Taking Jana (Paradise South #2) (28 page)

CHAPTER 48

N
o sound, just
sight. Tunnel vision in a deafening vacuum. Jana felt her heart slamming inside her, but she couldn’t hear it in her ears.

She blinked, swallowed, and gasped for air while her eyes caught a view of the sparks from the far wall spew then fizzle out as all the main and secondary lights shut down in sinking unison. The glow of one lone emergency light highlighted the soft smoke simmering from the
shot-up
metal panel. Then as the light yellow smoke rose to the ceiling, so did the
brain-shock
muffling all surrounding sound.

And the chaos broke through.

Screaming bounced off the walls and glass bottles crashed and shattered. She swung her head in the direction of the bar. Erin was no longer standing behind the bar, but the woman’s wailing lifted above it, making Jana’s instinctual alert system sound like a siren in her head.

She had to get to the injured woman.

But Johnnie was still too close, the gun hot in his hands.

Think of something, dammit! Do
something!

As her hands went up to her ears to find quiet enough to think of a move, she heard a deep, low groaning coming from the entry doors, from the ground. Her line of sight was blocked by a large column, but she knew it was a man. From the sound of it, a dying man.

Oh dear
God.

Johnnie
had
been bluffing. Antonio had come and was now gasping for air, for life.

He’d been shot. For her. She still couldn’t see him to know how bad it was, but she needed to get to him. Her mind whirled, soul dove, eyes glazed, while her heart wrenched under the weight of planets and stars.

Don’t you dare take him from
me!

Antonio, hang on. Please….

CHAPTER 49

J
ohnnie slowly turned
back toward the stage.

Jana?

His eyes dry and wide, shocked to see her, he let his gun slide down to his side. “You didn’t leave me?”

She glared back at him as if damning him to hell. Raw abhorrence.

His free hand raked through his hair over and over again, yanking as if clarity would come from pain. He was totally unsure of who was where, and who the hell was shot, but he knew one or two were down. Because of him.

He’d only meant to scare, not to kill.
Only to scare!
His father’s phone call—
fuck
!—got him all messed up, distracted. But he swore Jana had snuck out, and a man had come in. He started shaking his head, trying to gain clarity and quiet in his cloudy, screaming brain. “Everyone shut the fuck up!”

*

She heard her pulse in her ears, blood threatening to boil over. The man at the door—her man!—now let out only short,
hardly-audible
wheezes from the floor. Erin’s moaning behind the bar was becoming quieter, fainter.

“Let me go check on them? Please, Johnnie?”

“Don’t you move,” he snapped, the pistol being used as an extension of his pointer finger.

Pleading with him wouldn’t work. He was beyond irrational. He was psychotic, and she didn’t want anyone else hurt. She had to separate him from that damn gun, which he was practically juggling between his hands as he shook his head erratically and shuffled back and forth again.

Do something, Jana! Code fucking silver, for Christ’s
sakes!

All she saw around her were chairs, tables, napkins, water bottles, and shoes.

Shoes.
Spiked high heel shoes. Right in that bastard’s fucking heart!

She reached for one of the girl’s spiked heels at the edge of the stage while his back was turned, then right as Johnnie pivoted toward her, Jana tilted her head, switching on an expression of sugar sweetness and light. “Johnnie, listen. I’ll dance for you,” she said swallowing back acidic bile and hate. “I’ll dance on stage, or just for you. Whatever you want. I know I was wrong to not go with my feelings for you. Please, just put the gun away and we’ll get everything—”

“Everything, what? Fixed?”

“Yes, fixed,” she said as a sliver of light streamed through the entry doors and was gone the next instant.

Help is here?
Oh God, please.

She kept her eyes on him and only on him. It seemed that Johnnie hadn’t noticed and she had to keep it that way.

“Together, Johnnie, we
can
fix this. I’m a nurse, remember? And we work perfectly together, as a team, right?”

He rubbed the sweat from his brow and scrunched his eyes at her, a skeptical glare. Or was he just unsure if she was real or not? Either way, his gun remained in his trembling, deadly hand.

