by Mel Sterling
"I don't need you to lecture me right now."
"Maybe not, but I need to lecture you right now."
Lexie stiffened. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to take a long walk off a short pier. But she noticed a frantic pulse leaping in his throat, and a wild expression in his dark eyes. The event had triggered an adrenaline rush in them both—he perhaps more than she—and arguing with him now was unlikely to accomplish anything positive. Then her self-restraint frayed to its breaking point, and she lashed out anyway.
"Who was it who ran out into the alley like a crazy person? It wasn't me!"
"Who was it who threw open the door in the first place, endangering herself? It wasn't me!"
Lexie held her fists tight at her sides. Jack jammed his hands in his armpits, arms crossed, body language crystal clear: I am not listening to you right now.
"I did not ask for a body guard, a security consultant, or an interfering writer with delusions of superhero powers!"
He rolled right over her exclamation. "Why did you come after me? Why didn't you stay inside where it was safe?"
"What, and have you running around out there, alone, maybe hurt?"
"I can take care of myself."
"And I can't, is that it?" She took three steps toward him and glared up. His arms were still crossed, but as she continued to stare, his body loosened.
"That's not what I said."
"Isn't it? Isn't it exactly what you said?" She was so tense she was nearly vibrating. He'd stupidly endangered himself, probably for nothing, and he was making her feel guilty for it.
"I just—I don't—" Jack's hands came out, as if to touch her shoulders, and Lexie stepped out of reach. At her movement, he looked stricken. "You can't get hurt. Not on my watch."
"But that's just it. I'm not on your watch. Jack, you're a customer in this store. We've given you a lot of latitude and you're a help some of the time, but I think I've got to draw the line right now, so we're clear. The store has insurance, but it doesn't cover crazy people shoving themselves into my life and my business and—"
Jack stepped forward, caught her face between his hands, and kissed her.
Hard.
Her lips were already open in mid-rant. In swept his tongue. He took advantage of her moment of shocked immobility to move his hands from her face to her back and waist and fold her into him.
It wasn't all bad.
In fact, it wasn't bad at all.
That was the problem.
A part of Lexie's orderly brain kept ticking along, running down a list of all the reasons why this should be bad. He was a customer. He was an unknown. He'd been around every time something a little off-kilter had happened in the past week. She had a struggling business to set to rights. She didn't have time to get involved. He was inserting himself into her life. She should call the police to report the prowlers, both tonight's and the night of the open microphone. She should pull away and order Jack to leave and not come back.
Yet, when his hand caught one of hers where it flailed indecisively between them, and pulled it to his chest and flattened the palm over what felt like a remarkably firm pectoral muscle beneath his shirt, she herself hooked her other hand over the place where his neck and shoulder met and clung, tilting her head, following his mouth with hers. Thinking was overrated. Arguing was counter-productive. Kissing was essential, delicious and exciting. What had begun as a too-firm kiss of desperation was steadily becoming a deeply sensual exploration, complete with erratic breathing, slow, deep sweeps of tongues, and a nibble or two.
She felt Jack's legs wobble for an instant before he shifted his feet and found his balance again. A spike of triumph shot through her. She was glad she made his knees weak, since her own were none too reliable at the moment.
Her neck began to get a crick in it as the kiss progressed. Jack was so much taller than she, and even with his arms half lifting her onto her toes the disparity in height was still considerable. She bumped up against something behind her and made a small startled sound. They had been moving as they kissed, and she hadn't even noticed, but now she was trapped between Jack and the back of the pink horsehair sofa.
Both were equally hard, which made her give a sudden gasp of inappropriate laughter.
Jack's head lifted enough for him to stare down at her. His pupils were enormous, swallowing the brown irises, and his mouth was moist, lips full and reddened. As she gazed back at him, he licked her taste from his lips.
"That's one way to derail a discussion," Lexie said, huskily.
"Don't ask me to apologize." Jack's hands moved from her back to her hips, and he shifted a breath away, as if he felt self-conscious of the hardness of his arousal pressing against her abdomen.
