8. Chapter 8
Chapter eight
H is friends turned out to be a lot like she’d expected. Which meant they reminded her of Roman and Max. Though one of them was a woman. They set up a rotation of guards, but Max stayed with her all the time.
Someone else might have gotten sick of spending so much time in a hotel suite, but she was used to working on her thesis for days at a time. Besides, she had the distraction of Max.
Totally delicious and wonderful, he used sex to help her work off any tension she built up being in the same two rooms. She didn’t need to go running when he loved her into a puddle of exhausted pleasure. Sex, the perfect cardio.
They kept talking, too, about their more recent pasts and their hopes for the future.
"So, you want to be doing this when you’re ninety?" she asked him at one point.
He shook his head. "Nah. Can’t do what I do when you lose your game."
"So, what does your future look like?"
"There’s a pretty high mortality rate in my profession."
"You plan to be dead?"
"Hell, no. "
"Then?"
Well, that answered the question of whether a black man could blush. He could. And it was adorable.
"What? With a reaction like that you can’t not tell me."
"You know I like to cook."
"You want to be a chef?" She wasn’t seeing why that would embarrass him.
"I want to own my own place."
"You want to open a restaurant."
"Nothing big. Not fancy-assed. Something that only serves breakfast and lunch."
"Like a diner."
"More like a deli, but not."
"One of those little food carts?" Maybe he thought former Marines should do something more dangerous, but she thought he’d be really amazing at this.
He loved to feed her...the suite had a mini kitchen, and he did most of the cooking.
"That, or a little coffee shop style place. Though I’m not looking at serving a bunch of fancy-assed coffees either. There are enough places that do that already. Not in Boston, but maybe in California. Mama and her teacher moved there a few years ago and they do enjoy the sunshine."
"Where in California?"
When he named a town only about thirty minutes from the one her parents lived in, Danusia felt the inevitability of destiny shiver across her soul.
#
Max hung up the phone as Danusia stood up and stretched from where she’d been working hunched over the suite’s fairly ample desk for the past six hours. He’d never seen anyone get so lost in deskwork for so long, well except maybe Spazz, but he was too antsy not to get up every hour or so and work off a little of his extreme extra energy.
Her pretty breasts pressed against her top, her nipples hardening as she moved in response to the now flowing blood in her body probably. She turned to him and caught him looking.
He grinned. "Nice view."
"I’m glad you’re enjoying the perks of babysitting me."
"Professor, I can guarantee you I don’t see you as a child."
She smiled and sauntered forward, putting a sexy sway in her hips she only did around him. He liked it. And he liked that she did it for him. "I need to go to the library."
"Too dangerous."
"How long are we going to be here?" she asked, though he could tell she wanted to argue about the library.
"The spooks are setting up a sting at your apartment. Making it look like you’re moving back in. They want the hit team."
"That tells me what they’re doing. Not how long it will take."
"There’s no way of telling, but we don’t have to stay here, professor."
"I’m not taking this trouble back to Roman’s place. What if they find me there?"
"My condo is ready, and the movers delivered my furniture today." He’d been thinking about taking her back to Boston since the threat level escalated with the Luminescent employee’s death, but he’d known Danusia wouldn’t go for returning to her brother’s apartment.
She looked at him, waiting for more.
"Come stay with me."
"I..." She looked over his shoulder, though he knew there wasn’t a damn thing of interest to see .
"You said you’re defending in October. Does that mean you aren’t signed up to help with classes in the fall?" he asked her.
"Yes."
"So, you’re just working on your thesis?"
"Yes."
"Does it have to be done here?"
"The university library is here."
"And you still need it?"
"Not exactly."
"Why the trip today then?"
"I want to verify some facts and a couple of resources."
"Sounds like busy work."
"I’m ready to get out of this suite."
She’d lasted longer than a lot of people would have. "I get that."
"So?"
"So, come home with me."
"For how long?"
Shit. He knew this question was coming and damned if he hadn’t decided what his answer was going to be. "For as long as I can get you to stay."
"You mean like in sickness, health, and corrupt pharmaceutical companies trying to get to me?" she asked, as her gaze came back to him.
"Yeah, like that."
"I..." She was looking at him again, but her eyes were filmed with tears. "I thought you didn’t want a relationship."
"I want you."
"Any way you can get me?"
"Pretty much, but damned if I’ll settle for casual. "
"You sound like a man who knows what he wants." She sounded like a woman who wanted what he did.
"I am."
"And love?" she asked.
"It comes with the package."
"You’re not going to say it?"
