Cabe looked out through the double doors of the Windsor suite of the Hotel del Coronado and took a breath. The water soothed the deepest parts of him, as the desert soothed Amy. In the weeks since the raid on the boat, they’d gotten to Vegas, Amy to spend time with her dad and Uncle Clive, him to celebrate Six’s last days of freedom. It had been more symbolic than a riotous bachelor party. There’d been no strippers or painful hangovers. Just some gambling and relaxing by the pool, where they’d sat shooting shit, just like the day they’d all met in kindergarten.
He wondered what Brock would have made of the three of them. Of where they’d ended up. There would be an empty seat at the long table behind him, just for Brock.
The palms swayed, the waves crashed, the sun shone. It couldn’t have been any more perfect had a rainbow split the garden in half.
Every single person he loved was in the room behind him—except Six and Lou, who were taking their own sweet time driving the classic open-top convertible to the venue. Cabe’s guess was they were driving all the way down Coronado and back.
Hands slipped around his waist, hands that were now familiar and as necessary as the call of the ocean. “You okay?” she asked.
Cabe turned and pulled her close. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look today?” He ran his finger along her shoulder, the strapless black dress that fitted her like a second skin leaving them bare.
“Maybe once or twice,” she replied.
He kissed her lips. “Ow,” he said as his mom slapped him on the arm.
“Behave,” she whispered.
His mom always treated formal events with a reverence they really didn’t require. It wasn’t like they were in church. Six and Lou’s wedding had been a small civil one, with just Six, Lou, and a handful of witnesses, where he’d proudly stood as Six’s best man. But the reception was bigger. Delaney had her arm around Mac’s bicep, leaning her head on his shoulder while Mac spoke to his parents. Six’s parents were chatting with Louisa’s mother, while Six’s sister was instructing her boyfriend to help her move the favors table. Cabe’s mom had just finished fussing over the wedding cake she’d made, while his dad and brother were shooting shit over sports stats. And the guys from Eagle who were in town and off duty sat looking uncomfortable in their suits, while a few of Lou’s friends talked in the corner.
The cake was way too big for their party of twenty-six, and included three layers of cake done in all their favorite flavors.
Six walked up the steps toward them, leading his new bride by the hand. His smile was nearly as bright as the glint of his wedding ring. As always, Louisa’s head was down, and she gripped his hand as though her life depended on it. Cabe knew he’d brought her in through the parking lot and grounds so she didn’t have to deal with all the people milling about the hotel. A new bride was a beautiful thing, and it was only natural for people to want to stop and wish the couple well, something that would make Lou desperately uncomfortable.
“Don’t tell me, Lou,” Cabe said. “He got lost, right?”
Lou laughed, her shoulders shaking. She glanced up at him briefly. “I told him to keep going,” she answered honestly.
Six chuckled. “I told her I wasn’t missing your mom’s cake.”
Everybody cheered as they stepped inside.
The photographer Cabe had picked snapped a photograph of the two of them. She’d been totally behind Amy’s idea of no formal pictures, and Cabe had talked to her at great length about Lou’s shyness. They’d come to an agreement that an almost invisible candid photography approach would be best. “You need to see this,” she said.
She fiddled with her camera for a moment and then showed him a photograph that almost made him choke. At the moment the clerk had said Six could kiss his bride, Lou had put her arms around Six’s neck and looked up at him, the long hair she usually hid behind had all fallen away from her face, leaving a beautifully unobstructed image of the two of them staring into each other’s eyes with so much love and passion that he couldn’t help but sigh.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Amy said.
“It is.”
He took Amy’s hand and led them to their seats at the long table. White and Tiffany blue paper lanterns were clustered above them. Mac had found them after scouring the internet for days. Bizarrely, the tall vases of white flowers with Tiffany-blue ribbons had been his idea. Between the three of them, they’d cobbled together a half-decent party.
He smiled as he watched Lou change the place settings, moving her and Six from the middle of the table to the end nearest the view of the water. And as usual, Six watched and let her do whatever she needed to. It was only right.
Which was exactly why Amy would be taking on another difficult case starting Monday and he wasn’t going to lose his shit over it.
Well, he was. Maybe a little bit when he saw her back in those ugly suits with a sidearm strapped to her shoulder.
