Waters Run Deep (31 page)

He was flawed like every man, but he was his own man. “You think you’re like him?”

Several seconds ticked by. “Maybe.”

“But you’re not.” She turned to him. “You still angry with me?”

His eyes remained unreadable. “You didn’t trust my judgment. When I saw you in confrontation with Teri, even though you had the upper hand, I couldn’t help feel as though you disregarded my request as some kind of punishment.”

“But I didn’t.”

He sighed. “I don’t understand you.”

“I don’t understand myself.”

She turned and looked at the moon barely visible through the trees before rubbing her upper arms. She wore a thin T-shirt and the cold front sweeping through the parish earlier that evening had brought cooler air. Nate draped his jacket over her shoulders. She felt the warmth of his body in the light fleece, savored his smell enfolding her much as his arms had done once.

“I acted out of character,” she said, sliding her arms into the comfort of the sleeves. “I led with my heart and not my head. My fear for Spencer crippled me.”

She glanced back at him. “My love made me weak.”

“Or made you stronger.”

She shook her head. “Every word you said was correct. I had no weapon, no backup, no concrete knowledge of Teri’s whereabouts. I should have waited for you, but I didn’t. I could have gotten us both killed. I almost did.”

He nodded. “Maybe. But you also showed conviction, and your analysis of the situation was spot-on. Teri had means and opportunity to harm Spencer. You took that away from her.”

She shivered. “But—”

“What? You took her down, using experience and decisiveness. You did what you were hired to do. All along, you busted leads for us.” His dark eyes were fierce in her defense. Something moved inside her so hard and fast, she clasped her chest.

“But I made mistakes.” She clenched the front of the jacket.

His lips twitched. “Oh, you mean you’re human?”

She pressed her lips together but said nothing. She allowed the gathered material to fall.

“So I’ve been thinking,” he said, shoving his hands into the front pocket of his khaki pants. He wore a striped piqué polo shirt that made his shoulders broader than normal. She looked away, afraid she might touch him and give her emotions away. “I’m good at my job. I do fine under Blaine and I’ve got a nice little pension tucked away.”

“Security’s good.”

“Yeah, it is, but I also have these boxes stacked in my house, full of missing persons and cases long gone cold. I work them in my spare time.”

“Weird hobby.”

“It’s not a hobby. It’s a quest. Mostly, it’s on my own dime, but there are grants I could likely pursue if I had the time. I feel convicted about helping others get absolution from the burdens they carry.”

“Like you never had.”

“Things have changed, haven’t they? And with them, I feel the need for a new chapter for myself…and maybe you.”

She jerked her head toward him. “Me?”

“You.”

“What are you talking about?” Panic inched into her thoughts. Marriage? Was he talking something like that…just because she could possibly be pregnant? Or was there more?

“An arrangement similar to what you have at Sterling, but more of a partnership.”

“You’re offering me a job?”

He laughed. The sound didn’t suit the mood or the night around them. Something flapped in a nearby tree, rising higher in the thick canopy overhead. “Sort of.”

She took a step back. “But I have a job. In fact, I’m leaving in a few days to head back. What would keep me here?”

His expression split and she saw his vulnerability. It slammed her, kick-starting her heart with the rawness of his love. But he didn’t say anything, merely watched, trying to shutter his expression, but failing to do so.

“You,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“You want me to stay for you.”

Nate tore his eyes from hers and looked around. As if he’d rather look at scraggly weeds and faded artificial flowers than acknowledge the truth in her words.

“But we have no…that is to say…we barely know each other really. I’ve never seen your house. Don’t know your favorite color or your birthday. I can’t leave everything I’ve ever known or the new career I’ve managed to salvage from the ashes of my old one for a person I…” She trailed off because she wasn’t ready to say those words. A person she’d fallen in love with.

It was all very impractical, ridiculous and stupid.

They’d gotten caught up in the moment, ambushed by passion, shoved together by shared purpose, linked by like personalities.

Those did not translate into a relationship. It could not emote into a happily ever after.

He grabbed her shoulders. “Listen up, Annie, because I’m only going to ask this once.”

