Soul and Blade (20 page)

He turned out not to be what I expected either.

When I walk to him his face is twisted, not just in anger but also in disappointment. Maybe in me or maybe for me.

I click off the camera and the earpiece. “You killed him, didn’t you?” This is the piece of Dash I have been missing. This is the darkness inside him. He has taken a life against his oath as a doctor and against his nature as a human.

Dash looks down, pressing his lips together. “I didn’t know the details. I never lied to you. Antoine came to me and I wanted to be able to say I didn’t know your name and I didn’t know who you were. I wanted deniability. I didn’t even know where this house was until recently. I swear.”

“I’m not mad.”

He sighs. “I had to do it. You know that, right?”

I nod, but I’m a little worried about him. “Have you killed other people?”

“His blood is the only blood that stains my hands. It was a terrible thing to do, but the pictures were too much. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let him live. I am not strong enough. I went to confront him. Antoine traced his credit cards. I only wanted to confront him about your fate. But I got so angry—” His hands tremble and his eyes turn dark, scary dark. His brow is so furrowed I don’t know that it will lift again. The haunted look in his eyes makes sense. The things he has done for me. I realize then the darkness inside my lover’s heart was put there because of me.

“None of it matters now.” I step into him, pulling him to me. “Thank you, though.”

“What for?”

“Taking it all away. I wish it were gone again. I wish I didn’t know.” I think about the story I made up for Samantha Barnes and realize I must have known all along. I must have had an idea.

“Taking it away doesn’t work. You are a naturally curious person. You solve the crime no matter how hard I hide it. You solve the crime and I look like an asshole for hiding shit from you.”

I laugh weakly into his chest. “I want to go home. I want to forget all of this.”

“What about her?”

“She was Penny’s mother. She’s not mine.” I link my fingers into his.

“Penny?” He looks confused. He honestly never knew my name.

“That was my name.”

“I hate the name Penny. I like Jane.”

“Even Jane Doe?”

He chuckles. “We gave you a proper English name. Spears is very respectable. He was also the doctor who first operated on you when you were found.”

“I think Townshend will suit me more.”

He pauses, looking down on me. “You do?” His eyes fill with hope and whatever is left over from talking about him murdering a man in cold blood.

“I love you, Dash. I have always loved you. I will always love you. Even if I were to get my memories wiped again, I would find you again. Every time.”

He smiles but says nothing. He kisses me softly and whispers, “Then let’s go home.”

I have a feeling “home is where the heart is” will become something of a thing for us. He has likely moved us into the big house. The mischief in his eyes suggests it.

We walk to the car he has down the road.

Walking away from something bad and toward something new.

21. MARRY YOU

T
he big house is not my type of house. But I like the pool. I drop my robe on the sun chair and jump in. The cool water refreshes. I swim with the huge wolfhound running laps around the deck. His whine means he’s contemplating coming in.

“Sirius, go lie down,” Dash commands. The dog tucks his tail and finds his huge pillow, his docility a ridiculous sight.

Not like the black-and-white cat that ventures out from under the table and chairs to give us an indignant look. He strolls the deck, fishing his white toes in the water. It makes me smile until Dash pulls his T-shirt off and walks to the edge of the pool.

Then I sigh.

Perfection.

Binx runs when Dash dives in, swimming underwater to me. I try to swim away, but he is a much stronger swimmer than I am. He pulls me down to him, wrapping himself around me. We surface and his wet lips find mine.

I encircle my legs around his waist and cling to him. “My mother says the wedding is still going to be the wedding. We are not getting off without the hoopla.”

I laugh and lean back, letting my upper body float, but my legs stay wrapped around him. “I figured. I’m not going to fight it. Dash, marrying you is the only part of the entire day I give a rat’s ass about. The rest she can have.”

“Are you happy, Jane?”

I stare up at the blue sky and wonder if anyone has ever asked me that question. “I am.”

In the sparkle of the sunlight, a star fills my gaze. I lift my head and cock an eyebrow.

He’s holding an engagement ring over my head. It isn’t the same as the one before. It’s old and larger, the sort I would never have thought of as an engagement ring. “I don’t know how the hell we ended up here. How this worked out even after everything fell apart. I only care about going forward. I want every day to feel like this one. I know they won’t all feel this way. I know we’ll fight. I know we’ll disagree. I know my mother will always be an issue—”

I laugh, cutting him off.

He smiles at that one too, blushing a bit. “But I also know that if we can make it through what we have already, those other things are nothing. I have never met a woman your equal, Jane. I have never met someone who manages to survive the way you have, but then live and live well. You evoke my respect and my loyalty without ever saying a word. I used to think it was my job to protect you from everything. But now I see you don’t need that. You are a hero in your own right and I love you even more for it.”

