt good. I shimmied the skirt down to my ankles,
and stepped out of it.

“C’mere.” He crooked a finger at me.

“What about the shoes? And the rest of it?”
Bra and panties. Mine. Not Mother’s.

“The shoes are hot,” Rafe said. “They can
stay. And I’ll deal with the rest of it.”

“I thought this was supposed to be about me
having my way with you.”

But I obeyed that beckoning finger and
headed for the bed. Slowly, since I could tell that although I felt
self-conscious, he was enjoying the view.

He reached out for me as soon as I got close
enough. “C’mon up here.”

No problem. I crawled onto the bed, and for
good measure onto Rafe, as well. And if I had needed proof that he
still found me desirable, that proof was now nestled between my
thighs.

He made a small sound—halfway groan, halfway
sigh—when I moved against him. Maybe a bit of laughter, too. “You
trying to kill me, darlin’? I’m already weak, remember.”

“You don’t feel weak to me,” I informed him.
“But you’re right. None of that yet. I was supposed to kiss it and
make it better.”

“No...” But when I leaned down and put my
lips to a patch of his chest that wasn’t covered by bandages, he
dropped back on the pillow, this time with an arm covering his
eyes. “You’re gonna kill me. I know it.”

“No, I won’t.” I found another patch of skin
and kissed it. “Not yet.” And then another. And another. By the
time I had dropped kisses all the way down his stomach to the
waistband of his jeans, his body was quivering like a plucked
guitar string.

When I flicked open the button in his jeans,
he lifted his head. “You just better not be thinking that I can
last if you do anything like that down there.”

“Really? You usually like it when I do
things like that down here.”

“Not today,” Rafe said. “I dunno if it’s the
pain pills or just the pain, but I ain’t got that much control at
the moment.”

“Really?” That was disappointing. Pushing
Rafe to the limits of his (considerable) control is something I
enjoy doing, but only if he has control to spare. If he wasn’t even
going to present a challenge, what was the point?

And besides, he’d mentioned pain. That isn’t
something that happens often.

I pulled the zipper down, very carefully,
and just as carefully slipped my hand underneath. “Maybe I just
need to be very gentle with you.”

“Yeah,” Rafe said, his voice hoarse.
“Very... damn... gentle.”

I was gentle for a minute, and then I
managed to the jeans down to his knees. Getting them the rest of
the way necessitated getting off the bed, so I did. And while I was
standing up, I shimmied out of the panties I still had on, as well
as unhooked my bra.

“Keep the shoes on,” Rafe said, watching
from under his arm.

“Don’t you have enough scars?” But I kept
them on as I climbed back on the bed. “Now you just stay there and
let me do everything. Don’t move unless I tell you to.”

“You got a little bit of dominatrix in you,
darlin’?” He was grinning, eyes lit with laughter, but they turned
to liquid black when I sank down on him. “Christ...”

“Like I said.” I wiggled, just to get more
comfortable, and because it made his eyes roll back in his head.
“You just lie back and enjoy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

But of course he didn’t. It started out slow
and gentle, but then his hands found my hips, and slow and gentle
gave way to a driving pace that ended with us side by side on the
bed, gasping for breath. I only remembered at the very last second
that I couldn’t collapse on his chest the way I normally do, and
I’m afraid I may have hurt him when I rolled to the side and
plopped on my back next to him. He grunted, anyway, and then just
lay there, struggling to catch his breath.