Chapter 17
Chapter 17
M aybe it was all the new thoughts and feelings jangling inside her that caused the dream. Maybe the dream was her mind’s way of trying to parse fact from feeling. Whatever the reason it was one of those gripping dreams, the kind that clutches the dreamer by the throat with unnamed dread and tension and won’t let go.
First it was Jay, lying gently and peacefully beside her. They both slept, and then Jordan woke. She rolled over and looked down at him, and when he opened his eyes and smiled up at her, it was Gaines. She froze with panic, and then he reached for her, grasping her hips and pulling her snugly beside him. His head dipped, his lips almost on hers, but instead of kissing her he whispered.
There’s someone in this room.
Jordan’s eyes popped open. She stilled her breathing and froze as the dream mingled with reality. Was someone in the room or was that part of her overheated imagination?
With something akin to horror she peeled open her eyes and made herself look. No one was in her room. She was alone. Relieved, she sat up, her eyes landing on the empty space beside her with a jumble of relief and disappointment. And more than a little yearning. Whether the yearning was for Jay or Gaines seemed to be the source of her confusion. She was about to lie back down when she heard it, the tiny clatter of something amiss. A noise that made her wish she had a cat so she could blame its midnight ramblings. There was no cat, however, and no way to easily dismiss the noise, the tiny squeak of someone taking a step in the living room.
Maybe Gaines decided to sneak in and make certain everything was okay.
It was the type of thing he would do, she knew, show up unexpectedly for a perimeter sweep to settle his own mind about her safety. But somehow she also knew that if Gaines did such a thing, Jordan would never know because he wouldn’t make a sound. He was, after all, a spy.
If not for the children, Jordan would be content to pull the blanket over her head and feign ignorance. To hope and pray the sound was nothing and would soon go away. But with her babies nearby and unprotected, it was up to her to track the source of that sound. Grabbing her phone, she debated a split second what to do. What if she contacted Gaines—again—got him out of bed—again—dragged him over here in the middle of the night—again—for another wild goose chase—again. She couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Gaines was exhausted and he needed his sleep, if not more than she did. He was, after all, a spy with an important job that often made him miss large chunks of sleep and rest.
As a compromise to both of them, she typed in the text but waited to send it.
I heard a noise. Checking it out. Come if you get this text.
There. If and when it turned out to once again be her overheated imagination, she would delete the text. But if, on the itty-bitty chance it was an actual intruder, she’d have a rescue ready. Gaines would, she knew, move heaven and earth to get there in a fast amount of time. All the more reason not to text him yet. If he became injured speeding to her aid, she’d never forgive herself. Even if his daily life put him in much worse danger, Jordan would hold herself accountable if something happened to him on her watch.
Phone in hand, she crept from her room, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dimness of the house. She didn’t do nightlights, after reading a pediatrician’s stance on the increased risk for nearsightedness in children. But now she regretted the lack. The only light in her dim abode came from a few clocks and electronics, not nearly enough to make out shapes. Unless they moved. Please don’t let them move, she silently prayed, taking a step outside her room, forcing herself to be brave by virtue of being a mother.
Thoughts of the kids fueled her steps. This time she would do it right; she would neutralize the threat before securing the assets. Or something less menacing. Make sure the kids are safe. That was all this was. She was satisfying her overheated imagination to make certain her children were safe.
As she meandered through the house, she began to calm. Nothing was amiss, nothing was out of place. No one moved, no more noises made her suspicious. Her breathing had almost returned to normal by the time she checked Nash, careful not to make a sound. If he saw, heard, or even smelled her he would wake, wanting to nurse. And she, na?ve though she may be, still held on to some hope of weaning him soon.
Nash didn’t stir. Jordan eased out of his room and closed the door with no noise. She intended to turn toward Charlotte’s room, but before she could do so the little girl let out an ear-splitting wail. Sprinting now, Jordan reached her room and threw open the door, taking everything in with a primal mix of panic and protection. If someone was hurting her baby, he’d soon wish he’d never been born.
There was nothing and no one, though. As with the rest of the house the room was undisturbed, save for the little girl now sitting on her knees and weeping loudly. Satisfied there was no threat, Jordan sat on the bed and attempted to soothe, but Charlotte pushed her away.
“Wibs,” Charlotte pled, over and over. “I want Wibs.”
Jordan searched for the dog, tipping sideways over the bed to find that he’d fallen or been pushed aside. She settled the animal within Charlotte’s grasp, but that didn’t stop her sobbing.
“No, I want Wibs. Uncle Wibs, the weal one,” Charlotte insisted, now clutching the stuffed dog and using him to dry her tears.
Jordan attempted to calm her on her own a few more times, to no avail. Then she attempted reason, something pointless on a three year old who wasn’t inconsolable. “Honey, Uncle Ribs is in his own house. He’s sleeping.”
“I NEED HIM,” Charlotte insisted, becoming impossibly more unmanageable.