My heart is racing. Not because he’s saying fancy things to me. Not because he’s proposing. But because for the first time ever, I feel like he sees me. I slip my fingertip into the circle. He pushes the ring onto my finger—of course it’s a perfect fit.

He is a perfect guy. They don’t actually screw things like this up. The advantage to having yard surrounded by woods and no neighbors for miles is that you can celebrate an engagement in a pool.

You can kiss until you don’t think your lips can take one more. You can rub and touch until you both need to exit the pool for a beach chair. You can make love in your backyard with no one watching you.

If ever there was a moment for slow and passionate, this is it.

He lays me down on the chair and slips between my legs, dragging my bathing suit bottom down. He enters me before we have contemplated more foreplay. It’s too desperate for that. When he’s inside me, he flips up my bathing suit top to expose my breasts. Our breath hitches together as our bodies writhe in the sea of bliss.

When we finish, we lie there a moment longer, holding on to each other and the moment we have made magical.

“Every second from now on will be the best in my life,” I whisper and kiss his cheek.

“For me too.” He scoops me up, carrying me inside to the shower. Water pours down on us, massaging us almost, it’s so intense.

I walk from the shower, staring at the large oval ring with the diamonds all over it. It’s too fancy and too expensive for me, and yet I love it. It’s different.

Like us.

I take a quick picture of it and send it to Angie. She texts back and I can only imagine the series of sounds she’s making—
ochs
and squeals.

She sends a picture too, of a guy looking down. I recognize him immediately and carry the phone to Dash. “Who is this guy? I saw him at your parents’ place.”

“That’s a cousin. His name is Charles Jardine. He’s from Scotland.”

“Of course he is.” My roll my eyes. “He and Angie are dating, I think. She sent me this picture. And from the background, I’d say that is her house. She has flowery wallpaper like that.”

He leans in, looking at the floral wallpaper. “Maybe, but that particular paper is in my mom’s bathroom upstairs.”

“Oh, dude. She had sex in the bathroom at that party?”

He chuckles. “Apparently.” He points at the black underwear on the floor behind poor Charles, who doesn’t realize she has snapped a photo of him as he looks down at the buttons on his shirt.

I press her name on my phone and stroll into the kitchen to find food.

“Och, that is some ring, Janey. Ya must have nearly shit.”

I laugh. “I was in the pool, so no.”

“Ya filthy thing. Shitting in the pool over a ring.” She laughs harder.

“So Charles, huh?” I don’t want to talk about shitting in the pool.

“Oh my, that is some lad, that is. He’s a rugged man from an area just outside Edinburgh. It’s been a pretty fantastic two weeks.” She sighs. “He’s exactly the sort of man I need. Exactly what a man ought to be—successful and weird, in the right ways. Not the scary ways, though. He folds his socks when he takes them off.”

“That is weird.” I can’t help but smile for her, even if she is just in the beginning stages. “It must feel nice to be dating again.”

“It feels nice to be shagging again.”

I laugh. “And that.”

“That is the important stuff.” She sends me another picture, making my phone buzz again. “I sent a picture of the family home. He’s right rich, Janey.”

“Not everyone thinks rich is important.”

“Tell me that again when we’re sixty years old and taken care of. Everyone cares about rich a’ some point. His clan is well known in the country. His family owns a shipping-something-or-other.”

I open a yogurt and spoon some into my mouth, thickening my words. “But you know love is more important.”

“Love is everything.” She yawns. “And I have to get back to work. We are starting some test runs soon. I’ll let ya know how the poor subjects fare.”

“You know how they’ll fare.”

“Aye, I do. I know they’ll think it’s remarkable and amazing. I remember when ya first went in. Ya thought the sun and moon set in me arse.”

“I still do.”

“Kiss the cat and the dog and Dash.” She laughs and hangs up.

Dash walks in wearing nothing but pajama bottoms. “Is she well then?”

“She seems to be. She is pretty happy that he’s a Scot like her and he’s rich.”

He nods and takes my yogurt, eating a big bite of the small cup and passing it back nearly empty. “Can we hire a cook?”

I wrinkle my nose, almost prepared to say no, but then I glance about the huge house. “Yeah. I think we can.”

“Can we hire Mrs. Starling?”

“No. Weirdo. She has her things she does. She doesn’t want a permanent job. And no Evangeline, not since you made the creepy joke.”

He grimaces. “I would never hire a young cook. Cook’s position can only be filled by an old, patient lady. She has to be motherly and cut the crusts off your toast.”

“Oh my God. You are kidding, right?”

