Joker Joker (The Deuces Wild Series Book 2)

by Irish Winters

  Tate didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He’d just breached agent/client protocol in a big way, and he knew he’d do it again given the opportunity. Something about Winslow had brought his feral nature to the surface in a big, and yes, a hard way. His soul yearned to fix what was wrong with her, to fight that cancer with every last breath. To make her want to fight death as hard and as long as she could. That was how people were supposed to face the Grim Reaper. They were supposed to spit in the old man’s eye, not lie down and give up like it seemed she’d been doing.

  But his body? As wrong as it was, the need to kiss her had come out of nowhere, a storm he hadn’t been able to resist. When her lovely peaches-and-cream fragrance wafted up between them, he was lost. Okay, so it came with a hint of garlic, so what? Between those other fragrances, nearly lost in them, was the alluring, feminine scent of Winslow, an addiction he had no intention of curbing.

  He pressed another kiss to the top of her forehead. She was tiny. So helpless. She needed someone to help her fight that damned cancer growing inside of her. Someone stalwart and tough. Someone who meant what he said and said what he meant.

  But she was strong in her own way too. He sensed an uncanny juxtaposition within her, a paradox he didn’t dare believe. How could a woman so full of life be dying?

  “I want you to promise me something.” His voice was hoarse with the ache in his body. Maybe, in his soul.

  Her head bobbed against his chin. “Okay. What?”

  The innocence and trust in this woman humbled him. Just like that exhausted deer had done, Winslow seemed willing to follow his lead. That simple act of faith threw his life into sharp perspective. Was he up for a fight with cancer? Why not? It made more sense than most of the other battles he’d been in. “I don’t want you to come up here unless I’m with you, okay? Promise.”

  “I promise.” She sounded timid. Was this in any way the right thing for a man like him to ask of a woman like her? Or was he the biggest ass on the planet for taking advantage of her weakened condition, now, when she was dying?

  The answer came swiftly. Just do it.

  He swallowed hard. So be it. “It’s time I took you home. Your mother will be worried.”

  “Okay,” came the same timid whisper, this time with a tremor that rattled her body.

  Tate lowered his face, tilting Winslow’s chin upward with two fingers. Was she afraid of her mom? He smoothed the silky strands of hair out of her eyes and off her face, drinking in this last stolen moment. Deliberately, he tipped his lips to hers and sealed the promise. “I’ll come back tomorrow if it’s okay with you. If you feel the need, we’ll climb up here then, deal?”

  A smile danced through her eyes. “I’d like that.”

  How did he get so lucky? For the first time, Tate thanked his ornery boss for the assignment. Maybe Tucker knew something he didn’t. It was possible. Tate took Winslow’s head between his palms, tilting her forehead to better see into her eyes. “What color are your eyes? I think green. Pretty green. Am I right?”

  She nodded, but lowered her lashes. “And yours are dark brown. Like chocolate fudge.”

  He pressed his lips to the end of her nose for one quick peck. “Unless I’m angry. Then they’re black as coal.”

  Lifting her face to meet his gaze, an angel-soft palm skated over his cheek. “You don’t ever have to be angry again.”

  Chapter Eight

  Back on the ground, Tate snagged Winslow’s fingers and pulled her into his side. He’d already put his shoes back on and snuggled Pepe inside the jacket with her, but he wanted her close.

  Pepe was the man, er, dog of the hour. Like a good trooper, the little guy hadn’t deserted his post, but he did run circles, yelp, and bounce like an insane jackrabbit when Winslow touched down. The tux jacket fit her better with him buttoned up inside of it.

  Damn, she glowed. She looked happy, not sickly or weak. Or scared. To look at her now, Tate never would’ve suspected she was dying. Endorphins would do that to a person, only it had to be more than just the physical connection they’d shared. Tate couldn’t explain it. He swiped a hand over his face, hoping he wasn’t glowing too.

  What he’d intended as a quick kiss had morphed into something else. One moment, he was fulfilling the last wish for some girl he didn’t know, spinning her in a slow dance just to make her happy. The next, well… hell. The next he’d fallen head-over-heels for an incredible woman, and he was in deep trouble. Coming on to a client was not how a trusted agent acted.

