Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  It could have been so much worse. He had expected it to feel so much worse, in fact. Liam moved stiffly, the pain slowing him down but not stopping him as he slid from his bed, grabbed a robe from his closet, and padded over to the door of his bedroom. When he pulled it open and ventured out, he was surprised to see a man and a woman tangled up together on his couch. It must be the couple that had showed up the night before. They had helped save him from whatever attack had happened, so he was happy to have them exactly where they were.

  Liam didn’t know what time it was as he walked into the kitchen. It was still dark outside, but that could mean that it was 2:00 in the morning or 6:00. His own body clock was completely off, and all he really cared about was getting a drink of water. He gingerly lifted a bottle of water from the fridge and started to open it, but a sound from behind him startled him into whirling around to face the unknown person standing there.

  “It’s okay,” the man said, lifting both hands. “My name is Wes. I’m Jordan’s boyfriend. Jordan works with Hannah.”

  Liam nodded, slightly, still standing there with water bottle in hand. “Yeah. Hi.”

  “Hi,” Wes said, reaching for the bottle in Liam’s hand and taking it, unscrewing the cap, and handing it back to him. “There you go. How’s the pain?”

  Liam took a sip of water gratefully. “Could be worse.”

  “How’re the nerves?”

  Shaking his head, Liam wiped his mouth with his forearm, the water soothing his parched throat. “Dunno. I remember bits and pieces. The things I do remember don’t seem real.”

  “That’s how I felt,” Wes said. “When I first realized what Jordan really did, and who she really was. It’s a shock, no matter how you find out.”

  Liam sat down at his kitchen table, careful not to lean back and press his injured back to the chair. “What do you mean who she really was?” Liam asked, vaguely remembering that it seemed almost as though Hannah had opened the drawers and cabinets in his bathroom without so much as touching them. “You mean an investigator?”

  Wes suddenly got a wary look on his face. “Oh. Uh, yeah. I guess I mean her connection with the supernatural world, in general. It was a big thing for me to adjust to.”

  “Yeah,” Liam said, taking another sip of water. “It’s definitely strange, thinking that there are things like curses out there.” He shook his head, the fog beginning to clear enough that he was starting to realize what had happened. “Shit. What—I mean, what happened? Hell. I got attacked by some invisible …thing. I almost died. Hannah …she moved things around. She pulled bandages towards her without even touching them. Some other woman—your girlfriend. She was healing me. What the hell have I walked into?”

  Wes put his hands up, trying to calm Liam down. “It’s going to freak you out from time to time. Can’t avoid that. But I swear—you’ll get used to it. Are you and Hannah … you know?”

  Liam was still lost in his own thoughts, and when Wes paused, waiting for an answer, Liam just stared at him. “Huh?”

  “Are you and Hannah romantic?”

  He thought of Hannah, curled up on his bed, and his heart flipped over in his chest, despite everything else he had to think of at the moment. “Uh, no.” He shook his head. “No, it’s not like that.”

  “But you want it to be.”

  “She’s amazing,” Liam said, replaying the image in his mind of Hannah pulling things to her without touching them. “Maybe more amazing than I’d realized. But she and I don’t think of romance the same way.”

  Wes walked over to Liam and looked him in the eye. “Look, man, getting involved with a Rockwell Clan girl is the best thing that ever happened to me. But you have to be careful with these things. Man to man, let me just tell you— the Rockwell Clan women can’t be tamed, and they can’t be fully understood. Ever. Hannah has secrets that you couldn’t ever pretend to guess—I can promise you that. But she’s good, and she’s kind, and she’ll get you through anything. Trust her, and do what she says. That’s the best advice I can give you.”

  “What kind of secrets?” Liam asked, his brow furrowing. “What are you talking about? I was attacked by a curse—a curse from a crazy, old woman who thinks that I killed her granddaughter. She got to me in my own house. Do you realize that? She could get me again. I’m not safe here. She’s coming after me.”

