Too Hard to Handle, page 32
And talk about torture. It’d been nearly impossible to keep her hands and her mouth to herself. Why pregnancy should have evolved to make a woman horny out of her mind was something she did not understand. I mean, the deed is already done! Why saddle a woman with an increased urge to mate? And then, while Dan had been out hunting for hot dogs with extra peppers and she’d been lying on the sofa trying to find a comfortable position—and cursing Dan’s name for doing this to her—she’d had a grand epiphany.
“I want you to make love to me,” she told him now, dragging him with her up the walk and the stoop. Pulling him inside the bottom-floor apartment.
“Excuse me?” he asked after he booted the door closed. “I thought you said you—”
“Shit, I know what I said,” she groused. “But forget about it. I don’t care about any of that right now. The tacos from last night didn’t work. The Thai food for lunch didn’t work. These extra peppers on the hot dogs aren’t going work. That old saying about spicy food must be a myth. And I’m tired of not being able to get comfortable. I’m tired of being fat—”
“You’re not fat.” He smiled, his eyes roaming over her as if he’d never seen anything so beautiful. She wanted to punch him in the face. “You’re gorgeous and glowing and—”
“And I’m tired of waiting for this kid of yours to decide that he or she is ready to make an appearance.” She grabbed his lapels and yanked him down until they were nose to nose. “Sex can induce labor. So let’s have some sex.”
“Penni”—he curled his hands around hers, forcing her clawed hands to release the leather of his jacket—“you’re not thinking straight. You’re exhausted and—”
“Damnit, Dan!” she hissed. If she could have shot fire from her eyes, she would have set his hair ablaze. “You put this thing inside me. Now you help me get it out!”
He stood to his full height, hooking his thumbs in his belt buckle so that his fingers made a frame of his man bits. The man bits she was trying to make use of. Glancing at his face, she saw his lips quirking.
She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t do it. Don’t you laugh at me.”
He rolled in his lips, his big chest quaking.
“You really don’t want to test me right now,” she warned. “I’m this close”—she held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart—“from taking out my frustration on various and sundry parts of your body. Starting with your smiling mouth.”
“Ahem.” He studiously wiped away his smirk, trying his best to compose himself. “Come here,” he said, herding her toward the couch. Yes, herding. Because she was as big as a cow. Thanks to him. The bastard! “Let’s sit down and let’s talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she growled. “I just want to do it.” Still, she sat on the sofa, jamming a pillow behind her aching back and putting her swollen feet and ankles up on the coffee table. Cankles. She never thought she’d see the day she had cankles.
“Believe me,” Dan said, sitting beside her and putting his big, warm hand on her belly. He always did that when he came to visit her. Sat with his hand on her stomach as if he wanted to touch her and the baby at the same time. “I wanna do it too. Jesus, Penni, I’ve been dreaming of doing it for the last six goddamn months.”
“So what’s the problem?” she demanded.
“The problem is I promised myself that if we made love, when we made love”—she narrowed her eyes because the way he said it made it sound like it was a foregone conclusion. Now she added the word “arrogant” in front of the word “bastard” when she silently cursed him—“that it would be because you’ve accepted that I love you. And you’ve admitted to loving me too.”
“Dan,” she said, sighing, “I’ve already told you—”
* * *
“I know what you’ve told me, damnit!” Dan cut Penni off. He’d tried to play nice. Play it cool. Tried not to broach any of their issues because every time he did, her face twisted up like someone had shoved a porcupine up her tuckus, and he worried what her stress could do to the baby. But he was done being patient. They were having their heart-to-heart right goddamned now!
“But you’re wrong,” he said. “You think you’re a rebound, but you’re not. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d dated and slept with fifty women between Patti and you, or zero women between Patti and you, because the moment I met you, the moment I saw you, I knew. I knew you, Penelope Ann DePaul. And I knew I wanted to be with you.”
“Dan, I—”
“Shut up and let me finish,” he growled, pinning her with a fierce look.