  But Tate never expected that a high could feel this good, this empowering. Normally, he was the quiet man in the room, the recalcitrant shadow in the farthest corner, and the first to bust out of Tucker’s boring sit-rep meetings.

  He avoided people because they annoyed him. Civilians seemed caught up in narcissistic trivia he had no stomach for. Cell phones. Gossip. Selfies. Celebrities. Who did what to who. What did any of that have to do with what was going on in the real world? He knew the hard side of life where good men and women died in the line of duty. Civilians didn’t have a clue.

  But now the night felt bigger. More open. The sky seemed wider. Higher. The few stars breaking through the last of the clouds sparkled brighter. Even the chilly autumn air felt brisk instead of chilly, lifting his spirits and reminding him of his home in far off Alaska. He had to look down to check his feet to see if they were touching solid ground.

  His inner radar kept pinging on Winslow, relaying back every subtle nuance in her gestures, her steps, the way she breathed. Inhaled. Exhaled. Sighed. Everything. At the moment she was kissing bug-eyed Pepe’s round little head and talking nonsense to the dog. Calling him Sweet Thing and Honey Munchkin. Girly stuff like that.

  “Mom will be mad at me for skipping out on the prom,” she murmured as they walked silently north to hook westward onto Maple. “She went all out for me and look how I repaid her.”

  He squeezed Winslow’s fingers. “She’ll get over it. I’ll tell her you were with me, that it’s no big deal.” Who was he kidding? It was a damned big deal.

  Winslow stopped short of the concrete walk to her door. “Oh, oh. The porch light’s not on. She locked me out. I was afraid of that.”

  “Your mom locks you out?” How childish. The more Tate learned about Joyce, the more he knew she’d never make mother of the year, but Winslow was right. The car was gone.

  “It’s okay. I know what to do when she does this to me.” Winslow headed for the east side of the house. At the first window, she stepped onto a concrete block standing on its end in the weedy flowerbed. “Here. Boost me up.”

  “No, ma’am.” Tate put a quick stop to that. No woman was going into a dark house alone while he was there. He clamped a hand on her wrist, dragging her and Pepe back to the ground. “You don’t have a key to your own home?”

  Winslow offered a feminine grunt of disdain. “Are you kidding? Mom took that away from me a long time ago.”

  Yep. Joyce wasn’t even a finalist. “Let me do it,” he insisted, his foot already on the block. It teetered beneath his weight, but the barely-cracked window slid up without a sound, ending the argument. “Let me guess. WD-40?”

  Winslow shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not entirely without wiles.” There was that smile he was falling in love with. A little bit mischievous. A little bit naughty. One hundred percent womanly.

  His heart did a funny flip until a car rolled by, its headlights grazing over the apparent B&E in progress. Tate got down to business. Hefting himself onto the windowsill, he stuck one foot between the sheer drapes, careful not to break anything on his way to Winslow’s bedroom floor. This window might serve as an escape hatch for her, but he was bigger and wider. It was a tight squeeze. Finally inside, he turned and told her, “Go around to the front. I’ll let you in.”

  One hand fell to her hip. “Why can’t you just pull me up? I’m not heavy. Neither is Pepe.”

  “Because this is your bedroom. The last thing I need is to impugn your virtue, no
w move it. Double-time. Front door. I’ll let you in.”

  Her eyes had stars in them again. “Aww, you say the sweetest things.”

  Me? Tate Higgins? That was a first. He nearly looked behind him to see if she meant someone else. For two cents, he would’ve scooped her up and through the window right then and there, but no. They weren’t teenagers, and he wouldn’t give any of her neighbors something to talk about. “Will you stop standing there and do as you’re told?”

  Ducking her shoulders, she cuddled Pepe and nodded. “We’ll meet you around front.”

  Tate made it down the hall just as Winslow and Pepe hit the front steps. Opening the door with a flourish, he waved her inside.

  “Are you leaving?” she asked, flicking the living room light on upon entry.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No, I just thought we could talk or something. It’s not very late, and if I know Mom, she won’t be back until late.”

