15
“It couldn’t have turned out worse,” Kay was saying as Jill hurried down the long hallway and took a left followed by a right until she was hopelessly turned around. She ducked into an empty room furnished with nothing but a window overlooking dense dark Virginia forest. Jill sat her butt down on the edge of the cool metal window-sill, glancing up just as Jack’s broad frame appeared in the doorway.
“Just so you know, they’re all listening in on speaker in the conference room.” Jack ambled past Jill to the wall beside the window, slid his butt down to the carpeted floor, stretched out his legs and made himself comfortable. Then he looked up at her, gestured with his head, patted the carpet beside him. “Sit. It’s the middle of the night and you’re exhausted.”
Jill sighed, then nodded and sat down next to him. She stretched out her legs alongside his, adjusted the hem of her black dress so it wouldn’t ride up too far, then placed the phone on her thigh and tapped the speakerphone button.
“How’s Nina?” Jill asked. “Did Romeo let her go to a hospital?”
“Of course not,” said Kay. “We were hoping to pass off Bobby’s death as a tragic car accident. But Nina heard all the gunshots and saw Bobby getting shot. She’s been screaming her head off about shooters and ambushes and assassins. There’s no way Romeo’s going to let her go anywhere near a hospital or the police until she settles down—which isn’t going to happen anytime soon. She’s strung out and hysterical. It’s chaos here at the mansion, Jill.”
Jill’s heart sank. “Is . . . is Romeo going to kill her to shut her up? Because if he is, I’m going to call 911 right now and send the cops to the mansion.”
“Do not do that, Jill. Trust me, it’s a bad idea. The local police are on Romeo’s payroll, and they’ll write it up like Romeo says.” Kay was silent for a breath. “Besides, Nina’s been saying that Jack killed Bobby, that you put Jack up to it because you didn’t want the wedding to happen. So calling the cops is only going to get them looking for you and Jack, and if that guy Benson really is ex-CIA, I guarantee he wants to stay clear of the cops and FBI as far as possible.” She sighed again, then inhaled sharply. “Anyway, Romeo’s not going to hurt Nina. Word has already gotten around that Bobby was shot dead, so it’s pointless to try to keep Nina quiet now. Romeo has other things on his mind right now anyway, with Bobby’s mom going nuts. Romeo also has to deal with the wedding guests, many of whom are members of the other East Coast Mafia Families.”
Jill glanced anxiously at Jack, then gulped and nodded. “So . . . so Nina’s safe for now?”
“Yes.” Kay paused a beat. “But you aren’t, Jill.”
Jill frowned. “What? But . . . but Romeo knows Jack and I didn’t shoot Bobby.”
Kay sighed. “I . . . I advised Romeo to stick with Nina’s story that you and Jack did it.”
“Wait, what?” Jill almost screamed into the phone. “You know we had nothing to do with it, you . . . you bitch!”
Kay exhaled, and Jill could almost feel her shrugging. “I’m sorry, Jill, but it was the best option, the best narrative, the best explanation. Especially after you guys fled the scene and almost got Romeo’s guards killed in that second crash. Besides, it was the only way I could convince Romeo not to put a bullet in Nina’s head and dump her body in the Delaware River, Jill.” Kay took a sharp breath now. “Look, you know Romeo wasn’t particularly fond of Bobby in the first place. And so Bobby’s mom was convinced that Romeo himself had her son killed. Nina’s story about how you wanted to stop the wedding and hired Jack to kill Bobby worked to get Bobby”s mom off Romeo’s case. It’s the rational choice.” She took a breath, sighed it out. “And the cold truth is, it serves my purposes too.”
Jill frowned as the rage settled to a hot simmer. “How does it help you?”
Kay sighed again. “Oh, Jill, you should have taken my advice and walked away while you still could. You aren’t cut-throat enough for this world.” She chuckled coldly. “But I bet that snake John Benson understands. He’s listening, isn’t he?”
Jill looked up at Jack, whose face was clouded with anger, eyes burning a hole in the phone balanced delicately on the curve of Jill’s thigh. Benson didn’t respond, but Jack did.