CHAPTER 50

S
he tried like
hell to ignore the dark silhouette that came around the wide column at the corner of the bar. A tall,
broad-shouldered
man in a cap, a police cap?

Oh, thank the
Lord.

Jana felt air flood her lungs.

But Johnnie’s glassy eyes shot her direction the next beat like he’d heard or sensed the saving presence.

Please
no.

“You know, Jana,” he said with a sharp focus on her. “My father can go fuck himself. Fuck his clubs, too. It’s you, I want you. Only you. And I learned from him to take what I want. I’m taking you. Right now.”

He went to grab her wrist, but she beat him to it, voluntarily extending her hand for him to take.

“Yes, Johnnie, I will…I will go with you, just put the gun down and let me take care of the two injured, okay?”

With his eyes still piercing hers, Johnnie’s
gun-hand
lowered to his side, but he kept the piece in his grasp. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath for courage as she felt Johnnie’s other hand connect with hers. His touch alone sent her stomach into a tumultuous fit, but she swallowed back her nausea with all she had.

“Come now,” Johnnie said with victorious pleasure in his tone as he pulled her up from the chair.

She rose to her feet, and when she opened her eyes, the silhouette, the cop, was right behind Johnnie. A millisecond later, the other man grabbed Johnnie’s wrist and squeezed some pressure point, making Johnnie drop the gun to the floor. In the next beat, Johnnie was face down on the ground with the other man’s knee in his back, one arm pinned behind him, while she could only stare through the
near-darkness
as the cop struggled to get Johnnie’s other flailing arm secured.

All the while, Johnnie screamed insanities and profanities that jostled her thoughts, her breaths, her nerves.

Block it out, Jana!

She could hardly see in the darkness or hear anything over Johnnie’s yelling, but the cop was still struggling to keep the
coked-out
maniac down and away from the pistol.

Move, Jana!
Go! Move the
gun!

Jana shot forward and kicked the gun away from the scuffle. The man on top finally got Johnnie’s other arm pinned. With Johnnie finally contained, Jana made a beeline for the door, to her Antonio. To her love.

*

As she made her way to the front doors like a blind bat in a dark cave, the strip club flooded with sunlight. More police officers, half a dozen, streamed in, thankfully, but their
bum-rush
kept her from her Antonio, who was assuredly bleeding out on the club’s filthy floor. She had to get to him.

She pushed on, his body now in her sights, laid out flat on the floor to the right of the entrance doors. A paramedic entered then and knelt down. Then another. Thank God.

I’m coming too, Antonio. I’m coming for
you.

*

She dreaded seeing his face, the pain, the brink, the end.

Her world without him, oh God, horror and despair flashed and burned through her.

She came up on the two medics, opened her mouth to announce herself, and forced herself to look at her Antonio’s face.

It was Brandon, the bouncer.

Fluttering freedom one heartbeat, frozen fright the next.

Johnnie hadn’t shot Antonio—
thank God!
—but Antonio wasn’t here. And he sure as hell would have been after so much time had passed. So Johnnie wasn’t bluffing about keeping Antonio somewhere else, with someone else, by gunpoint.

Flashing rings of light filled her vision and skewed the scenery. Then she was out.

*

He had her cradled in his arms now. “Jana,” he whispered. “
Princessa
, come back to me.”

Her lashes flickered and a large flood of air filled her chest. Then wide eyes as large as the universe looked up at him. “Antonio?” She blinked. “Am I dead? Are we dead?”

“No princess, we’re okay. We’re alive and well and together.”
Alive, together.
Thank God, because he didn’t know what he would have done. Forget driving home to Mexico, he’d imagined driving off a high cliff. If he’d lost Jana, ending it like his mother had didn’t seem so far out there. Unfathomable…his life would’ve been unfathomable.

But with her alive and breathing, unharmed in his arms, he’d go or stay about anywhere as long as she was with him. Manhattan or Calgary. It didn’t matter—however, with the insanity that had gone down tonight, he’d sure as hell make his case for them to go anywhere that was far away from there.

