Legal Action - Box Set (14 page)

              Once they landed in London the last thing they wanted was to be closed up in a hotel room. So they piled supplies in a rented Land Rover, drove to the county of Surrey an hour south west of the city and for the first time in her life, Charlotte experienced tent camping.

              “You’re so good at this!” Charlotte said as she watched Finn competently erect a large tent.

              “Easy as pie, I’m a man of many skills,” he said, taking off his t-shirt and wiping his sweaty face with it.

              “Well then, hurry up with the bedroom!” she said and he threw the wet t-shirt at her. She could look at him forever, she thought, his body was such a finely tuned machine. He was six feet two inches of solid muscle and she had the inadvertent bruises to prove it. He didn’t mean to get rough, but he was strong, and God help her, she loved it. He avoided conflict and rarely argued, he was the consummate British gentleman, except in bed. Sex with Finn was
intense
, and she was digging it more every day.

              She watched him as he worked, shirtless, in baggy cargo shorts and work boots. His tattoos were mesmerizing, and combined with the ghosts of knife and bullet wounds, he looked
dangerous
. His hair was growing out from his former short military cut and it wasn’t as dark as she’d imagined. It was naturally streaked, chestnut brown and it had grown just long enough that he pulled it back into a short ponytail when he worked. His face was simply a miracle, large grey-blue eyes, straight, classic nose and high cheek bones. Of course, his mouth made him impossible to resist, it was so full and red and
so
fucking sexy
. She imagined those incredibly succulent lips on her body and she could feel herself blush.

              “For fuck’s sake, my love, are you trying to drive me out of mind?” He said, he was next to her in a flash and covered her mouth with his and pushed her back so she was lying on the picnic table where she’d been sitting. “What were you thinking that made you squirm and blush and completely distract me?” he asked, unbuttoning her shorts and jerking them down roughly as she ran her hands over his steel muscled arms and moaned. “Tell me what you were thinking, my insatiable beauty,” he whispered against her ear, then pressed his lips to her neck as his hands moved under her blouse.

              “I was watching you, your mesmerizing chest and back and arms… your hard, rippled stomach… and I was looking at the trail of hair from your stomach down to… ohhhhh God!” she cried in ecstasy as he roughly opened her with his fingers and pushed his cock into her, plunging so deeply it shocked and thrilled her.

              Later, when they lay panting and he rested with his head on her chest, he said, “Don’t distract me anymore, my love, or I’ll never finish the damned tent and we’ll have to sleep out in the open with all the wild things.” He stood and buttoned his shorts and bent to kiss her pretty bare pussy before helping her adjust her clothes. “I like our little experiment,” he said and smiled his crooked smile. “I have no idea how we managed it in that tiny bathroom and I suspect it was the half bottle of vodka we drank, but I think I’ll shave you again, out here in the wilds, in the morning.”

              “You know Finnegan, you’re as wild as all those filthy little sluts you were always dragging through the loft and using multiple condoms on.” She said, teasing him as he started to turn and go back to his tent building.

              He laughed and took her chin in his hand and raised her mouth to his, “you’re the most erotic woman I’ve ever fucked, my love, and the only woman I’ve ever
made love to
. And it hurt like hell when those nasty little tarts slapped the shit out of me for yelling your name at the strategic moment!” He kissed her with his heartbreakingly beautiful mouth and left her breathless as he went back to work.

              Charlotte began to unload the bags from the Land Rover and spilled the contents of her purse on the ground. She cursed as she gathered her things and glanced at her cell phone. It’s battery was nearly dead and she couldn’t remember the last time she used it. Some ‘
hell cat
’ in the courtroom she’d become, ‘
hell cat
’ in the bedroom was more like it. Before it went dead she tried to check messages but there was no reception at all in the primeval forests of Surrey.

              “Damn,” she muttered, throwing the useless phone back in her purse.

