by Geri Krotow
“Yeah. I don’t know. Probably. Hell, my head’s been screwed up since I took the money and ran with it.” Since he’d gotten Jena’s text, but he wasn’t going to verbalize that. His decision to steal and run, then to help get Jena out of that place, had been all his own.
Brandon looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go. Poppy’s meeting me at the boatyard. I’m still doing the custom yachts, but at a much slower production rate. She’s doing their interiors.”
“I’m glad you can still do that, Brandon.” He knew that Brandon’s full-time job was at a large shipbuilding company in NOLA. Brandon said he’d learned a lot there and that it wasn’t so bad—he had a decent salary. But Jeb had seen his friend at the top of his game, running a multimillion-dollar production facility. It had to be tough to take the pay cut and lose his creative license.
“Me, too, bro. And it’ll be a lot better when you agree to come back.” He winked at Jeb before he stood up and threw his cup into the recycle bin. “You want a lift back to your place?”
Jeb shook his head. “No, thanks. I need the walk.”
Chapter 8
Jena drove up to Baton Rouge the next Sunday for family dinner. A laugh escaped her as the breeze whipped her hair around the car. Having the sunroof open on a warm summer day, with the air conditioning blasting at her face, was an indulgence. A fun one.
She hadn’t asked if Jeb would be there or not; it wasn’t something she’d ever asked before, and she didn’t want to raise any curiosity. Not after her father had witnessed their combustible chemistry firsthand.
“Gah!” She pounded the steering wheel. If her father had been holding a lit match, it would have blown up The Refuge when he found them reaching for Jeb’s phone. Hudson hadn’t said a word, but she’d seen the bemusement in his expression. As if it wasn’t much of a surprise at all, seeing her and Jeb hot for one another. It made her wonder how many other times her parents or brothers noticed there was more in the air between her and Jeb than a childhood friendship.
There was nothing to make a go of, anyhow. Never had been. Okay, maybe back in college, before she’d been recruited into undercover work. But they’d been so young, what were the odds anything they’d started back then would go the distance?
They’d never know.
She prepared herself to face her parents anyway—just in case Hudson had said something to Gloria. Her mother had begun to worry about her never “settling down,” and despite Jena’s protests that times were different, that she was different than her mother in so many ways, Gloria wouldn’t hear any of it.
The house looked as beautiful as it always had—Gloria didn’t do anything only halfway. But Jena had noticed a more welcoming vibe, as if the house had settled into becoming a home now that Hudson and Gloria had opened their minds and hearts.
Jena wasn’t a fool—she knew her parents weren’t going to instantly turn into diversity poster children, but they’d made a big step by apologizing to Henry and Sonja and the entire family.
The front door was locked and she didn’t get any response when she rang the doorbell. Puzzled, she walked around to the back via the long, winding gravel path her mother had laid around several flowerbeds and groves of trees.
But there wasn’t anyone by the pool, either, or on the veranda. She shot off a text to Brandon, since she was certain he and Poppy were coming.
His reply was swift.
Sonja’s having the baby. We’re all in NOLA. Sorry, sis.
Brandon gave her the hospital address and told her to take her time driving back—the baby apparently was taking its time, too. Whatever that meant. She sighed. Getting back into the groove of being a permanent Louisianan was going to take a while. She’d been going on missions for the better part of a decade. No one was going to realize she wanted to be a part of their lives instantly.
They’d forgotten her. Of course they had. No one was used to her being around, and it wasn’t personal. But it felt like it.
She turned to leave, but the day was so hot, the heat oppressive as all hell. Her sundress was easy enough to slip out of, and she could swim in her underwear. Or… She looked around the property. No one could see into the very private backyard pool area.
But Sonja might give birth to her niece or nephew at any moment—although Brandon had said it was going slow.