Damn it. He opened his mouth but closed it again. He hadn’t said those words to anyone in his adult life. Last time he’d said it to his mom he’d been about ten years old. They weren’t a kissy-huggy-tell-you-I-love-you-all-the-damn-time family.
Danusia smiled, but shook her head. "We’ll go to your place for now. We’ll work out the details later."
That was better than he expected after all the times he claimed he didn’t want a relationship. She didn’t ask for explanations. She didn’t demand those three words he found so hard to say.
She was perfect for him.
#
They flew back to Boston in the helicopter. Danusia left her car for the female agent baiting the trap for the hit team to use. They settled into a routine. She worked on her thesis during the day, and he went into the Atrati headquarters every day to his job when stateside.
The hit team took the bait three days after the female agent moved into Danusia’s apartment pretending to be her. Nothing was said by either of them about her returning to her apartment. One drawer in his dresser held her clothes as well as some hangers in the closet.
His spare bedroom had become an office with an oversized desk and overflowing bookshelves.
The spooks wanted Danusia’s help building their case against Luminescent. She gave it, though he knew it put her behind in her thesis.
When Roman’s team went off the grid in Africa, Max didn’t hide it from Danusia, trusting her to keep silent about it. Just like she’d managed to not give even a hint to her own involvement in an illegally developed weapons case at the federal level, or the fact she’d been the target for a hit team, despite several phone calls with family.
Her mother wanted a visit. He was thinking on that. On what to do about visiting his own family and getting to know Danusia’s...besides Roman anyway.
Then a team with his name on it got assigned a job in South America and Max had to make a choice.
#
Danusia was just sending some more support documentation off to the US Attorney General’s office for the case against Luminescent Pharmaceuticals when she heard Max arrive. He wasn’t due home for three more hours.
A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she went looking for him. She’d been waiting for this day since coming back to Boston with Max. She was sure she knew what was coming. They found each other in the hall outside the room he’d given her to make into an office.
The serious expression in his eyes made her stomach clench. "What’s going on, Max?"
"I got an assignment. South America. Fly out oh-four-hundred."
She nodded, her throat tight, her mouth suddenly so dry, she didn’t know how she was going to force words out, but she had to. This was where their relationship moved forward or broke forever. "I’ll get the rest of my stuff moved in here while you’re gone."
Something moved in his dark brown eyes, something like hope and joy. "You didn’t ask how long I’d be gone."
"It doesn’t matter. I’ll be waiting here for you when you come home. "
"This is home for you?"
"Wherever you’re going to be when you’re not working, that’s home for me."
"Oh, God." And it was a prayer not a curse the way he said it. He pulled her tight against him, in a way that had become familiar. "I love you, Danusia."
"I love you too, Max, so much." Hot tears ran down her cheeks.
He’d finally said the words and hers had been the right ones. He didn’t want to get rid of her. He wanted her to stay. He really wanted her.
"I refused the assignment."
"What? You? What?" She couldn’t breathe for the happiness blooming inside her. She was scared to trust it, but his dark gaze made promises.
"I’m not leaving you. You’re my family. My dad, maybe long-haul trucking was all he knew. Maybe it’s all he wanted. But damn, him and my mom? They weren’t happy. Maybe they wouldn’t have been even if he was home the other twenty-two days of the month, but I want a family with you...a life that includes time together."
"I thought you weren’t ready to retire from soldiering."
"I thought I wasn’t either, then I met you."
He wasn’t going to leave her alone. She meant so much to him that he was going to change his life for her. Danusia felt the happiness burst in her chest and she started laughing, even as the tears still tracked wetly down her cheeks.
He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
"You really like carrying me."
"Just call me Power Man."
She giggled as he dropped her on the bed. "I’d rather call you Max. You’re the man I love. "
He leaned down to kiss her, his lips right against hers as he said, "I love you. Always."
After they made love (which was so much more fun than packing him up to leave the country and put his life on the line again), she was snuggled into his side, drowsing when he asked, "Once you finish this PhD thing, how do you feel about moving to California, closer to our families?"
"You’re really serious about us, aren’t you?"
"I refused any more field assignments, I’d say so, yes."
She grinned against his dark, warm skin. Every time he said it, she loved hearing it – as much as hearing his I love you’s .
"Matej and Elle’s company has already made me an offer of employment. I wasn’t sure about it, though it’s exactly the kind of place I feel I could make the best income." Maybe she could build closer, more normal relationships with her siblings now that they were all adults and the age gap and the brain gap just wasn’t that important anymore.
He squeezed her tight, his hand settling on her hip. "We’re going to do it, aren’t we, sweetheart?"
"What?"
"Work on that happily ever after so many people talk about."
"Yes, yes, I think we are."
THE END
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