by Sue Wilder
“I hid your phone.”
“You hid my damn phone?”
Her chin lifted. “I knew you’d be like this, stubborn, when both Angie and Maggie said you needed a day in bed. What else was I supposed to do?”
Her challenge turned me inside out, and I wasn’t sure why I was losing control. But with each passing minute, she pushed me closer to an edge that I couldn’t blame on the meds.
A muscle hardened in my jaw. “You can’t want me here.”
“I don’t want you alone. Yesterday, when I asked for help, you had to chase after me. Then you fell and injured your back, and that makes you my responsibility.”
“I injured my back months ago.”
“I have to do this, Garrett.” She drew in a deep breath. “When I cause harm, I have to make it right, and you’ll stay here for the day you need while I make sure you get fed.”
“I don’t need your pity.” And I damn sure didn’t want her penance.
“Don’t be stubborn, Garrett. It isn’t a good look on you.”
“Or you.”
I watched the way her posture changed, defensive as she pulled her hand from mine. I let her go.
“The wash cycle takes forty-five minutes. The dryer runs about the same. An hour-and-a-half, Garrett, then I’ll bring your clothes and your phone, drive you home if that’s what you want.”
What I wanted would have shocked her.
◆◆◆
Trouble returned my clothes while I was sleeping. I hadn’t intended to sleep, but no excuses. Pain mixing with the fresh round of meds wiped me out, and the physical effort—both in and out of the shower—had been enough to put me down, flat on my stomach and naked in her guest bed.
Yeah, I’d waited too long this time around, but I was tired of the dance. Tired of calling Angie every time I felt a twinge. Having to come up with excuses when Maggs questioned why I wasn’t coming around, refilling my prescriptions on time.
Maggie Jackson might be bright, easy on the conversation, but she read too much into a few casual dinners. A break from the loneliness for me. More serious for her, although I’d made it clear I didn’t do permanent.
I felt nothing physical for her. No sex, since I wasn’t sure my back could handle the gymnastics, and her body didn’t turn me on enough to try.
Yesterday had been another day in a long line of days filled with accepting liabilities, and I’d wanted to ease my mind, settle in at the bar where the wooden chair supported my sorry ass and kept my back stable. The day hadn’t worked out as expected, but at least I was thinking clearly again, not that I wanted to remember the bunny slipper.
Didn’t know what I was supposed to say about it, either, since trouble clearly took it as an assault on her sovereignty. The flasher moment ran hot, the way her eyes widened. Now she insisted she didn’t need help, and I couldn’t let her get away with that decision.
If I hadn’t seen bitch written on her car, the graffiti on her house wouldn’t have alarmed me, but the same word, used twice and in two different locations, was a warning.
I tugged on the cotton pants since they were easy. The black tee smelled of some fabric softener; thankfully, it wasn’t lemon.
Barefoot, I wandered through the house and found the note she’d left behind, propped on the kitchen counter beside my phone. She’d driven into town for food since I hadn’t eaten in a day. Oh, and she’d taken my shoes, so I shouldn’t worry.
Or try to leave.
Damn woman.
But at least she’d left the cell, and I swiped at contacts, connecting seconds later to Maxton Wells. I’d known Max since our military days, when we’d been assigned to the same joint hostage rescue team. He was British Royal Marines. I was Army Ranger, and it was a time when we were young and fearless and brash.
We met again a few years later, reconnected. Max was working for Blackthorn while I’d started Ibiza, offering high-level security services—an expensive way to describe private contractors. Connor Lange had a problem Ibiza solved, and we’d all been close friends since then.
Maxton picked up on the second ring. “About time you called.”
“Had some issues on my end, but I’m with her now.” Or at least I was in her house. “I got her version of why she handed me a Blackthorn card. Now I want yours.”
Max grunted. “He trusts you.”
“What’s her conflict with Con?” Details I needed if I was being blindsided. Pulled into this mess because Con had a revenge fantasy that somehow included me.