She promised herself a fifteen-minute dip, no longer. Without further delay, she grabbed a beach towel from the veranda, still unlocked, and stripped off her clothes. She dove into the twelve-foot-deep end and let a grin split her face under the water. It was about damned time she acted more like a fun-loving woman than the deadly serious agent she’d been for too long.
* * * *
Jeb pulled up to the Boudreauxes’ and his stomach sank when he saw Jena’s car in the circular drive with no sign of either brother. It wasn’t that he was afraid of seeing her again, exactly. It was more of a self-preservation tactic. Work tomorrow morning would be safe, as there would be an entire staff of contractors and the employees she’d begun to hire. And he’d never let himself be alone with her again, so that ruled out another kitchen disaster.
He pocketed his car keys and hit the doorbell, hoping against hope that Hudson would be the one to open the door. He’d converse with him until the other Boudreaux men showed up.
No answer. They had to be around back. He walked around the side of the house and the first thing he noticed in the backyard was that no one was there—the veranda looked empty, and the laughter that was a part of the usual Sunday dinners was absent.
The water’s splash drew his gaze to the pool. More like a resort, the Boudreauxes’ pool looked as if it’d been prepped for a fancy magazine shoot. Lush plants and flowers surrounded the river-rock edge, and the small waterfall at the far end came from a hot tub he’d only been in once, when there’d been a family get-together.
What he’d never seen in the luxurious pool was Jena, swimming laps as if she were still on the school swim team. Unlike when she was in high school and college, however, she wasn’t wearing a swimsuit.
Go. Now. Get. Out.
His mind screamed while his feet turned to lead weights. He tried to summon the soundtrack from every slasher movie he’d seen, but instead all he heard was the water lapping over Jena’s skin as she stroked across the length of the pool, oblivious to him.
Maybe he was wishing her naked, and in reality she had on a skin-colored swimsuit. He ripped his gaze from her and immediately saw the chair with what looked like a dress and underwear.
Jena was naked. In the pool. Alone.
He didn’t know how he summoned the strength, but, as if through his own pool of pepper jelly, he turned and began the walk back to his car.
Keep going. One step, two… The legs that had moved him across eight miles of NOLA yesterday morning struggled to make it the few hundred yards to the side of the house, where he’d be out of her range of sight and—better—he wouldn’t be able to see her, either.
“Hey!” For the second time in three minutes, he froze. Maybe she was yelling at a snake. He took another step away, doing the right thing. Leaving Jena alone.
“Jeb!” Closer, the pat of wet feet on the rocks, the squeak of the gate. “Come back here.”
He braced himself. Look at her face. Do not look down.
But when he turned around, Jena was wrapped in a big pink towel. Not that he looked anywhere but at her face—where her eyes flashed.
“What the hell were you doing? How long were you watching me?”
“Hey, wait a minute. I wasn’t here to watch you. No one answered the door so I came around back. There’s no crime in that.”
She clutched the towel high against her chest, leaving him no chance of seeing her cleavage. He kept his gaze on her face anyway. “Why did you leave without saying anything? You saw me, right?”
Lying had its vi
rtues. But she’d known him for most of his life. And she could read him like a neon sign at midnight in the French Quarter.
“I did.”
She looked at him, and he saw the lines around her eyes. Not the smiling ones he loved to cause when they were together. Jena was tired.
“No one’s here. Wait, give me a minute.” She whirled around and stretched the towel out like bat wings, then rewrapped it. When she faced him again she’d somehow tucked it under her left arm, in the secret way only women seemed to know. It was the same with bath towels and her long, long hair. He’d seen her wrap it up like a frothy dollop of whipped cream, never failing to make his fingers itch to undo it. Now her wet hair hung in thick lengths around her shoulders.
“You look a little out of it, Jeb. Did you go for a long run today?”
“Yeah.”
“And you haven’t hydrated enough, have you?”
“I did.” No, he hadn’t. He drank plenty of water, but sometimes his long runs made him a little more susceptible to the heat and humidity.
