It was true that though she’d seen him in beards for certain roles, she’d never seen him in a full beard in real life. He was usually scrupulously shaved and architected. But now there was a heavy shadow on his chin. Some men had very soft beards and some men had very prickly beards. From where she sat, she couldn’t tell which kind that Moreau had. For just one, intense second, she had the urge to lean over and test his stubble under her fingers.
She frowned at herself. What was wrong with her? She never had thoughts like that.
“Your package came from Warby Parker.”
“Ah.”
He didn’t reach out for it, so she did it herself, unpacking the glasses with a kind of reverence that she couldn’t quite cover up.
He nodded as he glanced at them, but his eyes stayed mostly on her face.
“Don’t you want to see them?” she asked, holding them out to him.
“I won’t be able to see them if they’re on my own face. You try them on.”
She didn’t argue with his logic, because she really did want to try them on. They were the fanciest and sharpest pair of glasses she’d ever seen. She slipped them on but immediately squinted. “Ugh, I have my contacts in.” She shut her eyes. “Your prescription is harsh.”
“Mine? Yours requires a half pound of lenses.”
She laughed. That was true.
“Take your contacts out and try them,” he urged her.
She followed directions without thinking too hard on it. Maybe she was curious to see how close their prescriptions actually were. She slid the glasses on again and realized that, yeah, she couldn’t wear these for hours and hours, but their prescriptions were remarkably close.
“That is a nice color on you, the green,” he told her.
“Thanks. I can’t believe how light these are. It’s like they’re not even there.”
“You should keep them, then.”
“What?” She gaped at him. “Moreau, no way. I saw the price tag on these.”
He waved a hand through the air. “I’ll trade you, then.”
“For what?” She read the expression on his face. “For my glasses? You must be nuts! They’re ten years old. And from Costco!”
He shrugged. “I’ve grown partial to them. And besides, my contacts will be here tomorrow. And I, like you, normally only wear glasses to get from the bed to the bathroom. It will not be a hardship to wear these glasses.”
She leaned back and eyed him. “You’re serious.”
“I never joke about eyes. You know this about me.”
“Davy—”
Suddenly, he nudged her leg with his foot and it hit her all at once that she was kind of curled up at the end of his bed! How the hell had that happened?
“Go now,” he ordered her. “I am tired.”
She quickly rose up and gathered up all the packaging to toss in the trash. She nodded a goodnight to him and was already back in her room by the time she’d figured it out. He’d booted her out of the room so that she’d quit arguing and accept his gift already.
***
Over the next ten days, Moreau healed very quickly, and a very, very small part of him wished that it would slow down just a little bit.
Something about him being laid up and woozy and drowsy and inert had opened up a part of Geo that he’d never before been allowed to meet. He never would have guessed that she’d have a soft spot for the infirm, but it couldn’t be denied.
He had the sneaking suspicion that as soon as he was back on his feet, that version of her was going to slam the door right in his face.
He’d thought it had been hard to never get to know Geo in the way that he wanted. But the reality of getting a glimpse and then having her cut him off was going to be much more difficult. Excruciating even.
Even now, the remnants of his concussion were almost completely gone—he was reading comfortably and sleeping a normal eight hours instead of half the day—and he noticed the difference in her. She was visiting him less, her looks were sharper, her smiles less frequent.
But, he supposed, that could also be because they were just now entering their third week of being on lockdown, and perhaps she was irritated to be penned up in the bunker.
“Cedric,” Moreau asked one morning as he carefully crutched down the hall toward the kitchen. “When you are on lockdown, you never leave? None of the team members ever leave?”
Cedric shrugged and held open the kitchen door. Moreau was glad to see the kitchen was empty save for a tray of sandwiches that Sequence had prepped and left behind.
“We’ll leave every once in a while. If one of us has to do an errand or there’s an emergency or something. But yeah, mostly we stay here. It makes the most sense for us all to be here because we keep our team so small.”
“And no one visits you?”
The men sat down at the breakfast bar and Cedric handed down an empty plate and took one for himself. “No visitors allowed, except in special circumstances. For example when Rook let Elena visit you because she was so worried about you she was about to stroke out.”
Moreau let that information warm him for a moment. He liked to hear that someone was worried about him in a genuine way. Someone who he didn’t pay.
“But she hasn’t come to visit you?”
Cedric took a big bite of sandwich and cocked his head to one side, eyeing Moreau. “What are you getting at?”
“What do all of you do for sex while you’re on lockdown?”
Cedric coughed up a bite of his sandwich into a napkin. “Wow. We’re really going there, huh?”
Moreau shrugged.
“Um. We’re celibate?” Cedric’s cheeks pinked up.
“Lovers do not visit you here?”
Cedric shook his head. “Against the rules. Besides, if they did, you’d know, considering your room is smack dab in the middle of all the employees’ quarters right now.”
Moreau lowered his chin to his fist. “This is terrible for all of you.”
Cedric laughed. “It’s not so bad. When all this is over, we’ll all get to go home to our girls and have killer I-missed-you-so-much sex.” He froze mid-bite and looked a little shocked at himself. He didn’t normally say things like that.