Sanity was returning swiftly. "Then don't complicate things between us."
His mouth tightened a little, and all Lexie could think about was kissing him again.
"It isn't complicated."
"It is."
He caught her waist and lifted her, so that she was perched on the awkward, curvy wooden back of the sofa. The swooping wood frame was mercifully flat at the point where he placed her, but it still sloped to her left, making her lean away from the slant to keep a tentative balance. Now her mouth was in easy reach of his, and he looked right at her, waiting for her objection as his hands slid over her skirt to her knees, pushing them apart and making a place for himself between them. Her skirt rode up as he stepped close. "I don't know how to make it any plainer than this. Alexia—"
"Damn it, Jack—"
"I want you. Have wanted you since you evicted me from the Rare Books aisle. I want to get to know you. I want to touch you. I want to kiss you. I want to take your clothes off and spend an entire day in bed with just you and a pot of good coffee."
"Coffee?" she squeaked.
"Okay, the coffee's negotiable. Just—don't shut me out because you think I'm overprotective."
"How about overbearing?"
His head tilted as he considered. "Could we compromise on 'over-enthusiastic?'"
"I think…I think, as interesting at this evening has been, that we should call it a day." She pushed at his chest, hopped to the floor, and stepped aside as she straightened her skirt. Jack seemed mildly disappointed, but no longer angry.
"I'll still walk you and Melville home."
"I'll let you. But hear me out, Jack—"
He held up both hands, capitulating. "I know, I know. I'm a customer. You've got boundaries. I'll respect them."
"Thank you." She went to the cupboard and pulled out her jacket and satchel.
"I'm not banned from the store?"
Lexie turned with a wry shake of her head. "Don't push your luck. Just…walk me home, all right? Can we leave it at that?"
"Only if you let me hold your hand while we walk."
"Oh, honestly." She shook her head again, then pointed her foot at the bag of parcels. "You get to carry that."
Blazing sun. Never any worry that his ultra-compact laptop wouldn't have battery power, as long as his portable solar charger didn't take a hit from something—bullets, shrapnel, flying concrete. Jack studied the sleek black device riding in his lap and turned it to compensate for the Humvee's new heading, keep the sun glare on the photovoltaics. The laptop rode in its Kevlar bag between his feet on the Humvee's floor, power cable snaking up between his desert camo-clad legs. The charger saw nearly continual use, since the Marines had all but commandeered it for their own tech, at least the men in the Humvee hauling Jack, Gard, Kozinski, Chum Bucket and Eckhart. When they were rolling hot through a town was about the only time Jack could scrounge a charge for his laptop, and it took some doing to keep the solar panel in the light while watching for snipers and incoming—
—incoming—
—incoming—
Everything stopped. Engine. Forward motion. Eckhart's continual narration of what he saw out the back window as he peered past the scope on his M-16. The bullets spitting from Chum Bucket's gun
in the turret atop the Humvee. Even time.
Everything, except Gard's head, turning to the men in the Humvee with him, yelling, yelling.
When time started again, the solar charger was nowhere, his laptop was nowhere, Eckhart was lying on the ceiling and the world was tilted and red, and someone was screaming. Everyone was screaming. Jack was screaming, too.
This time he didn't wake up on the floor of the studio apartment above the grocery. He was still in bed, the blanket binding him tighter than swaddling. He was wet with sweat, and the first thing he did was reach for the phone and dial.
Gardner Dawson answered on the first ring. "JT, buddy. What's up."
"Gard." The word panted out of Jack. He got a look at the glow of the bedside clock. "Man, I'm sorry. It's three in the morning. I just…" Jack couldn't quite say, I needed to hear your voice, know you're still alive, it was a dream. Gard knew, anyway.
"It's okay, buddy. I was awake. Bad one?"
Jack kicked free of the bedding and put his feet on the floor. The cool boards brought him out of the desert, grounded him in the here and now. "When aren't they?"
"I hear that."
