Coming In Hot (Jupiter Point Book 6)

by Jennifer Bernard

  Joseph blinked at her. For a moment he seemed to hear her words, hear the kindness in them. Then he spat onto the sidewalk. "Whatever, pariah. Too late." And he ran away into the darkness.

  Carolyn stared at the spittle on the sidewalk. She appeared frozen in place, temporarily stunned into paralysis. Tobias hesitated, wanting to offer some comfort but unsure if it would be welcome.

  "Kids," he finally said. "You never know what crazy thing they'll get in their heads."

  She snapped out of her trance and looked at Tobias. "What exactly are you doing here, anyway? How did you just happen to be walking down the street at that exact moment?"

  Damn. Busted. He decided that complete truthfulness was his only real option at this point. "Well, the exact moment part was pure coincidence. But I was coming to see you, see where you lived."

  "You were stalking me?"

  "Reconnaissance." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Among other things."

  "You couldn't just Google me?"

  "Oh, I did," he admitted. "But you know the Internet. It's filled with bad information along with the good. And there's no replacement for visual observation."

  She put her hand on her stomach. "I'm very confused."

  "Listen. For what it's worth, it's not about Aiden anymore. I just spent the evening with him and I can see it's a one-sided crush. My suspicious nature got the best of me. I'm sorry."

  "Oh." She tilted her head, causing the lamplight to slide across her hair, giving it a ghostly sheen. "So let me get this straight. You thought I was some kind of cougar gold-digger, but now you see that's wrong, so you came to my house to apologize?"

  "No. I mean, yes. I am apologizing. This is an apology." He grinned ruefully. "Can't you tell?"

  She laughed a little.

  "Mostly I came by because I was worried about you and those letters. You might call it an instinct. I learned to trust my instincts in the army. And it looks like I was right. So can we call it a truce? Will you accept my apology?"

  She chewed on her lower lip while she gazed at him for a while. He stood patiently under her scrutiny. He couldn't blame her for being cautious. She'd never laid eyes on him before this morning when he crashed her class. Then he'd shown up at her office, and now her home. Plus, he didn't exactly present the most welcoming appearance. Especially when he forgot to smile.

  Do it, asshole. It wouldn't kill him to look a little less terrifying, now that he knew for sure Carolyn wasn't the enemy here.

  He stretched his mouth in a grin.

  She peered at him, squinting in the dim light from her porch, and burst out laughing. "Is that the best you can do?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I see what you're doing there." She circled her index finger in the general direction of his mouth. "You're forcing yourself to present a warm and fuzzy appearance so I'll relax and forgive you for stalking me."

  "I wasn't—"

  "Reconnaissance. Whatever. Can you deny the rest?"

  He gave an unwilling laugh. "I've been told I can strike terror into the hearts of innocent maidens."

  "You're no ogre, sorry. And I'm not exactly a maiden." He caught a hot shimmer of a look from under her eyelashes. It rocked him back on his heels, at least internally. On the surface, he managed to keep his cool. "And I'm definitely not terrified of you. I already know I can get the jump on you."

  She grinned at him.

  "You don't want to throw down a challenge like that. You caught me unprepared. And you're a woman. It wasn't fair."

  "It wasn't fair because I'm a woman?" She blinked at him and tucked a sweaty strand of hair behind her ears.

  "A civilian woman," he corrected. "If you were military, that would be different. How could I go a hundred percent against an art history teacher?"

  "Oh, you are asking for it, Mister." She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. "On the other hand, I did just run several miles and this poor dog is exhausted." He glanced at the big black Newfoundland who was stretched on the lawn, his dripping jowls resting on his enormous paws. "So I guess any kind of rematch is out."

  A sharp pang of disappointment shot through him. He didn't want to part ways just yet with the beautiful Carolyn Moore. It was after ten, and she probably had classes to teach, and he had … well, he wasn't really sure what he had to do tomorrow. Spend some time brushing up on his defensive martial arts moves, for one.

  "It's a date," he said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You said rematch. You're on. If I lose, loser buys dinner."

