I knew he expected me to freak out. I actually wanted to freak out. He wasn’t supposed to say anything like that, even though I wanted him to. Fuck. What was I supposed to do with this information? Truthfully, it delighted me and terrified me both.
“I haven’t either,” I whispered, looking away.
“I missed that,” he said, and pulled me closer.
“I haven’t either,” I yelled, and tried to dislodge myself from his arms.
He had other plans. After he picked me up and deposited me in the bathroom, we brushed our teeth and he proceeded to pee.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I rolled my eyes and looked at the ceiling.
“What? I had to pee. Don’t you need to pee?”
“Yes, I do, but I am not going to pee in front of you.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or scream. “If you leave the toilet seat up, I will hurt you.”
“No worries.” He grinned. “I didn’t put it up in the first place.”
“On my God,” I muttered, leaving the bathroom. “This is never going to work.”
“Yes, it is,” he yelled after me.
I grabbed some yoga pants and a T-shirt and yanked them on before Mr. I Have No Inhibitions Whatsoever came back. He sauntered back into my bedroom in all of his naked glory and a pout settled on his pretty face.
“I thought I was going to get lucky.”
“You were until you peed,” I told him, and tossed him his jeans.
He laughed and pulled them on, neglecting to do up any of the buttons. If he thought that would turn me on, he was right. I trained my eyes on his face and waited.
“Don’t you need to potty?” he asked, grinning like a naughty child.
Damn it, I did. I waltzed past him, slammed the bathroom door, and locked it. I wouldn’t put it past him to barge in. The thought made me giggle and I bit it back. I ran a brush through my hair and swiped on some gloss. If we were going to talk, I needed just a little bit of pretty on my face. I avoided mascara just in case I cried, which I had no intention of doing, but I’d done a lot of things lately that were way out of my usual MO.
When I walked back into my room, he was gone. My stomach cramped and my breathing hitched. I slid down the wall to the floor and let my head fall to my hands. Had he left? Had he gone without saying good-bye? Was he pissed because I’d put the kibosh on his morning sex plans? What an asshole . . . and I almost let him do it without a condom. I was every kind of idiot all rolled into one. I got up and stomped out to my kitchen. I needed caffeine and then I needed to hunt him down and shoot his balls off.
I was so wrapped up in my ire, I didn’t even notice the object of my wrath seated at the table with a cup of coffee in his hands and an icy glass of Coke sitting at an empty spot waiting.
“Men suck,” I shouted at the cabinet as I yanked out a glass for my morning ritual.
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Shit,” I screeched, whirling around and slamming myself up against the counter.
His chuckle made me want to slap him, but my relief that he was still here kept my hands glued to my sides. “I thought you left.”
“So I can see. Sit down. I poured you a Coke.”
“How did you know I drink Coke in the morning?”
He said nothing and just drank his coffee. It was time to talk.
“What’s happening here?” I asked. “Who are you and what have you done with me?”
“I’m Luke and you’re me before I found you.”
“Come again?” I took a big swig of Coke and tried to decipher his riddle.
“I wanted to, but you wouldn’t let me.” He grinned and I blushed. “Damn, you’re beautiful.”
“Compliments will not get you back into my pants, but the truth might,” I said quietly.
“Can you handle the truth?” His green eyes bored into mine and made me wonder if the truth was overrated.
“I suppose we won’t know until you spill it.”
His demeanor changed. I recognized the change. I lived by the same rules. He closed the human side and opened the cold agent side.
“The reason I’m telling you this is complicated. Normally, well hell, there is no normally.” He laughed without humor and ran his hands through his hair. “I can tell you this because I’m getting out and you need to know.”
That sounded ominous. Fuck.
“How did you find out my name?”
He raised an eyebrow. “That was the easiest part. You should never keep your ID in a false casing on your gun. I’ve known your name since the first time we were together.”
Son of a bitch, I thought I was good . . . “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That goes back to you being me before I met you.”
“Cryptic much?” I snapped.
“You’ll get it eventually,” he shot back lazily. “There were other reasons too. I needed to know who you were so I could find you again. There was no way in hell you were going to get away from me.”
“Am I a job?” Please say no. Please say no.
“No, you’re not a job, but one of my jobs had something to do with you.”
What the hell did that mean? Wait. Fuck. He wanted me to make him real . . . He didn’t exist. He was tan and had lost weight. I hadn’t heard from him in three months . . . Mexico.
“Did you see the actual body or just photos?”
“Saw the body in the morgue, but saw photos of the crime scene,” he said, and got up from the table. The tension in his body was palpable and he tried to mask it by making toast. The utter incongruity of his action made me laugh. He turned on me and his green eyes narrowed to slits. “You think it’s funny that you almost died?”
“No.” I swallowed the rest of my inappropriate laughter. “I think it’s funny that you’re making toast when you’d clearly like to spank me.”
He said nothing and continued his toast making. He grabbed butter and peanut butter and jelly and honey from my fridge and cabinets. His movements were concise and angry.
“So you’ve been in Mexico.”
He nodded once and buttered the toast.
