Floored (46 page)

“I’m sorry I left you, baby. I’m so sorry I didn’t trust you. I want…” A shudder ripped though him and his eyes lost focus.

What did he want? His eyes rolled back and closed. “Sean, what do you want?” His body went limp. A paramedic pushed her aside. There were two of them. They were handling Sean, turning him, hands all over him, tending to him, talking statistics to each other.

“Don’t let him die. I love him. You can’t let him die.”

More arms pulled at her. Stud picked her up. The paramedics were moving Sean onto a stretcher. “It’s over, Cait. It’s over now.”

She shouted at Stud. “It’s not over. What did he want?” She pounded his chest. “What did he want?” Stud had no answer. There was no siren on the ambulance. Her air cut off. Just like that, there was none of it left to breathe with. She fell forward and her world went black.

50: Sunset

The midday sun flooded the hospital’s car park and beat down on the windshield of the Statesman. In the driver’s seat, Cait’s head was tipped back into the headrest and Sean knew from the way her body was relaxed, her eyes behind her sunglasses would be closed.

He opened the back door and slid in. She stirred when he closed it. Her ultraviolet lenses coming up to the rear-view. He watched it too and saw her smile.

“Where to, sir?”

He told her the address and she started the engine. He put his belt on, but it rubbed right across the hole a Pariah bullet put in his side. The one that nearly did him in and needed more than stapling to close. He’d leave it off. He’d survived a near fatal shooting. A car ride with his favourite driver was a picnic.

“You should put that belt on?”

“I should’ve got in the front.”

“You should’ve done a lot of things.”

The unsaid end of that was, ‘differently.’ They’d had this conversation a lot over the last two weeks. Cait had been very persuasive, while he was stuck in a hospital bed, about all the things he should’ve done differently. He should’ve thought twice about going all
Die Hard
and crashing the gang party alone. He should’ve waited for his tail, for Stud, for reinforcements. He should’ve ducked. He should’ve finished his sentence.

He’d let her think he couldn’t remember what came after, “I want,” and she let him because it might well have been anything from, ‘I want something for the pain’ to ‘I want to get that bastard who shot me’.

But he hadn’t forgotten and he couldn’t wait much longer to finish the sentence.

What he wanted now was to be alone with her. Somewhere no one was going to walk in with a chart or want to put him to sleep with more pain relief. Somewhere he couldn’t see Stud’s ugly mug two spit swallows off reading him the riot act again. Somewhere he wouldn’t be reminded of the shit storm of paperwork he had to do to help close Operation Colour Wheel and put Justin, Wacker and as many colour wearing, illegal bikie gang members as possible in jail for a long time. It would’ve been easier had Stud decided to drum him out of the force. But then Stud was a bastard who’d taken Cait fishing while he’d been laid up.
Fishing
.

“Where are we going?”

“I told you I have it sorted. I want to…” He stopped deliberately.

Her sunglass eyes shot up in the mirror. “Don’t even make a joke of it.”

He laughed and that still hurt. He’d have to take it easy for a while yet. That’s what the holiday was for. Taking it easy and being together for the first time with no threats, no disguises, no lies and no travel agenda. “Too soon.”

“Too awful. It will always be too awful.”

He wanted Cait to get over this fear of him dying. A new job would help. He wasn’t sure what it would be, but no more undercover. If he had her to come home to he might be able to handle something less frontline without falling over from boredom. She needed a new job too. Something using her degree. She’d be earning more money than he would. That kind of hurt too, but it was something he could work on.

“Sean, where are we going?”

“Somewhere you’ll like. Belmont Street is only the first stop.”

“How do you know what I’ll like?”

“Because I asked you.”

He had. All he’d been good for these last two weeks was talking, so they talked, about everything he wanted. To start again. To stay together. To win her trust. He was hoping he was going to be well enough for more strenuous activity than holding hands and falling into each other’s eyes now. He knew he’d never forget to ask and to listen again. He’d almost lost her because he’d failed to consider what she wanted, how she felt, and tried to impose his own thinking on her. He knew he’d never do that again because his body simply wouldn’t be able to stand the level of terror and pain that’d ripped through him when he’d got back to the empty house and realised she was gone.

