His eyes popped open. “Ow.”
“Dammit, Dante,” Zoey sobbed. “I thought you were shot. I thought you were dead.”
“I was shot,” he wheezed. “Thank God for Kevlar.” He pulled aside his shirt to show two bullets flattened against the vest underneath. “Shit. I think I may’ve broken a rib.”
“Arrest him,” a man hissed.
The knot of people around Dante cleared, and Zoey could see a tall, balding man near the front of the courtroom. Both of his arms were held by men in uniform.
One of the guards standing over Dante looked up. “I’ve patted him down. This guy’s not armed, Mr. Headington.”
“He’s a known felon, an FBI agent gone bad,” Headington said very quietly. His voice seemed hypercalm. “Arrest—”
The judge brought her gavel down with a loud
BANG!
Everyone jerked to look at her. “How dare you shoot an unarmed man in my courtroom, Special Agent Headington?”
Headington opened his mouth, but the judge had turned her critical gaze on Dante. “And you, sir. Who are you, and what do you know about Mr. Spinoza’s baby daughter?”
Dante groaned and slowly got to his feet. Zoey wrapped her arms around him in case he went back down again. She wished she could just tell him to stay on the floor, but that might be detrimental to his masculine ego, what with all the law enforcement types in the room.
“I’m Special Agent Dante Torelli,” he said. He didn’t shout, but his voice carried clearly throughout the courtroom. “And Petronella Hernandez is in this courtroom.”
Several people gasped. The Mrs. Guptas stood up from where they’d been sitting at the back of the courtroom. Mrs. Pratima Gupta held Pete up high, and the baby beamed. On the stand, Ricky burst into tears, and for the first time since she’d met him, Zoey felt a grudging sympathy for the guy. At least he’d been truly worried about Pete.
Tony the Rose stirred. “You don’t wanna go testifying against me, Ricky. Might not be good for the baby’s continued health, y’know what I mean?”
The judge slammed her gavel down. “Mr. Franklin, please inform your client what the punishment is for threatening a witness in a federal case!”
“Yeah, you do that, Mr. Franklin,” came a voice from the back of the courtroom. Ashley Janiowski waddled up the aisle, looking very fierce for an incredibly pregnant woman. “But Uncle Tony’s not going to be hurting any babies anymore, are you, Tony?”
“Ashley, whatcha doin’?” Tony demanded.
“I’m making sure you don’t come after me and mine, Uncle Tony,” Ashley said. “For shame, sending a crazy hit man after baby Neil Junior.”
Mr. Franklin, the defense lawyer, who didn’t look like a man particularly bothered by small things like murder, actually leaned away from Tony the Rose. “Tony, you sent a hitman after a
baby
?”
“’Course I didn’t,” Tony squeaked.
“Don’t you lie to me!” Ashley shrieked. The judge started pounding her gavel, but Ashley yelled right over her. “You even think about hurting another baby and I’ll give evidence myself.”
The judge froze, her gavel still in the air. Apparently she was as stunned as the rest of the room by Ashley’s pronouncement.
Tony the Rose turned a deep shade of maroon. “Ashley Madonna Janiowski, family don’t tell.”
Ashley narrowed her eyes and hissed like a very pregnant cougar. “Family don’t send hit men after family, Tony DiRosa. Don’t think I’m not telling Mama about what you did.”
Tony opened his mouth, but nothing came out, except maybe air, because as everyone watched he seemed to deflate in his chair.
For a moment the courtroom crowd was mesmerized by Tony’s downfall.
Then Jack Headington sputtered to life. “Torelli may have brought the baby in, but he’s still wanted for murdering fellow agents, for taking mob-related bribes, and for—”
This time it was Dante who cut him off. “I was sent to the Chicago office specifically to uncover ties to the mob, and I did, Your Honor. Jack Headington was the mob connection within the Chicago office. He was the one who passed information to Tony the Rose and others. He was the one who told Tony where Ricky Spinoza’s family was being held in protective custody. He was the one who planted evidence that I accepted bribes—bribes he himself accepted. And he was the one who set up FBI special agents in his own office to be murdered by crooked FBI personnel he had on his private payroll.”
Dante paused for breath, and everyone turned to Headington, as if they were at a particularly deadly tennis match. Zoey expected Headington to deny everything, to maybe panic and try to run.
