by Joss Wood
“Where is she?” Kai demanded, banging his beer bottle onto the bar counter.
“As I said, my office But I don’t want you going anywhere near her. She’s upset enough already,” Jack told him, following him as he walked to the end of the bar. Jack tried to stop him from walking behind the bar and through the door marked Staff Only by placing his hand on Kai’s chest.
“Take your hand off me before I break your fingers,” Kai growled.
Jack held both his hands up as his gaze turned speculative. “She’s not crying over you?”
“Not this time,” Kai said as he pushed open the door and walked into the busy kitchen. The kitchen staff were so busy that they didn’t spare him a glance. “Where’s your office?”
Jack pointed to a door on the other side of the room. “Next to the back door. If she’s not crying about you then why is she crying?” Jack asked, sounding perplexed.
Kai’s face tightened with determination. “That’s what I intend to find out.”
***
“Your brother is ready to rearrange my face.”
Flick looked up and blew air into her cheeks. Kai Manning was the last person she wanted to see her like this—blotchy skin, piggy eyes, messy hair—yet he was the only one she could stand to see. Unlike Jack, he wouldn’t try to placate her, wouldn’t try to finagle the reason for her tears out of her. He’d just offer his help.
“Jack always wants to rearrange someone’s face. It’s a quirk of his,” Flick replied in a croaky voice. “What did you do to annoy him?”
“I slept with his baby sister.”
Flick nodded. “That would do it.”
Kai folded his arms and leaned his shoulder into the doorframe. “He also thinks I made you cry.”
“Not this time,” Flick answered, trying to keep her tone light.
Kai nodded. “Then who can I beat up for you?”
Flick managed a wobbly smile. There was the offer of help she expected from him, short and hard-ass, but sweet nonetheless. He was that type of man, the type who would, without fanfare, offer what he could. If he cared about you, even a little, he’d offer his time, his wallet, his fists. He was so much better than he imagined himself to be.
Flick, her feet on the edge of Jack’s desk, looked at him, and for the first time didn’t see the hot guy with the broad shoulders and lion eyes. She didn’t see the ex-soldier or the tough personal protection specialist. She looked past the muscles and the attitude to the man beneath. She just saw Kai.
She knew that he’d expected her to run screaming when he’d told her about his past, but instead of the thug he portrayed himself as, she saw someone who intrigued her mentally and emotionally. Someone who’d been given a hard path to follow, but who’d navigated his life using his brain and his guts, along with his street smarts. Oh, he wasn’t an angel, she knew that, but she also knew, instinctively, that he wasn’t all devil either. He lived by his own code of honor; the people he liked enough to help, he would. He would serve and protect and give as much as he could without removing the layer of Teflon that encased his heart.
He’d been disappointed too many times by too many people to ever risk his heart. It was such a pity, because whoever managed to break through the layers to his heart would be one lucky girl.
Kai snapped his fingers and she blinked. “Sorry . . . what was the question?”
“I was offering my services to beat up whoever it was who made you cry.”
Aw, sweet man. “Thank you, but it wouldn’t be a fair fight.” Flick pushed a curl behind her ear, sadness clouding her features. “I had a horrible fight with Pippa.”
“She told you?” Flick heard Jack’s voice from somewhere behind Kai, and rolled her eyes. “She told you but she wouldn’t tell me?”
“Go away.” Kai followed his terse order with a hard look at Jack.
“It’s my office and she’s my sister.”
“Scram.” Kai stepped into the office and slammed the door closed behind him, muting Jack’s irritated squawk. Flick smiled. There weren’t many men who weren’t intimidated by her big, burly, surly brother. Kai ignored Jack’s thump on the door and flipped the lock. He walked over to the desk and sat down on the corner, placing his hand over her ankle. “I don’t know much about girls and their friendships but I would assume that it was a pretty big argument if it sent you running from your house.”
You can’t just take her over because your own mother didn’t love you enough to stick around!
Yeah, it still hurt like hell. It was one of those arguments that altered a friendship, that caused cracks in the foundation where there were none before. Nothing between them would ever be the same.
Flick blinked back her tears and bit her bottom lip, trying to keep her composure. Pippa was the most important person in the world to her, and she wasn’t sure what to do next, where to go.
“Do your tears have to do with the secret you were talking about earlier?”
Flick nodded.
“Can you tell me who is asking you to keep the secret?”
What harm could that do?
“Gina, Pippa’s mom.” Flick turned the heavy silver ring on her thumb. “After my mom died, my dad pulled away from me, and Gina took me under her wing.”
“Where was Jack?”
“Jack and my brothers have a different mother—my dad was married before. Jack is six years older than me and was in his freshman year at college. My other half-brothers are older than him. I was pretty much left to my own devices after Andy and my mom died.”
“Tough break. What caused their deaths?” There was a trace of sympathy in Kai’s voice, but not pity or misplaced sentiment.
“Andy had cancer, and my mom’s official cause of death was double pneumonia.”
“And the unofficial cause?”
She never spoke about this, and had only once before voiced her belief that there was more to her mom’s death than a chest infection that couldn’t be treated. She’d never dared to speak about it again but maybe, just maybe, Kai would understand. And if he didn’t then a) she knew that he wouldn’t repeat her words and b) he’d be leaving soon and she wouldn’t have to face him.
