by Tara Brown
I almost laughed but managed to keep it under check. “Of course.”
"That is her mission in life.” Coop joked.
I gave him a glare. His siblings hugged him once more as Suzanne gave my kids hugs. “Take good care of your mom and John.”
Mitch acted confused. I nudged him. “Coop's name is John.” Mitch's face glowed. Coop grinned back. “You better still call me Coop though. I don’t want to get confused and think you're talking to my dad.”
“I like John better. I always thought Coop was a weird name.”
We all laughed. Suzanne hugged him once more. “Out of the mouths of babes.”
Mitch started to look confused again. Coop ruffled his hair. “Okay, we have to go.” Coop gave his dad a smile. “Thanks for letting us stay.”
His dad winked. “Have a safe trip.”
We walked out and got in the SUV we had rented and drove into Anchorage. He parked the SUV and turned back toward the kids. “Who is ready for three days of fun?”
“What?”
He winked at me. “We’re going to Vancouver, in Canada, by cruise ship. So we'll have to stay on a huge boat with heated pools, saunas, arcades, kids’ club, and all the restaurants you can imagine. It's going to be extremely hard to decide if this is the thing we want. I mean, I know it's a sacrifice to miss three more days of school, after already missing a few. So you'll have to decide if you want to do this or the drive to Vancouver. Either way, it’s three days.”
Mitch gave me a questioning stare. Jules was screaming and shouting and asking a million questions. She attacked Coop.
"You ready?" I asked Mitch.
He beamed and nodded.
I didn’t know how Coop had done it, but I followed him to the massive cruise ship and boarded with him. He had our Canadian passports and boarding tickets. Apparently, we had been on the cruise the entire time and had only left the ship to explore Anchorage.
As I watched him laugh and joke and point out things for the kids to see, my stomach sank.
He had let all his guards down and let us in.
That scared me.
When we got on board, I was stunned at how much he’d pulled off without me knowing. It shouldn’t have surprised me.
Our room was a suite. So the kids had their own room but no door out into the hallway. That made me feel better. What had me feeling a little strange were the bags in our room. Packed suitcases with swimsuits, dresses, raincoats, and yoga pants. He held up a pair as he opened the bags. “I didn’t forget your favorite.”
I smiled at the Lululemon pants. “How?”
“Jack, of course. The guy is a genius. This was all handled days ago.”
I was baffled. “How did you get the clothes on board?”
“I work for this agency who has connections, and they do things for their people so our missions are easier. It's a good gig, unless your mission is in the desert somewhere and you're stuck sweating your ass off and eating dust.”
I folded my arms. “You're annoying sometimes.”
He came over to me, wrapping his arms around me and tilting my chin upward. “Are you over him?”
“James?”
He shook his head. My stomach began to sink again. He stepped back. “Let me know when you are.”
I couldn’t fight the expression on my face. It was obvious I wanted to say I was over him, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t lie to Coop. Servario had broken my heart, even if it was my own fault.
He changed the subject quickly, “You know what Vancouver has?” I shook my head. He raised a brow. “Lululemon outlet stores.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Rachel wears that crap too. When we were at the house, she told me she gets her pants there at the outlet. It's way cheaper.”
“Where do they all live?”
He sat on the bed. “Brant and Sarah and the kids live in Anchorage, near Mom and Dad. Rachel lives in Washington. She works in Seattle but has a house in a suburb just outside it. Louise lives in California where Maria and Stan also live. Stan is her husband; he never visits.”
I pulled my bathing suit out of the bag. “Do they know about your dad?”
His eyes twinkled. “My siblings know Dad worked for the government in something he never talked about. They know when he retired we all got new names and new IDs. We lived in Hawaii before. They know what they need to know. I was a kid when we went underground. Maria was getting ready to leave home. She's ten years older than me. She was eighteen and so angry. But we had to start over. Mom and Dad moved to Anchorage and they haven’t left since.”
“You started over completely?”
“Just like your kids. We get new names and new lives and new everything.”
“It’s hard for kids to leave everything behind. I feel bad for them.”
He laughed as if it were at something in his head he wasn’t sharing with me. “They'll bounce back. Kids are resilient.”
“That they are. So you and Rachel are the only ones who work for the government now?”
He scowled. “Rachel isn’t one of us.”
“Dude, she so is. She is one of us. I guarantee she is.”
“No, she isn’t. She's a photographer and a chaotic mess. Trust me, she’s not an agent.” He sounded certain.
Had I imagined it?
“Okay. I seriously thought she was one of us.” I brought my bathing suit into the bathroom and pulled it on. The images of Rachel and the other siblings filtered through my mind. I checked my face in the mirror and whispered, “She so is.” I just needed to determine why she hadn’t told him.
I left the bathroom to find my two kids already in the suits and ready to hit the hot tub.
When we left the room, Coop took my hand in his. We walked like a family, and I couldn’t help but wish it were my kids’ real family, that I had been smart enough to date a guy like Coop when I was young, and not a dickwad like James.
The kids ran to the indoor pool, both diving in. Jules went right for the climbing wall. She scaled it as though it was nothing and dove off into the pool. Mitch swam over and went down the indoor waterslide.
