Page 74 of Jack of Hearts
“I mean it, baby brother. One of us will stop by later, and your ass had better be here.”
“The two of you are worse than having a nursemaid.”
“We almost lost you.” He squeezed Alex’s knee. “We’re still traumatized. Deal with it.”
If it had been one of them almost dying, he’d be traumatized, too, but he might need resuscitating again just from pure boredom. After Court left, Alex roamed the confines of his condo, looking for something to do. He’d cleaned everything twice already. His clothes were washed, dried, and put away. The bills were paid. He’d even bleached the grout on the bathroom floor.
He’d give his brothers one more night of peace, and then it would be time to put his plan to win Madison back into motion. Deciding to shower and call it an early night so tomorrow would get here faster, he went into the bathroom. As he stood in front of the mirror, he gritted his teeth when he tore off the bandage covering the wound that bastard Ramon had put in his chest. He stared at it, trying to remember anything from the time he’d been shot and when he’d woken in the hospital, asking for Madison.
He’d opened his eyes to the sound of her voice, but she hadn’t been there. He’d been too afraid of the answer to ask his brothers if she’d even visited once.
Coming that close to death, he should have experienced some kind of epiphany, or at the very least, a conversation with an angel who would have told him the meaning of life. But other than the bullet hole in his chest, nothing felt different. There had been no tunnel with a brilliant white light at the end.
Nothing had changed. He still wanted to be an FBI agent, putting bad guys away. He still loved his brothers, the same as he always had. And he still loved Madison. The only thing almost dying had done for him was make him more determined than ever to use this second chance to win her back. Although he was still under “house arrest,” he could make his first move.
He studied the photos a jeweler friend had sent, decided on the one he liked, and then texted his friend, telling her to have the item delivered tomorrow.
She immediately responded.
Any note with it?
He considered, then texted back.
No
After taking a shower, he put on a new bandage, pleased with how well the tissue was healing around the wound. Tomorrow the stitches would be removed, which he was looking forward to because the damn things itched. For dinner, he reheated the leftover pizza Nate had brought over. Finished eating, he turned on a ball game and fell asleep on the sofa while waiting for one of his “jailers” to stop by and do a bed check.
“Is Madison Parker here?” a messenger asked.
“She’s Madison,” Lauren said, pointing at her.
He thrust a padded envelope into Madison’s hands. “This is for you.”
“What is it?” Only her name and the bookstore’s address were on the front.
Lauren grabbed it and shook it next to her ear. “Well, it’s not a bomb. You might try opening it. That’d be one way to find out.”
“Smarty pants. Give me it.” She opened the flap and peeked inside. “Nope, not a bomb.” It was a white velvet jewelry box, and when she opened it, she stared at it for a moment, wondering who would send her a bracelet. Then she saw the grasshopper charm on the delicate silver chain and sucked in a breath.
“What? You know who it’s from?” Lauren fingered the charm. “It’s so cute.”
“Alex.” Tears stung her eyes. She had missed him every day, had felt the ache in her heart from the moment she woke up each morning, and had fallen asleep each night thinking of him.
“Oh, sweetie.” Lauren took the bracelet from her and put it on her wrist. “Let’s take a break.” She pulled Madison to the coffee bar. “Angelina, would you mind covering the front for a few minutes? Madison and I are going to treat ourselves to a latte.”
Madison smiled at her mother, hiding the ache in her heart. Angelina gave her a hug before going to cover the front. Although still sad with the turn of events involving her brother, she had bounced back faster than Madison had expected. Maybe she’d been wrong to think Angelina had been too fragile to deal with Ramon’s creepy behavior.
Latte in hand, she followed Lauren to their office. They had a sofa in the office, and as soon as they were seated, Lauren said, “Start talking. What happened between you and Alex? I thought there was something really special going on there.”
So had she. Was the bracelet an apology for using her to get information on her cousin? She lifted the grasshopper charm with her finger. It was an exquisite piece. The eyes of the grasshopper were small emeralds, and the charm had obviously been handmade.
“I thought so, too. Maybe things were just moving too fast for him.”
She thought about the moment with Nate, when he’d pulled her aside while they were keeping vigil at Alex’s bedside. “I’m sorry you got caught in the middle, Madison,” he’d said.
“It wasn’t your cousin who threatened to kill you, so nothing to be sorry for.” She’d almost given him the thumb drive then, but she’d been so mixed up. Ramon was dead, and apparently they had all the evidence they needed to send her uncle to prison for a long time, if not forever. It would break her mother’s heart all over again to learn that Jose and Ramon might have been the ones responsible for her father’s death. So the thumb drive had stayed in her pocket and was now hidden in a box in her closet.
“When he gets well”—Nate had looked over at Alex, lying deathly still in the hospital bed, his eyes locking back on hers with a fierce determination—“because he will, the two of you need to have a long talk. Until then, I’m going to ask you to keep who we are to yourself. The rest of it, the arrest of your uncle and the death of your cousin, will be front-page news, but we’ve managed to keep your name out of it. As far as anyone knows, you were never there.”