  Just as Liam really started to feel the panic welling up inside of him, Hannah appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. She crossed to him quickly, taking his arm. “Hey,” she said, frowning at him. “What are you doing up? You can’t be walking around.”

  “She can get me anywhere,” Liam said, gripping her arm. “Winnifred. She got me in my own house. In my shower. She cursed me. She could curse me again—anytime. Anywhere.”

  “Shhh,” Hannah said, gently, rubbing his arm. “Come back to bed. You need to rest. You shouldn’t be standing. Wes, what were you thinking?”

  “Should I get Jordan?” Wes asked. “We were just talking, the two of us. I was telling him you’d get him through anything.”

  Hannah rubbed Liam’s arm. “Hey, for all we know, Winnifred thinks you’re dead now. If I hadn’t been here, you would have bled out. She probably thinks her curse worked, and she’s not going to come after you again—not until she realizes you’re not dead. So, we’re just going to keep you lying low for a while. Which means—bed.”

  Liam hardly would have thought that he would be reluctant to follow Hannah to bed, but his nerves were on edge. He pulled his hand away from her. “I want to see my back. How bad is my back?”

  “It’s going to be fine,” Hannah said, though she didn’t reach out for him again. “It looks bad right now because the wounds are fresh, but they’re going to heal. I have someone who is going to help make sure that they heal as best as they can.”

  She was so sweet, and patient, and kind. In the back of his mind he felt badly for lashing out at her, but all of the panic that had been staved off from passing out and then waking up confused and thirsty was now rushing back in. “I was cursed,” Liam said. “I told you—I was cursed. There’s magic. Holy shit, there’s magic. She could kill me—just kill me right here, and right now if she wanted to. What’s stopping her? I didn’t kill Trinity! I didn’t steal from her. We need to call the police—we have to explain to them. We have to find out who really killed Trinity or this crazy-ass witch bitch is going to kill me.”

  “We’re going to find out who killed Trinity,” Hannah said, unfazed by his intense emotions. She reached out again now, taking his arm. “Bed. I mean it, Liam. You can’t be standing here getting worked up. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  She was still being gentle with him, but it was clear that she meant business now. When she guided him towards the living room, he found that he was powerless to resist her firm grip. He looked down at her.

  “What are you?”

  Hannah’s reply was mild. “I’m the person trying to take care of you.”

  “I saw you move things without touching them,” Liam said, “and that guy—him over there. He said that it would shock me to find out who you really are. And his girlfriend—I could feel her taking pain away from me. What is going on, Hannah? I told you—I knew you had a secret that you were keeping from me. Are you a witch? Can you curse people, too?”

  “No, I cannot curse people,” Hannah said, her voice still light and calm, though he could feel a bit of tension in her grip now. “You’re not yourself right now, Liam. Your nerves are shot, and you’re half asleep, and you’ve had a lot of blood loss. You need to lie down and rest, and when you wake up in the morning we can talk more about all of these things. When your head is a little clearer.”

  Liam let her guide him into the bedroom, and he even sat down on the edge of the bed, but when she tried to ease him back onto the covers, he resisted, despite the pain that shot down his back. “I want you to be honest with me. I want to know what’s going on. Don’t I deserve that much, given that I almost died tonight?
I just want to know what’s going on.”

  Hannah sighed, lifting her hand to touch his face. Her fingers brushed his hair off his forehead, and her eyes held an unreadable expression. “Maybe you do deserve that much, but we can’t talk about it right now, Liam. You need to sleep. Can you just trust me for right now?”

  The touch of her fingers on his skin sent little prickles of desire through him, and Liam reached for Hannah’s waist, drawing her in. His face tilted up, as she stared down at him, and he lifted one hand into her hair, tangling his fingers in it. “I’ll trust you, if you kiss me.”

  Hannah’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t pull away from his grasp. “Liam …”

  “One kiss, and I’ll lie down and sleep, and we can wake up in the morning and go from there. You can tell me everything then.” He didn’t know why he was pushing her, but he suddenly, desperately wanted to feel her lips on his. So much that he would force himself not to demand the answers that he wanted, just for the chance to actually feel her kiss.

