“Thanks, Stormy,” Donovan said, touching her arm as she passed him. She stopped and smiled up at him. I thought for a second that she might reach up and kiss him, but she just caught his hand and squeezed it before glancing back at me. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she had something she wanted to say to me, but then she left without saying anything.
“That your girlfriend?”
Donovan ignored me in favor of unpacking the grocery bags the girl must have brought. He pulled out coffee and juice and fresh fruits and an array of meats. There was enough there for several feasts, the kind of food Donovan and Joshua had always scoffed as teens. They’d rather devour a bag of Doritos than eat the pot roast our housekeeper slow cooked for hours and hours on Sunday afternoons.
“Are you hungry?”
I shrugged, even though I was starving. “You’re not going to answer my question?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I want to know the kind of people you’re going to have coming and going in my house. It is still my house, isn’t it?”
He tossed a couple of potatoes into the sink before stowing the bag in a dark, lower drawer in one of my cabinets before glancing at me.
“It’s still your house.”
“Then who is she?”
“She works for Gray Wolf just like me, just like all the other people I’ll have coming and going out of your house these next few days.”
“Well, excuse my disbelief. But the two of you seemed awfully cozy to just be coworkers.”
“Yes, well, we’re a family at Gray Wolf. With the kind of work we do, you tend to get pretty close.”
He opened a couple of cabinets, clearly searching for something. Then he glanced at me. “Do you have a frying pan?”
I grunted, pushing away from the archway to grab a pan from the drawer under the stove. I held it out to him.
“Don’t tell me you know how to cook.”
“I can fry a steak.”
I pulled the pan back before he could grab it. “I’ll cook. I’d rather not raise my cholesterol because you believe oil is a necessary seasoning.”
He held up his hands and stepped back. “You’re the boss.”
“If I was the boss, you wouldn’t be here.”
***
Forty minutes later, the steaks cooked to perfection and the potatoes melting in my mouth, we settled in the living room on opposite ends of the couch. I watched him eat for a second, watching the muscles of his jaw move. His hair was shorter now. Like Ash, he wore it in a grown-out version of a crew cut. No more curls. But he was tan, as if he still spent a lot of time down on the beach. And those muscles in his arms suggested he took the time to work out whenever he could. I remembered the summer he and Joshua decided they were going to get ripped muscles. It hadn’t gone well. I never thought he’d try it again.
Funny how things change over time.
“Does it bother your girlfriend?”
“What?” he asked, glancing at me.
“The work you do. Protecting other women.”
“Would it bother you?”
I pushed a piece of potato around my plate, giving it some real consideration. “It would, I think.”
“Why?”
“Beyond the point that you’re placing yourself in danger for a complete stranger?”
“Beyond that.”
“Because you’re spending long hours alone with a frightened woman.” I looked at him, honestly curious to hear his answer to what I said next. “Surely you’ve had clients throw themselves at you.”
“A few,” he admitted, as he took another large bite of his steak.
“Have you ever slept with a client?”
His eyes moved over me, as he continued to chew his meat. “Are you offering?”
I could feel the heat of my blush as my eyes immediately dropped back down to my own plate. “Of course not!”
“Then why does it matter?”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“Interesting turn of conversation.”
“Do you blame me for being curious? Aren’t you curious about the people in my life?”
He lifted his plate and dug in his pants pocket for a second. Then he tossed me a piece of paper. “I know about the people in your life.”
The paper turned out to be a list of my friends in my father’s handwriting. He’d gotten most of it correct, but he’d missed a few names and added the names of a few people I hadn’t seen in a few years. But it was pretty accurate, which was a little worrisome. Did my dad really know that much about my private life? I thought I was doing a better job of keeping him out of most of it.
“I recognized some of those names right off the bat. You’re still friends with Ali and Steph?”
“Off and on. We get together a couple of times a year to brag about how great our lives are going.”
“And Tina?”
“She married Curtis. Can you believe that?”
His eyebrows rose. “I thought they hated each other.”
“They did. But then they found themselves alone together at the same university and they became inseparable. They got married two years ago and they have a little boy now.”
“Must be nice.”
I shrugged. “They seem happy.”
We were quiet for a minute, only the sound of cutlery on our plates filling the room.
“I ran into Amanda a few months ago.”
That stopped him. He didn’t move, just stared down at his plate where it was balanced on his thighs. Then he slowly began to chew again, nodding just enough so that I caught it.
“She was there that night, you know. She told me she saw them confront him at the party, that she’d gone to get them some cokes but heard them talking as she was walking back to him. He told her it was nothing. Said they were just blowing off some steam. She asked him to leave with her, but he refused.” I looked down at my food again, suddenly finding it completely unappetizing. “She feels guilty for not pushing the issue more.”
“It might not have done any good.”
