A Week Later…

 

Malaika stared at the notes she’d written days ago, staring at them the same way she had every night since she’d first put them to paper. I walked up behind her and rubbed her shoulders, loving the way she leaned back into me and sighed.

“Give it a break for tonight.”

“Everyone’s counting on me to get this solved.”

“Yes, but they don’t expect you to perform miracles.” I tugged at her hair, pulling it off her neck so I could kiss it. “They understand it’s going to take time.”

“I just wish I’d had time to get the notes we’d had in the cabin. Some of those would really come in handy right now.”

“We were kind of running for our lives.”

“Yeah, well…”

I groaned, pulling at her arm, forcing her out of the chair. “Come to bed.”

She stood and moved into my arms, sighing as she pressed her face to my chest. “Did you call your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Good news?”

“Not yet. But the doctors are still hopeful.”

She pulled back and looked up at me. “She’s going to wake up. And, by the time she’s healed, the sale will have gone through, and you can move her back home.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so. Because I said it would be so.”

I chuckled, kissing the tip of her nose. “What would I do without you, Ms. Gray?”

“You’d be completely lost. And you wouldn’t be the owner of a new—old—ranch.”

“All thanks to you.”

“And Jack Stone.”

She was right about that. When Jack deemed it safe for us to return to Ellaville, Malaika made a single phone call, and the cash offer on the ranch was rescinded. Then she told me exactly what I’d need to buy it myself. It would have been impossible if Jack hadn’t happened to hear about it—how, I still wasn’t quite clear on, but had a feeling Malaika had had something to do with that, too—and he put up the money I was short on the down payment, assuring me I could work it off as a continuing employee of Stone Security.

I would have promised to work for the devil himself in the heart of hell to get that money.

In less than a month, the ranch would be mine. Every acre, every building, every inch of my family’s legacy. I hadn’t told my father yet. I was a little concerned he wouldn’t want to come home because it was all done in my name. But I was hoping Mother’s health scare had opened his eyes to the dangers of pride.

I still didn’t know if she’d done this to herself on purpose. I hoped not. But I had to believe, like Malaika clearly did, that she was going to come out the other end no worse for the wear.

That was what Malaika was teaching me. Hope.

“Did you call your parents, like I told you?”

She groaned. “They’re not happy that I’m leaving Albuquerque. To live on a ranch, no less.”

I smiled. The only condition I’d put on the whole buying the ranch thing was that she come live with me in the cabin at the back of the property. After all, she was taking the position of manager of our local branch, so she’d need a place to live. And we were practically living together already. She’d insisted that we’d start getting on each other’s nerves the second the sex stopped being so exciting. I told her we’d just have to make sure that never happened.

“They’ll get used to the idea.”

“They never seemed to care where I lived before. But now…maybe they’re getting sentimental in their old age.”

“Or they’ve always deeply loved their youngest child, they just didn’t know how to show it.”

“I doubt that.”

One thing at a time, I supposed.

I swung her up into my arms and carried her to the bed, stretching out beside her on the mattress. We were both still fully dressed, the day still clinging to our shoulders, our thoughts. I pulled her close on the same bed where we’d first made love and kissed her, our kiss lingering and gentle, different from those first few. But just as exciting.

I hated that Neri hadn’t survived the fire. I hated that I’d had no choice but to leave her behind. I thought about her often, wondering if I could have done more, if I could have fought harder. What if I’d thrown her over my shoulder and forced her out the door? Could I have done that? Would it have been the right thing to do?

Maybe. Maybe not.

I wasn’t a religious man, but standing at the back of the church during her and her father’s funeral yesterday, I felt things I’d never felt before. It was more than hope. It was an understanding that I couldn’t begin to explain.

In Afghanistan, I met a lot of religious people, and a lot of people who became religious in the darker moments of their existence. In the final moments. I always thought of them as hypocrites, people who used religion as a crutch or something even more sinister. But now? My way of thinking had shifted. This experience, meeting this woman, had changed the way I saw the world.

I would never be religious. But maybe there was more to the world than the cynical way in which I’d always viewed it, more cynical this last year than before.

“We’re going to figure this out. We’re going to end it.”

Malaika touched my face. “I know. I just…I’m afraid of what might happen to you when we do. What will you do when you have the name of the man who was behind these attacks on you, on me?”

“I’ll kill him.”

She grunted, crawling off the bed. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”

“Do you not trust that I can protect you?”

“I do. I just…I don’t want any more killing.”

“We didn’t ask for this. We didn’t start this.”

She nodded slowly, pacing between the bed and the desk. “I was afraid to come back to Ellaville. I know Jack said the harassment and the attacks stopped the moment the cabin burned down, but I was afraid. It doesn’t feel finished to me. And I’m so afraid of what will happen when they start up again, when you and I find ourselves in the middle of some sort of war!”

I got up and pulled her back against my chest. “We’re together. We’re happy. I won’t let anything ruin that.”

She twisted in my arms. “I love you, Quentin. I can hardly believe that it’s true, but I do. I don’t think I could survive losing you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I lifted her chin, forced her to look at me. “I will never let anything or anyone tear us apart.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

She hesitated, staring into my eyes for a long moment like she was trying to see where that promise was written on my soul. Then she pulled away, picking up a piece of paper off the desk, the same one she’d been studying for days.

“I know who he is. I know who the man behind all of this is.”