She blinked.

“What I feel for you is illogical, absurd and possibly silly.” He paused, swallowing the words. “But what I know without doubt is the feeling is true. From the moment you walked into my life, I’ve been pulled toward you like a magnet to iron. It’s not merely the urge to bend you over this crypt and mate with you like a…a primeval wolf.”

“Really?”

He blinked. “Okay, maybe not here, and not like a wolf, which was a strange thing for me to say, but I want you with a need so strong it scares me. But it’s not just that, Annie, it’s the way you smile. The way you crook your head when you’re thinking. The way you stare longingly at Spencer when you think no one is looking. It’s your stubbornness, your scent, your taste. It’s everything.

And all that combined tells me you were made for me.”

“I—” She closed her mouth because his descended.

His hands slid up to cup her face, not gently, but possessively. She felt every word in his kiss and she welcomed it, felt passion stir and rise within her body.

He broke the kiss, but kept her face cupped in his warm hands. “So I’m going to say this once, Annie.”

She nodded.

“I love you, or at least I think this is love. I’ve never felt it before.”

She nodded again.

“Stay with me and be my partner, in all ways.”

She felt her heart thud, hard and heavy, and it felt as if it might burst from her chest. Or was it already clogging her throat? She wasn’t sure. Then the panic came again.

“Can I have a little time to think this through?”

He dropped his hands, took a step back and then started laughing. “That’s your answer?”

She slumped. “It’s who I am. I have to think. You said you’ve thought, but I haven’t. I’ve been briefing Ace, watching Barney with a too-quiet Spencer, consoling your mother on Della leaving. All those things have crowded my mind and I’m all cloudy. I—”

“If you have to think about it, what does that say?” he asked, finally ceasing his somewhat profane laughter among the departed.

“It says I want to be sure. I mean, I think I feel the same way, but I have to give my mind the same credence I’ve given my heart. It’s only fair.”

Nate folded his arms, shook his head and watched her with a tinge of amusement in his gaze. “See? Another reason why we suit.”

“You’re okay with it?”

He smiled. “I think I’d prefer it.”

“Right now at this very second, my heart says yes. So this is a risk.”

“But one worth taking. I want you beside me, mind, heart and soul. Anything less would be unacceptable. So, think. Think hard.” He turned back toward the house where he’d grown into a man.

Annie felt the vise in her throat loosen. This was a man not accustomed to handing a decision to someone else. This man usually got what he wanted, so she knew it was a rare gift. He’d given her power over his fate. “Hey, Nate?”

He turned.

“You’re nothing like your father.”

She couldn’t see his expression in the shadows. “Oh, but I am. I go after what I want, and what I want most in this world is you.”

* * *

Specifically, his heart.

“Hell,” he said to himself before scrubbing the fuzz from his teeth. Afterward, he rubbed his scruffy jaw thoughtfully, turning right then left. He wouldn’t look too bad with a beard. Hunting season was around the bend. Maybe he’d visit the old salt lick and see if any deer had sniffed around, providing him a store of venison he’d not had in many years. Of course, he didn’t really hunt much and, outside of Lucille’s summer sausage, wasn’t a big fan of the sometimes too gamey meat. Never mind.

It had been two days since he’d seen Annie and already he was going Grizzly Adams. Or crazy.

The peal of the doorbell interrupted his contemplation of beards, hunting and wallowing in sorrow. He slid on the wrinkled pajama pants lying over the hamper and padded out to the living room.

Probably his mother. He’d called in sick, something he so rarely did he had stockpiled months of vacation. She’d likely made gumbo—her one good soup recipe she pulled out for all people under the weather.

But it was Annie.

She wrinkled her nose. “You look terrible.”

“And you don’t,” he replied, meaning it. She looked great. Her hair curled around clear gray eyes and a pretty pink mouth. His heart played a game of hopscotch in his chest. He swung the door wider. “Come inside?”

She lifted one shoulder. “Should I? You look like that wolf you mentioned a few nights ago.”

“Well, then, by all means come in.”