  "What if you win?"

  "Then winner buys dinner." He grinned at her, a real smile this time, instead of the stiff "don't look like a jerk" version. She blinked, looking surprised that he was actually capable of such a thing. "I'd like to buy you dinner no matter what. If you're willing. I won't twist your arm."

  She laughed at that, but shook her head. "I don't think dinner is a good idea. You're related to one of my students, who you're obviously worried about. I'm happy to talk with you about counseling options and that sort of thing. But I don't think that socializing in any way is helpful."

  He gave a quick jerk of a nod. Of course she was right. Besides, he'd promised Aiden. Had he temporarily lost his mind?

  Yeah, probably, and it was the fault of those leggings she wore, and the way her skin glowed in the lamplight.

  "You're right. My bad. I won't bother you again." He gave her another nod, of the formal "goodbye" kind, and turned to go. Then paused, and turned back. "There is one more thing. I feel that I owe you something for all this trouble."

  She started to object, but he shook his head.

  "Not dinner or letting you kick my ass or anything like that." He gestured toward her front door, with the weird symbol painted on it in garish orange. "How about I get rid of that for you? I have nothing too important to do tomorrow. I'd be happy to pick up some paint and take care of your door."

  "Now that, I wouldn't mind at all." She gave him a brilliant smile. "But I'll get the paint. I have a light schedule tomorrow. Come on over around lunch time. I'll make you a sandwich and you can play handyman."

  "You don't have to feed me—"

  "I did use physical force against the brother of a student. I feel a little bit guilty about that. And you helped me catch my anonymous letter sender. I think gratitude and guilt add up to at least a sandwich, maybe a cup of coffee too."

  "Deal." He nodded again, then walked away before he was tempted to say anything dumb, like "it's a date." Carolyn had made it perfectly clear that she wasn't interesting in anything of the sort. He shouldn't be either.

  Key word: shouldn't. But when had he ever avoided the shouldn'ts of life? Ask anyone in his family. Never.

  BACK IN HIS RENTAL CAR, Tobias waited until Carolyn had disappeared inside her house. Then he grabbed his iPad from the backseat and snapped a quick photo of her front door. He drove in the direction of the Embassy Suites, but then his curiosity got the best of him. He pulled over and did a quick Google search for the image that the vandal had painted on her front door.

  Since the orange paint had dripped a little, and Carolyn had interrupted Joseph before he’d completely finished, the search results were confusing. A Sumerian sun god. A store in Beverly Hills. A motorcycle manufacturer in Italy. None of those seemed to fit what he'd heard Joseph and Carolyn talk about.

  Then he remembered the first phrase she'd mentioned—Light Keepers. Even though it was a generic term, like a scented candle or a yoga studio, it was worth a shot. He typed that in along with the image, and finally hit something useful.

  The Light Keepers Brigade was located in a rural area of northern California. There wasn't much reliable information about it. It seemed to be part militia, part survivalist, part end-times cult, part back-to-nature wholesome living. It didn't operate under the auspices of any particular religion, but it did follow Old Testament beliefs like women's subservience to men and unquestioning obedience to the group's founder, who called himsel
f The Ray.

  But what did an art history teacher have to do with such a crazypants organization? From that brief interaction with Joseph, it sounded like she used to live there. That could explain why she had that karate move down. As a militia group, they probably trained their members in all sorts of battle skills.

  He thought about Joseph, and how hard it had been to wrangle him into an arm-lock. That kid was tough and wiry and fast. Guaranteed, he'd have no trouble making a cross-country team on his own. He didn't buy that explanation for a second. Something else was going on.

  He clicked around for more recent information, and landed on an article from a small local newspaper in Humboldt County. "The popular farm stand operated by the Light Keepers has been shut down in the midst of the fall harvest season. In past years, it was the only stand to stay open year-round, selling a mix of root crops and winter greens. No one from the compound would explain why they've closed the farm stand, or whether they might reopen at all. The group has recently gained increased attention from the federal authorities amid reports of illegal arms dealing and other suspicious activities. Said one neighbor, 'they've always been 'keep-to-yourself,' 'live-and-let-live' folks. But lately, no one ever sees them. It's like they're circling the wagons or something. I feel especially bad for the kids, because that farm stand was the only time they came out into the rest of the community.’"

