CHAPTER 14
“You owe me a hundred dollars,” Payne said, his gaze inscrutable, as Huck walked into the office the next afternoon.
A prickle of unease slid down his spine. So McCann had told them already. Fabulous, Huck thought, shooting the man a look. McCann didn’t appear the least bit abashed. Merely shrugged. In any case, he’d really wanted to do tell them himself, but he supposed since he’d leveled with Guy the other’s realized he wouldn’t have lied about or omitted his involvement with Sapphira. Huck pulled a bill from his wallet and handed it to Payne. “So I guess this means I’m fired.”
“That depends,” Flanagan said, walking into the room, a cup of coffee in hand. “Are you going to make a habit of sleeping with all of our female clients?”
Huck rubbed the back of his neck and squashed an embarrassed smile. “No.”
“Are you going to make a habit of continuing to sleep with this one?” Payne wanted to know.
“Not according to her,” Huck said, aching for the soft slide of her skin beneath his, those quickened breaths, and sleepy, wanting green eyes.
Flanagan quirked a brow. “What does that mean?”
“It means she dumped him,” McCann supplied helpfully. He plopped down in a nearby chair and looked on expectantly, as though the mess of Huck’s life was going to double as his entertainment.
He was having a hard time continuing to like McCann, Huck decided, scowling. “Let’s just say I don’t possess the necessary funds to keep up her charity work and her father’s a manipulative bastard who has her over a barrel.” He shot the three of them a look that he meant to quell any further annihilation of her character or future conversation. “I don’t blame her. I’m not angry with her. I want only the best for her.”
“What about Tricky?” McCann asked. “Don’t tell me you want the best for her, too.”
Flanagan’s eyes took on a shrewd gleam and he rocked back on his heels. “My God,” he breathed. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
“You think the fool would risk this job for anything less than love?” McCann asked, displaying the first bit of true insight since he’d walked in. “Catch up, Flanagan,” he teased. “You’re losing your edge.”
Payne regarded him with cool blue eyes, probing and assessing. “It’s true, then? You’re in love with her?”
Huck crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. “If love makes you miserably unhappily, altogether wretched and lonely, then--“ He blew out a harsh laugh. “--yeah, I guess I’m in love with her.”
“I see.”
Then that made one of them, because he’d lost all perspective.
“What are you going to do about it?” Payne wanted to know.
“Nothing,” Huck admitted, helpless and frustrated. Once again a man of action unable to act. “Because there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t help her. I can’t give her what she needs.”
Furthermore, he’d tried calling both her home and her cell and she refused to speak with him. He had gotten a call from her father after the report had been delivered and, surprisingly, Stravos had thanked him for his candor and “honest business practices.” He’d also gotten a call from Ella, who’d thanked him for not outing her to Stravos. She’d gone on to say that Sapphira was hurting, too, and she’d asked Ella to pass along the request that he not call or come by, that a clean break would be best.
Meaning that he wouldn’t be welcome and no doubt she’d left instruction not to let him through the gate.
“Surely you’re not going to let a little thing like money stand in your way,” Payne said.
Huck snorted. Only Payne, who was as wealthy--if not wealthier--than Sapphira’s father, would think money or the lack thereof was a “little thing.” He shrugged. “Knowing what she’s doing, the good she does for so many people, I can’t ask her to give that up for me. I won’t be that selfish and eventually she’d hate me for it.”
“You don’t have to. Payne Industries could use a woman like Sapphira in charge of charitable contributions. In fact, I’d be willing to increase her salary twenty percent. That ought to cover Ella’s housing as expenses as well, right?” The first hint of a smile moved over his lips. “We wouldn’t want to leave Ella over that barrel, either, would we?”
Huck paused, absolutely blown away. Was he really hearing Payne correctly? Did he really mean to offer Sapphira a job and increase her salary to accommodate Ella as well? Flanagan and McCann were grinning their faces off.
“Look at him,” McCann said. “I told you he’d be speechless. Pay up, Jamie.”
Grumbling under his breath, Jamie darted a look in Huck’s direction. “You’ve got to quit being so damned predictable,” he said, putting a twenty in McCann’s outstretched hand.
Huck shook his head, felt the first stirring of hope push through the hopelessness which had been dogging his every step since last night. He’d been so distraught, he’d actually gone home to see his mother and grandmother. A quick call to his PI had confirmed that the man hadn’t uncovered a single thing about his father. It was time to take matters into his own hands, to ask the hard questions. Thankfully, the long-time-in-coming conversation with his mother had brought him a unique sense of peace.
