Page 44 of Jethro

The first kiss was barely a kiss at all. Just his mouth brushing hers, soft as a question, and then gone. He waited. She opened her eyes and found him watching her, patient and steady and completely unafraid of whatever her answer would be. So, she gave it to him. She slid her fingers into the short hair at the back of his neck and drew him down to her again.

He kissed her slowly, as though they had all the time in the world. There was no hurry in him. No taking. Only warmth, and tenderness, and a hunger he held carefully in check, like a match cupped against the wind. She felt it in the way his breath caught when she sighed against his mouth, and it moved her more than she could say that a man this strong could be this gentle with her.

They kissed through the end of the movie and the credits and the blue glow of the menu screen. Long, soft kisses that started and ended and started again, broken by quiet laughter and foreheads resting together. When at last they drew apart, her heart was pounding so hard she was sure he could hear it over the rain.

She rested her forehead against his and took a shaky breath.

"Jethro."

"I'm right here."

"I want you. I need you to know that. I want you so much it scares me a little." She drew back just far enough to look into his eyes, and her own were bright and uncertain. "But I'm not ready. Not yet. Everything in my life has been rushed or forced or decided for me, and I want this to be the one thing that isn't. What I wish I could have given you first, was stolen from me. I want it to be ours, when it's right. Can you..." Her voice wavered. "Can you give me a little more time?"

There was no disappointment in his face. Not a flicker of it. He only smiled, that slow, crooked smile that had undone her the first day she met him, and he brushed his thumb across her bottom lip.

"Darlin', I'd wait a hundred years for you and count myself lucky every single day of it." He kissed her forehead. "There's no clock on us. Nobody's keeping score. When you're ready, you'll tell me, and not one minute before. That's a promise, and I don't make many."

Relief washed through her so strongly that her eyes filled again. She laughed at herself and blinked the tears away.

"There's one more thing. And it might sound silly."

"Try me."

"Will you sleep beside me tonight? Just sleep. Just hold me." She twisted the edge of the quilt in her fingers. "In the hospital, those two nights, when you sat by the bed and held my hand, the dreams didn't come. Not once. I think about that all the time. I think maybe if you're holding me, they can't find me."

Something passed over his face, so open and so deeply moved that she understood she wasn't the only one who had been lying awake in the dark for years.

"That's not silly," he said roughly. "That's the best thing anybody's ever asked me for." He lifted her off the couch, quilt and all, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and laughed into his shoulder.

His bedroom was plain and clean and smelled of cedar and rain. She changed into one of his old Marine Corps T-shirts, and he turned back the covers and waited for her to choose her side, then followed slowly, never rushing, letting her settle.

Then she rolled toward him, and he opened his arms, and she fit herself against his chest. He drew the quilt over them both and wrapped himself around her, his body a warm, solid wall between her and every dark thing in the world.

"Is this alright?" he whispered.

"It's perfect." She found his hand on her waist and laced her fingers through his, holding it against her heart. "Jethro?"

"Mm?"

"Thank you. For waiting. For not making me feel like I'm broken." He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, soft and lingering.

"You're not broken, Aurora. You're healing. There's a world of difference, and I'd know." His arm tightened around her. "Go to sleep, darlin'. I've got you. Nothing gets past me tonight."

The rain softened to a whisper on the roof. Aurora listened to the slow rhythm of his breathing, felt the steady weight of his arm across her, and somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, she let go.

Once, around two in the morning, she stirred and made a small, frightened sound. Jethro gathered her closer and murmured against her hair, low and steady. You're here. You're safe. I've got you. She sighed and went still, and the dream never came back.

When the sun came up over the bayou, gold and soft through the screen, Aurora Lyons opened her eyes in her husband's arms and realized, with a slow, astonished joy, that she had slept the whole night through.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jethro's dining room table had not seen a meal in nine days. It was buried under laptops, legal pads, bank statements, and empty po'boy wrappers, and the four people around it had slept about as often as the table had eaten.

It had started with a rumor. A Robicheaux cousin cleaned offices on Poydras Street, and she had heard that Langley Capital was being sold out from under a man too sick to sit up. Aurora had listened, gone very quiet, and then called the people she trusted to find out why.

Hiro found the money first. He was hunched over two screens, his glasses pushed up into his hair, when he finally pointed.

"There. One and a half million dollars, wired from Vance Meridian Wealth in Houston to something called Thibodeaux Interiors, LLC." He looked up. "Your mother is the only member. The company hasn't filed a tax return in thirteen years, and it just got paid a million and a half to pick out curtains."