Chapter 30
Forrest stood by feeling helpless as Maggie led Jordana out of the room. Pedro had a point. He hoped for Jordana’s sake that Pedro was wrong about Beni. The room was quiet as they heard Maggie and Jordana climb the stairs.
“So,” Damon said into the silence. “When are you going to marry that woman?”
Forrest shot his brother a glare.
“I’ve already given him permission. I don’t know what’s taking him so long. I asked my wife ten minutes after her father gave me permission. Don’t make me take it back by delaying, son.”
Damon smiled at Pedro, who winked in return.
“Let’s get this life and death stuff over with and then I will.”
“Mr. Forrest,” Lacy said, “you need to make it very pretty. I’d suggest candles and flowers. Miss Jordana will need to feel special after learning her uncle would kill her.”
“How old are you, child?” Pedro asked.
“I’m thirteen. Why?”
“I do believe by the time you’re eighteen you could rule the world.”
“Please, I just want her to put her laundry away. Let’s do baby steps,” Lydia muttered, and soft laughter spread through the room.
Maggie came back into the room and Hunter immediately put his arm around her. Maggie snuggled closer to him and gave a sad smile. “She’s making the call. I know we want answers, but I sure hope it’s not him, for Jordana’s sake.”
“Me too, but it has to be,” Pedro said with a sigh.
Forrest felt horrible for him too. “I already lost my wife. I don’t want to lose another member of the family.
However, the betrayal if it is him . . .
knowing he’d kidnap my daughter, putting a contract on her life, putting one on me and you too.
I feel anger, but also sadness. I only wanted my daughter to know she was loved by her whole family.
It’s not a big family, but I believed there had been much love in it. ”
“If Jordana says yes, you’ll have a big family full of love,” Forrest told him, catching his eye and directing him to the room filled with not only his blood family, but the friends in the town who had quickly become his surrogate family.
“We won’t even make you get naked for some apple pie,” Miss Winnie told him.
“What the heck, Miss Win?” Damon said suddenly, spinning on them. “Why does he get a pass? You’re gatekeeping your pie from me, telling me I need to get naked for your next festival banner.”
It was the most animated Forrest had seen Damon about anything before. Forrest tried to hide his smile, but Hunter, Stone, and Kane didn’t. They burst out laughing.
“Maybe you’re just not banner-worthy, D,” Stone taunted. “I mean, nothing is going to beat my banner.”
“Hey,” Hunter snapped, “my banner got them the South Carolina Winter Pie Festival Award.”
Pedro was chuckling as he watched the town dissolve into who had the best naked pie picture. “Have you taken a picture yet?” Pedro asked him.
“Nope,” Forrest told him. “I guess I’m not banner-worthy either.”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” Miss Ruby said, interrupting the bickering.
“Forrest, we have something special planned for you and Rowan. Together.” She smiled at him and Forrest began to feel nervous.
He and Rowan were fraternal twins, not identical.
There’d be no hiding behind “mistaken identity” for either of them.
The town went back to their debate and when Forrest looked at Pedro he saw the man amused, but clearly deep in thought.
Forrest looked up at the ceiling as if he could feel Jordana’s nerves.
He wanted to be there for her and hoped he could be forever.
He didn’t feel right about proposing until this danger was over. No matter what Damon or Pedro thought.
Jordana stared down at the phone. She didn’t have her cell phone and she couldn’t remember his personal number off the top of her head, so she did the only thing she could think of. She made a call to Uncle Beni’s medical office. It was a public number that she could easily find online.
The receptionist knew her. She’d seen Jordana grow up, running around his practice when he had offered to babysit her even when her mother had been alive.
“Dr. Silva’s office,” the receptionist answered.
“Hello Ana. It’s Jordana. I’m in trouble. Is my uncle there?”
“Oh baby, we’ve been so worried about you. You’re missing. Your uncle has posters everywhere trying to find you. Where are you?”
“I’m in America. I don’t have my phone so I can’t call his cell.”
“He’s not here, baby. I’ll call him though, right now. Do you have a number for him to call you at?”
“Thank you, Ana. Have him call me at,” Jordan looked down at the piece of paper Maggie had written the number on and read it off for her.
