Nerd in Shining Armor (Nerds, #1)(38)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

The smoke got worse, and there was a terrible smell along with it. She thought of her collection of carvings in her bedroom, but it wouldn’t matter if they all burned up if she and Jack survived.

As Nick continued to fumble and cuss, she glanced down. There was no way he’d be able to untie her one-handed, and the knife was sharp, but not sharp enough to cut right through a section of terry-cloth dish towel. Sawing would do it eventually, but that would take too long.

She held her breath, waiting for him to finally put down the knife. At last he set it right by his knee and wrenched at the knots.

Jack lunged, swinging the suitcase and bashing Nick in the face. Nick fell backward, away from the knife and up against the cabinets. Wood splintered. Then Jack dropped the suitcase and leaped on top of Nick.

As the thump of body blows and grunts of pain filled the small kitchen, Genevieve scooted her chair around so she could pick up the knife with her toes. Going barefoot all her life, she’d become very good at using her toes.

Holding the handle tight, she lifted her leg around the back of the chair. She had to grab it by the blade, and the sharp edge nicked her palm, but she was able to finally get hold of the handle with her other hand.

She slid the blade between the chair leg and her wrist and started sawing. The men had rolled away from the cabinets and Nick had his hands around Jack’s throat. Jack’s glasses lay crumpled over by the stove. Genevieve prayed as she’d never prayed in her life, and kept sawing.

Jack managed to throw Nick off just as she got one hand free. After slipping off the chair, she untied the second piece of towel and leaped to her feet.

Nick had Jack down, a knee in his chest and his fist raised to punch Jack in the face. Genevieve did the only thing she could think of—she grabbed the pepper shaker off the table, wrenched off the lid, and tossed the contents into Nick’s face.

As Nick gasped and choked, Jack managed to roll on top of him. A couple of blows from Jack’s fists,

and Nick was out cold.

Breathing hard, Jack staggered to his feet. "Good . . . good thinking, Gen."

"We … should call 911." She picked up the phone off the table, dropped it once, and picked it up again. She dialed 811, hung up and dialed 711. Finally she managed to hit the nine.

She gave her name and address, and said there had been an assault and the house was on fire. They asked if she could stay on the line, but she said no and hung up.

"Gen, I’m going to stay by him and make sure he doesn’t come to. You’d better go see if you can turn on the shower and put out the fire. It should all be contained in the tub."

She ran down the hall, waving away the smoke and stench. Once inside the bathroom, she found a tub full of smoldering ashes and a partially melted plastic shower curtain. The curling iron was in there, too, but it had only burned a small hole in one of Mama’s hand towels.

From what she could tell, Jack had used the packet of matches Mama kept next to a scented votive to start a fire in the wastebasket. Then he’d put the wastebasket in the tub. That fire had been the one to get Nick’s attention. She turned water on the whole thing, making a bigger mess, but at least it was all in one spot.

She hurried back to the kitchen. "You’re a genius," she said.

"I know. Which is what worries you."

"Not anymore, Jack." She walked over and sat down on the floor beside him.

"What do you mean, not anymore?"

"This may not be the time or place."

"If you’re going to tell me to get lost, there is no good time or place."

"Not get lost," she said. "I want you to stay found."

He gazed at her. "Come closer. You’re blurry."

She scooted in until her thigh touched his. "How’s that?"

"Better. Now say that again."

"Jack, I’ve missed you something terrible the past few days. I’ve come to the conclusion that we go together like grits and gravy."

"You have?"

She nodded. "I decided that if you didn’t remember the ice cream date, I wasn’t going to hold it against you."

"But I remembered."

"I know. Which makes you perfect."

"Gen, I’m sure not perfect. I—"

"Perfect for me." She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the mouth. Then she drew back. "That’s to hold us over until we can be alone again."

He swallowed. "God, Gen, I—"

The sound of sirens cut him off.

"They’re here," she said.

"Gen, I love you more than life itself."

"Well, I love you even more than that, so there."

"That’s not logical." But Jack smiled as he said it, which made him look real cute, so she decided to kiss him again.

Later on, she realized that they must have given the officer who came into the kitchen quite a start. Down at the police station the officer admitted that he didn’t often come on a scene where folks were making out next to an unconscious perp.

Fortunately, once the whole story came out, and Matt and Mama and Lincoln showed up to add their two cents’ worth, neither Genevieve nor Jack had to hang around the police station.

Which was a good thing, because they had double-dip cones to buy. And a happily ever after to take care of.

