by Low, Gennita
“I don’t scare her dates. I reason with them,” Jed said, leaning against the counter.
Grace looked at Jaymee and rolled her eyes. “He reasoned by standing threateningly outside on the porch and not saying a word to poor Tommy. Pfffft!” She stretched, again reminding Jaymee of a sleepy kitten. “Oh well, it saved me from hurting his feelings that night.”
“Why?” Jaymee asked, intrigued. Her own dating experience had been sadly lacking, and certainly never would have encompassed a purple-haired date.
“His hair color clashed with mine,” Grace explained with such dead seriousness the adults in the room burst out in laughter.
Well, two of them, anyway, Jaymee corrected. Jed merely smiled, if that slight tug of those lips could be called a smile. “We can’t have that,” she agreed.
“I’m staying at the beachside. You can bunk there, if you like,” Nick told Jed.
“A bed? A shower?” Grace chipped in, grinning. “Wow, what’s that?”
Jaymee frowned. This was going too far. She usually disliked prying into other people’s business because she resented it when others did it to her, but the idea of a young girl being forced to live without food, bed and shower was too difficult to accept. Didn’t she need to go to school, or something? She must help this child. She looked at Jed.
“Where were you two staying when you were waiting to get Nick alone?”
“I’m sure you know that we were trespassing on your property, Miss Barrows.” Jed’s light eyes met hers squarely.
“Please call me Jaymee,” she said. “I don’t understand this training business Grace has been telling me about. You can’t do that to a growing girl, not allowing her to eat for two days! It’s unhealthy, to say the least. And what’s this about no shower or bed?”
Jed shot Nick a glance, which the latter answered with a crooked grin. “It’s called survival training for a reason,” he told her, in his soft-spoken manner.
“Training for what?” retorted Jaymee. The man had to see he couldn’t starve his daughter. “Armageddon? I’m taking her to an outdoor birthday party tomorrow, and she’ll be eating and drinking.”
She stared back challengingly at the dark and brooding man, very aware of Nick’s watchful gaze on her. She was still afraid of this cousin of his. There was something very elemental about him that made her extremely uncomfortable when he stood too near. But Grace brought out inexplicably motherly instincts in her, and she felt the girl needed a woman’s hand. There was something wild about her.
Grace laid her head against Nick’s shoulder and purred out, “I like her. She’s yelling at Dad.”
“Better him than me,” murmured back Nick amiably. He hid his frustration as he willed Jaymee to meet his eyes, something she had steadfastly avoided since he and Jed came in. “She does have a temper, Jed.”
“We’ve witnessed it first hand, when she yelled on the roof,” Jed told him. He placed the empty glass on the counter and straightened up. “Grace is supposed to eat tomorrow, anyway, so I won’t argue. She can go with you.”
“You can come along too,” Jaymee invited.
“No, thank you. I don’t attend parties.”
“Free food, Dad. Come on,” coaxed Grace. “You can torture me later.”
“You go ahead.”
Nick stood up. “Come on then. I’ll take you to my place.” Tossing Jed the keys to his Jeep, he added, “I assume you know which vehicle outside is mine. I’ll join you in a few.”
Jed nodded. “Grab the backpack, Grace.”
His daughter obediently did as she was told, and the two of them went outside after greeting Jaymee goodnight.
Nick studied Jaymee as she gathered up the empty glasses and dirty washcloths. She was banging the glasses a lot louder than needed, although the blank expression on her face betrayed nothing. He felt his own anger surging as she gave him the silent treatment. Oh no, she wasn’t going to withdraw the same way she did every time her father bothered her. He wouldn’t allow it. A few swift strides and he was behind her at the sink and without warning, he turned the water off.
Jaymee calmly wrung the washcloths dry. She fought the urge to lean back against his hard body, to feel his arms around her again. “So, where did you learn how to move like that?” she casually asked, flapping the wet cloths.
Nick reached over and pulled the cloths out of her hand before turning her around. “It won’t work, you know.”