“It works for you because now Romeo Carmine is forced to avenge his nephew’s murder by coming after Jill and me,” Jack growled. “Romeo might not personally give a shit about Bobby, might even be thrilled his nephew is dead. But it happened in the middle of the wedding party, with all the East Coast Mafia Families in attendance. Romeo will have to hit back to save face, to protect his reputation. That’s the code by which these mafia scumbags operate in their underworld society.” He glanced grimly at Jill. “Nina’s story serves Kay’s purposes because it clearly identifies the two of us as Bobby’s killers, takes suspicion away from himself, prevents any rumors that a rival Mafia Family was involved. It’s the cleanest path for Romeo, and it makes sense to take it. Romeo’s already declared war on Darkwater, and so he might as well double down. It’s not a bad move at this point. He knows Darkwater isn’t law enforcement, that if there’s a showdown, it’ll happen in the shadows because Benson and Kaiser don’t want the public to know that a CIA-linked off-the-books team operates within U.S. borders.”
Kay gasped in mock surprise. “Well done, Jack Wagner. I’m re-thinking that action-figure comment after this display of intelligence.”
Jack chuckled dangerously. “Nah, you aren’t reconsidering a damn thing. You’re betting that an action-hero Delta-Force killer like me is not going to rest easy with a target on our backs. That’s what you want from this deal, isn’t it, Kay? You want Romeo Carmine dead. You’ve set it up so that Jill and I will never be safe unless Romeo is dead, and you think I’ll kill him to protect her.” He snorted. “You and Benson would make a good team, Kay. You both have a surprising talent for twisting morality to suit your own purposes.”
Kay snorted back at him. “There’s no such thing as morality, and I bet Benson knows that better than anyone. We’re all driven by animal instinct and selfish incentives. Morality is just a story we tell ourselves so we can pretend that we’re somehow better than the beasts who prowl the jungle.” She paused a beat, her voice sharpening when she continued. “And you, Jack Wagner, are very much in touch with your jungle instincts. From what I heard, you almost ripped Bobby Carmine’s throat out in the parking lot for calling Jill something unmentionable. Oh, and that moment on the dancefloor with you and Jill seemed more than just an act. Tell me, Jack, if the phone hadn’t interrupted you back then, would you have kissed her?”
Jill stared at the phone, her cheeks burning from the rush of hot blood. She gulped back some unnamable emotion, glanced up at Jack, who was frowning so hard his entire face was twisted into a sharp V.
He flicked his gaze to meet Jill’s, then blinked and seemed about to respond when Benson’s voice crackled from the phone’s loudspeaker.
“What happens to the deal with Diego if Romeo is killed? Hell, what happens to the Carmine Mafia Empire if Romeo dies suddenly?” Benson asked. “He doesn’t have any children, no siblings other than Bobby’s mother—who doesn’t seem to be part of his mafia operations, doesn’t appear capable of becoming a mafia queen, heiress to Romeo’s throne. Bobby could have been the heir, but it sounds like Romeo didn’t want that either. So what’s the succession plan for the Carmine empire if Romeo drops dead, Kay?”
“There isn’t a succession plan.” Kay’s voice carried a hint of eye-rolling contempt. “Romeo finds the whole system of bloodline-based entitlement to be tasteless and pathetic. His legal will contains only a few sentences. Bobby’s mother keeps the mansion in Philadelphia along with a generous trust fund that will maintain her in luxury for the rest of her life. Bobby would have been part of that. But that’s all they get. The rest of his wealth—both legal and illegal—is up for grabs.” She laughed once. “Romeo wants chaos to reign after he’s gone. Law of the jungle. Whoever can take what Romeo leaves behind, gets it. No rules. Romeo wants the other Mafia Families to fight over his territory. His bodyguards and henchmen can fight over his possessions—the cars in the garage, the cash in the drawers, the damn silverware and bedsheets, for all Romeo cares. The banks and investment companies will get into legal battles to claim the money in his accounts and investment portfolios. The government will try to seize his properties and homes. Distant relatives will crawl out of the woodwork to claim their share. Fake relatives will show up with forged credentials. There’ll be court-cases and street-battles. There’ll be bribery and blackmail, threats and treachery, murder and mayhem.” Kay laughed again, then sighed. “Romeo imagines himself watching in glee from the afterlife as criminals and government agencies and banks and hedge funds all fight over pieces of his kingdom. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” She sighed again. “Too many testosterone injections, if you ask me. But I guess we all have our internal narratives, our personal legends, private myths of our own greatness.”