“No.” He grins, drinking the orange juice right from the carton and licking his delicious lips. The side with the large incisor sticks out a bit, making me want to suck it.

I blink myself out of the Dash daze and mutter, “But then they’ll be here all the time, and then we can’t have sex in the kitchen or living room or random stuff like that. Is that what you want?”

He pauses, holding the jug. “Is that an option?”

“If we lived alone, it could become one.”

“Okay. But one of us has to learn to cook properly.”

I shrug. “We can just have sex in our room, then.”

“That’s probably the right idea. It’s not sanitary to have one’s bare arse on the table or counters anyway.”

“No.” I step toward him, taking the jug of juice from his hand. I take a big swig and swallow it as he plants juicy kisses on my neck.

“What’s the plan for the day?”

I press my lips together and think. “I have to talk to Antoine and Cami, find out where we are in the weapon-slash-drug lord situation in Panama. And I have to figure out how we can find the asshat who is trafficking the girls in Taiwan. I screwed that one up.”

He leans back. “You made a mistake?”

“Never. I just killed someone before I got the intel from them. But I wouldn’t change a thing.” The image of the Polaroid haunts me still if I’m not careful to keep the memories in check.

He looks concerned. “Why did you go back to active duty?”

“I needed it. It makes me feel strong and in control, and I needed to feel that. Everything was spinning out of control in my head, and going back fixed it. I knew I was done with the mind runs. I can’t help in that project anymore. And you and I were not in the place where I was feeling good about ditching my pension.” I take another drink.

He takes the jug and sips from it. “But now?”

“Now, I don’t know. I need to finish off the projects I have going. I need to catch the bad guys. It’s my gig.”

“You mean kill the bad guys,” he scoffs, and his eyes turn haunted for a moment.

I lean in, kissing his orange-tasting lips. “Sometimes the world is just a better place without those people. We don’t use warrants. We don’t worry about rules and laws. We just take away the bad people who are making the world a worse place. It’s the best unit for me. Every mission is about stopping something heinous. Half the time the friggin’ CIA knows about whatever we are hunting, but they let it run because they need a bigger fish. The bad guys die. The good guys are freed from the situations they have found themselves in.”

“When will you be done saving the whole world?”

“I don’t know. I can’t save it all, I know that. I can only stop the few things I know about.”

He leans in and kisses me once more. “Can we talk about the possibility of retirement? For us both?”

I wrinkle my nose. “Why?”

Dash looks hesitant, but he says the thing plaguing him. “The baronetcy comes with things—demands and expectations. My father is stepping down. His name is on the list after all. He knew it. He thought by distancing himself from my very guilty brother, he would be left alone. He is actually pompous enough to believe that his title will earn him clemency.”

I cock an eyebrow, pausing all my judgments and thoughts. “Are you serious?”

“He’s an idiot. That much is true. But you have to remember he’s the last of a dying breed. The men and women born in the forties and fifties were still quite the gentlefolk.”

“I expected your father to be a dipshit. Have you met him? He grooms more than any single woman I know. He fake-tans. It’s weird. The part I’m asking about is the title. We really have to take it on?”

He nods, as concern crosses his brow.

“I’m the worst person for this. I am actually the worst-case scenario. I am no Princess Di. I am the exact sort of girl families like yours run from. You can’t expect me to take a title from your mother?”

“She becomes the dowager, Jane. We have an obligation to my family. You will be Lady Townshend. You will be my wife. I will take this title and we will be responsible. That is what is happening.”

The lump in my throat burns, but I don’t argue. Accepting who he is to the world is half the battle of accepting who I am and who we are.

“You will be a beautiful bride and the world will call you humble and sweet.”

“Assassin. They will call me assassin if they ever find out.”

“A sharpshooter is not an assassin. And you forget I have blood on my hands too.”

I step close to him. “How is your baggage worse than mine?”

My question elicits a laugh as he plants another orange-flavored kiss on me. “My baggage is lifelong. Yours was fairly solvable. It isn’t hard to walk away from terrible things. But to walk from a thousand years of lineage is pretty impossible. My family came to the UK with William the Conqueror. My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was King Richard the Lionheart’s first cousin, and his father had been in the line of succession as a prince. My entire family has spent their lives as part of this. Sometimes they were in and other times they were out. Depending on the king. Most recently we were out and bought our way back in, very typical for the times. One thousand years of tradition. I cannot help but be proud, Jane. It’s who I am.”

His words, the ones I have been chanting all along, sting when they’re thrown back in my face.

“Then it’s who I am too.” I nod, against my better judgment. I have no desire to be in the spotlight. Yet I would rather be a branch on his tree filled with great and terrible things, than be on the tree I belong to. Starting over with him is insane, but I want him and this is who he is.