Hot Contract

by Jodi Henley

  “You’re hurt,” he said.

  “Shit happens.” Connor rubbed the back of his neck.

  “The Samoy—”

  “Are a bunch of assholes who’ve been dying to get their hands on us. Get over it.”

  Brightly painted cogs rolled by, silent in the long glass case separating them from the rest of Seattle-Tacoma airport. Glowing red letters picked out Arrivals and Departures.

  Keegan stared at Connor's reflection. “You’re my little brother.”

  “I’ll always be your kid brother, but man—I’m an adult. I got over my age years ago.” Connor shouldered his duffle.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Connor turned just short of leaving the secured area. His brilliant green eyes were tired, and there were new lines carved in his cover-model face. “I do, but I made an informed decision, and it turned into a cluster-fuck. It’s not your fault.”

  A woman came up behind him and did a double-take. “Don’t I know you?” she purred, leaning right up against him.

  She gave him a proprietary little pat and he caught her wrist, jerking her in tight. He put his face right up against hers and snarled, lips lifted back off his teeth. “Touch me again and I'll break your fingers, little bitch.”

  Jesus. “What the fuck—?”

  Connor shoved the woman hard enough to flip her on her ass and kept walking. “Questions?” he growled.

  Keegan passed the security checkpoint. “Thought you liked women?”

  Connor shifted his duffle to his other shoulder. “Yeah.” His voice matched the rest of him, smoky and rough. He was a contradiction in terms, a fully grown, former spec ops warrior with the looks of an underwear model. Even as a kid, he’d been drop dead gorgeous. He should have gone to New York instead of following the rest of them into boot camp.

  Keegan limped over to the escalators. Corlis waited off to one side. Fallon stood beside her, stomping back into his boots. Even leaving the secured area, Fallon set off watch-this-guy alarms.

  He jerked at his laces and gave Connor a sour look. “Shit, Connor. Give it a rest. Cover your face or something.”

  Corlis dropped her bag, and a chunk of carved wood fell out. She tucked it back in. “It’s not his fault.”

  “It’s not his fault he looks like some kind of freaking god?” Fallon tied off his laces and headed for the down escalator.

  Keegan followed them. They were in Seattle, and Fallon’s sister, Maggie Ann, waited to ferry them all back to DalCon. Connor was right. It was time to let go. No-Fly? Jesus. Keegan limped off the escalator dragging his black mood. His leg ached, and his shoulder throbbed, but having Connor back went a long way toward soothing the pain.

  A tall redhead blocked their entrance into the baggage claim. When Connor was around, women just seemed to appear. Even after two weeks in captivity, Connor broadcast blatant sexuality in the megawatt range.

  They collected their stuff and went outside. Maggie waited, idling up against the curb with her big Suburban wide open. Corlis and Fallon got in, loaded down with pieces of the Indonesian spirit-house Fallon had brought back for his sister. Keegan threw his duffle in the back and waited until they maneuvered the steeply gabled roof under the back seat. Connor slammed into the front seat, fending off yet another admirer.

  He ducked his face down into his shirt and tugged the collar up over his head. “Fuck this shit.”

  “Man, if I had some of that, I’d sell it.” Fallon stretched out on the middle bench, his jacket under his head.

  “Like anyone would buy,” said Corlis, shoving his booted feet off her lap.

  The Suburban pulled out into traffic and merged on to the exit ramp. In the back seat, Keegan stretched out and threw his arms over his eyes. Corlis and Fallon argued softly, and Connor fielded Maggie’s questions with polite, carefully worded lies.

  DalCon was intact, although currently in the red. He’d liquidated too much of their working capital for them to be more than barely solvent, but whole enough, all things considered.

  There were contracts pending, people to save and places to go. Another year would see them back in a position to expand. Their satellite office in D.C. got a lot of business. Maybe another in Singapore?

  “...talk to him,” said Corlis. “He needs medical attention. Antibiotics...”

  Maggie turned at the next corner. “Harbor View Emergency, coming right up.”

  “I don’t need a doctor,” said Keegan.

