That evening, they sat on the balcony after a light supper, drinking cola and watching the moon rise over the Gulf of Mexico. They sat side by side, holding hands and glancing at each other every few seconds to make sure that it was all real.
“In all my dreams, it was never like this,” she confessed softly.
“Not in mine, either,” he replied gently. “I don’t like to leave you even long enough to take a shower.” His gaze went hungrily to her face. “I never thought it could be like this, Natalie,” he breathed. “Not so that I feel as if we’re sewn together by invisible threads.”
She drew the back of his big hand to her lips. “This is what they say marriage should be,” she said dreamily. “But it’s more than I hoped for.”
His fingers curled into hers. “I know.” He glanced at her hungrily. “You’ll never know how I felt when Vivian confessed that she’d lied. I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d almost lost you.”
“It’s all in the past,” she said tenderly. “Speaking of your sister, Vivian phoned while you were showering,” she said suddenly. “She said that Bob and Charles have gone hunting with that Marlowe man and she was going to spend the weekend cramming for her first test.”
“I told the boys not to go off and leave her alone,” he said grimly.
“Stop that,” she chided. “Vivian’s grown, and the boys practically are. You have to stop dictating every move they make.”
He glared at her. “Wait until we have kids that age, and tell me that then!” he chided.
She sighed over him, her eyes full of wonderful dreams. “I’d like one of each,” she mused. “A boy to look like you, and a girl who’ll spend time with me when I’m working in the kitchen or the garden, or who’ll be old enough for school when I go back to teaching.”
“Planning to?” he asked comfortably.
“Not until the children are old enough to go, too,” she said. “We can afford for me to stay home with them while they’re small, and I will. When they’re old enough to go to school, I’ll go back to work.”
He brought her hand to his mouth and smiled. “Sensible,” he agreed. “And I’ll change diapers and give bottles and teach them how to ride.”
She studied his handsome face and thought back over all the long years they’d known each other, and the trials they’d faced together. “It’s the bad times that bring us close,” she commented softly.
“Yes,” he said. “Like fire tempering steel. We’ve seen the best and worst of each other, and we have enough in common that even if we didn’t have the best sex on two continents, we’d still make a good marriage.”
She pursed her lips. “As it is,” she said, “we’ll make an extraordinary one.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” He lifted his can of soda and she lifted hers, and they made a toast.
Out on the bay, a cruise ship was just coming into port, its lights making a fiesta of the darkness, a jeweled portrait in the night. Natalie felt like that inside, like a holiday ship making its way to a safe harbor. The orphan finally had a home where she belonged. She clasped her husband’s hand tight in her own and sighed with pure joy.
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Unleashed
by Diana Palmer
ONE
“EVEN A DOCTOR couldn’t read this handwriting,” Clancey muttered to herself as she tried to decrypt a note jotted in the margin of a photocopied arrest record.
“What are you muttering about now?” Colter Banks asked from the doorway.
Colter was her boss, a Texas Ranger who worked cold cases for the San Antonio office of the Department of Public Safety. He was gorgeous: tall, narrow hipped, with powerful long legs and broad shoulders. He had dark brown hair and liquid black eyes. Those eyes were glaring at her.
She looked up with a disgusted expression on her oval face. She brushed away a strand of dark wavy hair from her forehead. Pale gray eyes glared at him. “I can’t read this.” She waved the sheet at him.
“If you’d like to resign...?” he offered, and looked hopeful.
“I can’t resign. This was the only job available and I have to eat,” she grumbled.
He took the sheet from her and frowned as he studied the note he’d placed next to a certain charge on the rap sheet.
“Ha!” she exclaimed.
He glanced at her. “What do you mean, ha?”
“You can’t read it, either, can you?” she accused.
He lifted his chin. “Of course I can read it,” he scoffed. “I wrote it.”
“So, what does it say?”
He stared at it again. He had to puzzle it out or she was never going to let him forget this. While he stared at the scribble and tried to make sense of it, the phone rang.
He tossed the sheet back on her desk. “Phone.”
“Excuse,” she said under her breath.
He glared at her as he pulled his cell phone out of its holder. “Banks,” he said.
He listened. His face grew harder. He glanced at Clancey, who was still waving the sheet at him, and turned his back. “Yes, I can do that,” he replied. “Sure. I’ll stop by on my way home. No problem. See you.”
He put his phone back and looked pointedly at his watch. “I’ve got to see the assistant DA on a case I’m working, that Reed case from five years ago. We hear that Morris Duffy, who was suspected in his disappearance, may be getting out of prison a year early for good behavior, and soon,” he remarked, missing the sudden worried expression on his assistant’s face. “We could sure use a break in the case.” He
