Hot Contract

by Jodi Henley

  “Past events have no bearing on this.”

  “Is that all it was to you, babe? A past event?”

  “Drop the subject, Fallon.”

  “Go ahead, call me Fallon. You only call me Padraic when you want something. That’s right, ain’t it? We shared everything until four days ago when you decided you wanted more. We did the dirty-nasty. Now I got to pay? Well, fuck that. You’ve screwed me for the last time.”

  He tore his sleeve out of her hand and clattered down the stairs to the front door, his heavy camouflage jacket swinging out behind him.

  Corlis followed him to the landing, hand clenched around the rail. “Fallon!” They locked eyes. “Check the perimeter and be back in five.”

  “Take a fucking number.” The door opened fast and slammed faster.

  Corlis hung her head, eyes closed. “We didn’t use protection.”

  “Shit.” Keegan’s already sour stomach went septic. He moved to stand beside her.

  Corlis brushed at her face and blinked as if surprised to see her fingers were dry.

  Keegan caught her wrist. “I’ll reassign him,” he said. “Get Nick in here with us. He can take the next flight out, be here in less than a day.”

  She jerked her arm back. “No!”

  “Fallon is broken. That time in Peru did something to his head.”

  “That may be, but Padraic is mine.”

  His eyes felt like sandpaper. “God, Corlis—get a grip. If we can't fix this, Connor will die. We have to work together.”

  “I can work with Padraic.”

  “I hope you can,” said Keegan. He looked at Jen, still sleeping like his life hadn’t just taken a huge turn for the worse. “Let’s get her upstairs.”

  ****

  Corlis leaned in a corner near one of the front windows watching rain spatter the glass in thick, syrup-like drops. If the Aina were out in the woods, they were idiots. She needed to sleep, but thanks to Papa Stalling, they’d flown from Hong Kong to Hawaii in a jet so luxurious she couldn’t sit down without worrying she’d smudge the butternut leather.

  With their Seattle office out in the field, DalCon was short-staffed, which made Stalling’s offer a studied insult. He was playing them with the chance to ransom Connor. He knew a full frontal would destroy them.

  Corlis padded down the hallway to the kitchen. There was a pot on the stove. Empty. A solitary plate in the drainer. One fork. One spoon. And two cups on the counter. She picked them up, curious. The heavy white mug was stenciled with the Pele Project logo, obviously a misappropriation. The other was bright yellow with chunky red print declaring it the property of Puna Fire and Rescue.

  She sniffed it. Coffee. The other held diet Coke.

  A man, then.

  She rinsed them out and put them in the drainer beside the plate. It was obvious Guinevere lived by herself, equally obvious she’d entertained recently.

  Corlis turned her collar up and went back to the main room. Maybe Keegan would get some sleep. He was wound as tight as an addict in withdrawal and there’d been a look in his eyes that Corlis wouldn’t soon forget.

  Guinevere Stalling was nothing like her picture. In person she was all lush and curvy like a Botticelli done by Rueben. Who’d have guessed Keegan went for antique plush? Not that he was any kind of prize. Mr. Goddamned Average.

  A noise at the front door sent her to the foot of the stairs. Fallon stood on the other side of the spy-hole, head down. The rain had slowed, but it was still hard enough to plaster the thick fall of black hair to his nape.

  She opened the door and he shouldered past her, bringing the wild-ozone scent of the storm in with him.

  “Padraic?”

  “Three hours,” he said, not looking at her. “Fucking wake me.”

  ****

  Jen squirmed. Her sheets clung to her with the obsessive grip of a truly paranoid neat-freak, and that was the last time she’d let her cousin, Mac, demonstrate hospital corners on her bed. Tidy lessons? He was so dead. She braced herself, rolled to the side and fell from the bed in a rushing avalanche of blankets. The edge of her pillow brought down her prized Tiffany and iridescent dragonflies flew everywhere.

  Keegan flipped on the light. “Don’t move.”

  Keegan was real?