  Corlis glared at him over the back of her seat. Keegan sat up straight, cradling his arm. Pain streaked from his fingers to his chest and radiated out to every inch of him that wasn’t already hurting.

  “It’s too late,” said his sister. “Deal with it.”

  They both knew she wasn’t talking about the doctor.

  “Tell him, Liss.” Fallon sat up, too. “Give him some of those warm fuzzies you’re so damned good at.”

  Connor pulled his collar down. “We’re coming up on Emergency.”

  Keegan rubbed at his face with both hands. Fury cracked the wall he’d put around his feelings and made his eyes burn. “Give me your sat-phone.”

  Fallon shook his head. “No, man. I know what you’re going to do, and Liss is right. It’s over.”

  Keegan narrowed his eyes. “It’s over when I’m dead. Right now I need your fucking phone.”

  No one moved.

  “Even if you called, she doesn’t want you. She paid you off, and it’s been five days.”

  Keegan let out a low sound like an animal might make, unable to hold it in. He was out the door and down the sidewalk before the car came to a stop. Pain stopped his lungs. He couldn’t catch his breath in the cool misty air. When he finally collapsed, Corlis was there, backed by her partner.

  It was raining, like it always did in Seattle. Keegan shook, looking down into the gutter, awash with the things people threw away.

  ****

  Jen ignored the weather forecast, but the camera rushed over the waves and exploded into a panoramic view of downtown Honolulu anyway—another beautiful day in Paradise. Either it was warm or it rained. Sometimes a lull in the trade winds produced a temporary depression and the city baked.

  She pulled her hat down low over her eyes and edged the cutting wagon out through the tall copper doors. Buckets of shears and empty containers rattled in her wake. Security followed at a discreet distance. After the first horribly numb day, Percy’s men tried to give her as much space as they could, providing her with an illusion of privacy.

  The sprawling half-acre garden sweltered silently in the noonday heat. Her pre-job wardrobe—really her pre-escape wardrobe—contained no jeans, only a pair of khakis that reminded her too much of Deacon. If she stayed any longer she was going to have to go shopping.

  The wagon rattled over a long granite slab. Her mother’s imported Japanese gravel formed neatly raked paths. The sky was a deep luminous sapphire and the clouds long strands of torn cotton stretching out to the distant horizon. A whisper of sound came from the building behind her.

  ...lucky you live Hawaii.

  “No,” she muttered, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. “No, I’m not. I want Keegan. Damn him.”

  God, it hurt.

  Even knowing what she did. Even knowing that the man she’d slept with, the man she’d trusted with her heart wasn’t the man he really was—she wanted him still. She smeared the makeup around her eyes before she remembered it was there. Other than the time she’d spent with her father, this was the first time she’d left her rooms. There were only so many times she could hide in the bathroom and cry.

  Voices came from Percy’s end of the garden. He lived in the only family building to look inward. On a slight rise, it seemed an organic part of Eliza Stalling’s original design work. A long, shoji-screened veranda ran the length of the ground floor, vaguely reminiscent of an ancient Japanese fortress done up Hawaiian-style.

  “Jen! Where are you? Jen!”

  Percy vaulted the
red lacquered rail, his usual entourage nowhere in sight. He looked tattered and scruffy, dressed way down in a pair of loose cargo shorts and a faded blue t-shirt. Jen recognized it as one their mother had given him just before she died. The logo had flaked off years ago, leaving little patches of something silver.

  He found her beside the jasmine and stared down at the white-starred bushes for a long time before he transferred his attention back to her. “I was wrong,” he said without any other greeting.

  The cutting shears dropped out of her hands and narrowly missed her foot. She squatted to retrieve them and crushed a newly transplanted bush. “About what?”

  “Dalfrey.” Percy folded his arms over his chest with that stuffed look he got when he was wrestling with his conscience.

  She waved a hand. “Oh, him.”

  Percy found the bodyguards trailing Jen and jerked his head. The men nodded and left.

