Chapter 9
B eth dropped the secure phone Kane gave her this morning into her tote bag as he settled next to her in his pickup truck.
He took off his cowboy hat and tossed it in the back seat. His black leather jacket shifted. The shoulder holster he’d slipped on over his white Henley shirt before they left the house came into view. A bit of tension released from her neck, knowing the gun in her bag had a friend. She prayed they didn’t have cause to play together.
Reaching for the seat belt, she pulled it across her body. It clicked into place along with her gaze on his jean-clad thigh.
The side of Kane’s lips tugged up in a smirk. “In case you’re wondering, yes, it is.”
She snapped her head up. “Huh?”
“My leg. It’s just as spectacular as you’re imagining it.”
Heat crept into her cheeks as her gaze fixed on his dimple. “I wasn’t imagining anything of the sort.” More like imagining what it felt like under her touch. Against her own thighs as he… “I’ve seen Chris’s and Nic’s arms. I know what your steel, or super, or whatever you want to call it, looks like.”
And that knowledge gave her plenty of material to work with when she fantasized about what other wonders awaited under his pants.
After she’d said goodbye to Scarlett and Chris last night, she hadn’t argued when Nic and Linc stayed so Kane could go home and pack. As Linc sat on her sofa and watched a football game and Nic helped her clean, she wondered what horrific events had brought the two of them to VIPER. When she’d finally laid her head on her pillow, she wondered the same about Kane. The thought still occupied her mind when she found him in her kitchen this morning with coffee and bagels from her favorite deli.
He took her hand and placed it on his knee. “You have no idea how hard my steel is. Or how super I can be.”
Warmth radiated through his jeans. “I expected it to be cold.” Last night it hadn’t felt cold when it vibrated against her under the table, but she figured that was her own body heat.
“Scarlett worked some sort of magic to make it feel like flesh and blood. It’s all networked with my brain.”
“Can you feel me? I mean my hand?” She pressed the pads of her fingers into his steel as he backed out of the parking spot. The questions—and the contact—felt more personal, more intimate than any encounter she’d ever had with a guy.
“Yes.” He placed his hand over hers. “I can feel the pressure. It’s hard to explain, but I can feel you. Your heat.”
She swallowed a squeak as his leg vibrated beneath her palm. “Can you feel pain?”
He shrugged as he pulled out of her neighborhood and onto the main road. “It’s hard to tell. I feel phantom pain all the time. My brain still thinks I have a biological leg attached to my hip, so actual pain and phantom pain are indistinguishable. It mostly aches where my leg is cut off, and the steel is attached. It hurts today. The warmth is helping.”
Knowing she could make him feel better shot heat from the corner of her smile into her cheeks. “So, I’m a human heating pad.”
“Yup. And I’m a human weapon.” He glanced at her and winked. “Looks like we both have superpowers.”
If only her superpower would incinerate the ridiculous notion that she was cursed.
“You okay?” Kane squeezed her knee.
“Yeah.” She pulled her hand away from his steel. The list of things she needed to discuss with him stretched for miles, but she couldn’t help but ask what had been on her mind since the day they’d met. “How did it happen?”
She studied his profile, his jaw moving from side to side as he maneuvered the truck through Saturday morning traffic. The silence, save for honking horns, lingered for what felt like an hour. “Forget it; you don’t have to tell me. It was rude of me to ask.” She didn’t like to talk about her trauma. What made her think he wanted to share his?
He stopped at a light and looked at her. “No. It’s okay. You told me what happened to you. It’s only fair I share my story.”
Guilt settled in her chest. She hadn’t told him everything, only what he needed to know.
He hit the gas as the light turned red. “I was in the Middle East on a routine maneuver when we came upon a mess of IEDs. You’d think the improvised in improvised explosive device would mean it was built half-assed, but every device worked perfectly. Too many of my team, men and women with families back home, lost more than a leg.”
An image of Kane as he lay in a fiery field with burning debris raining down on his broken body had her hand slipping back to his thigh. “I’m so sorry.”
He glanced at her. “I survived. I’m grateful for that, and grateful VIPER offered me a second chance at my military career. I don’t take that for granted.”
“I’m glad you survived.” Clearing the emotion from her throat, she drew her hand away from the impossibly hard steel under his jeans and focused on her own situation. “We need to set some parameters for our pretend relationship.”
He smiled. “Lay it on me, darlin.’”
And like that, sunshine burst through the clouds in his eyes. Pleasure at being able to bring him out of the dark rippled through her.
“Here’s how I see it, cowboy. There’s no need to be all sugarplum and couple-like unless we’re in a public place where someone might be watching. Traveling and staying together sends the message I’m living my life oblivious to the threats hanging over me. That’s what we want, right? To make them think we’re not on to them?”
