She blew out a breath. “Everyone asks questions they don’t really want the answers to. It’s human nature. We’re curious, but often regret that curiosity when it makes the conversation awkward.”
For someone who was usually so blunt, she was sure hesitating now. “I think I can handle an awkward conversation.”
She watched me for a moment more before continuing. “Fine. My mom was raped as a child.”
It was a startling way to begin the conversation, and I knew she was after a reaction, but I refused to give her one. “And?”
“And this is the part where you get uncomfortable and make up some excuse, so you can leave,” she said.
I leveled a stare at her. “I’ve been a combat medic for seven years and have had four tours in a goddamn desert. Uncomfortable is basically my permanent address. I’m sorry about your mom. What happened?”
Mercy seemed to consider me for a moment before she went on with her tale. “It was one of my grandmother’s boyfriends. The women in my family aren’t exactly good at relationships, and they tend to trust the wrong men.”
Her wording caught my attention. “They? Are you intentionally excluding yourself?”
“I don’t have time for any relationship nonsense. Besides, guys tend to run away screaming when you tell them you have sixty kids. Anyway, Mom didn’t have anyone she could turn to, nobody feeding positivity into her life or encouraging her to pursue her dreams. My grandmother was a horrible person and used to fill her mind with all sorts of messed up advice, like, ‘Marry for money, love will come later’ or ‘You can love a rich man just as easily as you can love a poor man’.”
“That is fucked up.” I glanced across the street at Mercy’s humble apartment building. It was obvious she didn’t come from money. “I take it your mom didn’t heed your grandmother’s advice.”
“I think she tried, and that’s how she ended up with my dad. He looked great on paper as long as you didn’t consider his history. He had a promising career in the Air Force, programming satellites at Moffett Airfield. He’s brilliant, but he has no common sense, which turned out to be pretty damn expensive. Alimony and child support for his four previous wives and children made quite the dent in his paychecks.”
“Four? Holy shit. Please tell me your siblings all have luxury car names.” I couldn’t resist bringing that up. In fact, I’d been waiting for an opening all night.
She cracked a smile, shaking her head. “So stupid. Beth told you about me and Bentley, I take it.” At my nod she continued. “Yep, all car names. Aston, Royce, Porsche, and Nova.”
I laughed. “That’s horrible, Mercedes.”
She tried to glare at me, but the side of her lips crept up. “Mercy. Nobody needs to know that I was named after a car my dad most likely wanted so it could help him get laid. Anyway, you think that’s bad? Wait until tonight when you’re trying to sleep, and your brain points out that all six of us have different mothers. I know Dad has no common sense, but let’s be real. Any of those women could have put a stop to Dad’s luxury car name insanity. He is not that charming.”
“Novas aren’t luxury cars,” I pointed out.
“Nova was a compromise. According to my mom, Nova’s mom is a hippie who was naïve enough to believe her daughter was being named after a brightening star.”
“Well, your dad was Air Force. Those guys tend to be stargazers,” I joked. Growing up as an only child with parents who’d never gotten divorced, I couldn’t imagine what Mercy’s life had been like. “Are you close to all of your siblings?”
“Nope. Ben’s the only one I’ve even met… well, that I remember. Mom and Dad split before I was two and Mom moved us north to Portland. As far as I know, all my other sisters and brothers still live in Cali. Dad retired from the service about a year after I was born and moved to Seattle for a job. That’s where he met Ben’s mom.”
“Wow.”
“Indeed. I’ve thought about reaching out to the others, but Nova’s the closest to my age and five years older than me. I don’t know that we’d have anything in common. Porsche has friended me on social media, but her daughter’s closer to my age than she is. My family is weird.”
She could say that again. Still, knowing that Mercy hadn’t grown up in a traditional family just increased my respect for her. She could have turned out to be a sniveling pile of self-pity, but instead she’d educated herself and dived into a career path she felt passionate about. She’d seen a lot of shit, yet she managed to hold onto her innocence and hope. All of this combined with her classically beautiful face and curvy body, created a package I could hardly resist.