“You look like you did that time in college, after the 10K.”
“I didn’t think you’d remember that.”
“I’d never forget seeing you dry heave like that. Come on.” She jerked her head at the pool.
“What? No. I’ve got water in my car. I’m leaving.”
“You need to cool off, Jeb.” She put her hands on her hips, and miraculously the towel didn’t move. Not that he was looking. “Look, I promise I won’t come in the water with you. You’ve got it all to yourself. Let me get you a sweet tea out of the veranda fridge.”
He was too mentally exhausted to care, so while she sauntered off to get his cold drink, he went ahead and got into the pool. Almost as soon as the cool water hit his skin he began to feel more like himself. The confusion about whether to stay or go vanished, and his leg muscles loosened up.
“Here you go.” Jena handed him a plastic cup and straw before she sat on the pool’s edge, her calves in the water. Jeb sucked down the drink in two gulps.
“I don’t think your mother’s iced tea has ever tasted this good.”
“So you’re feeling better, I take it?” She motioned for him to give her the cup and she refilled it from the pitcher she’d also brought out. When she gave it back to him she surreptitiously glanced at his waist below the water.
“Don’t worry. Not everyone is as comfortable in the buff as you are.” He’d left his boxers on. The tea was cold and smooth against his parched throat. “I feel stupid. I hadn’t realized that I’d let the heat get to me.”
“Maybe you were distracted?” Her grin threw him back to college. It was her saucy, devil-may-care smile that he credited as the reason he’d originally fallen for her, as a kid, when he’d carved that heart in her parents’ huge oak tree.
“No offense, but I ran long yesterday and this morning. I haven’t been able to get out after work, so I pushed it too much, I guess. How did you know?”
Her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. He didn’t think he’d asked a tough question.
“It was my job to know.” Her quiet answer carried over the water. He sank onto the ledge that rimmed the pool, providing seating. His back was to her, her legs next to him.
“You mean with the CIA?”
“Yes.” She scooped some water, let it fall from her hand. “It’s not classified that I was employed by the agency. At least, it won’t be in due time. When I can tell my family, I will. But until then…”
“You don’t want me mentioning it. I haven’t, and I won’t.”
“I know.” She looked at the waterfall across the pool and he sipped his tea. He didn’t know the last time he’d felt so relaxed. The constant hum of the sexual chemistry was there, of course—it always was. But he wasn’t going to act on it. The price was too high; each time he was with her, the fall afterward was too hard. It sliced too deep, reminded him that he’d never have her.
“By the way? I knew you were getting dehydrated because you were pale and clammy.”
“I should know better by now. Thanks for getting me in the pool. I needed it.” He took another swig of tea. “Where is everyone, by the way?”
She kicked her feet out, splashing. He wasn’t going to linger on her pink toenails. Or wonder when she’d found time to pamper herself, which no one deserved more than her. “Sonja is having the baby. I would have turned right around to go back, but Brandon says it’s taking a while. I was hot, saw the pool, and jumped in.”
“It is a perfect day for a swim. So you’re heading back to NOLA now?”
“Mmmm.” She pulled her knees up, sat cross-legged with the towel between her legs. His fingers trembled with the need to shove it back and explore Jena’s most intimate parts.
Instead, he moved his hands through the water, sank deeper so that his shoulders were beneath the surface.
“I wanted to tell you about my real work for a long time.”
“Yet you didn’t. And that’s okay, Jena. I get that you were working on national security. I didn’t need to know.” But he’d sure have liked to. To understand that she wasn’t on some Navy supply ship, taking aid to a natural disaster or manmade catastrophe site. As if knowing would have made a difference. He grunted in frustration.
“You never wondered, when we were…seeing one another the last two years?”
“No. I trusted you.”
He looked out of the corner of his eye and saw the crisscrossed scars on her shin. Without touching her—that would be disastrous—he nodded at her leg. “Those scars, what are they from?”