He looked down at her. Still so out of it, a soft smile reached her weary eyes as she reached up to his face. The gentle stroke of her finger down his cheek and along his jaw made him warm, made him whole.

She reached up for the cap on his head. “What’s this?” she asked with a look of wonder and remembrance spreading across her stunning face.

“My chauffeur cap,” he said smiling. The replacement for the one Jocelyn Carlson had taken. He’d had this one in his trunk since Monday. “When the one dancer came out of the club screaming about the
gun-wielding
maniac inside, I wasn’t waiting for the cops, not a chance with you inside. So I grabbed the cap, figuring any head cover was better than nothing, and it resembled a police officer’s cap at any rate. Stupid, I know, but hell, here we are, right?”

“You…you almost killed me,” she mumbled.

“What’s that?” he asked, not really expecting much of a coherent answer from her. She was in shock, confused, obviously and understandably out of it. Thank God he’d come up behind her to catch her when she passed out minutes ago.

“You were the Jersey limo driver. In SoHo. Chauffeur cap. Hunky. But dangerous,” she murmured, smirking softly.

Holy shit!
The night he fired Jocelyn Carlson. “Midnight sunglasses?”

“Midnight sunglasses? Yes, yes, sunglasses at night…to hide…” Her blanched cheeks were now gaining color back, rose color.

“Jesus, Jana!”
Unbelievable!
“I nearly killed you before I got the chance to fall for you!” He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “
Mi amore,
lucky that I’m a damn good driver, able to avoid even the most exquisite of jaywalkers,” he teased, then kissed her on the bridge of her nose.

She laughed lightly, sat up slowly, and slid her arms tight around his neck. Locked and holding him for dear life, he felt her tears on his neck.

Then in a deadly serious yet hushed tone, she said, “I thought…I thought you’d been shot and I couldn’t get to you, and then that Johnnie’s guy had you, to kill—”

“Shhh. I’m here. I’m here and everything is okay.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her lips gently, a feather brush. “We’re okay.”

CHAPTER 51

A
fter the police
had taken Antonio and Jana’s statements, Johnnie had been taken in, the coke party in the back had been handled, and of course, Brandon and Erin had been loaded into ambulances. Antonio offered to take her back up to Fort Lee to wait out the surgery with her mother. Jana, shaking as if naked and stranded in the Arctic, insisted they go back to his place.

The image of Johnnie’s crazed eyes wouldn’t leave her. And the thought of life without Antonio had been more than she could bear. No, she couldn’t be with anyone right now other than her guardian angel.

Antonio hadn’t let go of her hand for even an instant. Again, he knew just what she needed, totally in tune, in sync. It was more confirmation to Jana that she’d never had it so right. They were so damn right it hurt.

But right now, his hand wasn’t enough. Jana needed to be with Antonio in the deepest sense, as close as she could physically, emotionally, and spiritually be to her lover, and more officially now, her guardian angel. And if she had the choice, she wouldn’t ever let him go.

*

She pushed him onto his couch, not waiting for them to reach the bedroom. “Do you think,” she began through her kisses to his neck, chin, and cheek, “that I’m horrible for wanting you when I should be rushing up to Fort Lee?”

He slid his hands up to her hips, sat her on his lap, and kissed her mouth without yield until he apparently needed air.

“Was that your answer?”

He smiled. “Yes. But for translation’s sake, since you did just go through a traumatic event, you, Jana Park, are the most wonderful woman—person—I’ve ever met. And if you didn’t want to be with me right now after what just happened in that hellhole, and instead chose to be waiting at the hospital with your
self-deluded
mother for your
self-absorbed
father to come out of surgery, I’d be worried. Really worried…for me.”

He smiled then kissed her again and pulled her core into his already bulging center.

“And, Jana, seriously, it’s going to take time for you to learn to live…for yourself. Truly for yourself. You need to learn how to be selfish. And I won’t rush you, I’ll never rush you. But I’ll sure as hell remind you”—he lifted her shirt up and over her head and then moved the cup of her black bra down to brush her breast with his sensual lips, kissing her all around her
already-tensed
nipple—“that you deserve every damn ounce of happiness. I won’t ever let you forget that.”

