Flirting With Disaster

by Ruthie Knox

  Sean’s eyes were wary, his whole body considerably tighter than it had been moments ago. After a few seconds, he nodded.

  If Caleb knew someone was threatening Judah’s life, he would fabricate a reason to send another agent to New York. He wouldn’t come right out and admit he didn’t want her to go, but she’d know he was protecting her, and she didn’t want to be protected. She wanted to go to Buffalo with Sean.

  Partly it was the way he’d just smiled at her, and what he’d said, and the way he’d said it. Okay, mostly it was that. And a little bit his stomach. And the kiss. And the moment on the bed, with his mouth by her ear and his face scratching over her neck.

  But it was Judah, too. Sean’s report had stripped off some of Judah’s layers and revealed aspects of his private self. She didn’t like the thought of some other agent showing up and badgering him into spilling his guts. He’d hate it.

  He would talk to her, though. He wanted to trust her.

  And why not her? Be your best self. This was part of it, wasn’t it? Stepping up to meet the challenges head-on?

  Caleb came in and handed Sean a fresh cup of coffee. “Don’t tell Caleb what?” He perched on the arm of the couch, looking at Sean rather than at her, a determined set to his jaw.

  Katie sighed. “Sorry, Sean. I suck.”

  Sean looked at her expectantly, but he didn’t say anything. He was giving her some maneuvering room. Awesome.

  “Look,” she said to Caleb. “I don’t know how to tell you this. It was Sean’s idea, but I know I should have stopped him. I figured I could keep the credit card statement out of sight, and you’d never need to know about it.” She wrung her hands, drawing out the drama a little.

  “What’s she talking about?” Caleb asked Sean.

  “The hotel,” Sean said. He was guessing, but it was the right guess, and he said it with total assurance. “We had a p-pretty pricey room in Louisville. I wanted us to be in the ssame hotel as Judah.”

  “You shared a hotel room?” Caleb asked.

  “Yes,” Sean replied.

  Katie waited for him to reassure her brother that the room had been a double, and nothing had happened, and Katie had been throwing herself at Judah at the time. He didn’t. He just met Caleb’s eyes, direct and confident, as if to say, Yeah, I shared a room with your sister, and what happened in there is none of your damn business.

  If she wasn’t careful, she could really start to like this guy.

  Caleb frowned. “How much did it cost me?”

  They were talking man-to-man, and she let them, only half-listening as Sean filled Caleb in on their plan to pick the case up again. She sank deeper into the couch, thinking about Judah.

  Gay. It fit. Not in an “oh, my gaydar went off” kind of way, but more in the way he held himself back. Alone in his room with her, or even in the hall behind the stage at the High Hat, Judah had been performing his attraction to her. On the phone, over voice mail and email, he was still performing, but she’d caught him in a few moments of honesty, and they had a different timbre to them.

  She had no idea why, but he really did want her back on the case.

  I need you. He kept saying it, and if any words were her Kryptonite, it was those.

  “Hey, Leadfoot? What t-time do you want to go?”

  She was staring out the window at the woods, wondering if she’d ever get the apology Judah owed her. What made a man his age incapable of apology? How did anyone remain so privileged, so clueless about how to be a good human being?

  “Katie?” Caleb said sharply, cutting into her reverie.

  “What?”

  “Sean’s talking to you.”

  She blinked and dragged herself into the present. Her mind had wandered, comfortable to let Caleb and Sean sort out the rest of the lie she’d manufactured, and now she was disoriented. Stupid daydreaming brain, always getting her into trouble.

  “Did you just call me ‘Leadfoot’?” she asked Sean.

  “I have to c-call you ssomething,” he said.

  “Most people call me ‘Katie.’ ”

  Sean nodded. “What t-time?”

  She calculated how long it would take her to pack, shower, eat something, and reassure Caleb that she wouldn’t get devoured by wolves while she was away. “I can pick you up around nine,” she said. “I’ll drive.”

