Page 30 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

Well, shit. That didn’t go like he’d planned.

Not at all. Keller took a full step away from Savannah.

It was either that or jerk her back into his arms where he wanted to keep her forever.

He should’ve known better than to disguise the truth from this mind-reading wonder. When the hell would he learn?

Yet neither was he ready to declare his love for a woman he’d just met. Not yet, not yet, not yet. Life didn’t work that way, and he wasn’t a dumb kid anymore. He had responsibilities. Duties! Those things didn’t go away just because a guy fell in love.

Not in love, his heart screamed. Can’t give away what’s already given!

Savannah’s pretty head canted to her right, nearly to her shoulder.

As much as he tried to resist, the warmth in her chocolate brown eyes drew him back in.

“It’s okay,” she told him, her voice caressing the mixed- up feelings in his head.

Why did it feel like she thought she needed to gentle him?

He was no mad dog, damn it. He was a federal agent and a damned good one. He worked hard, damn it, and—

She touched the center of his chest, his breastbone. One sizzle. One tiny fingertip. And he was what he’d been from the start, lost and found and so damned sad. The dam inside felt ready to burst.

Keller took a step back, not ready. Never ready! He refused the magic this woman held over him. No more, damn it! No more voodoo spells or witchcraft or curses or whatever you wanted to call it. Not now! Not ever!

Yet the tender swell of love in her eyes, the pure love she’d just professed, stopped him short. He knew it then. This emotion he felt wasn’t magic and she wasn’t evil. If anything, Savannah was one of the purest women he’d ever met.

And Keller was tired of the empty life he’d been forced to live. The last time he’d found any comfort had been in Carol Marie’s arms. Never thought he’d find another woman equal to her. Not until Savannah Church jerked her door open and told him, ‘I. Said. No.’

Weakened by that sweet enlightenment, Keller dropped to his knees and grabbed Savannah to him, burying his face in her soft, sweet belly like a bastard kid with a gut full of sins to confess. Only these were sins of the heart. Failures. Omission. Shortcomings.

“I killed her,” he cried, so damned ashamed and embarrassed and weary. “She wanted to meet my mother, but I never should’ve taken her home. I should’ve left town and taken her with me. I should have protected her. Hell, I should have killed Ma first! Carol Marie would still be alive then.”

Savannah’s fingers captured his sweaty head, pressing him against her body. “Shush, it’s okay. Everything is okay.”

“No, it’s not. You don’t understand. Elaine killed my wife.

I know she did, but God! I didn’t know she was already pregnant.

” Tipping his chin to the ceiling, Keller roared as the sin he’d never forgive himself for poured out of his soul like a wicked, writhing serpent.

Fanged and vicious, it never let him rest, not once since the morning he’d found Elaine bent over the body of his precious wife.

In his witch of a mother’s own home, for the love of God!

Poor, sweet Carol Marie had a baby in her womb then. She’d meant to tell him that day. It was supposed to have been a surprise. Her doctor told him that sad news at her funeral. Keller’d had a son. A tiny son! Elaine took everything!

Full of hatred for his biological witch of a mother, Keller took hold of Savannah’s hips to shove away from her.

She had no right to think of him with kindness.

To think of him at all! He hadn’t deserved kindness from his wife, and he didn’t deserve it now.

She shouldn’t have shared the pleasure of her sweet, pure body with him, either.

He could never be good enough. Not with the level of hatred in his heart.

Any man who wanted to murder his flesh and blood was no saint.

Yet he couldn’t summon the strength to make Savannah go, not with her holding onto him as if she were suddenly the stronger one.

Which she most certainly was. She’d never killed a thing in her life, and he’d taken so many lives.

So damned many… Except the one he should have taken.

How he hated his mother. Every day. In every way.

If he could do it over again, he’d still have Carol Marie. Not Elaine and not Savannah.

Somehow that didn’t sit quite right. He’d never missed Elaine, but Savannah... He wasn’t sure he could live another day without the warmth of her all-or-nothing love in it.

