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They all began to talk at once, arguing out the best plan, overlapping each other’s words as they reached over each other to get to the food, arguing and eating, Lisa Livia finally joining in as Carpenter pulled up a chair next to her, making Joey and Agnes scoot over, which brought her close to Shane.
Right where I want to be, she thought, and watched to make sure everybody had enough food. When the table was pretty much cleared she said, “Okay, here’s my last word: Nobody shoots anybody tonight. We’re a team now, one big happy family. We need each other. If everybody shows up here tomorrow breathing and with all working body parts, and I do mean everybody, I’ll make breakfast. Anything you want. But if anybody hurts anybody else on the team, I’m going to be upset. Understand?”
Joey and Frankie looked in different directions.
“And nobody wants Agnes upset,” Shane said.
Joey and Frankie nodded.
“Good.” Agnes shoved her chair back. “Now let’s all get some sleep. And somebody check on Garth, please.”
“I’ll check on the lad,” Frankie said, getting up. “You’re not fucking Irish,” Joey said, getting up to go with him. “Family,” Agnes said, steel in her voice.
“I can’t wait for the holidays,” Xavier said, and left them to their slumbers.
Shane followed Agnes up the stairs to the second floor as she said, “Do you think any of this is going to work?”
“It’s a place to start,” he said. “We’ll play it by ear-what’s wrong?”
Agnes had stopped at the top of the stairs. “Maria and the bridesmaids are in three of the bedrooms up here, and Carpenter and LL are in the other one. We’ll have to use the housekeeper’s room again-”
“Nope,” he said, and steered her toward the attic stairs, his hands on her waist.
She hesitated and then went along, saying, “I suppose you’re right,” sounding exhausted. “That whole saving-the-attic-bedroom-as-commitment thing was dumb.”
“Nope,” he said, letting his hands slide down to her hips, patting her beautiful round butt as she climbed in front of him. His world was going to hell, but Agnes still had a great ass and right now that was enough.
She opened the door at the top of the stairs and then went into the bedroom on the right, and the moonlight flooded the room from the low windows, making it feel almost underwater, peaceful. The big low bed had looked inviting before, but now Agnes said, “Oh,” with an ache in her voice that was almost a moan, and he felt the same way.
Shane looked at her in the dim light, round everywhere. “Long day.”
“I need a shower first,” she said. “I was in jail.”
“Been there,” Shane said, and watched her pad across the hardwood floor to the half-finished bath on the other side, telling himself that she was exhausted and they were both mind-fried from thinking about the next day until he heard the shower go on, and then he gave up being the Sensitive Guy and stripped and went in to join her.
She hadn’t turned the lights on in the bathroom, either, so he found her by the moonlight coming through the skylight, making the soap blue on her wet skin. “Hey,” she said, but it was a soft welcome, not a protest, and his hands slid on her soapy lush curves, and he forgot the next day and lost himself in Agnes and in the feel of her hands as she stroked the soap over him, and the soft sound of her giggle and sigh under the water, and the taste of her as she tangled her tongue with his, the way her body yielded to the shove of his, the way she shivered against the scrape of his beard, drew breath at the slide of fingers, and urged him on, hungry for him as he invaded her, but mostly the way she wanted him, wrapped herself around him and demanded him, and by the time they fell onto the bed, she was so hot, so desperate for him, and he was so insane for her, that he drove into her, into the shock and the need, into everything she was, obliterating himself in her, nothing but him in her, rolling in those satin sheets, until they both exploded, and when he came back to the cool blue room and the moonlight and the quiet with Agnes shuddering in his arms, holding on to him as if she’d never let him go, for the first time in his life he thought, Don’t let go, and held on.
The sunlight woke Agnes up because it came in at such a fu
“I overslept. I think.” Agnes looked around for a clock, but there wasn’t any. “Do you have a watch? What time is it?”
Rhett gave them both a dirty look and went back to sleep. Shane reached over her, which felt so good that she didn’t fall back against the pillows until he pressed her down there with his body as he grabbed his gun and his watch out of the pile of clothing next to the bed. “Six,” he said to her, keeping her pi
“Oh, good,” she said, nestling back into the pillows. “I still have to get up, but it’s not a complete disaster. How’s your gun?” She gri
“My gun is fine,” he said, and pulled her leg over his hip so she could feel him hard against her.
“I guess it is.” She settled in closer as he began to kiss her neck. “This was a good idea, sleeping up here. I should have been up here a long time ago instead of saving this place for some dumb commitment idea.”
“Nope,” he said, and kissed her, and she settled into the kiss the way she’d settled into his body as his hand slid down her stomach, practically following a path by now. She started to giggle at the thought-Shane blazing a trail-and he said, “What?” but he gri
“You’re going to wear a groove there,” she said, and then stopped smiling. “Not that I’m assuming you’re staying-”
“I’m staying,” he said, and kissed her again.
When she came up for air, she said, “You don’t have to say-”
“Can we have this conversation tonight?” he said, and she looked up at him, not sure. “I think a lot of things are going to happen to both of us today. But I know I’m going to be back in this bedroom with you tonight. Can we talk about this then?”
Agnes swallowed. “Sure.” He knows he’s going to be back here tonight. She wriggled a little with happiness, and he gri
“Because if we keep talking, you’re going to have to leave to go do wedding stuff,” he said, letting his hand drift lower, “and I’m not going to get laid.”
“Right,” Agnes said, and sighed against him, but she thought, God, I hope we’re both still alive to be back here tonight.
Then he kissed her, and she stopped thinking at all.
An hour later, the buzz of Shane’s sat phone woke him up.
“I hate that thing,” Agnes murmured, buried under the blanket, her head resting on his chest
Rhett lifted his head from his place on the floor and communicated his displeasure with a long look before he collapsed back onto the pillow Agnes had put there for him.
“Yeah, I’m starting to feel that way, too,” Shane told them both as he checked the phone.
DOCK-FIFTEEN MINUTES
“I’ve got to meet Wilson,” he told her. “I hate him, too.”
“Yeah,” Shane said, his mind reluctantly turning to things he didn’t want to face.
Wilson had kept information back, vital information. That could have been part of his fucking No Need To Know, part of the whole responsibility of the guy who’s in charge the reality of taking Wilson’s place suddenly swept over him, ensconced in Washington, sending others out into the held to do the dirty work, others like Carpenter-but it could be something else, too, and his gut was telling him it was something else and it wasn’t good.