“I’m sorry and thank you.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry and I don’t want you to thank me. I want you out of this shit,” he snapped.
“What in the hell are you talking about?” I stood up and attempted to keep my temper in check. Who did he think he was? My father?
“You’re always going to be in danger,” he shouted. “You have a fine chance of dying every single fucking day.”
“So does everyone,” I yelled back.
“Your percentages are slightly higher.”
I couldn’t really counter that one because he was correct. Up until now I’d never really thought about that very much, but Ass-hat Son of a Bitch Douchehole had me wanting things I’d never wanted before.
“You ended it in Mexico, didn’t you?”
“Does anything ever end?” he asked tiredly. I stared at him and waited for more. “We nailed the kingpins, but there are always more behind them.”
“If someone comes after me, I’ll take them out.”
“Goddammit, Candy, false bravado is going to land you six feet under.” He slammed his fist down on the counter and his toast became toast.
I stared at the floor. He was right. I was losing my edge. When did that happen? How did it happen?
“In their headquarters there were pictures of you with explicit instructions to carve you up while you were still alive. The directive was to carve you, shoot you up with bad heroine, and let you bleed out.”
I was mute. I had clearly taken out the wrong guy and was slated to pay heavily. It was Luke’s reaction that mystified me.
“I have never enjoyed killing people as much as I did in Mexico.” He violently shoved two more pieces of bread into the toaster to replace the ones he’d punched out. “Can I make you some eggs?” he asked politely.
“Um . . . no.” My aborted death was too much to pr
ocess, and I’d seen some real horror in my time as an undercover agent. However, the fact that Luke almost broke my toaster and then formally offered me breakfast was the thing that sent me over the edge, so I did what came naturally. I started talking. It was talk, cry, or shoot stuff. Crying was unacceptable. I liked my house and didn’t want bullet holes decorating the walls . . . so talk it was. “You’re right, that was stupid, what I said. It lacked foresight and planning. I know you don’t want to hear me apologize, but it was my fuck-up you had to clean up and that makes me sick. You could have died and it would have been my fault and I never would have known. I would have thought you’d just found another stranger-with-benefits situation that was better than ours, when really I had killed you . . . not literally, but I might as well have pulled the trigger. Now that I know this . . . and why in the hell Steve didn’t tell me this—wait. Why didn’t Steve tell me this? Do you work for Steve?”
“Did. I did work for Steve. Not anymore. He was only recently briefed, and I informed him that I was going to tell you this.”
“He agreed to that?”
Luke gave me a hard look and I backed off. Clearly Steve had agreed or Luke wouldn’t have told me. Or Luke was really high up on the food chain.
“You shouldn’t have taken a job that was personal,” I told him, and waited for him to take my head off. He didn’t disappoint.
“Are you kidding me?” he yelled. “I’m crazy about you. You are as damaged and insane as I am. I waited for you to make a move for a year, and then I look at pictures of you with your stomach ripped open and know that you took out one of the leaders of the nastiest most fucked-up drug cartels at the moment. I want you for myself and I want you alive. How in the hell do you think I wouldn’t go down there and take care of that?” he demanded.
I was speechless . . . almost. “Luke, you don’t even know me.”
“Candy, I have been on you for a year. I have watched you and I know more about you than you could imagine.”
“That’s kind of creepy . . . and kind of hot,” I muttered, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that he’d stalked me for a year and I hadn’t noticed. “Why didn’t you just say something when we were together?”
“And what exactly would you have done with that? Agreed to date and get married and live happily ever after with me? You would have run away. The same thing I would have done if someone tried to trap me.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re you and you make me real. A civilian could never understand what I’ve done. Some of it I had to do and some of it I wanted to do. You are perfectly imperfect—so beautiful and so damaged. I am so fucking drawn to you, I can’t see straight. That’s why.”
He stopped and stared me down, daring me to run. I wanted to. I really did, but I stayed. Little pieces of my heart began to shatter, but this was not going to work.
“What will you do?” I asked, unable to deal with all he had said.
“Do?”
“For a job. If you’re getting out, what will you do?”
He shook his head and gave me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Seeing him close himself off hurt in unexplainable ways. He’d asked for my life, put his heart out on the floor. But I couldn’t go there. I simply couldn’t.
“I’ll figure it out.”
“You’re asking me to give up my reason for living,” I whispered. Why did I ever ask him his real name? This was more than I could handle. Everything had been fine when I was a ho and he was not David. Wasn’t it? Hell, I couldn’t even remember now. That felt like another lifetime ago. I had nothing if I didn’t have my job. He might think he knew me, but he had no idea who I really was if he thought it was okay for me to turn my back on my sister.
“Do you really think you’re living?” he asked tightly. He was angry and I didn’t blame him, but I was angry too.
“You know, Luke, you may have followed me for the better part of a year, but I wasn’t following you. I don’t know you and you don’t know me if you think you can walk in here and tell me to quit my job because I might die. Up until recently, I didn’t even care if . . . never mind.” Fuck, why was I born without a filter for my mouth?
“Up until recently you didn’t care if you died.” He finished my statement correctly. “What happened recently that made you care, Candy?”
