“It’s nothing bad,” he said, as if maybe she’d spoken out loud. “I’m just here to give you this.” He lifted up the white rose awkwardly. “It’s . . . ah, something men do. When they . . . ah . . .”
As his voice seemed to desert him, Grier stared at the perfect petals of the flower and, as she breathed in, she caught the scent—and then she realized she was making him stand out in the rain.
“God, where are my manners—come in,” she said. “You’re getting wet.”
As she stepped back, he hesitated. And then he put the rose between his teeth and bent down to untie the laces of his combat boots.
Grier started laughing.
She couldn’t help it and it didn’t make any sense, but there was no holding it in. She laughed until she had to back up and sit down on the mattress again. She laughed from joy and confusion and hope. She laughed at everything from the perfect rose to the perfect moment . . . to the perfect timing.
To him being a perfect gentleman—to the point that he didn’t want to track in on her bedroom rug.
Her brother was right.
She was going to be okay.
Her soldier was home for good . . . and she was going to be perfectly fine.
Isaac stepped into Grier’s room in his stocking feet and he was careful to shut the door behind himself. Taking the rose out from between his teeth, he smoothed his hair and beat back the feeling that he wished he could have shown up in a tux or something.
But he just wasn’t a tuxedo kind of guy.
He approached his woman and got down on his knees in front of her, watching her laugh, and smiling a little himself. She’d either lost her damn mind or she was glad to see him—and he hoped like hell it was the latter and didn’t care if it was the former as long as she let him stay.
God, she looked good. With nothing but a black silk blouse on and a pair of hose, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen—
As she wiped her eyes, he realized she had something in her hand and it wasn’t some sappy-ass flower. It was a foil packed of . . . pills?
Grier clearly tweaked to what he’d focused on, because she stopped laughing and tried to tuck the thing behind herself.
“Wait,” he said, “what is it?”
She took a deep breath, like she was bracing herself. “Why did you come back?”
“What’s up with the pills.”
“You first.” The look in her eyes was dead serious. “You . . . go first.”
Well, now he felt like a fool, but then again, even though all was fair in love and war, there was no place for a man’s pride in that mix, was there.
“I came back to stay, if you’ll have me. I spent the last week . . . taking care of things.” No reason to elaborate on that one, and he was relieved when she didn’t ask. “And I had to do some thinking. I want to go legit. As you’ve said, you can’t change the past, but you can do something about the future. My time with XOps . . . I’m going to carry that burden around with me for the rest of my life—but, and I know this is going to sound bad, I’m a murderer with a clear conscience? I don’t know if that makes sense . . .”
The thing was, though, that notation in his dossier Must have moral imperative hadn’t just been window dressing—and that was the only reason why he could live with not sending himself to prison or the electric chair.
He cleared his throat. “I want to go through my trial for the cage fighting—maybe if I agree to cooperate, I can plead out or something. And then I want to get a job. Maybe in security or . . .”
He’d been hoping to join Jim Heron’s crew, but then again, with Matthias dead, maybe those three had disbanded—although he was never going to know. If Jim hadn’t come to find him by now, he was never going to.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
Isaac froze. Then blinked.
Huh, he thought. Going by the ringing in his ears, someone had apparently just clipped him in the back of the head with a two-by-four.
Which would explain not only the noise but the sudden dizziness as well.
“I’m sorry. . . . What did you say?”
She held up the pills. “I forgot to take them. With all the drama, I just . . . didn’t do it.”
Isaac waited to see if the okay-I’ve-been-boarded sensation returned, and what do you know, that was a hell-yeah.
The aftermath didn’t last, though. A shattering joy beat back the wobbles, and before he knew it, he’d all but jumped on Grier, tackling her onto the mattress in an embrace that brought them bone-to-bone. And promptly horrified him.
“Oh, God, did I hurt you?”
“No,” she said, smiling and kissing him. “No, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
She got an odd, faraway look in her eyes. “Yes, I’m positive. Can we call him Daniel if it’s a boy?”
“We can call him anything. Daniel. Fred. Susie would be tough, but I’d deal.”
There was no more talking after that. He was too busy undressing her and her him, and then they were naked and—
“Fuck . . .” He groaned as he entered her, feeling her tight hold on him and reveling in that warm, slick pressure. “Sorry. . . . I don’t mean . . . to curse. . . .”
Oh, the moving, the glorious moving.
Oh, the glorious future.
He was free at last. And thanks to her, he was in out of the rain, literally.
“I love you, Isaac,” she breathed against his throat. “But harder . . . I need you to go harder. . . .”
“Yes, ma’am,” he growled. “Anything the lady wants.”
And then he proceeded to give her everything he had . . . and everything he was and ever would be.