  “Now see, that’s one of the things we’ll have to sstraighten out if we’re going to be p-partners again,” he replied, spreading his arms like wings along the top of the couch cushions. “I’m going to be the one who drives.”

  “I like to drive,” she protested.

  Sean looked at Caleb. “Back me up.”

  “You’re a terrible driver,” her brother said.

  “You traitor!”

  Caleb picked up her empty coffee cup and carried it into the kitchen with an amused smirk that told her he was pleased with Sean and pleased with himself.

  Men.

  “If you’re the partner who drives, I get to be the partner who picks the music,” she announced.

  “My c-car, my music,” Sean said, gathering his jacket off the arm of the couch and standing up.

  “Come on,” she complained. “What does that leave for me?”

  He stepped closer, blocking some of the light and replacing it with a couple hundred pounds of man as he shrugged into his jacket. It had a deep navy satin lining that matched his eyes, and she remembered its buttery softness beneath her fingers when she’d touched his arm. Supple leather over hard muscle. She’d be willing to bet that jacket had cost a mint. A strange luxury for a security guard to have a jacket like that.

  But what did she know about Sean, really? Next to nothing. He was so serious and stern again, she almost wondered if she’d imagined him smiling. If his laughter had been a mirage.

  “What?” she asked.

  Sean didn’t speak. Not until he’d crossed the room and opened the door to let himself out.

  One foot outside the house, he finally said, “You can be the p-partner who packs heat.” His mouth twitched with a smile he didn’t quite allow onto his lips. “I’ll be b-back at nine, Leadfoot.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was 293 miles from Camelot to Buffalo, most of it a straight shot northeast along I-71 and I-90. Five hours in the car with Katie. Plenty of time to talk strategy about Judah. Plenty of time for the two of them to get to know each other better, now that they were talking.

  Thirty-four miles in, and Sean already knew he was screwed.

  Katie leaned forward to fiddle with the volume on his stereo. Her scent washed over him, fresh as a beam of sunshine.

  He wasn’t going to touch her. Not today, not tonight, not ever.

  “Wuh-wuh-why d-did you d-decide t-t-to sstart fffieldwork?”

  Oh holy mother, that was bad. If every sentence that came out of his mouth was that much of a catastrophe, he would seriously have to consider going back to silence.

  Katie had to have noticed, but there was no pity or disgust in her expression when she turned toward him, rising slightly in the seat to tuck her sock-clad feet beneath her butt. “Do you want the short, pithy answer people find comforting, or the long, painful one that’s actually true?”

  “Wuh-we have t-t-two hundred ffifty nine miles to g-go.”

  “So, the long one then?”

  “B-both.”

  She smiled a little, touching her right thumb with her index finger and rubbing at the spot where her ring had been. Looking down at her hands, she said, “The short version is, I got sick of sitting around in an office all day, and I thought going out in the field would make my life more interesting.”

  “Has it?”

  She glanced at him, then away. She’d been doing it all morning, flicking her eyes in his direction for a few seconds at a time. Assessing him. Or reassessing him, as if she hadn’t taken his measure right the first time. He wondered how he compared to Judah. In California, Sean had never had much trouble finding a date, but in
Camelot, California didn’t count for anything. Did she even see him when she looked at him, or did she see the silent shrimp who’d sat behind her in math class?

  “Sure,” Katie said. “It’s been fun, learning new stuff. Caleb took me to the firing range one day, and he’s been teaching me self-defense—how to poke attackers in the eye and whatnot. How to read a room and interrogate people. I like it.”

  She looked at the window and fiddled with the missing ring again. He waited for the long version of the story, but she kept her peace, and finally he asked, “D-did you luh-lose it?”

  “Lose what?”

  “The ring you k-k-keep p-playing with. The sssilver one you d-don’t wear anymore.”

  Katie frowned. “No. I didn’t lose it. I put it away.” She glanced at his hands on the steering wheel, then at his face, and let out a long breath. “It was my wedding band. I stopped wearing it a couple weeks ago, when the divorce came through.”

  “You were muh-muh-muh—” He gave up on the word “married.” It wasn’t happening. “To who?”