Benson’s chuckle came through the phone. “Hell, that’s the best succession plan I’ve ever heard. I like this guy Romeo. And that bit about personal narratives and private myths is solid psychoanalysis, Counselor.” He chuckled again. “Though some of us make those narratives external, make those legends public, pull those myths out of the privacy of our own minds so the people around us can share in our greatness. Am I right, Team?”
Laughter and groans from the Darkwater war-room crackled through the phone. Jill raised both eyebrows. Jack grinned and shook his head.
Benson’s voice came through again, all-business now. “All right, Kay. Maybe we can do business, now that I know you want something from us. Incentives are everything, just like you so wisely explained.” He waited a breath. “I still need more from you, though. Especially since you’re going to get what you want from us—after all, Romeo Carmine was a dead man even before you called me. He ordered a hit on my guy Jack, and that’s a death sentence in my book. But Romeo is a side-effect, just a pit-stop on the road to Diego Vargas. Romeo isn’t the real target, and although we’ll get to him eventually, I’m not letting anyone take him down until we have a plan to bring Diego back out of the shadows. Look, Kay, you need to—”
Benson stopped abruptly, went silent for a moment, then started saying something to Nancy and Paige, all of them speaking in hushed tones. Jill couldn’t make out the words, but she sensed the excitement in Benson’s tone, like he was actually enjoying this, like it really was a game to this mysterious ex-CIA man.
Then suddenly she realized that Benson wasn’t the only one enjoying this.
Jill was too.
It startled her to admit it, maybe even mortified her. After all, her once-best-friend Nina hated her, a mafia boss was out to kill her, her car was wrecked, her clothes were torn, her phone and wallet had been stolen by a manipulative lawyer who seemed perfectly content to play both sides, wheel-and-deal her way to some endgame that wasn’t completely clear to Jill, perhaps not to anyone except Kay Steffen herself.
“Look, Benson, I’ve told you all I know,” came Kay’s voice now. She sounded distracted, and Jill could hear a car engine start in the background, like perhaps Kay was calling from her car in the Carmine Mansion’s parking lot. “I need to go. Romeo catches me talking to you guys and I’m dead before I hang up.”
“A minute ago I’d have said I don’t give a shit, Counselor,” Benson said slowly, like he was focused on something else. In the background Jill could still hear Paige and Nancy, their voices low but urgent, like something was up. “But in light of some very interesting information that my team has just chanced upon, perhaps there is a way to bring Diego out of the shadows sooner rather than later. You might be more useful than you know, Counselor.” He chuckled. “We’ll call you back, Kay. Go ahead and end the call, Jill. Good work.”
Jill was startled when Benson called her name, complimenting her like she was part of the team, part of the group, part of this story. She blinked and smiled, then tapped the phone screen and ended the call—a call she’d started by snatching the phone off Benson’s desk and scampering down the hall of this strange building hidden in the woods of Virginia!
And now Jill almost fainted as the facts hit her like a barrage of bullets.
Had she seriously just moderated a negotiation with a crooked lawyer to broker a deal to murder a mafia boss and flush out a South American thug who’d tried to assassinate a U.S. Presidential candidate?
Sure. Why not.
It made about as much sense as anything else today, right?
Jill slumped against the wall, blinking in dizzy confusion as the room began to spin. Then she felt Jack’s arm slide around her shoulders, and now he was gathering her into his warm body and stroking her hair and kissing her forehead and comforting her, cradling her, whispering soft words that soothed her even though she couldn’t understand what he was saying because she was drifting in and out of consciousness.
“You’re amazing, Jill,” he whispered into her hair as she nuzzled into the crook of his shoulder and inhaled his warm masculine aroma. “Resilient, strong, and completely incredible. Twelve hours ago you thought you were being carjacked by a murderer. Instead of freezing up, you fought for your life.” He smiled as he held her. “You almost ran me over back then, but now you’ve totally floored me, Jill. I am so impressed with how you’ve held it together today, sweetheart. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner on this mission. You had my back, Jill. You were coming to the hotel to warn me that Kay and Romeo were onto me. Yeah, you had my back, and I’m going to have yours. Nobody’s going to hurt you on my watch. And my watch is never going to end. My duty to protect you is going to last forever, Jill. Benson was right—Romeo Carmine is just a speed-bump in the road to our forever. You hear me? Jill? Hey, Jill?”
