Butterfly Ops

by Jen Doyle

  At least that put a smile on her face. “’Night, Kate,” he said, standing up and walking to the door. He paused as a thought occurred to him—maybe the issue with Lyndsey wasn’t that Kate hated her; maybe it was the opposite. And maybe forty-year-old widowers weren’t the only ones fighting the ever-looming tidal wave of guilt.

  He leaned back against the door. “You know, when your mom and I first met, we spent a lot of time talking about Lyndsey.” Even before they were together, in fact. Abby had wanted to know about her—or, to be more specific, Abby had wanted to know about how and why Ian had come to be the head-case he’d been at the time.

  If they’d actually been a couple by then? He probably would have held back the details; as it was back in those early days, however, he couldn’t have cared less if it made her run. Not at first, at least. That’s how screwed up he’d been. He’d probably even played up the parts that would have made just about any other woman in the world think twice before getting involved with him. He’d always figured the only reason he and Abby had gotten anywhere was because she’d seen him as a challenge.

  “I think that under different circumstances they might have ended up being friends.” That might have been stretching the truth a bit. It wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility, though. Not technically, at least. “I love you, Kate.” He closed the door behind him. One down, three to go.

  The others made it easy for him; as was usually the case in the rare times one of them was singled out for something like this, the other three tended to congregate. Ducking the yellow Do Not Enter tape across Liam’s doorway, Ian made his way through the debris covering the floor. There were war zones neater than Liam’s room; Ian could actually say that from experience.

  He sat down next to Jack on the end of the bed. Liam was perched on his desk; Annie in the desk chair. Despite their easier acceptance of Lyndsey and their willingness to protect her feelings earlier that night, Ian knew they would never all gang up on their sister. And although they hadn’t taken any of this nearly as hard as Kate seemed to, he had no doubt they were concerned as well.

  Annie started it off. “Is Kate okay?”

  Ian nodded, knowing the moment he was downstairs, the four would rejoin and trade stories. Which was actually fine by him; no matter what he said, they needed to come to their own conclusions.

  “Is she in trouble?” was Annie’s next question.

  “No,” Ian answered, watching his children through a new light. He’d never seen them look like this before, had never seen that sense of loss and uncertainty show on their faces, despite how hard he’d pushed. Which, admittedly, wasn’t too hard—he’d always been concerned about making things worse and had been maybe a bit too willing to accept their assurances that they were doing okay. Between his hesitation to dig deep and their apparently active attempt to make sure everything was rolling along just fine then, well, yeah; it was clear they really had been letting him off the hook all this time. “She’s just missing Mom a lot right now.”

  And speak of the devil. As Ian looked up Kate appeared in the doorway. She came in and sat on the bed as he moved to make room for her. “Having Lyndsey around…” It was more than a catch in his throat now. This time there were actual tears. And this time he didn’t fight them. “It’s hard not to think about Mom.” He had to stop and take a deep breath. “About Mom not being here. I’m sorry I haven’t mentioned her much this week.”

  Which, obviously, had been yet another wrong choice. He had been so busy keeping Lyndsey separate from his family, trying not to impose her on them—or them on her—that he hadn’t realized it would have been better for the kids to know his own feelings were bittersweet.

  Shit. Shouldn’t there be a manual for things like this? He had absolutely no idea what to say other than just the flat-out truth. “There have been times this week that I can’t believe how lucky I am to have Lyndsey back in my life again. And then other times when it just makes me miss your mom so much I can’t breathe.” As he spoke the words Ian realized how true they were; it wasn’t something he had fully admitted to himself. “I don’t know how to make that better. Or what to tell you about how you’re supposed to feel. I wish I did. I wish I could make this easier for you.

  “But you don’t have to make it easier on me, okay?” he added. “If you want to yell or make scenes…” He looked at Kate and got a small smile. “Or whatever, that’s fine. And if you don’t want to talk to me about it, you can talk to Aunt Sarah or Grandma or Uncle Matt. Whatever you want. My only request is that if you need to have a tantrum and decide to throw something, I’d rather it be on the softer side. Like a pillow.”