“Had to do with Elle.” I remembered the tragedy involving Con’s half sister. He’d been a wreck, and I’d still been too messed up to help. “Soleil… she has her faults, but she’s trying to atone, and Con is taking her efforts at face value.”
“Why send her to me?”
“Luna’s suggestion. You’re there and you have skills. Soleil stays in the house and we have situational control.”
I snorted in disbelief. “Luna bother to mention how Soleil and I have history?” Where I’d been an ass and she still held a grudge.
“So? We all got history.”
“Makes it complicated.”
“I can see complicated,” Max agreed. “Last year, Con stashed Luna on his island while he handled those European negotiations, then had to come home early to keep her from leaving. Cost him a cool million she doesn’t know about, and she still had him on his knees in less than a month.”
I thought about my back and being flat on trouble’s floor. “Get me on my knees, Max, and I’m not getting up for a week.”
“Call your guys. I’ve already assigned a team.”
My jaw flexed. “Who?”
“Manny Carrasco and Wade Reston.”
I wouldn’t fault Max’s choice. Both men were tenacious, loyal with unique skill sets, and they’d been with Ibiza from the beginning.
“Take a look, Garrett. That’s all he’s asking. A risk assessment and a defensive plan, then get involved or walk away. Your call.”
Silently, I stared through the kitchen window. Across the street, a man stood in his front yard watering plants. Sunlight glinted off the faded-blue pickup truck. A portable radio sat on the tailgate, with an announcer calling the plays for a baseball game. Everything appeared normal, and maybe Con was leveraging trouble’s problem to motivate me into thinking about my game again.
Which I was doing. I could walk. I didn’t have to do anything. But I rubbed above my left eye, unable to shed the image of trouble as she sat in an overstuffed armchair, flicking her foot so hard the fuck-me shoe fell onto the carpet like a red slash I didn’t want to see on her.
“Give me a few minutes. I’ll get back to you.”
Quickly, I punched in my private number for Ibiza. Told the receptionist what I wanted, and she connected me to Manny Carrasco, a barrel of a man with the sharpest instincts I’d ever encountered.
“Heard you had something,” I said after the preliminaries.
“The basics so far, Mr. Kincade.” I wished he’d stop with the formality. We’d known each other for years, and in the field, he called me Garrett without issue.
But at the office, Manny held to the chain of command. Like so many others, he’d decided my absence was temporary, and that I hadn’t really given control of Ibiza to Blackthorn.
“Wade flew out yesterday,” Manny continued. “He interviewed the restaurant owner, watched the security tapes. We have copies for the file, but if you talked to Ms. St. Clair, you know what happened.”
I did, but Manny’s controlled tone confirmed my suspicions.
“The guy was a pro. Hit her with a kidney shot, full momentum. Slammed her against a car, then kicked her when she was down. No ID on the face yet, but we called in a favor, got a look at the police report. They’re calling it random street crime. Got a lot of it in that area.”
“Send what you have.” I gave Manny my private fax number while I searched the cupboards, finding the coffee and filters for trouble’s expensive coffee machine. “Keep
Wade on it. Have him look at her house, canvas the neighbors.”
“Anything else?”
Pressing the brew button, I listened for the first hiss. “Get me a short list of her enemies, but not just hers. Anyone close, because our unknown might be using her to get to someone else. You know what level I expect.”
“Consider it done, and it’s good to have you back.” Manny’s jovial grin was clear in his voice. “The game’s been boring without you.”
“Not back in the game.” I’d just spent eighteen hours flat on my stomach. If I got back in the game, I’d want the rush again.
Still, it was easy to imagine Manny sitting in his office on the twentieth floor of the exclusive New York high rise—Ibiza’s corporate face because nervous executives found comfort in the civility, in the marble floors and private elevators. The security and discretion.
