“Sounds great to me,” Nate said fervently.
Mace walked over to Elisa, who was staring out the opening of the window. “Be aware,” he said. “I wish I could tell you it’s all over and you can relax, but I’d be lying.” He glanced at Nate. “If you weren’t on Kimball’s shit list before, you are now. Your troubles aren’t over. They’ve just done a lateral shift. You now have a new homicidal asshole to worry about. Welcome to the exclusive club, the members of which Redd Kimball would do anything to kill and maim. Congratulations.”
A ghost of a smile flitted across Elisa’s face. “At least I’m in good company.” Her eyes flicked to Nate. “It makes all the difference in the world.”
“Well, yay for your positive attitude,” Mace said sourly, but he might have saved his breath, because Elisa wasn’t listening. She was looking at Nate. Nate was looking back. Neither of them knew that he was there. They only saw each other.
Damn. It’s not like he hadn’t seen this coming from miles away, but for fuck’s sake. Nate, too? Right fucking now?
“Get in the car,” he grumbled. “I want some distance from this place.”
“Don’t we need to talk to the police?” Elisa asked.
“I’m sure you will, and at great length,” Mace said. “But at the moment, we’re probably being watched, knowing Kimball. And you guys need to get looked over by a doctor. The cops can talk to you afterward. To their hearts’ content.”
“Are we going to Josh?” Elisa’s big golden eyes fixed on his with startling intensity. “You’ll take me to him?”
“Straight to Josh,” Mace assured her. “Granger Valley Hospital, here we come.”
Elisa slid into the back of the SUV, right into Nate’s embrace. He draped his good arm around her and clamped her up against his body like he was afraid someone was going to rip her away from him.
Thought, to be fair, someone had just tried.
Well, damn. It was good that Elisa’s most pressing security problem had been resolved, but the one she’d exchanged it for might be even worse.
She didn’t seem too worried, judging from her starry-eyed look as she—oh, for the love of fuck. Seriously? They were kissing? Here?
He just didn’t get it. Love and passion was great, yeah. Sex was awesome. They’d find no argument from him about that universal and self-evident truth. Getting laid rocked. That said, now was not the time to dive into the bottomless pit of amour and wallow in it. And both his brothers and their respective ladies were doing that right now. Now Nate, who might as well be his brother after all these years, and who ought to fucking well know better, had fallen into the same trap.
Boom, boom, boom. Tumbling one by one, like overripe fruit.
He didn’t begrudge Nate his good luck at finally getting the woman that he wanted. God knows, the guy had worked for it. Paid for it, too.
For that matter, all of them had paid. Kimball wouldn’t let himself be manipulated a second time. They would never get that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to draw him into a trap again. But he didn’t begrudge Nate his crazy gambit. Elisa’s life was unquestionably worth it. Everyone would agree with him on that.
Still, they’d stirred up Kimball’s hornet nest. They’d beaten on it with a great big stick. They’d ratcheted up his revenge vibe to its highest frequency yet. And Eric was still thousands of miles away on his romantic fucking honeymoon, and Anton and Fi were rolling around whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears. Now Nate and Elisa were lip-locked, in the back of the car. Right after all that apocalyptic bullshit had come down on their heads. The fuck?
He needed all hands on deck. He needed one hundred percent of everyone’s energy and attention, and he wasn’t getting it, not by a country mile. With all this pink-tinted love-fog in the air, it fell to him to be the lone, solitary grown-up on duty.
That had never been his role. His brothers had always occupied that job, at least when it came to dealing with Shaw’s Crossing. It did not come naturally to him.
It made him feel tense and alone.
26
Shaw’s Crossing, two weeks later…
Elisa stepped back from the painting on the wall and studied it while she mixed a lighter shade of pale yellow to highlight the heart of the flower.
The painting covered the whole wall. Four meters by three, and she’d covered the whole thing with panels of stretched canvas. The room was a mess of drop cloths and stepladders and frames for stretching canvas.
So far, she’d only painted the center panel. The rest were covered with preliminary sketches, and the drafting table behind her was heaped with discarded ideas. It was all still evolving, every minute she worked on it.
What was coming out onto the canvas continued to surprise her. She no longer even tried to control it. As soon as she got to work, something took over and painted through her, for hours on end. She forgot to eat and sleep sometimes.
The image was a huge well of darkness full of barely perceptible monsters. It emanated looming disaster, but in the center, a big hole was torn through it, like an exit point from a cave that let the light spill in. Outside the darkness was a blaze of color, luring the viewer out. Flowers, plants, animals. Life. Hope.
Two small figures were silhouetted in front of that opening, running toward it. Their long shadows stretched out behind them to merge with the darkness.
It was huge. By far the biggest painting she had ever done. And thank God she had something to work on. She’d be a basket case if she didn’t have a project. The only time she could breathe at all was when she was painting something.
Or rather, painting was the only time she could breathe when Nate wasn’t here to help her. Nate had his own wicked, delicious ways of making her calm down.
Just thinking of them brought a dreamy smile to her face.
The doorbell made Elisa spring up into the air, panicked. Shit. Who…?
The security system in the building was state-of-the-art, and all entrances were guarded by professionals, and still that doomsday feeling was so hard to shake. Her mind just couldn’t convince her body to relax. But a glance through the peephole showed that Demi and Eric stood outside, and panic was swiftly replaced by joy.
She threw the door open and hugged Demi hard, then gave Eric the same treatment “When did you guys get back?”
“Just this morning,” Eric told her. “We crashed last night in a hotel near the airport and took off at the crack of dawn.”
“Right,” Demi said, looking up at him ruefully. “Because this guy can’t seem to sleep past five AM, no matter what I do to him all night long.”
“Come in, come in.” Elisa dragged Demi into apartment by the hand. Demi looked great, glowing with a freshly acquired tan, some brand new freckles, and the soft-focus all-over sparkle of being madly in love and utterly sexually satiated. Eric gave off more or less the same blissed-out vibe, in masculine form.
So it was all good. The honeymoon had rocked. Yay.
“You guys look gorgeous,” she said, squeezing Demi again. “So tan.”
“We spent all our time lolling on the beach and swimming,” Demi admitted. “Which was great, but the sky fell while we were gone, and we missed it!”