“My mom’s not a bad person,” Mercy continued. “She has issues from her childhood that she never figured out how to resolve. To this day, she still measures her self-worth by the amount of affection she’s receiving from whichever man she’s dating. Regardless, she protected me. Even though she dated a lot of scumbags, she made sure I was never alone with any of them. She didn’t want what happened to her to happen to me. When I started learning child psychology, I wanted to build a time machine so I could travel back and help her, to be the person who cared enough to ask the right questions and get her the kind of help she needed. She’s too far gone and set in her ways now, but if I could have gotten to her as a child, I feel confident that I could have made a difference in the way she turned out.”
“That’s why you’re passionate about the preschool,” I replied. “You want to help kids like your mom.”
She nodded. “I know that probably sounds crazy or narcissistic, but yes. There is no time machine, and Mom is beyond my help, but the little boys and girls I work with… there’s still hope for them. I want to help them break the cycle of abuse and neglect and poverty. I want to show them that it doesn’t matter what life they were born into, they can be so much more.”
“I don’t think that sounds crazy or narcissistic at all.” Her dedication and enthusiasm practically made her glow. She was so fucking gorgeous it took everything in me not to reach out to her and pull her against me. I understood her, because we both had regret driving us. I couldn’t find a time machine to send me back to save my dad, so I tried to make up for it by saving the lives of others.
Mercy shrugged. “Yeah, well let’s just say I don’t have a lot of friends my own age.”
“Hm?”
“I’m a lot to take in, Landon. ‘My mom was raped as a child’ isn’t exactly the best conversation starter, and I suck at small talk. I usually don’t know any television star’s name, what else they’ve played in, or who they’re dating. I don’t care about that stuff. Instead, I want to talk about ending child poverty and protecting the future. I make it awkward and am known to be a little intimidating.”
She was rambling, talking shit about herself and showing me the insecurities she felt because she was different. But she didn’t understand how beautiful her uniqueness was. Desperate to show her, I didn’t think. I just lowered her pan to the sidewalk to free up my hands and closed the distance between us. Then, my mouth covered hers.
A spark zinged between us. It was like I could taste the passion on her lips and feel the intensity in our touch.
Her eyes grew impossibly wide, and she froze. But she didn’t push me away.
Encouraged, I pressed my body against hers, feeling her soft mounds press against my chest. Deepening the kiss, I licked at the seam of her lips, silently begging for entrance as my hands circled around to her back to pull her against me and hold her close. Her lips parted with a sigh, and she let me in. Relieved, my tongue swept over hers, sampling, exploring, savoring. She tasted like marionberry cobbler, vanilla ice cream, and life, and with every second I stayed connected to her I felt a little more rejuvenated. A little less like the cynical asshole I’d become.
Kissing Mercy felt like coming home. Finally.
All too soon, she pulled back, separating us. My hands fell to my sides, instantly missing the feel of her. The night felt colder and lonelier
as it filled the space she’d occupied.
Her eyes were dark with lust, her breathing was shallow and quick, and her lips were swollen as she searched my gaze. “Why did you do that?” she asked.
Stunned, I stared at her. No woman had ever asked why I’d kissed her before. How the fuck did I even answer that? “I don’t know. I… You were talking shit about yourself and I… I don’t know.”
“You’re only here visiting, Landon.”
I couldn’t tell which one of us she was trying to remind, but her words rattled me. Forty-five days of leave had seemed like a life sentence, but now it felt like a single day of freedom. “I know.”
“I can’t… I don’t even know you.”
“What do you want to know about me?”
“Nothing, because you’ll be gone at the end of next month and I’m already going to have to pick up the pieces of your mom that you leave behind. I can’t let you break me.” She started to pace in front of me. “Let’s be logical about this. We obviously share a connection through your mom and this neighborhood, and we’re both in the business of healing people. It’s natural for those sort of connections to be misconstrued as emotions like affection.”