  “Levi Rider.”

  “You’ve g-got to b-be fuh-fucking k-k-k-k—” Sean pounded the steering wheel with the heel of one hand. “You muh-married that guy?”

  “ ’Fraid so.”

  Levi Rider was the kind of asshole everybody loved. Good-looking, smart, and smiley, in high school he’d had a compliment for every teacher and a hundred best friends. Weekends, he and the guys he hung out with would round up some alcohol and host a party under the railroad trestle in the woods near campus. Sean had been out there a few times, a fringe participant, and he’d resented the hell out of Rider, who told funny stories about himself that always made him look good.

  When you couldn’t make your own tongue work, it was irritating to be around someone who used words as well as Levi.

  Rider had treated Katie like a sidekick, and once in the locker room Sean had overheard him bragging to his friends about how he’d talked Katie into giving him head when his parents were out of town the weekend before. Sean had ditched school for the first time in his life and thrown rocks in the Coshocton River, winging them as far as he could, one after another, until he couldn’t lift his arm past the shoulder anymore and the pressure in his chest had begun to ease up.

  “Wuh-why would you d-d-d-do that?”

  She looked at him, forehead furrowed with dismay, and said, “He asked me to.”

  “Juh-Jesus.”

  He watched the road and took a few deep breaths. It was all water under the bridge. What did it matter that Katie had married Levi? Probably everyone had called it the perfect match. Levi and Katie. Such a cute couple.

  It was none of his damn business.

  “We needed residency,” she said. “We moved to Anchorage after we graduated, but the university’s tuition was too expensive without residency. He hadn’t paid attention to how hard it would be to get it—they don’t just give it to you if you move up there. But a married couple can get it more easily than a single guy, especially if the wife is working full-time. So he said, you know, maybe we should just get married. And I said yes.” She pinched a fold in her jeans at the knee. “I didn’t tell my family until earlier this year. That’s why I wore the ring on my thumb, though I don’t know why I bothered. I bought Levi one, and he stuck it in his underwear drawer.”

  “Yuh-you were only eighteen?”

  “Yeah. I knew better, though. I was just … seduced, I think.”

  Sean’s hands hurt. It took him a second to realize he was gripping the steering wheel so hard, his joints ached. He forced himself to loosen all the muscles in his hands and arms.

  Not your concern. This was exactly the problem with Katie—the way she made him care about shit that had nothing to do with him. All these feelings she dredged up from somewhere that he’d been happy to ignore for over a decade. Lock it down, he told himself.

  But Katie kept talking, her face turned toward the window and her tone faraway, untouchable.

  “Levi had this grand plan. He’d always wanted to move to Alaska and live kind of wild, and he used to talk about it a lot. We’d go up there, learn to camp and hike and everything, work for wilderness people in the summers to pick up all the skills we needed, and then after we graduated we could start our own outfitters. Live the good life, you know? Commune with nature and all that.” She wrinkled her nose. “It sounded better when Levi said it. And to his credit, we did all that. I’m quite the accomplished camper, I’ll have you know. We started up an outfitting business, Wild Ride, and ran it for three years before it all kind of came apart.”

  She looked over at him. Unclenched her hands in her lap. Shrugged. “So that’s the story.”

  That was the story? She hadn’t told him anything except what he already knew—that Levi Rider was a selfish prick. What Sean wanted to know was, had she loved the guy? Did he break her heart? How was the sex?

  What he wanted to know was whether she’d grown to resent the way Rider treated her or still didn’t see it, even after the divorce. And none of that was any of his fucking business, so he looked at the highway and kept his hands loose on the wheel and kept his mouth shut the way he should have in the first place.

  When he’d calmed down enough to glance at Katie again, she was watching him. “Do you remember me?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “From high school. Do you remember me?”

  “Sssure.”

  “Did you like me?” she asked.

  “I d-d-didn’t know you.”

  “Yeah, but did you like me?”

  He looked back at the highway. It wasn’t meant to be an embarrassing question. She couldn’t see into his soul, couldn’t know how much he’d liked her and for how long.

