“The hell I can’t. And what were you thinking when you lied to me about the meeting? Bar business, my ass.”
“What I do with my life now isn’t your business.”
“I’m making it my business.”
“Why?”
Hesitating, she bit down on her lip before sighing. “Because I think Brandon would want me to. He’d want me to make sure you were okay.”
“Not at the expense of your own safety. I knew him well enough to know he’d want to kill me himself if you were in danger because of me.”
“So you are in danger. What have you gotten yourself into, Noah? You know what, it doesn’t matter. You can just walk away. Leave with me, now, and put this life behind you.”
Blowing a breath out, he pulled his ballcap off and repositioned it, shaking his head. He glanced up and saw Blake and Tarun watching him closely and nearly cursed. Fiddling with his hat was what he did when he was frustrated or unsettled, and it was a dead giveaway that something bothered him when he did it.
And now Blake and Tarun knew Lily unsettled him. Great.
“It’s not what you think it is, Lily. We’re not doing anything illegal. Yeah, there’s more to the MC than just the bar, but it’s not what you’re thinking.”
“I heard you guys talking about missions, intel, and people getting hurt, Noah—” her eyes widened as she broke off, and her next words were breathed out quietly. “Wait, are you guys, like, law enforcement? Undercover or something?”
She just gave him the perfect explanation. It was close enough to the truth to satisfy her and maybe then, she’d give up on trying to help or getting him to leave with her.
He should be happy, so he didn’t understand the shaft of disappointment shooting through his chest.
Giving his head a little shake, he cleared his throat. “Yeah, that’s basically it, although we are an MC. But you see, you don’t have to worry. And you don’t have to stay to help. Let us do this. We’re the professionals.”
“That guy, Blake, he’s the boss, right?” She waited for his nod before she continued. “He seems to think you guys can use my help. And he said I won’t be in any danger. You’re just going to be scoping out the situation. I can handle that, and my skills can help. I wasn’t lying when I said I can hack.”
“Lily, no. Go back to Virginia. You don’t need to do this.”
She set her shoulders stubbornly as she regarded him with her unusual blue eyes, and he knew before she spoke that she wasn’t going to go home.
It should bother him. It should piss him off and he should order her to go home. Going anywhere with her, just him and her, in close quarters was a recipe for disaster. He was way too attracted to her, and more than that, he liked her as a person too much.
But it was also for those reasons that he couldn’t seem to make himself feel upset. The whole thing was an epically bad idea, and he still had to try to talk her out of it, but there was a part of him that didn’t want to.
“Lily, I don’t—”
“Lily, is it?” Damara said, popping up next them. “Let me show you to your room so you can get settled in. And I’m sorry for startling you earlier. I didn’t mean to. I just genuinely wanted to know if the meeting was interesting before I walked in.”
Before Noah could say anything else, Damara was leading Lily away, throwing a wink over her shoulder at him, like they were conspirators. They weren’t, though. She might think she was making it easier for him to stay close to Lily, but that wasn’t what he wanted.
His lion growled inside him, but that time the sound didn’t startle him. He almost expected it, because even he could hear the lie in his thoughts.
Chapter Four
Lily followed behind Damara as the other woman carried her suitcase upstairs. She’d tried to protest that she could do it on her own, but Damara insisted, and she gave in fairly easily. It was getting late and she’d been driving most of the day, and she was worn out.
She’d never understood how sitting still in a seat while she drove for a day could wear her out so much, but it always had. And it took her two and a half days of driving to get to Nevada.
Damara stopped to open a door and gestured to the one next to it. “That’s Noah’s room, in case you need to talk to him at some point.”
Lily felt her mouth pop open as Damara waggled her eyebrows at her before walking in. Sputtering, she followed her in. “No, you’ve got this all wrong. It’s not like that with Noah and I.”
Damara looked at her innocently. “Like what?”
“It’s not—we’re not—not that I—”
“Oh, stop messing with her,” came another woman’s voice from the doorway. Lily turned to see the woman who’d been at the meeting walk in. “Hi, Lily. I’m Tarun.”
Lily smiled at her, grateful that she’d interrupted her broken ramblings. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Have you known Noah long?” Tarun asked as she came into the room and sat on the chair.
Damara tsked as she sat on the edge of the bed. “So I have to stop messing with her, but you’re allowed to grill her?”
“I’m not grilling her. I’m just trying to get to know her better.” Tarun switched her gaze to her. “So?”
She felt her lips curling with amusement as she arched an eyebrow. “Oh, is it my turn to speak now?”
Damara laughed. “I like her already.”
Shaking her head, she sat on the other end of the mattress. “To answer your question, I’ve known him for about six years now. We lost touch about three years ago, though.”
“That’s about when he and Luke joined the Enforcers,” Tarun mused.
“Luke?”
Tarun smiled. “My ma—husband. He and Noah have known each other since they were little kids.”
“Is that what you guys call your branch of law enforcement? Enforcers?”
Tarun and Damara exchanged looks and then both nodded. “It is,” Tarun confirmed.