She was trying to reason away the attraction we felt towards one another.
“But the good news is that we’re both mature adults and we can control ourselves. This doesn’t have to be awkward or strange or—”
“What if I don’t want to?” I asked.
She shook her head, as if to settle her jumbled thoughts. “Sorry, what?”
“What if I don’t want to control myself? I enjoyed kissing you, Mercy. I think you enjoyed it, too, and I’d like to do it again.”
She gaped at me. “That’s a horrible idea.” But then her gaze dropped down to my lips, and I knew she was thinking about it. “I am not my mother. I don’t need the affection of a man to validate me.”
“Never said you did. Pretty sure I wouldn’t be this attracted to you if you did.”
That seemed to throw her off. She swallowed and glanced toward her apartment building, as if gauging the distance and figuring out how long it would take her to escape. I didn’t want her to feel threatened, so I took a step back.
“I’m also not your mother, either, Landon. I’m not going to wait around for you to get your shit together.”
That stung. “Never asked you to.”
“Well, I don’t do casual. Conversations or sex.”
“Who said anything about sex? It was just a kiss, Mercy,” I said, playing it off like I didn’t want in her pants. I was kind of being an asshole, but her comment about me getting my shit together was still smarting. Hell, I wished the woman would pull a punch every now and then. She seemed to know how to hit me right where it counted.
Her tongue snaked out and slid across her lower lip, drawing my attention back to it. “So, you don’t want to have sex with me?” she asked.
“Never crossed my mind,” I lied as my mind cycled through thoughts of stripping her bare and getting my hands on her luscious curves. I wanted to know what Mercy’s other lips tasted like, what sort of sounds she made as she was reaching climax, how she looked when she orgasmed. “But if that’s an offer, sure. I’ll take you up on it.”
She snorted. “Unbelievable. No, that is most definitely not an offer.” Bending, she picked up her pan from where I’d discarded it when I lost my mind and kissed her. “Thank you for walking me home, Landon. In the future, do try to control yourself and keep your hands and lips off me.”
“You kissed me back,” I reminded her. Sure, it was immature, but I was still a man and my ego had been bruised. I needed to save face.
“Goodbye, Landon,” she replied, crossing the street.
I followed her, not quite done with our conversation yet. “Wait. Is the preschool open tomorrow?” I wasn’t sure since it was Christmas Eve and all.
She stopped, in less of a hurry to escape now that we were back on a topic she was comfortable with. “Yes. Only until noon. We should be closed, but we were worried about the kids getting a Christmas meal, so we took a vote and decided to stay open. Your mom has been preparing one heck of a feast for them. We’re down a couple of teachers and volunteers, but a lot of the kids will be gone, too.”
“I’ll be here to walk with you in the morning.”
Her expression hardened. “Thank you, but I’m sure I can make it the block and a half to your mother’s house on my own.”
The idea of her walking any distance alone in this neighborhood set off all sorts of protective instincts in me. Knowing I needed to extend an olive branch so she’d allow me to keep her safe, I agreed. “I have no doubt you can protect yourself—you’ve been doing it your whole life—but you don’t have to while I’m here. Please let me walk you.”
Her step faltered, but she recovered quickly. She didn’t look at me, but she nodded. “Okay.”
Relieved, I let out a breath. “Thank you.”
With her pan still in hand, Mercy hurried up the stairs to her apartment. But this time, she glanced over shoulder at me before disappearing behind her door.
I was making progress.
Chapter 8
Mercy
True to his word, Landon was waiting on the stairs of my apartment Monday morning when I emerged. I’d been agonizing about what to wear since Sunday night when he dropped me off, so I was running a little late. I’d considered pairing today’s Christmas themed V-neck sweater with a cute little plaid skirt that showed off my legs, but thought better of it, deciding to wear the sweater over a collared shirt and pair it with slacks instead.