Moreau cleared his throat. They were nearing the heart of the matter and now that they were here, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what he was really asking. “All of you?”
“Yeah. Most of us, anyways. I know that Sequence is really missing Naomi and Brookie.” His wife and daughter. “And Bex is all Atlas ever talks about.”
“But not Rook or Geo?”
“Oh.” Cedric side-eyed him for a second. “Ah. Nope. I don’t think either of them have anybody to go home to these days.”
Moreau didn’t jolt, because as a trained actor, he was highly in tune with his body, but he wanted to jolt. That was not the answer he’d expected at all. He’d expected to pry a few details about Geo’s mysterious Him out of Cedric.
Moreau cleared his throat. “Rook doesn’t date after his divorce I noticed.”
“Yeah, not that he talks about anyways. His ex-wife doesn’t really date either. She tried about a year ago and that whole thing went up in flames. Elena thinks May and Rook are still in love.”
“Elena is very intuitive.”
“Totally.”
Moreau wished that intuitive Elena were here right now. She might pick up on the fact that Moreau was dying for info on Geo and doing his royal best to dance his way into some intel on her current love life.
“And no one for Geo?” he couldn't help asking, though he could have kicked himself for how casual he didn’t sound.
He could feel Cedric’s side-eye again and knew for sure that he hadn’t adequately pulled off nonchalance.
Cedric cleared his throat and shrugged. “She’s tight-lipped about her personal life. With me, anyways.”
Moreau let the conversation flow elsewhere. He and Cedric went back up to Moreau’s quarters after lunch.
&
nbsp; Moreau was very anxious for the day the nurses would leave. It shouldn’t be much longer. Then he wouldn’t have to have a shadow everywhere he went in the bunker. He’d get moments of peace. And, depending on how far along the investigation was, and how safe Rook deemed him to be, the team might be able to start coming and going from the bunker, the way they usually did, and Moreau wouldn’t have to feel so guilty about trapping everyone in one place.
A few hours later, just as Moreau was getting ready to head downstairs—Wilkes was here again and wanted to meet with him—a timid tapping at his door had Moreau barely restraining the roll of his eyes. Moreau genuinely liked Leary and definitely appreciated Rita. But Val, on the other hand, was getting harder and harder to stand. When Moreau had been at the very beginning of his recovery, her timid approach to him had been kind of nice. Interacting with her was like getting cared for by a flighty little angel. But recently, she’d begun to annoy him just a little bit. She talked so quietly! And her touch was so light it tickled the shit out of him. He much preferred Leary’s loud voice and sure hand.
Just a few more days, he reminded himself as he called for her to come in.
“Afternoon,” he said as she scuttled into the room.
“Afternoon,” she whispered. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better,” he answered truthfully. “Haven’t had a headache all day.”
“And your leg?” she asked, motioning for him to sit on the bed.
He unsnapped his track pants and she crept toward him. “Wow! I haven’t seen your incision in a few days and it looks very good.”
Moreau hadn’t really looked, to be honest. Even the small cut over his temple that was mostly healed at this point made him a little queasy.
“That’s great.”
He averted his eyes and caught sight of Geo in the doorway. But something had her attention in the hallway. “What’s up?” she said to someone who was approaching.
“I was hoping to get a word with Moreau but wasn’t sure if we were meeting here or…”
It was Wilkes’s voice.
“Davy?” Geo leaned into the room to ask, assuming that he’d heard the request. Moreau was touched that she was shielding the view of him from the detective, in case he decided that he wanted privacy for this moment.
“Come on in, Wilkes.”
Geo stepped aside and the red-headed detective strode through the door. His brow furrowed when he realized that there was currently a nurse attending to Moreau. “Sorry, I assumed you were alone.”
“I’ll be out of your hair in just a sec!” Val squeaked, snapping off her gloves and tossing them into the trash can beside the bed. Val rose up, turned, and froze.
Moreau started to put his pants to rights but paused halfway through.
Wilkes, normally so reserved and professional, seemed to have swallowed his tongue.
“Detective Wilkes, Val Jones,” Moreau introduced the two of them.
“Call me Ray,” Wilkes said, extending his hand to Val.
She quickly shook Ray's hand and even though she was facing away from Moreau, he could still see her blush in the tips of her ears.
“Nice to meet you,” she whispered.
Moreau’s eyes cut to Geo and her expression was one of unguarded interest, her eyebrows raised and a little smile on her face.
“You’re a nurse,” Wilkes said, somewhat awkwardly.
Moreau was amazed. He’d never seen Wilkes be anything but calm and professional. The man seemed to have an answer for everything. But apparently you toss a ninety-pound waif in his direction and he forgot which way was north.
“That’s right.” She tugged nervously at the bottom of her pale-pink scrubs. “But M-Moreau is healing so well, he won’t need me much longer.”
“Is that right?” Geo asked from the doorway, but her eyes were on Val, not on Moreau.
Val nodded. “In my honest assessment, he doesn’t need full-time nursing care anymore.” She whirled around, though, her fingers tangled up in the bottom of her scrubs. “Unless, of course, you feel that you need that still, Mr. Davy. Anything to make you more comfortable.”