  “Look at me, tell me you have no interest in him and I’ll leave.” He reached down in his pocket and produced a tablet. “I watched the lounge vid.”

  She bit her lips, but the words blurted out anyway, “So did I—I doubt you found it as interesting.”

  “Then you did watch it?” he asked.

  “Once. I’m not a masochist.”

  “Watch it again. With me.”

  Jen was finished with pretense. “No.”

  Percy stared at her intently. “Do you remember Tim? The final scene played out after you left. When you went missing, we thought you’d been kidnapped. Dad was so scared he was puking blood, and into that hellish mess...came Tim. The most perfect specimen Dad could buy.”

  Her brother’s eyes unfocused, staring at something only he could see. He shook his head. “Good old Tim. He wanted to be a Stalling so much he was willing to be your husband as a condition of entry. Turns out he’d forgotten that sleeping with you would be a lifetime commitment. I put the pieces together and called off the hunt."

  His hand fisted on the tablet. “Makena did the right thing or rather, a right thing. There’s such a damned small number of right things, more wrong things than right anymore. It’s all hot and tangled up inside and it still makes me furious each and every time I think about it. All this, because Dad wants grandchildren with green eyes and has no problem using us to get them. You. Me. Nothing but a means to an end. I can’t even look at a woman without wondering if she’s not dad's perfect genetic match-up.”

  Percy swore, sharp and angry. “We’re more alike than you know, little sister. At least you got to escape.” He took a deep breath. “When Dalfrey slept with you, I thought he was a user out to suck you dry and I...reacted badly. Help me out here, Jen. I’m guilt-tripping like mad—”

  He punched through the menu on his tablet and brought up the video clip. Keegan’s face showed for just an instant before he turned his back on the cameras. Percy backed it up, slowed it down, and zoomed in on Keegan’s reflection in the darkened glass.

  “There,” he said softly.

  Jen touched the screen. “I did that to him,” she whispered.

  “We gutted him. You see it too.”

  “He...I...why didn’t he tell me?”

  Percy gave her a smile that went nowhere near his eyes. “We’re nothing if not thorough, we Stallings. I threatened everything. I’ll bet Dad went after his brother. You tell me, Jen. Who does he give up? You...or everyone else?”

  Pain drove Jen back toward her rooms. Some vague idea of hiding. But she couldn’t run from herself. Keegan had never said he loved her, but he’d proved it beyond all doubt trying to rescue Deacon.

  She lurched into her building and slammed the doors behind her. The entry rose around her, atrium tall. Steps at the far end curved down to her rooms, and up to the empty floors between her and Tris.

  A wide cargo elevator balanced out the other side. Tris kept it locked when he wasn’t in residence. It had been locked when she left.

  But it was open now.

  ****

  “What do you want, Jen?”

  Jen followed his voice. “How did you know it was me?”

  “No one else comes up here.”

  “Not even Housekeeping?”

  “They clean my windows and get out. They don’t come to talk.”

  Tris stood silhouetted against the afternoon sun, his face in shadow.

  Jen pulled her collar up to wipe at her eyes. “I-I need some help.”

  “Help chokes you, huh? God knows, it chokes the hell out of me.” He raised a thick brown bottle to his lips and flung it away.

  There was a crate of them next to his futon, and Jen eyed it warily. Two missing. Not drunk yet.

  She knotted her hands. “Keegan loves me.”

  “What do you want me to do about it? I could kill him, but that would just create problems. Or...” Tris unscrewed the top to another bottle and drank half of it. “I could kill you, it’s what I do. But that would make Percival mad, and hell—you’re the only relative I like.”

  “I let Keegan down. I couldn’t see past my own fears to his, and...I let him push me away.”

  Tris stretched out on his futon, clad only in a pair of jeans. Long black hair fell away from heavy black brows, a prominent hawk-like nose, and thinly cut lips. He gave her a sardonic look and drained the rest of his bottle.

  “Percy went to see you,” he said. “I told him not to.”

  “What should I do? I feel so guilty.”