“What won’t work?”
“I won’t let you withdraw from me, Jaymee. You can try your polite sarcasm on someone else, like your father. Look at me, damn it!” He forced her chin up. “I know I owe you some answers, but I’ve to go with Jed right now. Will you be up late tonight?”
That did get her to look at him. “You’re presumptuous. Maybe I don’t want you to come back tonight,” she said.
“Where do you suppose I’m going to sleep, with Jed and Grace in my little efficiency?” He caressed her back, felt the involuntary response. “What, are you a use-em-leave-em kind of woman?”
“You aren’t getting off this time, Nick or Kill, or whoever you are,” Jaymee warned, glaring at him now. “You’ve put me off with kisses long enough. I want to know.”
His crooked smile only made her madder. She balled her hand and jabbed it into his flat tummy. She couldn’t really draw her elbow back enough to land the hard blow she had in mind, but the grunt it elicited gave her a certain amount of satisfaction.
“What was that for?” he asked, rubbing where she hit.
“I thought that was the standard greeting from your family and friends. They attack you without warning,” Jaymee sweetly told him. “I was assured by Grace you usually jump out of the way fast enough, that this time you weren’t paying attention.”
“I was distracted,” Nick agreed. He continued his caress. “Let me come back over tonight, Jaymee.”
“I need time alone. I want to think things over.” Not that it would help, since she couldn’t make heads or tails about this man, except she’d fallen in love with him. “Besides, I need to do some paperwork tonight.”
Pride made her bite down on the questions churning inside her. If he wouldn’t tell her, she wouldn’t ask. She would never ask anything from a man again.
“I want to be with you, you know that,” Nick said, his eyes glittering with suppressed emotion. “Why do you think I’ve been spending virtually every moment with you?”
Jaymee let out a sigh. “I don’t know,” she replied, suddenly tired. “I do know, yet I don’t know. I want to know, and I don’t want to know.”
She drew a tentative finger down the front of his tee-shirt. He grabbed her finger and lifted it to his lips, feathering a kiss on the tip, then lightly biting it. She closed her eyes at the feel of his tongue and his teeth.
“All right.” She gave in. “I’ll leave the back door unlocked. I’ll probably be up in the study.”
“No, lock the door,” Nick ordered. “Give me a spare key.”
It rankled he expected her to trust him so absolutely. Such male arrogance. “And if I don’t?”
But Nick had been on Programmer mode since Jed had pulled that stunt on them in the woods. Even as he fumed over Jaymee’s sudden coolness, the trained part of him was calmly assessing his options. He needed her to give in, and knew which switch to pull to get her to give in to him. Although another part of him recoiled at the thought of taking advantage of her, he blocked it off. He was the Programmer, and manipulation was what he did best. Later, he would study this unnatural reluctance when it came to Jaymee, but right now, he acted by instinct.
He smiled, and watched the sudden wary look in her eyes. Amazing how she was always aware something was wrong, even though she never knew what he was up to. It was easy to reassume the role of lover, before Jed’s unexpected interruption. All he had to do was think of her in his arms. Naked. And doing… He gave an inward sigh. Bad idea. He leaned closer, wishing he had more time.
“If you d
on’t give me a spare key,” he cajoled, “I’ll huff and puff till your house falls down, and then you’re going to be sorry, because I’d probably eat you.” He caught the beginning of a hint of humor on her tempting lips, and felt relieved. “Give me the key, sweetheart, and a nice kiss before I go.”
Jaymee could never resist him when he smiled like that. The horrid thing was, she knew he did it on purpose too, that he was being exactly what she’d known him to be. By acting like the bad boy she’d accused him of, he sweet-talked with words, seducing her to do exactly what he wanted. She just couldn’t resist that smile.
She faked a glare as she allowed herself to be led from the sink area. Pulling out a drawer, she found the spare key and dropped it into his open hand. She continued glaring at him when he pointed at his lips with a long, index finger. Putting both hands against his hard chest, she stood on tiptoes, and when his head came down, she gave him the merest wisp of a kiss, then gave him a slight push.