“Shouldn’t Jules have a lifejacket?”
“Someone needs to do his research better.” I mocked him. “She's on the swim team. She swims with the kids Mitch's age.”
“You’re going to have issues with that one.”
“Why? She's smart and athletic and sweet. She won’t be boy crazy or anything like that.”
He climbed into the massive hot tub, never taking his eyes off the kids. “She is going to make the Olympics and you'll have to invent some kind of amazing cover for that.”
“Oh yeah.” I laughed. “I never thought about that. That’s probably true.” The water was hot and amazing as I lay back in it. “This is nice.”
He swam over to where I was. “Was my mom really mean to you? Brant said she’s a complete bitch to Sarah.”
“She hates me.”
He winced. “I'm sorry.”
“It's not like we're really dating and she's going to be my mother-in-law.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Lucky thing.” His cheeks flushed as he lowered his gaze. “I mean, we could just try to date and see what happens.”
“This from the guy who spouts ‘I'll never love anyone ‘cause I have to save them’ and ‘Jack is a moron?’”
His eyes darted back at the kids. “Yeah, well I think it's safe to say, I’ve eaten all those words.”
My lips curled up into a smile. “I did notice over the last few days at your parents’ house, you might have eaten some of them.”
He acted insulted. “You're cheating. Firstly, you have Jules. Sweet and all big eyed with those lashes and totally cute. She always says that thing that makes your heart twinge. Secondly, you have Mitch. He is funny and shy and sort of sad, and reminds me of me and Brant when we were little and our lives were taking a turn for the worse.” He moved in front of me, putting himself between my knees. “Thirdly, there’s y
ou. Absolutely beautiful and bumbling and needing me to save you, except in that rare moment when you become G.I. Jane for twenty seconds and start killing everything in the room. Then you're badass sexy. You're an amazing mom, and yet you’re a humble human being, and for a hot chick that’s refreshing. You've been dealt a terrible hand and you aren’t giving up. You're fighting. You aren’t even dwelling a little.”
"You make it sound better than it is." I was struggling with him asking me about Servario and now doing this. “And I have wanted to give up.”
He laughed. “Evie, everyone wants to give up. It's human nature. The fact you don’t give up is what counts. You're amazing. Like fucking amazing." He stared deeply into my eyes as he said it.
Something came over me.
I grabbed his face with either hand and pressed my lips to his. It was rash and insane, and I wasn't sure I wanted to do it but no one had ever spoken to me like that before.
I swooned.
His hands dug into me as he wrapped completely around me, holding me tightly.
My hands ran up his neck to his hair.
He paused, like he was catching his breath and smiled against my face. “You’re in so much trouble.”
I was barely able to breathe. “I know.” My words sounded like a moan and my lips refused to stop brushing against his. We were breathing each other in. Voices coming close to us were the only thing that saved us. He pulled back, giving me a passionate stare. Everything he was going to do to me was there in his eyes, like a movie playing on a screen.
I swallowed hard and backed up from him. When I got to the other side of the hot tub, a group of elderly people came and climbed in with us. His eyes never left mine until Jules shouted for us to watch her jump off the high board. We clapped and watched, but really we were both living out the memory and the anticipation of what was to come.
19
If this boat’s a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’
I tucked the kids into bed and kissed them both. “I'm right next door if you need me.”
They were exhausted from the hours of swimming, running, and climbing. The cruise had turned out to be a veritable floating workout room. I closed their door and slipped into our bed. He wasn’t there yet. I was a bit scared he just wasn’t coming back.
What had happened in the hot tub was crazy. We both knew it. I personally had a barrage of regrets, but none of them weighed as heavily as his compliments.
I lay there for a while, getting less excited and more worried. My worry turned to anger when I realized he wasn’t coming back. He was sitting somewhere fighting the urge to come to the room.
I knew it.
All the nice things he said drifted to the back of my kind as the realization he regretted this picked at me.
I closed my eyes, hating the situation I was in.
He stumbled into the room, flooding it with light and startling me up hours later. I exhaled loudly and rolled over. He reeked of liquor and cigars.
“Evie, we need to talk.”
I lifted my middle finger into the air.
“I know you're pissed, but we need to talk, for real. Jack just contacted me.”
“What?” I turned over. “How?”
“This.” He pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “We have to go and finish what we started.”
“What?”
He was in a drunken stupor. “The human trafficking brothels. We have to go and shut them down. Commander contacted Jack. He wants it cleaned up. Us killing off the ones we did, started something. He doesn’t know where to begin, and he isn’t sending us aid. He wants it on the down low as a favor to the Brits. Evie, they know it was us, somehow. And they've asked for our interference but they want you to be able to say it wasn't them and they have full deniability." He slumped onto the bed.
"That's insane." I asked, not wanting to talk about us any more than he apparently did. “We’re on the open ocean on a cruise ship. How are we supposed to help CI right now?”
“Whew, the room is spinning good.” He flopped on the bed and gazed over at me. “We should talk about earlier too.”