He then tipped her dark cherry nipple with his tongue and pulled away. “We have a lot of damn pleasure to catch up on in life, you and I,” he said before opening his mouth again to encompass her entire breast, circling her nipple with his wet, tickling tongue, sending spikes of electricity down to her core.

He paused then. His eyes met hers and his head tilted slightly. “I need you to know, Jana, that I will never let anyone hurt you. Not ever.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“And so you also know then, that I’m insanely in love with you?”

Her eyelids fell as her chest filled.

In
love.

She felt lost and found all at once.

Antonio’s
love.

Even as he held her there, letting his words resonate, she felt the truth of his words. She sensed a
never-used
chamber of her heart fly open as if she never needed to take another breath, not a single next breath ever again. Hearing and feeling his declaration, his infinite adoration, was like nothing she’d dared to dream of before.

“Look at me,
princessa
.”

No, she didn’t want to, but she wanted nothing more. She yearned for the sight of him, for eternity, this man. But her emotion, her weakness, her fear…

“Look at me, Jana,
mi
amor.
”

Her heart cried as she willed her lids to open to his adoring eyes. And God, his gaze was so intense, so raw, it made her quake then melt inside, molten lava reaching every part of her being. She couldn’t escape, and she didn’t want to escape. His eyes were absorbing her whole, his look pouring over her, a look as close to idolizing love as she could ever hope to imagine. Could ever hope to hold.

*

No more words were spoken. Antonio made love to her, such slow, deep love. All the pain and heartache that she’d been bombarded with over the last days and weeks and years was being lanced away, driven away with each and every powerful, electrically charged thrust.

“That’s it, princess,” he whispered as she spasmed through a climax of
life-changing
proportions.

“Antonio,” she murmured, panting from the tidal wave she’d somehow managed to live through. “Feel my heart. Can you feel it?” She’d never felt such jackhammering joy pulsing through her before.

He placed his palm flat on her chest. “Jesus, Jana.” He looked proud, concerned, and glad all in a single look.

She threw the blanket from her seething body, sat up to take his face in her hands, and kissed him desperately, longing for their connection to be always tangible, palpable, constant.

He took her hands from his cheeks and brought them to his chest, to
his
heart. “I want
this
with you always, Jana. You and me, always.” He kissed her cheek and pulled her into him, holding her close and tight, his firm embrace making her know safety, security, and yes, his love.
Love.
That she’d definitely never known before Antonio.

*

When they were done and spent, he carried her to the shower and washed her down, soaping her from head to toe, shampooing her hair, loving her clean.

“What’s this, princess?” he asked, eyeing something on her upper arm. “Did he fucking hurt you, touch you? You said he didn’t.”

She saw the tiny dark blue mark he’d noticed and shook her head. She knew Johnnie’d grabbed her by the wrist and left no mark, but this type of bruise was different anyway. It was a pinching bruise, one she recognized from her many others, those that had appeared on her hands and arms without her remembering when. “I did this, babe. When I get anxious, nervous, scared. I haven’t done it in so long. Not since…not since…meeting you, getting to know you,” she said, loving the realization. “It’s a trick, pain for pain.”

“No more pain,” he said, kissing her bruise better. Then kissing her elbow, her wrist, her palm, and each finger.

“I could get used to this kind of medical attention, Mr. Ruiz.”

“You better get used to this my warrior princess. You’d better.”

She smiled at him as she grabbed the body bar from his hand. “Turn around.”

He lifted his brows but did as he was told.

She lathered her hands up and loved him clean right back. Soaping his wide, strong shoulders, his
iron-hard
back, his tight muscular behind and down his legs. It made her swim inside to take care of him like he did her.

Yeah, she could see a future with him. She definitely could. Her
dreamed-for
symbiosis.

“What you said before. Me too.” She turned him around to face her and kissed his mouth sweetly. “I want
us
, always, Antonio. There’s nothing in the world I want more.”