  Huh.

  Something unusual was happening up there. But what did it have to do with Carolyn? And what business was it of his?

  Shrugging it off, he closed up his iPad and tossed it in the backseat. Maybe he should just go back to Jupiter Point. Carolyn wanted nothing to do with him. Aiden wanted him out of his hair. The crisis was still a crisis, but short of sticking Aiden in quarantine until he fell out of love with Carolyn, there wasn't much he could do. Besides, now that he'd met Carolyn, he had no real advice on how to stop thinking about her.

  Decision made. He'd cover up the spray paint on Carolyn's door and then he'd head home.

  7

  Between the vandalism and the threatening letters, Carolyn had trouble getting to sleep. It unnerved her that all this time a member of the Light Keepers had been right under her nose. At least he hadn't been in any of her classes. The expression on his face when he'd called her a pariah—it gave her chills. Obviously the community hadn't completely erased her from their memories. She wondered if her father and stepmother still talked about her, or if the name Carolyn was strictly off-limits.

  The thought made her so sad that she called to Dragon. "Come on up here, big guy. I know it's against house rules, but they'll never know. It'll be our secret, okay?"

  The big Newfie hauled himself off the dog bed in the corner and trotted to her side. His nails scrabbling on the shiny surface of her comforter, he hauled his lumbering body onto the bed. He looked somewhere between guilty and triumphant as he surveyed the room from his new perch.

  "I know, I know, breaking the rules is hard, isn't it? I know the feeling. I swear it's okay." She patted his haunches until he sat, then collapsed into a furry pile of doggy bliss at her feet.

  She lay back, finally relaxing. Dragon wasn't trained as a guard dog, the way the Light Keepers' dogs were. But he would certainly let her know if any strange sound or movement occurred in the night.

  When she finally did sleep, she had a nightmare. A man dressed entirely in black strode into her office. He swept all her papers off her desk—students' essays on the significance of Leonardo da Vinci went flying. Books flew out of the shelves and landed in a big mess on the floor. A wild wind rushed through the room like a hurricane. Her hair whipped out of its knot and swirled against her face. The wind was tugging her out of the room toward a window that suddenly opened up. She was going to be sucked into a void, disappear forever…

  But the man in black—Tobias—reached out his hand and grabbed her wrist. He held on tight while she battled the force of the howling gale.

  And then she woke up, sitting bolt upright. Poor Dragon uttered a reproachful howl.

  "Sorry, boy," she whispered. When her heart rate finally approached normal, she lay back down.

  Wow. For a man she'd only met yesterday, Tobias Knight sure took up a lot of space in her brain.

  THE NEXT DAY was her lightest teaching day. She usually used the hours between classes to catch up on grading or assemble slides for her next lecture. But today she went first to the hardware store, where she picked up some black gloss paint, then home.

  Tobias was already busy cleaning off her door with a damp cloth. He wasn't wearing black this time. Instead he wore jeans and a green plaid long-sleeved shirt with a hole at the elbow. Painting clothes. He wore a bandanna tied backwards on his head, maybe to keep off the sun.

  In black or out of black, he looked like pure, unrefined, one hundred percent sin. So male, so strong, so lethally attractive.

  She shook off her momentary trance and walked up the steps to join him. "It's a good thing the door is black," she told him. "Easy to match. How are you today, Tobias?"

  He paused in his work and glanced at her. The shadows in his eyes made her wonder if he'd had trouble sleeping too. Maybe he was worried about his brother. "Just fine. And you?"

  His formal tone made her smile. "Oh, ducky. No letters arrived at my office today. It was kind of a lonely feeling, actually. I might need a pen pal if I want more mail. That was a joke," she said quickly. "My sense of humor can get a little morbid sometimes."

  He lifted his eyebrows. "I bet I can beat you in that department. Black humor is the official language of the Special Forces."

