Jack
"So I hear you're retiring." Me and Jim walk back to his office together. "Yep." "Think you knocked her up on the first go?" I'm shocked Jim asked but I'm not about to deny doing it either. "Yep." "Yeah, I think I got Libby the first time too." He smiles, what used to be a rarity now becoming the norm. We both go into his office and find Libby and Lexi sitting there. Libby is frowning at my girl. I come to stand behind my woman offering her comfort even if she doesn't need it. Libby looks up at me, "I was asking Lexi what she plans to do about school now that she has you." "What does she want to do?" Libby's frown deepens. "She's worked so hard to get as far as she is..." "And I'll work just as hard when the semester starts again. I just won't do it from campus. Or at least not from my old campus." "Lexi can go anywhere she wants to or do anything she wants to do. I'll support her one hundred percent." "But what about...?" I lower my hand to Lexi's stomach and her sister gasps, "When we have our baby I'll be there to help make sure she has time to do both." Her face goes white and her eyes round. "Baby?" "It's bound to happen sooner than later, Libby. Besides I want our kids to be born close together so they can always have one another." Lexi tells her sister. She reaches over to touch her sister's hand with her. Libby turns hers to grasp Lexi's. She gives her a watery smile. "Stupid pregnancy hormones make me so fucking emotional. That was the most beautiful thing you could ever tell me." "Besides, the town we went to for the founder's day parade has one of the best psychologists alive. She’s done more work for the F.B.I. than any other psychologist who doesn't work for them than anyone. I would love for her to be my mentor." I look up at her sister just as Libby looks up at me. I can read the worry in her eyes over Lexi wanting to work with this woman. She jumps up to run for her phone so she can show her sister who this woman is. "Jack?" Libby comes to stand next to me. "I'll work on getting her to change her mind at night. You work on her during the day." "Maybe if you just keep her knocked up all the time she won't be able to work with this woman." Damn, I never thought I would hear Libby tell me to keep her sister knocked up all the time. I guess desperate times call for desperate measures. I will support Lexi in anything she wants to do but I'm not going to let her do something knowingly dangerous either. If she really wants to work with this woman then I'll find a way to make it happen but she better not think I'll let her track down serial killers and bad men without me spanking her little ass red for it. She is after all the most important thing in my life. I would have to start hunting them down before she ever got their cases.
Epilogue II
____________
A month later:
Jim
"Hello." I pick up the phone, intrigue about why Libby put the call through when she usually doesn't bother until after we have established a relationship with the individual. "Mr. Archer? I am speaking to THE Archer am I not?" The voice has a heavy accent. "That depends on who is asking." "I don't have time to play coy, Mr. Archer. I have something you want and you...you can do something for me." This man is direct whoever he is. "And what do you think you have?" "I know about the list of names you took from the Russian. I was one of those names at one time. I also know the man you're looking for and where you will find him." I sit up fully invested now. Still, I take it slow and don't show my interest. "You seem to think it is a man I am looking for." "It is and he is a lot closer to you than you think. You are right to think that the man is killing your people off because you can identify him." That pretty much does it for me. I want this man and what he knows. And I want it right away. "Why don't you come in to talk to me and we'll see what we can do for each other." "That is going to be a problem. You see, I'm in prison Mr. Archer." Shit. Shit. Shit. "Then what do you want from me?" If it's a prison break he's going to get it. Anything to get that name. "I have a daughter...she is in danger and needs the protection only you and your men can offer her." My hand squeezes up around the phone. "What's her name and date of birth?" The End!
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Gunfights, dead bodies, and one pissed off Russian is not Kat St. Claire’s idea of a good time. But that’s exactly what she has on her hands all while trying to stay alive long enough to become an old cat lady. The next time she prays for excitement in her life she’s going to give herself a swift kick in the a$$. Ivan Dragomir’s entire world is a repeat of nothing but vice, blood, and death. He left Russia to start a new life, one that didn’t include the violence of his past, but violence wasn’t done with him yet. Now he’s on the run in his new country with a woman more used to dealing with paper cuts and printers than knife wounds and getting blood out of denim.
These two are on a collision course with a dark fate if they can’t figure out how to work together to take down a very powerful Senator before he gets away with more than just bad political moves. Hot Russians, violent murder, and sex so hot it could melt Siberia; this full-length romance has it all and then some.
