It was easy to close my eyes and shut her out as she pulled the sporty Mazda out of the parking lot. Not that my lack of participation slipped by her. She tapped me, none too gently, on the wrist. "Do not even think of falling asleep. You know better than to sneak out like that. This is bigger than just us, Gray."
Oh, damn. She’d used my last name. "Yeah. I know, but it’s my family. And I’m…scared." I was whining, but the last name thing had pushed me past overload. My arm hurt where they’d scrubbed the heck out of it, Mitch was arriving in ten minutes, and although the scratches on my legs had been cleaned, they were still visible. Pierce and Annie were furious with me, and Mitch was arriving in eight minutes. He was going be so pissed. And it would be hours before my lab work came back. Maybe I was going to die in few hours. And Mitch was arriving in seven minutes.
Annie turned onto the airport access road, then checked her watch. "We’re on time. You want me to park, or just pull up at baggage claim?"
"Park. Sean will be here in an hour, so you should probably just wait for him. Mitch will want to rent a car anyway, and—"
"My wedding is in four days." She wiggled, annoyingly happy now that she’d drained her anger by giving me hell for forty-five minutes.
"Yeah." I gave her the best smile I could manage. "You’re going to be a beautiful bride, but what does that have to do with parking?"
"Nothing." She pulled into a spot and turned off the engine. "But it has everything to do with you and Mitch staying safe. This situation has to be controlled before then, which means you have to start telling me the truth about what’s going on. You’ve been hurt, and there are too many people we both care about in danger. I’m off the clock in four days. Truth. Everly. Right now."
A shiver rippled down my spine. Her eyes were flat, without a trace of the sparkling Annie who was my best friend. But she loved me. I could feel it where her hand rested reassuringly on my shoulder. Still, it bordered on creepy. "What’s with the lightning quick mood change? A second ago you were happy dancing, now you’re…oh, bridezilla."
"Yeah, well, my emotions might be off, but I still need the truth from you." She squeezed my shoulder, then folded her hands in her lap and waited.
"Aukele is my grandfather, and I think he knows all about the toxin, maybe all about what my mom was involved with."
She nodded. "Uh-huh. I expected that. Can’t find him, or a record of any marriage to Makani Milu, on any database in the known cyber world. I’m guessing theirs was a native Hawaiian ceremony, and they kept it that way, never giving in to bureaucratic pressure to register their union."
"That fits. The other thing really nagging at me is the apparent lack of connection between Parker Steele’s cousin and whoever is trying to kill me. Abduct me. Terrorize me. Whatever. It’s not like I’m carrying this magic formula around with me, and it’s not buried in my subconscious, or—"
My cell buzzed with a text from Brody Williams.
Confirming appointment tomorrow. 8:30am HI time.
"Darn. I’d totally forgotten about my client session tomorrow morning." I kept talking to Annie while I texted agreement to Brody. Multitasking: great invention. "It’s gonna be a late night with Mitch because I need to fill him in on everything, and now I need some planning time for this session tomorrow."
Annie’s shoulders tightened, the movement subtle, but the repressed reaction behind her motion was strong enough to punch holes in the Mazda’s interior energy field. Not good, since the car hadn’t come with a whole lot of breathing room.
Time for me to probe. "You want to talk about why you react to this client like he’s your worst nightmare?" I was pretty sure she’d sidestep the question, but it didn’t hurt to ask.
She rolled her shoulders back…slowly. It was obviously a decision rather than spontaneous relaxing. "No. It’s not him, per se. I think it’s just that I’m about to get married, and what if something in my past comes back to hurt Sean? How could I live with that?"
There was an odd rumble of half-truth running through Annie’s words that bothered the back of my mind, leaving a tangled case of the twitchies behind. "I think there’s more—"
Her phone chirped, and within a nanosecond she’d tuned me out, and focused on the text message shining brightly in the half-light of the parking garage. My trepidation hiked up a notch.
"Sean’s here. His flight just landed. Early. Oh, El. He’s here." Clipped words. Excitement mixed with anxiety. Or maybe I was just projecting my own screwed up psyche onto Annie’s happiness.