“Continue,” she allowed with a sniff. And she was so damned beautiful, she made him ache. Pregnancy looked good on Penni. It made her round and soft. All dewy and pink. It’d been torture these past few months keeping his dick in his pants, but that’s what he’d done. Because that’s one of the rules she’d imposed when she agreed to move to Chicago.
Dan would thank the BKI ladies until his dying day for convincing Penni to do that. He’d loved seeing her blossom. Loved watching his child grow within her. Loved going to Lamaze classes. Loved…her.
“You think the only reason I’ve stuck around as long as I have is because you’re pregnant, but that’s not true,” he insisted. “Baby or no baby, I would have pursued you exactly the same,” he continued. And the look on her face said she desperately wanted his words to be true. “Because I believe with my whole being and everything that I am that we belong together. You and me. Forever.”
“Dan—”
“And you think because I loved my wife with my whole heart that there’s no way I could love you the same.” He cut off whatever protest she’d been about to make. Now that he was talking, he was determined to get it all out, lay every single one of his cards on the table. “But again, you’re wrong.”
“But—”
“See, my love for her doesn’t lessen my love for you,” he said, his eyes boring into hers, insisting she hear and understand and believe. “’Cause love is endless, boundless. Just when you think there couldn’t possibly be any more in you, you look and see a well of it just waiting to be tapped.” And it was a miracle. He was awed by it. Humbled by it.
“I loved Patti. And I love you. And I’m so…lucky…” His voice hitched. Oh, and great, now he was the one with tears welling in his eyes. “So fucking lucky to have had the opportunity to love two brilliant, beautiful woman in my life. So fucking lucky to have found a soul mate twice.”
“Soul mate,” she whispered.
“That’s what we are,” he insisted, wiping a hand under his nose. “When I think back on it, I’ve known since the beginning. It’s that strange connection we share. That odd sense of peace and comfort we get whenever we’re near each other.”
“That bizarre feeling of knowing and being known.” She sighed.
His heart leaped. Did she…finally…believe him?
“Exactly.” He nodded. “So I’ll make love to you, Penni.” Oh, how he’d make love to her. Over and over. Twice for every time he’d wanted to in the past six months. “Just as soon as you tell me you believe me. Just as soon as you tell me you love me too.”
He held his breath, searching her face. And then he saw it in her eyes. She believed him. She believed him!
“Dan…” She whispered his name and he hoped to hear it on her lips for a hundred more years. He didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare blink. His heart was a fist, huge and hammering against his sternum. “I believe you,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him tight. “And I love you,” she confessed in his ear.
He sucked in a breath of triumph, tightening his arms around her, knowing they would stay around her. Forever. Tears rolled down his face, soaking into her hair. He didn’t care.
“I told you back in Malaysia I was looking for something more in my life,” she whispered. “For someone more. But I think the truth was I was aching for love, aching to be loved. And I’m so humbled, Dan.” She was openly sobbing. The sound made his own tears flow faster. “I’m so humbled and fortunate and happy that my questing heart found you…”
“Penni.” He framed her face, his heart bursting with love and happiness, his shoulders shaking. It caused the new ink he’d gotten yesterday, the fresh ribbon with Penni’s name in the center that he’d had tattooed just below Patti’s—when their baby was born, his or her name would go on a ribbon too—to rub against the material of his T-shirt and burn. “You’ve just made me the happiest man alive.”
“Good.” She nodded, her smile a little wobbly through her tears. “Now would you please make love to me and help me make this kid to hurry the hell up?”
“It would be my pleasure,” he growled. And it was…
Order Julie Ann Walker's first book
in the Deep Six series
Hell or High Water
On sale July 2015
Click here!
Read on for an excerpt from
Hell or High Water
The first in The Deep Six, a pulse-pounding new series from Julie Ann Walker!
Present day
10:52 p.m.…
“And the Santa Cristina and her brave crew and captain were sucked down into Davy Jones’s locker, lost to the world. That is…until now…”
Leo “the Lion” Anderson, known to his friends as LT—a nod to his former Naval rank—let his last words hang in the air before glancing around at the four faces illuminated by the flickering beach bonfire. Rapt expressions stared back at him. He fought the grin curving his lips.
