In Your Wildest Dreams (51 page)

Yet she only shrugged. "I'll get another one. Or maybe start my own little ad firm."

"Didn't you work awful hard to get where you are?"

"Yeah," she said, "and it's scary to go back to square one, but
..."

"You'll be brave," he finished for her. And then he swallowed, ready to lay something heavy on her. "I'm thinkin' about rejoinin' the force. Can you handle that? Danger every day?"

To his surprise, the question brought a warm smile to her face. "Jake, you were born to help people. I've known that about you from the beginning."

As he looked into her eyes and felt her belief in him, he knew he'd been wrong: He
could
save people. He'd saved Shondra. Maybe even Tina. Hell, maybe even Raven, in some small way. But mostly, he'd saved himself, by letting himself love the only woman who could breathe life back into him.

And he knew that, finally, he wouldn't be having any more sexy dreams. She'd made them all come true, so he'd be living them from now on.

Epilogue

Stephanie
sat on the dock, listening to the night sounds of the bayou and eating a slice of the apple pie Jake had brought home for her the night before. Inside, he nailed up the crown molding he'd carved for the bedroom, the last touch in his refurbishment. It had turned into not a place for him to be alone, but a place for them to be alone
together.

She thought of the existence they'd built over the last year. Life was stressful some days in the Quarter—but her one-woman ad agency, where she could do the work she loved without the corporate atmosphere, was slowly getting off the ground. And even when Jake came home to their pretty little Royal Street apartment tired and wrung out from something that had happened on the job, she could see the satisfaction from his work shining in his eyes, and she could feel it in the sureness of his touch when they made love. So life was good in the city, but even better when they escaped out here for a few days and nights of peace and great sex.

They'd married in Chicago—a big, no-holds-barred affair that her mother had loved planning and her sister had loved helping with. But they'd opted out of the traditional honeymoon and instead headed straight to their bayou house, where they'd made love for a week to the slightly scratchy sounds of
Mamère's
old records. Jake had joked it was a damn good thing she'd gotten lots of lingerie at her bridal shower because, despite his best intentions, he was destroying panties at an alarming rate.

If there was any dark cloud in their lives, it was enduring the arrest and trial of Robert Nicholson. But that was also a good thing, the last thing he needed, Jake said, to say good-bye to Becky. Nicholson had been sentenced to life in prison just last week.

When the hammering had ceased, she called to him. "Jake, honey, can you come out here for a minute. I need to tell you something."

A moment later, he exited the house with two cans of beer. As he popped the top on his, she only set hers aside unopened and looked out over the dark water. "There are angels in the bayou tonight," she said.

He grinned, sliding his arm around her shoulder. "That's what you called me out here to tell me?"

"No." She shook her head softly, eased a forkful of pie into his mouth, and then passed him a booklet of New Orleans real estate listings. "I called you out here to tell you we're going to have to start looking for a house a little sooner than we thought."

He glanced down at the book. "Why?"

Setting her pie plate aside to place a hand on the worn denim that stretched across his thigh, she whispered, "I'm
...
a little bit pregnant." They hadn't planned to have a baby right now—they'd only talked of it as something for a distant future—and given the child he'd once lost, she wasn't sure how he'd feel.

He leaned forward slightly.
"A little bit?"

"Well, completely." She smiled and rolled her eyes at her own silly wording. "I was just nervous to tell you."

He set his beer on the dock and lifted his hands to her face. "Never be nervous with me,
chère."

"But we haven't talked about
...
and I wasn't sure how you'd
..."

His smile unfurled slowly.
"Beb,
I love you. And you're havin' my baby. And that's damn scary. But also
...
perfect, and wonderful. You gotta know that."

"Deep down, I guess I did." She bit her hp thoughtfully. "I was thinking, if it's a boy, we could name him James, after you. And if it's a girl, we could call her Meghan." The names, he'd once told her, that he and Becky had discussed that fated evening over dinner.

"Becky would like that."

"I thought it might
...
keep her alive for you a little or something."

"Mon Dieu,
you're sweet," he said, bending to kiss her. "But Becky's gone, and as much as that hurt, life is about me and you now,
chère.
Me and you and this little
bébé
inside you."

He pressed his hand against her abdomen and they exchanged soft smiles.

"Now let's look for angels," he said.