“I’ll call him right now!”
Jordana hung up and waited. It didn’t take long. Her uncle was always putting work first. It made Jordana wonder how much of his doctor’s practice was legit and how much was just a front to throw off suspicion?
The phone rang and Jordana flinched. She exhaled and thought, here goes nothing.
“Uncle Beni?”
“Jordana! I’ve been worried sick. Where are you?”
Jordana sniffled. “It’s been horrible! Uncle Beni, I don’t know what happened.
I was in the , running from the men who had kidnapped me when I ran into a man from America.
His name is Forrest Townsend. He told me he loved me and he’d keep me safe.
I came to his hometown, Shadows Landing, in the state of South Carolina.
But then Dad was shot! Oh, Uncle Beni, who would do this to our family? ”
“I don’t know, Jory. Don’t worry, your father is safe in New York.”
Jordana sniffed. “No, he’s not. Forrest called the government to check on him.
I don’t know who he talked to, but the hospital told them they didn’t want to be the center of a political fiasco, so they sent him here.
To the middle of nowhere. Then Forrest just left me.
Left me all alone in this stupid little town where I don’t know anyone just because he got a new grant.
Dad arrived and he was so sick. I’ve been slowly nursing him back to health.
I think his fever is going back down, but he’s still going in and out of consciousness.
He hasn’t been able to tell me who shot him yet.
I’m hopeful he’s going to live. There are some signs that he’s beating this infection.
He will for sure if you’re here, Uncle Beni.
There’s only one doctor in this little town and he doesn’t know anything.
Please help me, Uncle Beni!” Jordana began to cry, and she didn’t need to fake it.
The hurt she felt at the chance that her uncle was the one behind this was breaking her heart.
“I’ll be there on the first flight, Jory. Don’t worry. I’ll be there soon and take care of everything. Where are you staying?”
“They don’t even have a hotel here. I’m at some old house that’s a bed and breakfast, but the owners are hardly here. It’s truly terrible, Uncle Beni.” Jordana gave him the address and waited as she heard him write it down.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Jory. Uncle Beni will take care of everything, I promise.”
Jordana hung up the phone. She took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
The biggest lie she told wasn’t that she was scared or what had happened to her dad.
The biggest lie she told was that Forrest would leave her.
She loved him so much and from the looks of it, her father approved.
She simultaneously both wanted Uncle Beni to be behind this so that it could be over soon, and was fearful that if it wasn’t Uncle Beni then the threat would go on forever.
They wouldn’t be able to focus on their future if the threat was still looming.
Jordana walked down the stairs and the sound of a debate reached her.
She smiled as the men debated who had the best naked pie banner.
She even heard her father chuckling. Her heart filled with the warmth Uncle Beni’s possible betrayal had stolen.
Her father was becoming part of the town just as they’d brought her in and made her feel part of the town and part of the Townsends.
Jordana listened to their banter for as long as she could.
However, time was limited. The happiness she’d felt listening to the group tease each other dimmed as she stepped into the room and all conversation and laughing stopped.
She didn’t want to be the cause of that, yet she was.
“The trap has been laid. Now we wait to see what happens when my uncle shows up. What do I need to do now?”
“Jory,” her father said, calling her over to him.
He took her hand in his and looked up at her.
“I think the time has come for me to take over. You know I’m a military man.
You know I know how to run an op. I may be stuck in bed, but my mind is now working again, thanks to you and this town saving my life.
I need to call Vara and update him. Then I need to call Secretary Ramsey.
It’s time for me to be the general and the politician. And it’s time for you to be safe.”
“But—” Jordana began to say.
Her father shook his head to stop her. “I already feel so much stronger, Jordana. This is more than my job. This is who I am. And if it’s my brother-in-law who is behind this, then I’m going to be the one to take him down. Now, does anyone have a cell phone I can borrow?”
Kenzie stepped forward. “My husband has a drawerful of burner phones. I’ll grab one for you to use.
I’ll program our numbers in it too and grab one for Jordana also.
However, even though you’re the general, I’m the one in charge of your recovery.