His father’s name had been Marshall Winston, III. He’d been the teenaged son of one of the local wealthy families. When his parents had discovered the pregnancy, they’d seen their promising son’s life vanish before their eyes and had forbid him from having anything to do with his mother.
“It had hurt,” she said. “I won’t lie to you. But I wasn’t going to insist that he thwart his family and I was too proud to ever ask for any help.” She paused. “Just when I had given up, he’d come back to me--back to us.” She’d smiled then, remembering, but the grin slowly faded. “I was five months along when he died. Killed in a boating accident out on Fawn Lake. You have his eyes.” She’d paused and her weary gaze had clouded with memory. “Anyway, after he passed away, I got a letter from his family requesting that I never contact them. It was so sad. You would have thought that they would have wanted the only part left of their son--you--but...that wasn’t the case. I’m sorry,” she’d said. “Frankly, son, I don’t know what’s taken you so long to ask. I would have told you at any time, but since you never brought it up...” She shrugged. “I took the easy way out and never did either. I’m sorry.”
She had nothing to be sorry for, Huck had told her, and she damned sure had never taken the easy way out. She was the most kind-hearted, hard-working person he’d ever known and he loved her.
Much like Sapphira, he’d realized. Their qualities were remarkably similar.
At the end of that meeting, he’d come home with the answers to his questions and a cookie bouquet the size of an apple basket. Huck grinned.
Remembering her cookie fetish, even the bouquet had made him think of her. He’d promised to share it with her after all, hadn’t he?
Huck’s gaze found Payne’s once more. “I don’t know what to say,” he finally told him.
“Can I make a suggestion?” McCann said.
Huck turned. “I think you should say thank you. Then I think you should go and tell her about it so that you can get her back and you all can live happily ever after. It’s, uh... It’s what we do around here,” he explained, as though Huck were a little slow on the uptake.
“She won’t see me,” Huck said. “I’ve tried. And you know the property. There’s only one way in and out and every stretch of fence is covered in motion detectors.” He shrugged. “Short of dropping onto the--“ Huck stilled as the brilliant glimmering of a plan began to take shape.
McCann smiled. “There we go,” he said. “Now you’re thinking like a Falcon. Think you’ve got one more jump in you?”
Huck nodded, the first tingling of excitement beginning to infect his blood. And it wasn’t from the jump, he realized. It was because he was going to see her again. Because, thanks to Payne, he could fix this. He could make her his.
Huck shot him a grateful look. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for this.”
A full-fledged smile transformed his face. “You can start by not screwing it up. I’ll call the airport and have the plane readied.”
McCann whooped. “All right! Let’s go kiss some ass!”
Flanagan glared at him as though he’d lost his mind.
“Well ‘kick some ass’ certainly doesn’t apply, does it?” he defended. “And if he marries her we all know he’ll be doing more ass-kissin’ than kickin’.”
“True,” Jamie said, nodding thoughtfully. He sighed heavily. “But it’s worth it.”
Huck chuckled, despite himself and slapped McCann on the shoulder. “You’re growing on me, man. You’re growing on me.”
“That’s because he’s a parasite,” Jamie said. He smiled at Huck. “Congratulations, man. We’re happy for you.”
Touched, Huck smiled. But they couldn’t nearly be as happy for him as he was happy for himself.
And right now there was a mouthy little rich girl confined in a gilded cage who desperately needed rescuing.
* * *
“I think you’re a fool,” Cindy said, seemingly outraged. “You let him go? You let him walk away? For what, Sapphira? Belle Charities?”
“You know better than that, Cindy. We’ve been over this.”
Cindy seemed genuinely baffled. “Let me tell you what I know. I know that with enough hard work we could have drummed up the funds to free you from this posh prison. I know that finding someone you love--who loves you back--is priceless and shouldn’t be tossed aside so easily.”
How dare she imply it was easy! Sapphira thought, blinking back what felt like the millionth tear. It hadn’t been easy, dammit. Watching him walk away--and the rest of her selfish hopes and dreams right along with him--had been the most difficult thing she’d ever had to do. But unlike Cindy, Sapphira was a realist. If it were possible to raise that kind of money...then why hadn’t they? Why did they always have their hand out? Why did it feel like they weren’t doing enough?
No, she was wrong, Sapphira thought. She hadn’t made the easy choice, but she had made the right one. Until her circumstances changed, she didn’t see any way out of her current arrangement with her father.
But she had gone to see him, and she had told him that she was tired of being on salary without a job. Though she knew it could potentially ruin everything, she hadn’t been able to sit idly by and do nothing anymore. She’d told him a bit about her charity work and told him that she planned to do more. Curiously, her father had paused long enough to look at her--truly look at her. He’d blinked, seemingly startled, then had gruffly given his consent. “Do whatever you want to,” he’d said. “I just don’t want to lose you.” It was the closest thing to affection she’d felt from her father in a long time. Pity she’d had to lose Huck to get it.
