Stripper: The Fringe, Book 4

by Anitra Lynn McLeod

  For the life of him, Duster thought Mary would react totally differently. That she didn’t somehow didn’t really surprise him. Mary never did what anyone thought she would. Mary just behaved like…Mary.

  “Bootstraps, ever heard of them?” Mary directed the question to the very air. “I could rant and rail and scream at the sky, and what would that display get me? A big load of wasted energy that could best be expended elsewhere.” Mary took a deep breath and cast Michael a look full of meaning, then turned to face the audvid. “He won’t even make love to me because he’s so afraid of hurting me. I’m not going to ask you if that’s normal ’cause I know for myself it isn’t.” Mary shook her head. “Go back to bed, Duster. I’m sorry Michael bothered you. Go back to Diane, and Scott, and—oh, yeah, you missed a trick with your pool, but I caught it.”

  “What?”

  “The cover goes rigid but for where you located the sensor. I angled it up a few degrees. Now the whole cover goes so tight you can’t get a fingernail in there.”

  Duster couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Just last night, I told Diane if there was some kinda shortage of security around here, you’d tell me about it. After you fixed it.”

  “Damn straight. Tell Michael bye-bye.” Mary lifted something off her shirt. Over the audvid, it looked like a little black dot resting on her index finger. After considering it for a moment, she thrust it close to the audvid. “Say bye-bye, Duster.”

  “Mary?” Using his sing-song voice, more amused than afraid, Duster asked, “What is that?”

  “A tiny EMF that can go wide.” Grinning, holding it up, Mary turned toward Michael. “If you don’t want communications planetwide to go down in a chain reaction, you tell Duster everything is fine.” Mary nodded to her hand. “Or I’ll make it not fine and give you all something legitimate to worry about.”

  “Mary, please don’t,” Duster said calmly. “I’d like to spend today with my family.” Not a doubt in his mind she’d do exactly what she threatened. Duster considered what a tiny EMF that could go wide might do. Mary managed to make Whisper blow enough EMF to take out an entire quadrant of equipment. God only knew what she could make the tiny black dot on her fingertip do. Frankly, he didn’t want to find out.

  “You’re a respectful man, Duster. I appreciate that.” Mary kept her right hand up and her left hand hitched to a belt loop of her purple pants. “I want to spend the day with my husband. Michael wants you to come here to base and talk sense into me that—what was the problem, my beloved? I’m not hysterical?” Rolling her eyes first at Michael, then at Duster, Mary added, “I get the ramification of this disease. Every motor-nerve in my body is going to slowly die and so am I. You don’t need to stick it up my nose. I get it. Two years left to me, give or take a few months. Moving on. I want this day with Michael. I want to not have to worry about anything. I don’t want you to worry about it either, Duster, given your situation. I vote MacKay step up to the plate. Hell in a hand basket comes, he’s got two fail-safes. Three, if you count Nash.”

  Stunned and impressed by Mary, Duster offered, “MacKay is good to go, Michael. I wouldn’t mind Nash sitting fourth behind you and me.”

  “You’re agreeing with her?” Bleary-eyed, Michael cast a stunned gaze at Duster over the link.

  Looking at the worn, exhausted face of his boss, Duster gently said, “Take at least half a day off. Make love to your wife. Take her back to where you picnicked for the first time.”

  “Where she eluded me.” Michael grinned.

  “No one wants me to use this.” Mary held up the tiny dot on her finger. “Ugly all around. So. That puts me in charge.” She lifted her free hand, breathed on her nails, rubbed them briskly across her chest. “Give.”

  Michael shook his exhausted head. “I give.”

  “Duster?”

  “I give.”

  Mary fiddled with one of the op-pans. “MacKay?”

  Within seconds, MacKay came on to the split-screen audvid as he brushed back his long hair from his slightly balding pate. “Yes”—casting his gaze to the split-feed, he promptly said—“sir, sir and ma’am.” Since he didn’t know who was in charge, MacKay covered the bases well. If nothing else, MacKay was ever polite and sharply aware of the fluctuating power system of Windmere.

  Michael broke the moment. “Duster and Mary both sponsor you as a candidate for Master-of-Arms. Is this a position you would vie for?”