Jack heard the clink of dishes at Gard's end of the conversation. "Why are you up at this hour?"
"Waiting for your call, what else?" The tone of Gard's voice made Jack smile and take a smoother, calmer breath. "No, man, the leg. You know. It hurts sometimes, the part that's gone. It's better if I just get up, have some coffee, think about something else. So tell me. Where are you these days?"
"It's a little burg called Camden. College town in Oregon. Full of autumn leaves. Gard, you should see this place. It's like Eckhart's idea of heaven, you remember how he never shut up about the Pacific Northwest." Jack fell effortlessly into the casual clipped speech the team had used in the Humvee. "Coeds everywhere, walking in the sun. Everybody's drinking lattes instead of beers."
Gard made a quiet noise Jack knew to be laughter, and Jack could see him so clearly, except in Jack's imagination, Gard was wearing his desert camo helmet, sun wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening as he huffed his amusement. Gard wasn't a noisy man—that was Eckhart's job, continual narration, the constant filling of the void. Gard was a still, self-contained man.
Even when the IED blew and took Gard's leg below the knee, Gard had kept his cool, talking Jack through cinching the tourniquet when Gard couldn't pull it tight enough, talking him through the wreckage of the Humvee and the blood, to find the radio, until the unit medic got there and Jack could noisily puke his guts out a few feet away.
Jack had seen the aftermath of tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires. He'd thought himself ready to see the realities of war.
There was a world of difference when you were a participant in the disaster instead of an observer after the fact. The keyword was "aftermath."
"Lattes. You're in civilization, aren't you?" Another clinking sound.
Jack scrubbed his hand over his face and head, frizzling his sweaty hair. "Tell me you're not eating instant coffee crystals out of the jar, Gard."
"Buddy, don't make me lie to you."
Jack shook his head, though Gard couldn't see him. The moments of connection settled him, brought a return to reality. It felt good to talk with Gard. There was a short, companionable silence in which Gard cheerfully made crunching noises into the phone.
"So how's the PT going? You settling into your bionics?"
Gard chuckled. "You should see this thing. My orthopedist calls me 'Terminator.' They had me running on the treadmill last week. It's got a lot of spring. I like it better than the peg I started with. But hey, what about you? What are you doing in a college town besides drinking frilly coffee?"
Jack gave the bed pillow a punch and shoved it against the wall, swinging his legs back into bed beneath the blankets, settling in. "Trying to write."
"Another exposé?"
"I don't know. Seems like nothing's coming out. I sit half the day in this little bookstore on the town square, drinking cold coffee from the shop next door, and nothing comes. So instead I stare at the woman who—" Jack broke off, realizing what he had been about to say.
Gard was on it like an alligator on a slow-moving duck. "Woman? Are you hung up on some college babe, JT?"
Jack's mouth quirked. "She owns the bookstore. Inherited it from her uncle. Remember me emailing you about the old guy, Horace, who died recently? Her."
"Her." The dry amusement in Gard's voice made Jack shake his head again and settle more firmly against the pillow. "Does this her have a name?"
"Alexia. Lexie."
"Kissed her yet?"
The silence spun out as Jack replayed that kiss—had it only been a few hours ago?—after he'd chased the prowler. He thought about the warmth of Lexie's flesh through her clothes, the slow burn of the kisses, her bright red flush and the feverish blue glitter of her eyes afterward. The way she immediately raised a wall between them. He thought of the slow but wary walk home, and how her hand had felt in his. "Yeah," he offered at last.
Gard laughed, loud and long. "I see we've entered that territory of which gentlemen do not speak."
"What does that mean?"
"I think we're talking more than recreational sex here, aren't we?"
The idea set off an avalanche in Jack's brain. Too soon, too fast, too much, too personal, too— Not that he hadn't already imagined Lexie in bed. He had, more than once. He wasn't in a mood to reveal that fantasy—it was different when he and Gard were just part of the guys in Iraq, everyone one-upping everyone else's unrealistic bullshit. Already what he felt for Lexie went deeper than simple lust for a pin-up girl's picture. Gard was right. They had entered that territory. "Yeah," he said again. "Maybe. So let's talk about something else. How 'bout those Seahawks?"