Instead he laughed softly. “Dante, Dante, Dante. I have twenty-five years of experience in the Bureau, an exemplary service, and a wall of commendations to prove it. Accusing someone else of your own crimes is the oldest trick in the book.”
“Yeah, it is,” Dante said. “And you’d certainly know, wouldn’t you, Jack? But I have more than accusations. I have proof.”
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a computer disc. “You might’ve killed Kevin Heinz, but not before Kevin found your money trail and e-mailed it to me.”
Headington’s face turned gray.
And then the disc Dante was holding broke apart and a piece fell at his feet.
Dante looked down. “Oops.”
Everyone stared at the broken disc.
“There’s no way we’ll take evidence solely on your say-so,” Headington whispered silkily.
Someone sighed. Zoey turned.
The tall man in cowboy boots stood behind her, his arms crossed. “Always trying to impress.”
Dante frowned. “Hey, what were the odds the disc would get shot?”
“Show-off.” The tall man shook his head. “Your Honor, I’m Special Agent John MacKinnon, and I have all of Torelli’s evidence on my office computer. I’m here to arrest Jack Headington.” He waved to four men behind him. “Take him in, guys.”
This time when the court erupted into shouts, the judge didn’t even bother using her gavel.
One month later . . .
T
his is our third date to the Field Museum,” Zoey panted as she and Dante crashed through his apartment door. “And we never get past Sue the T. rex.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Dante murmured against her neck. She’d noticed in the last month that he seemed to have a thing about her neck.
Not that she was complaining. She heard a slam as he kicked the door closed with his heel. Dante had a lovely newly renovated apartment in Wicker Park, which had surprised her the first time she’d seen it. For some reason she’d assumed that he’d lived at the red brick apartment where he’d been guarding Pete, Nikki, and Ricky. Actually, she was a little envious of his apartment. The floors and woodwork were all honey oak, and the living room had an enormous bay window that overlooked a garden courtyard.
“No, but really,” she said as she tilted her head back to give him better access. Dante was very, very good at neck kissing. “We should at least”—she gasped.
How
did he always find that exact spot?—“at least get to the Egyptian tomb next time.”
He pulled back to look in her face. “Did you pack a lunch today?”
“Well, no.” She played with his tie. There was something about undressing a man in a suit and tie that was kind of kinky.
She loosened the tie.
He was grinning at her in a perfectly obnoxious way that if she wasn’t so interested in jumping his bones she might’ve taken issue with. “Then you didn’t expect to see the whole museum.”
She pulled the tie from his collar. “Yes, but it’s the principle of the thing. You ask me on a date to the museum—”
He rolled his eyes. “You demanded we go again.”
“
Whatever.
” She started unbuttoning his shirt. Really, it was like opening a Christmas package. “We go in and pay the ridiculous entrance fee and we don’t get twenty steps inside before you say something dirty in my ear and we have to turn around and rush out again. The ticket people probably think we’re nuts.”
“So we have a museum fetish.” Dante shrugged out of his jacket and shirt. “Perfectly normal.”
For a moment she was distracted by the sight of his naked torso. It was smooth and muscled, and it gave her a thrill each and every time she saw it. Zoey ran her fingertips over his side, just above the waistband of his trousers. She was checking as she always did for the slight bump of his scar there. Eventually there would come a time when she didn’t have to see for herself that the scar was healing—had healed—but for now his wound was still too new to her.
“How do we know it’s a museum fetish?” Zoey asked. Dante reached for her and raised her arms so he could pull off her sweater. “I mean, we never get past Sue. Maybe it’s a dinosaur fetish.”
“Dinosaur fetish,” Dante repeated, eyes fixed on her breasts. Her sweater had been really bulky, and Zoey had decided not to wear a bra today. He blinked and met her eyes. “Then that puts you in a difficult position.”
Zoey arched her eyebrows at him as she shimmied out of her jeans. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said as he put his hands around her waist and lifted her up to sit on his entryway table, “that there must not be many guy dinosaur fetishists in the country. I might be the only one.”
“And?” She wiggled a little on the table. It seemed quite sturdy, and she wondered why they’d never tried it before.
But Dante was no longer smiling. In fact, he looked a little nervous. “And maybe you should stick with me.”
