18. Galahad
Galahad
The GPS announced our turn, and I took a narrow lane that wound between overgrown hedgerows. We’d left Paris an hour ago and had spent the last twenty minutes on roads that had needed their pavement replaced at least five years ago.
“Almost there.” Grace had been quiet for most of the drive, watching the countryside roll past—vineyards, stone walls, villages that looked like they hadn’t changed in centuries. Different from the nervous energy she’d had in London. Here, she seemed settled.
The hedgerows opened up, and the cottage appeared ahead of us.
It had ancient stone walls and a slate roof with moss at the edges.
Roses climbed higher than the windows from a wild garden, with herbs and flowers tangled together.
An old Citro?n sat in the gravel drive, next to an electric bicycle.
This was exactly where I would have imagined Jean ending up.
Somewhere old and simple, full of books and mementos, far from the dust and danger we’d shared.
I put the rental car into park and killed the engine.
“It’s beautiful,” Grace said, sliding out of her seat.
The front door opened before we reached it, and Jean emerged into the afternoon light, arms spreading wide and his gray beard split by a grin.
“Galahad!” He pulled me into an embrace, thumping my back hard enough to let me know he may have been old, but he was far from frail. “It’s been too long, mon ami. Far too long.”
“Jean, it’s good to see you again.”
He released me and held me at arm’s length, studying my face. His hair had gone fully gray since I’d last seen him, and the lines around his eyes were deeper, but the sharpness was still there. “You look terrible. When did you last sleep properly?”
“On the train over from London.”
“That doesn’t count, and you’re a liar.”
“Wait.” Grace’s head tilted. “You didn’t sleep at the hotel?”
“I had other priorities.” I nodded toward Jean. “This is Grace Laurent. Grace, Dr. Jean Dupont.”
Jean turned to her, taking both her hands in his. “Any friend of Galahad’s is family here, and you shall call me Jean. Come inside. You must see the place.”
I grabbed our bags from the trunk and followed the two of them inside.
“Welcome to my home.” The front door opened directly into the main room, and Jean swept his arms out. “She was built in the seventeenth century, best anyone can tell. I’ve added electricity, plumbing, and a wonderful kitchen, but I’ve tried to keep her bones intact.”
A massive stone fireplace dominated the far wall, running floor to ceiling, the hearth blackened by what had to be four hundred years of fires. The stones were irregular, with crumbling mortar in places.
“The fireplace is why I bought her,” Jean said, running a hand along the mantel. “I walked in, saw this, and knew I was home.”
Books covered every surface. Stacked on tables, lined up on shelves, piled in corners. Photographs clustered on the walls and a glass-topped display case near the window held rows of tarnished coins.
Grace drifted toward the case. “What are these?”
“Metal detecting is one of my hobbies.” Jean joined her, lifting the glass lid. “All of these are verified Roman coins. That one came from a field in England. This, from a vineyard in Spain. And this.” He picked up a coin worn almost smooth. “This is from a riverbank not ten kilometers from here.”
“Fascinating.”
“Each one is a small piece of evidence. At its peak, the Roman Empire stretched from Wales to Iraq, and ordinary people carried these coins in their pockets the entire way.” He set the coin back in its place. “They’re history you can hold in your hand.”
Grace leaned closer, studying the worn faces stamped into the metal. “How long have you been collecting?”
“I found my first coin when I was seven. It’s what led me to my career.” He gestured toward a photograph on the wall, of a group of men and women standing outside a stone structure. “I know our Galahad speaks as little as possible?—”
“I talk when there’s something important to say,” I interjected, but he ignored me.
“—but did he tell you about Task Force Grail?”
Grace looked over her shoulder at me. “The work you told me about in Afghanistan?”
“It was called Task Force Legacy, but yes.”
Jean tapped a figure at the edge of the frame. Younger, leaner, but recognizable. “He never wanted to be in the photographs. Always standing guard instead of celebrating.”
“Some of us were working,” I said from near the fireplace.
“He was the best we had. Kept us safe when things got dangerous, and learned more about ancient metalwork than half my graduate students.”
That was my cue to leave. “I’m going to get some wood.”
Jean winked at me as he steered Grace toward a worn leather chair and gestured for her to sit.
I made my way through the kitchen, out the back door, and quickly found the woodpile. There was more than enough to bring in for the evening, in case it cooled off enough to warrant a fire. But there was far more uncut wood, and an axe leaning against a stump. Time to work off a little tension.
After verifying the axe was sharp, I balanced the first log on the stump, hefted the axe, and swung. It lodged halfway through the wood, and I lifted the whole thing up to swing again. The two halves flew to the sides. That was exactly what I needed.
When the next log was in place, I imagined the face of the man who’d followed Grace. Thunk. The look in her eyes when I’d found her. Thunk. Next piece of wood. How she’d frozen at Tristan’s when I told her the police confirmed someone had been in her apartment. Thunk.
Clear your head.
I chopped the next five pieces of wood, focusing on my breath and my movement.
Searching for my center. But those green eyes kept invading my thoughts, like they had last night, when I couldn’t sleep.