“Running through brambles with you when we were eleven, after we’d rung the Devereauxes’ doorbell and hid behind their wall.”
He burst out laughing. “I forgot all about that. That’s right, you fell and ripped up your pants.”
“Not all my scars are from my work.” She half frowned, and he saw the skin of her scar stretch.
“Your cheek has healed incredibly well.”
“I had the best plastic surgeon in the world.”
“Does it still hurt, though?” He knew his knee surgery site still bugged him, years out. His torn ACL in college cross country had needed surgery, and it effectively ended his competitive running career. He was grateful he was still able to run recreationally.
“Sometimes. I’m fortunate it’s summer. Maybe in the winter it’ll bother me, when it’s chilly and damp.”
“What about the scars on your back?”
“You noticed those?” Genuine surprise spiked her voice.
“They’re hard to miss.” Especially the one that looked like someone took a scoop and left an indent just above her right shoulder.
“You never asked before.” She hugged her knees, keeping her bottom flat so that her towel did its job and kept her privates covered. “The one that looks like a bullet wound? It’s not. It’s from getting thrown into a rusty piece of rebar. Yes, by a bad guy, and don’t worry, my partner at the time took him out.”
Jeb didn’t ask what “took him out” meant. He didn’t want to risk interrupting her words. She’d never shared this part of her life with him before, and he couldn’t expect there’d ever be a time she would again.
Her sigh echoed around the pool’s high brick landscaping. “The three lines near the base of my spine? That was a gunshot. I’m lucky to be alive and walking, let me tell you. That happened early on, within my first year with the agency.”
“Yet you went back for more.”
“It’s seductive. The training was like nothing else I’d ever experienced. And believe it or not, most of the work was boring. Stakeouts, so to speak. Waiting. A lot of waiting. And a lot of analysis, working with analysts who are highly skilled at ferreting out a life story from the tiniest crumb of intel. It was easy at times to think that the lulls would last forever, that my first
few missions were anomalies. That’s when I got most of my scars, when I was a rookie.”
“How long do they consider you a rookie?”
“Not long enough. The last couple of years have been more intense. The missions came one after another, and it was getting harder and harder to come back to the social work position I had with the State of Louisiana and pretend I’d been on yet another Navy deployment. It’s one thing in the middle of a war that’s on television and all over the Internet every day. But we’re not at that pace anymore, at least not as far as the public sees it.”
“What made you want to quit?”
“I never intended to make it a career. It’s hard to not be in the thick of it, to just let it all go, but that last mission sealed the deal for me. My operator days are over, and I have no regrets.”
He looked at her then. “None?”
Her eyes shone, reflecting the light off the pool surface. She met his gaze with steady calm, and something else he’d never felt from her before.
“I can’t regret reaching out to you, Jeb, no matter what it cost you and my brother. It saved my life. Do I regret that you risked your life to come get me, saw me at my weakest, my most broken?” She glanced away, her face shrouded in doubt. He waited.
“No. Someone had to see me like that, to get me out of there, and there’s no one else I’d have chosen.”
He swallowed. “I didn’t risk my life, Jena.”
“You spent a day in the county jail!”
“An administrative glitch. Sure, it wasn’t the best day of my life, but it wasn’t the worst, either.” The worst had been the thirty-six hours of not knowing exactly where she was, and if she was still alive. That had defined hell for Jeb.
“The end result, regardless, is that we’re both here now, going after new dreams.” He set down his cup and swam out to the middle of the pool before he turned and faced her again. “You can come back in, you know. I’m not going to touch you.” Unless she wanted him to.
The sun reflected in diamond-shaped undulations on the water’s surface. Silence stretched between them. She was thinking about it. Weighing the pros and cons. He forced himself to concentrate on the water, the iced tea, anything to keep his erection from becoming a distraction. He’d always want her, but it wasn’t fair to say she’d be safe in the water and then sport a raging hard-on through his wet briefs.