I swallowed several times and fidgeted with my tea mug, feeling like a bug under a microscope. I also fidgeted in my chair. Finally I said, “Stop that! Tell me the truth now.”
He calmly got up and went to the cabinet that I’d been snooping in. When he pulled out the rest of the papers, he shuffled through them and handed me several. “Read.”
I read all right and had to push my jaw back up off my chest several times. Slowly I set them down.
“Then who killed Payne and stabbed Pansy?” the stupid question came out before I could think, since I was so delighted (and, yes, relieved) that Dano was not guilty of anything other than gathering inside information for one Global Carrier Insurance Company-the biggest one that Fabio dealt with in his agency.
Dano shook his head. “I thought you cared about me.”
Oops. “I did…do.” I set the papers down, got up and went to place my arms around his neck. “You have to believe me that I never wanted you to be involved.”
And his kiss said more, a hell of a lot more than any words could.
He started to nuzzle my neck. “If I knew who hurt Pansy and killed Payne, don’t you think I’d tell the cops?”
Preoccupied by his hands running over my body in oh-so delicious places, I barely remembered what he was talking about. In a few seconds I leaned back, looked him in the eyes and said, “Yes, I do.”
“Then sex isn’t out of the question, once I recover from your attack?”
Thank goodness he was smiling his dynamite ER Dano, sexy, girls-can’t-keep-their-hands-off-me smile.
I ran my fingers down his chest to grab onto the towel. “Not at all.”
His lips covered mine, and despite his earlier “discomforts” he lifted me up and carried me into the living room, where soon my clothing lay in a pile on the floor-right after I’d yanked off Dano’s damp towel.
It didn’t take me long to forget my concerns about Dano. As he ran his hands across my breasts so very gently in the afterglow of our lovemaking, it seemed like a dream. Well, this very moment seemed like a sexy, unbelievable dream, but any thoughts that he was a criminal seemed like ages ago and not very real.
I turned toward him, taking his now very pale pink cheeks in my hands and kissing his lips with purpose. “I am so sorry.”
He kissed me back, running his tongue inside my mouth until I thought we could do…it…again. “Fagetaboutit. You’ve worn me out.” He playfully pinched my nipple.
“I really do want to forget it all but need to make it clear. The job stuff. Not the sex. I’m sure you’re wondering who I am.”
He wrapped his leg across mine. “Nope. I know you rather intimately now.”
I smacked his hard chest. “Ouch. Well, I need to make it all clear.” And I really did. I couldn’t start a relationship on a lie, so I told ER Dano who I really was and who I worked for, leaving out Jagger’s identity-or what little I knew about it.
Dano leaned back, looked at me and smiled. “I was wondering when you’d get around to all that.”
I felt my eyes widen a hundred times larger. “You…were wondering?” I wrinkled my forehead. “I’m not following.” But my investigative abilities were sending out signals that said, He knew. He knew. He knew all along!
He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “We’re straight now, Nightingale. Straight.”
When he held me closer, I wanted to go on and on asking questions, but this felt so right that I shut my mouth. But in my mind I screamed, Jagger!
Jagger had to have already told him.
Of course, Jagger always managed to finagle us into getting jobs in the companies that we were investigating, and it made sense that one of the employees would have to know who we were.
While Dano kissed me deeply, sensually and well, damn hotly-the last thought on my mind was I’m going to kill Jagger.
Twenty-Three
Dano and I were dressed and heading out the door when my cell phone rang. I opened it and brought it to my ear.
“Pansy’s awake. Meet me there.” Then Jagger hung up before I could scream at him about the Dano situation. In my mind though, I knew Jagger always had my back. He never would have let me come here tonight alone if he didn’t really know who ER Dano was.
But did Jagger really know what Dano and I had done?
Yikes. I hoped to hell he couldn’t tell about my “glow” like perceptive Lilla could. Naw. Guys were not perceptive.
“We need to get to the hospital. Pansy woke up.” Pansy woke up. Perfect.
Dano turned to look at me. “That Jagger?”
Oh, yeah. Jagger had known. I’d kill him for sure and not with a cell phone but a real knife!
“Yep,” I said as Dano threw his keys at me.
“You drive. I’m indisposed as far as night vision. My truck will get us there faster than your yuppie Volvo.”
I wanted to argue that it was not yuppie, but that’d be a losing battle since my car, in fact, was. Hey, I bought it secondhand from a financial advisor in suburban Glastonbury, CT. Couldn’t get any more yuppie than that.
On the way to the hospital, I kept apologizing to Dano about the pepper spray until he made me pull over and said, “Stop that. You did the right thing. I wouldn’t have expected any less out of you, Nightingale. You’ve got guts and chutzpah. That, my dear, is why you make a fantastic nurse, investigator, and…sex-”
“I get it. Thanks.” Phew. I really didn’t want him going into that-even if it sounded like a good compliment coming on. There was that Catholic-school-induced-conscience thing, and once you heard something out loud, it became all too real.
Premarital sex. Or pre no-plans-for-marriage sex. Yikes.
We drove off and soon were pulling into the parking lot of Saint Greg’s.
“There’s Jagger’s SUV,” Dano said, pointing to the left side of the parking lot.
At first it surprised me that Dano would recognize Jagger’s SUV, but working with Jagger, I’d learned not to be bowled over by Jagger-induced shockers any longer, and that obviously pertained to Dano-induced shockers too. “Let’s see if he waited for us in it.”
I opened my own door since even after having sex with ER Dano I wasn’t expecting any changes. Truthfully, I didn’t want any. He was hot and perfect the way he was and there was enough chemistry between us to blow up a small building. Nope. I liked ER “as is” and no amount of wishing and hoping could produce that amount of chemistry-and apparently, I liked it.
And, hey, since he was still talking to me after pepper spraying him-he had to feel something close to it too.
Jagger got out and walked toward us.
I could swear he looked at me as if he knew about…you know. But then I told myself that was my stupid conscience acting up again. No way could he tell-but when we got closer, he stepped next to me and touched my arm. “Let’s go inside,” he said.
Wow.
Was that a possessive kind of touch?
I decided to concentrate on the case at hand and not try to figure out my romantic involvements/non-involvements. Besides, a thirty-something who up until now hadn’t had a date or sex in X (truthfully I didn’t want to know the real number because it’d be too embarrassing) number of months was in no position to figure anything out.
Walking between these two, though, proved more difficult than I thought-especially when they both went to put their arms around my shoulders-at the same time!
We made it up to Pansy’s floor without any more physical contact on anyone’s part, and not a word of explanation either.
I, however, smiled to myself all the way up on the elevator.
We stopped at the desk, and ER Dano explained that we were all employees who had come to visit their boss.