  “Liam,” Hannah said again, shaking her head. But she still didn’t move away. “We shouldn’t. We need to focus on what’s happening with you. If we do this …”

  “One kiss,” Liam murmured. “Nothing more. No acknowledgment tomorrow. If you don’t want to kiss me, then say no. If you do, but you’re just afraid—don’t be. One kiss, Hannah. That’s all.”

  Hannah stared down at him for a long, long time, and he began to think that she was just figuring out how to reject him nicely. But then she closed her eyes and sighed, leaning into him, so that his arms moved around her. She bent her head low, resting her forehead against his, and then she angled her head so that her lips brushed against his.

  Warmth spread from her kiss through his whole body, and he claimed her mouth with his, kissing her passionately. She groaned against his lips, and it was the sweetest sound that he had ever heard. When her lips parted, he slid his tongue between them, searching out hers. He kissed her over and over again, forgetting everything else other than the taste of her mouth and the feel of her lips. His hands slid down her back, and gripped her hips, but when he started to yank her against him, Hannah pulled away.

  Her cheeks were flushed, and her breath was coming fast. She pressed a hand to her chest and took several steps back, looking at him with wide, beautiful, brown eyes.

  He stared back at her, unsure how to find any words that would express what he was feeling in that moment, but she didn’t give him time to come up with them.

  “Lie down,” Hannah said, gesturing to the bed. Her voice was just a little bit shaky, and she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “You promised, Liam. Lie down now. Rest.”

  Liam lay back on the bed, careful to avoid hurting his injured back, and he held his hand out to her, wanting her to join him. He didn’t want to let go of her.

  But Hannah shook her head. “No. I’ll sit and watch you.” She sat down in a chair across the room, curling her legs up underneath her. She was clearly shaken. Her fingers trembled as she pushed her hair over her shoulder. She had felt it, too. She must have. There was something between them that was powerful, and it had hit her just as it had hit him. That was enough to put his mind at ease for at least a little while. Lots of things in the world didn’t make sense right now. But the connection between a man and a woman—that made sense.

  Liam closed his eyes, and as he did, he knew that he had to kiss her again.

  Chapter 11

  Hannah

  She slept fitfully in the chair in Liam’s bedroom. Every time she managed to doze off, Hannah fell into nebulous dreams that all centered around Liam and feeling his lips against hers. The longer she stayed asleep, the more the dreams progressed, and she found herself waking with a start from a dream where both she and Liam had been lying in his bed, naked with their bodies pressed together.

  When she woke from that dream, she didn’t go back to sleep. The sun was starting to stream in through the bedroom windows anyway, and she didn’t want to risk the dream progressing any further if she fell back asleep. Hannah got up and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. There was still blood all over the floor from the night before, and she shuddered slightly as she looked at it. She turned the shower on, letting the water begin to stream down, and she stripped, carefully laying the sweats she had borrowed on the counter to avoid getting them dirty. Then she went to work, turning the shower head so that some of the spray spilled over the stained floor. She scrubbed away the blood, using wipes, and towels, and anything else that she could get her hands on. Liam would need to buy new towels, but at least he could get up and use the bathroom without having to see his own blood covering the floor.

  When she was done, her hands, and arms, and legs were bloody again, and she stepped under the shower, washing herself off and scrubbing her hair with Liam’s soap. She got out of the shower and toweled off with one of the remaining clean towels, and then got dressed again. She twisted her hair, soaking wet from the shower, into a thick braid and then coiled it around itself, so that she could tie it in a braided bun at the base of her neck. When it dried, it would come out of the braid in gentle waves that cascaded down her back. She decided not to explore why she thought that she might, in a few hours, like to have waves cascading down her back because it might force her to face the realization that she wanted to be attractive to Liam.

  She could still feel his kiss heating her lips, and she knew both that she wanted more, and that she could never, ever let herself have more.

