Holly overheard this and gave a slight nod. “Yeah,” she confirmed. “That’s what I couldn’t really explain. Nailed it.”
Michael popped back up. “If I didn’t have a horde of roommates, I would love to invest in some quality furniture. Because it is an investment. You could probably sell everything in this room for triple what you paid for it in another three to five years. Hell, maybe you could get more.” His eyes widened earnestly. “If you decide to sell, let me know. I’ll get you in touch with my aunt and you guys can do some business together. I’d only take, like, a five percent commission, which is practically nothing. You’ll still be coming out on top, trust me.”
“Okay,” Chris clapped his hands and smiled tightly. “Let’s order that food, huh? Right now. Because I have a feeling they can’t possibly get here fast enough.”
Kate stifled a laugh. “Can you call it in?” she asked Chris. She looked at Holly and jerked her head towards the kitchen. “Holly and I will get everyone drinks.”
Before they had crossed the threshold, Holly was apologizing. “I know, I know. He’s insufferable, right? I knew that,” she sighed. “But I didn’t want to admit it. Part of me was hoping you guys would meet him and tell me I was just being too hard on him.”
“You are not being too hard on him,” Kate informed her, pulling a chilled bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. “I can’t believe he ever got a second date. What do you see in this guy? He’s such a bro.”
“Not past the blonde curls, I guess.” Holly groaned, grabbing the first glass of wine Kate poured and downing it. “He seemed so different at the café, didn’t he? Like the strong, silent type. But as soon as he takes off that apron, it’s like a switch flips and the words just pour out of him, and more times than not, they’re stupid.” She motioned to Kate for a refill. “It sucks, too, because during one Jabber Fest he told me that his mom owns a coffee shop in Vermont. I really wanted to meet her and, I don’t know,” Holly lowered her gaze and picked an imaginary piece of lint off the counter “pick her brain, or something.”
Kate put her hand on Holly’s shoulder. “Oh, honey,” she said gently. “You can’t possibly stay with him long enough to meet his mother. And do you really want to meet the loins that birthed this guy?”
“Not when you put it like that,” Holly mumbled. She raised her eyes to meet Kate’s and smiled mischievously. “If we get drunk, his rambling is actually kind of funny.”
“No way. Last time I got drunk…” Kate blushed.
“Last time you got drunk you banged your bodyguard. I puked on my shoes walking home,” Holly grumbled. “Who was the real loser there?”
The women laughed and returned to the living room, finding Chris held captive by Michael’s monologue on craft beers.
“Honestly, IPAs are the new wine,” he announced, gesturing so wildly that he nearly knocked the glass Kate offered him out of her hand. “Pretty soon you’ll be going to restaurants and asking the sommelier what beer to pair with your meal. Grapes are out and hops are in, man, I’m telling you. My stepsister Laura owns a brewery in Michigan, and she’s making insane money right now. Insane. That’s where I would invest, honestly. A brewery.”
“Seems like you’ve got a lot of plans for investing,” Chris remarked, his tone icy. Clearly, the shine had worn off Michael for Chris.
Michael scoffed. “Oh, yeah. You’ve gotta plan for your future, man. Honestly. What about you, man? You make enough as private security to invest?”
Chris rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I do okay,” he replied shortly.
“Man, you gotta start thinking about your retirement someday. You can’t do this forever, huh? You ever think about investing in a brewery? You know, once the muscles start to sag?” He winked at Chris.
Holly winced, and Kate jumped in to smooth the conversation’s course. “Chris used to work in a restaurant,” she offered. “That’s…like a food brewery.”
Holly snickered, and Chris chuckled. Michael nodded as if it were a perfectly normal thing to say. “Very cool. How long have you two been together?” he asked, and actually paused long enough for an answer.
Kate began to stammer, unsure how to answer such a question. Does he not know that Chris is my security? she wondered. “Uh…” she shot a pleading look at Holly, but Chris answered smoothly, surprising her.
“Almost six years now, right, babe?” he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.
“Oh. Well,” she said, playing along. “More like eight, if you count the years you were locked up.”