              Finn squatted beside her and helped refill her purse, then leaned toward her moving his fingers along her cheek. “What’s wrong, my love, what do you need? The tents up and I’ll unload all this, it’ll only take a minute.”

              “My damn phone’s dead and I swear the ridiculous thing wouldn’t get reception if I were strapped to the highest cell tower at the highest point on the planet!” she said, tossing her purse back in the car.

              He stood and pulled her up and against him, his eyes were happy, blue-grey and worry free. “Here,” he said, handing her a small cell phone from his pocket, “I guarantee this one can reach the president if you need it to.”

              She called her office in San Diego and told Billy Sheridan she was sorry but she would need more time away. He said they all missed her, especially her elegant, lethal style of bloodletting in the courtroom. They all wished her well and were anxiously awaiting the invitations to her wedding. She told him the wedding was off, there’d been a big change of plans and she’d fill him in later. He was speechless and she really couldn’t blame him, what kind of idiot would break off her engagement to Alexander Bly?

              The next morning she woke to the smell of tea brewing and as she crawled out of the tent Finn pulled her against him. “Morning, my love, care for a cup of the national beverage of the U.K.?” he said, handing her the cup with a glint in his eye.

              She sipped the tea and looked up at him, his hair was tosseled and there was dark stubble on his normally smooth chin. He was the kindest man she’d ever known, strong
and
gentle and her heart actually fluttered when she looked at him.

              “What the hell is that look in your eye, soldier?” she asked, tilting her head to study him.

              He urged her to finish her tea as he rubbed his chin and his eyes traveled down her body, she was wearing one of his soft, white under shirts and nothing more.

              “We both need a shave,” he said, and he leaned close to kiss her and bury his face in her neck, “I can’t believe the wicked urges you stir in me, my love. I never understood the ‘
bare down there
’ craze but fuck, Charlotte, shaving your tender little pussy is
fucking mind blowing!
”

*

              They drove through the English countryside and Charlotte was in heaven, the villages with cobbled streets and little, spired churches at the end of the lane were the definition of enchanting. They stopped in shops with hundreds of brands of tea and tins of biscuits and handmade woolen sweaters and scarves and charming oddities. Charlotte’s meager childhood in Mississippi made England, especially with her British boyfriend, a dream come true.

              At the Lion and Lamb Pub, Finn drank dark beer and Charlotte sipped wine. They ate roasted pork with root vegetables and Charlotte said English food was much better than she expected. Finn wanted her to try the lamb chops or rabbit but she said she most certainly would not eat a furry creature whose likeness belonged on a baby blanket.

              “We need to make a plan, my love,” Finn said, “as you know from my new passport I’m Phineas Hunter now. So Finn still works as a nickname, but a new identity’s not much camouflage really, if someone wants to kill me they’ll track you and there I’ll be”

              “That’s horrible, why would anyone want to kill you, you’re done with all that, you have you’re law degree, isn’t that that what you’ll do now, work as an attorney?”

              “Yes, it’s already in the works, I’m getting my license to practice in the U.K., the American Embassy has the process under way, it’s not a big deal. But, there could always be the danger of retribution against me. My identity was highly classified, but Jamey Huang discovered who I was, mainly because I lost my edge at the end, I gave myself away because I wasn’t focused enough.”

              “How can that be, Finn, you never make mistakes, I know how you were about your work, you were so fucking focused there was no room for us.”

              “Yeah, well that’s ironic, because there not being room for us is what ruined me as a perfect assassin. When you asked me to end my work as an operative and I wouldn’t, even though I was already so fucking in love with you I couldn’t see straight, I just became a machine. You warned me even, you said you couldn’t love me if you were always afraid I’d come back from the other side of the world in a body bag. You asked me to choose you or the job and I thought you would be there when I eventually gave it up. Then you were with Bly and it all went so fast, he consumed you and I began to lose my edge. All I could do was picture you with him and it killed me inside and I started making mistakes, stupid, deadly mistakes.”

              “Why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you stop me from being with him?” she asked.