Ibiza took assignments all over the world, and I’d always thought New York was the perfect location for our headquarters. We took up an entire floor with all the computers, researchers, analysts. Training was held off-site, but nothing could compare to the energy of the city.
Recently, though, I’d changed my expectations, finding comfort in a whiskey bar. In a fishing boat that took me back and forth across the bay.
And I liked the ocean storms that blew up in the winter and settled into a man’s bones.
I disconnected from Manny and called Max. The command slid into my voice as if it never left. “I’m looking into it.”
“I’ll let Con know.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m back.” But the idea of leaving trouble on her own was off the table.
“Close enough.” Max was happy when he got his way. “What’s the plan?”
“Manny’s gathering background. Wade stays in L.A.” Which earned Max’s grunt of approval. “The problem is Soleil. She wants to leave, be on her own. I’d talk to her, but she isn’t listening right now.”
Max coughed to cover his laugh. “I can have Luna talk to her.”
Since Luna was behind this, I thought having her call trouble was justified revenge. “Tell her to wait a few hours, then keep it casual. Convince Soleil to stay while I work things out.”
Through the window, I noticed another neighbor staring at trouble’s house. He stood in the adjacent yard, ordinary, wearing wrinkled khaki pants. Faded brown hair, black-rimmed glasses, hands deep in his pockets, with body language that read innocuous.
But his expression was unnaturally curious.
“Do a background on the bluff tenants,” I said. “Save me some trouble.”
Max sharpened his tone. “Someone worrying you?”
“Could be nothing.” But every possibility had to be explored. I knew Max could handle the backgrounds, and after we disconnected the call, I watched the neighbor disappear into his house. Then I called Ethan.
“Come pick me up,” I told him, giving him trouble’s address.
Shoes or no shoes, I wouldn’t be here when she got back from the store.
CHAPTER SIX
Soleil
“He left me a damn note, Loony.” I glanced at the tablet propped on the kitchen counter. We were using Zoom since Luna called and wanted to talk and cook at the same time. She was in New York, where Connor had a gorgeously elegant apartment overlooking Central Park. There were other houses, but New York was the preference, and I watched as she swayed to the music, humming as she worked on the roast she’d planned for dinner, while I relied on my old standby—chocolate chip cookies.
“I even took his shoes,” I told her, gesturing with my spoon. “But he was gone when I got home.”
“Didn’t you do the same thing? Leave with just a note?”
“He was asleep when I left.”
“And you were gone when he left.”
“Fine.” Luna never judged my excuses, only pointed out the contradictions. “I saw the scars on his back, Loony.”
“Connor told me about them.” She focused on her measuring cup, adding oil, then mixing in the spices. “I guess they’re pretty bad.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“Garrett was in an accident eighteen months ago, and it’s been a rough recovery.”
“Then you understand why I can’t ask him to help.”
She glanced up. “Why not?”
“He was in so much pain he couldn’t move.” I stared at the cookie dough on my spoon. “It’s too much to expect.”
“Give him time. Garrett’s more than you think, and Maxton wouldn’t have recommended him if he didn’t have certain skills.”
“I get that he has skills.” I’d seen the damn scars. “And it isn’t him, Loony. This is about me. I’ve dealt with powerful men, the paparazzi—but every time he calls me cupcake, I’m right back in high school like an idiot.”
“He still calls you cupcake?”
“Yes.” I plopped a blob of cookie dough on the baking sheet, ignoring the delighted way she laughed. “Nothing’s changed. We still have that old dynamic, and I’m pretty sure he remembers it the way I do. Like when I painted hearts on the windshield of his car and he caught me doing it.”
I’d told him the hearts were a cheerleading initiation, but it was a lie, and Garrett made me wash the paint off in front of the entire football team. He called it his own initiation, while the guys laughed and the cheerleading squad cheered.
“It was funny,” Luna pointed out. “And everyone loved you. The way you flicked water around and danced like you were on the field.”
Soleil St. Clair, always the pro. Hitting the mark.
