Chapter Eight #2
“Ford,” she said softly. “I’m sorry for pushing.” Her pretty blue eyes seemed sincere, and he froze, torn apart by all of the messy emotions colliding in his head. Slowly, she reached up and tapped one of the small boxes being crushed in his grip. “How about this one?”
Right. Focus. Nodding stiffly, he forced his fingers to relax while he stuffed the anger and confusion and gut-deep feelings of loss back into a vault in the deepest recesses of his mind.
“Okay.” He returned the losing colors to the shopping bag, and opened the box of Medium Chestnut Brown to review the instructions.
An hour later, Natalie looked like a different person, and he needed a break from being in such close proximity to her, touching her, watching her beautiful face.
The mall was closed on Sundays, so they spent the rest of the day with Henri playing cards, sipping wine on the back patio in the evening, and walking the grounds of the fallow farmland after dinner.
Henri’s disposition had improved greatly, which made Ford feel a little better about dropping Natalie on the man’s doorstep.
The doctor would never admit it, but he’d probably been very lonely.
And still grieving. Having someone to care for, to talk to, to be with had been good for him.
That was her superpower and also her biggest flaw.
She made every room brighter with her smiles and teasing and general cheer.
But she also pushed and poked, and didn’t always recognize when she’d crossed a line.
Or maybe she didn’t care. She seemed to feed off getting any kind of reaction. Like a child desperate for her parents’ attention and willing to do whatever it takes to get it, consequences be damned. It made her the most fascinating and most frustrating woman he’d ever met.
Honestly, she reminded him a little of Connor, which… Well, the notion had him lying awake, staring at the ceiling long past his bedtime.
The next morning, he tried to look relaxed as he and Natalie emerged from the hypermarché—like a surprisingly nice discount supermarket—into the corridor of the bright, modern shopping mall in Marseille.
With chin-length brown curls, no makeup, and clear eyeglasses, the woman next to him had become unrecognizable.
Still gorgeous, but an understated, less vibrant version of herself, helped greatly by the meek posture she’d magically adopted.
She also wore a lightweight shawl around her shoulders that made her sling less obvious, and carried a bag of new clothes in her free hand.
Every time he looked her way, something jolted inside him.
Her disguise was so good, it might’ve fooled him if he hadn’t been there for the transition.
Which was, of course, the entire point. But he had been there.
Intimately involved. Cradling her head as he rinsed the dye from her newly chopped hair, trying to ignore the desire to lean over and trace the shape of her lips with his tongue.
Fuck.
The mall at least kept his mind—mostly—on other things, namely watching the crowd for threats.
“Lunch time?” she asked, keeping her voice low. They’d agreed to limit conversation in public since she wasn’t fluent in anything but English. Marseille was a large, culturally diverse city, but the less notice they attracted the better.
Unfortunately, going unnoticed wasn’t exactly his strongest skill.
The obvious presence of a bodyguard played a large role in deterring attacks, so he usually went out of his way to not blend in.
But since this role required him to be as invisible as possible, he wore a pair of square-framed glasses, two days’ worth of stubble, and his hair flopping over his forehead instead of combed back.
He couldn’t make himself smaller, but he wasn’t exceptionally tall, nor was he super jacked. As long as he managed to be discreet in his surveillance, he shouldn’t stand out. Much.
His partner helped. How did she make this look so easy? “I could eat.” He followed the signs to the food court where they picked one of the busier lines.
“It’s not bad,” Natalie said ten minutes later, “but how is this supposed to be a taco?” She took a bite of what was basically a flat grilled burrito stuffed with a combination of fillings and sauce that weren’t necessarily Mexican inspired at all.
More like a hot, grilled tortilla wrap than what Americans knew as tacos.
He chuckled, relaxing a little now that they were tucked into a secluded corner of the dining area, his back to the wall, half shielded by a potted rubber tree. “No idea, but these shops are everywhere. Not as popular as pizza, though. The Marseille train station even has a pizza vending machine.”
Her eyes widened behind the thin gold frames of her glasses. “Wow. I wonder if it’s any good?”
“I’ve never been desperate enough to try it.” Part of him wanted to risk it with her, though. Good or bad, he somehow knew she’d make the experience more interesting.
She sipped her Orangina. “I’d love to get one for the office, but it could be dangerous having pizza anytime I wanted.”
No, she could be dangerous. He smiled and nodded, pretending that he wasn’t tearing himself apart on the inside, and attacked his meal, while surreptitiously keeping tabs on the other shoppers.
“You ready for me to get started?” Natalie nodded toward the bag on the chair to her left, which held the refurbished PC laptop he’d bought.
No. “Go for it.”
After lunch, Natalie and Ford took another trip through the superstore for groceries. They’d planned some simple meals she could help him cook to repay Henri for doing all the food prep the past few weeks.
Now, she watched the scenery change outside the car window as they left the suburbs of Marseille and drove into the rolling hills of the countryside. The mall had almost felt like being back in the US, but with everything written in French.