              “Because when you were with him you didn’t have that awful, worried look you had when I would leave for a mission. I thought he really made you happy and he was what you wanted. He
is
the most eligible bachelor around, with his charm and his billions. I wanted you to be happy, but the thought of him with you, touching you… it began to seriously fuck with my head and then you were kidnapped because I slipped up somehow. They would’ve killed you because of me, and I couldn’t have lived with that.”

              After a week of braving the wilds they packed up and moved to a cozy room at the Prince John Inn. The nights were turning chilly as summer came to a close and they had no desire to return to London. In the next days and weeks they drove through the countryside exploring fairytale hamlets, planning what their lives would be like, just as they’d done in their law school years when they’d first been lovers. They held hands wherever they were, across the console of the Land Rover as they drove and when they walked down hidden roads overhung with the branches of ancient trees and up lanes thick with roses blooming riotously in the late August sun.

              One day they stopped for lunch in the dearest little town Charlotte had ever laid eyes on. She walked excitedly up and down the one cobbled street and called to Finn in delight each time she peered in the window of yet another quaint shop. The establishments included a slate roofed pub called the Mad Hatter, an intriguing Curiosity Shop filled with antiques, and as Finn informed her, a cobbler that actually made shoes for the Queen.

              “It’s a Dickens novel come to life!” she told him, “my God, who knew places like this really exist? Have you ever seen a more perfect little village in your life? I’m in love with it, in love with it, I tell you!”

              He wrapped his arms around her and they both laughed at her exuberance, and the unexpectedness of it, Charlotte, the barracuda lawyer, in love with a tiny English town in the middle of nowhere.

              “As a matter of fact I am acquainted with charming English villages; I grew up in this country if you remember. We lived to the north in Manchester but I visited my Grand Mum in the summers and she lived in a small town much like this one. Do you really love it here, more than any place we’ve seen so far?”

              “I do, absolutely, almost as much as I love you, but not quite. You’re still my number one love.”

              He kissed her; a long, heartfelt kiss, then rested his chin on the top of her head for a moment and asked if she wanted to see the best part of the village.

              They walked along a grass lane and climbed over a wooden fence into a stand of oak and birch trees. Then out of the woods into a bright meadow where a charming two story cottage stood surrounded by a low, stone wall nearly hidden under trailing wisteria. Charlotte caught her breath at the sight of it, the thatched roof bowed slightly in the middle and there was a charming arched trellis with a gate and flagstone path meandering to the front door. On the picket gate hung a weathered sign that said
Dovecote Cottage
.

              “Do you want to see inside?” he asked, holding up a large, iron key and looking like he knew the best secret in the world.

“Who lives here?” she asked, and couldn’t contain the excitement in her voice. “Was this your grandmother’s cottage?”

              “No,” he said, “come on, my love, let’s have a look around.”

              The front door was heavy oak with a leaded glass window, the door creaked as it opened and led directly into the living room. There were four rooms downstairs, a living room and small dining room, the kitchen and a spare bedroom. Each room had stone and plaster walls, roughhewn beamed ceilings, dark wood floors, a fireplace and wavy-glass windows. A narrow, crooked stairway led to two cozy bedrooms overlooking the front and rear gardens and a single bathroom with a white, claw foot tub sitting prettily in a bay window.

              “Finn, it’s like a dream!” Charlotte said, turning to face him.

              He was down on one knee holding a simple gold ring in his hand, and the look in his eyes said everything. She started to sink down beside him, but he told her to wait, he wanted it all to be done properly.

              “Charlotte my only love, my very heart, I can’t live without you and I hope you’ll accept this ring and this house and this man for as long as we both exist.”

              Tears streamed down her cheeks as she knelt in front of him, her arms went around his neck and he held her with tears on his own face. Soon they laughed; giddy and joyous as they wiped away their tears and before he could slip the ring on her finger she closed her hand teasingly and asked, “Is that it, you don’t have anything more to offer a girl like me?”