Chapter 23 Byrdie
Byrdie
One month later…
“How was that?” I turn to Nash, sitting beside me at the grand piano.
He smiles at me. “Perfect.”
I raise my eyebrow at him. “Are you telling me that because you love me, or because I nailed that piece of music with no help to read the music?”
He leans in close and kisses me. “Can it be a little of both?”
“You need to see this,” Makhi says from behind us, startling me.
There’s a note in his voice that instantly sets off alarm bells.
Breaking the kiss, Nash takes my hand and helps me up from the piano. After glancing at each other, confused about what’s happening, we follow Makhi out of the music room, across a white marble foyer, and into the den.
The villa in the south of France was Nash’s idea.
I thought he wanted to escape the reporters and the insanity of his uncle’s looming trial. Even if we’d wanted to leave the Gabriel Mansion, the reporters clogging the front gate for days made it impossible.
“I’m putting the house on the market,” Nash said over breakfast one day.
None of us had believed him at first.
By the end of the day, he’d found a couple of realtors to manage the sale, and Nance was busy coordinating the packing.
A week later, we were in a villa in Provence that Nash had rented for three months with no idea of what comes next. Getting away from a stifling town had been liberating for all of us and made us sure of one thing: our future is not in Massey, Arizona.
That town is in our past, and none of us have looked back since we arrived in the south of France.
Makhi is standing in front of the big screen TV, and what it shows stops me in my tracks.
“That’s the compound.” I lift a trembling hand to my mouth.
Men in black jackets with yellow FBI stamped on the back gather in small huddles with local police officers within the compound’s wire fence.
The headline running across the bottom of the screen is like someone plucked out a wish from my head that I’ve had since I watched Jeremiah’s acolytes lower my mom’s body into the ground.
“Jeremiah is dead,” I whisper.
“Someone took him out with a bullet right through his eye,” Makhi says.
I whip my head toward him. “How did you know? Did they announce how he died?”
“Witnesses,” Makhi explains, sticking his hands in his pockets.
“Apparently, he was in his cabin getting ready to spew whatever cult leaders spew when someone took him out. Everyone scattered. Then they realized all the guards were dead too. Someone made it into town, then the cops got the FBI involved.”
I sit down heavily on the couch before I fall. “When?”
Nash joins me on the couch and squeezes my hand.
“A week ago,” Makhi says. “It was on national news before it hit international.”
“A week?” Nash repeats, then snaps his head to the left.
We all turn to the left to look at Vonn, sitting quietly on an armchair, reading a new thriller he picked up at the airport.
An airport he was in because he had a family reunion back in Texas and was away for a couple of days.
“Vonn?” I ask faintly.
He lifts his head and glances at the TV before calmly putting his book down as if noticing this craziness for the first time. “Darlin’?”
“Did you…” I can’t bring myself to ask. “Did you do this? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
He turns back to his book.
I burst out, “Okay, I do need to know. Not the details, but did you kill Jeremiah?”
“Come here, sweetheart.”
I get up, and although my knees shake, I cross over to him and take a seat on his lap.
He frames my face with strong, calloused hands. “He shot at you,” he says quietly. “There was no future where I was going to allow him to do it again. My word and my life, I will always keep you safe.”
I hug him. No one has ever made me feel as safe and protected as Vonn, and no one ever will. “I love you, Vonn.”
He wraps his arms tightly around me. “I love you too, darlin’.”
“You did it with your army buds, didn’t you?” Makhi asks, grinning. “I bet you did it Rambo style with camo paint on your faces and knives clenched between your teeth.”
“A knife between his teeth?” Nash asks. “And since when did you watch Rambo?”
“It’s a classic,” Makhi sniffs, switching the TV off and tossing the remote on the coffee table. “We’ll watch it tonight.”
Vonn smiles at me when we stop hugging. “There was no knife between anyone’s teeth. Just a handful of experienced men who know how to shoot.”
“Are you sure it won’t lead back to you?” I ask, biting my lip.
“We left no tracks and stayed out of sight. It won’t lead back to any of us.” He tugs a tiny strand of my hair, making me smile.
My hair is approaching pixie-length after Jeremiah shaved it, and I appreciate having a little more hair on my head to keep it warm, even though Provence in the summer is beautiful and hot.
“So it’s all over.” I lean against his chest and wrap my arms around his waist.
“It’s all over,” Vonn confirms.
Nash’s uncle is in jail. The FBI arrested the sheriff and his deputy for corruption, and they’re unlikely to be cops ever again. Nash sold his family’s mansion, and we’re living in a beautiful villa in a beautiful part of the world.
