“I do not know.” Her voice was cold and hard in a way Kara had never heard. “Do I smack you like a spoiled child? Or do I hold you in my lap like a broken bambina?”
“I’m too big to sit in your lap anymore, Nonna.”
“I still do not know which I should do to you.”
Kara closed her eyes and turned back toward Justin, taking several deep breaths so that she had some chance of being calm when she told him, “Not no, but hell no.”
Up the stairs she heard the front door open and close.
Kara opened her eyes.
She and Nonna were alone in the kitchen.
“Where’s Justin?” She looked out the back window that opened onto the small fenced backyard behind their house, but it too was empty.
Nonna just shook her head.
Kara jumped up to bolt for the front door, but Nonna’s hand on her arm kept her from running to see where he’d gone.
“You have hurt him, Kara. Like with a knife. He will need some time.”
“But—” She didn’t understand.
Nonna pulled Kara into her arms and hugged her with surprising strength for a woman in her late seventies.
“He loves you so very much, mia cara. Now you must decide how you feel about him.”
“He—” It was all she managed before her knees let go, she missed the stool, and she sat abruptly on the kitchen floor. “What?”
* * *
Kara sat a long time as Nonna’s and then her own words sunk in. If that Texan idiot thought he was in love with her…and then she’d said…about it just being sex…
This time “sick” was the obvious choice of reactions, and it was only with iron control that she managed to keep from barfing up right there on the kitchen floor. The bile burned, but she kept it down.
When she made it to her feet, she drank a glass of juice to clear the foul taste.
Nonna gave her a silent hug, offering no words of comfort where they could find no home, and then handed her the bag lunches for Papa and her brothers. Then she waved for Kara to take them upstairs.
They were all leaving for work and school.
“Thanks, Kara.” Al Junior took his and went.
“You look terrible, honey.” Papa gave her a hug and was gone.
Joe would already be at the store and get his lunch there.
Rudi gave her a hug before taking his lunch. He was almost out the door before she noticed what was over his shoulder.
“Wait.”
Rudy ducked down his head and moved faster.
Kara managed to snag a strap and bring Rudi to a stumbling halt. Al Junior took one look over his shoulder and kept moving. The expression on his face said that he was glad to have made good his escape. Papa didn’t look back at all, very determinedly didn’t.
Rudi didn’t turn to face her.
“What are you doing with Justin’s duffel?”
He tried to tug free, but she jerked back on the strap. Then he mumbled something.
“What?” She jerked it hard enough to spin Rudi and slam him up against the doorjamb.
“I’m taking it to him. He said he couldn’t wait, couldn’t stay. He asked, so I packed it and I’m taking it to him.”
“Where?”
“C’mon, Kar.” He whined out the nickname only he was allowed.
“Where, Rudi?” she shouted in his face. “And, remember, you couldn’t get by me when we were kids and I’ll put Special Operations up against lawyer training any day. Now—” She forced herself to take a deep breath and slow down. It was barely past eight in the morning and she’d already done so many things wrong today.
“Please, Rude. Where did he go? He doesn’t know the city, at least not this part of it.”
“Papa told him to go to the Marriott by the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Shit! Why’d he do that? That’s like the most expensive place around.”
“Why would he care? He’s rich.”
“No he’s…” Kara trailed off. She didn’t know that about him. She knew he was great in bed and was one of the best pilots she’d ever seen in any craft. But his family… She knew their names and that they were close. Some worked with horses, sister was Air Force. Not much else.
“Crap, Kara. Don’t you know anything about the guy you’re shacking up with? Papa did an Internet search, didn’t even have to hit a search with his NYPD credentials. High-end horse breeders. Their family helped found the American Quarter Horse Association, which impressed the shit outta Joe though none of the rest of us knew what it was. But you know Joe and the horses.” Rudi shrugged.
She knew. One of the lines Joe always gave for not having found himself a girl was that he couldn’t afford betting on the races and a girl. He always concluded by saying that the horses were cheaper and generally more fun.
“Apparently quarter horses are the biggest category of races in the U.S., especially in the South and Midwest. If one wins a race, Joe said there’s something like a thirty percent chance it comes from the Roberts’ ranch or one of their studs. This dude’s way high-end, Sis. What did you do to him?”
“Uh, can I just say it wasn’t real nice?”
“Crap, Sis. You gotta fix this. I can see how it’s hurtin’ you. You gotta fix this.”
“Don’t know if I can, Rude.” But she lifted Justin’s duffel off Rudi’s shoulder and put it on her own.
“You gotta try, Kar.” Then he hugged her hard and headed off to keep the courtrooms of Brooklyn safe.
Kara stepped out into the light morning mist. It was damp and chilly. She turned back for a coat and the door closed in her face. Through the beveled glass she could see enough to know that Nonna had shut the door.
Then the dead bolt clicked into place.
Kara’s keys were still hanging on the hook in the foyer where they always hung—next to her coat on the other side of the locked door.