Bingo, bango, bongo. His listeners had fallen under a spell as deep and fathomless as the great oceans themselves. It happened anytime he recounted the legend of the Santa Cristina. Not that he could blame his audience. The story of the ghost galleon, the holy grail of sunken Spanish shipwrecks, had fascinated him ever since he’d been old enough to understand the tale while bouncing on his father’s knee. And that lifelong fascination might account for why he was now determined to do what so many before him—his dearly departed father included—had been unable to do. Namely, locate and excavate the mother lode of the grand ol’ ship.
Of course, he reckoned the romance and mystery of discovering her waterlogged remains were only part of the reason he’d spent the last two months and a huge portion of his savings—as well as huge portions of the savings of the others—refurbishing his father’s decrepit, leaking salvage boat. The rest of the story as to why he was here now? Why they were all here now? Well, that didn’t bear dwelling on.
At least not on a night like tonight. When a million glittering stars and a big half-moon reflected off the dark, rippling waters of the lagoon on the southeast side of the private speck of jungle, mangrove forest, and sand in the Florida Keys. When the sea air was soft and warm, caressing his skin and hair with gentle, salt-tinged fingers. When there was so much…life to enjoy.
That had been his vow—their vow—had it not? To grab life by the balls and really live it? To suck the marrow from its proverbial bones?
His eyes were automatically drawn to the skin on the inside of his left forearm where scrolling, tattooed lettering read For RL. He ran a thumb over the pitch-black ink.
This one’s for you, you stubborn sonofagun, he pledged, flipping open the lid on the cooler sunk deep into the sand beside his lawn chair. Grabbing a bottle of Budweiser and twisting off the cap, he let his gaze run down the long dock to where his uncle’s catamaran was moored. The clips on the sailboat’s rigging lines clinked rhythmically against its metal mast, adding to the harmony of softly shushing waves, quietly crackling fire, and the high-pitched peesy, peesy, peesy call of a nearby black-and-white warbler.
Then he turned his eyes to the open ocean past the underwater reef surrounding the side of Wayfarer Island, where his father’s old salvage ship bobbed lazily with the tide. Up and down. Side to side. Her newly painted hull and refurbished anchor chain gleamed dully in the moonlight. Her name, Wayfarer-I, was clearly visible thanks to the new, bright-white lettering.
He dragged in a deep breath, the smell of burning driftwood and suntan lotion tunneled up his nose, and he did his best to appreciate the calmness of the evening and the comforting thought that the vessel looked, if not necessarily sexy, then at least seaworthy. Which is a hell of an improvement.
Hot damn, he was proud of all the work he and his men had done on her, and—
His men…
He reminded himself for the one hundred zillionth time that he wasn’t supposed to think of them that way. Not anymore. Not since those five crazy-assed SEALs waved their farewells to the Navy in order to join him on his quest for high-seas adventure and the discovery of untold riches. Not since they were now, officially, civilians.
“But why you guys?” The blond who was parked beneath Spiro “Romeo” Delgado’s arm yanked Leo from his thoughts. “What makes you different from all those who’ve already tried and failed to find her?”
“Besides the obvious you mean, mamacita?” Romeo winked, leaning back in his lawn chair to spread his arms wide. His grin caused his teeth to flash white against his neatly trimmed goatee, and Leo watched the blond sit forward in her plastic deck chair to take in the wonder that was Romeo Delgado. After a good, long gander, she giggled and snuggled back against Romeo’s side.
Leo rolled his eyes. Romeo’s swarthy, Hispanic looks and his six-percent-body-fat physique made even the most prim-and-proper lady’s panties drop fast enough to bust the floorboards. And this gal? Well, this gal might be prim and proper in her everyday life—hell, for all Leo knew she could be the leading expert on high etiquette at an all-girls school—but today, ever since Romeo picked her and her cute friend up in Schooner Wharf Bar on Key West with the eye-rolling line of “Wanna come see my private island?” she’d been playing the part of a good-time girl out having a little fun-in-the-sun fling. And it was the fling part that might—scratch that, rewind—did account for the lazy, self-satisfied smile spread across Romeo’s face.