Landon had already kissed me once, and although I enjoyed the experience, I was at least sixty percent sure I shouldn’t encourage a repeat performance. So, I made plans to dress extra conservatively throughout his visit and hopefully dissuade any advances.
However, my professional attire didn’t seem to discourage his gaze from wandering over my body, somehow making me feel both self-conscious and beautiful. After hurrying to button up my coat (which I should have done inside my apartment, but I’d taken a lot of care to pick out this outfit and kind of wanted him to see it, hence the forty percent uncertainty about a repeat of our kiss), I popped open my umbrella and shielded myself from the morning rain. Landon walked beside me, but he didn’t crowd me or say anything more than a quick good morning as we headed out to pick up his mom.
Landon was different as we walked to the school, more alert and tense, more focused on what was going on around us. It was almost as if he expected an attack at any moment. Thrown off by his strange behavior, I looked to Beth but she was busy watching him, too. I had a feeling we were seeing Landon the soldier, vigilant, watchful, protective. I wanted to remind him that we were on our way to a preschool, so the threat of being attacked was slim to none, but didn’t dare.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one passionate about my job, after all.
By the time we approached the school, a few of the children were already there, playing in the side playground as they waited for the doors to open. Beth went in to begin breakfast prep and I peeled off and headed to the playground to see who all had arrived.
I was almost to the gate when someone shouted, “Ms. Mercy!”
Looking around, I found two of the four-year-olds, Randall Adams and Samuel Fletcher—Randy and Sammy, as they preferred to be called—sprinting down the sidewalk toward me. Randy’s mom, Marie, hurried behind them as she balanced his little sister on her hip. The boys had been inseparable since the first day of preschool when they teamed up during a game of wall ball. Their friendship was sometimes a struggle for their teacher, who often had to separate them to keep them from talking during class, but I loved how readily the two accepted each other.
In the beginning, their parents begrudgingly let them hang out, but over the past year and a half, they’d all turned into more of an extended family. They were each other’s emergency contacts, and the parents alternated drop-off and pick-u
p duties. Sammy told me they were even spending Christmas together this year. Wearing matching Spiderman hoodies and jeans, they came to an abrupt stop at my feet and smiled up at me.
“We’re twins,” Randy informed me, his chest puffed out in pride. “Mom got us the same shirt, and now nobody can tell us apart.”
Randy had dark skin, dark eyes, and short dark hair, whereas Sammy’s skin was pale, his hair was shaggy and blond, and his eyes were blue. The two couldn’t have looked more different if they’d tried. Yet somehow, in their little world, all it took was a sweatshirt to make them the same. The sentiment was so sweet and innocent it made the back of my eyes sting as I nodded, giving them both a bright smile. “You’re right, Sammy, I can’t even tell you apart,” I told Randy.
“I’m not Sammy, I’m Randy!” He threw back his head, laughing, before turning to face his friend. “See? She thinks I’m you.”
“Let’s go see who else we can trick,” Sammy suggested.
Still laughing, the two scampered off toward the playground.
“I probably should have told them… I don’t know. Something,” Marie said as she joined me, breathing heavily as she turned to watch the boys. “But they were just so adamant about it, I couldn’t.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I replied. I’d needed their little interaction today. I could still feel it warming my heart and taking away the stress of the weekend, so I could focus on my job. “The world will tell them they’re different soon enough. Here, they can be the same.”
“It’s adorable, isn’t it?”
“The sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. I hope they never change.”
Marie drifted off toward the playground while I turned to walk into the school, wiping moisture from beneath my eyes. Landon was standing on the sidewalk watching me. He’d been close enough to hear the boys, and I wondered what he thought of the exchange. His expression was unreadable, telling me nothing.
“Have a good day, Landon,” I said, climbing the stairs toward the school.
Rescuing Mercy (Special Forces: Operation Alpha): A Dead Presidents MC Spinoff Page 8