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t think I’ve heard of any agency called the Enforcers before.”
“It’s a private sector,” Damara murmured as she cocked her head. “Six years… So you knew Noah in his Marine days, then?”
Swallowing hard, she glanced down at where her fingers clenched together, forcing them to relax as she looked back up and nodded. “Yeah. He was good friends with my late husband.”
Damara sucked in a breath. “Late husband—was his name Brandon?”
Her eyebrows raised as she looked over. “Yeah, it was. Does Noah talk about him?”
“Only once. He doesn’t like to talk about his time in the Marines, unless he’s talking about something he learned while he was enlisted. He mostly stays quiet about it.”
“I know he joined the Enforcers three years ago, so that must be when he got out of the Marines too, right?” Tarun asked with a thoughtful frown on her face.
Lily nodded. “He was injured pretty badly in the blast that killed my husband, and was medically discharged. Although,” she murmured with a frown, “he seems perfectly fine now. He must have really put some work in to get better.”
Damara glanced at Tarun as she nodded. “He’s worked very hard to get where he’s at today.”
Something about it all didn’t add up in Lily’s mind. She hadn’t thought about it because so much had happened so quickly since she arrived, but she’d expected him to be… well, not looking so perfectly healthy. He’d been in a wheelchair for most of the funeral service, although he’d insisted on standing as the casket was lowered into the ground, and he’d been leaning heavily on his cane.
She knew a lot of healing could happen in three years, but still—it just didn’t seem like it fit. She’d have expected him to at least have some type of limp, if not still use his cane. But he walked powerfully and with ease, not a hint of pain on his face, just like he had before his injuries.
It wasn’t that she begrudged his recovery. She didn’t, not in the slightest. She was happy that he didn�
�t have any long lasting physical effects—especially since she knew the mental effects war, and losing someone traumatically like Noah had, could have.
It was that something about it didn’t add up.
Maybe it was just the result of a lot of physical therapy and a lot of hard work. She didn’t know, but although she wanted to figure it out, she thought maybe it was something she needed to just let go.
Tarun cleared her throat and Lily glanced up at her. “So if you haven’t seen him in so long, what brings you here now?”
“Not grilling her, my ass,” Damara muttered.
She laughed as she shook her head. “No, it’s okay. My showing up out of nowhere must seem odd.” Pausing, she glanced down at her hands, searching for words. “I honestly didn’t know Noah very well. He and Brandon were really close, and he was at our house a lot, but he was always a lot quieter when I was around. I thought for the longest time that he didn’t like me. I actually just learned tonight that that wasn’t the case, but he still hasn’t told me why he was so silent when I was around.
“Anyway, the last time I saw him was at Brandon’s funeral. We barely spoke, and to be honest, it took me months to realize that I hadn’t seen him since then. I was in a bad place after my husband died. Even when I did realize Noah disappeared, I still wasn’t in any shape to wonder about it much. It was all I could do to get by day to day. Actually, not even day to day. It was more like minute to minute.”
Damara reached over and placed her hand on Lily’s arm, her touch comforting. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been.”
“It was agony for the longest time,” she replied softly. “But, in the last year or so, I’ve finally begun to get back to myself. It’s just… I don’t know. The more I began to live again, the more I wondered about Noah. About what he was doing, how he was doing—if he had a case of misplaced survivor’s guilt. I’ve been through counseling with other military wives who’ve lost their husbands, and I learned it was a thing some of the men feel when their friends die in combat.
“Noah was there when Brandon died. He watched it happen, and almost died himself. I thought I needed to find him. Talk to him. Make sure he was okay and that he wasn’t blaming himself for living, or something. I think it’s something Brandon would have wanted me to do, and I felt like I needed to do it for that final piece of closure. So I can try to finally put the past where it belongs and really start living again. I tracked him down, packed up a box of things I thought he might like to have, and drove here. And that’s it. That’s why I’m here.”
Silence rang through the room for a moment before Tarun spoke, her voice soft. “Are you sure that’s the only reason you’re here?”
She frowned, glancing between the two women. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you only here because you think it’s something Brandon wanted? Or are you here because it’s something you wanted, too? And not just because of closure.”
The attraction she felt for Noah sprang to mind, along with the weird electrical spark she felt when he touched her, but she shut those thoughts down. She wasn’t ready to admit to any of that. She might never be ready.
Besides, all those things happened after she got there. They weren’t the reason she came.
“Like I said, Noah and I weren’t close. We didn’t know each other well. But he was my husband’s best friend, and I came to care for him, too. The way Brandon spoke of him… I could see who Noah was, so clearly. So yeah, I guess I came here for myself, too. Because once I worked through most of my grief, I needed to know he was okay.”
“I hope you know we don’t mean anything by all the questions,” Damara said softly.
Tarun nodded with agreement. “We really don’t. It’s just that Noah’s special to us. He’s a great guy, and he’s been through a lot. We don’t want to see him get hurt.”
“I don’t want that, either. I came here to make sure he wasn’t hurt, not to cause him any. But I think you’re both mistaken if you think I have that kind of power over him.”
