Page 35

THREE MONTHS LATER and winter had arrived. Heavy snow had turned into heavy snow flurries that kept the landscape white like sheets and the trees that lined the passageways like black and white paintings in an art gallery: Bare. And where wearing sunglasses during that time was as nonsensical as wearing shorts. Roni didn’t wear shorts, but she still wore her shades.

She drove her Porsche past the guard booth as the electronic security gate opened and allowed her passage through. She stopped at the main house, got out, and went inside.

As soon as she walked in, she stared at the staircase for several seconds, as if she was frozen in time, before going up. She was still dealing with the aftermath of that day in Jessica Hampton’s apartment. How Gus went down. How Brax went down. How she never ever wanted to step foot in New York City again for as long as she lived because of all of that going down. Nothing but bad memories met her there. Nothing but pain and agony and death and destruction. She was done with the City.

She slowly walked up the winding staircase with what felt like lead in her boots. Everything felt heavy to her, and like a climb. Even her heart was still heavy. Especially when she got to his bedroom and thought about how he took those bullets for her. For her . How none of this never would have happened had she remembered to frisk that bitch.

But what was done was done. Even JJ, who visited her often, told her so. Even Brax’s father and his other brothers and even Lady Millicent told her too. It wasn’t her fault. She was beating herself up for nothing. It was something Brax would have told them to do. “Reassure Roni,” he would have told them. “I don’t want her ever blaming herself.”

Now that was a hero, she thought, not those paper tigers like BG and Mulvaney.

She opened the double doors of his bedroom, steeled herself, and then walked on in.

Brax was sitting up in the middle of his bed with his back against his tall headboard. He wore pants pajamas and a top, when he never wore anything to bed, but he had company. He was dictating instructions to Margo, and she was updating him on various contracts that he still needed to sign.

“Those doctors didn’t release you to come home and work, Braxton,” Roni said as she began walking toward his bed. “Hey Margo.”

“Hello, Miss Ross. I told him it can wait. But he insisted I come over and come over to work.”

Roni stood at the side of his bed. “You’re supposed to rest, and you know that man. It’s only been nine days since they released you.”

Brax looked at her over his reading glasses. “Take off those shades in my house,” he ordered.

Margo was wondering why she always loved to wear those sunglasses too, especially indoors, especially on a dreary winter day, but she dared not ask her. Brax would have her hide if she said anything untoward regarding his little princess.

But Roni didn’t even dignify his order with a comment. She’d been wearing her glasses and dressing in her various styles all her adult life. He knew she wasn’t changing to accommodate him.

But he apparently felt, because he saved her life, that he was entitled to run it more than he already tried to.

“Did you hear me? Why are you wearing sunglasses in my house? There’s no sun in this house.”

“I thought you told your mother I was the sun.”

Margo glanced at her. Say what now , her look seemed to say.

“I told my mother you were the sun light , not the sun, so take’em off.” Then his voice softened. “I want to see your eyes.”

Roni started to ask why, but she didn’t. He was looking at her with such sincerity in his own eyes, as if seeing hers somehow mattered greatly to him, so she decided to just go with it. She removed her shades, sitting them on the top of her hair, and then she sat on his bed beside him, with her back to his headboard. They were shoulder to shoulder.

He waited until she looked at him. When she did, his heartbeat quickened. When he finally came out of his coma and ended up spending nearly three months in the hospital, Roni was the first face he searched for. When he saw it, his heart relaxed. And she never left his side. Day and night, she remained in that hospital as if she had been gunned down too.

She resigned from her job to stay by his side, although Brax, knowing what that job still meant to her, later got the VPD to grant her an unpaid leave of absence instead. The family loved her presence by his side, too, because they were not hospital people, as his father put it, although Roni never heard of such a term. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. Brax would do the same for her. He had, in fact, done everything for her including taking those bullets for her. It was the least she could have done.

He was still in pain. His wounds were slow to heal because they were so extensive. But he was grateful to see her dancing eyes again. He took her hand and squeezed it. “How has your day been going so far?” Brax asked her.

“So far okay.”

“Any bad cases?”

“I’m a homicide detective. They’re all bad.”

“I don’t know why you chose a profession that’s all bad.”

“Don’t start.”

“Okay, okay. Just giving my opinion, that’s all.”

“You’re supposed to be resting. How’s that for an opinion? The doctor’s opinion.”

“I spent damn near three months in the hospital. I’ve been out nine long days. That’s nine straight days of doing nothing but resting. After what I’ve been through, I need to get back in the swing of things.”