If she were here for a different reason, she’d love to explore Marseille and its port.
She wanted to hike around Les Calanques—a series of coves in the high cliffs above the Mediterranean.
She’d seen amazing photos in a guidebook at the farmhouse.
She also wanted to take the train to Cannes and Nice. See Antibes. Explore Monaco.
Maybe someday, if she made it out of this mess.
She tapped her fingers on the lid of the laptop Ford had bought her.
On the gardening forum, there’d been a short exchange between Emma and the Night Herons’ computer expert Dallas, but only to make contact and establish private communication in an anonymous chat room.
Natalie had left a message of her own, and then hit the news sites to read everything she could find involving her team.
Everyone was safe, the bad guys were dead.
So was she.
That had been fucking surreal. Reading about her own demise.
It had been interesting and enlightening, but hadn’t left her with any clues to who was after her now.
She just had to scrape up the patience to wait for a response from Emma or Dallas.
She hadn’t told Ford that other people on the team might see her message.
He didn’t know she had a team at all. Didn’t need to.
Lying to him felt icky, but necessary. And one of many reasons she needed to quit thinking about their kiss two days ago.
Yeah, right. If she had that kind of willpower, it never would’ve happened in the first place.
“How long do you think it’ll take to get a response?” Ford asked, breaking into her reverie.
“No idea.” She drank the dregs from the bottle of Orangina she’d bought at lunch, savoring the sweetness.
“When we’re in open communication, we don’t always monitor the forum.
We use a different one to communicate with some of our informants, but she’ll probably check this one at the same time, just to be safe. It’s a habit.”
Hopefully. If the team had been forced to operate even more underground, they’d probably be using alternative methods of contact more frequently than they used to.
The situation sucked overall, but in this case, it might work in her favor.
“I’ll take a look before bed tonight.” If she could wait that long.
At least Ford had caved and bought a hotspot they could use anonymously from the farmhouse.
She’d convinced him it was safer if she didn’t have to leave the house just to find Wi-Fi.
Probably true, but she also didn’t want to wait until he was willing to take her to town again.
And she wanted to be able to do more research without him hovering.
“Speaking of bed…” She looked at him. Even in profile, he was ridiculously handsome.
His jaw muscle jumped. “Don’t.”
Pretending to pout, she said, “You’re no fun.”
“If I were, you’d be bored.” His hands twisted on the steering wheel. “No challenge.”
She put her free hand on her chest and said, breathlessly, “You really know me.”
He rolled his eyes and gave a little shake of his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
Rolling her smile between her teeth, she returned to looking out the window as they approached the small city of Aubagne at the foot of the Garlaban.
“Did you know you can join the French Foreign Legion here?”
A little surprised he’d initiated casual conversation, she glanced his way. “That’s still a thing?”
“It is.” He exited the highway onto a two-lane road, heading toward the mountain and the farmhouse. “The only way to enlist is to come to France and knock on the door of one of the recruiting centers. Supposedly, they’re open 24/7/365.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “You looked it up once.”
“Actually, my brother did. Our grandfather was in the Legion—the officers have to be French—and Con had this idea that it would be a grand adventure.”
“But?” She could hardly believe he was voluntarily talking about his brother again.
Ford’s nostalgic smile made her stomach dance. “He found out that recruits were allowed to have up to six missing teeth.”
A laugh burst out of her. “Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Apparently. But I think it was the five-year obligation that scared him. At nineteen, he couldn’t imagine committing to anything for that long.”
And then he’d only lived a couple years longer. Damn. Her chest tightened. “I don’t blame him. Who wants to be surrounded by a bunch of macho mercenaries with poor dental hygiene?”
“Right?” Ford didn’t smile, but he sounded amused.
Nat’s breath came a little easier. “Can women join the Legion?”
“You thinking of enlist—”
She glanced at him when he stopped mid sentence, but his gaze had narrowed on the farmhouse as they approached. Instead of turning onto the side street that led to the driveway, he kept driving.
“What’s wrong?”
“Maybe nothing.” His knuckles whitened. “But the front door was ajar. I’m not taking any chances.”
She glanced back at the house but all she could see now was the back of the house above the fence line. Maybe Henri had let the dog out. But why out front? And wouldn’t they have seen him out there? Dread settled heavily on Natalie’s chest.
Ford continued along the perimeter of the property. As soon as they crested the hill and were out of sight, he pulled over and shut down the engine, putting the key fob in the cup holder. “Stay here. I’m going to check it out, and I’ll come back for you.”
Her heart skipped. What if he didn’t? “Let me come. I can help.” With…whatever.
He made a frustrated noise in his throat. “I’ll be faster if I don’t have to worry about you.”
Worry about her getting hurt, or worry about her getting in the way?
Probably sensing her desire to protest, he said, “You’re still injured, Nat. Just this once can you not argue with me?”
The accusation hit her right in the throat, but she nodded. “Are you carrying?” She’d feel better knowing he had a weapon.
His gaze hardened as he shook his head. “Stay. Here.”
“Be careful.”
But he was already gone.