"Fantastic. We can meet at the Hilton for a drink and then show Sean and Mitch the chapel."
She eyed me, both eyebrows hiked up in elegant arches. "Have you looked at yourself?"
My stomach took a dive into reality. Mitch wasn’t going to be happy with the bags under my eyes or the cuts and scrapes on my legs. Then there was the bandage from the knife wound, clearly visible, since Annie had brought me a dress with spaghetti straps. "Right. Better give him a chance to assimilate my relative safety before tossing him into a social situation with you guys."
We climbed out of the car, the scent of airplane fuel clinging to the humid air. I thought twice about breathing. "Where do the military flights land? You know?"
"Um-hmm. They share the airport. Sean is arriving on Delta, but Mitch will grab a bus from wherever his flight disembarks. He told you to meet him at baggage claim, right?"
"Yes. It’s just that this is the first time I’ve met him at an airport. Guess I’m nervous."
"You’re nervous because he’s going to give you hell about fighting with a killer."
She had a point.
We strolled through the front doors of the airport, our heads turning, each of us searching for our respective guy.
Mitch showed up first, hobbling toward me with a huge grin that was bracketed by lines of exhaustion.
Panic flared deep in my gut. Had he been hurt? I ran toward him, slippahs slapping a frantic rhythm against the cement floor. I reached for him, my palms skimming down his arms.
"It’s okay, Sunshine. Go ahead and touch."
I sucked in a preparatory breath, then curled my fingertips against his arm, and we shared a moment so intimate it stilled my heart. Love for me flowed through him, so complete, so perfect, that tears pooled in my eyes. His lips touched mine, demanding, while I watched the images of him flashing on my internal monitor—it was a minor tumble from a rocky cliff. He had some bad bruises, but nothing serious.
When we broke apart, he tapped the bandage on my arm, and then ran his thumb over my lips. Worry leaked from behind his eyes. "Don’t tell me until I have a beer in my hand."
Sean came up behind Annie, grabbed her, and lifted her off the floor in a huge hug.
"Welcome home, handsome." Annie grinned as he spun her around.
Normal. But not. She’d put enough emphasis on the word home, that it distracted me from cataloging Mitch’s injuries.
While they were lost in a kiss, Mitch laced our fingers together. "Sounds like Sean found a job here. I knew he was looking."
Job? Here? Annie hadn’t said anything.
Their kiss ended, and Annie laid her hand against Sean’s cheek. "I talked to the real estate agent earlier. She’ll put my townhouse on the market tomorrow."
The room spun. Free fall. No parachute.
Eighteen
Mitch pulled me tight against his side. "Annie didn’t tell you that Sean got a job here?"
"No. We haven’t had much time to talk." I was a terrible liar, and every word sounded rough with inconsistency. Why hadn’t she told me? It would have much better use of the time between Tripler and the airport than reaming me out for stuff I already knew had been stupid.
Annie must have seen the confused horror that had to be frozen on my face, because she immediately grabbed my hands. "Touch me. I just found out for sure a second ago. Sean texted me while you were busy kissing Mitch, and I didn’t want to tell you unless it was official."
&
nbsp; I knew she was telling the truth because my fingertips didn’t lie. Still. "But you just told Sean that you’d already talked to a real estate agent."
"Earlier today. I set things up just in case, but I won’t put the townhouse up for sale until first thing tomorrow."
I wanted to be happy for her, really I did, but we’d been sisters in every sense of the word for almost seven years. Having her live next door, sharing meals, shopping, the bad stuff, the good stuff—it was suddenly all gone. I met her gaze. A damp sheen clouded her bright green eyes, eyes that shouldn’t be anything but happy right now. I found a moment of calm and smiled. "It just surprised me. And you know what—" a burst of inspiration shattered my selfish loneliness. I could fix this— "I can move here, too. There’s nothing keeping me in North Carolina."
Mitch cocked his head, and his arm dropped from my shoulders. "I live there, Sunshine."
