"c.r.a.p," she said, half p.i.s.sed that Yuri might still be in the picture and half p.i.s.sed that Johnny thought she was that stupid. "You actually expect me to believe that Yuri rolled over as easy as that?"
"We were able to exert pressure on him. No violence was necessary."
"But you would have used violence," she said between her teeth, wondering if she"d gotten herself mixed up in a situation that could only end badly. Like with blood involved.
"No-I wouldn"t have," he lied. "Relax." He started to reach for her, and she slapped his hands away.
Christ, was Johnny mixed up in a way of life beyond the music he produced? Should she start running like h.e.l.l? "I don"t feel like relaxing," she ground out, par t snappish, and mostly sullen. " This is all messing with my mind big-time. I l ive a simple life, or did until- "
"I know. I"m sorry to get you mixed up in any of this," he quietly said. "And look, I don"t want to fight about my going to Zurich. The trip was a one-shot deal-sorry, scratch that phrase. It was a set of circ.u.mstances that will never be repeated. Never. Okay?" He bent low so their eyes were level. "Yuri is out of our life. I promise. There"s just a lot of people I have to protect, so I can"t explain every little detail."
She really liked his unreserved promise about it being over, but all the rest about not being able to tell her everything and people to protect made her uneasy. "You"re like-not connected, are you?" she nervously asked.
He laughed so hard and so long she was beginning to get rankled all over again when fighting a smile and wiping the tears from his eyes, he said, "Word of honor, babe. I"m not connected."
"For sure?" Could she ask him to swear on a stack of Bibles or something equally inane.
"For sure," he said without a hint of a smile this time, without a glint of amus.e.m.e.nt in his gaze, with such earnestness, she knew he was telling the truth. About that at least, if not about the Yuri stuff. And if he was really protecting other people, she didn"t expect him to jeopardize that trust? Did she?
The honest truth was that she would like him to tell her everything. Like bare his soul to her, like they did in really hokey movies.
The reality was she"d known him a grand total of seven and a half days and really couldn"t expect much more from him than a certain civility given to a woman he"d slept with.
Jeez, that was one harsh reality when she was trying her d.a.m.ndest not to even think about being in love with him after so brief a time.
"Hey, are we good now?"
He was giving her that unbelievably sweet smile that could, like, charm the pants off of the world"s biggest ice queen. "Yeah, we"re good." She smiled. "And I should thank you for dealing with Yuri. Thanks."
"Don"t mention it."
"Anyway, it was very brave of you." A vast understatement, but she didn"t know where the line between fantasy and real life actually met in that scenario. And maybe he was right. Maybe she"d be better off not knowing. She"d lived through a real-life nightmare with Yuri once already. She didn"t need a repeat.
All Johnny wanted was for this conversation to be over. So much so that he did another brave thing. He decided to give her what he had in his pocket.
"Kaz bought some jewelry for his wife while we were in Zurich," he abruptly said, his voice brisk and hurried, as though having made up his mind, he wanted to get through what he was going to say as quickly as possible. "This jeweler does some special work apparen tl y, so as long as I was there, I got you this." Pulling a small velvet box from his pants pocket, he snapped the lid open with his thumb. "What"d you think?"
"Holy Christ!"
He couldn"t get a read on her wide-eyed expletive, or maybe he wasn"t up to speed when it came to giving out engagement rings. "Is that good-or not good?"
"It"s huge!"
"Kaz says his wife likes huge, no pun intended," he said with a faint smile, feeling better because Nicky was grinning ear-to-ear now. "Try it on." Slipping the diamond ring out of the box, he lifted her left hand, and slid a ring the size of Rhode Island on her fourth finger. "I was thinking about maybe a long engagement though... so we can get to know each other, if you know what I mean. Like no sense diving off a high dock into shallow water and breaking our necks because we haven"t given this a little thought. Although I"m sober and straight this time, so I"m guessing it"s a whole lot different than last time-but"-he half-smiled again-"just in case."
Now she knew what was meant by flummoxed. It was part numbness, part hearing a voice from nowhere saying You better check this one out, part fantasy Hollywood script. She swallowed and said in what she"d hoped would be a normal tone of voice but turned out to be a whisper, "Is this a marriage proposal?"
A long, long, long silence this time. Apparently she wasn"t the only one s.p.a.cing out.
"If it"s okay with you," he finally said, "yeah, I guess that"s what you"d call it."
Even as the little voice inside her head was screaming Will you shut the f.u.c.k up!!, she attempted to rally her rational faculties. "We don"t know each other very well," she pointed out. "Or hardly at all," she added, nudged by the small, incorruptible bit of her sanity that wasn"t dancing in the streets shouting Hallelujah!
"What I know about you," Johnny softly replied, every syllable rich with s.e.xual innuendo, "I really like. But"-he shifted his stance marginally as though responding to the significance of her statement-"I hear what you"re saying. I suppose you should meet my parents and brother... somewhere down the road." The masculine code of family obligation in action. "And we"ll go see your family, too. But Jordi"s the only one that really counts as far as any decisions I make," he added, his daughter viewed through a very different prism. "And she likes you, I can tell. So we"re good."
"I have the requisite seal of approval, you"re saying."
