Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  “Of course!” May said, glancing over at Ricky to make sure she was too far away to hear their conversation. Luckily, their kid had just plugged in her earbuds and was bouncing her feet along to whatever she was listening to. “If I wanted to see stranger dick, I’d just google it.”

  Relief swamped him. But then some disgust creeped in. “I can’t believe a man would do that!”

  “Really, Javi?” she asked dryly. “You can’t believe a man would take a crappy picture of a dick and send it to a woman he wanted to do the dirty with?”

  He frowned. “Okay, I can believe it. But it’s really freaking rude.”

  “No kidding. Not everyone is as gentlemanly as you are.”

  He twisted his lips up. “I hate that you think I’m a gentleman.”

  She frowned. “You’d rather I think you’re an asshole?”

  He laughed. “No. It’s just that the way I treat you—” He cleared his throat, “—treated you. I don’t think it was all that gallant. I just treated you with common decency. I don’t like thinking of anyone treating you with less than that.”

  She sighed. “It’s hard out there, Rook. The world is a tough place for everybody to live.”

  They were quiet for a while, both of them watching their daughter, lost in their own thoughts. A while later, Rook started gathering the cards back up, smoothing out the ones he’d bent.

  “So, are you done avoiding me?” he asked, fully prepared for whatever vitriol she tossed back his way. Looking forward to it, in fact.

  “I was not avoiding you!”

  “May, you were literally hiding in a pantry.”

  She sucked her smile back in and glared at him.

  “Do I need to apologize for the other night?” Rook asked. He had, after all, been the one who’d kissed her.

  “Yes,” she said imperiously. Then she rolled her eyes and sighed. “No.”

  “It was kind of a big deal,” he prodded her.

  “It was not! It’s not like it hasn’t happened a million times before.”

  “Since we split up?”

  She frowned. “Are you trying to pick a fight, Javi?”

  “With you? I wouldn’t dare.”

  She frowned, but he could tell there was a smile buried underneath it.

  ***

  That conversation with their daughter was sticking to May worse than the kiss had. Ricky had gone to bed half an hour ago, Rook had disappeared into his section of the bunker and May was left restless in her bedroom.

  She smirked at the moon out her window. It just figured that it was a full moon. She wondered if it was possible that it had been a full moon for the last several weeks. Why the hell else would it feel like a door she’d thought was firmly closed was opening again? Maybe Mercury was in retrograde or something.

  Because after the vacation, after the kiss, after that conversation with Ricky, May couldn’t deny that things with Rook were not nearly as settled as she’d told herself they were. And she had no clue what to make of that.

  “Fine,” she told the moon, “I’ll always love him. Are you happy now, you asshole?”

  Great. She was going insane. Picking fights with celestial bodies.

  What she needed right at that moment was a big old dose of reality.

  May went to her phone and dialed up the number of the landline at her parents’ house. She figured they were the last people in New York City without cell phones but she didn’t particularly mind, considering it meant that neither of them had started texting her.

  “Jones residence,” her mother answered the phone in her thick Jersey accent.

  “Hi, Ma.”

  “May! How are you? What’s going on? You’re calling so late. You haven’t told me anything since the fire. You left your poor mother in Brooklyn while you went off on vacation, with your ex-husband, no less. All while your father and I have been worried sick about the vandalism at your house.”

  May gritted her teeth. Good. This was exactly what she needed. Some good old-fashioned mom-guilt to wipe her slate clean. She was so used to it at this point that it almost centered her. “Arson, Ma. Not vandalism. And I’ve called you almost every day to keep you updated.”

  “I wasn’t aware there was a difference between arson and vandalism. Frank!” Her mother screamed for her father so loudly that May’s eyes watered as she winced and held her cell as far as she could from her ear. “Your daughter’s on the phone!”

  “No, Ma. Don’t put Dad on I— Hi, Pops.”

  “May,” her father’s gruff voice came on the line. “Are you still vacationing in the Virgin Islands?” He grunted gruffly. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about? I wasn’t in the Virgin Islands.”

  “It would be ironic if you were though. Considering you got knocked up in high school.”

  May sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It would have been the height of irony, Pops.” Frankly, she was a little shocked her father was even using the word irony correctly. “Look, will you put Ma back on?”

  “I’m on. We both are. We got the speakerphone installed, you know.”

  Her mother’s voice was tinny and far away sounding. May could just picture them now, her father comfortably settled into the kitchen chair while her mother hovered three feet away, not wanting to get too close but not wanting to be cut out of the conversation either.

  “Pops, I’d like to talk to Ma privately, if that’s all right.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “You’re pregnant again, aren’t you?”

  May gritted her teeth. She’d had a hell of a time these last few weeks and her patience was completely used up. “No. I’m not. And if I were, it would be none of your damn business. Just like the last time. So put Mom on the damn phone before I hurt your feelings even more.”

  She was breathing heavily and almost missed her father grumbling about how she hadn’t hurt his feelings. But she knew better. Her father acted tough, but as was so often the case, that was merely to hide his extremely sensitive pride.