“I read somewhere, ages ago, that there are people in Africa who believe that they are about to die and then do.”
Kai nodded his agreement. “Shamans or witchdoctors cast a spell and the person who is cursed wills himself to death. It’s documented.”
Flick pulled her ring off her thumb and bounced it in her hand. “For weeks, months after Andy died, my mom barely spoke, hardly ate. When she got a cold, she didn’t treat it. Then she got a chest infection and didn’t get help for that. Pneumonia followed and she refused to go to the doctor. My dad didn’t force her. When she couldn’t breathe, he finally called for an ambulance. I think she chose not to get better.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Andy had always been sick. I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t. Our lives were spent looking after him, making sure that he was comfortable, pain-free, had company. My mom did most of the work, but I was her helper. When Andy died, I think she lost her purpose in life.”
Kai didn’t reply and Flick darted a look at his face, wondering if he was about to dismiss her speculations. But he just returned her look, judgment free, and eventually he lifted his shoulders.
“I can’t say she did or didn’t but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. People do some crazy shit.”
People do some crazy shit. Five words of acceptance that made her want to throw her arms around him and hug him tight. He wasn’t agreeing with her but he wasn’t dismissing her either. It was both a benediction and a blessing. It was pure acceptance and she wanted to roll around in it.
“You’re looking weird, Sturgiss.”
Flick smiled. “I am weird, Manning,” she replied, some of her cockin
ess returning.
His finger traced her anklebone, drifting up and under the hem of her jeans to stroke her leg. “So, to get back to the original subject, your aunt has asked you to keep a secret from Pippa, and that’s why you’re crying?”
Tears welled in her eyes again. “Essentially.”
“Screw that.”
Flick frowned when he picked up her cell phone off the desk and started to push buttons.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded as she jumped to her feet and tried to take the phone from his hand. Kai blocked her efforts by standing up and turning his back on her.
“Kai, give me back my phone!”
Kai held up his hand to tell her to simmer down and Flick slapped his shoulder in annoyance. Kai gave about as much reaction as he would if he were swatting a fly. “Hi, is this Mrs. Gina Sturgiss?”
“God, Kai, it’s late! She was probably asleep!” Flick hissed.
“Yeah, my name is Kai and I’m a friend of Flick’s.” There was a short silence and then he turned and rolled his eyes in her direction. “Yeah, I’m the one she spent an afternoon with.”
Flick lunged for the phone again and Kai just turned and snagged her around the waist with one arm. “So, the reason I’m calling you . . . Yeah, this secret you’re asking Flick to keep is making her cry, and that, excuse the language, pisses me off. For some reason she can’t tell Pippa but she needs to tell someone and I want her to tell me.”
Flick heard her aunt’s raised voice and pushed her hands against Kai’s arms to make him let her go. He just tightened his grip and waited for her aunt’s tirade to peter out. Hah! Kai didn’t understand—her aunt Gina would chew him up and spit him out and still have the energy for more.
After another minute Kai obviously realized the same thing because he broke into Gina’s tirade.
“Actually, ma’am, I’m not asking your permission. I’m telling you that Flick is going to tell me what’s eating her up inside and then I’m going to help her find a solution. We clear about that?”
Squawk. Squawk. Double squawk. “Bye, now,” Kai said and disconnected the call. He dropped his arm and shook his head. “Tough old bird.”
“You have no idea how much trouble you’ve just dumped me in.”
Kai showed no remorse. “You’ll deal. So, spill, Sturgiss.”
She could refuse to tell him. She could walk away right now, but he was right. This was eating her up and she needed help. Kai was offering and she knew he wouldn’t spend any time persuading her to tell him. She could choose to tell him or not. He definitely wouldn’t beg.
Flick reached for her car keys and picked up her cell.
“It’s easier to show you,” Flick replied.
“Now?”
Flick jammed her hands into the front pocket of her jeans. “You got something better to do?”
“Okay, then.”
***
“Holy shit.”
Flick stood in the passage outside the last of the third-floor bedrooms and looked past Kai into the disaster area beyond the door. Unlike the doors to the other bedrooms and the study, the door to this room still opened unimpeded and was therefore, according to Gina’s rules of hoarding, still relatively empty. Kai placed his hands on his hips, turned sideways, and lifted his eyebrows. “So, this is unexpected.”
“Isn’t it?” She knew what he meant; the downstairs, visitor’s area of Gina’s beautifully decorated house could grace the pages of any magazine. But you’d need a tetanus shot to enter any room on the third level.
“Holy shit,” Kai said.
Flick flushed, feeling embarrassed by association. “What can you see? Is it a dead cat?”
“It’s full, not dirty,” Kai replied, his eyes on something in the back corner of the room.
Flick frowned as he walked up to an old table piled with books and squeezed between it and an old cupboard. Old puzzle boxes that looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa threatened to tumble to the floor as he pushed aside another table so that he could wedge his large frame into a small space between a bookcase and a display cabinet.
