CHAPTER 13
Chunky Monkey or Rocky Road? Julia wondered, staring morosely into her freezer. What the hell. She’d have both. She drug both containers out and promptly filled a bowl. Chocolate therapy, she thought, shuffling back into the living room. What else would a shrink need?
Besides a lobotomy and a new heart?
Why, why, why had she kept pushing him when she knew he’d been getting angrier and angrier? Why couldn’t she have done what he asked and simply let it go?
She knew why--she knew that he was hurting and she wanted to take care of him. But you couldn’t take care of someone who didn’t want to admit anything was wrong, and if she’d merely played along, she could still be with him, laughing and nuzzling and having wild, wonderful sex.
She’d still be with him, would have had another day, and then maybe another.
More nows.
If she’d only been patient, then she might have been able to bring him around by degrees. As a therapist, she knew this, but something told her that Guy McCann’s head was too thick to respond to that kind of treatment--it would have to be cracked open, emptied out, and reassembled, she decided, the idea drawing a small sad smile.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have the wherewithal to do it.
He’d basically kicked her out and she’d left because she’d been hurt and mortified by his rejection.
Her only consolation was that a.) she knew that she was right and b.) she’d driven her own damned car home.
Call her a cab, my ass. As though she were a hooker he’d met on the street that he could conveniently ship off at a moment’s notice. Logic told her that he’d been concerned for her safety, but her heart had been aching too hard to accommodate clear thinking. She’d--
Julia stilled as a noise snagged her attention and she listened closely. What was that? It was coming from the living room window.
She carefully set her bowl aside, fear making her pulse leap into overdrive. Another sound, this one more insistent, reached her ears and in a nanosecond she realized what was happening.
Someone was trying to break into her window.
Shaking so hard she could barely dial, Julia snagged her cordless phone and quietly moved to the kitchen where she promptly dialed 911. “What do I do?” Julia asked, terrified.
“Stay on the line until the authorities get there,” the operator told her.
“Shouldn’t I run? Aren’t I trapped in the house? I--
Her living room window shattered and she heard someone swear from outside. Julia frowned. The voice sounded oddly familiar. “Hold on a minute,” Julia said. “I’m going to check something out.”
“Ma’am, you don’t need to do that. Wait for the authorities. They should be there any minute now. Ma’am? Ma’am?”
Julia peered around the doorframe and watched as a leg encased in blousy black pants angled in through her broken window. “Son of a bitch,” she heard the intruder mumble. He braced an arm inside the frame and it was then that she noticed the shirt--white, equally blousy...almost like a pirate’s outfit. “...from a friggin’ stallion to gelding if I’m not careful,” she heard him say. “Honestly.”
Julia blinked, astonished. “Guy?”
He banged his head against the window sill and swore. “Motherfu-- Julia?”
“Ma’am? Ma’am?” came the insistent operator. “What’s going on? Do you know your attacker?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “He’s not my attacker,” she said. “It’s fine. I know this man.”
Sirens sounded in the distance and to Julia’s astonishment, Guy actually looked pleased with the prospect of getting arrested. “Oh, good. They’re almost here.” He grimaced at the window. “Sorry about that. The door would have been too easy.”
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded. “I could have shot you.”
“But you don’t have a gun,” he pointed out, looking at her hands to make sure.
“But I could have! What the hell is wrong with you? Why didn’t you knock like a normal person?”
“Because I’m trying to get arrested,” he said, seemingly exasperated with her because she wasn’t following his cockeyed logic.
Her eyes bugged. “Get arrested? Why?”
“So that I can give you a mug shot.” He paused and lowered his voice. “Along with my heartfelt apologies.”
The pirate suit, the mug shot. Julia felt a wild laugh break up in her throat. “Have you lost--“
The police roared into her driveway cutting off what she was about to say. Julia’s gaze swung from him to the blue lights flashing outside and stifled a groan. “Hold on,” she said. “Let me go take care of this.”
“No!” Guy insisted. “You have to press charges.”
He’d clearly lost his mind. “What?”
“You’ve got to press charges. For the mug shot.” That endearingly crooked smile curled his lips. “And then I was hoping that you would come bail me out.”
She knew she kept repeating him, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. It was too much. Unbelievable. “Bail you out?”
He nodded. “I’d appreciate it. And I want you to forgive me, too, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Her heart melted like a pat of butter over a warm bun. “Guy.”
A knock sounded at her door. “Police!”
“You don’t have to do this,” she said quickly. “I forgive you.”
“I know I don’t have to, Julia...but I want to. For you. Because you’re special.”
Uniformed officers burst into the room. “Freeze!” They tackled Guy to the floor and in short order had him cuffed. Rather than looking put out or frightened, he looked downright pleased with himself.
“You want to follow us to the station, ma’am?”
“Sure. How long before I can bail him out?”
The officer blinked. “What?”
“How long before I can bail him out?” she repeated. What? Had she stuttered?
Thoroughly confused, the cop looked from Guy to Julia and back again. “If you’re just going to bail him out, what’s the point in pressing charges?”
“It’s complicated,” Julia said, her gaze tangling with Guy’s.
An hour later, Julia watched Guy stroll across the parking lot toward her car. The pirate outfit ballooned around him and for a second he looked like the genuine article. She leaned her head out the window of her car. “Need a lift?”
Smiling, mug shot in hand, Guy climbed in beside her and hand the picture over. “Not bad, considering they took my eye patch,” he said.
Her heart pounding wildly, Julia nodded. Her mouth parched at the unbelievable gesture. “It’s nice. Thank you.”
“I owe you an apology,” he said without preamble. “I was an ass.”
“You are, but I knew that already. I should have left you alone.”
“Don’t you get it? That’s why I’m here.” He reached over and ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “I never want you to leave me alone. Call me an ass, tell me to go to hell, but don’t ever leave me again, even if I’m trying to run you off. “ He paused, swallowed tightly. “I need you.”
Her eyes misted, recognizing the gesture for what it was. In his own round about way her bad ass former Ranger, modern day pirate was trying to tell her that he loved her.
He was botching it up, of course, but...
“I love you, too,” Julia told him, chuckling softly.
He smiled and breathed a significant sigh of relief.
“And do you know what I’d really like you to do?” she asked him.
“Name it.”
“I want you to love me...now.”
That slow wicked smile she’d come to love spread across those sinfully crafted lips and he laughed softly, the sound eddying through her, vibrating ever nerve in her body. “Baby, just say the word,” Guy told her, then his mouth founds hers and sealed the promise with a kiss.