“Can’t count those, though, because I can’t be sure you waited for me.” Chris answered smoothly, leaning forward and slapping Michael’s knee conspiratorially. “Know what I mean? Chicks, man. Can’t trust ‘em to be loyal to their man when you’re in the joint.”
“Totally, totally.” Michael nodded and sipped his wine. “Relationships are so crazy, honestly. That’s why, when you meet a good girl, you’ve gotta lock her down.” He dropped a lazy wink at Holly.
“Oh, God,” she muttered into her wine glass, taking another healthy swig.
Chris looked thoughtfully at Kate. “Honestly, that’s the smartest thing I’ve heard all night,” he said.
The rest of the night moved forward at an agonizingly slow pace. Michael continued to talk between every mouthful of food, and throughout the entirety of the movie. The rest of the group eventually stopped responding to his statements, and it didn’t seem to bother Michael in the slightest. Before they left, Holly gave Kate a hug and whispered in her ear, “If he takes a breath, I’m going to jump in and break up with him.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Kate whispered back.
“Then I’ll just never call him again without explanation. Whatever.”
Shutting the door behind her, Kate turned to face Chris. “I don’t have a lot of experience to base my assessment on,” she said sheepishly. “But that was a pretty bad first date, huh?”
Chris hid his face in his hands and screamed into them, eyes wide and peeking over his fingertips. “What was wrong with that guy?” he asked. “Hell, what’s wrong with me for allowing that weirdo to stay in your house for that long? I could have called him a security threat and kicked his ass out.”
Kate giggled. “Next time.”
Chris shook his head and approached her, slipping his arms around her waist. “No way. Next time, we’re not inviting that dude over. Or anyone.” Kate laughed, leaning into Chris’s embrace. “Just us, no friends. That way I can get to know you without some douchebag interrupting with his opinion every twenty seconds.”
“Twenty?” Kate asked, nuzzling Chris’s neck and inhaling his scent of soap and sweat. “That’s being a bit generous.”
Chris traced Kate’s lips with the pad of his thumb, trailing off her bottom lip to her chin, and tilted her head up to look at him. He bent down and kissed her softly, deeply, sending shivers down her body all the way to her toes. “I’m serious, Kate,” he said quietly. “I want to take you out, somewhere nice, on a real date. I want to get to know you.”
“Just say when,” Kate said breathlessly. Her stomach fluttered at the thought of dressing up and going out with Chris, flirting in the cab on the way to a dimly lit restaurant, waiting for a kiss goodnight at the door. “We could start now, and work backwards,” she suggested, pulling him towards the bedroom.
“I can’t protect you if I’m sleeping with you,” he protested halfheartedly. Chris wanted to follow her into the bedroom, more than anything, but the illusion of professionalism demanded that he make an argument against it.
“You can protect me even better!” Kate countered. “I’ll let you sleep on the side closest to the door.”
And that settled that.
16
As she settled back into her pillow, Kate wondered how she had gone so long without sex. Perhaps the grief of losing Aiden had killed her sex drive, and she hadn’t even realized how much she had missed it until Chris arrived in her b
ed to reawaken her libido. She was exhausted and content in a way she had been sorely missing, but she couldn’t quiet the voice in the back of her head that was insisting she was dishonoring Aiden’s memory by sleeping with another man in what had been Aiden’s bed. Kate forced the thought out of her mind, shaking her head. She looked over at Chris and mustered a smile.
“What?” he asked, smiling back.
“Nothing,” she lied. “Just happy.” Not a big lie. She was happy, in a way.
“I’m glad. Happy even though we’re doing this backwards?”
“Yes.” Kate propped herself up on an elbow. “So now we’re at the ‘getting to know each other’ stage. Tell me about yourself.”
Chris laughed and propped himself up, facing her. “What do you want to know?”
“Hmm…what’s your favorite book?”
“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. What’s yours?”
“Pride and Prejudice.”
“Interesting choice,” Chris mused. “‘Angry people are not always wise.’ That’s from Pride and Prejudice, right?”
“Do you really think I’m that angry?”