  Good. Another smile. A smiles of the ‘my dad is such a dork’ variety, but a smile all the same.

  “And preferably at me, not at any of those other people. Because then you’d definitely get in trouble.”

  They were starting to fidget a bit, which meant they needed some time without him in the room. So, well… “Are we okay?” They all nodded. Though no one was what you’d call overjoyed, no one was on the verge of collapse, either. He stood up.

  That was about as good as it was going to get for now, he thought, coming down the stairs and finding Lyndsey and his dad in the living room arguing about some call an umpire had made. He smiled as he sat on the armrest of one of the chairs. “Having fun?”

  “Stupid umps; the Sox never get a break,” his father muttered, standing up. “It’s bedtime for me. It was nice to meet you, Lyndsey; this is something Mary’s been hoping for for a long time.” He nodded to Lyndsey, almost as though he was tipping a hat. “Good night.”

  Translation: Mom’s already gone to bed and she’d never have said this anyway, but although we have no idea what happened all those years ago, we’re glad you didn’t hold it against him.

  “Good night, Dad,” Ian said, going over and taking his place on the couch.

  As soon as he’d left the room, Lyndsey got up from her chair and came over to sit on Ian’s lap.

  “Since when do you watch Sports Center?” he said, thinking how odd it was to have her here on his couch. To even have her in his living room. He had to once again remind himself that this was real.

  “Years.” She smiled. “And before you ask—Boston Celtics. White and green.”

  He laughed. When he’d first met her in California, she hadn’t been able to tell the Warriors from the Lakers. Or from the 49ers, for that matter. “You watch basketball, too?”

  “No,” she said, suddenly serious. “Haven’t watched basketball in a long time.”

  He could tell from her voice there was a story behind that statement. Before he could ask her about it, though, she leaned her head against his shoulder and said, “So, how’d it go upstairs?”

  New subject. No problem. “Not too bad. Sorry about all that.”

  She shrugged. “I fight zombies and vampires. I can deal.”

  “Still…”

  Looking down, Lyndsey took his hand in hers, asking, “So, well, why don’t you wear your ring?”

  Right. Of course she’d caught all of that—and of course she wouldn’t let it go.

  The problem, though, was that it wasn’t exactly a point of pride. And that it was actually because of her.

  He and Abby hadn’t had wedding rings to start with—they weren’t exactly readily available in the middle of Sumatra’s rain forests, which was where they’d been married. It wasn’t even something Abby had ever cared about. Until that trip to California, that was. Seeing Lyndsey in the flesh, or, rather, seeing how affected Ian was by even just a glimpse of Lyndsey from far away, had kicked Abby into overdrive. On a trip to Tokyo within a few weeks of leaving Sausalito, he’d let a very determined Abby drag him to nearly every jeweler’s shop she could find. Not exactly a high point in their relationship.

  It was why he was so reluctant to wear the ring even now—to him it symbolized an early rift in his marriage, not the bond he’d had with his wife. When he had worn it, i
t was because he knew how important it was to Abby and, later, to his kids. But if he had his way, it would stay locked up in his desk drawer, taken out only as a reminder of what he and Abby had managed to overcome: the ghost of the woman who was at this very moment sitting next to him. With an incredibly suspicious look on her face.

  Well, whatever. She’d deal. She had her stories, he had his. “It never really fit me very well.”

  “You’re not going to talk about it,” Lyndsey stated flatly.

  He smiled, refusing to take the bait. “Kind of ironic, no?” After all, she’d always been the one to keep her thoughts to herself, not him. Funny how the tables had turned.

  There was a moment of silence as Lyndsey seemed to consider whether or not to push the issue. She finally came down on the ‘not’ side.

  Changing her line of questioning, she said, “This desk job of yours. You weren’t kidding about how, well, not-behind-a-desk it is, were you?”