Kane grinned. “First, I’m never going to stop calling you sugarplum. Second, I agree we don’t need to be couple-like when we’re alone. But we do need to let everyone we meet think we’re together because one, maybe two, murderers are watching you.”
She shot her gaze to the rearview mirror.
He looked too. “We’re not being followed, but that doesn’t mean someone isn’t monitoring us. Cameras and satellites can track our location just fine.” He checked the mirror again. “Scarlett mentioned your parents are in Africa on a safari.”
“Yes. Their plane took off about an hour ago.” And they didn’t expect to hear from her until Christmas Day, when this cartel crap would hopefully be over .
“Then we only need to worry about your friends. Why aren’t you spending Christmas with your parents?”
“My dad was a firefighter. He spent many holidays working, so we’ve always celebrated on our own schedule. We did our Christmas festivities a couple of weeks ago. When this opportunity came up, I encouraged them to take it. I can only stay away from the office for a few days anyway and want to be back in DC for Christmas Eve mass.”
“Don’t they have churches in North Benson?”
“Not a fabulous old stone church with a view of the Washington Monument from the steps.” A smile lifted her tense lips. “I don’t typically go to mass, except on holidays, but I teach a science class there for the youth group kids a couple of times a month. What about you? Do you mind spending the holidays alone?”
“Actually, this will be my first Christmas not spending it with Gran. She’s going to visit my twin sister Livvie and her boyfriend in Atlanta.”
“Twins? That must have been fun growing up.”
“Yeah, she was a lot of fun to tease. Despite being annoying, she turned out pretty okay. She’s an orthopedic surgeon now.” He blew by the entrance to the beltway. “We have to make a quick stop to see Gran and say Merry Christmas before she leaves for the airport.”
The way he said we felt way too comfortable. Like she could get used to spending holidays with Kane and Gran at the house they shared. “When we get near my parents’ house, we need to stop for a bottle of wine.” She rattled off the name of a liquor store. “I drank the last of my favorite when I visited a couple of weeks ago.”
“Got it. Remember, when we are in public, you treat me as your charming, handsome boyfriend.”
She rolled her eyes. Her arrival in town with a man on her arm would be like a Christmas gift for the gossip brigade. Except they’d have the added fun of speculating how long he’d live.
As Kane took the next exit, Scarlett’s words repeated in her head.
Kane will think your curse is nonsense, just like you should.
She should think it was nonsense. Time was supposed to heal her morbid thinking, and yet here she was, too afraid to fall for the guy sitting next to her and too afraid to tell him why. Maybe she should have stayed home and went to work where it was safe and Kane-free. Between the gossips who reveled in rewriting her past into a fractured fairy tale, the stalker who wouldn’t go away, and the new uninvited cartel characters in her story, North Benson felt triply unsafe.
“Wait.” She touched Kane’s arm. “What if my parents’ house is bugged? What if Chavez or?—"
“Relax. Nic had a couple of his ex-military buddies sweep the place. It’s clear.”
Telling her to relax in his country twang had the opposite effect. So did his explanation. “They broke into my parents’ house?”
“No. One of Nic’s friends owns the security company they use. He sent them a message late last night saying someone was coming today to fix a broken camera your dad had reported. He and his team did more than a simple repair.”
“You could have asked me first before you did that.”
“You were asleep, and it needed to be done to keep you safe.”
“I may not be a super soldier, but I know how to protect myself.” For two years, she’d controlled every decision to ensure her safety, from choosing the best defensive driving course to which martial arts school to attend to which brand of Mace to put on her key chain. Control kept her from taking permanent residence in her secure lab. Since Chavez stole her cake, she could feel in her gut, in her heart, that hard-won power unraveling thread by thread. She held on to the flimsy pieces and rattled off everything she’d done to take command of her life.
“Remarkable work, Dr. Parker.” Kane stopped at a traffic light. “What you have done may be good enough if a lone stalker attacks you again, but Chavez and his associates will outnumber, outgun, and outmaneuver you before your brain has time to tell your muscles to move. Now, tell me about your parents in case they come up in conversation.”
She pursed her lips together as her last scrap of control flew out the window. He was right. All her work would amount to a swat on the kneecap if she met Chavez and his men face to face. She stifled her frustration as she stretched out her legs. “My mom’s a retired nursing professor. Now, she heads up fundraising for the local hospital. I’m on the board, which is why I want to be at the party tonight. All proceeds go to the new cancer wing.”
“So, you’re both smarty-pants that give back to the community?”