“Have you thought about where you want to go next?” Nash asks as Nance walks in to tell us, “Lunch is ready.”
Nash lets out a long sigh. “Nance, you don’t have to keep cooking for us. We can get staff.”
“It’s what I like to do, and I will continue to do it for as long as I can,” Nance says.
“Do you ever miss the mansion?” Vonn asks Nash as we get up from the couch so we can eat lunch in the kitchen. This house comes with a gorgeous dining room, but we’ve all gotten so used to eating every meal family style in the kitchen. That looks unlikely to change anytime soon.
Nash shakes his head. “We took everything that meant anything with us. That mansion was nothing but a building filled with bad memories.”
“Did the investigation into your dad’s accidental fall ever find out what he was doing on the roof the night he died?” I ask Nash. “That had to have been why your uncle was so sure someone had killed him.”
Even after Marcus Gabriel’s arrest, he was still claiming that Nash, Makhi, or Vonn killed Nash’s dad. No one believed him.
“No one knows,” Nash says. “I spent most of my time avoiding him. Especially towards the end. He was always the worst when he drank.”
Nance says briskly, “Whatever he was doing up there can’t have been anything good. Time for lunch.”
Makhi cocks his head as he watches her disappear into the kitchen, his expression thoughtful. “You don’t think Nance would have—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nash cuts in. “It’s Nance.”
We all look at each other and start laughing at the crazy idea of Nance shoving Nash’s dad off the roof.
“Nance wouldn’t do something like that,” I say, still laughing.
My smile disappears, replaced with a frown when I recall how determined she has always been to protect Nash. And her warning to stay away from the roof.
A moment of doubt hovers in my mind, and not just mine. Nash is looking thoughtful. When he notices me watching, he grins, “Nance?”
“Crazy,” I say, shaking the thought of Nance killing anyone out of my head.
It’s the next day, and I’m going on an early afternoon bike ride.
“You still haven’t taught me to ride,” I say to Makhi as he leads the way out of the villa.
Nash had it shipped over with the grand piano from Arizona.
Riding in Massey was fun.
Riding in Provence is incredible.
“I haven’t, have I?” he says with a grin.
“I still haven’t forgiven you for slamming a door in my face,” I tell him severely, just in case he thinks I have.
He lifts our joined hands and kisses my knuckles, making my breath catch. “Haven’t you?”
“Just because I have a reaction when you kiss me doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you. It just means my body likes it.”
He dips his head, his mouth hovering over mine. “Your body has so many interesting reactions when I do things to you.”
“Stop seducing me,” I whisper, fighting to keep my eyes on his and not on his mouth.
The corners of his eyes tighten in a smile. “Why? Is it working?”
Scowling, I step around him.
And I slam to a stop.
I point. “What’s that?”
The basket at the end of his bike is new. When we ride, it’s us, helmets, the clear blue sky and the sun bronzing our bare shoulders.
My traitorous body betrays me again when he drops a kiss on my neck and wraps his arms around my middle. “That is a picnic I asked Nance to make for us. I thought we could go for a ride, eat a little lunch, and…”
“And?” I turn to look up at him.
“And,” he says with finality, ignoring my glare when he hides what other plans he has for us. Grinning, he snags my hand and leads me to the bike. “Come on.”
I eye him suspiciously. “Nance hates you. Why would she prepare the food for a picnic?”
“She’s secretly in love with me.” He winks at me, and I roll my eyes.
“I’m going to tell her you said that,” I warn him.
He actually looks concerned.
Laughing, I throw my leg over the bike, tugging the hem of my skirt down and holding it until I sit when Makhi looks like he’s having ideas. “I won’t do that to you. Not yet, anyway.”
He places the helmet on my head and puts his on. Once he’s climbed on the bike, we speed away from our villa.
He takes me to a lavender field so beautiful I want to cry.
“Why here?” I ask as he helps me off the bike.
“It was the most beautiful place I could think of taking the woman I love,” he says softly.
My breath hitches.
“And if she doesn’t love you back?” I whisper, my heart pounding against my chest.
The kiss on the corner of my mouth is light but perfect. “Then I will love her anyway.”
We sit on a red-checked blanket he pulls from the basket tied to the back of the bike.
He lifts containers of olives, fresh bread still warm from the oven, cold chicken, cheese, and crisp apple slices.
We eat with our fingers and sip glasses of ice-cold wine, and he rests his head in my lap as I take in our magical purple haven.