Shotgun Honeymoon Read online

  “No,” Russ said emphatically. “Nunh-unh. Down. Put me down immediately. My own steam…I’m good. Ow, damn, watch the left side. Hell, that hurts.”

  “What’d you always tell us when we were growin’ up?” Jeth asked, deliberately ramming his brother’s right foot into an obstruction that he himself stepped carefully around. “Oh yeah.” He glanced at Guy and Jonah.

  “Do the crime, do the time,” the brothers chorused.

  “But

  “Assault police, do time,” Jonah, who’d been assaulted more than once working with his eldest brother, and all too frequently since he’d sent Janina off to find him, stated emphatically.

  “Cowboy off to do it yourself, do time,” Jeth, who knew all too well whereof he spoke, said pointedly.

  “Forget to tell the woman you love that you do,” Guy, who was exceptionally good about doing so but had almost lost Hazel anyway, offered mildly, “and you’ll lose her.”

  “Piss me off any further by not putting me down,” Russ said between his teeth, “and one-handed and half-dead or not, you’re all goin’ down.”

  “You think so?” Guy asked.

  Russ canted a glance at his wife. Grinned crookedly. “Yeah. First rule for a rookie cop in unknown territory—never go in without backup. Right, Janie?”

  She studied him a long moment, bewildered. Then her eyes went wide and she swallowed hard. “You knew?”

  “Always.” He opened his hand where her ring still sat snugly in the center of his palm, held there by the thong he’d laced around his fingers. “Thought you were pretty before, but that’s when I fell in love.”

  “Oh.” Janina blinked. Glanced around for someplace to collapse. Pointed at the back seat of Jeth’s SUV. Looked at his brothers. “Put him down there,” she croaked. “Gently.”

  “Easier if I do it myself,” Russ protested.

  She drew an unsteady breath, nodded. Crawled ahead of him into the heavy-built 4X4 vehicle.

  She wanted his good side to herself.

  When he was in, she reached across and shut the door behind him then locked them in.

  He quirked a brow. “Jeth has the keys.”

  Janina traced his mouth. “He’d better not use ’em.”

  “This thing has lots of windows.”

  “They’re tinted. No one can see in.”

  Russ grinned. “True. But I’m not exactly in any shape for gymnastics…”

  “I don’t care.” Janina kissed the corner of his mouth. “If you love me even if I can’t get pregnant, nothing else matters because I’ve loved you forever and…”

  Russ reached up and switched on the interior light, threaded his hand into her hair, pulled her head back. Let her feel the ring still in his palm. “Janie, look at me. Listen up good. I knew before we married that you might not be able to get pregnant. You told me about you and Buddy, or else I heard you talking to Tobi. It doesn’t matter. I knew. I know. Thing is, stuff changes. The body protects itself, kills off things for a reason. And while you might have killed off Buddy’s, you’re not killing off mine. That negative reading you got from the pregnancy test? Either you got a bad kit or your body’s lying to you. Don’t believe me, but I can smell pregnant on you, taste it on your skin, in your honey. Everything’s sweeter. Different.”

  Her chin quivered, her eyes filled. She fitted her tongue between her teeth to steady herself. “No,” she whispered. But not to him. “It can’t be. It’s stress.”

  Again, but with no interruptions in the offing this time, Russ showed her the ring. “Why did you take it off?”

  “The first time?”

  He made a motion for her to go on.

  “Your blood.” She fingered the ring, slipped her hand inside his strapping so she could touch his left hand. “I was covered in it. I had to wash it off. When I went to put my ring back on, my fingers were so swollen…” She shook her head. “I put it on when the swelling went down, but they’ve been like that all week. Figured between the heat and PMS, water retention…”

  She ducked her head, bit her lip. “But I’d already missed my period. Even with stress, the divorce, Buddy at his worst, that never happened before.” Her mouth twisted. “I couldn’t hope. I had you. That would have been too much.”

  Russ smiled.

  She shrugged. “But you were in the hospital, you didn’t want me there. I couldn’t worry you, tell you Buddy’d been following me. I had to handle that by myself so, you know…” A one-shoulder hunch. “Extra stress. I was worried about you, too, and I was afraid you—because you never said anything about love—and I wondered if maybe it would be better if we…or maybe I…. I guess I left it at home this morning when it wouldn’t go on.”

  “You know why I couldn’t stand to see you at the hospital?” Russ asked.

  “No.”

  He grimaced. “You were making yourself sick and I couldn’t bear seeing you that worried about me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “There’s a cure for that, you know. Don’t get shot again.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “You know, you’ve never said anything about love, either,” Russ said finally, gently. “But I know you do because it’s in every damn thing you’ve ever done for me, and it’s been in everything you’ve done every minute of every day from the moment you set foot in the Bloated Boar.” He touched her mouth. “It’s a word that’s nice to hear, but you saying it wouldn’t tell me louder than you’re telling me now. Than you’ve told me for years. I was just too big an idiot not to have heard you and done something about it sooner.”

  “I adore you,” Janina said thickly. “Love you to distraction and to the point of wanting to shake or kill you when you don’t take care of yourself.” She hesitated apologetically. “But in order to stay sane I’ll need the words from you at least once more. And probably once in a while after that, too.”

  Russ laughed. Gasped in pain, but couldn’t prevent the mirth from spilling out of him. So he let it. Chuckled, snickered, roared. Hard, long with feeling.

  Until a miffed Janina grabbed her ring away from him, ripped off the thong and slipped it on, stone in, and swatted him upside the head with equal feeling. Then he subsided, rubbed his skull and gave her that devastatingly devilish Levoie grin.

  “You never read your ring, did you?”

  She viewed him with did-they-sew-your-shoulder-to-your-belly-button misgiving. “Read my… What? What are you talking about?”

  He wiggled his fingers. “Give it to me.”

  She took it off. “Even if it needs to be sized so I can wear it all the time after a legitimate doctor tells me whether or not I’m pregnant, I want it back.”

  Russ swallowed a smile. “Noted.” He held the ring up to the interior light, angled it so she could see the inside. “Remember I told you I made this six months before you rescued me from the Boar?”

  Janina nodded warily.

  “I inscribed it then, too, just in case this damn tongue of mine tripped me up so I never got around to telling you how I felt.”

  All shaky again, Janina peered at the inscription. Grabbed the ring and read it again to make sure she’d seen it right. Put it back on and turned carefully to face him.

  “Dear God, I love you,” she said, and with the greatest care slid her arms around his neck, leaned in and kissed him.

  His one good arm wrapped tightly around her, Russ pulled her close, let his heart expand, open wide…

  Then he took her deep inside himself and kept her there.

  For Janina, who owns my heart. Always. Russ

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7770-4

  SHOTGUN HONEYMOON

  Copyright © 2004 by Terese Daly Ramin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopyin
g and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  Visit Silhouette Books at www.eHarlequin.com