“I’m just glad we got out of there alive,” said Roni. “That crazy woman thinking you destroyed her father. And for Gus to go in with her for money?”

“As if I was giving up that kind of money to them.”

“You would have to help me,” said Roni. Then she looked at him. “Right?”

“Let’s just say Scottie would have been contacted.”

“Not for my sake, he wouldn’t.”

“If he couldn’t help,” Brax continued, “then I would have considered paying up. But to answer your question, yes, I would have given it up.”

Roni smiled. “Thought so,” she said. Then she saw Brax grimace. “Did they send another nurse over to change your bandages?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Show me?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Show me, Brax.”

“Last I looked I have thirteen years on your ass. Fourteen because I just had a birthday. Who should be bossing whom?”

“Boy just show me.”

“This child thinks she’s my mother,” Brax said to Margo and Margo laughed. But he lifted up his shirt and showed Roni a fresh wide bandage across his stomach.

“Okay good,” Roni said. “The other nurse said you brought her to tears with all of your yelling.”

“I wasn’t yelling. She tried to kill me the way she yanked that bandage off that time. This shit hurts when you take it off like that.”

“She said she’s never coming back.”

“Because I’m not letting her back. She’s too heavy-handed. I thought she was trying to skin me alive.”

Margo laughed again. Roni shook her head. “Mister Big and Brave, he is. Scared of a nurse.”

“She lives in the Amazon. She’s no typical nurse. You should see the size of her. Pulling it off like that. This shit hurts.”

“That’s because it’s only been nine days since you left the hospital. You aren’t fully healed yet. That’s why you need to tell Margo goodbye and get you some rest.”

Margo began to pack up her papers. “Fine by me,” she said.

“Don’t you go anywhere,” Brax said. “Veronica’s the one who’s going.”

“Going where?”

“Downstairs to get me a drink. The doctor said a little wine will do me good.”

“He did not say that.”

“Just go get me one. We’re almost done. By the time you come back up we’ll be through.”

“Sure you will. But I can use a drink myself,” she said as she got out of bed. “You want something to drink, Margo?”

“Nothing for me, thanks. After he signs those contracts I’m out of here.”

“That’s what you think,” Brax said, Margo laughed, and Roni made her way out of the bedroom and back downstairs.

As she went behind his bar downstairs and poured two drinks, she couldn’t help but think about how far Brax had come. She spent every night in that hospital with him. It got so bad that every time Lady Millicent showed up, she was at first flustered to find Roni still there. “Well my goodness, Veronica. You’re choking him. Let him breathe.”

Roni felt embarrassed and exposed when his mother said that to her. But she still wouldn’t leave his side. But when his mother realized his stay was going to be months, not weeks, she was pleased to have Roni there all the time.

And when he was released and returned home, she went back to work, but she spent every single night at his place. Waiting on his hand and foot. Becoming the very person her mother was to his mother, and the very person she declared she’d never be to anyone. But that man saved her life. That man was her world. And although she knew she was sounding just like Lady Millicent sounded when talking about Roni’s mother, but Roni couldn’t help it. That man was Roni’s family.

As she was about to grab the drinks and head back upstairs, she saw those brochures and photos she had taken from Jessica Hampton’s apartment in a slot on the bar counter. Apparently one of his brothers, who brought his clothes home from the hospital that day, had found them and placed them on the bar. She looked at those photos of Jessica with her family, but mainly those shots of Jessica with her father. With the man that led her to try such foolish things.

They found out that her father had died five months ago, and died penniless as she said, and that his death began her quest to destroy Brax in whatever way she could. But like always with revenge, she just ended up destroying herself.

But then another photo caught her eye. This one presumably of the whole Hampton family. The father, the mother, Jessica, and her sibling. Roni turned the photo over and saw a handwritten note : Me, my dearly departed wife, and our beloved daughters. Stay strong, Jess. Stay loyal, Margo. You two are my world. Love, your father .”

But when Roni saw that word, her heart slammed against her chest and she quickly turned the photo back over again. It had to have been over twenty years ago when the photo was taken, but it was her. Roni could see the resemblance fairly easily. It was her. Jessica Hampton’s sister was Margo Norris!

And her sister, who had to have believed Brax wronged her father too, was upstairs alone with him at that very moment!

The glasses fell from Roni’s hands, spilling over, and she ran.

As soon as Roni left upstairs, Margo knew she had no more time to waste. She had just arrived at the house when Roni showed up, and it was the first time Margo had been alone with Brax. She had to end this now!