  Tate’s eyes narrowed, wondering at the conflicting impressions Winslow’s mother portrayed. Mama Bear. Cat on the prowl. Liar...

  He gave her the benefit of the doubt. “She’s probably out looking for you. I’ll stay here until she gets back.” Tate lifted Pepe out of Winslow’s arms and set the rascal on the floor. The little guy dropped to his butt and lifted one rear leg to scratch his ear.

  “Welcome to my humble home,” Winslow offered, her voice timid as she slid out of those man-sized furry boots, but kept snuggled in his jacket. “Do you like popcorn? I can make some while we wait.”

  No man in his right mind turned down an offer like that. “Sure. I’ll help.” Tate joined her at the gas stove in the kitchen, noting the austerity of the place. There was no phone on the wall. No toaster or blender on the counter. Pretty much not much of anything. He’d grown up without many modern conveniences, but the wilds of Alaska were known for that. Modern suburbia was not.

  Winslow meant popping popcorn the old fashioned way, with oil and a frying pan with a lid and a whole lot of shaking going on. He settled his hip to the kitchen counter, his arms folded over his chest while Pepe slurped water from the dog dish by the back door. “Do you have a house phone in case your mom calls?”

  “That would be the day.” Winslow glanced sideways at him as she kept the fry pan moving. “She doesn’t call home, but no. We had a phone at our last house, but not here.”

  “Why not?” He inhaled the delicious aroma in the air as popcorn started popping. Mmmmmm. Nothing better.

  “I don’t know. I guess because we move a lot, and Mom hasn’t gotten it hooked up yet.” Another shrug. “Do you want salt and butter? I do.”

  He couldn’t resist the pixie smile on her face. “Yes, please. Why’d you move?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mom.”

  This was a downright odd situation, an intelligent twenty-year old woman content to live at home with her domineering mother, the same woman who’d pitched a fuss over her missing daughter, then locked her out of the house. Tate suspected Joyce was down at Land’s End drowning her sorrows instead of looking for the kidnapped child she’d declared she was so worried about. The spectacle he’d witnessed earlier bugged him.

  Winslow seemed fairly energetic, and, as much as he hated to admit it, that bugged him too. If she was as close to dying as he’d been led to believe, how had she climbed that tower, not once, but twice in the same day? She wasn’t even breathing hard. She seemed—normal. A little pale maybe, and thin, but, yeah. Normal.

  “Yoo-hoo, Tate. I need a tall person.” She arched her brows at the cabinet over the stove. “There’s a popcorn bowl up there. Would you mind reaching it for me?”

  Such a simple request, but the intimate gesture caught Tate by surprise when he lifted an arm over Winslow to grab that bowl. He towered above her, like a giant with an elfin princess. It made a guy feel better than he was. Prouder. At least bigger. At some intrinsic level he couldn’t fathom, he felt more like an alpha male with Winslow instead of a beta.

  Until he caught sight of the shoebox overflowing with prescription meds alongside the popcorn bowl. What the hell? Small plastic bottles. Some white. Some green. Some brown. Boxes. Zip-lock bags. All with prescription labels and containing pills and tablets. He set the large bowl on the counter near the stove, but he couldn’t let that stash go without making a comment. “You sure take a lot of pills.”

  Winslow turned off the burner and transferred the popped corn to the bowl. “Nah-ah, those are Mom’s. Mine are behind you.”

  He twisted around. Holy shit. She meant the giant pill holder beside the portable plastic file box? The box lid was raised with an index card taped inside that listed what looked like a twenty-four hour schedule. “You have to take all these?”

  “Don’t look so shocked.” Winslow slapped the lid shut with her fingertips. “It’s a lot of meds, but these nasty things have kept me alive for years. I don’t have to like them. I just have to take them.”

  “All of them? Every day?” There had to be close to fifty prescription bottles in that box. He’d never seen a pillbox with five seven-day rows before. Count ’em. Five.

  She jiggled the aromatic bowl of steaming kernels under his nose. “Let’s eat.”