“You want to talk about earlier?”
“Yup.”
“You want to talk?” I didn't want to talk but decided to give him a dose of his own medicine.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
"What about? How much you want me?" I sat up, letting my tank top star fall.
“Yes, I mean, I do want you—”
I bent forward, brushing my lips against his cheek, whispering, “But—”
“No buts, Evie. No buts. "I want you."
"And yet you went and got drunk." I lifted my head away from his. “You were right from the start. This was a mistake. It always was a mistake.”
“No, no, no.” He sat up, leaning in. “That was a mistake. You know. You just—you just come as a package deal and I don't think—"
"It's fine." I didn't want to hear any more."
"It's not fine. You want me as much as I want you.”
“I do but—” I licked my lips and grid to ignore the heady scent of him mixing in my inhales. “No."
“No.” He leaned closer, brushing his lips against my cheek. “Why did you kiss me in the hot tub?"
“It was a mistake."
“Evie." He inhaled me. "We need to get our heads back in the game."
"I know that. Which means we have to stop the flirting and messing around. Honestly, how do you feel about me, Coop?”
He looked like he might lie but he didn’t. “Conflicted.”
“Until you don’t feel conflicted anymore, let’s not do this.”
“You know you feel the same way I do.”
“Yeah, but it's like you said before, I'm emotionally easy."
His stare turned to ice. “You don’t want to fall for me either?”
“No.” I looked him in the eyes.
“Why do we have to have respect and shit for each other?”
“I don't know. The job I guess.” I said it as I climbed back into the sheets and rolled away from him.
He climbed in next to me and I fell asleep.
Having him there, even as someone I couldn't have made everything better.
The next day, he took Mitch to mini golf and I took Jules to the princess shop. They did her hair, nails, and toes and made her into something that broke my heart. I wished my mom could see it. I was sitting in the chair waiting when Coop and Mitch showed up. Coop took one look at her and turned and walked back out of the princess shop. I looked at Mitch. “What's his deal?”
He shrugged. “I beat him, he's a sore loser.”
I laughed. Coop came back a couple of minutes later with a disposable camera. He started taking pictures of Jules in her varying stages of princess. He tossed me a different camera. “This one is of us golfing.”
Mitch smiled. “And eating the largest slices of pizza I’ve ever seen.”
Coop pointed at him. “Best pizza ever.” He continued to get Jules to smile. I felt bad that I hadn’t noticed there were disposable cameras on board. I hadn’t thought of savoring our new memories because I wasn’t sure if I should or not.
How sad was that?
I didn’t want to think he was the sweetest person on the planet, but that was impossible. His cell phone rang. He answered and passed it to me.
“Hello?”
It was Luce. “Hey.”
“Hey, how's the house and the town?”
“Good. You don’t get to see it for a while longer I guess, huh? I’m assuming you heard about that.”
“Yeah. Is my mom okay?”
Luce laughed. “She's fine. She and Fitz have started canning fruit. They're like the weirdest spies ever.”
“I know, right?” I laughed. “So what's the plan?”
“I'm staying here with Fitz and the kids. Your mom is going with you guys. My lungs can't take it yet.”
I lowered my voice, “Why are we being chosen to do this if we're in deep?”
>
Luce lowered hers too, “We can't be traced back to CI or the US right now. The Brits are putting on a good show about the deaths. They're acting like it was some kind of terrorism, but they know it was CI. As payment, they want the rest of the job cleaned up, and they can’t risk how deep this goes into their administration. They have moles. We all have moles. On the bright side, even though the boat is his, Servario isn’t being linked to it. Guess he has a front for renting the boat out and there's a paper trail of Mary and Sooky renting it. Other than that, I have no idea what's going on, only that the commander and Jack were in contact. He’s asked that we do this as a favor to the Brits.”
“Is it a setup?”
“I don’t know. Your mom's worried. I can tell. That makes me worried. Fitz thinks we should tell them all to fuck themselves and Jack is tense.”
“Okay. I don’t think we should do it either, but at the same time, I don’t like the idea that there are human trafficking brothels. I have kids; I would kill someone if they ever touched them."
“I got your kids, dude. Fitz and I won't let anything happen to them.”
I added, “Tell Mom she has to stay. Tell her Jack, Coop, and I can do this.”
“She isn’t going to listen.”
“Put her on the phone.”
Mom's accent was thick and sweet when she answered, “Not a chance, my darling. You are stuck with me.”
I bit my lip. “If I ask Servario for help, will you stay with the kids?”
She went silent for a moment. “No, he hung you out to dry.”
“I know but he's good at this. You said it yourself. Between him, Coop, and Jack, I'll be fine.”
She went silent again. “Fine. If he goes, I'll stay. I'll arrange it all. He will meet you in Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?”
“Coop knows his orders. I love you and I’ll meet you at the ship tomorrow.”
I opened my mouth to say something but Luce was back. “Hey. You think Servario is a smart idea?”
My eyes darted to Coop and I scowled. “No. But I do know he's a better bet than my mom. He has all the wrong connections in all the worst places. I have a bad feeling that’s what we’re going to need.”