  “Yes.” MacKay stood a bit straighter, as if he’d been waiting his whole life for this moment. MacKay didn’t care if he was sworn in as Master-of-Arms to Prime Bastard or Windmere. He would die to defend this ball of rock because his family, three generations deep, called this world home.

  “For the next six hours, you are in charge. Should a worthy crisis erupt, you contact me, then Duster, then Nash. In that order. But you take the front.”

  MacKay nodded with a solemn pride. “Yes, sir.”

  “I think you are forgetting something, Michael.” Mary lifted her black-dotted finger so MacKay could inspect it. He did so with respectful interest.

  “Commander.” MacKay nodded to Michael. “Sir.” MacKay nodded to Duster. “I would respectfully ask you both to define Mary’s position in the chain of command.”

  Michael uttered the first genuine laugh Duster had heard from him since this started. Michael seemed to revive in an instant, and his exhaustion melted away. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary.”

  “As I’ve said before, Michael, if you must resort to name-calling, I prefer Purple Lady of Corona.”

  “Indeed.” Michael laughed again and turned his gaze to Duster. With a wink, he sauntered behind Mary. “I surrender.” He lifted his hand and stroked from the top of her head to the small of her back.

  Mary grinned. “Smart man.” She cast stripping brown eyes to Duster and MacKay via audvid. “I willingly defer to my husband in the chain of command. Mind you that to bother him is to bother me.”

  It wasn’t a classic threat, but the peril of bothering either Michael or Mary came through loud and clear.

  To MacKay, Michael said, “I want you here, at base, A-sap.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Michael closed the connection, then turned to the audvid com Duster watched. “You make third at this point. MacKay, me, then you.”

  “I’m a wrist com away.”

  “Good. Don’t call.” Mary leaned over into audvid range and fiddled with the controls. “Call me greedy, but I’ve only got six hours with him, and that’s not nearly enough for what I want to do with him.” Winking, Mary added, “Don’t call unless the IWOG is on the freaking doorstep.”

  Black, then fuzzy lines of gray filled Duster’s screen.

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary.”

  “Turn that off, Michael.”

  Stunned, Duster burst out a laugh as Michael shut off his wrist com with, “Mary’s got intuition better than I have scent.”

  “Say bye-bye, Duster.”

  “Bye-bye, Duster.” Duster said it with a low whisper. He really thought she’d go ballistic when she got the news. Maybe beat the hell out of everything in the vicinity, but no. She just went “Really?” like Michael sometimes did. Then seemed to have jumped to “Indeed”, then “Granted” as if she just kind of always figured in the back of her head her joy couldn’t last. “Not trapped by any bars, any chains, but by her own body.” Satan himself could not have devised a more horrific way to torture Mary. Her mind filled with an arsenal but her body unable to respond. “Jesus.” Even when he feared her the most, Duster would not have wished this fate on Mary. He wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. The most horrific soul in the Void did not deserve this torment. Mary had done nothing to deserve it but dealt with it in her usual kick-ass, no-holds-barred style.

  “Oh, Duster?”

  His audvid came alive. How, he didn’t know. Mary’s face filled the screen. She lifted up the black dot on the tip of her finger. “Lint.” She blew a tiny puff that made the dot float away.
/>   “You, you—”

  “Me.” She winked. “Thing is, with me, you just never really know.”

  The screen went black, and all Duster could do was chuckle. And then he turned his mind to spending the entire day with Diane and Scott.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Diane awoke alone in bed. Sunrise was just now brightening the room through the skylight and dappling the hanging plants with pale spots of light. Hearing voices, she pulled on her robe, then made her way to the main room. Duster was in the kitchen, talking to Mary and Michael. What were they doing here so early? Couldn’t Michael wait to interrogate and get his hooks into his own wife?

  Cautiously, she stepped forward and realized Duster was speaking to them over an audvid. She didn’t have to see the screen as she saw the flickering blue-gray light filling the kitchen and obliterating the peach light of dawn.

  Diane didn’t hear much but the tail end of the conversation. Apparently, Mary had forced both men to take a day off by threatening them with a piece of lint.