He grinned. “It’s Killian Nicholas Langley, so I haven’t been lying. Lock up behind me.”
He turned and disappeared out into the night. Jaymee stared at the door for along moment, then turned the lock. She felt as empty as the house.
Chapter Ten
Balance the checkbook. Update the payroll. Write down the week’s mileage. Check the inventory. Jaymee went through her routine, finding comfort in the familiar. This was what she had deliberately made her life, and boring as it may be, it offered a sense of security, a sense of control. When Danny had left them in chaos, she’d come up with a plan. Simplify. Cut out everything and just simplify. It was an escape and a solution. It helped her to stay sane when her mother’s health worsened and her father went to the hospital, fallen by a stroke. It gave her a sense of direction when she was lost under a pile of credit lawyer mail, demanding payments.
Numbers and planning. The step-by-step climb back to some semblance of control had counted on these details, and Jaymee found out the more she simplified things, the more she got things done.
However, somewhere along the line, she had also decided to ignore her emotional needs. Emotions fed chaos, she reasoned, and thus, she’d simplified her life one step further—stay away from relationships.
The first few years after Danny went by in a blur. She buried her pain under a mountain of responsibilities, and by the time she surfaced, she’d retreated inside, hiding behind work. There were times when she was lonely, but it was used to forge another brick into her wall of resistance.
Jaymee liked living inside her little self-contained area. Life was simple. And safe.
So, why did she venture out of her nice, safe haven? Neither nice nor safe. She managed a small smile as she plugged numbers and signed checks. Nick—Killian—had warned her he was neither, and she’d still plunged unheedingly into a relationship with him. She took a long swallow from her drink, staring at the columns on the screen.
The problem was, the parts she knew of the man on her mind wouldn’t add up like her balance sheets. He could charm and seduce like the best of them, all right, but she had also seen the side of him that was edgy and powerful. Tonight, there had been something dark and frightening in his eyes when he thought they were being ambushed.
And what ordinary person got ambushed, for God’s sake? She speared her hair in disbelief as the possibilities of what that incident meant played havoc with her imagination.
The sound of the back door caught her attention, and she heard her father’s familiar walk. “Jaymee girl?” he called out.
“I’m in here.”
Bob opened the study door and looked into the room before walking in. “Alone?” he asked.
Jaymee waited a beat for the usual deprecatory remarks that followed, but none came. Looking at her father, she was surprised to find him clear-eyed.
“Yes,” she answered, studying him.
Bob glanced at the computer and the papers on the desk. “Have you found more work to replace the Hidden Hills subdivision?”
Jaymee shook her head. “I haven’t been looking around. Several builders have some work for me, so I’m not too worried.”
“Yes, but a subdivision is steady work. It’s a shame we lost the account.”
We? Did she hear right? It had been forever since her father included himself in the business. “That’s true,” she agreed. “Is there anything you needed, Dad?”
Bob picked up a bill from the pile, looked at it, then put it back. “I just wondered how the inspection had affected our business, that’s all. Builders don’t take kindly to undernailing. I’m worried that word might get around.”
Her father was behaving very strangely. Something was different, the way he spoke, the way he looked at her. Pushing her chair away from the table, she stood up.
“Nothing to worry about,” she said. “I had the inspector give me copies of his findings. Whoever sent in the complaint didn’t know I’d gone back to check the roofs.”
She left out Chuck’s and Rich’s names. Bob surprised her by bringing them up himself.
“You went back because you knew about Chuck and Rich all along.”
Jaymee shrugged, wondering where her father was trying to trip her up. “I had my suspicions.”
“And you made sure those roofs were done right after firing them, didn’t you? You’ve always taken care of everything, haven’t you?”
“Why the sudden interest, Dad?”
He fidgeted with the papers again, drawing a slight frown from Jaymee. “Everything’s in order, right?” he continued in that half-stating, half-questioning tone of voice. “All caught up.”