He didn’t ever need anyone to give him a definition of insanity, because he’d lived it. In that first hour before he’d been able to get hold of Stud. In the time it took him to figure out where Wacker might take Cait, he’d died a thousand times, by a hundred cuts of pride and arrogance.

Being still had been impossible. Speaking without shouting untenable. He had trouble breathing, focusing, controlling the panic from whiting out his eyes. All of his senses were full of missing her, false clues and distracting images that stopped him thinking clearly. He smelled her citrus skin, so strongly, for a second he thought she’d come back. He’d gone to the bedroom to look for her. He’d stood in the doorway and his hands shook with the knowledge he might’ve held her alive for the last time, while in his ears he heard her agonised voice, over and over.
“Please don’t make me choose. Please don’t make me choose”
.

He was no more capable of waiting for Stud’s team to get to Milo Newberry’s Walton Street house than he was of judging the danger, the stupidity of going John McClane on a situation he had no intelligence on. Insanity was the only excuse he had for abandoning everything he knew about policing, about gangs and violent crime and putting himself so far over the line it’d confused the gang with the sheer dumb randomness of it.

The only reason he wasn’t dead was his non-plan was so moronic Wacker suspected it was a trick, and Grumble was better with his fists than a shooter. That, and Stud had trusted his instinct and focused all his resources on Sean’s hunch.

“You’re not going to tell me where we’re going, are you?”

“You already know.”

“You told me to pack for summer. That’s a pretty broad clue.”

“I told you to buy a blue bikini. That should’ve narrowed it down.”

She laughed. “Since when do I do what you tell me?”

He sat forward so he could touch her shoulder. “Since you like how it turns out, say in the bath, or…”

“Okay, okay. I’m driving. I’ve got the point. Don’t distract the driver with very hot thoughts. I’ll agree sometimes it makes sense to listen to your superior knowledge about things like baths and beach fashion.”

He stroked a finger up her cheek. “Only sometimes?”

“Hey, that’s better than almost never.”

It was better. It was perfect. He sat back.

“So, where are we going?”

He sighed. “Nag, nag, nag. Is this what life with you is going to be like?”

“Would you rather I lie to you? Keep my thoughts to myself?”

He shifted forward and spoke in her ear. “No. Never.” It came out sounding low and serious, not the mocking tone he’d used earlier. He softened it by kissing her cheek. “You’re in big trouble if you ever do that again.”

She laughed. “Nag, nag, nag. Now sit back before you end up in the front seat by accident.”

He sat back. “You’re going to drive me crazy.”

“But you love it.”

He did. He loved everything about it. Everything about her. Maybe too much. A lot of stuff he worried about felt insignificant when he was with her. She gave him clarity. He didn’t want that ever to wear off, but he knew he was at risk of smothering her. She didn’t need smothering. She needed support. Big wide highway of difference there.

“We’re here. Pull over in front of that white house.”

She eased the Statesman to the kerb and shut it down. “Where is here?”

He leaned forward between the seats again. “This is where I grew up.”

She looked at the house. “This is where your dad took Blue till we find somewhere to live.”

“Yep. I want you to meet Mum.”

“I liked your dad.” Cait swivelled around so she could look at him. “You’re so like him. But I think I’m scared of your mum. I still don’t understand why she wouldn’t visit you in hospital.”

“Hold on to that fear, you might need it.”

“Sean.”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying she might kiss me, but she might hit me with something instead. She wouldn’t come because she’s furious at me for my Rambo stunt.”

“Now you know why I’m scared. Won’t she blame me?”

He squeezed her shoulder. “She’ll love you.”

“Why would she? I almost got her son killed. More than once.”

“Because I do.” He leaned further forward again and felt his wounded ribs protest. He kissed her cheek.

“Easy as that?”

She wasn’t convinced. He’d known for days how nervous she was about meeting his family. Worried she wouldn’t fit in with the noise and the invasive, impolite, in your face nature of it. “That’s how it works.”