  May sat hard on her bed, clutching her phone to one ear and feeling unsettlingly exactly like she had as a seventeen-year-old girl who had to tell her parents she’d gotten pregnant.

  The memory came, unbidden but not unwanted.

  ***

  “Wow,” Rook said with a smile on his face as he smoothed her hair down to her shoulders and let his palms rest there. “I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you be nervous before.”

  They were standing down the block from her house, preparing themselves to go in and tell her parents that they were pregnant. It just killed her that he’d put on a tie for this. She’d tried to talk him out of it, saying it would only make it seem like he was atoning for something. But he’d just laughed and gotten dressed in his Sunday best. She knew that he wanted to seem respectable and serious about her. She couldn’t help but internally swoon a little bit at that. But maybe it was just the morning sickness.

  “I’m not nervous!” she insisted haughtily. Then she sagged a little bit. “I’m just… really dreading this.”

  “Look, baby. It’s gonna be awful. But then it’s just gonna be over. And I’ll be there with you the whole time. You can sit on my damn lap if you want.”

  She laughed and rolled her eyes. The only thing worse than telling her father she was pregnant was telling her father she was pregnant while she was playing footsie with the guy who’d knocked her up.

  “I think we just need to get it over with,” he said resolutely. “Come what may. And then we’ll go somewhere and I’ll make May come.” He grinned at his own joke and leaned down to kiss her.

  May took that kiss gladly but she couldn’t help but pull away and bury her face in the buttons of his shirt.

  His arms came around her roughly, firmly, the way they always did. He held her tight.

  “Javi?” she asked quietly, barely recognizing her own voice. “Is there…”

  “Is there…” he prompted when she
just trailed off.

  She took a deep breath, told herself to just ask the damn question already, and tilted her head back to look him in the eye. “Is there anything that could happen in there with my parents that would make it so that we aren’t together anymore?”

  His eyes grew as wide as half dollars for a moment before he threw his head back and just laughed. “God, no. Are you joking? Oh.” He read her expression. “Okay, you’re not joking. Baby, no. There is nothing that could happen in there that would make me leave you. Unless you were serious about your dad’s shotgun and I don’t make it out of that house alive. But other than that, it’s you and me forever, May. No matter what.”

  “You and me and Baby,” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes.

  He nodded vehemently. “Right.”

  She didn’t really feel better. But she did feel a little silly for asking in the first place.

  “You want some proof?” he asked after a minute.

  “Proof?”

  “Well, we’re still seventeen, or else I would have already dragged you to the courthouse and married you. So, I went a different route instead.”

  He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out some folded pieces of paper. He handed them over.

  “What’s this?” May asked, her heart in her throat. But she already knew what it was. “Really?” She was breathless and buoyed and filled with helium.

  “My dad and I went to each of these places this morning. I’m approved at any of them. As soon as you pick the one you want, I’ll sign the lease.”

  She looked at the apartment listings in her hands. “But these move-in dates are for this weekend.”

  “Yes,” he nodded resolutely. “And I’m gonna be moving in this weekend. Of course, you don’t have to. If you’d prefer to stay with your parents until we get married, that’s totally underst— Oof!”

  She threw herself into his arms and hitched her legs around his waist. He held her up, two hands on her ass and their smiles jammed together. “You want to move in together this weekend,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “Of course I do. None of these places are Buckingham Palace, May. But they’re what I can afford working at the mechanic. And I want to live with you and make a life with you and take care of you. And I want you there to take care of me too. I don’t want to rush you. But this is where I’m at. It’s how I feel.”

  She squeezed him hard with all four of her appendages and then slid down his body. He set her on her feet.

  “What do you think?” he asked, somewhat nervously.

  “I think I’m relieved. And I wish we could move in to one of these places today.”

  He grinned. “Do you finally believe that there’s no way I’m leaving you?”

  “I believe it.”

  ***

  “May?”

  Her mother’s voice jolted her back to the present. “Yeah. Mom. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. What was it that you wanted to talk about?”

  “Why are you still married to dad?”

  Her mother gasped at the question and May winced. Maybe she should have finessed it a little bit. But her memory had the thought jolting out of her. “And why did you let him treat me like that after I told him I was pregnant?”

  Her mother was quiet on the other end of the line, but May couldn’t stop herself now.

  “He barely talked to me for two years, Mom. It took forever for him to even want to see Ricky. He ignored me and Javi at all family gatherings. He kicked me out, Ma.”

  “You were moving out anyways!”

  May’s temper went to one hundred. “You think that matters? That just because I happened to have a place to go, it didn’t matter that my father kicked me out of my childhood home while I was pregnant and scared and—”

  May cut herself off and then continued. “You didn’t do anything. You didn’t say anything. You let him kick me out just like you let him scream at you every night of the week.”

  “That’s not fair, May.”