  "I can well imagine." Her father had an obsession with the various branches of the military, none of which had accepted him because of his psychological profile. The Special Forces had been a particular dream of his. "What made you leave the army?"

  "It was time," he said simply. "My brother Ben had this idea about a pilot service. He couldn't do it alone. So I came home and we started Knight and Day Flight Tours. Just had the grand opening recently."

  She cocked her head at him. "First Aiden, now Ben … Is it always about your brothers with you?"

  He reached for a spot at the top of the door, causing his shirt to stretch tight. "Do you have brothers?" he asked instead of answering.

  "No, I never had any brothers or sisters. Just the other kids at—" She broke off, not wanting to get into a discussion of her weird childhood. "Are you hungry?"

  "Let me finish cleaning the surface, then I'll have a quick bite while it's drying."

  "Sure."

  He stepped back so she could unlock the door. In order to slip inside, she had to pass within a few inches of him. As she did so, their sudden closeness made her nerves go haywire. The whirlwind sensation of her dream came back to her. Her heart skipped and raced, her breath fluttered in her throat like a trapped moth.

  She practically bolted inside. Dragon trotted to greet her, and she crouched down to bury her head in his shaggy coat.

  Sweet lord in heaven, what was this? Being around Tobias was like sticking her finger in a light socket. It was a good thing he didn't live here. She petted Dragon and forced her breath to ease. Good old Dragon. She was going to miss this dog when she went back to Jupiter Point next semester.

  Jupiter Point.

  Where Tobias lived. Will Knight's brother. Merry's future brother-in-law. Oh God.

  She muttered a curse into Dragon's coat and rose to her feet. She'd have to get used to him, that was all there was to it. That meant spending time with him, like a normal person.

  Starting with lunch.

  She went into the kitchen and pulled sandwich makings from the fridge. What kind of sandwich would a guy like Tobias Knight like? Something hearty, to maintain all those muscles. Roast beef, perhaps. Also, something that packed a punch. Horseradish. Horseradish was the testosterone of condiments. He'd probably like lots of that. Cheese? The guy didn't have an ounce of fat anywhere on him, at least that she could see.

&n
bsp; That might require closer inspection, however.

  Jarred by the thought, she accidentally squirted mustard onto the counter. As she was wiping it up with a paper towel, Tobias walked into the kitchen.

  "All clean," he told her as he went to the sink to rinse off the cloth he was using. "Should be dry in a few minutes with this sunshine."

  "Mmm-hmm." She tried hard not to watch the flexing of his muscles as he wrung out the cloth. What were those muscles at the back of the arm called? The ones that ran in a firm line between shoulder and elbow and made her mouth water? "What kind of sandwich would you like? I have roast beef, ham, cheese, I can make some tuna, whatever you like. Are you a peanut butter jelly man?"

  He turned, grabbed a dish towel to dry his hands, and leaned his rear against the enamel of the farmhouse-style sink. "I'm easy. You learn not to be picky in the Army."

  "Yes, but you're not in the Army anymore," she pointed out. "Now you can you eat whatever you want. That's what I do. Every single meal, I give serious and extensive thought to what I actually want to eat. So, what do you want?"

  He stared at her, lips quirking up in a half-smile. "Really? Every single meal? What did you eat last night?"

  "My favorite guilty secret snack. Ritz crackers, cheese, and pickles."

  "I'll have that," he said promptly.

  "What? That's not lunch. That won't hold you through painting the door."

  He waved that off as he hung the dish towel back on its rod. "I could paint that door on no food. It won't take me long. The only question is how many coats we need to cover up that ugly orange."

  She shuddered as she pictured it. This morning she'd sent an email to the math professor letting him know about the vandalism, though she hadn't included any details—like the fact that it was directed at her.

  "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not ready to share my guilty secret snack with you," she teased, half serious. "We barely just met."

  "Guess you have a point there." He grinned at her. "So what do you want to know so you can decide if I'm worthy or not?"

  "Let's start with what kind of sandwich you want."