  He nodded.

  “Did you like Levi?”

  “Fuck no,” he said.

  It was the first clean sentence he’d managed since she climbed into the car, and it got a smile out of her.

  “That makes one person.”

  “Wuh-wuh-one p-person what?”

  “One person who liked me more than Levi.”

  She untucked her feet from underneath her and stuck them on the dashboard. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d normally stand for, but he made an exception.

  “That’s why I married him,” she said. “At least, that’s what it seems like to me now. That was the seduction. I loved him, or I thought I loved him, but he was the only guy I’d ever gone out with. I don’t think I married him because I loved him. I think I married him because everybody liked him so much, and I thought, ‘This is the guy to spend your life with. The guy everybody wants to be around. He needs you, and so you’re lucky just to be with him.’ ”

  Fiddling with her thumb again, she said, “He’s a complete horse’s ass. That’s what I decided. People are just stupid. I was stupid, too.” She looked out the window for a while, then turned to face him, and she seemed taller, her voice taking on the sharp edge it had in Louisville last weekend. “I’m not going to be stupid anymore. That’s why I changed jobs. I’m going to be a different person. Smarter, and stronger, and all-around tougher and less idiotic. So, you know, fair warning if you liked the old Katie. I’m killing her off.”

  Sean watched the road. They blew by a green highway sign that told him Buffalo was 243 miles away.

  The situation was so much worse than he’d thought.

  At her house this morning, he’d just about talked himself into going for it. Katie didn’t fidget or flick her eyes from side to side when he talked, looking for a way to escape the conversation. Nine times out of ten, when you stuttered in front of people, they got so busy feeling sorry for you and worrying about what to say, they couldn’t even hear you. You started to feel infectious. You started avoiding opening your mouth, because God forbid you should make someone uncomfortable.

  With Katie, it wasn’t a problem. Either she didn’t care, or she was exceptionally good at pretending she didn’t. Her lack of reaction had
relaxed him enough that he’d started talking to her openly, without thinking too hard about what he was saying.

  It turned out he couldn’t have a normal conversation with Katie without hitting on her.

  She was interested in him, too, no question. He’d coaxed a real smile out of her—the smile that showed her cute crooked tooth—and he’d caught her staring at his stomach. When he’d told her she was the farthest thing from terminally unfuckable he could imagine, her lips had parted, her pupils had dilated, and he’d known if he tried to kiss her again, she’d let him.

  But then Caleb walked in, and Sean came to his senses. Katie wasn’t some random woman he could take to bed without worrying about the repercussions. It was never a good idea to fuck your friend’s little sister, not unless you planned to marry her. Caleb would wipe the floor with him if he found out, with good reason.

  Now he had another reason to maintain his distance, and an explanation for the way she’d acted with Judah. Katie was wounded. Coming off a divorce, she was looking for some excitement. Maybe looking for a man to convince her she was desirable after whatever Levi had put her through when their marriage fell apart. She wasn’t herself, and that made it a bad idea to get tangled up with her.

  He needed to think with his head instead of his dick, because if he slept with Katie, somebody would get hurt, and he wasn’t completely certain it would be her.

  All he had to do was not notice the way her sweater skimmed over that slim little body and her jeans hugged her ass. The way she smelled. Her soft lips. How much he fucking liked her.

  “It wasn’t you,” he said.

  The comment seemed to surprise Katie almost as much as it surprised him. She’d been staring out at the bleak interstate landscape, her body slumped against the passenger door, but now she turned to look at him, her eyes returning from wherever they’d been. Far away, he thought. She was a daydreamer. She always had been.

  “What wasn’t me?”

  “It wasn’t your ffault,” he said. “You were n-never ssstupid.”

  “How would you know?”

  It was an uncomfortable question, and one he didn’t know how to answer. He could hardly tell her he’d memorized her in high school. That he’d known all the colors of her nail polish, her favorite clothes, and the names of her friends. What celebrities she liked. Every score she’d gotten on every math test they took.