“Stick with you?” Oh, God, was he saying what she thought he was saying?
He nodded. “Permanently.”
“Permanently . . .” Her mind went
pink!
just like a lightbulb burning out.
“Christ.” He raked a hand through his hair, looking adorably sexy, bare-chested and with his hair sticking up. “Will you marry me?”
“
Marry
you?”
“Oh, God, stop repeating everything I say.” He hooked his fingers under the waistband of her panties and drew them off. Zoey lifted her hips to help out, because she wasn’t that far gone. “I know we haven’t known each other all that long, but I love you, and I’m almost sure you love me.”
He looked at her.
She shrugged and nodded.
He tossed the panties to the floor, widened her legs, and stepped between them. “Good. You love me, too. I’ve got a steady, pretty good-paying job. The FBI might not be your favorite federal organization, but you have to admit you can’t beat the benefits.”
He looked at her again.
She raised her eyebrows and began fiddling with his zipper. This was certainly getting interesting.
He frowned and hurried on. “I’ve been cleared of all the charges against me and even been commentated for my undercover work. Headington’s been charged with all sorts of crimes, Pete’s safe and happy with Nikki and her jerk of a boyfriend, Charlie Hessler’s going to recover enough to take early retirement and go fishing; and Tony the Rose has been convicted. Heck, you even got your Prius back from impound. Life looks pretty good right now—”
He sucked in his breath because she’d lowered his trousers zipper and inserted her hand into his briefs to stroke him. He felt hot and hard and just the way she liked him.
She bit her lip.
He kept his eyes on her face and finished almost desperately. “And I really, really think we should get married, preferably before you meet my huge family and they scare you off.”
“Hmm.” Zoey took a condom from his trousers pocket and thoughtfully rolled it onto his cock.
He groaned.
She smiled and kissed him softly on the lips.
His eyes fluttered close—really his eyelashes were the prettiest things—and whispered against her lips, “Please, Zoey?”
He crowded closer and nudged her just
there.
She sighed. What would it be like to be married to a neatnik who listened to Frank Sinatra and drove an eighty-thousand-dollar BMW with bullet holes in the doors?
“Please, Zoey?” he murmured as he entered her, slow and strong, and so very, very good. “Marry me?”
She wrapped her legs over his hips, her arms around his shoulders, and leaned in to bite him gently on the earlobe. For a second she savored the moment. Dante’s breath coming roughly in her ear as he began to slide in and out of her, his strong, warm body holding her, all his will and heart and mind bent on one task: to make love to her.
He was right. Life was pretty good right now. Actually, it was downright wonderful.
She kissed his ear where she’d bitten it and whispered softly, but clearly, “Yes.”
Meanwhile, somewhere across town . . .
P
ratima Gupta sighed and lowered her spoon to the dish of rice and milk in front of her. “We have done it, Savita-di, we have done it!”
“Yes,” Savita-di replied, but her face was not wreathed in the joy that Pratima expected.
“What is the matter?” Pratima asked. “Is not our restaurant a glorious success?”
“Ye-es,” Savita-di said.
“Are not the tables filled every night with patrons who groan, their bellies are so full?”
Savita-di frowned. “Ye-es.”
Pratima leaned forward across the desk in their shared office. Beyond the door, the voices of their cooks, waiters, dishwashers, and busboys rose and fell, a reminder of the success she claimed.
“Do we not have protection from the so-strong Mr. Neil Senior, so that we do not have to fear thugs invading our kitchen anymore?”
“Ye-es.”
“And is not our kesar kheer the finest—the very finest—in all of Chicago, perhaps in the entire US of A?”
“Ye-es.”
Pratima threw her hands up in the air. “Then tell me, Savita-di, what could possibly be the matter?”
Savita-di slammed her hands flat on the desk, making the bowl of kesar kheer shiver. “The kesar kheer, Pratima, the kesar kheer! It is not entirely perfect.”
Pratima’s mouth fell open. She looked at the blue bowl of delicious pudding that sat on the desk between them and then she began to slowly nod. “It is not quite tasty enough.”
“It is not quite spicy enough.”
Both ladies examined the bowl of kesar kheer. Savita-di took a spoonful and tasted it, her eyes closed, her eyebrows knit.