And God how she missed him. She’d spent last night at the hospital with Carmen, but had planned on staying at home tonight to lick her wounds in private.
Unfortunately, one look at her big lonely bed had quickly changed that plan.
In fact, she could honestly say that she couldn’t look anywhere around this house--what used to be her sanctuary--without seeing him. There, slouched in her recliner. Seated at her kitchen table. Curled up on her couch and, heaven help her, sprawled out across her bed. She missed him more than ever imagined she could long for a person. That wicked smile, those mysterious smokey gray eyes. His laugh. She blinked back another fresh wash of watery emotion and dabbed at her eyes with the perpetual tissue she’d held in her hand since last night.
How had things gone so very wrong? Sapphira wondered. How had she managed, in less than a week, to put herself in this sort of position? And there went another plane, she thought, cursing the fact that they lived so close to the airport. Now she’d never hear one and not think of Huck, his fearless body sailing through the air and the resulting injury which had ultimately made their paths cross.
Ella knocked on her door. “Sapphira, could you come outside please?”
“Ella, do I really--“
“Come on, child. Sunshine will do you some good.”
Mumbling under her breath, Sapphira reluctantly heaved herself from off the couch, dusting the cookie crumbs and chip flakes--evidence of her food therapy--from her chest in the process.
The only thing the sunshine was going to do was make her puffy eyes ache, Sapphira decided, joining Ella out in the front yard.
Ella shielded her eyes from the sun and looked skyward. “Hmmm,” she said. “Well, would you look at that?”
Sapphira frowned, cupped a hand over her own eyes and glanced up. “Look at--“
Her breath caught in her throat, smothering the last part of that sentence and felt her heart skip a beat in her chest. No, she thought, staring at the sky diver headed right for her front yard. It couldn’t be-- He wouldn’t--
But even from this distance she knew it was Huck. She’d know that lean muscular body anywhere. Furthermore, she could feel him getting closer, coming into her range, so to speak, where she could pick him up on her internal radar.
He’d said he couldn’t sky-dive anymore. He’d told her that his knee wouldn’t hold up to the stress of the landing. That’s why he’d left the military, had given up his dream.
What the hell was he doing? Sapphira thought, as his form drew closer and closer. She could make out his smile, see the absolute euphoria on his face. And, sweet heaven, how dear that was. Her chest grew so tight with emotion she feared it would burst. She hurried forward as he drew closer, started screaming at him before he ever hit the ground.
“Have you lost your mind?” she screeched. “Are you trying to kill yourself? Put yourself in a wheelchair for the rest of your life?”
Huck landed with a gentle, graceful roll at her feet. “That depends. Are you willing to push me around for the rest of my life?”
Seriously, her damned heart was going to explode. He couldn’t do this to her. She had to say no. She’d taken a baby step with her father, but she couldn’t see him going completely for this.
She dropped to her knees, her gaze tracing the woefully familiar lines of his face, his hopeful expression. “Huck, please don’t do this.”
He pulled an iced cookie--no doubt one of his mother’s--from the front chest pocket of his jumpsuit and handed it to her. The words, “Will you marry me?” had been written in pink icing.
She felt it then. Her heart actually came apart. “Huck, I--“
“You don’t have to choose, Sapphira,” Huck told her. “I’d never ask you to do that.” He smiled, reached up and swiped a tear from her cheek. “But you don’t have to. Payne wants you to come to work for him, head up his charities. He’s going to increase your salary by twenty percent so that you can bring Ella with you.”
If she hadn’t already been on the ground, she would have surely fallen over. Even now, her legs felt like jelly. “Are you serious?” she breathed.
He nodded. “I love you. I would never ask you to give up being who you are, unless I knew you could still be who you are...with me.” His lips curled into an endearingly unsure smile. Her arrogant caveman, laid bare, prone, and at her feet, unsure. She choked on a sob. “Oh, Huck, I--”
He held up a hand and quirked a brow. “I sense some name-calling coming on. You aren’t about to call me anything you’ll regret are you?”
Behind them, Cindy and Ella laughed, and at some point all three gentleman from Ranger Security had managed to get onto the property.
Smiling, Sapphira leaned down and pressed a tender kiss against his lips, cupped his beautiful face with her hands. “How does fiancé sound?”
Huck chuckled, his heart in his eyes, and kissed her back. “A damned sight better than ‘insufferable, boorish clod,’ I can tell you that.”