  When she was clean and dressed, Hannah slipped out of the bathroom and padded her way past the bed where Liam still slept, going out into the living room. She found Jordan and Wes curled up on the couch, sleeping, and she gently shook Jordan’s shoulder.

  Immediately, Jordan’s eyes opened and she was alert. “What? What’s happened? What’s up?”

  Hannah shook her head. “Nothing. I just want you to check on him. He’s still sleeping, but I’m worried. He looks pale.”

  Jordan nodded and got up, untangling herself from Wes, who attempted to wrap his arms more tightly around her and nuzzle into her neck. She pried herself loose with a kiss on Wes’ forehead and followed Hannah towards the bedroom. “Wes told me that he might have slipped up and assumed that Liam knew more than he did,” Jordan said. “He didn’t mean to spill the beans. He just got the impression that you and Liam were quite close.”

  “That’s okay,” Hannah said, stopping outside the bedroom with Jordan. “He didn’t tell him everything. Jordan—there’s something about Liam. He wants me to be honest with him, and I want to be. But I’m being foolish, because I know that he doesn’t take relationships seriously, and I can’t not take one seriously. It’s just not in me. And after I got burned so badly with Alex, I’m not ready to just trust any person that gets my …you know. Blood going.”

  Jordan’s eyebrows arched up so high they almost came off her face. “Gets your blood going?”

  Hannah gave her a look. “Come on. Be serious. I’m very attracted to him because—obviously. I mean, you saw him. And he’s definitely attracted to me. There’s something between us that seems to just click, and I find myself wanting to just tell him everything there is to know, but I can’t. I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s just because I’ve seen you, and Ryan, and Quentin all finding people to confide in, and what that’s done for your lives and now …now I’m trying to grab that for myself. But he’s not a settle down, serious kind of guy.”

  “Hold on,” Jordan said, shaking her head. “You’re about three steps ahead of where you need to be. Just because you’re attracted to the guy doesn’t mean that he is, or that he should be your soulmate. He might just be gorgeous—I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

  “That’s the surest sign that you’re in love that I’ve ever heard then,” Hannah said. “Liam is probably the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, so if you didn’t notice …”

  “He was covered in blood,” Jordan said.

  “And naked.�
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  “And covered in blood,” Jordan said. “Look, I’m sure he’s very attractive, and you should have all the fun you want to have with him. Just keep your heart out of it, and keep your secrets to yourself. I know I’m a bad one to talk, given me and Wes, so I can’t really judge. But if you’re not sure, don’t tell him anything. We have to protect Barrett from any more criticism of running a loose ship—don’t forget that.”

  Hannah nodded. She could always count on Jordan to tell it to her straight and get to the point. “Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking. I have no business telling Liam anything or getting involved with him at this stage.”

  “Nope,” Jordan said. “You don’t. But I didn’t have any business doing what I did with Wes, so like I said—you do what you gotta do, and just try not to screw it up too badly.”

  “I need to keep things professional,” Hannah said, although just the memory of Liam’s kiss stirred her deep inside. “I’ve decided. Absolutely.”

  Jordan lifted a shoulder. “Okay. You still want me to help him out again?”

  Hannah nodded. “Yeah. But I don’t need to be in there for that. You can just heal him as much as you can afford to, and then I’m sure you and Wes have other places to be. We’ll take it from here.”

  “Okay,” Jordan said, opening the bedroom door. “You got it.”

  Jordan went inside to help Liam, and Hannah scrubbed a hand over her face, then went into the kitchen to scrounge up some food. She threw herself into her cooking, putting together vegetable omelets, bacon, and biscuits with the things that she found in Liam’s fridge. Hannah enjoyed cooking, and it was a way for her to get lost in her own thoughts. She got so lost that the sound of Liam clearing his throat behind her came as a surprise, even though she should have heard him the moment he left his bedroom.

  Hannah turned around, seeing Jordan behind Liam waving goodbye to her. Seconds later, the front door opened and shut, and Hannah knew that she and Liam were alone in his house. “Good morning,” Hannah said. “I made breakfast.”