Jordan wrung her hands, staring helplessly at the door. She had never seen Charlotte this upset, had never been unable to calm her before. Was it an effect of Jay’s death? At long last did Charlotte put a name to what had been amiss? Was calling for Ribs her way of grieving for Jay?
Whatever the reason, there seemed to be no end in sight. Eventually the sound would wake Nash and then she’d really be in trouble. There had only been a few combined meltdowns since Nash was born, but they had been enough to drive Jordan to the edge of sanity.
Grasping her phone, she erased the text to Gaines and called him instead.
“Jordy,” he declared in the half-alert mumble she’d come to associate with his disturbed sleep. It wasn’t the same as her incoherent midnight rambling. Instead his was ready to defend and protect, probably already included him rolling out of bed and reaching for pants. Don’t think about his pants. “What’s going on?”
He had to hear Charlotte in the background. Jordan had to almost yell to be heard. “Charlotte is having a meltdown. She wants you and I…” And I want you, too. “I know it’s the middle of the night and you have work and…”
“Jordy,” he interrupted, urging her to spit it out.
She took a breath. “Can you come?”
“I’m on my way,” he said. In the background she heard a car start and smiled. Somehow the knowledge that he would have come even before she asked was almost as comforting as his actual presence, or so she thought until, almost an impossible time later, he eased into the room and swept Charlotte into his arms.
It only took a few swipes of his hand and a couple of reassuring kisses before she stopped crying and melted into him, pressing her tear-streaked little face into his shoulder. He let her shudders and snuffles die down to a reasonable level before trying to make her talk. Eventually he asked a question.
“What’s wrong with my baby?” His tone was tender, as was his touch, middle finger stroking her forehead, pushing the wet hair off her cheeks. “Why are you so upset?”
Her tiny fists tangled in his shirt, holding tight. “I don’t want him,” she murmured, so softly they had to lean in to hear it.
Gaines looked at Jordan but she shrugged. Later she would tell him her theory about this being because of Jay’s death, but she didn’t want to bring it up when Charlotte was beginning to calm. Already her eyes were drooping.
“Who, baby?” Gaines whispered, angling her toward the bed in an attempt to ease her back under the covers.
“The man,” Charlotte insisted, voice growing softer with renewed sleep.
“What man?” Jordan asked because Gaines was now shuffling her further into the bed, righting the covers around her.
The movement came to a standstill, as did their hearts, when Charlotte sleepily mumbled. “The man who stands over my bed.”
T hey stared at each other, blinking in confusion over Charlotte’s inert form. After a considerable time, and accompanied by her snores, Gaines eased his arm from beneath her and tiptoed out of the room behind Jordan.
By unspoken agreement, Gaines would do a perimeter check. Jordan meandered to her bedroom to wait, too distracted to ponder her choice of location. She intended to perch on the edge of the bed, but evidence of her disturbed slumber proved too inviting. She eased into the tousled bed, paddling her feet contentedly. Cool sheets were a small luxury, and one she’d gladly accept.
Gaines joined her shortly, kicking off his shoes before stretching out on top of the covers. It was odd, she thought, how natural it felt to have him there. As if neither of them gave it a thought. Of course she and the gorgeous spy would confer in her bed. Where else?
Gaines reached out and touched a finger to her cheek, alerting her to the fact that he was on to her wry amusement. And now he smiled in response. The moment stretched, erasing the earlier stress.
“Find anything?” she asked, already knowing the answer. He would have led with it, if he had. She rolled toward him, tucking her hand under her cheek.
“Nope.” He rolled toward her, mimicking her pose. The bed was king size, and yet they were at the center of it, very close together.
“I heard a noise,” she confessed in a near whisper, unwilling to disturb the peace. “It woke me.”
He frowned. “What sort of noise?”
She thought back, trying and failing to place it. “I don’t know. Something that didn’t belong.” She recounted checking the house. His scowl deepened.
“You should have called me then.”
“I didn’t want to distu…” she began, but he pressed a finger gently to her lips, cutting off the word.
“Never, ever, ever would you disturb me. I want to know. Every time, every noise.”
She couldn’t respond because his finger was still on her mouth, a strangely intimate thing, to have someone touch your mouth. She swallowed hard and he did the same, removing his finger and curling it back into his palm.
“I should…” he began, but didn’t know how to continue. Neither of them knew what to do with the unprecedented situation.
Jordan reached out and gave his button-down shirt a little tug, settling the matter without addressing any of the odd tension. “You can’t sleep in this.”
He sat up, eyeing her as he reached for the hem and paused. All of a sudden she realized the problem. Gaines, perfect specimen he was, was self-conscious over his scar.
“Gaines,” she said, a bit reproachful. She’d seen him shirtless a dozen times; she didn’t care.
With a resigned sigh, he peeled off the shirt and tossed it aside, lying down, shoulders a tiny bit stiff as if bracing for something unpleasant.