Jill looked up woozily, but she couldn’t see his face clearly. The day’s exhaustion had finally caught up with her, and her vision was going in and out. She moved her lips to speak, but she couldn’t hear the sound of her own voice.
Instead she heard Benson’s voice crackle through the phone on the carpet beside her.
“Get some rest, you two,” he was saying. “It’s the middle of the night, and nothing’s going to happen until tomorrow. There are sleeping quarters below ground level in the south wing.”
“Roger that,” said Jack stiffly. “I’ll put Jill to bed and then join the team in the war-room.”
“Negative,” said Benson. “You get some rest too, Jack. We’re good up here. Paige and Nancy found something on Kay that might help us bring this thing to a close, but we need some time to dig deeper.”
Jill thought she heard some stifled laughter in the background, but she couldn’t be certain of anything right now. It was like her body had finally understood that it was safe for the time being.
Perhaps safe forever.
“You’re safe, Jill,” came Jack’s whisper, and Jill felt herself being lifted into his arms for the second time today. She felt her body instinctively snuggle into him as he carried her effortlessly from the room, down the long hallway, around a bend and down a tunnel, finally stepping into a gleaming elevator whose doors closed with a gentle sigh.
The elevator began to descend, and Jill was puzzled when she felt her ears pop like the pressure had changed.
“How far underground does this building go?” she murmured when the elevator finally bumped to a stop and the doors slid open with that quiet hissing sound, like steam escaping from vents in the earth. “Where are you taking me?”
“Actually, I don’t know.” Jack stepped out of the elevator and stopped, turning left and right with Jill in his arms as he looked around. “This underground section with the sleeping quarters is all new to me. Hopefully they haven’t furnished all the rooms yet. If we’re in luck, there’ll only be one bed ready for use.”
“Oh, right, like the plot for your favorite porno movie.” Jill snickered against his chest as he carried her down the hall, which smelled like fresh carpet and new paint, the clean air infused with the woodsy aroma of cedar or pine, like they were somewhere beneath the Virginia forest, amongst the ancient roots of gigantic old trees which had been there for centuries, had their own sense of space and time, understood the vast seasons of the universe’s epochs, were whispering those secrets to Jill as Jack carried her deeper into their burrow down the Darkwater rabbit-hole.
Jack chuckled, the sound of his laughter sending vibrations of mirth through Jill’s wonderfully relaxed limbs that were draped over Jack like they were both part of the ancient root systems of this cosmic forest, intertwined and interlocked, tied together by fate, drawn together by destiny.
“Let’s try this room,” Jack muttered, stopping outside a closed door. Jill heard him push it open with his boot. “Perfect.”
Jill struggled to turn her head as Jack carried her across the threshold. The room had midnight-blue walls with forest-green carpeting and matching green trim on the black ventilator grills. A black metal desk with a matching chair stood against the wall. An open closet stood beside a closed door that presumably led to a restroom.
Against the far wall, beneath the gently humming ventilator grill, lay a metal-framed double-bed with an air-mattress made up in military-gray bedclothes and matching fleece blankets. Jack lowered her onto the mattress, which was firm and bouncy, perhaps over-inflated. Jill giggled as she jiggled, then smiled when she saw Jack opening up the fleece blanket for her.
He covered Jill from her toes to her chin, then stepped back, rubbed the back of his neck, grunted, and finally strode over to the solitary desk and dragged out the chair. He sat down, lifted his legs and placed them on the table, positioning himself in an improvised recline that looked terribly uncomfortable.
“I think maybe we stumbled into the torture-chamber section of Darkwater HQ,” Jack grumbled as he tried a few different positions, then slid his body off the chair and landed on the carpet. He rolled over onto his back, cradled his head in his left palm, stared up at the ceiling, then turned his head towards her and smiled. “You need anything, Jill?”
Jill shook her head.
Jack nodded. “All right. Holler if you do need something.” He closed his eyes.
Jill watched him quietly. She was exhausted but still wide awake. It wasn’t that wired sort of alertness, though. It was a steady buzz that had started building when Jack lifted her into his arms. Being snuggled into his big warm body had affected her in a way that she didn’t want to admit to herself—let alone to him.
She watched him silently for several more breaths. The room was dark and still, nothing but the gentle drift of air from the ventilators. Jill swallowed, sighed, tried to close her eyes, couldn’t do it.