I’d hurt him. A reciprocal pain slid into my heart and cut deep. "No. I didn’t mean…I’m sorry. There’s so much to tell you…my family…and because you travel all the time, we can build a life here, near Annie and Sean…and my grandfather. Can’t we?"
Annie touched Mitch’s arm. "My fault. I hit her with this at the end of a really bad day."
I wrapped my arms around Mitch’s waist, my hands splayed against his back. "I love you, Mitchell Hunt. Nothing will keep me away from you. Not ever."
His emotional pain blasted me, stabbing through my fingertips before it eased a bit. I needed to give him some words. "I have so much to tell you. Since I arrived here, my life has done one of those unexpected flip-flops that screws everything up. I miss all of us sitting around, eating take-out Chinese, chopsticks flying while we work out the details of a case. If we’re spread out all over the country, we can’t do that anymore. It hurts, Mitch. The loss of that hurts."
Annie and Sean had slipped away, giving us privacy, but she turned and waved just before they disappeared into the dark of the parking garage.
Mitch returned the wave, then kissed the top of my head. "Yeah, I miss that too. Looks like we’re gonna be making the airlines a lot richer than they already are. Let’s get to the hotel, order a pot of coffee, a bottle of brandy, and you can bring me up to speed."
I stepped back, looked into his eyes. "Are we okay?"
"We’re okay."
A breath of relief filtered through my lungs. "I thought you wanted a beer?"
"I've got a feeling this conversation is gonna require the hard stuff."
It had been a long night. The five of us had gathered in my room and hashed out everything that had happened. The only thing missing was the Chinese food. And the only plan we came up with was to visit Kahuna Aukele in the morning and see if he could help.
Morning happened way too quickly. Sunlight filtered through the slider, and I couldn’t stop testing the sexy stubble on Mitch’s cheeks. It scratched against the palm of my hand with tender gentleness, and the contrast was intoxicating.
"You want to stop that, Sunshine, or you’ll have some explaining to do when you miss your client call."
Brody Williams. And I hadn’t spent a single minute preparing.
I hit the shower on the run, hoping for inspiration. But Mitch joined me, and my inspiration pooled, centered, and exploded—only not in my brain. The gray cells were a murky haze of happy, liquid pleasure that kept any rational thought from intruding and spoiling the moment.
And Mitch had barely touched me.
"Love your skin. You soften when I touch you. So sexy. So beautiful." His words caressed my nerve endings, but his hands, oh, they knew their way around my heart, and spoke with a depth of love that was my foundation. My home.
I followed a trail of bubbles, chasing them over his chest, smoothing the surface of his abdomen until it angled into the apex of his thighs. "You want me." My words faded into a breathless pant.
He pushed into my hands. "Always. In every way."
There was something about the trailing soap bubbles, the water, and my hands sliding over his skin that detonated every cell in my body. I surrendered to the need, to the beauty of showing him what he did to me, and reveling in the power of what I did to him.
We stayed in the shower until I’d explored every inch of his skin, made sure all of his parts were functioning properly, and that he knew, without a doubt, that I loved him beyond measure.
I didn’t bother to dry my hair, and barely managed to drag a sundress over my damp body before my cell rang. I palmed the phone, moving and talking to Mitch while I made my way to the door, finger poised to answer the call. "Heading to the beach. I’ll do this session outside so as not to crowd everyone. Pierce, Annie, and Sean will probably show up in a few minutes."
Mitch pointed to the connecting door. "Not okay with me. Not gonna fly with Pierce either. We’ll be right behind you."
There was a rap on the door and Pierce stepped into my room. "Let’s go, Belisama. I’ll be close enough to watch, not close enough to listen."
Leprechaun genes. The man always knew what was going on with me. Except on Sand Island when his team was in trouble. A shiver trailed along my skin.
The phone was on ring number six, my last chance to catch the call before it flipped to voicemail. No time to argue with the men in my life. I sucked in a breath and moved on. "Good morning, Brody. I’m on my way to a quiet spot where we can talk, but while I’m getting settled, why don’t you tell me how the free writing assignment worked for you?"