  The nervous light in her pale green eyes stopped his prying. Her meds were none of his business. What did a guy like him know about cancer patients and their treatments anyway? Absolutely nothing.

  Tate took a deep breath and followed his nose to the front room behind Winslow. She had no womanly figure, and that get-up she had on was no help, not the way it hung off her hips like a rag. But she did have a nice sway to said hips, and the glow off the lamplight caught her glossy black hair. It swung as she walked, but even that poked at him. Cancer patients didn’t usually have hair.

  He froze. Damn, I’m dumb. Look at her. Really look at her. In the light. Yes, there was a definite sparkle in her eyes, and he suspected he’d put it there, but now it was plain to see how anorexically thin Winslow’s body was beneath that swishy skirt. She had no meat on her bones. No fat. Her eyes seemed too large for her face because they were ringed with dark shadows. Her pale complexion seemed paler now that he could see her clearly. Her brows were thin, nearly transparent. Even her fingers were slender and bony.

  She set the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table and curled in the corner of the sofa with a sigh. Tate lowered his bulk beside her. Damn, she was small. “You’re tired.”

  Stifling a yawn, she nodded. “I think I overdid it today.”

  He didn’t play the sneaky game of yawn and stretch. Tate just wrapped one arm around her shoulder and tipped Winslow into his side. “You’re cold. Let me warm you up.”

  “Thanks. I tend to get chilled at night.” She curled into him, shivering, and instantly, he wanted more than just this one trumped-up night with Winslow. There was something about her that took him back to the days before it happened, when life was good and the sun still shone every morning. His fingers commenced a slow massage on her bicep, as if they couldn’t touch her enough.

  As frail as she seemed, a unique energy radiated off Winslow. It glowed in her tired eyes like a tiny ember that needed enough air to burst into flames. He’d recognized it up on the water tower, under the stars. It was the same expression he’d seen on too many faces in dirty, far off villages where war had raged too long and too hard. Where people, mothers and fathers and children, just wanted to be left alone to live their lives in peace and quiet.

  Winslow was like those people. She was desperate to live, while he, one of America’s so-called finest, one of the proud and the brave—Oorah!—had been building walls to keep people out. Cursing away the very thing she was fighting to hang onto.

  Humbling. Damned humbling.

  It was easy to imagine a better way forward with her head resting on the side of his chest like it was. A man could almost believe in himself again. What was it the talking heads of the world said, that it only takes one woman to change a man? The right
woman?

  “If this isn’t enough popcorn, I’ve got some leftover bacon from breakfast. It’s crispy, but I could reheat it. I know guys like meat.”

  “Wait. You’re not a vegetarian?” First the kidnapping scam, then the locked door, now an outright lie about her daughter being a vegetarian? What was Joyce thinking?

  “Hmmm, not hardly,” Winslow murmured. “It’s one of the few things I can eat that stays down. If you ask me, bacon should be in a food group all by itself. Right?”

  Yes, and I think Joyce should stop lying to me.

  The popcorn could wait. Winslow made a very small and fragile armful. It was the little things he noticed now that they were inside. Her gentle hand on his stomach, so light he barely felt it. The way her hair smelled of peaches. That hint of garlic in the air. The solid muscle to her bicep. She probably got that from climbing the water tower.

  Like any dog, Pepe made himself comfortable alongside Tate’s other hip—right before he climbed onto Tate’s lap. Holding Winslow and her little buddy almost made him feel at home.

  “So tell me about yourself. What’s it like escorting women everywhere?” she asked, her voice quiet. She had to be exhausted.

  Tate shrugged, one corner of his mouth curved into a half smile. “Don’t know. This was my first. How’d I do?”

  Her head came up, her eyes bright with questions. “This isn’t your job? But the tux and the car and—”

  “The Corvette belongs to my buddy, and the tux is rented. I work for the FBI.”

  “And…”

  He settled for the FBI mission statement. “I protect the American people and I defend the Constitution of the United States.” Truth. Justice. The American dream. But I’m not Superman.

  “What does that mean?”

  Tate cleared his throat, re-evaluating what that mission statement meant now that he had an armful of Winslow. The Bureau’s pomp and ego used to bug him, but now…