"How about I ask you for a big favor, JT?"
"Name it, my man." Jack got out of bed and walked to the kitchen end of the studio, where he parked the phone between shoulder and ear and started heating water for coffee in the microwave. He got out the jar of instant coffee crystals and grinned at it. His crystals would go into the hot water first, though, not straight into his mouth like Gard's.
"The quacks here are telling me to get out in the world, take my bionics on a road trip. Get on with my life. Like I'm cleared for takeoff or something now that I've finished the PT course. You got a sofa I could crash on?"
Jack looked around the nearly empty studio. A table with one straight chair. The bed. A junky little dresser he'd picked up at a thrift store a few blocks away and schlepped precariously home on a rolling office chair he'd bought at the same time. A ratty couch too short for any real purpose. Nothing he wouldn't mind giving away or leaving behind when he took off for the next assignment, whenever it turned up.
He'd think of something. Throw a cheap futon on the floor for himself, maybe. Gard could have the bed. It would be good, really good, to see Gard again. "Hell yeah! Come on. Nearest big airport's about ninety minutes away. I'll come get you, just gimme the word."
"You're sure it's no trouble?"
"No trouble. I'll even stock a case of beer." They said their goodbyes as the microwave oven beeped. Jack stirred a spoonful of coffee crystals into the hot water in his cup, dumped in some powdered creamer, and took a sip.
It was bad, really bad, after the high-octane nectar Gilly made him day after day at The Cup. He grinned down at the coffee as he carried it back to bed and got into the blankets. When you needed a hot jolt of caffeine at three in the morning, you took what you could get.
While he sipped, he replayed the evening, dinner with Lexie, then chasing down the prowler. Just the thought of what could have happened, had the prowler come in while Lexie was working late, alone, made his skin crawl afresh. Maybe it was just someone hunting for food or a place to sleep out of the weather, but Jack didn't think so. He was determined to get to the bottom of the problem. It was a task he'd accepted before Horace died, but now with Lexie in the mix—
Lex
ie.
By all that was holy, that first kiss.
Jack took a deep breath. He shouldn't have kissed her, not that way. Despite her response, she was so very controlled, his sudden kiss must have seemed more of an assault, triggered by the high rev of adrenaline, than romance. Yet she'd given as good as she got.
He dumped the rest of his coffee down his throat and swallowed hard, feeling the heat scorch all the way, welcoming the sensation.
John T. Jarvis was a man who lived on the edge. Alexia Worth was a woman who planned every day down to the minute. Jack knew he'd shaken her from her cherished routine with the simple act of asking her to dinner.
He could almost hear Gard's voice in his head: Let it go, buddy. Let her go.
Jack couldn't. Something in Lexie called to him, the warmth, the sweetness, the stability, the steadiness. She was dependable. John T. Jarvis was not. She would always be around to feed the cat, whether it liked her or not. John T. Jarvis might pack up at any moment and bolt for the next big story.
Except—the next big story seemed more and more like it was here, in this tree-filled college town, instead of on the fire-lines. Even though it probably wasn't even a medium-sized story. But it felt like the right one for Jack, a change of pace as radical for him as climbing on a plane to a tsunami-ravaged shore would be for Lexie.
This was risky for Jack. Once he started thinking about it like that, he felt more sanguine about the whole situation. More settled. It was just a new kind of risk, no different from his perspective than any other. From there, he could begin to think about strategy.
Taking it slow. That's how he'd proceed with Lexie.
He would woo her.
Jack shifted down into the blankets. Not to sleep, but to plan. While he lay there, brainstorming ways to charm an accountant-turned-bookseller, the vestiges of the nightmare drifted away like smoke, leaving only a faint trace at the back of his mind, like the salty, sulfurous residue left by gunpowder.
CHAPTER FIVE