  And it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t. She knew enough about the world to know that the way her father treated her mother wasn’t her mother’s fault. But she had the anger of a child still buried deep in her gut. The questions of a kid who just wanted to leave her father behind and was caught wondering over and over why the hell her mother wouldn’t take her away from all that, bring them somewhere to start over.

  “Maybe not. Why do you stay married to him?”

  “It takes a lot to make a marriage successful.”

  May held back her scoff. Her mother’s marriage wasn’t any more successful than May’s had been. Just because they’d stayed married didn’t mean anything. Her mother and father barely tolerated one another.

  “Divorce is awful, May. I don’t have to tell you that. I saw what it did to you. To Javi.”

  May took a deep breath. “Are you saying that you stayed married to Dad because you saw how hard my divorce was?”

  “No. I’m saying that life is hard. And all you can do is try to do things for the right reasons. Sometimes you stay married for the right reasons and sometimes you get divorced for the right reasons. But none of it is the wrong answer, as long as you do it for the right reasons.”

  May was surprised by her mother’s candor. She wasn’t usually someone who talked like that. In wisdoms. In thoughts about how the world worked.

  “Ma.”

  “Don’t be calling here and insulting your father and me and the choices we made.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I can tell you’re unhappy, May. But it’s because you’re searching. You’ve always been searching. You’ve always been so busy searching you have no idea when you find it.”

  Fully chastened, embarrassed by her own temper, May dropped her head into her hand. “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was a long pause. “There’s not always reasons for the things we do and don’t do, May. There’s not always answers. So, if you have an answer, if you have a reason, be grateful for it.”

  Her mother hung up the phone and May held the phone to her ear for another long, quiet moment.

  She’d had so many reasons for her divorce. And she wasn’t grateful for a single one of them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rook checked the security cams and sensors for the umpteenth time before he sat on the edge of his bed. His room in the bunker was small and utilitarian. The other Rook Security employees had rooms they kept on the other side of the bunker, but his was just a small offshoot of his office. It was because when he was on-duty, he usually worked until he could barely see straight and then he liked to just stumble through the door on the side of his office and straight into bed.

  He looked around the almost-bare room and wondered what May would think of it. She’d had so much disdain for the home he’d made out of his condo. He’d never been one for decorating, but after the divorce, he hadn’t wanted Ricky to be subjected to a bachelor pad. So, he’d done his best to make sure it had a homey feel. He’d even hired a decorator to help him with the wall colors and light fixtures and rugs and linens and all that crap.

  That interior decorator had actually been the first person he’d slept with after May. It had been a year after she’d finished decorating his house. And two years after he’d signed the divorce papers. He’d been so ungodly lonely and overworked and overwhelmed and just so sad. He’d run into Katie at a bar. They’d gone back to his place because it was closer. What a mistake that was.

  The sex was over quickly and was completely meaningless. He’d felt a physical release but it had only added to his emotional tension. He hadn’t wanted to have a woman in his bed. In his space. May had no mark whatsoever on that condo, but still, having another woman there made him feel like he was cheating. He’d felt like complete and total shit. And what was worse? Because Katie had been in his house a dozen times before, and because she’d helped him decorate the damn thing, Katie had felt shockingly at home in his bed. Asking her to leave th
e next morning—after a night of tossing and turning—had been one of the lowest moments of his life. He’d been embarrassed and uncomfortable and regretful. He hadn’t been able to help but feel as if the world were still punishing him for not being able to make it work with May.

  Sex with May had always been electric and wild and guilt-free. Sex with Katie had felt like some warped cousin of that. It was the same act, but came with none of the same euphoria or connection. It had been like eating a rice cake and calling it dinner.

  Rook chuckled humorlessly to himself as he considered May’s freaky psychic tendencies. He wondered if her disdain for the way his house was decorated, his bedroom, was because on some level she could sense that he’d slept with the decorator. He wouldn’t put it past her to have sensed it. The woman was scary-accurate about that kind of thing.

  One of the sensors on his open laptop starting to blink and he quickly flipped to the hallways cams. May was dressed in pajamas and bare feet as she moved up the stairs of Ricky’s crow’s nest. He frowned. He watched for a moment as May cracked open Ricky’s door and peered in for a second.

  He expected her to just peek in at their daughter and then go back to bed, but instead, May stood there for a long time, staring in.

  Deciding to go make sure everything was okay, Rook slid back into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, dragging his running shoes on and heading through the bunker toward Ricky’s room.

  He let out a long, slow breath and realized that his stomach was tumbling like a dryer on low. He was… excited. He was walking through a dark building at night to go see his ex-wife and he was really freaking excited to see her. Go figure.

  He cleared his throat at the bottom of the stairs that led up to Ricky’s room so that he wouldn’t startle May.

  She peered down into the darkness.

  He came up the stairs to stand beside May, peeking into Ricky’s room. Nothing was amiss.

  “Everything all right?”

  She nodded, waited a long moment and then sighed. She looked back into Ricky’s room, assuming the same pose she’d been in for a few minutes.