  “You’re asking me about matters of the heart?” Tris laughed softly. “Only you, Jen...” He closed his eyes and flung the bottle after the first. “I must be drunk.”

  “Tris!” Jen pushed the case away from his seeking hand.

  Tris opened his eyes and caught her wrist. “Do you love him, Jen? Do you love him enough to follow and fight for him? Enough to give up your independence?”

  Like a scalpel cutting away dead scar tissue, his words sliced away all doubt. Eight years ago, she’d wanted to believe in love, and now she was afraid to try. There was nothing in her to believe it would always be smooth between her and Keegan, or that it would be beautiful. But beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and she couldn’t stop that part of her that ached with loss, that screamed out soul-deep to be with him.

  She believed in the geothermal linkage with all her heart, but Keegan was her air. Her hand turned up. “I can’t breathe without him,” she whispered and knew oddly enough, that this—her most dangerous cousin—understood.

  The elevator ground to a halt.

  Tris released her, folded his arms over his chest and looked at the cage from under lowered brows. “Got something to add?”

  Percival flung the gate up. “She came to you for advice?”

  Tris sneered. “Is that what this is about? You’re jealous? I saw the vid. Feel good about yourself, do you? This is about your guilt, isn’t it?”

  Percy raked a hand over his face, teeth clenched. “Yes, I feel guilty. I want to make amends. My karma stinks, and I want to do a good deed. Want me to grovel, Tristan? Want to see me crawl?”

  Tris came off his futon. Face to face, the two men were nearly identical in shape and size. “I want you to give me my father.”

  “This isn’t about Lance.”

  “The hell it’s not—”

  Jen swallowed her heart down and got between the two men, only vaguely aware of Percy at her back. She looked up at Tris and put a hand on his chest. He watched her with cold, empty eyes.

  “I need Keegan’s file.”

  Tris spun on his heel, and braced his shoulder against the window, one hand pressed to the glass, head turned away. “This is not a good time,” he growled.

  Jen followed him. From the surprised look on his face, her vertigo wasn’t the big secret she’d imagined it to be. Fear churned her stomach into a roiling mess. She wondered when heights had ceased to matter.

  “I don’t know how to find him,” she told her cousin. “Find him for me...please?”

  ****

  “Hav
e you eaten?” Corlis asked.

  The thought of food made Keegan sick. He sprawled on the floor of his office and stared at the ceiling with dry, burning eyes. Ever since they’d returned from the hospital two days ago, he hadn’t moved, except for an occasional trip down the hall to the bathroom.

  Corlis squatted by his side. “Ray some crackers,” she said. “Put something down in your stomach before the antibiotics make you puke.”

  “I don’t want food.”

  The door banged back. “What’s wrong, Liss?” Fallon entered the room. “Torture quota not full?”

  Keegan rolled over and opened his eyes in time to see his sister jerk the door closed behind her, leaving him and Fallon alone. Fallon pulled out a chair, straddled it and leaned both arms on the back.

  Keegan hunched to a sitting position. “What do you want?”

  Fallon shrugged. “Nothing, everything.” His normally angry snarl was tired. “A measure of peace perhaps...” He scrubbed at his face and laughed softly. “I thought you’d understand.”

  “You love her,” Keegan said flatly.

  “Yeah, man—I love your sister. Want to pound me for it?”

  Keegan fumbled a cracker off the desk. His stomach clenched around the tiny bit of food. “Tell her how you feel.”

  “And have her laugh at me? Yeah, right.”

  Something scratched outside the windows. Fallon looked up quickly, on his feet and away from the chair. He flattened himself against the wall, gun in hand, and flung the blinds back, exposing the cold, Seattle drizzle. A twenty foot expanse of lawn rolled down away from the building and ended in a wall of pine and thorny blackberry brambles.

  “Did you see anything?” he asked.

  Keegan shook his head and went still. His stomach lurched up in his throat, the second cracker halfway to his mouth. He crawled for the trashcan and held on to the rolled metal lip.

  Fallon slid his gun back into the holster and pulled his t-shirt down. “Get over her, Keegan. She ain’t coming back.”