She slid past him and he inhaled her sweet scent. Definitely baby powder. Then he stopped because it was quite wolfish behavior.

“You weren’t lying,” she said, turning a circle in his living space. “There are a lot of cases here.”

He closed the door and turned to her. “Too many.”

“Should we get started right away? Is this going to be our office?”

He spoke before he registered her words. “It will… Wait, are you staying?”

She leaned against the arm of an overstuffed chair. Her gaze dropped to his bare chest, and he felt the pilot light go on deep in his pelvis. He wanted her, but this was greater than lust. She redirected her gaze. “Yeah, against all better judgment, I am.”

He stood for a moment, allowing the information to filter through his fuzzy brain. Did this mean only as a business partner?

He’d wanted more. “So…”

She folded her arms. “You know what convinced me to stay? Henry and Emily Ann.”

“Who?”

“Your great-great-aunt and -uncle.”

He tried to connect the dots but failed. His face must have shown as much because she sighed and shook her head. “The cemetery. Two hearts interlocked. Good food and a good woman. Remember?”

“Yeah, and you said, ‘What about love?’”

She stared at him for a moment. “You know what single women everywhere want?”

He shook his head. He really, really didn’t know that one.

“We don’t want to be found one day dead in our apartments with a cat eating our faces off.”

“What?”

“Stay with me,” she said. He eased himself on the couch because, though he knew Annie to be quite logical, he had no clue where she was going with this.

“I tried over a year ago to circumvent the whole spinster dead on her couch surrounded by hungry cats thing. I forced myself into a relationship thinking I didn’t have to have love. I could have a husband, a kid, a dog and a life not spent alone watching reruns of Titanic while eating Lean Cuisines. I tried to squeeze my foot into that slipper thinking love didn’t matter because I wouldn’t be alone on Christmas. Thing is, when you try and do that, you get blisters and bunions and you don’t want to even walk around.”

Now he followed her. She’d tried to force something and it didn’t work.

“So I didn’t want to put on the slipper anymore. It was easier that way.”

“We’re talking about relationships, right?”

She blinked. “Yeah.”

He clasped his hands between his spread knees and nodded. “Go on.”

“So I spent the last day and a half doing some thinking, which seems contrary to what you should do when you are in love, but this is important, you know?”

“Absolutely.”

“I thought about what I thought I wanted, that whole pretty-packaged life, and then I thought about what you said. Or what I said. About love. See, that’s what I lacked all along, and when I started feeling like I was falling for you, it scared me and I threw up all kinds of barriers. The case was an important barrier. We’re talking about saving a life here, so that wasn’t necessarily a barrier.

But still, I convinced myself that it couldn’t be real. It was lust. Or the damn heat. Or whatever straw I could grasp, but the deal was

—”

“We fell in love despite common sense.”

“Yeah,” she said, finally smiling. “We did, and it’s crazy, but it’s true.”

His heart expanded in his chest, but he didn’t move toward her. Not yet.

“So what it boils down to is I want to lie beside you every night, and when we’ve passed into the great beyond, I want our hearts still overlapping. I want to be next to you in that cemetery at Beau Soleil as your loving wife, Anna Maria Dufrene. I want that more than a career or California sunshine.”

He almost cried. Almost. “I want that, too.”

“I’ll have to go back to California for a week or so. I have to make arrangements for my dad, have to meet with Ace and deal with my grandmother’s house and the stupid condo I bought. I know you haven’t said anything about marriage, and that’s okay for now because we’ve not even gone on a date. Unless you count Madame Jacqueline’s.”

“I don’t count that.”

Annie’s eyes were damp. Sweet, damp gray eyes, shining with a new beginning for him. “Oh, good, because I was hoping to get another opportunity at that doberg cake.”

He rose. “Whatever you want.”

She stood, toe to toe with him. “I like the sound of that.”

And then she smiled up at him. Not Annie the competent undercover nanny, but Anna, slightly unsure, possibly scared but wonderful in so many ways he couldn’t possibly begin to list.

“It may be rough. I’m not an easy man to deal with.”