“Let me go,” he begged as the first of many sobs wrenched out of him. More of the snake. More of the beast. Migraines and hell. Those were his lot in life. Not this gentle woman. Life just wasn’t that kind.

Yet Savannah’s fingers worked a peculiar kind of magic over his sweating skull. Slow and steady, they massaged and blessed, threading over his skull and through his hair. Until at last, he could breathe again.

Bowing his forehead to her belly and sick of fighting, Keller circled his arms around her slender waist, needing a connection with this woman more than he needed air.

There was no keeping anything from Savannah, and for once in his long lonesome life, he didn’t want to be alone. He needed this. He needed her.

The lovely fragrance of lilacs enveloped his ragged soul while she continued massaging her gentle kind of magic into the tense muscles that encased his hard Ranger head.

Until slowly… Gradually... Comfort seeped into the deepest crevice of Keller’s locked-up heart.

He began to understand. This woman standing with him now had given him every last piece of herself.

Sh e’d given freely because that’s who she was.

She truly loved him. His denial of that love hurt her.

But she was right. She had stood beside him, and even now, she did what she could to soothe the bitter hatred he’d carried for years.

The least he could do was man up and admit that, yes.

It might be a betrayal to his dead wife, but he did have powerful feelings for this living woman, this mysterious, mind-reading Savannah Church.

It was time she knew, although he was pretty certain she already did.

Which meant it was long past time for him to voice those fears—to himself.

Savannah didn’t need to hear what she already knew, but Keller did.

“I couldn’t,” he murmured into her warm body. “I couldn’t take the chance. You already believe, and once people believe—”

“They fall prey to those who misuse their power, right? Is that what you believe?”

“Yes,” he declared raggedly. He’d seen more evil than good during his life.

Most people were grubbers, content to exist in poverty while they groomed their version of the truth into something it wasn’t.

He’d never understood how self-righteous the poor could be, or how entrenched in snobbery the have-nots were.

You’d think only the wealthy were stuck up, but the wicked poor were just as bad. Just as small-minded.

They twisted reality until those who had honestly worked for a living and made something of their lives, had only done so because they’d lied, cheated, or slept their way to the top.

Ignorance knew no limits. There were as many poor people as rich who lived to lord their measly sense of self-righteous power over others.

Elaine was that grubber. Mean. Poor of spirit.

Vicious. But never to people’s faces. Only to their backs.

“There are good and bad people, Keller,” Savannah said quietly. “Gran Mere taught me that. Even among those we believe are better or smarter than us, maybe wiser, there is still deceit and evil. It’s the way of this world we live in. To everything there is a season. A time to…”

He nodded, rubbing his cheek against her hip as he inhaled her unique, feminine scent. “Trust me. I know Ecclesiastes. ‘ To everything there is a season,and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die,a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill…’”

And there he stopped. The rest of the bible verses were more juxtaposition of goodness balanced against evil, but Keller was spent. Mourning, dying, hating, and war he understood. They were the bedrock of his life. But loving, peace, and heaven? Those concepts were strangers. Damn, he was tired.

Savannah’s fingers tapped lightly on his head. “Get up,” she commanded.

Reluctantly, he stood, looking for his shirt, needing a barrier—anything—between him and this strange woman.

She and her Gran Mere had a way of twisting Catholicism with voodoo to make it appealing, and for sure, Savannah had a gift of sight.

She’d had not problem seeing through him.

What a joke. For a federal agent, he’d certainly turned into a pussy.

If Tucker could see him now... Shit. He’d be on the streets, looking for another job.

“Stay,” she ordered softly, her hand circling his wrist before he could get away, drawing him back into her arms. “I’m going to tell you a secret,” she whispered, looking to her right, then to her left as if there were anything besides mice in the barn with them.

“I love you, Keller Boniface, and I’m not afraid to say it.

I believe I fell in love with you when you knelt to pay your respect to Gran Mere.

I could see you clearly then, but I see you better now.

You weren’t who I first thought you were.

You are…” She paused as if searching for the right word.

“…better. You’re better than I’d judged you to be, certainly more than I’d expected from a federal agent.

