Then he looked up at the detail chief. No more pretending she was just another woman he happened to be concerned about. This went far deeper than concern. “Where is she?” he asked. He had to see for himself that she was safe and sound and he had to see her now!
And that was when he heard her voice.
“Vince!” she cried out.
Vince had to turn around himself twice before he saw her coming from around the back side of house with her family with her. They all looked shaken, but remarkably physically okay.
But when she saw Vince running toward her, she dropped that blanket that was draped around her and ran to him wearing a pair of pajama pants and the matching top. It was as if they couldn’t get to each other fast enough. George just stood there amazed. Was this that ruthless, uncaring, sometimes coldhearted Vincent Fontaine that he knew and loved? He could hardly believe it.
As soon as Vince made it over to Ricki, he lifted her into his arms and held her as tight as he could. “Thank God,” he kept saying into her hair. “Thank God!”
He was so happy to see her he was near tears. It was so unlike him that Milo elbowed George. But George was already astonished. Was it possible that Vincent Fontaine, a man who knew not the meaning of love, let alone how to love,was in love???
It seemed that way to George based on how he was holding that girl and how tightly his eyes were shut. It was as ifhe went from adject fear for her life to pure joy that she was alive and well and in his arms.
Even her family were surprised by his reaction to Ricki, and even more surprised by Hardshell Ricki’s reaction to him. How could she have just met this man from what she told them, and be all into him like that already? And Hershel Richardson didn’t want to hear anything about any love at first sight. There was no such thing in his book. No such thing.
But it was everything in Vince’s book. What if he had lost her and never told her? What if she had gone to her grave believing nobody truly loved her?
That was why, when he sat her on her feet and he looked into her eyes, his hands holding each side of her face, he was almost ready to say those three terrifying words he had never spoken to another human being in his entire life. He was almost there!
But when he looked into her soulful eyes, into thosebig brownsas he called them, his voice choked. He knew if he went there and made his true feelings known, there would be no going back for him.
But how could it be? How could he say those words to a woman he’d literally just met? It went against everything he believed in.Love?What was that? That was his way of thinking just before he met her. Now it was all about love? It made no sense at all!
All his life he refused to let emotions overtake his good sense. It worked marvelously for him thus far. He’d already made some major emotional leaps for Ricki as it were. Some foolish leaps if you would have asked the man he was before he met her. He was changing alright, but nobody changed that fast. And that was why he couldn’t pull himself, he just couldn’t, to make that ultimate leap.
It wasn’t in his makeup to behave that irrationally.
And it was just too soon.
“Were you injured at all?” he asked instead as he looked all over her body.
George, Milo, and his security detail had hurried over to the couple too. Milo and his security guys wanted to see for themselves just who this special lady was. They wanted to know just who was this person that could have their usually no-nonsense, somewhat coldhearted boss so into his feelings this way.
“Are you in any pain?” Vince added, as he continued to look her over.
“I’m not injured and I’m not in any pain, thank God,” Ricki said. “But I would have been in serious trouble,” she added, “had I stayed in my bedroom.”
Vince was puzzled. So were Milo and George. “What do you mean?” George asked her.
“My bedroom was right there,” she said, pointing to the blown-apart front of her parents’ home. “It was right off from the front door entrance. And that’s where the explosion came from. Only one other bedroom is up front like that, and that’s Erica’s bedroom. I tried to sleep in her room too, but I couldn’t do it. It was worse in her room. I kept thinking about her the whole time I was laying there. So I went to the backside of the house where I knew we had a spare bedroom, and where my parents and Davey slept. Had I stayed up front,” she said as her face became even more anguished, “there’s no way I would have. . . There’s no way,” she said again, but Vince quickly pulled her back into his arms. He shuddered to think what would have happened to her had she stayed where she originally laid her head.
But as he thought it, he looked at the security detail. “Did you see anybody, or hear anything?” he asked them.
“No sir,” said the detail chief. “We had just arrived something like an hour before this happened. That bomb had to have been planted before we got here.”
When the police chief went over to the family, Vince, Ricki, and Vince’s entourage went over there too. Hershel was just asking if they could leave now. “This has been most trying,” he said.
“Yes sir, I can only imagine,” said the police chief. “Where are you going to be, sir?”
“I own a rental house on Firth Street,” said Hershel. “2981. You can find us there.”
The looked at his deputy, who wrote down the address. “You’re free to leave,” he then told them.
“Let’s go,” Hershel said as he, his wife, and Davey were heading toward his untouched Cadillac. “Come on, Rasheda,” he added.
But Rasheda didn’t let Vince go. She couldn’t. He was the only person on earth she ever felt safe with. And after how close she came to certain destruction, safety was what she had to have. She didn’t even look at her family.