“Kai, you’re going to cause everything to fall like dominoes. You’ll be buried and I’ll have to leave you there!”
“Chill, Flick,” Kai retorted. He stopped in front of the display cabinet and instead of opening the cracked glass doors, he stood up on his toes and stretched up, his hand brushing the top of a high, long windowsill. There was something in the shadows, something she couldn’t identify. Flick was distracted by the strip of flesh that appeared beneath the hem of his T-shirt and his well-fitting jeans, and remembered the heat of his skin, the way he tasted, the feel of that firm, well-shaped ass under her hands as he slid into her, hard and masculine . . .
“It’s a Beretta.”
Shaking off her memories and ignoring the lusty throb between her legs, Flick concentrated on what Kai was cradling like a newborn baby. It was a long and thin and incredibly elegant rifle.
She frowned. “Berettas are pistols.”
“Not this one.” Kai rubbed his thumb down the barrel of the rifle. “Beretta is just the brand name—the company makes other weapons as well. This is a Beretta Imperiale Montecarlo shotgun.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
The corners of Kai’s mouth kicked up in a smile. “Hell, yes. These shotguns are generally accepted to be among the best in the world and are frequently used in the Olympics for skeet and trap shooting.”
“Oh.”
Kai rubbed his thumb over what looked to be silver engraving. “Any idea where she got this?”
“I didn’t even know she had it, or the rest of this crap, until recently.”
“Not crap,” Kai corrected her. “There’s some high-end stuff in this room.”
“And how would you know that?” Flick asked.
“I was a poor kid who grew up on the streets, so I know crap. This isn’t it.”
“It’s just furniture, and old puzzles, and guns—”
Kai’s head snapped up. “There are more guns?”
“In the other room. I think I saw some the first time I was here.” Why was he looking so interested? His yellow-brown eyes narrowed in concentration. He couldn’t possibly think that Gina had something worthwhile in these piles of junk. “Don’t get excited, Manning, they’re probably fake.”
“This one isn’t,” Kai pointed out, stroking the stock of the rifle before reaching up and placing it back on the window ledge.
“Even so, if she manages to get a hundred bucks for it, I’ll eat my hat.”
Kai maneuvered his way through the furniture, and the smirk on his face made Flick feel desperately uneasy.
When he reached her, he bent down and brushed his mouth against hers. “Then get chewing, honey, ’cause that gun—that Beretta Imperiale Montecarlo—is worth around a hundred grand. And I want to buy it.”
***
Kai swung into Flick’s driveway and cut the engine to his Jeep. Half of his mind was on the guns Flick had shown him and the other half of his mind was on the long-haired, red-eyed girl sitting next to him. He wanted to follow her into her house, strip her naked, and take himself on home, but they had an agreement, and she was vulnerable, and he wasn’t that much of a bastard and . . . crap. There were reasons why he couldn’t do that, and even more reasons why he shouldn’t do that, but right now, with her light perfume in his nose and that hair in a messy knot that he wanted to rake his hands through, he didn’t give a shit about any of them.
Except that he did. He wanted what was best for her and, unfortunately, sleeping with him probably wasn’t it.
Flick turned in her seat and leaned her back against the door. Kai wanted to tell her to get out of the car and head on in, but the words wouldn’t form on his tongue. He tried to make himself get out and walk around the car to
open the door for her, but that wasn’t going to happen either. So he’d just sit here, like a dweeb, and wait and see what happened.
God, he was pathetic.
“So, that’s the secret,” Flick said, lifting her knee onto the leather seat.
“I’ve heard of a lot worse. Caravaggio murdered a pimp over a prostitute and then tried to castrate the dude. Gerald Ford was a male model. And Mozart was into some weird sex shit.” Kai tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “A house full of furniture isn’t that big a deal.”
“Caravaggio?” Flick asked, bemused. He couldn’t blame her. He had a mind full of trivia.
“Late sixteenth-century Italian artist. Revolutionary and known to be, at the time, the most celebrated painter of his time. My favorite painting by him is Narcissus. It hangs in the Galleria Nazionaled’ArteAntica in Rome.” He watched, amused as Flick’s mouth fell open, and resisted the urge to shut it with his. She thought she’d had him pegged as a rough, tough ex–Special Forces soldier who read spy novels and liked his guns. He did like guns, and he did read spy novels, but he never assuaged his thirst for knowledge, and was constantly jumping from subject to subject as the mood took him.
“I saw The Denial of Saint Peter at the Met when I lived in New York.”
Kai lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “You lived in New York?”
“For a couple of years.” Flick poked her finger into his bicep. “Caravaggio was considered the first great representative of the Baroque school and was, even in his lifetime, considered to be rebellious and basically a pain in the ass.” Flick sent him a cool smile. “I’ve lived in lots of places, Manning. I might be living in a small town now, but I can, and do, still read.”
So that was what his foot tasted like.
“My point was . . .” What the hell was his point? Oh yeah, right, the messy house.”. . . that while your aunt’s house might be filled with stuff, it’s not filled with newspapers and trash and takeout containers. Or cat corpses.”
“Big whoop. It’s still filled to overflowing. Pippa and her siblings are going to have a coronary when they realize that she’s all but broke.”