Moreau smiled. He knew from her resume that Val was new to private nursing. She’d worked in the intensive care unit at a hospital in the Bronx for a few years. She still wasn’t used to having a patient call the shots and not the hospital.
Moreau’s smile grew when he looked up to see Wilkes frowning at him. Either Wilkes didn’t want Moreau grinning at Val or he didn’t like Val saying the words anything to make you more comfortable to another man.
He could throw him a bone. “Wilkes, did you have lunch yet?”
Wilkes shook his head. “I came straight from the airport.”
“There should be something in the kitchen, if you’d like to go. I will meet you down there in a few minutes. Val, if we’re done here, would you mind showing Wilkes to the kitchen?”
“Oh.” She looked surprised and confused. Moreau had never asked her to do anything that extended further than her nursing skills.
He shot her his most charming smile and she blinked like he’d just shined a bright light in her eyes.
“Sure. Of course, Mr. Davy.”
And they were back to formal titles. He wasn’t sure exactly why she’d stopped using his first name all of a sudden, but he could only guess that she was flustered by Wilkes.
“Thank you.”
Wilkes shot him a narrow-eyed look but followed Val out of the room.
Geo watched them go, clicking her tongue in her mouth. “Playing matchmaker, are we?”
“You noticed the connection as well?”
“A dead man would have noticed that sexual chemistry. I’ve never seen two people bone up for one another so fast.”
Moreau kept his mouth shut. He would never have put it so crudely himself, but what had happened between Wilkes and Val was exactly how Moreau had felt the first moment he’d been introduced to Geo.
Geo didn’t seem to notice his choice to refrain from commenting.
“Apparently Wilkes isn’t scared of stepping on her,” Geo wandered over to his window and peered out for a second.
“As a detective for the LAPD, I think Wilkes deserves a bit of sweetness in his life if he can get it.”
“You respect him,” she observed.
“I do.” Moreau finished snapping up his abominable—but necessary with the cast—pants.
“You feel healthy enough to eighty-six the nurses?” she asked.
Moreau couldn’t help but laugh outright.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he laughed again, into the palm of his hand. “It’s really nothing. But when my mother and I first moved here, I was much better at English than she was, but she insisted on handling the business side of my career for a long time. And she could never remember the difference between what it meant to eighty-six something and what it meant to sixty-nine something.” He broke off into laughter again and this time Geo joined him.
“You’re kidding.”
“I would not joke about this. Once, she got confused and told an on-set assistant to sixty-nine the group of fans that had gathered at the exit.”
Geo laughed again, hard. “Oh my god. That’s priceless.”
Moreau let his chuckles fade away. It had been fifteen years since his mother had died, and a long time since he’d talked about her. It felt nice to be able to laugh.
“To answer your question, yes. I feel well enough to forego the full-time nursing care. Perhaps Leary could visit every few days to make sure I’m on the right track.”
“Yeah, that’s what Rook had thought could eventually happen too. Leary also has a physical therapy background, so he’d be good to have for the full recovery of your leg.”
“That is good news. And it will be good news for you all if you don’t have to babysit me every second of the day now that the nurses can leave.”
“That’s just part of the job, Davy. It doesn’t bother any of us.�
�
He fussed a little with his designer socks. “It does not bother you to be on lockdown? Surely you look forward to going home.”
“Actually…” she was looking out the window again. “I’m staying here full-time these days.”
“In the bunker?”
She nodded. “My personal life is… sort of in transition.”
He couldn’t interpret the look on her face. She looked more uncomfortable than he’d ever seen her look before. Not embarrassed really, but like she was trying to get herself to say words she’d never said before, as if her mouth couldn’t quite form them.
He took a stab in the dark and figured knowing was better than not knowing. “A break-up?”
She smirked. “No.”
What did that mean? That she and Him were still going strong or that she wasn’t involved with anyone?
Moreau quickly did the math in his head. Cedric had said that he didn’t think that Geo was dating anyone and Geo had just admitted to living at the bunker full time. Surely, if she had a man, he’d open his home to her. Moreau couldn’t imagine having Geo as his woman and not flinging open the doors of his life to her.
“Look,” she said, turning back to the window. “It’s not a big deal. The other members of the team don’t even really know. I just thought I should tell you because I’ll be your next door neighbor. Even if we’re not in lockdown anymore.”
She nodded her head to the hallway, toward the door of her room.
He opened his mouth to respond but suddenly she was in front of him, shoving his crutches into his hands. “We’ve given the lovebirds enough time. Let’s get down there.”
And then all there was to do was follow her out.
CHAPTER FIVE
Wilkes brushed crumbs off his hands and reached for his messenger bag when he’d finished the panini that Sequence had apparently made for him. Geo waited in the hall while Moreau and Wilkes met. Val was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m sorry to make you fly across the country, Detective.”
“It’s not just you, Davy. I don’t have jurisdiction here, but there has been information I’ve had to gather in New York as well. The NYPD doesn’t always cooperate remotely.” He scowled and pulled out a folder. “I’m hoping you can do some IDs for me. Tell me if you recognize any of the people in these photos.”
Rook Security Complete Series Page 81