“Dad?” She wondered whether he was really as sober as he appeared.
“That computer makes all the paperwork so much easier, doesn’t it?” he went on, still fidgeting with the bills.
Jaymee studied her father a few seconds. “Paperwork is still paperwork,” she said slowly. “I’m really behind filing these bills away.”
Bob cleared his throat. “Is it still the same system?”
She nodded, too stunned for a moment to say anything. Finally, she said, “There’s a pile of bills in the shoebox that needs sorting.”
Her father avoided meeting her eyes. “Good. Well, good night. I suppose you’ll be at Mindy’s party tomorrow.”
“Yes. Good night.”
She remained where she was as her father closed the door behind him. She couldn’t recall the last time her father hadn’t been caustic or drunk while talking to him. Tonight, he was neither.
She was tired. It had been a very long day and a nap sounded a lot more tempting than house chores. She dimmed the lights and lay down on the sofa. If Nick didn’t show up by midnight, she would go to bed. Closing her eyes, she let out a long sigh. She didn’t even know where he stayed. Details, she needed details.
*
Nick checked the time as he made his way to the back of Jaymee’s house. She had left the porch light on for him. He paused for a second before inserting the key into the lock and turned. Such a familiar act, turning a key and walking into a house in the dark. Familiar and intimate. He smiled humorlessly.
Things hadn’t quite gone the way he’d wanted this evening. Jed’s sudden appearance not only changed his plans, but also sped up his intention to slowly reveal himself to Jaymee. There was no hope for that now, knowing how her mind worked. Not after she’d witnessed that little display in the woods. Jed had done it deliberately, of course. Jed, who never stopped pushing anyone to his limit, who constantly tested everyone around him. Nick’s lips curled up resolutely. He’d be damned if he allowed his cousin to test Jaymee or toy with her in one of his usual mind games. Not this time, cuz.
Light shone from beneath the study door and he quietly opened it. The computer was still on, but Jaymee was curled up on the couch, her face hidden against the back pillows. Closing the door, he lay down the book bag he’d brought along, and went to sit on the floor by the sofa. He heard her soft, even breathing, and didn’t ha
ve the heart to wake her. She didn’t sleep enough as it was.
He glanced back at the computer. He’d shown Jed how far along he’d gotten before he was alerted there was an explosive aboard his boat. After debriefing him, Jed had agreed they needed to break the code before he could surface again. If the program fell into the wrong hands now, the loss of lives thus far would be a waste. Most of all, they needed to get the ones who were responsible for his near-demise, as well as their friends’ deaths. Their enemies weren’t stopping there, that was certain, and Jed wasn’t going to wait around for them to dig and find out about Grace. Nick could understand his determination, especially now he knew about Emma’s death. Reaching out, he wrapped a long ringlet of Jaymee’s hair around his finger. He didn’t think he could bear it if she was hurt because of the nature of his job.
He took out a flash drive from the side pocket of the book bag. Jed’s programs were nowhere near the capacity of what his specially-designed software could do, but since his precious belongings were at the bottom of the ocean, he would have to make do. It would take some time, with some serious rewriting, to get these programs ready the way he wanted them. Might as well get started while she slept.
*
Jaymee heard him at work even before she was truly awake. With her eyes still closed, she could see with her mind’s eye the expression on his face as he concentrated on the screen, his mouth occasionally quirking as he thought out a problem, his fingers moving knowledgeably on the keyboard.
She opened one eye. The room was in darkness, except for the illumination from the computer screen casting a silver gray glow over the man in her chair. He typed. Her computer flashed back answers to his commands. He typed some more.
She doubted she’d understand anything on the screen even if she were close enough to make out the lines. His familiar profile, silhouetted in the shadows, projected a mind in its element. He worked efficiently, communicating with that damn machine as if it hadn’t given her fits for months. She wrinkled her nose then gave in and smiled wryly. A man in deep thought was a very potent draw to a woman like her. Slowly, she sat up.