But he wasn’t going to tell her.
Because she was better than good.
And she needed to leave the house every day knowing he fully believed she’d come back to him. At least during this next assignment she wasn’t undercover, something Amy had decided on her own.
Ivan Popov had taken a plea deal. In return for information on Lemtov and Sokolov, he faced lesser charges for the theft of the chemical weapon Louisa had developed and his role in her abduction. It had been an outstanding debt at Lucky Seven and his inability to pay it off that set all the wheels in motion.
Between pressure from the Assistant District Attorney and Woods’s fear of life in prison, he’d confirmed nine missing women had been trafficked the exact same way they had planned to traffic Amy, Sonya, Alison, and Eve. The women had been picked for their looks and hospitality training because, as Woods had confessed, American women sold for a premium. While their actions had broken up the trafficking ring, their leads on the locations of the still-missing women were running dry. And Cabe knew just how hard it was for Amy to accept that they might never find them. Which was why Eagle Securities still had resources, at their own cost, looking for them. Harley and Lite were trying to find their trails, but there were days when it seemed unlikely they were ever going to find them. He shook his head, parking the grim thought for another day. Today was for celebrating and he was determined to focus on that.
“You want this, Ames?” he asked quietly. “Wedding, marriage, kids?”
He’d never asked, and suddenly it became imperative that he knew where she stood.
Amy smiled at him and placed her hand around the back of his neck, squeezing and massaging it just how he liked. “Yes. I do. I want to get married on a beach in the middle of nowhere with my toes in the hot sand. And I want to go back there for my ten-year wedding anniversary with two kids in tow and let them build sandcastles in the place I said my vows.”
Her words soothed yet surprised him. “I would have thought you’d want to get married in Vegas.”
She shook her head. “There’s a reason Nevada’s divorce rate exceeds the national average. Plus, it would be a circus. I don’t have the challenges that Lou has, but I want it just to be about me and my husband and the start of our own adventure.”
Just when he thought he couldn’t love her any more, she’d encapsulated his own thoughts exactly. He didn’t want to recreate the wedding he and Jess had planned to have, and if he was honest, it had always been more about what Jess had wanted. But now … he wanted the vision Amy had just laid out. The two of them on sand that was almost as white as Amy’s hair, and the blue coming from the ocean, not paper lanterns or clothes.
He pressed his lips chastely to hers. “Let’s do it,” he murmured.
“Do what?”
“Go get married on a beach. Or at least let’s take a trip and find the beach we want it to happen on. We can spend however long we need or want scouring the planet for the perfect place. I just want to go, with you … anywhere.”
Amy sighed. “That sounds perfect, but without being the party pooper, we have jobs. I have a new case starting on Monday, and you’re off to South America, right?”
Cabe pressed his forehead to hers. “Fuck. Being a grown-up sucks.”
She cupped his cheek. “It does … but you know that conversation we’ve been putting off about where to spend Christmas?”
“The one I’m going to win?” he said with a wink.
“What if we didn’t go to Vegas or stay here for Christmas? What if we went and found our first beach?”
He could see it. The two of them. Her in a red bikini sipping champagne on Christmas morning, away from the chaos of their jobs and busy lives. A time to get to know each other. That would be the best Christmas present of all. It was less than a month away, but they could pull it off. “You sure you want to do that, Ames? I don’t want Uncle Clive buying a new shovel so he can dig a hole to bury me in.”
Amy laughed. “Uncle Clive wouldn’t dig a hole. He’d pay someone to do it.”
Cabe kissed her softly. “Semantics, Ames.”
“Can we do it?” she asked.
He looked up briefly and saw his mom smile at him. He knew his parents would be cool, that they’d understand his need to disappear, to travel. Then he looked back at Amy, those eyes of hers the very color of the oceans he was thinking about. “Let’s look tonight at where we could go.”
Amy shimmied in her chair, a little victory dance of excitement. “Yes. Costa Rica? Tahiti?”
He shook his head. He didn’t give a shit where they went as long as it was together, but for kicks he responded. “Thailand? Seychelles?”
Her laughter was interrupted by the sound of Six clinking his spoon against his glass.
I love you, Cabe mouthed.
And his heart filled as she returned his words.