“No.” Chris smiled. “Not that angry, and you are very wise. What’s your favorite food?”
Kate thought about it. “Cake. I could eat cake all day, every day.”
“I have literally not seen you eat cake once since I’ve known you,” Chris pointed out.
“Well, it’s a special occasion food,” Kate explained. “You can’t just eat cake willy-nilly, there has to be a reason for its consumption. Maybe that’s why I like it. Because cake is usually served during happy times. What’s your favorite food? Wait, let me guess: candy.”
“Close. Chicken parmesan.”
“How is chicken parmesan close to candy? They’re absolutely dissimilar.”
“They’re both extremely tasty,” Chris said loftily.
Kate rolled her eyes. “Seriously, what’s with the candy? You hoard it like a six year old.”
Chris shrugged. “I just like candy. It’s cheap and plentiful, why shouldn’t I hoard it?” He smiled at Kate’s disappointed look. “Sorry, pretty lady. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes candy is just too good to refuse.”
“Fair enough. I have another question: why did you leave the Marines? Or is that just another que sera, sera kind of thing?”
Chris avoided her gaze. “Yeah. I guess,” he said lightly. Kate looked at him.
“Oh, is that something I should not have asked? I’m sorry. I should have realized that could be a painful thing to talk about.”
“No, it’s not,” Chris forced a smile and patted her shoulder in an awkward caress. “Really. I just needed a change of scenery, I guess. Can’t do the same thing forever.” He leaned over and kissed her nose. “Let’s get some sleep. I’m beat, how about you?”
Kate snuggled up next to him and quickly fell asleep. Chris, however, lay awake, staring at the ceiling through the soft illumination of the city lights. He struggled not to turn over or get too restless, as he didn’t want to wake Kate.
Gently, he peeled her arm off of his chest and eased himself out of the bed. He went to the couch, where his things still waited for him, and collapsed onto it. Moving on up in the world, he thought. From couch to the lady of the house’s bed. He stared into the dark, intentionally keeping his mind blank. He knew once he started thinking, his thoughts were going to stray to a place he wasn’t sure he was ready to visit. It was a battle he lost.
Chris hadn’t dated much since he returned from the Marines. Sure, he’d had a one night stand here and there, and a few times he’d had a couple dates with the same girl, but it was always very casual, and no one had ever been under the illusion that it meant anything. As a result, Chris hadn’t been posed many questions about his past that couldn’t be glibly brushed off. But Kate truly cared about the answer, and it was harder to keep secrets from someone like that.
Chris pulled his bag over to the side of the couch and rummaged around by feel, locating and pulling out a Twix bar. He had told Kate that his affinity for candy was based in nothing, and that had been true. But it’s definitely not the whole story, now, is it? Chris thought, his thoughts turning the chocolate taste on his tongue bitter.
Chris had always been partial to sweets, but running from threatening figures throughout his childhood and training during his teenage years had kept it from showing on his body. It became such an ingrained part of his personality, he never gave a thought to any other possible side effects. When Chris had been deployed, he found himself, to his horrified amusement, going through sugar withdrawals. The headaches and irritability became so severe he worried he might actually get discharged prematurely—and then he met Jackson.
“Looks like you could use this a little more’n I could right now,” the Southern drawl accompanied a cellophane package hitting Chris in the head softly. He had been slumped over a table, head resting on his arms. His first instinct was to beat the hell out of whoever had just thrown something at him. He looked up with rage in his eyes and started to rise when he saw the chocolate cookie sitting next to him.
“The hell is this?” he muttered, picking up the package and turning it over in his hands.
“You ain’t never seen a moon pie before?” the soldier standing across the table folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Take a bite and tell me it ain’t the best thing ever hit you in the head.”
That had been Chris’s introduction to the man who would become more like family than anyone else he’d ever met. Jackson, much like Chris, was a fiend for sugar, but his taste for it had come from a more sinister background.