“Jack?” she whispered.
Jack grunted, opened one eye. “You need something? Water? Food?”
Love, came the thought from Jill’s buzzing body, but the word stayed tucked inside her because of course it couldn’t be said because it couldn’t be real.
“I . . . I’m fine,” she said hesitantly. “It’s nothing. Sorry.”
Jack studied her with that one open eye. Then he grunted, shrugged, and closed the eye.
Jill sighed, turned on her side, the motion making her bounce on the over-inflated air-bed. She sighed again, turned on her other side, then yanked the fleece blanket down past her breasts because suddenly she was hot and uncomfortable, scratchy and cranky.
She’d left her shoes in the medical center after that nice woman Fay had checked her for shock. Fay wasn’t a doctor, but apparently both her parents—now deceased—had been doctors who’d trained Fay in both modern and some not-so-modern medical techniques while growing up in Iceland. Jill stuck her bare feet out the bottom of the fleece blanket. Her toes were free, but Jill still had her black tights on, and suddenly she wanted them off.
Jill glanced at the closed bathroom door past Jack the resting giant. She considered tiptoeing over him, but she’d been unsteady on her feet earlier and she didn’t want to step on Jack and wake him. She could wriggle out of her tights beneath the blanket, couldn’t she? It was dark.
She slid her hands beneath the blanket, found the bottom hem of her black dress, tried to pull it up over her hips so she could get to the waistband of her tights. She got the front of her dress up, but needed to raise her ass off the mattress to get the back of the dress up past the curve of her butt.
Sucking in a breath, Jill lifted her bottom off the mattress, yanked up her dress, then plopped back on the over-inflated mattress. The entire bed bounced frantically, the springs of the metal frame squeaking beneath her as the over-inflated mattress bounced like a darned trampoline as she wriggled and wrenched, shoved and shimmied, tugged and tore at her tights to get them off her.
Finally she got them off past her legs, but the effort had made her hotter than before. Still, the pesky tights were off now. She’d cool down soon enough.
The fleece blanket was all bunched up around her waist, and just as Jill gathered up her tights and was about to toss them into the corner of the room, she gasped in horror at the mortifying revelation that she’d pulled off her panties along with the tights and now her dress was hiked up past her hips and the fleece blanket had fallen away and her recently waxed pussy was exposed to the open air, plumped up like it was on display.
“Shit,” Jill gasped, flinging the crumpled mass of tights and panties away from her with one hand, frantically tugging at the hem of her dress with the other. She managed to get the dress down far enough, then got the blanket spread out over her bare thighs, relieved that she’d accomplished all of it without waking Jack.
Or maybe not.
“Hey, Jill?” came his muffled voice from the carpeted floor.
Jill froze, wondering if she should pretend to be asleep. Thankfully the room was dark enough that even if Jack had glanced over, he wouldn’t have seen everything, maybe wouldn’t have seen anything at all. Anyway, he must have heard her tossing and turning, wriggling and struggling. No need to fake being asleep. Her modesty was intact. Her dignity was preserved.
“Yes?” she said with measured nonchalance, languidly turning her head in his direction like everything was fine, totally cool, nothing to see here.
But then she saw why Jack’s voice had sounded muffled earlier.
“Ohmygod, I didn’t mean to do that!” Jill shrieked in horror when she realized that while tossing her bunched-up tights and panties, the two items of clothing had separated, and while the tights had ended up in the corner of the room like she’d intended, her panties had taken a different flight-path and had landed very much not where she’d intended! “Oh, I’m so embarrassed! I so did not mean for that to happen, Jack!”
“So it was a mistake? Well, that’s disappointing,” Jack growled from beneath her panties, which had landed squarely on his face and were still covering his mouth and nose as he rumbled with laughter.
Jill buried her face in the blanket, giggling uncontrollably for a few seconds before gathering herself enough to face him. But when Jill peered out and focused her eyes in the darkness, she saw that she couldn’t face Jack because Jack’s face was not visible through the crotch of her panties.
“OK, you can take my underwear off your face now,” she said, rolling towards the edge of the bouncy bed and trying to snatch her panties back. “Give me those, you pervert,” she giggled as Jack stuck his tongue stiffly up so that her panties rose off his face like a black butterfly. “You’re sick.”