"Fine. I want my wife back. Period." He cleared his throat. "There were a couple other things, but nothing I want to talk about."
I’d reached the beach and stepped out of my slippahs, tucking them under my arm, while I juggled the phone. Why had I purchased a dress without pockets?
"All right. I think we’ve established that your former wife is key to your issues." I used the word former, because I wanted to stress they weren’t together anymore, and to begin to lay the groundwork for exploring his personal issues, rather than focusing on what he believed the final outcome should to be.
"Yeah. So, tell me what I should say when I confront her. Maybe I should just grab her and take her someplace where we can talk."
Something was very wrong with Brody Williams. It wasn’t so much his words, although they were about as subtle as flashing red lights, it was the anger under the words. And this session wasn’t working out as a phone consult. I needed to see him, touch him. The thought caught in my stomach and twisted into a rock-hard ball, my spidey sense on full alert, screaming no touching.
"That would be abduction, and not a good choice. Have you written to her?"
"Yeah. A few times. She answered the first letter, then returned the others unopened."
"Let me go out on a limb here—were the letters that you sent threatening?" This man was hitting my radar on so many levels that I actually looked around, needing to get a visual on Pierce and Mitch. I spotted them blending into the shadows, and my anxiety leveled off. Brody was an ocean away, hardly a threat.
Pierce gave me a thumbs-up.
Mitch cocked his head, then took a few steps in my direction. I held my hand up to stop him. There was no danger.
"Let me clarify what a personal coach does, Brody. I’m here to help you work through your issues, the things that keep you from moving on in your life. Communication with your ex-wife may be one of the things you chose to learn to do more effectively, but it isn’t the core issue. We can work more efficiently together if I help you find other things to fill the gaps in your life that were created by her absence. This is about you discovering what to change in your life, and how to make those changes."
A man was strolling toward me, cell to his ear. I veered to the side, trying to keep my conversation with Brody as private as possible. The stranger’s gaze bored into me, changing in the sunlight from dull green to muddy brown and back. Hatred flashed behind the dull surface of his eyes. I wanted him to pull the sunglasses down from the top of his head, to cover the emptines
s.
I closed my eyes, shutting him out. I had enough problems with the lunatic on the other end of my phone.
Sly laughter sounded in my ear. "That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. I want to change my single status to married. She needs to come home where she belongs. Now how are we going to do that?"
I clearly heard the bitch at the end of his sentence even though he didn’t articulate it. "I’m not the right coach for you Mr. Williams. I suggest you find someone who is more capable of helping you with this issue."
"So you’re gonna quit on me, just like she did."
A burst of laughter exploded from a group of teenagers just down the beach from me.
The same laughter echoed through the phone line.
Panic shot through my veins. The man with the muddy eyes was Brody Williams. Here. Passing me on the beach. The man who’d just moved behind me.
I spun toward the shoreline, caught myself. I had to move slowly, and not catch Williams’s attention.
Words, Everly. Keep the man talking. Keep moving. Signal Pierce.
"I prefer to think of it as a transfer to someone more suitable rather than quitting. I want you to find the best possible therapist to work with, and I’m sure it isn’t me. We all have limitations, and I honestly don’t know how to help you."
I waved at Pierce, a huge, fake smile plastered on my face, just in case Brody turned around and caught me. Pierce started toward me, covering the ground between us quickly, scanning the area for the threat. My bodyguard in action.
Mitch passed him, running straight for me.
"I see it as quitting. I don’t much like quitters, Everly." His words were layered with menace.
I chanced a look at Brody Williams. He’d stopped walking, had turned to face the shore, his line of sight tracing Pierce’s movements. Then he flipped his sunglasses down and turned away, continuing down the beach.
"Goodbye. Ms. Gray."
Time slowed. I turned, fumbling with my phone, and watching as Brody Williams pocketed his phone—our movements almost identical, mirrored in the soft sunlight of a beautiful Hawaiian morning.
a Touch of the Past (An Everly Gray Adventure) Page 14