In typical Jisa fashion, this instalove thriller promises Happy Endings ;) for everyone. None of the main characters die and even though some touchy subjects are hinted at I try not to stay in that part of the book for too long but if you are sensitive to that sort of thing this book may not be the right one for you or you could skip that chapter, it’s up to you, dear reader. It’s all here, something for every one of my Lovelies, and sweet like baklava. Happy Reading.
1
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Ivan
I realize how close winter is when the slap of cold hits me in the face like an angry lover. Normally I don't mind D.C. in the winter but I've been thinking of moving somewhere warmer lately. The cold reminds me of things I would rather leave buried in the icy ground of Russia. American winters are never going to be as bad as Russian winters but sometimes when I'm in my apartment and I've been holed up for days working I'm reminded of where I came from. It's usually then I have to leave and head to my favorite café close to my apartment.
Most days I take a break to walk there for a large black coffee and to people watch. It helps remind me that I'm not back in a dank cramped cell. I've made a life for myself here in D.C. One of the best things about D.C. is the influx of so many people and cultures and languages in one area. That and it is really easy to hide in a place that is constantly changing faces from day-to-day.
Today, when I swing the door open and the smell of coffee hits me I make sure to stare down each person in the café. I am just a moody bastard today I guess. Not that I'm not normally moody. I stand at the back of a line and wait my turn. In front of me are the two older women who have been trying to get me to tell them my story for months. Both of them are fighting the battle of the gray and yoga mats and weird green drinks are always in their hands. I've joked with them and called them cougars much to both of their delights. They come up with stories when I don't give them anything on who I really am.
This week I'm a Romanian Duke who had to flee his motherland because of a government upheaval. Last week I was a spy for the USSR that had to go into hiding. I wonder if they would still flirt and find me appealing if they knew how close to the truth they were.
Behind them is another regular, the lawyer. He's a total dick waffle to everyone who doesn't make a certain amount a year or wear a business suit. I've threatened to cut him plenty of times for talking down to the pretty, young barista that always makes my coffee. If he isn't talking down to a woman, he is trying to hit on them.
When cold air from the swinging door hits my back I find the other regular standing behind me. I've had to threaten the lawyer about her more than once. Fucking pervert. If he isn't eying her tits with his hand in his pocket playing the one dick shuffle then he's leering at her ass making rude sounds loud enough everyone can hear him. Not that she gives him any attention at all.
The only reason I know this fuckwad is a lawyer is because he tells me every time I threaten to end his life. It's a tired song and dance and eventually one day I'm going to have to come through with some of the stuff I've promised to do to him. But damn do I not want to have to.
I want to be able to sit back and enjoy the simple things in life - like freedom and fresh air. I don't want to have to go back to the violence I left in Russia. I damned sure don't want my hands to be stained with any more blood. I left that life when I left the land of my birth.
But the woman standing behind me reminds me of Moscow in the heart of winter. She always dresses in muted colors; today her suit is all white. Who does that? Her hair is the color of pale moonlight on the snow and she always has it pulled up in some kind of knot at the back of her head. She has an icy beauty that makes men shiver and women not realize how much of a threat she is to them until it's too late.
It's her eyes that make her more than just an ice queen, a frigid beauty held apart from people. Her eyes are huge chocolate orbs that seem to take in everything around her and give nothing away. She would have made very good money in my Russia as an assassin, or a government official. Of course, in Russia sometimes you can be both.
Her damned eyes always make me crave chocolate. I've been coming in here for years and haven't ever asked for a fucking hot chocolate but one day behind her after taking in her melted pools of brown I ordered a hot chocolate. I don't think I've said more than ten words to her during the months she's been coming in but somehow she's sank her talons into me and made me crave something warmer than my lonely studio apartment overlooking a river of pavement.
It pisses me off. She pisses me off, with her perfect face, and her perfect hair, and her soft perfect voice. I step out of line and gesture for her to move up. I don't like having her at my back. I don't like having anybody at my back. Old habits and whatnot.
She gives me that polite, icy smile of hers that's just a little too tight to be friendly and starts to move ahead of me when the chill from the door catches my attention again, but this time something else has the hair on the back of my neck rising other than the D.C. air.
In Russia, especially the prison system, you have to develop almost a sixth sense for knowing when bad shit is about to go down. It saved my life more than I care to admit and today is no different. When a man stands in front of the door wearing a large overcoat scanning the people in line I can tell something is off. I don't hesitate to drop to the ground and roll. Yeah, I could come off looking like a complete idiot who just lost his mind but at least I will be alive to be that idiot.