Chapter 18
Justin took one look around his twentieth-floor room of the Marriott with a view out over the Brooklyn Bridge. If he sat in here, he’d go mad. So he went downstairs and bought shorts, a T-shirt, and some decent running shoes because he couldn’t wait for his duffel to show up.
He thought about going for a run in the city, but Brooklyn was so damn crowded he didn’t know where to begin. The deep Somali desert, Ramon Airbase in Israel, Tripoli—those he understood. New York was like a city gone mad. Vertical. So many people crowded in that he couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
Finally he went to the hotel’s fitness center and hit one of the treadmill machines. It was mid-morning and he owned the place. Everyone else was off to their business meetings or whatever.
He started running fast. At one mile he goosed it and at two he increased the incline and goosed it again. Without a forty- or fifty-pound training pack he could run a half marathon before he felt it.
Some part of him acknowledged that he couldn’t do it at this pace, but he couldn’t make himself slow down. Didn’t matter that the sweat was burning his eyes; he hadn’t thought to grab a towel and he wasn’t going to stop.
So, he did something he almost never did, especially not in public. He pulled off his T-shirt, exposing his back, and used it to wipe at his face from time to time.
Justin was nine miles out at a dead run when he hit the wall. It was too much, so he cycled down, first to trot, then jog, then walk. Until finally the machine ground to a halt and he stood there with no more idea of what to do than when he’d started.
He turned around and jolted.
There on a chair behind him rested his duffel bag.
Beside it sat Kara Moretti with her knees pulled up to her chest, her hair down and mostly hiding her face. But he could feel those wide, dark eyes watching him.
His heart ached with the need to go to her, but he couldn’t do i
t. Not after what she’d said. He stepped off the treadmill and sat down on the trailing end, facing her.
They sat in silence a long time before she spoke.
“How was I supposed to know?”
Justin shrugged. He’d simply…known. He’d thought that was enough somehow, dolt that he was.
“You never said you loved me.”
He hadn’t. Didn’t make it any less true.
Again they lapsed into silence. Someone came in, looked at the two of them, then opted for the swimming pool next door. Wise choice.
“I hate that you’re mad at me.” Her voice broke. Kara’s voice never broke.
“C’mon, Kara. You’re not the one I’m mad at.”
“Then who?” It came out on a choke and a gulp. Her face remained mostly hidden by her hair.
“Duh! Who else is sitting in the room?”
She tipped her head to the side until one red-rimmed eye studied him in the clear. She’d been crying while sitting silently behind him, and the thought almost ruined him.
Then she shook her head, which totally blocked her face.
In frustration she grabbed at her hair and tossed it back over her shoulders.
He waited, feeling the chill of cooling sweat. The T-shirt clenched in his hand was clammy but he wasn’t about to fish another one out of the duffel; it was still too close to Kara.
“I don’t get it. Why are you mad at yourself?”
Justin scrubbed his hands through his hair, wishing he could reach inside and fix the mess there. “Pretty obvious.”
“Not to this girl.”
“C’mon, Moretti. Use that amazing, intuitive brain of yours.”
“My what?”
“The attack on Turkish OKK. Blowing up your ScanEagle to cover my retreat. Those kinds of tricks don’t come from training. They’re the reason you fly with the 5D—because you’re that damn good.”
“I am?”
Justin looked around the room for help, but it was just them and a few dozen fitness machines. “You are,” he finally answered. “Though that’s off to the side of the current conversation.”
“The one about you loving me and being angry at yourself for it?”
All he could do was nod. Why did Kara Moretti knock all of the words out of him? He had no clear answer to that one either.
“You’re angry because…” He could see her testing the idea. “You fell in love and you thought I had gone there with you.”
That was only part of it.
“Because…no.”
“What?” He needed her to explain, because he certainly couldn’t.
“Give me a break, Justin. These are your feelings. Why am I the one trying to explain them?”
He shrugged. “I’ve just beat myself up for nine miles and I have no idea. I’m hoping that you do. All I know is that I have this overwhelming gut full of anger. When I started, I thought it was at you. By the time I was done, I knew it was at me. I just don’t have a fucking clue why.”
“Wow! The cowboy swore. In front of a woman no less.”
Justin could feel the heat flaming his cheeks, and wiping them with a soggy T-shirt didn’t help. He went over to his duffel, dug out a fresh one, and pulled it on. He retreated back to the treadmill and sat down once more facing her. “Sorry.”
* * *
Kara was the one who was sorry. Sorry that he covered that beautiful chest of his. Sorry that he was so ashamed of the scars on his back. They made him more human, more believable…and much more complicated than anyone she’d ever slept with.
She had arrived at the fitness center early in his run.
When he hadn’t answered his hotel room door, she’d thought about where she’d go if she had a load of anger to work off. Geri’s Gelato came to mind first, but she hadn’t had a chance to introduce Justin to that particular indulgence yet. Second choice was a workout. Hotel fitness center, easy once she thought about it.
