by Cari Z.
After the too-fast twenty-minute ride, Lennox pulled his Harley into the driveway and killed the engine. The neighbor watering a bunch of unseasonal potted mums across the street glared at him as he took his helmet off. Lennox waved, grabbed his obligatory side dish out of the saddlebag, and stowed his helmet back in its place, then headed for the front door, which had been propped open with a brick―an actual brick―that read WELCOME in black letters on top. Lennox briefly contemplated having a life that involved extraneous decorative bricks, shook his head, then walked inside.
He sidled into the kitchen quietly, hoping to put his mac and cheese on the counter and get out before Gaby or Serena noticed him. His odds were pretty good: at the moment they were arguing about . . . chips?
“I said bring a side dish, not grab the nearest bag of fat and carbohydrates on your way out of the 7-Eleven,” Gaby snapped from where she was chopping tomatoes to put into a salad. She was using one of the knives Lennox had given her and Marcus last Christmas, handling it like a pro. He smiled a little even as he winced in anticipation of Serena’s comeback. The older Rodriguez sisters were incapable of being in each other’s company for more than a minute without an argument developing.
“Are you kidding me?” Serena grabbed a bag and shook it. “These are imported, organic potato chips made with cask-aged Italian vinegar and pink Himalayan rock salt! These came from Boulder; there’s nothing healthier than a Boulder potato chip!”
“If I wanted you to bring potato chips, I would have asked for them! Just because they’re organic doesn’t mean they’re healthy, and I’m trying to keep three kids junk food–free as long as they’re eating at home.”
“Lee is thirteen and the boys are seven. Do you really think they’re going to be interested in salt and vinegar potato chips? It’s a very adult flavor.”
Gaby slammed her knife down and tossed the tomatoes in the salad bowl. “They might be!”
“You’re crazy if you think this is the worst thing they’ll be eating tonight. Like, here―Lennox!” Serena turned toward him like a human heat-seeking missile. “What did you bring for dinner?”
Lennox resisted the urge to back away. “Mac and cheese.”
“Ha!” Serena glared at Gaby. “He brings noodles mixed with butter and cheese and gets nothing from you, and I bring one little bag of chips and get interrogated like it’s the Inquisition!”
“Lennox knows the rules.” Gaby pointed a finger at the covered casserole dish. “Are there any vegetables in there?”
He nodded. “Broccoli.”
“There, you see? He brought broccoli.”
“He wrapped it in cheese!”
Lennox made good on his chance for escape this time, almost jogging down the hall and out to the backyard where Marcus was at the grill. His twin boys were playing some combination game of tag and bouncing on a trampoline, Gaby’s younger sister, Rommie, was stretched out on a lounge chair in front of the pool, and Lennox’s daughter was nowhere to be seen. He sighed and headed for Marcus, who glanced up from turning the corn and bratwurst and gave him a welcoming smile. He was a big guy, taller than Lennox by a few inches, and wore an apron over his button-down and suit trousers that read WOMEN WANT ME, COWS FEAR ME.
“Hey, man, glad you could make it.” He reached into the cooler next to him and passed Lennox a beer. It was cold, dark, and just what he needed at the moment.
“You’re a saint,” Lennox said, popping the cap off and taking a long drink.
“Is it still a free-for-all in there?”
“Eh.” Lennox wobbled his free hand back and forth. “It could be worse. I think it’s more habit for them than anything else these days.”
“Maybe,” Marcus said judiciously, a pensive frown on his broad face. “Serena looked ready to spit nails when she got here though. I think something bad went down at work, but you know how Gaby feels about her job.”
“Like she drank the Kool-Aid.” Yeah, Lennox had been in earshot of several arguments over Serena working for a famously bad man with equally famous powers of resurrection. Gaby thought Elliot McKenzie wasn’t trustworthy; Serena told her sister she shouldn’t condemn someone based on their past behaviors.