Raised in a nice Southern Baptist family, Jackson had grown up itching for a taste of freedom. It came along when he was fifteen, in the form of a pretty girl with a heroin habit. Teenage love bloomed hard and fast, and Jackson had been a full blown junkie before his seventeenth birthday. Luckily for him, he managed to avoid collecting any felonies during that period of his life. Unluckily for him, his girlfriend fell pregnant, and the young couple found themselves homeless with a baby on the way.
Jackson had stepped up in a big way. He cleaned up, joined the military, and married Darla when their son was two years old. He proudly told Chris, “I ain’t touched a drop of dope since that stick turned pink. I c’n beat the cravin’ off with sugar, that’s the only way you’d ever know I was a junkie.”
“Chris?”
Kate’s voice jolted Chris from the memories. His eyes shot open and he gasped, startled. Kate was kneeling next to the couch, her face inches from his in the dark.
“Jeez!” Chris reached out and touched her cheek. “Hey. How long have you been there?”
He could feel Kate smile under his fingers. “Long enough. Listen, I think I may have overstepped earlier, and I wanted to apologize.”
Chris smiled back, and patted the spot next to him. “Come here.” She sat, waiting. “You don’t owe me any apologies, I owe you one.” Chris sighed. “You’re really brave, you know that?”
“Me?” Kate sounded dubious.
“Yeah, you are. You told me about Aiden right from the get-go. It was hard for you, and it hurt you, but you could talk about it. I just…I’m not that brave.” Chris reached for Kate’s hand, finding it and entwining his fingers with hers.
“Chris, you don’t have to-”
“I want to,” he said softly. He took a deep breath. “I’ve only ever had one real, true friend in this world. His name was Jackson. We were stationed together overseas, and he was like a brother to me. We got discharged together when our time was up, and we were going to take a stab at running a restaurant together. I liked to cook and he liked to eat,” Chris smiled at the memory. “He had a real knack for business. It was his place in SoHo, where I worked.” Chris swallowed hard. “First time I’d ever lived in New York. I didn’t think I was up for it, but Jackson, he wasn’t afraid of anything. His wife, Darla, she…she had a lot of problems. She was using drugs,
hard drugs, and no one knew. Jackson suspected it, but he didn’t know for sure. He thought she was still clean. I think he was just hoping she was, anyway. No one knew for sure she wasn’t, not until she nodded off driving home one night and wrecked the car.”
Kate waited in the silence, listening to Chris’s heavy breathing. When he spoke again, his voice was thick.
“It was bad. Really bad. She drove off an embankment and the car was all smashed up. Tyler, their son, he was in the backseat.” Chris paused again. “They both died.”
Kate’s breath caught in her throat. “Oh, Chris.” She squeezed his hand, overcome with the depth of grief she knew he must have felt. She knew it all too well.
Drawing in a shuddering breath, Chris continued. “Jackson blamed himself. Anyone would, even when it wasn’t their fault. I blame myself for not seeing what he was planning on doing that night, and I know it wasn’t my fault. I was at his front door when I heard the gun go off. I knew even before I busted it down what I’d find inside.”
They sat together in silence, hands clasped, the two of them reflecting on the tragedies in their lives that had led them to that moment. The silence spread out around them like a soft blanket, and they relaxed into it. Neither had anything left to hide, having laid out their darkest truths for the other. They sat in the dark with their souls freshly bared, and eventually fell asleep.
17
Kate woke first, finding herself draped on top of Chris. “Oof,” she groaned, stretching the kinks out of her shoulders.
Chris’s eyes, as always, popped open at the first sound. “Good morning,” he smiled and stretched as slowly as syrup being poured from the bottle.
Ooh, syrup, Kate thought. “Morning,” she greeted. “We should go get some breakfast. Waffles sound phenomenal right now.”
Chris sat up, stifling a yawn. “Or,” he countered, “we could stay in this morning and I’ll make you some waffles from scratch. My way of apologizing for behaving like a kid last night.”
“Chris, you don’t have anything to apologize for.” Kate leaned in and kissed his cheek. She never would have believed that she could fall as fast and as hard for someone as she had for Chris, but the reality was undeniable. “Believe me, I know how grief can turn you upside down.”
The Book Critic's Bodyguard Page 10