I tossed my plate onto the coffee table and watched the potatoes skitter across the thin ceramic and fall onto the table.
“You don’t know what might have made a difference.”
“I know that analyzing every second of that night isn’t going to make anyone feel better.”
“Is that what you think this is?” I looked at him just in time to catch something like a dark cloud pass in his eyes. But then again, it could have just been a trick of the light. “Do you think it makes me feel better to be sitting here with you, all those memories coming back after I thought I’d dealt with it?”
“I don’t like this anymore than you, Kate.”
“I’m sure you don’t. I’m sure you would rather be anywhere else but here. You made that pretty clear when you disappeared all those years ago.”
“You told me to leave.”
“I was grieving!” I stood and moved to the recliner so that I could see him and I wouldn’t feel this overwhelming need to move into his arms. “You didn’t have to run away.”
“You blamed me for what happened. You still blame me!”
I nodded. “I do blame you. If you’d been there—”
“If I’d been there, I wouldn’t have been with you. Is that what you wanted?”
My eyes narrowed. “Don’t turn this around on me.”
“I’m not the one who did this, Kate. I didn’t hurt Joshua. The guys who did it are in prison, and they’re going to be there for a very long time.”
“I know that. I was at the sentencing hearing. Where were you?”
He stood up and grabbed my plate, carrying both plates to the kitchen.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “Don’t try to leave the house.”
And then he was gone. Just like before.
Chapter 7
Kate
I watched television for a while, thinking about snea
king out just to see what would happen. But my head hurt and I was exhausted despite the fact that I’d spent most of the day in bed. I paused outside his bedroom door, my hand on the wood, wondering if he was asleep, if he was thinking about me.
“Don’t be stupid, Kate,” I whispered to myself.
I went into my own bedroom and slipped out of my sweat pants, no longer concerned with the cameras or who might be watching me on the other end. Then I crawled into bed, willing sleep to come quickly, but of course it didn’t. Instead, my thoughts worked their way back in time, to all those moments when Donovan’s constant presence in my house became more than just the boy down the street, more than just Joshua’s friend.
“Take the remote, Kate,” Joshua said, holding his game controller out to me. “I have to piss.”
“Real classy, Josh,” Donovan laughed.
“Why do I have to be classy? This is my house and she’s my sister. It’s not like she’s a real girl.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, tossing my book at my brother.
“See? She doesn’t even know how to spend a Saturday afternoon. We’re seventeen, Kate,” he said, turning to me, “why aren’t you upstairs primping for a date?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because I’m a guy. It only takes five minutes to change my shirt and put on some cologne.”
“I’ll have to tell Amanda how hard you work to be pretty for her.”
“Go for it,” Joshua said, tossing my book back at me before climbing to his feet. “Seriously, take over the game for me.”
I climbed off the couch in the game room in the basement of our house, taking my time walking over to the beanbag Joshua had just abandoned. He glared at me as his character lost a life because he was too busy glaring at me.
“I don’t even know how to play this.”
“You’ve watched us often enough. You should.”
Joshua shoved the remote into my hand and ran toward the stairs, taking them two at a time. I laughed as I settled down in the bag, moving the character on the screen as expertly as Joshua would have. What he didn’t know was that I sometimes played this game when he and Donovan were out finding trouble.
“Good move,” Donovan said, his character rushing toward mine as we worked together against the same monsters. It was an intense few minutes, but we managed to clear the level and move to the next.
“Yes!” Donovan yelled, turning to me with his hand raised, waiting for a high five.
I slapped his palm.
“You wouldn’t have been able to do that without me.”
“You think so?”
“I’m good at this game.”
Donovan laughed. “And so modest about it.”
I shrugged. “Why should I be modest?” Then I reached past him and grabbed his bottle of soda. “And I deserve a reward.”
I started to get up, but he grabbed my arm, pulling me back down.
“That’s the last one.”
“I know. And now it’s mine.”
“No, it’s not.”
He reached for it, but I moved it out of his reach. I started up out of the beanbag again, but he grabbed me around the waist and pinned me to the bag. We started to wrestle, hands gong where they probably shouldn’t have. But we’d played like this since we were seven years old. Yet, there was something different about it, something about the way he looked at me when he finally had my shoulders pinned. I stopped fighting and looked up at him, my heart pounding as I focused on his lips and wondered what they would feel like on mine.
And he seemed more out of breath than he should have been…but it must have been my imagination.
Joshua came pounding back down the stairs calling to me.
“You better have not lost me my last life!”
Donovan let me go and settled back in his own beanbag.
“Here,” I said, handing him the soda. “You can have it.”
“No, you take it. You earned it.”
I could almost feel his hands on me as I slowly woke and realized I was dreaming, but the dream was most definitely a memory. That was the day I knew there was something between Donovan and I… something that shouldn’t have been there, but had somehow snuck up on the both of us. By graduation…
A scream reverberated through the house. I sat up, my heart pounding.