She’d curled up on the little bed next to mine, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how close she was.
And about how my job was to protect her, not make comments about carrying her tired ass up the stairs—especially when it had resulted in her exhausted smile that went straight to my dick.
Thunk.
What was it about her? I’d worked security for plenty of gorgeous women in the past, and I’d never had this problem.
More than half of them had come on to me at some point, which was one of the reasons I kept moving from contract to contract.
Separating my head and my heart had always been easy with my clients.
Hell, separating my head and my dick had always been easy.
But now? On this job?
Thunk.
Sweat trickled down my spine, and I peeled off my shirt, glowering at the stack of wood. Grace and Jean would talk each other’s ears off for hours if I left them to it. Probably for the best. She likely needed someone to talk to after hanging around with me for a couple of days.
So cut all the fucking wood for him.
If I did that, my muscles would ache in the morning, and if anything serious happened, I wouldn’t be able to take care of Grace. She was my job. Everything else came after.
But as I rolled my left shoulder to loosen it up, another pair of green eyes invaded my brain.
Carissa’s. My memory flew back seven years, when I’d taken the only bullet that had dared to find me.
It had been little more than a graze, but Pendragon had flown me to Bagram and onward to Landstuhl, then home for two weeks to recoup before coming back for light duties.
And what did I find when I came home?
An empty fucking apartment. Carissa had been screwing some other guy since before I’d even left the States. The phantom pain that popped up when I thought about her ordered me to stop chopping.
Fuck that.
I grabbed another piece of wood, and as the axe fell, the other pair of green eyes wedged their way in.
My mother’s bright green eyes looked up at me from where she lay on the floor.
They were bloodshot and swollen, her lip split, and bruises covered her neck.
My left shoulder was bleeding from the broken bottle my father had been threatening her with.
Thunk.
It was always green eyes.
Another piece of wood.
I lifted the axe over my head and slammed it through the log with one blow. I kept swinging the axe, breathing and trying to find my center, until the stacks of cut wood on either side of the stump were high enough I had to stop and stack them.
And my brain settled on Grace’s green eyes.
It was dangerous to fixate on my client, but far safer than thinking about the other two women.
The safest option was to focus on the wood, and I tried my damnedest. Once everything was back where it belonged, I pulled my shirt on and carried an armful of firewood into the house.
“—like they were the most important person in the room,” Grace was saying when I came back in. “She used to say the best conversations happened over coffee. That’s part of why I left my old job to open the coffee shop.”
Her old job? The coffee shop suited her so well, I hadn’t imagined she’d ever done anything else.
“Thank you, Galahad,” said Jean. “The days are hot, but the evenings are cool, so a fire will be welcome.”
“You should have your wood delivered pre-cut.” I stacked the wood next to the fireplace as he laughingly waved my comment off.
“You were saying, Grace,” Jean said, “about how your grandmother inspired you?”
“I went to school for finance.” Grace’s shoulders tightened slightly. “I worked for a company in Detroit that I thought suited me. The money was excellent, and I had really good reviews, but Didi said it was sapping the life out of me.”
“And she was right?”
Grace’s jaw tightened, and she took a breath, grief flickering across her face. But she obviously shoved it all down, because she lifted her chin and smiled. “She was always right about things like that.”
Had I ever asked her a single question about her grandmother? Grace talked about the woman the way some people talked about religion—constant, reverent, woven into everything. And I’d just let the stories blow past me, treating them like background noise instead of actually listening.
I should have asked.
No, you shouldn’t have, because this is a fucking job, Garrett.
“Jean,” I said, “we were hoping you could examine the egg.”
“Of course, of course. But you’ve had a long few days, and I’ve been alone too long.” He rose and offered Grace a hand to help her up, which she didn’t need, but still accepted. “I must prepare dinner first. Besides, you two are staying the night, no?”
“Jean, I’d like you to examine the egg first.”
“The egg has waited a hundred years, Galahad. A few more hours won’t change anything.” He retrieved three glasses from a cabinet and selected a bottle of wine. He paused, glancing at me. “Still don’t drink?”
“No.”
“Do you mind if we do?”
“No.”
He opened the bottle and poured two glasses. “I’ll be right back.”
Grace picked her glass up. “Why don’t you drink?”
There were too many reasons to count. Messed with my focus. Gave me nightmares. Reminded me of my father. But I settled for: “I don’t like the flavor.”
Grace accepted my answer with a small nod and took a sip of her wine.
Jean caught my eye as he returned with a bottle of still water. He knew. I could only turn down so many vodka toasts and local alcohol before the Legacy team started making guesses and I’d finally shared some part of the truth. None of them had ever pushed afterward.
“Now! Dinner.” Jean clapped his hands and led Grace into the kitchen. He already had several items on the counter, including some small onions. “Grace, can you chop these shallots? Thin slices, like so.” He pulled out a knife, made a quick motion to demonstrate, then handed her the blade.
I leaned against the doorframe as Grace settled into her assigned task.
Finance? Her grandmother was right—that wouldn’t have suited her. A woman like her needed people around her. People she could make smile.
Not people like me.