She managed to grab her panties off his face. She balled them up tight, aimed carefully, and hurled them into the corner of the room where her tights had landed. She glared at Jack’s grinning face for one hotly embarrassed moment, then buried her face in the fleece blanket again.
A crackling, electric silence descended over them. Jill’s entire body felt alive and awake, tingly and tender. She was about to poke her head out when she heard movement on the carpet beside her bed. Jill gasped silently, then wriggled her body away from the bed’s edge until her butt touched the wall.
The stealthy sounds of approaching manliness sent ripples through her tingling body, and Jill gasped again when she felt Jack’s weight press down on the mattress. Slowly she peeked out past the top of the blanket. Her breath caught when she realized she was looking right into his eyes.
“Did I ever tell you what my second-favorite porno-movie plot is?” he whispered devilishly as Jill blinked in the darkness, her smile broad and beaming, her body happy and humming.
“Panties dropping from the sky?” she teased.
Jack gazed at her with a strange intensity, then shook his head. “No,” he whispered, moving closer to her until they were both curled sideways on the bed, facing each other in the shining darkness. “It’s the plotline where the man says I love you and the woman says I love you too.”
Jill blinked about a hundred times as waves of the most wonderful warmth flowed through her buzzing body. “I . . . I don’t think I’ve encountered that plotline in a porno movie,” she said, trying to tease but unable to keep the tremble out of her tone.
“Well, you’re about to encounter it,” he whispered.
Jill giggled nervously, then gasped when she saw that Jack was serious as hell, that this wasn’t just his cocky game anymore, that this was for real, this was for the win.
“Oh, Jack, this is . . . crazy,” she whispered as Jack leaned closer now, the two of them ensconced in a dark room whose walls seemed like a flimsy background of a stage-set, like at any moment those walls might fall away to reveal a deeper reality where the two of them were the center of the universe, making it clear that the only purpose of events was to bring them together, that all of existence was a trick of light and shadows, everything just a peacock-dance of color and coincidence, space and time, man and woman. This man and this woman. “Oh, Jack, I don’t know what to say.”
“I do,” whispered Jack. “I know damn well what to say.”
Jack ran his fingertips along her cheek now, sending the most awesome tingle of warmth through Jill’s curled-up body. She stared in disbelief at the intensity of his gaze, and once again that surreal feeling of familiarity rippled through her, like she knew this man in the deepest way you could know anyone, that they’d lived a lifetime in a day together, that there was no other explanation for this depth of feeling, this intensity of emotion, this certainty of sensation.
Jill nodded in wide-eyed wonder as Jack stroked her cheek tenderly. He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, gazed at her like time had slowed to the point where she could feel each emotion linger and build upon itself, transporting her to some higher plane of feeling, someplace where the real world was tiny and distant, where the details of the day were nothing more than a footnote to the real story.
The story of Jack and Jill.
Him and her.
You and me.
“You’re mine, Jill,” he whispered in the poignant darkness, his words meeting her thoughts like two dancers meeting in the center of the round, like Jack was seeing what Jill had just seen, caught a glimpse of the vivid reality behind the veneer of the physical world. “You’re mine and I love you, Jill. I love you.”
“Oh, Jack, I . . . I love you too.” Jill heard herself say the words and was once again overwhelmed by that surreal sensation that the real story wasn’t going on out there but in here, that there was no bigger picture, that everything else was tiny and distant compared to the magnitude of what she was feeling right now. “Are we crazy for saying it, Jack?”
“Not with this crowd,” Jack said with a smile, studying her face lovingly for a moment, then leaning close enough for Jill to feel his warm breath on her wet lips. “With this crowd we fit right in, baby. Jack and Jill in the house. Here comes the kiss.”
Jack’s lips drew close now, closer, so close . . .
Then he stopped abruptly, raised an eyebrow, peered suspiciously off to the side. “That’s strange,” he whispered. “I expected some suspiciously coincidental interruption to stop us just before we kissed.”
Jill glared at him with stern amusement. “You mean like the way you’re interrupting the kiss by waiting for something to interrupt the kiss?”
Jack grinned. “Just giving the universe one last chance to object.” He rolled his gaze around the room. “I think we’re good.”
Jill nodded very seriously. “I think so too.”
She grinned. Jack chuckled.
And then he kissed her.
Slow and sweet, delicate and deliberate, carefully and completely.
He kissed her.
By God, he kissed her.