I glared at him while I considered what to say. Five points to me for not just blabbing out the first thing that came to my mind and five more points for realizing the first thing that embedded itself in my head was the right thing to say. At this point I had nothing to lose. “Fine,” I snapped. “I won’t play games. You happened, but this is ridiculous and too fast and happily-ever-afters only happen in fairy tales. Not in real life.”
“Life is real and happily-ever-afters only happen if you make them. Fast is relative. We’ve been sleeping together for a year and neither one of us chose to sleep with anyone else. Does that mean nothing?”
“It means that we’re compatible sexually.” I narrowed my eyes and backed away as he advanced on me.
“It means a lot more than that and you know it.”
He trapped me between the wall and my refrigerator. I could get away if I wanted to. He knew that as well as I did. Part of me wanted him to pull his cuffs back out and hold me down until I said yes to him. Yes about everything, but that would be a lie. I would hate him eventually for making me give up everything and I knew in my gut, he couldn’t give this life up either. We were built differently from normal people. We were missing something inside. My only real fear at the moment was that maybe he was what I was missing.
“Your sister wouldn’t want this for you.”
“Stop,” I ground out. “You are skating on thin ice. I’m doing this for her.”
“She’s gone, Candy. Do you really think she’d want you to exist in a living death for her? Haven’t you done enough to avenge her?”
“Stop it. Now.” He was tearing apart my walls and my reasons, and if too many came down, I’d be a shell. Hell, I was a shell, but I was a functioning shell. He didn’t care for me if he wanted to destroy me. “Leave,” I told him coldly. “Leave and don’t come back.”
“I’ll leave, but I will come back. This is so far from over, you have no idea.”
With that, he walked back to my room, grabbed his stuff, and slammed out the front door. As soon as I heard his car pull away, I slid down to the floor and I cried. Hard. He was wrong. He had to be, but if he was . . . why did my heart hurt so badly?
Chapter 10
The rest of the morning was a wash. Standing in the shower for forty minutes until the water ran cold didn’t fix anything, so I moped around my house and cried. I tried to clean and do some needed housework, but focus was a problem. After washing the dishes with laundry detergent, I gave up. Grabbing my gun and my toaster, I went to the shooting range.
A handful of people watched me blow my toaster to smithereens. A large round of applause followed my performance coupled with an evil glare from Mel the owner. A group of people had rushed the desk demanding their own toaster target. I expected to be banned, along with the lesbians, very soon.
Snippets of my morning with Luke continually flashed through my brain, making me antsy and stressed. My need to pace and shoot appliances was wearing thin on me and most certainly on Mel, so I did what I’d been trained to do in difficult situations. I compartmentalized. I blocked it out. Pushing things away to deal with at another time was a talent of mine. The problem was, I rarely dealt with anything I pushed to the back . . . hence, I was a broken girl. Awesome.
Fuck him and everyone who wanted what I was unable to give. I had a job to do and some well-fed, pompous professors at the university to interview. Evangeline was off my list as a suspect. I was completely confident she had nothing to do with any threat to Shoshanna. As I replayed her interview in my mind, I couldn’t help laughing. I sincerely hoped she did send me an invite to her and Yvonne’s wedding. I would totally go.
Dressed in a conservative suit, low-heeled pumps, and pearls, I walked across the campus of the university toward the administration building. Fall was in the air and the leaves on the trees blazed red and gold in the mid-afternoon sun. I had informed Shoshanna of my schedule and asked her if she saw me to simply ignore my presence. It would do no one any good if she went into a diatribe on fuzzy handcuffs. I did have an answer for her on that subject, but I’d pushed that one to the back of my mind and had no intention of retrieving it.
Watching coeds in their bubble of academia made me wish for simpler times. I was happy at college. Well, not exactly happy, but I’d gotten away from my parents and was able to live freely without the hell that had been my home life. Observing the handholding couples and laughing sorority sisters, I shook my head. This wasn’t what I remembered and it hadn’t even been that long ago. I remembered loving my classes, but the people were a blur. I stopped in my tracks. Fuck, I hadn’t lived in a long time. Aside from my brother and my boss Steve, no one knew me.
With a smile on my face that I was sure resembled a grimace, I picked up my pace and ignored the things around me I had no way of relating to. No time for wallowing in what couldn’t be changed. Instead, I would focus on what I was good at. Although I was technically a temporary bodyguard, I was still doing the right thing. The good thing. The just thing. My brain could compute that—take care of those who are good and eliminate those who are bad. Black and white . . . no messy gray.
I checked in at the front desk and waited outside Randall Steigmeister’s office. Single, fifty-seven, Professor of Religious Studies, lost sizable grant to Shoshanna’s department last year and was hell-bent on removing Shoshanna’s tenure. His picture led me to believe he enjoyed his food immensely, and the writings I had read led me to believe he was more a right-wing Christian than an open-minded professor of Religious Studies. This should certainly be enlightening.
“Miss Sanderson,” Randall Steigmeister bellowed grandly from his office doorway. “I am ready to see you.”
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