  She was trailing her hand down his chest as she said it, although more in a distracted way than anything else. He grabbed her hand and laced his fingers through hers, tugging her a little closer. No, he hadn’t been kidding. He traveled—a lot. But the reality was that most of what he did these days was, essentially, talk—talk people down, talk people into gearing up, talk people out of the panicky state they were in. And as far as Ian was concerned, if it wasn’t actually a desk job, then it was at least the metaphorical equivalent of one. It was just that the ‘desk’ in question was often a jump seat on a plane or a chair at a conference table in a palace in the U.A.E. or even a camp out in the middle of Patagonia.

  “More so than I’d like.”

  She looked up at him, eyes narrowing. “So then why do you still train so hard? Are you and Matt kind of like the hit squad? You guys go in when the others can’t get it done?”

  Yes, but not in the way she was thinking. Or, at least, the way Ian assumed she was thinking given the way she’d pulled her hand back.

  “We don’t hunt.” It wasn’t like the team spent their days acquiring targets for Matt and Ian to go in and annihilate.

  It appeared that had been exactly what she was thinking, though. Her cheeks turned red and she pulled back even more. Although she didn’t stand up, she was now more perching on his knees than sitting on his lap. “I don’t…” she said, flustered. “I didn’t…”

  Then, disarmingly, she flashed him a huge smile as she leaned back in towards him, getting up close and very personal. “Can’t blame a girl for being a little paranoid about working with the team that hunted her down once upon a time.” Then she added, “Especially when they’ve been trained this well.”

  Although he knew she’d just handed him a hell of a compliment, the distance in her voice made him turn to look away. Honestly? He still didn’t know what to say about that. ‘I’m sorry I sent the government’s hit squads straight to your door back in the day’ just didn’t cover it. “Lyndsey, I—”

  She didn’t seem to want to go there either, though. She cut him off by saying, “I really like the guys on your team, by the way—Ana included.” She smiled. “Who’d’ve thought?”

  He sat back and watched her; she grew more animated as she talked. “Brady wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought he’d be. And Sprague, of course. He’s pretty awesome. Brooks, too. he—”

  “Brooks?” Ian asked, more sharply than intended. He couldn’t help it, though. As good a guy as Brooks was, Ian had always had a thing about him. Probably because Ian married the woman Brooks had fallen in love with and Brooks hadn’t taken too kindly to that. Otherwise he probably would have considered Brooks an actual friend.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Lyndsey said, pulling Ian back into the here and now.

  He wasn’t entirely sure what ‘like that’ meant, but he figured it had something to do with the unsettled feeling he used to get whenever he and Abby were around Brooks. Something that had finally disappeared years ago and yet—apparently—had never been far from the surface. “I, uh… Sorry,” he said, not having any interest in explaining.

  With a devilish look in her eyes, Lyndsey ran her hand along Ian’s jaw. She brushed Ian’s lips with her own and threw her arms around his neck. Obviously knowing she’d hit a raw nerve, she said, “He is kind of cute—don’t you think?”

  The fact that she was nibbling on his ear made those last words a little easier to take. “So I’ve been told.” By Abby back in the day, in very much the same playful tone as Lyndsey just had, her mouth and hands doing the same thing. “He’s not really my type.”

  “Yeah?” Lyndsey mumbled into his jaw. “What is your type?”

  “At the moment? Blonde. About five feet tall.”

  She pulled away. Indignantly said, “I am definitely more than five feet tall.”

  He laughed as she glared at him.

  “You’re seriously not going to tell me what the story is with him?” Lyndsey asked.

  Ian shrugged and decided not to answer that question. Instead, he reached out for her, startling her a little as he shifted and threw her off balance. Catching her in his arms, his hand cradled the back of her head as he eased her down to the couch, and he gave her the kind of kiss he’d been thinking about all night. Disengaging only briefly enough to make sure it was being well received, he smiled when she reached back up and wrapped her arms around him, guided his head to her neck where, clearly, she expected a little bit of nuzzling.

  “If you insist on deflecting,” she was saying, “then you’d better put some conviction into it.”