Personally, Lennox was inclined to trust Serena’s judgment. When he’d first met her fifteen years ago, Serena had been falling from one bad relationship into another. She’d done three years in a state prison on drug charges when Lia was a baby, and from how Gaby had talked back then, her life might as well have been over. But Serena had turned things around, and since being hired by Elliot McKenzie, she was doing better than ever.
Not that that was enough to keep her sister off her back. A particularly pointed exclamation from Gaby drifted out into the yard, and Marcus winced. “Today’s a little worse than usual.”
“They’ll get over it.” They always did. “Where’s Lia?”
Marcus smiled. “Up in her room with her headphones on listening to Fall Out Boy, probably.”
“Not a fan of the samba music?”
“She’s not a fan of anything much lately.” Marcus shrugged the shrug of a parent, sort of a not gonna get worked up if it’s just a phase shrug. “She’ll be down for dinner. Which should be in a few more minutes, the way these things are coming along. You bring your mac and cheese?”
Lennox nodded. “With broccoli in it.”
“Way to game the system.” Marcus clinked Lennox’s bottle with his own and went back to minding the grill. They watched the boys continue their game of full-contact trampoline bouncing and drank in companionable quiet for a while until the meat was done. Then Marcus passed Lennox a plate of hamburgers to take inside as Gaby called out that it was time to eat.
“Go and get Lee, will you?” she asked as he set the food down, then washed his hands in the kitchen sink.
“You think she’ll open the door for me?”
Gaby looked unamused. “She’s thirteen, not thirty. She’d better open the door when one of her parents tells her to.” Even if that parent is you went unsaid, but Lennox heard it regardless. He didn’t say anything, just dried his hands on an old dishtowel and went to retrieve his daughter.
Her door was liberally crisscrossed with yellow and black DO NOT ENTER tape. That was new since he’d last been here. Lennox took it at face value and knocked loudly on the door. “Hey, Lia? Dinner.” There was a long silence, so he rapped again. “Lia!”
The door jerked out from under his knuckles. “I heard you the first time,” his daughter informed him haughtily. “And it’s Lee, Dad, not Lia.”
Christ, two years ago this hadn’t been so hard. Two years ago, right before Lennox’s last deployment, he’d still known how to relate to his daughter. She’d gone by Lia then, sweet Lia who’d loved horses and Saturday morning cartoons and who’d decorated her room in purple and pink, not black and blue. He’d had her for almost a month that summer before shipping out, and she’d been his little girl.
After eleven months in Afghanistan, though, followed by another seven months working with Oliver as Lennox tried not to lose his mind, before finally giving in to Gaby’s pleas and joining her family here in Colorado, well . . . Lennox didn’t know how he and Lee fit now. He didn’t know how to talk to her anymore, and the one time he’d tried to have her over at his new apartment, the night had gone, in a word, abysmally.
“Dad!”
“Sorry, sweetheart.” Lennox shook his head and refocused on Lee, who had her arms folded in front of her chest, like she was trying to hug herself. She looked a weird combination of annoyed and worried, but there was something else about her that was niggling at his brain. It took him a moment but―
“You cut your hair.” He blinked. “And dyed it purple.” Actually she’d cut one side very close to her skin. The other side still touched her shoulder. Plus it was purple. Lennox opened his mouth, then took a deep breath and shut it again. If his goddamn therapy sessions had been useful for one thing, it was reminding him to stop and take a moment when he w
as surprised or upset before he let himself react to whatever was causing it.
“Nice color, Lee,” he said at last, which seemed to shock her out of her funk. She smiled at him, and uncrossed her arms.
“Thanks. Aunt Rommie took me to get it done. Mom wasn’t happy with us.”
“Maybe it’ll grow on her,” Lennox offered as he moved back from the door. “You hungry, sweetheart?”
Lee shrugged. “Kind of.”
“I brought mac and cheese.”
“With cauliflower?”
“Broccoli.”
“Ugh.” She made a face. “Well, I guess I can pick it out.”
“Cauliflower next time,” he promised her. She shut her door, and they headed down the stairs together. “What made you decide to cut your hair?”
“I wanted a change.” That seemed to be her final word on the subject, as Lee darted into the dining room faster than Lennox could follow.
