An airport he was in because he had a family reunion back in Texas and was away for a couple of days.
“Vonn?” I ask faintly.
He lifts his head and glances at the TV before calmly putting his book down as if noticing this craziness for the first time. “Darlin’?”
“Did you…” I can’t bring myself to ask. “Did you do this?Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
He turns back to his book.
I burst out, “Okay, I do need to know. Not the details, but did you kill Jeremiah?”
“Come here, sweetheart.”
I get up, and although my knees shake, I cross over to him and take a seat on his lap.
He frames my face with strong, calloused hands. “He shot at you,” he says quietly. “There was no future where I was going to allow him to do it again. My word and my life, I willalwayskeep you safe.”
I hug him. No one has ever made me feel as safe and protected as Vonn, and no one ever will. “I love you, Vonn.”
He wraps his arms tightly around me. “I love you too, darlin’.”
“You did it with your army buds, didn’t you?” Makhi asks, grinning. “I bet you did it Rambo style with camo paint on your faces and knives clenched between your teeth.”
“A knife between histeeth?” Nash asks. “And since when did you watch Rambo?”
“It’s a classic,” Makhi sniffs, switching the TV off and tossing the remote on the coffee table. “We’ll watch it tonight.”
Vonn smiles at me when we stop hugging. “There was no knife between anyone’s teeth. Just a handful of experienced men who know how to shoot.”
“Are you sure it won’t lead back to you?” I ask, biting my lip.
“We left no tracks and stayed out of sight. It won’t lead back to any of us.” He tugs a tiny strand of my hair, making me smile.
My hair is approaching pixie-length after Jeremiah shaved it, and I appreciate having a little more hair on my head to keep it warm, even though Provence in the summer is beautifulandhot.
“So it’s all over.” I lean against his chest and wrap my arms around his waist.
“It’s all over,” Vonn confirms.
Nash’s uncle is in jail. The FBI arrested the sheriff and his deputy for corruption, and they’re unlikely to be cops ever again. Nash sold his family’s mansion, and we’re living in a beautiful villa in a beautiful part of the world.
“Have you thought about where you want to go next?” Nash asks as Nance walks in to tell us, “Lunch is ready.”
Nash lets out a long sigh. “Nance, you don’t have to keep cooking for us. We can get staff.”
“It’s what Iliketo do, and I will continue to do it for as long as I can,” Nance says.
“Do you ever miss the mansion?” Vonn asks Nash as we get up from the couch so we can eat lunch in the kitchen. This house comes with a gorgeous dining room, but we’ve all gotten so used to eating every meal family style in the kitchen. That looks unlikely to change anytime soon.
Nash shakes his head. “We took everything that meant anything with us. That mansion was nothing but a building filled with bad memories.”
“Did the investigation into your dad’s accidental fall ever find out what he was doing on the roof the night he died?” I ask Nash. “That had to have been why your uncle was so sure someone had killed him.”
Even after Marcus Gabriel’s arrest, he was still claiming that Nash, Makhi, or Vonn killed Nash’s dad. No one believed him.
“No one knows,” Nash says. “I spent most of my time avoiding him. Especially towards the end. He was always the worst when he drank.”
Nance says briskly, “Whatever he was doing up there can’t have been anything good. Time for lunch.”