  Conviction in deflecting? No problem. Ian’s hand slipped up under her shirt, under her bra... His other hand traveled down to her waist, his fingers brushing her skin as her shirt hitched up in the back. No problem at all.

  Her skin was so soft and smooth and her breath was so hot on his neck. She shifted just enough to let his leg fall between her knees. Damn it, he thought, as she pressed herself up against him. He closed his eyes and tried to suppress a groan.

  After a few more minutes—a few more increasingly intense and getting close to way-too-heated minutes—she pushed away from him somewhat breathless. She mumbled something about sparring... Lack of willpower... “Stop,” she whispered, not sounding at all convincing. “We need to stop now.”

  “Why?” he mumbled. Things were going just fine as far as Ian was concerned.

  “Your parents,” she gasped as he laid a kiss at the base of her throat, a kiss that made her shiver.

  “Are in the guest house,” he said. He slipped her shirt and bra strap down off her shoulder and kissed her there, eliciting another shudder.

  Nearly breathless, she pushed him away. Maneuvering herself into an upright position, she sternly said, “Your kids.”

  She was right. Obviously. Stifling a sigh, he forced himself to regain possession of his hand. Make it wander to much more PG-rated places. Like her cheek. Her forehead. He brushed a strand of hair away. They’d have plenty of time over the next few weeks to do whatever they’d like. “I can take you home if you want.”

  “I, um…” She looked away from him, her eyes filling up with entirely unexpected tears. She wasn’t a crier; or, at least, she hadn’t been. Not when they’d first been together. Softly, she said, “I don’t want to go.” Then she took his hand. “Is it okay if we just sit here for awhile? I’m not ready for tonight to end.”

  Was she serious? Was it okay? If it were up to him, she would never leave. Since he knew that was an inevitability, however, he figured he’d take advantage of this for as long as he possibly could.

  “Yeah.” His voice betrayed him as it cut off midway through the word. “That’s more than okay.”

  She settled back into him with a smile, her hand resting lightly on his chest, head on his shoulder.

  Okay. This was good. This he could do. Flipping through channels until he found an old movie they both agreed on, he put his feet up on the coffee table and promptly fell asleep. Not moving until dawn the
next morning, his mother’s gentle nudge on his shoulder a reminder that it was time to bring Lyndsey home.

  6

  Early on Monday morning several days later, Lyndsey found herself at the Ottawa airport again, although this time, she’d traveled on her own instead of with Ian. He’d come up the day before with Matt and Sprague to meet with the police officers who were overseeing the case, although from the message he’d sent her the night before, it sounded like they were getting the run around. Unfortunately, the runaround was coming from ZSJ’s client, Monica Cain, and Lyndsey had a feeling she was about to be dragged into it.

  “Parliament,” she said to the cab driver, since her plan was to go directly there. She had a couple of hours before she had to be there, but she was meeting up with Tom Catalano, her fellow ZSJian, who had flown in the day before. And, honestly, for as much as she would have liked to come up with Ian, it had been nice to have a little bit of a break.

  Not from him, which was a bit of a frightening concept in itself, since she hadn’t felt such a pull to a man since, well, the first time they’d done this relationship thing, sixteen years ago. But for all of these years since he’d left her, training had been the respite for her. The one place where she could escape everything else. It turned out that was no longer the case when you were a 37-year-old woman who had seen far too much—and was all too aware of the odds of continuing to dodge as many bullets as they’d each had to dodge in order to stay alive for all this time—to be able to put aside the reasons they were training in the first place.

  And, boy, did this team train. Hard. It was unlike anything she’d experienced, she had to admit. Five a.m. ten-mile runs followed by two hours of hardcore “PT” as they called it—“ridiculously-unnecessary-and-hard-physical-training” as anyone normal would—followed by another two hours of sparring, a ten minute lunch of annoyingly healthful things and not nearly enough carb-loading, before heading to the river and canoeing the hell out of it. And, unfortunately, all that training hard meant Ian was too tired to play hard. Not after dealing with all the things he had to deal with at home, too. Which, honestly, she found more exhausting than anything else.