So, while I get the phones, you will rest.” Kenzie turned to the group and flicked her hands at them. “Shoo. My patient needs to rest.”
Jordana watched the room empty until it was only her, Gavin, and Forrest with her father. Forrest took her hand and turned to Gavin and her father. “We’ll wait outside while you do your exam.”
Forrest led her from the room and down the hall so even the agent couldn’t hear them. He brought her into the family living room and pulled her into a hug. “How are you doing?”
Jordana took a deep breath and leaned into his strength.
“I’m in survival mode. I keep telling myself, just one more day, just one more thing to fix or to do, and then I can finally live my life again.
But I feel as if each day starts adding on one more thing that I have to figure out or fix so I can continue to live. ”
“Tell me what you need fixed. I want to help you share that stress.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know. I just want to be happy and in love with you. And to have my father not in a completely different hemisphere. And I’d like people to stop trying to kidnap or kill me. And I’d really love it if it wasn’t my uncle behind this.”
“Then let us just be in love tonight. Tomorrow or whenever your uncle arrives will be too late. But right now, your father is resting, the town is back to work, and I can spend the evening with you.”
Forrest didn’t let her down either. She hadn’t wanted to be far from her father, but Forrest still turned the evening into a romantic one.
It started with a picnic dinner on the Bells’ dock.
They watched the sky turn from blue to various shades of orange, yellow, pink, and purple.
Then Forrest borrowed a boat and they slowly cruised the waterways around Shadows Landing.
“It’s hard to see now since it’s high tide,” Forrest said as he turned the boat down a smaller branch of the river.
“But this is how the pirates evaded the British. They turned down here and anchored behind the church.” After several minutes of a slow curve in the river, the church came into view.
“It’s not visible from the main body of the river.
They’d go by it and look down and see open water.
But then,” Forrest explained, “the tide goes out and this becomes impassible for the larger boats the British used.”
“What if they did turn down this way?” Jordana asked as she took in the river branch where Skeeter’s boat was currently docked behind the church. It had been completely invisible up until a minute ago.
“One did. It was sunk immediately and left there for decades after the British had been taken captive or killed. It was a sign to other ships that the waterway was too shallow because it looked as if it had been run ashore. Eventually, it broke down and in the early nineteen hundreds was dismantled for history. Skeeter told us some of the boat is in the South Carolina History Museum.”
Jordana watched as the back side of the town’s Main Street went by. Before the end of it, Forrest turned to the left down an even smaller waterway. “But here’s my favorite place.”
The reeds were tall and thick on each side of the waterway until suddenly they weren’t. It opened to what she’d call a good-sized pond, but completely surrounded by reeds. “It feels like we’re in a different world and we’re the only two people in it,” Jordana said with wonder.
Forrest shut down the engines and dropped the small anchor. He moved from the captain’s chair to the larger seat in the back. He put his arm out and Jordana slid onto the seat and into his arms.
“Thank you for this.”
Forrest leaned forward and kissed her. It was filled with such love that it became an emotional moment for Jordana. “I will always be here to show you how loved and cherished you are,” Forrest said in between whisper-soft kisses. “Anything you need, I’m always here to try to help.”
“And if what I need is you?” Jordana asked, her voice full of not only love but now desire as Forrest kissed his way down her neck.
“Then here I am. Take what you need, Jordana. I’m already yours.”
Jordana felt empowered as she moved to straddle Forrest. He kept his arms out along the side of the boat, turning himself over to her. Jordana smirked even as she kissed him. She wanted to see how long it would take to break his resolve not to touch her.
It took until she dropped her bra onto the floor of the boat.
Forrest groaned, his hands moving to cup her breasts as he surged up to take her mouth with his.
They were a partnership in every other way.
Why would it be different with sex? Sometimes she took the lead and sometimes he did. In the end, they both benefited.
“You’re so beautiful,” Forrest told her, looking into her eyes, a moment before he kissed her breasts. “I don’t know how I got so lucky.”
“Right place, right time,” Jordana joked, but then stopped joking when he removed his pants and finished what she started. Then the only words she could form were chanting his name over and over until he pushed her over the edge and words were no longer relevant.