Who’s got a sponge?
We do… We do…
But I’d still been that girl, needy for what Garrett wouldn’t give, and over the years, I’d forgotten about it.
Until yesterday, when Garrett washed the white paint off my rental, and his silence still bothered me, the way he sat there, staring at the smears of white paint while I’d felt the same damn way—humiliated. Hoping for reassurance he wouldn’t give.
“Did you talk to him,” Luna asked, breaking my trance.
“Yes. I told him everything, because he has this way of staring you down until you tell him things. We sat in the same room where you talked to Connor.”
My twin’s voice turned soft and knowing. “There’s something about that room, Sunny. Be careful. You get reckless.”
“I’ve always been reckless.” Music filtered through from Luna’s end. Her evening settled in while I faced late afternoon, and I loved the way she cranked the music, poured a glass of wine, and cooked for a man—while the one man I’d wanted to cook for left before I got home, so eager to get away, he went without his shoes.
I plopped another cookie blob, squashed it with my spoon. “Where’s the mogul?”
“His office. Late meetings instead of flying to London like he planned. I talked him into coming out there—my date nights because he owes me a week.”
When I’d first heard the terms of her prenup, I’d giggled over the date nights and regular sex—not that attraction was a problem with them, and I was smiling when Luna examined her roast, then refilled her glass and took another sip.
“We’ll be staying at the San Juan house.” Which I remembered was on Connor Lange’s private island in Puget Sound. “It’s just a hop to Seattle, and we’ll drop down to see you—wouldn’t that be fun?”
“You want to stay here?” There was plenty of room, but I wasn’t sure how comfortable either Connor or I would be in close proximity. “I can move on.”
“Don’t you dare, Sunny. We want to visit you, not take over the house, so don’t even think of leaving. You’re safe there. You know the area, and people in Newport are very protective. The house is yours as long as you want it.”
My twin also wanted me within the tight circle that was Blackthorn, and I loved her for the generosity, for not turning me away when I called. She’d been more upset than I’d been, and I thought I should warn her.
“Mom called,�
� I said, rubbing my back as I straightened.
“You told her you wanted time alone, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and she was fine with it until Brand knocked on her door. He’d gone by the house, took photos of the graffiti and showed them to her. Said he was worried, which worried her, and she wanted to know why I hadn’t told her.”
“What did you say?”
“That the police thought kids were having fun and it wasn’t worth mentioning.”
“You haven’t told her about that attack, have you?”
“No, but I had to warn her about the selfies.”
My twin took a slow sip of wine. “What kind of selfies?”
“Innocent.” I shrugged and scooped up more cookie dough. “I was down at the old harbor and a few girls recognized me. Thirteen, fourteen years old, Loony, and you remember that age, how insecure it can feel. They were so excited to meet Dacree, and okay, it was risky, doing it, because people will know where I am now, so maybe that’s the reason I should move on.”
“It’s the reason you should stay, Sunny. Right where you are, with people who know you. Selfies will follow no matter where you go, and what you did was a nice thing. Generous. It will be okay.”
Luna, always reassuring, but I wasn’t okay. First, I’d lied to my mother so she and my father wouldn’t worry. Brand continued with his harassment no matter what I said or did. And while Luna had a string of arguments for why I should stay, nothing I did seemed right.
Involving Garrett in my mess was the worst thing I could have done, because if there were two people who shouldn’t work together—we were that pair. He made me crazy. I made him crazy. And it wasn’t because he called me cupcake.
It was the way I caught him looking at me.
The way I looked at him.
Wet and naked, stalking toward me with that look in his eyes.
The beeping timer for the cookies pulled me back, and I opened the oven door, ignoring the rush of heat. Then I looked around at my cookie mess, the bowl in the sink. The empty chocolate chip bag I hadn’t thrown away, while Luna concentrated on her roast. We were so used to being together, ten minutes passed without either of us speaking.