Tarun smiled, the expression knowing. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. He might be huge, but he’s a gentle giant. He feels things strongly, and you might be surprised at what—and who—has that power.”
Damara laughed lightly, breaking the weird tension as she stood. “Okay, with that, I think we ought to leave before we overstay our welcome, if we haven’t already.”
Lily stood as well, shaking her head. “Not at all. I understand why y’all had questions. I’m mostly just feeling grateful that Noah has people in his life who care enough to ask those questions.”
“The Enforcers are more like a family than friends. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for one of our own.”
Smiling at Damara’s words, she said goodnight as Tarun closed the door behind them. Standing still in the middle of the room for a few moments, she breathed deep and even, like she’d been taught in counseling. Feeling herself relax a little, she went to her suitcase and got out her pajamas. It’d been a tiring day.
She was happy that Noah had the Enforcers in his corner, she really was, but she was feeling an ugly emotion, too.
Jealousy.
She didn’t have what he had, and she’d probably give her right arm for it. Exhaling heavily, she pulled her tank top on and fished for her toothbrush and toothpaste. She did everything on autopilot, her mind a million miles away as she got ready for bed.
Her parents had been only children of only children, so when they passed away while she was in college, she lost basically all of her family. It hurt, but she had Brandon there, being strong for her, and loaning her his own mom when she desperately needed that mom feeling in her life.
His dad passed away when he was young, and like her, he hadn’t had any other family. It was only the three of them, and they’d considered themselves family since high school. A feeling that was solidified and made real when she and Brandon married.
And they’d had many friends. Being in the military meant moving every few years, but the bonds they forged at each base were strong, for the most part. The men formed their bonds while risking their lives for each other, and the women while clinging to each other when the men were deployed.
But when Brandon died, Lily had become so lost in her grief that the only one who could ever come close to reaching her was Mary, her mother-in-law. Her friends tried, she was sure, but very little could penetrate her grief back then. And so slowly, one by one, everyone disappeared from her life.
What finally broke through the fog that she lived her life surrounded in was when Mary got sick the year before. She had a cold that turned into pneumonia, and she went downhill fast after that. Lily would never forget what she’d said as she laid on the hospital bed, fading quickly.
“Lily, you know I love you. But you’ve got to snap out of this. You have a life to live, and knowing you as I do, it could be amazing. But you’re barely putting the effort in to exist. The spark of life is almost gone inside of you. And if I had the energy to do it, I’d slap you upside your head. I’m only sorry I didn’t do it sooner.
“There’ve been a lot of senseless deaths in this family. So much tragedy and heartbreak. But here you are, still alive, and you need to feed that spark inside you. Start living again, Lily. For all of us, for yourself, and for Brandon. Do you think he’d like to see you just barely existing? No. I know my boy. He loved you more than anything and all he’d ever want is for you to finally be happy again. To fall in love again. Maybe get married again one day and have kids. So if for no one else, do it for him. Make it happen, Lily.”
Those words had been burned into her brain, and she recalled them with perfect clarity. They were what finally got her to begin moving past her grief, but when she’d come out of that fog and looked around, she had no one left.
It was really no one’s fault but her own. Brandon’s death had all but destroyed her, and she hadn’t done anything to fight through it. It was something she regr
etted deeply.
Maybe that was part of why she’d wanted to find Noah. As much as they hadn’t been close, they were still closer than anyone else she knew. And he was the last link she had to the past, when she had people who’d been there for her, no matter what. She wanted to know what that felt like again.
Sighing as she laid on the bed, she reached over and turned off the lamp, staring up at the dark ceiling. She was feeling a little on the lost and pathetic side after that realization, but the reasons for her finding Noah were, at the core, the same.
To make sure he was okay and to give him the box she brought with her.
She wasn’t convinced that he was okay, though. Maybe he really was part of some secretive law enforcement branch—and that fit with the man she’d known before better than him being involved in drugs or something illegal.
But she still couldn’t shake her suspicion. There was something inside her telling her there was more to the story, that there was more than met the eye with his new life.
And she wasn’t going anywhere until she figured out what was going on and knew he was going to be safe.
Noah felt irritation flow through him as he walked down the hallway and saw Blake standing by his bedroom door. Mouth tightening, he shoved open his door and walked in without saying a word.
“I guess that means you’re still pissed,” Blake said as he walked in and shut the door behind him.
“Lily has no business going with me. She’s a human, Blake. Since when do you let humans go on Enforcer missions? Especially uninitiated humans.”
“She has a skill we can use, and there won’t be any danger involved in this, Noah. I think you’re more upset about her going because you volunteered to leave to get away from her.”
“We’re going to watch a male dragon who’s been trying to kidnap female dragons. Don’t tell me there won’t be danger. Just being so close to a dragon means she won’t be safe.”
“It’s minimal, Noah. Do you really think I’d let her go if it wasn’t? You know me better than that.”
Thief (Blood & Bone Enforcers MC Book 2) Page 3