That must be what woke me.
It came again, a little muted this time.
I reached over to my nightstand, to the knife I kept hidden in there. But when the scream came a third time, I realized that it wasn’t an intruder. It was coming from the spare bedroom.
It was Donovan.
I went out into the hallway and knocked on his door, but he didn’t respond. I pushed the door open. I couldn’t see him at first because the room was so dark. But as my eyes adjusted, the lump on the bed became mused hair against the white pillowcase, a muscular back and heavy thighs uncovered by the sheets that had been kicked to the foot of the bed. He was dressed in just a pair of boxer briefs, the kind of underwear that hugged a guy’s thighs and ass like a pair of spandex workout shorts. And Donovan filled his out quite well.
He cried out again, mumbling something I couldn’t quite make out, tugging his pillow harder under his head.
“Donovan?” I called from the doorway. But it had no effect on him. “Donny,” I said softly, crossing the room and laying my hand lightly on his shoulder.
He responded immediately this time, grabbing my wrist and yanking me over his body and onto the thick queen-sized mattress. I cried out as he climbed over me, pinning me with his hands on both shoulders.
“Let me go!”
He stared at me in the dark for a second, then reached over and flipped on the bedside lamp.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he demanded, as he came back to pin me down, his eyes narrowed as he studied my face.
“You were screaming in your sleep.”
“I was…” He hesitated, clearly aware that this was something he did. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Will you let me go now?”
The confusion and sleep left his eyes as he studied my face. And then his eyes moved further down, taking in the fact that I was still only dressed in a thin t-shirt. Memory made my cheeks burn, my mind going right back to that dream—to that relieved memory—I’d just woken from. How I’d wanted his touch back then, how I wanted to feel his hands on my skin. My body still remembered that need and the fact that we were lying in his unmade bed, both of us nearly naked, made that need come back tenfold.
I crossed my ankles, pulling my thighs tightly together.
“Let me go, Donovan.”
“Why are you always blushing when I look at you? I don’t remember you blushing this much back then.”
“Must be the head injury.”
“You think so?”
“What else could it be?”
“Oh,” he said, releasing one of my shoulders to move his fingers slowly along the curve of my jaw, “I could think of a few things.”
“Think about them on your own time,” I said, pushing his hand away and pulling myself away from his hold. I climbed off the bed and headed to the door. “Remind me not to wake you up ever again.”
“Might not be a bad idea.”
I glanced back at him. “What is it, anyway? PTSD?”
“Don’t worry about it, Kate. I have it under control.”
“Do you?”
His eyes moved slowly over me. “Go back to bed.”
“Time to get ready for work now,” I said, gesturing at the small travel clock he had on the bedside table. Then I focused on him. “Must be hell for your girl, sleeping with you during nightmares like that.”
“You sure worry an awful lot about someone you’ve never met.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. And I wasn’t sure I could speak with the knife that just sliced through my heart.
So he really does have a girlfriend.
Chapter 8
&nb
sp; Donovan
I made us breakfast, but she only picked at the eggs, throwing them down the drain the moment I turned my back. And she was silent on the short drive to her bank, refusing to speak even when I commented on the weather or asked a direct question about her normal route to work.
Everyone in the bank when we walked in stared at us. I wasn’t sure if they were staring at her because of what had happened Monday night, or if they were staring at me because their manager had told them who I was and why I was there. Probably a combination of both.
Kate dropped her bag into the bottom drawer of her desk and settled in her chair, adjusting the nameplate that sat beside a photo of her and her dad.
“What are you going to do all day? Stand there and watch me work?”
“She speaks.”
She started to make a face at me but caught sight of her manager, Mildred Talbot, walking toward us.
“Mrs. Talbot,” she said, climbing to her feet.
“Please, sit, Miss Thompson. I understand you sustained a concussion during whatever happened the other night.”
“I did. But it was mild. I’m fine.”
“I certainly hope so.” Mrs. Talbot turned to me. “You must be Mr. Pritchard. Mr. Grayson called yesterday to explain what was going to happen for the next few days.”
I inclined my head. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion. I’ll try to stay out of the way as much as possible.”
“It’s no problem. We’re happy to have the added security for Miss Thompson.”
She focused on Kate again, her eyes moving slowly over her. “Well, let’s have a good day and hope that there is no more drama.”
Kate watched the woman as she walked away, a clear look of dislike on her face. It reminded me of the many times I’d seen that look on her face after a teacher reprimanded her for some slight in class.
“Drama?” she muttered. “Someone died and she calls it drama.”
I rapped my knuckles on her desk to get her attention. “I’ll be around.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m not going far. But you’re safe here.”
“How can you be sure? After all, this is where it all happened.”
COLE (Dragon Security Book 1) Page 20
