CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Esme hurt all over from lack of sleep, and lack of food, and a whole damn night spent running around in a pair of three-inch heels, and yet she had a smile on her face. Her father wasn’t close to dying. Other than a broken arm and three cracked ribs, he was going to live long enough for her to personally kill him, unless her mother got to him first.

Johnny’s driving had revived her mother while they’d still been on their way to the hospital. About the second rubber-burning, tire-squealing turn, she’d come out of her faint enough to grab onto the console, and by the time they’d hit eighty miles an hour on a Commerce City street, she’d had enough blood and adrenaline pumping through her to talk, though she hadn’t said much beyond “Slow down!” and “Watch out!” and “God save me!”

The doctor had checked her out anyway, and given her a clean bill of health, and as soon as Dax came back to get them, Esme was taking her mother home.

And when she went back to Seattle, she was taking her mother back with her, at least for a couple of weeks. Her father was either going to have to figure out his gambling problems or go it alone, and Esme didn’t have a clue which way it would all end up. But she was never going through this again. She hoped her mother decided the same.

She checked her phone-7:25 A.M. Johnny had gone to a meeting, of all things, and promised he’d call her when it was over. God, she was thinking about him. Johnny Ramos, U.S. Army Ranger. The night had been wild, the sex amazing, and it all felt so right. It felt like love, which was crazy in one night, except he’d been a part of her life since she’d been thirteen years old, the part she’d longed for, and to be with him had felt so right, so easy.

She’d already told Dax she was staying in Denver for a week or two, just taking some time off. She needed to see where this all went. To bed, for sure, but maybe someplace else as well.

She checked her phone again-7:26 A.M. Johnny had thought his meeting would wind up by nine. Dax had said he’d be back before eight, and after dropping her and her mom off, he was headed to the airport, where he was going to see if he could track down Warner’s jet, see when it had come in and when it had left, then back to Seattle, and from there to Singapore.

But she was staying in Denver.

She took another quick glance at her watch-

7:27 A.M. She felt like an idiot for wanting to see him again as soon as possible, like maybe this morning, about nine-oh-five or so, right after his meeting-but there she was, Esme the Impatient, Esme the Insatiable, Esme Maybe in Love.

Duffy’s made great coffee, and it was a great summer morning in the Mile High City after one helluva night, but it was 7:28 A.M. and Dax’s time was running out.

He had the place to himself, and that hadn’t been his plan, or his wish. One of Duffy’s cooks had just finished watering the pots and pots of flowers filling every corner of the outside patio, geraniums and petunias still fresh with morning dew, and another cook had brought out the coffee pot to give him a refill and another chocolate croissant to fill him up, and it was all just great, but damn he’d hoped to be sharing it with her, the her, Suzi Toussi.

He hadn’t been hit that hard by a woman in a long, long time. It wasn’t something a guy was going to forget.

He pushed back from the table and tossed a ten next to his plate. The next time he ran into Suzi Toussi, he wasn’t going to let her get away. All he had to do was make sure there was a next time.

He could do that. He could make damn sure there was a next time.

Suzi slipped out of her black 1955 Porsche Speedster, the one she’d bought off Kid Chaos, Nikki’s husband, over at 738 Steele Street, and quickly walked to the side door of Duffy’s Bar. Everybody used the side door if they wanted into Duffy’s before eleven o’clock in the morning, except for those brave souls who hazarded the alley, and the crumbling brick steps, and the wrought-iron gate into the patio. She hurried down the hall past the bathrooms, and ducked behind the coat closet to get to the door leading to the patio from inside the bar.

For a second, her heart soared ridiculously high. There was a cup of coffee on a table, a plate with a half-eaten chocolate croissant-and a ten-dollar bill lying between the plate and a small bouquet in a vase.

He’d already paid and gone.

Her smile faded, and she just stood there and stared at the empty table, the sense of loss she felt completely out of proportion with the circumstances. But there it was, taking the air out of her.

She was late, and he was gone. Dax Killian. God, what a name.

She looked to either side of the patio, just in case… just in case-but no luck. She’d missed him.

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. He probably hadn’t even shown up. The coffee could have been anyone’s, and even if it was his, by any test of reason, it was impossible to feel a sense of loss over missing someone a person didn’t even know, or had barely met.

And yet it was there, weighing on her in an odd, sad way.

She looked around the patio again, then walked over to the iron gate leading into the alley. There was no one, only the bricks of the surrounding buildings warming up with the morning sun, the damp alley where one of Duffy’s busboys would have hosed it down-and a table where someone had been just minutes before she’d arrived.

She went over to the table and sat down in the chair where that someone had been sitting, and told herself she’d never been this ridiculous in her life.

She touched the coffee cup. It was still warm.

Oh, hell, she really had just missed him, or someone.

They’d barely met, she assured herself. She’d spent more time talking to the surveillance cop last night than she’d spent talking to Dax Killian.

He shouldn’t matter, not to a reasonable woman, not at all. Yet she found herself running one finely manicured finger along the edge of the croissant plate, and when she looked at the flowers in the vase, she saw the note.

Duffy, it said. If she doesn’t show, would you see that these get to Suzi Toussi at Toussi Gallery on Seventeenth. And it was signed-Dax.

Unbidden, a thrill went through her, and a very pleased, cat-in-the-cream smile curved her lips. The flowers were gorgeous, fresh and dew-kissed, picked right out of Duffy’s pots, a bright red geranium surrounded by a dozen or more purple and white double petunias, but the vase-ah, the vase. Upon closer inspection, it was exquisite, and she had to wonder where in the world Dax Killian had found a Chihuly vase between one and seven-thirty on a Saturday morning?

The only reasonable answer was that it was his, and he’d left it, this lush little piece of art, on a patio table for her.

He’d come into her gallery last night looking for Johnny, and that connection was more than enough.

With a name and a connection, she could find anybody.