Dinner for eight was a noisy affair in the Smith-Rodriguez household, with Gaby alternating between chatting with her sisters and keeping her stepsons still for long enough to eat. Lennox was seated between Lee and Serena, who did seem unusually subdued. When he had a moment as the conversations around them picked up, he murmured, “You need me to beat someone up or something? Because you look like somebody kicked your cat.”
“No,” she sighed. “It’s just Elliot being stupid. He’s gotten into a situation—not an illegal one,” she added with a mild glare at Gaby, who glared right back, “and I’m worried about it, but he refuses to get help. I understand his reasons, but I don’t agree with them.”
“What kind of situation?”
“The kind that― Well, it’s really not my place to talk about it.” Lennox’s eyebrows rose at that admission, but Serena ignored his surprise. “I feel like he should take some measures to be safer. And he doesn’t feel the same.”
“Safer.” Lennox’s brain went into professional mode. “Safer as in a personal carry, or safer as in a home security system?” The company he worked for, Castillion, had started as one man’s knife-making endeavor and grown into a multimillion dollar personal-protection business. Rodney Castillion still made custom knives, but he sold far more weapons than just his Wharncliffe blades now. His company did security system installs, monitored hundreds of clients’ homes and vehicles, and had a few specialists on site who consulted with insurance companies on high-tech crimes.
Castillion was a rapidly growing organization, and one that preferred to hire veterans. Gaby had gotten Lennox the job, and despite being forced to deal face-to-face with customers, he liked the work. It was by far the simplest thing in his new life, and the easiest to learn.
Serena laughed brightly. “Oh my God, I can’t imagine Elliot carrying a gun! He’d say it ruined the line of his suit or something, and him with a weapon? He won’t even use a pair of scissors if he can help it. No, no guns for him, although . . .” Her expression became thoughtful. “A home security system might be just the thing. The office building has a security system, but as far as I know his home has nothing like it. That’s actually a fantastic idea. Oh, Lennox!” She twisted to put a hand on his arm. “You have to come and meet with him tomorrow! Talk him into this―it’s exactly what he needs.”
Talk him into it? Lennox was more the “I’ll install it for you after you buy it, preferably when you’re not around to bother me” type. “I’m not very good at being persuasive.”
“He’s much better at giving orders,” Gaby added. Lee snorted quietly.
“Ganged up on by the women tonight, I see how it is,” Lennox teased, and was gratified to see Lee smile at him. “Serena, really, he’d do better to talk to Kevin at the office―”
“But he won’t!” Serena insisted, her voice tight with frustration. “He persists in thinking nothing is wrong and if someone isn’t there to ride him on this, he’ll just ignore the problem until something bad happens!”
Well, that sounded ominous. “Maybe you two should be going to the police with this.”
“You’d think that,” Serena said, her voice so saccharine sweet Lennox could almost taste it in the air. “But no, apparently not. Lennox, please, will you come by the office tomorrow?” She whipped out her phone and pulled up a calendar. “Around . . . four? He’s got a break at four, and I can make it last as long as you need.” There was genuine eagerness in her voice, backed by clear worry.
Fuck it. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“Amazing! You are amazing.” Serena reached around his shoulder for a one-armed hug. “You might be a literal lifesaver, Lennox. Has anyone ever told you that?”
The faint satisfaction of a job well done evaporated in an instant, leaving Lennox cold and breathless. His heartbeat sounded louder in his ears already, and he knew he had to get space, fast. He gently detached Serena’s arm and pushed away from the table. “No. They haven’t. I need some air, excuse me.”
He walked out to the back deck and shut the kitchen door behind him, then sat down on the edge of the steps and put his head in his hands. He breathed, in and out, slowly and steadily. He could handle this. He could. It was only because it was a therapy day; those sessions brought all this shit to the foreground, all the things he worked so hard to forget in his day-to-day life.