"Hey, don"t be mad. I didn"t mean it the way it sounded." He paused. "Yeah, actually, I did. Jordi really matters to me. What can I say?"
Nicky smiled. "I"m not mad. I was being flip. And for the record, it"s more than okay. I wouldn"t like you if your daughter wasn"t important to you." In fact, it was the first thing she"d noticed about him-well... maybe the second, next to his drop-dead good looks that couldn"t be ignored unless you were blind.
He blew out a breath. "So, are you saying yes?"
She wondered if there was a woman in the world who would have said no. "How about a maybe?" So perhaps she was a little bit crazy not jumping at the chance to be married to the s.e.xiest Man Alive. But that"s what came from being semi-grounded. She wasn"t gonna jump out of a plane without a parachute.
His brows came together in a scowl. "What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"
She smiled, liking that he towered over her looking worried, liking that he really was the s.e.xiest Man Alive and wanted her. "It"s a high percentage, mostly yes, maybe-okay? But marriage is a big thing. It"s not a trip to the grocery store. You said yourself you wanted a long engagement. I"m just going along with the idea."
"Gotcha." He looked relieved. "And you"re right to be cautious. There"s too many serial marriages and fly-by-night love affairs in this business. I"m not looking for more of that, either."
"Speaking of love affairs... "
He took her hands in his. "We"re good there for sure."
"It"s the love part I"m kinda wondering about."
He didn"t quite meet her gaze.
"Hey, don"t panic," she murmured. "I don"t know what I"m doing in that department, either. Especially after the state of my relationship with Theo, who I thought I loved and obviously didn"t, because here I am pretty sure I love you."
His face lit up. "Same here. On that pretty sure stuff."
"That"s all I really meant about maybe. I"m head over heels for you, and I just want to make sure I"m not completely nuts to feel this way after knowing you for not very long. I"m figuring I need a little time to stabilize my out-of-control-blind-to-everything-but-you pa.s.sions."
"No s.h.i.t. That first night in Paris something just clicked. And not in the usual way. It wasn"t just about s.e.x, although," he said with a grin, "I"m not discounting what we had going there. But this was different-is different."
"Whatever that means."
"Yeah-whatever." He smiled. "How about we figure it out together?"
Together. What a nice word, she thought. Simple, yet improbably complex. Warmhearted. Soft as a kitten. Cozy. Pink sunsets and walks on the beach. Whoa... she was moving into the Hallmark card s.h.i.t. "I"d like that," she simply said.
"I almost forgot. I brought you something else, too." Reaching up, he pulled a shopping bag from the roof of her car. "From Jean-Paul." Johnny had placed a special order from Zurich and had it sent to the airport in Paris where they set down to pick it up. "He sends his compliments."
Nicky could smell the rich scent of chocolate from the guerilla-style factory in the fifteenth arrondiss.e.m.e.nt before she pulled the large red box from the shopping bag. "How did you think of this?" she asked, ripping the ribbon from the box, her salivary glands already gearing up.
"You seemed to like his stuff," Johnny said with the casualness of a man who didn"t understand the full spiritual mystique of chocolate.
Since she had neither the time nor the inclination to set him straight when she had a full box of Roussel chocolates in her hand, she simply said with feeling, "You"re an absolute darling," and handed him the cover and shopping bag.
"OHMYG.o.d!!" She didn"t mean it to be a shriek, but there was no other word for it. Wide-eyed, she beheld an arrangement of Jean-Paul Roussel chocolate kisses on a spun-sugar cushion, the kisses spelling out: I LOVE YOU. Two rows, two times I LOVE YOU-enough kisses to keep her in chocolate heaven for a blissfully long time.
Quickly popping a kiss into her mouth, she gazed up at Johnny and, smiling through her chewing, savoring, and swallowing, managed to say, "Maybe-we could discuss... this-long engagement... thing." Any man who was this unbelievably, incredibly thoughtful was the kind of man one should immediately lock down in a long-term, signed, sealed, and delivered contract. Okay, maybe it was the chocolate talking. Everyone knew how really good chocolate affected the pleasure centers and serotonin levels in women, but seriously, she was beginning to waver on this issue of long engagements.
"I"m definitely open to a discussion." He grinned. "Say, tonight in bed."
"That"s another thing," she said, returning his grin with a chocolatey smile. "And I don"t want to jack up your ego any more than it already is, but honestly, you"re really hot-you know, s.e.x-wise. So in terms of pure selfishness..."
"I"m way ahead of you there." He had this irrepressible, possessive impulse when it came to one Nicky Lesdaux. Don"t ask him to explain it. He couldn"t. But the feeling was definitely a full-speed-ahead, pedal-to-the-metal sensation. "You know, long could be a couple weeks." Male possessiveness operating at the max.
Nicky"s eyes flared wide. "Really? I was thinking six months."
"How about a month?"
"Three months."
He grinned. "Deal, Now I need a kiss to seal the bargain."
Plucking a chocolate from the box, she offered it to him with a smile.
"Cute." But he took the chocolate, put it in his mouth and then bent low and kissed her the way he wanted to kiss her.
Chocolate to chocolate.
Body to body.
Flame-hot , impa.s.sioned love to love....
end.