For over half an hour she’d watched his back and thought about how those scars had shaped the man, reshaped his life.
“If your Chinook hadn’t been destroyed and your crew killed, would you still be in the Army? Or back on your horse ranch?”
“Well, I think that’s another conversation off to the side.”
Kara shook her head. She didn’t think that it was, though she didn’t know why she thought that.
He shrugged in that way of his, signaling his easy acceptance.
There was another trademark of the man. He took life as it came to him, rather than fighting it every step of the way. She wondered what he’d look like when he was truly angry, and was actually a little relieved that she had missed that. It had certainly left an impression on Nonna though.
“I was near the end of my first tour with the 10th of the 10th—10th Combat Aviation Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division—when it blew. I was due to muster out halfway through my rehab. But I couldn’t.”
“You don’t make SOAR just because you’re stubborn as one of your mules.”
“We don’t have mules, but I can think of a few of our horses that make your point. No, I was a different kind of flier after the attack. Discovered that I was just as careful, more so, but all that naive crap about somehow being the one in control was stripped away. You ride a bronc and think you’re the one in control, the next thing you know he’s putting you into the fence. Same with a Chinook. I learned to work with the helo, not merely be some urban cowboy dude flying a machine.”
Kara wished she knew how it all tied together, but couldn’t find the pieces. There were so many of them.
Justin waited with all the patience in the world. He’d never yelled at her, not even when she slammed his face into the counter. Instead, he’d gathered her up in his powerful arms and sat her down.
“I think your patience is one of your problems.”
His smile quirked, but it was a sad one.
“Seriously, if you’d shouted at me, you might have gotten some message through my thick skull.”
“What message should I have shouted?”
“That you’re crazy in love with me and that I’m going to have to figure out how to deal with that.”
Justin sighed. “No. This is my problem to deal with.”
“Cowboy!” she shouted at him and clambered to her feet.
He rose to face her.
She strode up and poked him in the center of his chest. “I’m the object of you being crazy in love with someone. I think that makes me pretty involved.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He snapped her a salute that she instinctively returned. “What are you planning to do about it, ma’am?”
There was a laugh. “Hell if I know, Cowboy.”
* * *
Justin didn’t know if he was pleased or disappointed that Kara didn’t try to join him in the shower. It was better that she didn’t, but he didn’t want her any less for all of what was going on.
She had remained exactly where he’d left her, sitting by the twentieth-floor hotel window staring out at the Brooklyn Bridge and the city beyond.
“What do you see?”
She startled and turned toward him, then her smile came to life. “I see something very delectable.”
He should have taken fresh clothes into the bathroom with him. When he began to dress, she offered a pout, but turned back to the window before he even shed the towel from around his waist.
“I was just thinking about you being here with me rather than going to see your family. With how close you are, that means something. Means a lot.”
“Why are you more impressed that I’m not seeing my family to be with you, than that I’m here to be with you?”
“Family matters.”
“And you don’t?”
“Cut that out, Justin. You can’t keep making
me face things I don’t want to. I’ll go crazy.”
“You mean crazier?”
It earned him the scowl he’d been hoping for. Her emotions were right on the surface, and he loved watching them cross over her features.
He picked up the phone. “Have you eaten?”
“You’re not ordering room service.”
“Why? Their menu looks good.”
“So not! You’re in Brooklyn, the land of amazing food. Come on, we’ll get a bagel and coffee.”
“I thought you were Italian.”
“I’m from Brooklyn. Sue me.”
They didn’t hold hands, but he liked how close she stayed as they walked to what she claimed was the best bagel shop this side, or any other, of some place called Ratner’s.
She relaxed more and more throughout the morning as she toured him about the city, came more to life as time passed. Maybe there was hope for him yet.
Chapter 19
“This is your idea of outdoors?”
“Yeah. What of it?” Kara watched Justin as he surveyed the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He’d complained of feeling claustrophobic in the city. Weird thing was they’d been standing on the Brooklyn Heights promenade at that moment, up on the cliff overlooking the East River with Manhattan as a backdrop—one of the best vistas in all of New York.
The Botanic Garden was fifty acres of woods, a tropical hothouse, and a wide selection of planned gardens. There were several places where you couldn’t see the surrounding city buildings at all. At the moment they were on a path deep in the bluebell woods. Shade trees of oak, birch, and beech shadowed over an acre of bluebell flowers in riotous bloom. A light vagrant breeze kept them stirred into constant motion.
“Sorry. Other than a couple of camping cabins, we don’t have much past the barn on ten thousand acres. And our ranch backs onto the Lake Meredith National Recreation Area. You can ride back into the hill-and-canyon country for a couple days and not see a soul. I’m in mind of a hundred acres or so that are so thick with bluebonnets in the spring that the bumblebees are stumble-drunk on the nectar and can barely fly.”
Right. She’d forgotten what Rudi had said about Justin’s family being wealthy. It was hard to remember when it was just him sitting there in the shade of his fool cowboy hat.
By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers) Page 17