  He tossed a floor cushion to her and scooped the wastebasket from under her desk. “Why can’t you have a cheap lamp like everyone else? Stand on that while I clean this up.” He scooped the lamp into her wastebasket and swore, shaking glass from his palm.

  “It’s Tiffany," she said, staring at his hand.

  “Stay on that cushion. Don't move.”

  Blood dripped between his fingers, spattering the pale flannel sheets. Suddenly, her head was floating a good ten feet above her body. She hadn’t had a flashback in years. Hadn’t, didn’t...couldn’t stop crying.

  There was blood everywhere. Her mother had been gone for such a long time. And her father had been so upset when word reached them that Eliza Stalling had been found. She’d wanted her mother back, and it was easy to sneak into the back of her father’s car. Even her brother, up front with the grownups didn’t notice, and he usually had a kind of sixth sense about her. When they stopped, Jen couldn’t wait.

  She'd hurried after the others only to slam into Percy. Her brother made a strange moaning sound, and his skinny back blocked the doorway so she couldn’t see in. She shoved him—omigod, she shoved him—out into that horrible room, that butcher’s shop where her once laughing mother hung like so much meat.

  Her hands dripping blood.

  Jen swayed to her feet, palms pressed to her eyes. Blocking out the sight didn't make the memories go away. If anything, it made them worse. “Wipethebloodoffyour hand.”

  “What?”

  “Wipethebloodoffyourhand—damn it! Wipe the blood off! Do it now!”

  Chapter Three

  The way Keegan's luck ran the minute Jen stepped off that cushion she'd puncture an artery and bleed to death. “Don’t move—you're going to hurt yourself.”

  Her mouth opened and stumbled over words she obviously didn't want to say. “Wipe your hand,” she blurted.

  “Yeah, I can do that. See? I’m wiping.” He inched around the tangle of iridescent shards, almost close enough to grab her.

  “I-I...don’t like blood.”

  He wiped harder. “I know. Jesus, Jen—”

  Her face was white. She was losing it, getting ready to bolt. Keegan grabbed her around the waist and spun her out into the middle of the room. Talk about light-headed. He felt sick and dizzy right down to his stomach. The only thing he was going to do was stand in one place and hold her until he could breathe again.

  “S-Sorry,” she whispered. Not looking at him, looking away. Anywhere but at him. “I’m so sorry.”

  What the hell was she sorry for? Having a fucked up life? “You didn’t puke,” he reminded her.

  The smile barely moved her mouth, but he was abruptly fixated on the curve of her lips and chin. She smelled like roses and musk, sweet and too damned heady.

  “Small mercies,” she said.

  Keegan dropped his chin on her hair and took a deep, long breath. “Your family has a lot to answer for.” Which was about the stupidest thing he’d said in a long time, since he didn’t know her family from Adam, but she didn't say anything. He stared at the wall, wondering if she dealt with idiots all the time or was putting on a show. Both thoughts made him cringe.

  He let her go. “You okay?”

  Jen stared down at her clenched fists. She wanted him to keep touching her and how wrong was that?

  “...I need a bath,” Keegan was saying.

  She forced herself to pay attention and his eyes darkened like he was angry, but she hadn’t done anything, had she?

  “I’m fine,” she said, turning her back on him.

  He slammed into the bathroom and the water started an instant later.

  Jen leaned against the wall next to the door. In less than a day Kee
gan had seen her at her neurotic worst. She’d let none of her other bodyguards in so close, but Keegan was different. When he wasn’t trying to play down his arrogance, he forgot himself and moved with the kind of lethal grace she associated with her more dangerous cousins.

  Her thoughts circled back to Terri. Why Terri? What made her so important? Jen wiped her eyes, surprised to find them wet.

  The bathroom door opened on a rush of steam and Keegan eyed her with his default expression—neutral and utterly bland. He had a towel around his hips and one hand over the hole in his shoulder.

  “I could use some bandages,” he said.

  She nodded, then edged around him with her face averted in a fruitless attempt to keep him from seeing her tears. Keegan moved at the same time and his elbow brushed her breasts. She gasped and he swore. She didn’t know which of them was more shocked.

  He stepped back and looked away. “You said you had a first aid kit.”