I was wrong when I took you at face value.

You have gifts, but you’ve stifled them until they cause you great pain and consternation.

They hurt you, and yet they should bless you. Pray with me.”

“No,” he told her. “I don’t pray and I don’t—”

“I know, I know, you don’t pray, and yet you swear and curse. But who do you swear and curse at? Is it not God or Jesus Christ? Is that not how many of your curses begin and end, using the Lord’s name in vain?”

Well, hell, yeah. He had nothing to say, so he kept his mouth shut.

Savannah breathed a drawn-out sigh, her breasts heaving.

“Is not cursing also a most desperate form of sincere prayer? Is not hating the God who created you and Carol Marie an angry man’s way of acknowledging there is a relationship between Him and you?

That you still believe, even enough to damn Him? ”

“No!” he nearly shouted. Cursing was vile and full of hate.

Especially cursing God. Blaming God. That was what he’d done.

He hurled accusations and condemnation heavenward at a power who could have and should have been there for Carol Marie, but who hadn’t bothered to show up!

Goddamn it. Cursing was not prayer. It was mean-spirited and vengeful and…

So what if it was communication between an angry, hurt man and an indifferent God? It still wasn’t prayer, okay? Prayer was gentle communication of a higher nature. It was communion, trusting and kind. It was a son speaking frankly with his Father, and…

Keller turned away from Savannah at the thought. Could she be right? Were his out of control tirades still communication with a God whom Keller knew to his core was truly there? Did God see it that way? Had Keller been—somehow—praying all these years with every curse?

Keller ran a hand over his sweaty head, dragging his fingernails through the prickly stubs of his cut.

It didn’t seem right, at least, it surely wasn’t proper.

Men used the Lord’s name in vain all the time.

Ask anyone. That was what hard men and soldiers did.

They cursed and they swore, they drank like fiends and they sent wicked bastards to Hell. They sure as hell weren’t praying then.

Yet deep in his soul, Keller knew he’d only cursed the Lord hardest when nights got too dark and self-pity ran roughshod over him. When he’d missed his wife. Which, until Savannah came along, had been all the time .

She stood patiently waiting, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail that curled at the nape of her neck.

Patience. That was her magic, damn it. She’d given him a lifeline, and now she was waiting to see if he hanged himself with it or…

what? If he dropped to his knees and said, ‘Thank you, Jesus, I’m saved! ’?

Not going to happen. He was no saint and this was no miracle. Cursing was one thing. He refused to pray.

“We really need to move,” he reminded her. “Pack what you need. Keep it light.”

“But you need the same kind of help Isaiah needed. You need—”

“Not now,” he snapped, needing to get this woman to safety if it was the last thing he did today.

“Okay then,” she said as if she’d gotten the precise answer she expected. “But know this. You don’t have to love me back for me to love you. I offered my heart, but not in exchange for yours. If you never find peace, know I gave freely what was mine to give. I do love you. I always will.”

What the hell was a guy supposed to say to that?

Savannah smiled. “I’ll let the dogs run until I get back. They’ll be okay.”

He’d forgotten the dogs. They’d been so quiet. “How about your cats?” he asked like a complete ninny. Savannah had just bared her soul and given him a precious gift in the process, yet he couldn’t—wouldn’t—give her what she needed. Not yet.

“They’ll be fine. You made sure they had water when you fed them, didn’t you?” she asked as if she still respected him. As if she still loved him.. .

“Sure. Water and food.” Like the dogs, each cat had an individual indoor kennel as well as its own outside caged run. Answering was better than thinking about the love she’d just professed. How could she do that? Love him ? Surely there were better men—

“Then I’m ready,” she declared as cheerfully as ever. That was another of Savannah’s gifts. She gave freely, while he doled out his meager gift of empathy and comfort in the smallest increments and only when he had to. Giving seemed to make her happy. Now that was something to think about.

She crooked her elbow like they were going on a date instead of running for their lives. “Shall we?”

Keller shook his head. If there were a way to deny this woman, he didn’t know it. He linked his arm through hers and humbly said, “Let’s roll.”