Jordan stared at his namesake unabashed, newly fascinated. There was a lot about her husband and his friends she didn’t know, secrets they would take to their graves. They were cagey about their handles. To this day Jordan had no idea why her husband was called Shimmer. Jay had been tight-lipped about it, as was everyone else. But she did know how Ribs got his name. It was the entire reason for his handle, a jagged scar that ran the length of his ribcage. The remnant of a bite from a massive shark, a mission gone horribly wrong. Her finger reached out and eased over each jagged edge, tracing the outline the shark left behind. Gaines sucked a breath, muscles rippling beneath her touch. Absently she wondered if he was ticklish, but in the moment she was too intent.
“I remember this,” she whispered. Not the actual shark attack, of course. She hadn’t been present for the event. But she’d been there for the aftermath, witnessed how shaken Jay and all the guys were when they returned home, even though they’d tried to hide it, to keep going and pretend nothing was amiss. She had no idea about the others, but Jay’s nightmares had lasted for months. One night four months later he’d woken in tears and panic, clinging to her.
We almost lost him, Jordy. You have no idea how close it was. He almost bled out in my arms. If not for Ridge and the tourniquet… He either couldn’t or wouldn’t say more about what happened, but it had been enough of a glimpse to allow part of his horror to leach onto her. She had clung in return, soothing him as she shed her own tears.
Jordan swallowed a sudden lump, remembering anew. Life without Gaines was impossible to fathom. Somehow he’d always been there, hovering in the background of her life with Jay.
“You could have died,” she whispered, finger trailing the outline, all the way up before going back down again.
“Lots of times,” Gaines returned, watching her intently.
“Not the reassurance I was aiming for,” she said.
“Why do you need it?” he croaked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Her hand froze. Their eyes caught and held. She could have pawned him off, taken a dive, said something glib and offhand. We’re friends; of course I don’t want anything to happen to you.
Instead she said, “I don’t know.”
He weighed that a few beats then, satisfied, reached out and took her hand, winding their fingers together. “Okay.” He brought her knuckles to his mouth and kissed them before resting their combined hands on his chest and closing his eyes.
After a few more sleepy blinks, Jordan fell asleep, her hand still nestled in Gaines’s cozy embrace.
I n the morning Gaines woke to the feeling that someone was watching him. He lay on his stomach and Jordan, as he’d predicted, was on her back, staring ponderously at him. He thought perhaps she was having regrets over their impromptu sleepover, but then she spoke and dispelled that notion.
“How are you?” she asked, tone sincere and full of concern for his wellbeing.
He smiled because she had no idea, none whatsoever, how long he’d dreamed of this exact moment. In his life, few dreams lived up to the hype. There was a reason Confucius said to be careful what you wished for. The reality never seemed to turn out like the vision. But this, this moment, this feeling, this unnamed thing that was happening between him and Jordan—the fruition of a secret dream he’d cherished for thirteen years —was somehow impossibly better. He wondered why that was. Right now it was too early to figure it out.
“I’m good,” he said, an understatement. Ten thousand possibilities ran through his mind, every one of them wrong and inappropriate, given her fragility. She was a bubble of temptation in tiny shorts and a pre-pregnancy t-shirt, one that hadn’t stretched enough to fit her new, maternal body. He caught an enticing snippet of skin on her stomach and, not being a choirboy, reached over to stroke it with his thumb.
Maybe Jordan faced a bit of her own temptation because her hand reached out and smoothed along his shoulder, finger tracing his muscles. “Are your cuddle needs being met?”
He shook his head.
Her brows rose. “No?”
“Now you know my secret shame, Jordy; I’m a snuggle pit. An endless chasm of cuddle void.”
She giggled, her tummy moving under his fingertips. Gaines smiled harder, so hard he felt like his cheeks stretched.
“Gaines,” she said.
“Mm.”
“I like this.”
“Jordy.”
“Mm.”
“Me too.”
The bedroom door opened. They saw no one until Nash’s head popped over the side of the bed. He scrambled up, pulling himself with fists held in blanket, an ace climber, until he reached Jordan. As before he had no qualms about claiming his breakfast. Unlike previously Jordan was awake enough to be discreet in her arrangement. The intimacy of the moment only added to the spell now weaving around them. Gaines reached out and sleeked his fingers over Nash’s fine baby hair, his heart tumbling when Nash grasped his finger and gave it a squeeze.
The moment felt impossibly beautiful, and then somehow it got better when Charlotte padded into the room, climbed up on Gaines’s side of the bed, and shimmied down between them. Gaines kissed the top of her head and she nestled against him with renewed drowsiness.
“Gaines,” Jordan whispered.
“Hmm,” he replied.
“I like this even better.”
It had never occurred to Gaines that he might love someone’s kids as well as he loved hers, until it happened. “Same, Jordy, same.”
They shared a smile over the kids’ heads. Jordan reached out a few fingers. He grasped them and gave them a squeeze and somehow that tiny touch was more potent than anything that came before.