  She fumbled the flat plastic case out of the medicine cabinet and pushed it at him. “Here, take it.”

  “You’re crying,” he said.

  “Good observation.”

  “I have a washcloth. Y’know, if you want to use it?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine if you’re crying so hard you can’t see where you’re going.” He took the first aid kit from her hands, put it down, and turned back to her, a balled up washcloth in one hand. “Work with me, here. I’m on your side.”

  Keegan reached for her, surprised that she didn’t move. Instead she burst into hiccups the second he touched her, shoulders shaking, all hunched up around her ears like a life preserver.

  Distance was the key. The woman had been pushed too far in too short a time. She needed breathing space he couldn’t give her with him all up in her business like he belonged.

  He ran the cloth over her face, smoothing the salt from her delicate skin. “Better?”

  She looked at him, a brief upward flick of her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No!”

  He cleared his throat. “Thought I’d ask,” he said, feeling like an idiot.

  Her totally unexpected smile illuminated her down-turned face like lightning. She looked at him then, and this time met his gaze fully. “If I ever do, you’ll be first on my list.”

  Chapter Four

  Jen closed the bathroom door behind her with a determined thump. It helped that the day was overcast. Her eyes hurt, all sore and swollen from her crying jag. Sunlight spilled across the floor and glitter-skipped across what was left of the broken lamp.

  There were squeaky boards and an equal number of worn risers on the narrow spiral staircase that led to her loft bedroom, but whoever was coming up missed them all. Jen saw the hair first, pale silver blonde.

  “You’re his sister.”

  Familiar gray eyes gave her an assessing look. “Yeah, I’m Corlis. Where’s my brother, Ms. Stalling?” She pronounced it Miz, and for all the inflection she put into her question she could have been asking about the weather.

  “Bathroom,” said Jen.

  Corlis looked at the broken lamp and made a quick circuit of the room. “Go downstairs. I need to talk to him.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  Corlis was so contained it was difficult to tell what she was thinking. She let the silence drag out until it wasn’t silence anymore, but a weapon.

  “We have intruders,” she said.

  Keegan opened the door, working at something around his waist. Jen caught a flash of ballistic nylon before he pulled his shirt back down.

  He glanced at her, his expression closed. “How many?”

  “Two,” said Corlis. “They hit the outer perimeter a minute ago. ETA in four.”

  Jen looked around in panic. “I haven’t packed yet!”

  “No time.” Keegan hustled her downstairs, one hand in the small of her back. “Right now I want you to get into the hallway and lay down as far from the door as you can.”

  Corlis followed them closely. “Fallon,” she called. "Give us a sit-rep.”

  The stairs looped around and continued down another flight. Someone moved in the lower vestibule, black-haired and hard to see in dirty gray camouflage.

  “Big and little,” he said. “Looks like the big one has a key.”

  Jen shoved past Keegan. “That’s Makena—”

  Keegan pulled her behind him. “If something happens, I don’t want you in the line of fire.”

  The door crashed back and bounced off the wall. “Guinevere!” he bellowed. Her cousin was a force of nature, driving through everything that didn’t suit him. He emerged from the stairwell like a leviathan rising from the deep, took one look at Keegan’s hand on Jen and went berserk, kicking the legs out from under him.

  Jen hung in her cousin’s powerful grip, toes dangling. “Mac...I can’t breathe....”

  Makena dropped her on her feet and cupped her chin. He was a doctor, although currently working as a volunteer paramedic. “Who are the assholes, Guinevere?”

  “Dad sent them.”

  “Don’t bullshit me!" roared Makena. "If this guy was from Security, he’d know better than to touch you.”

  Keegan got to his feet, cool and professional like Makena hadn’t just knocked him over like a bowling pin. Bad move. Her cousin interpreted non-confrontation as weakness.

  Keegan stuck out his hand. “You’re Makena Kualani.”

  “And you’re the bodyguard.” Makena was a Stalling on his mother’s side, and trying hard to be obnoxious.