“Yeah, we’re pretty amazing.” Her voice flattened out as she toyed with the medallion hanging in the V of her sweater. “I spent a lot of time at the hospital when I was in high school with a, uh, friend of mine who had cancer. I wanted to give back to the people who helped him.” She glanced at Kane. Respect glimmered in his gaze. She fed off that and forced a spark in her voice. “My dad retired from the North Benson Fire Department. Now he takes do-it-yourself classes at the local home store. He just renovated the kitchen himself and did a great job.”
“Maybe he can give me tips on how to renovate mine and Gran’s place. The kitchen is too small for us to cook together.”
“That’s…sweet.” She chewed on her lip instead of asking a dozen more questions about his life with Gran beyond what she knew already. After he’d lost his leg, Gran came East to take care of him and now they shared a house. She had a feeling the rest of the story would make her like him even more. “What about your parents?”
“My dad was an Air Force pilot. He was killed in action when I was seventeen.”
“Oh, Kane.”
He shifted his jaw as he glanced at her. The glint of sorrow she’d seen in his eyes earlier flickered.
“After my dad died, my mom struggled with taking care of herself and the house, so we all moved in with Gran and Gramps. A few months later she…”
Beth stared at his white-knuckled grip on the wheel. Holding her breath, she prayed the dip in his voice and the hint of anguish in his tone didn’t mean what she feared.
“She died after Livvie and I left for college.”
“I’m so, so sorry.” A memory from two weeks ago when she’d met Scarlett and the VIPER boys for dinner popped into her mind so suddenly she flinched.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Kane said as Nic slid into the vacant seat next to him at the table.
Nic scrubbed his hands down his face. With a sigh, he looked around the Italian restaurant like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be there.
Beth leaned closer from her spot several chairs away. “Are you okay, Nic?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I was on a date when I got a call about my buddy. He was one of the guys on my team when everything blew to hell.” He dropped his chin to the spot where his steel arm met his flesh-and-blood shoulder. “He survived the blast. Got married. Had a few kids.” He stared glassy-eyed across the room. “His wife was…” Nic’s voice broke. “Sh e was killed in a drive-by last night. I still can’t believe it. My buddy was tough enough to survive a fucking ambush, but he’s such a mess right now he had to send the kids to his parents because he can’t take care of them.”
Beth glanced at Kane’s profile as he steered the pickup truck into the next lane. She didn’t know why she’d pivoted her attention from Nic to him that night at the restaurant as the tragic story unfolded. She did remember the barefaced torment in his eyes when Nic spoke about his buddy being so distraught he couldn’t take care of his family.
Kane’s similar words rippled through her ears.
“Afterward, my mom struggled with taking care of herself and the house, so we all moved in with Gran and Gramps.”
Kane had quickly masked his reaction at the restaurant just as he did now, but she’d seen enough to know that the wisecracking cowboy had a big heart that had been broken.
Now she knew why, and it broke hers too.
“I’m so sorry about your parents.” She tried to search his gaze, but he kept his eyes on the road.
He nodded, his grip loosening on the wheel as his body relaxed. “If my dad were here, he’d kick my ass because I chose to serve with Marine Corps instead of the Air Force.”
His wide grin and deep laughter lightened the grave mood.
She smiled too. “Did your dad encourage you to be in the military?”
“Every man in my family has served for generations. I never thought of doing anything else but committing my life to protecting my country.”
She wanted to ask if that existence was as lonely as it sounded, but the tense set of his jaw indicated he wouldn’t be receptive to her questions. The nostalgic edge to his voice said the memories were bittersweet. “Do we need to pretend in front of Gran?”
“No. That woman can smell bullshit from a mile away. And we don’t have to worry about my house being bugged. It’s as secure as VIPER headquarters. There are cameras in every room, except the private areas, but even those have listening devices I can tap into if I sense something’s wrong, like if Gran isn’t returning my messages or something.”
Beth giggled, half at his acute vigilance and half at herself for liking him even more because he watched out for his grandmother.
“Hey, don’t laugh. I look out for those who are important to me.” He pulled into a driveway in the middle of a quiet suburban street. “Don’t tell her. She’ll have my ass if she finds out. Hell, she may already know. You remind me of her sometimes. Smart, with a respectable, yet annoying, ‘I got this’ attitude.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment. And your devotion is sweet in an over-the-top sort of way.” Pulling off her seat belt, she took in the long ranch house the color of Kane’s eyes as he came around to open her door. He really needed to stop being so chivalrous. So attentive with his domineering, sexy brand of charm. So adorably dedicated when he talked about his grandmother. And he needed to stop calling her smart. She was far from it. Smart people didn’t believe in curses.