She looked at the house as though it might grow wheels and run her down. “I don’t get your family.”

“You will because I want them to be your family as well.”

“I’m a bit old to be adopted, don’t you think?”

He wanted her to think about that, and he wanted to be next to her when she got it. He opened the back door and got out; opened the front passenger door and got in. She’d taken her sunglasses off. She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “Oh.”

She wasn’t quite there. He grinned and her mouth dropped open. “Oh.”

Now she got it. He went for her hand. She pulled it away. “If that’s some kind of lame-arse proposal you can forget it.”

He kept smiling at her. She was really cute when she got cranky. Got to him every time. Christ, he hoped he was fit enough for more than hand holding and lip locking.

“You want me to forget it. You really want me to forget it?”

She blew out her cheeks in frustration. “At least until you tell me where we’re going after this.”

He leaned across the console and took her face in his hand. He ignored the way his side pained and kissed her lips gently. “This is where we’re going.” He pushed his hand into her hair and pressed his fingertips gently against her skull, the pistol whip wound healed now. “And this.” He kissed her again, taking it deeper, pulled back to murmur, “And this,” before he made the kiss wet and she whimpered into his mouth. That almost derailed him entirely. He’d had a plan and this was it, but it was supposed to have a soundtrack with actual spoken words in it. He pulled himself together enough to take her hand and put it over his heart. “We’ll always be here,” then move their joined hands to her heart. “And here.” She sighed and he caught it on his tongue before he went on. “When it’s good, when it’s bad, when it’s forty-four flavours in between. You’re going to love me when I forget to be considerate, and I’m going to love you when you forget to trust me and that’s for always.”

If her smile was any broader, her eyes any bigger, she’d make him forget about the family visit and shift straight to an attempted booty call. He swallowed over the lump in his throat. “But right now we’re going in that door to Mum and Dad and my sisters, assorted brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews.”

“That’s a lot of family.”

“You’ll get used to them.”

“Then what?”

“Then we get back in the car and we drive off into the sunset.”

She smacked his arm. “You’re really not going to tell me.”

“I’m going to tell you it involves a long stay airport car park, a short flight and a small beach resort, where you’ll be needing that bikini,” he quirked his head, “or not. After that, it’ll involve a new place to live and new jobs. Where we’re going, Cait, is to a life together.” He sat back and looked at her gorgeous face. “Think you can you handle that?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe!”
What!
His whole body reacted to that. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I put my beating, second chance heart in your hands and you say maybe.” She was biting her lip. “Ah, you don’t mean that?”

“Don’t tell me what I mean.”

He frowned. This was not how the plan was supposed to go. He wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. Then he got it. “Caitlyn Mary Ann Murphy, I have a question for you.”

She was trying hard not to smile.

“It’s a simple one. A straight yes or no answer will do it.”

She gave up the trying and she lit up. His heart did a double thump his doctor might not have liked. “I want you to marry me.” There, that was less lame arse and if it didn’t work he’d have to think of another way round it, because there was not going to be a dead end to this, only beginnings, familiar patterns and fantastic detours.

“I think I’d like that.”

He leaned forward, kissing distance. Triple heart thump distance. Tailgating distance. “So will you?”

She brushed his nose with hers. “I’m glad you finished that sentence.”

“Jesus, you’re such a freaking tease.”

“Yes.”

He could kiss her again. Could ask her to turn the engine on and find a hotel to chill out in for a few hours before the flight. But if he did that it wouldn’t be a hairbrush Mum’d hit him with. “Yes what?”

“Yes. I’ll marry you.”

He pulled her over the console into his lap and bugger the fact he had to grit his teeth. He ground out a, “Thank Christ.”

She wound her arms around his neck. She was glassy-eyed and beautiful. His woman. His life. No more undercover. No more running or hiding for either of them. Only a wide smooth road of truth with a white line of honesty, a lovingly handmade map and the freedom to drive wherever they wanted to next.

He was utterly, completely, compellingly and forever, floored. And the very best thing — so was she.