  Stifling a burst of laughter, Diane clapped her hand to her mouth. “Scary Mary,” Diane whispered, liking the wonderfully strange, dangerous and kind woman even more. Because of Mary, Diane had a whole day with Duster and Scott. Right now, they needed to spend time together as a family, especially after the tension of the last few days. When the conversation ended, Diane made her way into the kitchen.

  Coffee perked happily away as Duster stood at the counter with a dopey smile plastered to his face. He looked like a man living a pleasant dream. Diane had no wish to wake him from it. Taking a moment, she simply watched him as he stood, his fanny against the counter, his head back, eyes closed and an utterly, sublimely beautiful smile on his face. Simple joy transformed him from handsome to breathtaking.

  Sensing her presence, he rolled his head forward and pinned her with a mossy-green gaze. “Good morning, my beautiful wife.” Opening his arms, he gave her an invitation she couldn’t resist.

  She moved forward and pressed herself against him, loving the warm, sleepy smell of him mixed with the scent of pungent coffee. Diane wrapped her arms around him and hugged him so hard he gasped out a breath.

  “What exuberance.” Kissing her sleep-tousled head, he added, “I can’t breathe if you keep it up.”

  Lessening her grip, Diane felt tears threaten. How much she loved him, and how fearful she was at the very thought of hurting him. “I can’t help it. I can’t believe I’m here with you and Scott.”

  “Me either.” Wrapping her up tightly, he lifted her off her feet and kissed her lips. Slowly, he let her feet once again touch the floor.

  Diane pulled back. “I haven’t brushed my teeth.”

  “Think I care?” He fell to kissing her again.

  Diane explored his sleepy mouth as he explored hers until the coffeepot gasped its last and broke them from the spell.

  Pressing his forehead to hers, Duster said, “Thing about morning breath is, it’s like onion breath. If both people got it, they cancel each other out.”

  Diane laughed. “I guess so.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Please.” Diane stepped back as Duster pulled two clunky ceramic mugs from the cupboard over the coffeepot. One cup was a lumpy cylinder decked in red and black. The other was squat and decked in brown and beige.

  “My favorite cups.” Duster filled them, then offered her the squat one. “I have cream and sugar if—”

  “I prefer mine bare, which is exactly how I prefer my husband.” Diane offered her comment with a wink and a smile.

  Lifting his brows, flashing her a salacious grin, Duster whispered, “I remember rather vividly, but I thought I’d offer all the same.”

  “What a generous host.”

  “Man and husband seeking to impress his mate.”

  At the moment, the last thing on her mind was coffee. She wanted Duster with a sudden gripping intensity that almost overwhelmed her. But now was not the time. She needed to talk to him about her fears of having more children. If she didn’t, she was afraid Duster would see it as a betrayal.

  Dropping her gaze, Diane considered the chunky cup in her hand. Without asking, she knew the cups were made by a child. “Tell me the tale.”

  “Of?” Duster lifted one brow.

  “The cups.” Diane lifted hers to him in salute, then sipped. She sipped again and again. “Real coffee.”

  “Like that, do you?” he asked, his voice dripping with innuendo.

  In response, her nipples hardened. Long ago, when Duster had explored her body with unsure hands, he’d interpreted each moan or sigh of pleasure with a questioning, “Like that, do you?” When he found a sweet spot, his hands would steady and he’d lower his tone as he asked the same pointed question. Even now, all these years later, hearing him say those words in that way sparked heat across her nerves.

  “I like that very much.” With a deep breath, she retreated from the promise in his eyes and voice. “Only once before have I ever had real coffee.” People said the synth was as good as the real thing, but Diane knew they were either fooling themselves or had, more likely, never tasted real coffee. “Tell me about your favorite cups.”

  Duster clicked his thick pottery mug carefully to hers, then leaned back against the kitchen counter. He seemed a little disappointed that the intimate moment passed but not angry. Actually, he seemed understanding. “Billy and Jared MacKay made them. Billy made the one I hold. Red and black for Michael. The one you hold, Jared made.”

  “Brown and beige for you?”