She went over to the bed and handed Brax another contract. “This is the main one, sir,” she said as he took it from her hand. But as soon as her hand was free, she pulled out a big butcher’s knife and showed it to him.

Brax leaned back as soon as he saw it. “What are you doing with that?”

“You killed my sister.”

“Your sister? Who was your sister?”

“You killed my father.”

Brax was floored. Was she related to Cal Hampton too? “But how could she be your sister? She was the one that paid that man to crash into my limo. You were in that limo with me. You were nearly killed.”

“She didn’t know I was in there. She was devastated when she found out. But that’s how she was. She was the pretty sister. I had the brains. She never got it right. That’s why I worked for you. To figure all your weaknesses and how I was going to get back at you someday. But then Daddy died. And you never said a word.”

Brax was trying to figure out how he was going to get that knife away from her. “I didn’t know he had died.”

“Liar! You did know!”

“How would I know, Margo? I didn’t keep tabs on him.”

“You know now. That’s how you know. You know now!” She lifted that knife. “This is for my father and my sister, you bastard!” Margo yelled out and tried to stab Brax through the heart.

But Brax grabbed her wrist and kept the knife away from him. He had little strength, but he used what he had as they struggled for control of that knife.

“ Roni ,” he called out, but his voice was too weak. He was in no condition to fight anybody, but he had no choice. He flung himself out of bed, causing Margo to fall with him, in hopes of getting leverage.

But it was still a struggle. He ended up on his back and she ended up on top of him. And still holding that knife. She was determined to stab it all the way through his heart to the other side.

That knife was within inches of his heart as her hatred gave her herculean strength while he was trying with all he had to garner the little strength he had. And he was managing to keep that knife just away from his throat, where it now was pointed, but not enough to knock it out of her hand or knock her off of him.

But by the way he was grimacing and sweating, Margo knew he was in agony. That was why she repositioned herself and then pressed her knee into his wound, causing it to immediately began weeping. Then she slammed her knee into his wound, causing him to yell out in pain.

That yell was just enough for her to retake control of her knife. She lifted up that knife to get the hardest jab through she could. And she was about to jab it straight through when Roni ran into that bedroom, with her gun already drawn, and fired with no hesitation. Because she had no time to hesitate. Within a second she was going to stab him to death. She had no time to worry if that bullet would graze Brax the way Jessica’s bullet killed Gus. She just fired.

It was enough too. Margo slummed down, the knife slid from her hand, and she kilt over, right on top of Brax. He was in so much pain as the bleeding was intensifying that he didn’t have the strength to push her dead weight off of him.

Roni ran to him, and slung her away from him herself.

Gate security, who ran in the house as soon as they heard that gunshot, ran into the bedroom.

“Call 911,” Roni was saying breathlessly as she tried to staunch Brax’s blood flow. “Call 911.”

“We already have,” the guard said, as he made sure Margo was indeed gone.

Roni removed her blazer and her blouse to staunch the blood flow even more. He looked to be losing consciousness.

But when he looked up and saw Roni’s terrified eyes, he forced himself to hang in there. “Really I’m fine, Roni. Just need a little doctoring. Stop worrying so much. I’m okay.”

But Roni wasn’t. She could feel his pain. When they came for him it was just like they were coming for her. They came for them . And she wasn’t going to rest until he was healed, back on his feet again, and ready to get on her last damn nerve once more. Then she’d be okay.

He looked at her as she straddled him holding that makeshift tourniquet over his belly. And he managed to smile. “Some pair we are,” he said. “You’re half-naked, and I’m half-dead.”

Roni quickly looked at him, afraid that he was worse off than he was saying, but when she saw his smile she smiled too. And shook her head. “Maybe we aren’t happily ever after material just yet. But at least happy for now?”

Brax nodded his head. “Happy for now. Yes. That’s more like us. Happy for now,” he said. And they both found a way to actually feel that happiness.

And when the ambulance came and Brax, with Roni in tow, was taken to the hospital, Roni watched the doctors redress his wound and send him on his way.

They held hands in the limo as Harry drove them back to his place.

She still had his heart, and he still was the only man on earth who knew how to handle her - and let her be herself.

She still was the love of his life.

He still was her person.

They still were friends with benefits plus.

And that was cool with them.

“ When you get caught between the moon,

and New York City:

I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.

If you get caught between the moon,

and New York City:

The best that you can do,

The best that you can do,

is fall in love. ”