  His friend, Kimo, skittered in, followed by a tall, black-haired man with hot blue eyes and a gun. Kimo was all but dancing in his need to get away, hopping from foot to foot, and looking from side to side.

  Makena and his best friend were nothing alike. Her cousin was a typical Stalling, large and heavily muscled, with long black hair tied back with a twist of tapa cloth and a double band of traditional Hawaiian tribal tattoos around each brawny bicep while Kimo was a scrawny tension coil, ready to explode.

  “Mac,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “We’ve got to leave.”

  Jen was just as anxious. With the way Makena was puffing up, someone was going to get hurt. “Chandler called you,” she said. “I told him not to.”

  Makena stopped glaring at Keegan long enough to give her an irritated look. “I came, didn’t I?”

  “Keegan got here first.”

  And they both knew how thrilled she was with that. Art was capable of doing anything to protect his interests. With Jen’s brother Percy fighting his reproductive duties, Jen was one half of Art’s direct line of descent.

  “This dynastic shit gets on my nerves,” said Makena. He sighed, heavy and gusty, like she didn’t already know he was the male version of a drama queen. “Think you could get them to lower their weapons? Kimo is delicate.”

  Jen leaned around her cousin to give Kimo a quick smile. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You’re not welcome, considering I all but pissed myself.” Kimo glanced around. “What is this, some kind of Rambo convention?”

  “This is Keegan,” she told him. “Corlis. And—”

  “Fallon,” said the man behind Kimo.

  Makena folded his arms. “These guys aren’t from Security, they’re instead of Security. You’re compromised.”

  “Chandler is working on it.”

  Makena twitched her a disgusted look. “StallingCo is impenetrable. You know Art would take you back in a heartbeat.”

  “I’ve spent myself on StallingCo. I belong here.”

  “You’d do that to Percy? Again?”

  Jen winced at the reference to her brother. “I’m not my mother.”

  “No,” said Makena, soft and completely vicious. “You can be your own category, all by yourself, another nightmare for him to carry around in his head.”

  “I can’t live my life in fear. If I give up now, what happens
next time? It’s failure, Makena. Don’t you see?”

  “You’d rather fucking die?”

  She lifted her chin. “Are you threatening me?”

  Keegan put an arm around her. “Back off, doctor.”

  “Right. Get your clothes, Guinevere.”

  “She stays,” said Keegan. Not so pleasant now.

  “She comes with me—you get out of my face—and we forget this whole thing. Or you can try to make me leave.” The look in Makena’s eyes was evil.

  Jen knew he was itching for a fight. Something had set him on edge and he wanted to take his anger out beating someone to a pulp. Not Keegan. Maybe Fallon since the look in his eyes was evil and calculating. If he thought he could take Makena, she didn’t want to know what he had to back it up. Anyone crazy enough to attack someone that outweighed him by a hundred pounds was crazy enough to win.

  She pushed clear of Keegan and confronted her cousin with her hands on her hips. “Crawling back to Dad is too much like crawling back into a cage. If I’m out, I stand some chance of freedom.”

  Makena's face softened. “I’m worried about you, Jen.”

  “Damn you, Makena. That is so not fair.”

  It wasn’t right to play this scene out in front of strangers, but there was anxiety in his Stalling-black eyes, the unspoken statement that if she needed him, he would drop everything to help her, as he had done years ago during that final break with her father.

  She shook her head, stumbling over words she had never been able to say, and saw in his eyes he already knew.

  Neither of them did well with words. “I’ll be all right,” she said awkwardly.

  “If you need a safe house, you have my number. Call me—and Jen?”

  “Yes?”

  His smile was crooked. “Show up for my mom's luau. She sent a dress. It's out in the Rover."

  ****

  Fallon re-set the perimeter alarm and straightened, rubbing the hair out of his eyes.

  Before he heaved his enormous bulk up into the cab of his Range Rover, Kualani flipped him off and his squirrelly little sidekick followed, taking the opportunity to repeat the gesture a couple more times before they left. Just another day in his ass-backwards life. Getting dumped on and flipped off by people he didn’t even know. Fallon pulled his hood up and slogged back through the mud.