  Duster nodded. “Twin boys made twin sets of cups. One set for me and one for Michael. I’ve used mine every day since the day they gave them to me.”

  “What holiday?” The question rose automatically to her lips.

  “You’ve spent too much time near the IWOG worlds.”

  “Have I?” Sipping her coffee, Diane wondered at what he could mean. Dahank still claimed itself a Fringe planet for the most part, even though the port city of Jade seemed to be ever more infiltrated with IWOG officers.

  “If you think they needed a holiday to give me a gift, you have.”

  “Have I offended you somehow?”

  “Not at all.” Duster sipped and beckoned her to his side.

  Going willingly, Diane snuggled close.

  “I was just making an observation.” Duster kissed her cheek. “We don’t have a holiday season here on Windmere. Birthdays are celebrated, and anniversaries, things like that. Even the day Windmere claimed independence is honored, but it’s not about gifts. More about being together. Generally, people do things like plant a tree or build a community project—folks here give gifts when they want to, because they want to. Billy and Jared made the gift of the cups to me and Michael about three years ago.”

  Instantly, Diane felt her awareness rise. “Three years ago. Isn’t that about the time you decided to hire a stripper?”

  Casting his gaze to the sunrise over the distant mountains, he ducked his head.

  “Duster?”

  “Yeah.” Reluctantly, he met her gaze. “It’s probably best to get that tale out of the way.” He took a deep breath as if he were gearing himself up for battle. “Let me tell you about the woman I met three years ago and the reason I decided to hire a stripper. Her name is Rena. She’s a nice woman. But I couldn’t be with her and refused to pretend I could. I could have let her down easy and dragged things out, but I didn’t. I told her straight up.”

  “Was she okay?” As much as Diane wanted to hear the tale, she also didn’t. She felt like she was prying into private affairs that had nothing to do with her. Analyzing her own husband was not a comfortable feeling. She’d had to learn to separate her job from her friends—no one wanted to be with someone who analyzed everything they said or did. But this she felt she had to know to understand Duster.

  “Rena said she saw the writing on the wall the first date we went on. She liked me, but she knew I wasn’t done missing you. We decided to be frie
nds.”

  “That’s a good thing.”

  “It should have been, but everyone else got real pushy about bringing us together. Don’t get me wrong, they had good intentions, but it only made things worse. We liked each other, cared about each other, but Rena and I never would have loved each other. Sadly, no matter what we said, no one else would believe us. Sherry MacKay, Bill’s wife, wanted the twin boys to make a gift for us, you know, like a little nudge in the right direction.”

  “How could cups—”

  “Sherry’s thinking went something like if we accumulated housewares together, we’d take up playing house with each other.”

  “Interesting idea.”

  “Billy and Jared instead made a gift for me and Michael. Five years old and they figured it out way better than any of the adults.”

  “Figured it out?”

  “That I would always have a connection to Michael.” Duster looked down at his red-and-black cup.

  Diane thought of all that Duster and Michael had been through in seven years. They’d saved each other’s lives, and they’d literally built a world together. As close as she and Sheldon were, she didn’t think they were as close as Duster and Michael. As much as she might hate and fear Michael, she understood why he and Duster were so close.

  “Does Michael use them?”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  Diane cradled the mug in her hand more protectively by holding the handle and stabilizing it below with her left hand. Her ring made a dull thwhick to the ceramic.

  “Click.” Duster cupped his hand to his mug, and his ring made the same sound.

  “Where is Rena now?”

  Taking a sip, Duster cast his gaze to the window. Pastel peach and creamy yellow sunrise kissed his face with soft light and shadows. “Rena married Richards, and they have two kids with a third on the way. They live down street about twelve houses.” He nodded out the window.

  “Richards. One of the guards on the Elusive Grace. The one with the puppies.” Diane felt a little shiver of worry. “He married Rena.”

  Duster nodded.

  “You let her go and watched her marry another man, and have his children, right down the street?” Did Duster feel some twisted need to punish himself? Had turning his house into such a grand place for children been just another way to torture himself? The two bedrooms for the MacKay twins made sense, but building a home with six rooms in addition to the master bedroom? He’d either been very hopeful or very hopeless.