EPILOGUE

On the morning after their wedding, Genevieve sat with Jack on the South Park beach towel to watch the sun come up over the rim of the ocean. They’d wrapped themselves in Genevieve’s favorite wedding present, an orange and yellow afghan. Turns out Jack’s grandmother hadn’t sold it, after all. She’d only told Jack that she had, hoping someday he’d grow up and realize his mistake.

They were honeymooning where it had all begun, except the hideout had been spruced up a tad. Genevieve, busy with wedding plans, hadn’t been a part of the improvement project. Matt and Jack had come out several times in Matt’s financed-to-the-limit new boat. Much beer had been consumed, some construction materials had been added, and now the hideout was reasonably watertight and had new fixings like straw mats on the floor and a canvas flap for the door.

Even so, it was only a temporary honeymoon cottage. Genevieve and Jack had a special permit to use the spot for this weekend, and then the hideout would be torn down. Genevieve thought that was fitting. Besides all the ecological stuff to think about, she wouldn’t want someone else staying in it.

Matt had ferried them out here yesterday after the wedding. On the way Genevieve had tried her best to learn whether he was fixing to pop the question to Mama. Matt wouldn’t tell, but Genevieve thought he might be working up to a proposal. Even though he was never getting back the money that jailbird Nick had embezzled, he surely realized that Mama didn’t give a care whether he had money or not. Besides, Jack believed the company would be in high cotton before long, once the new software program came out.

Genevieve hoped that Rainbow would recover, because she and Jack both needed jobs. But sitting here on the beach watching the sunrise, she couldn’t seem to worry about such things. She’d just finished telling Jack about Elvis’s Jockey shorts. Mama had said she could, once Jack was officially in the family.

This was as official as it got, with Genevieve wearing a diamond the size of a black-eyed pea on the fourth finger of her left hand. She’d tried to talk Jack into something smaller, but he had a pile of money in his savings account, enough for the ring plus a down payment on a house. Genevieve had been worried about moving out of Mama’s house and leaving her shy of the rent money, but Matt had told Genevieve not to fret about that. She considered it more evidence that Matt would propose to Mama very soon.

"That’s some story about the notches and your Granny Neville," Jack said.

"You can’t tell Lincoln. Mama doesn’t think he’s ready to hear this yet."

"Was his hair really purple yesterday? Because it looked black to me."

"Trust me, it was purple." Genevieve smiled as she remembered Lincoln walking her down the aisle in his rented tux and purple hair. "Mama thinks as long as he goes on doing that, he can’t hear about the Jockey shorts. He might spread it around school or something."

"Okay, I won’t tell Lincoln." Jack hugged her closer as he gazed at the horizon. He had on his extended-wear contacts for the honeymoon, but he’d promised to keep his glasses forever, for the sentimental value. "What color are those clouds?" he asked.

"Bright pink. Fuchsia." In the weeks since finding out he was color blind, she’d invented a way to help him "see" the colors. "Let’s say you’re moseying down the highway, enjoying the scenery in your Corolla. That would be your garden-variety pink. Then let’s say you come to a straight patch and decide to go lickety-split, pretending you’re in one of those Formula 1 cars on your computer. That’s fuchsia. It’s chock-a-block full of excitement."

Jack laughed. "Or let’s say you give me a little kiss on the cheek. That would be your ordinary pink. But if you rip off my clothes and throw me down on the sand, that would be fuchsia."

"Actually, that might be fire-engine red." Genevieve began to heat up like a kerosene stove. They’d had

a real jamboree of a honeymoon night, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a mud-wrestle on the morning-after, too.

Jack turned to her and gave her his best pirate’s leer. "It’s fire-engine red I want, then, lassie."

"Then it’s fire-engine red you’ll get!" Tossing aside the afghan, she grabbed the hem of his soft T-shirt and ripped it right up the middle. She’d always had a hankering to do that.

Jack’s eyes bugged out a little, as if he hadn’t expected such goings-on, but it didn’t take him long to start popping the buttons on her shirt. Jack was really learning how to jump in and enjoy the moment.

As they proceeded to get quickly nak*d, she took a second to make a wish that they’d be ripping each other’s clothes off for a long, long time to come. Of course that wouldn’t happen all by itself. It would take a heap of love and buckets of luck—the good kind.

The love was a sure thing. And bad luck was just a part of living, like boll weevils and chigger bites. But she had to say that good luck had been following her around like a hungry coon dog most of her life. She had no reason to believe the next fifty years with Jack would turn out any different.