Lennox wasn’t a lifesaver. He was a murderer, even if it hadn’t been his hand on the trigger, even if he’d technically been exonerated. Heat of battle, malfunctioning equipment, bad weather—none of it mattered to the two men who hadn’t come away from the fight.
Lennox wasn’t sure how much time he spent there, breathing and trying not to think, before a soft, familiar voice said, “Hey there. You doing okay?”
Gaby. He rolled his shoulders and opened his eyes, surprised to see that it had gone dark outside. “Yeah, I’m fine.” For a given value of fine. “How long have I been out here?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe. Lee and Serena were worried, but I told them to give you some space.”
He smiled crookedly at his ex-wife as she sat next to him. When they’d been together they’d been terrible to each other, their marriage a mistake from the very beginning, born of nervousness and homesickness when both their units had been posted overseas. But after an amicable divorce and doing their best to raise Lee together despite numerous deployments, they’d become better friends post-breakup than they’d ever been while married. “Thanks for that.”
“Serena had to leave, but Lee is hanging out downstairs. She’s still worried.”
And here it came. “Gaby . . .”
She didn’t wait long enough to let Lennox defend himself, not that he quite knew what to say. “She was so excited when you told us you were moving here, you know? She couldn’t wait to spend time with her dad. She idolizes you; all she wants is to be with you. But that sentiment’s not going to last much longer, Lennox, especially not if you keep pushing her away.”
“I can’t have her at the apartment yet,” he said. Gaby snorted, but he cut her off before she could speak. “I can’t, Gaby. Not overnight, not until I’m a little better. I’m working on it―you know I am.”
“Rodney’s still paying for your counseling?” Gaby had known Rodney a lot longer than Lennox; she and his daughter Becky had gone through basic together.
“Perk of the job,” Lennox huffed. “Also the worst part of my week, but I’m going, babe. Every week, I’m going.”
“Maybe it would be more effective if you stopped dreading it so much,” Gaby suggested, but there was no real hope in her voice. “I understand. I’m glad you’re going, I just . . . She’s your kid. You need to do right by her. You need to spend some goddamn time with her, while she’s around for you to spend time with.”
“I’ll take her out on Friday,” Lennox said impulsively. “Dinner and a movie. It’s not an overnight, but it’s the best I can do for now.”
“Better than nothing,” Gaby said, but it was light enough out that Lennox could see the little smile on her face. “Thanks.�
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“Fuck, don’t thank me for doing the bare minimum.” Hearing it made him feel exhausted.
She knocked her shoulder against his. “Oh, c’mon, West. Take it like a man.”
“I’m shit at gratitude, you know that.”
“Yeah, I know.” She pressed a brief but firm kiss to his cheek, then levered herself to her feet. “That’s another thing for you to work on, mister. Now get up, there’s Rommie’s homemade apple pie for dessert. Lee saved you a slice.”
“Our kid is wise beyond her years.” Lennox took Gaby’s hand so she could help lift him to his feet. It hadn’t been bad, as panic attacks went. He didn’t even have a headache to show for it now.
Lee was hovering by the back door, and handed Lennox a piece of pie and a fork as soon as he was inside. Once he took it, she folded her arms up immediately, a little frown on her face that reminded Lennox uncomfortably of himself. He put the pie down on the counter.
“The twins will get that if you don’t eat fast,” Lee warned him, but she didn’t pull away as he carefully drew her into a hug.
“Thanks for saving it for me, sweetheart.” Lennox gave her a squeeze. “Listen, I was wondering . . . you wanna go out this Friday? Dinner and a movie or something?”
Lee hummed thoughtfully but didn’t lift her head from his chest. “Maybe. Can I pick the restaurant?”
“You can even pick the movie, as long as it doesn’t have Ryan Whatshisname in it.”
“Oh my God, Dad, I’m so over him. Why would you bring him up?” Lee moaned, but she sounded more happy than annoyed. “When will you be here?”
“It’ll take me a bit to clean up after work, so maybe . . . six?”
“Not earlier?”
Lennox cringed inside. “If I can, Lee.” Fridays tended to be install days at Castillion, and those could run long. “I’ll let you know.”