“I’m serious, though.” Tracy or Stacy or Lacy, or whatever her name was—Leo had sort of tuned out on the introductions—wrinkled her sunburned nose. “How do you even know where to look?”
“Because of this.” Leo lifted the silver piece of eight, a seventeenth-century Spanish dollar, from where it hung around his neck on a long, platinum chain. “My father discovered it ten years ago off the coast of the Marquesas Keys.”
Tracy/Stacy/Lacy’s furrowed brow telegraphed her skepticism. “One coin? I thought the Gulf and the Caribbean were littered with old doubloons.”
“It wasn’t just one piece of eight my father found.” Leo winked. “It was a big, black conglomerate of ten pieces of eight, as well as—”
“Conglomerate?” asked the brunette with the Cupid’s-bow lips. Tracy/Stacy/Lacy’s friend had given Leo all the right signals the minute Romeo pulled the catamaran up to Wayfarer Island’s creaky old dock and unloaded their guests. It’d been instant sloe-eyed looks and shy, encouraging smiles.
Okay, and confession time. Because for a fleeting moment when she—Sophie or Sophia? Holy Christ, Leo was seriously sucking with names tonight—sidled up next to him, he’d been tempted to take her up on all the things her nonverbal communications offered. Then an image of black hair, sapphire eyes, and a subtly crooked front tooth blazed through his brain. And just like that, the brunette lost her appeal.
Which is a good thing, he reminded himself. You’re gettin’ too old to bang the Betties Romeo drags home from the bar.
Enter Dalton “Doc” Simmons and his nearly six and a half feet of homespun, Midwestern charm. He’d been quick to insert himself between Leo and Sophie/Sophia. And now her gaze lingered on Doc’s face when he said in that low, scratchy Kiefer Sutherland voice of his, “Unlike gold, which retains its luster after years on the bottom of the ocean, silver coins are affected by the seawater. They get fused together by corrosion or other maritime accretions. When that happens, it’s called a conglomerate. They have to be electronically cleaned to remove the surface debris and come out looking like this.” Grabbing the silver chain around his neck, Doc pulled a piece of eight from inside his T-shirt. It was identical to the one Leo wore.
“And like this,” Romeo parroted, twirling the coin on the chain around his neck like a Two-Buck Chuck stripper whirling a boa.
Their first day on the island, Leo had gifted each of his men—damnit!…his friends—with one of the coins, telling them their matching tattoos were symbols of their shared past and their matching pieces of eight were symbols of their shared future.
Leo tipped the neck of his beer toward Doc. “Maritime accretions, huh? You sound like an honest-to-God salvor, my friend.”
Doc smirked, which was as close to a smile as the dude ever really got. If Leo hadn’t seen Doc rip into a steak on occasion, he wouldn’t have been all that convinced the guy had teeth.
“But even a conglomerate of coins wouldn’t be enough to guarantee the ship’s location,” Leo added, turning back to the blond. “My father also found a handful of bronze deck cannons. All of which were on the Santa Cristina’s manifest. So she’s down there…somewhere.” He just had to find her. All his friends were counting on that windfall for various reasons, and if he didn’t—
“But, like you said, your dad tried to find this Christy boat for”—Leo winced. Okay, so the woman seemed sweet. But the only thing worse than mangling the name of the legendary vessel was referring to it as a boat—“like twenty-some-odd years, right?”
“And Mel Fisher searched for the Atocha for sixteen years before finally findin’ her.” He referred to the most famous treasure hunter and treasure galleon of all time. Well, most famous of all time until he and the guys made the history books, right? Right. “In shallow water, like that around the Florida Keys, the shiftin’ sands are moved by wind and tide. They change the seabed daily, not to mention after nearly four centuries. But with a little hard work and perseverance, you better believe the impossible becomes possible. We’re hot on her trail.” Her convoluted, invisible, nonexistent trail. Shit.
