by Jill Shalvis
“Hmm,” she murmured, which he hoped meant she knew the feeling.
He came up on one arm, using the other to tug her into him. “‘Hmm’ good, right?”
She let out a rough, mirthless laugh. “Fishing for compliments?”
He stroked a finger along her jaw, his mouth curved. “Yeah, well, you’re a hard woman to read.”
She met his gaze. “All you have to do is look in the mirror at the ten nail indentions in your back.”
He chuckled and rubbed his finger over the brow she’d furrowed. “But something’s bothering you.”
“But . . .” She paused with a rueful smile. “I have to admit . . .” She looked around them. “I feel a little bit like I just turned into my mother, boinking against the wall to scratch an itch. I mean, what the hell was that?”
“Adrenaline,” he said. “Sometimes after a mission’s over, it all builds up and you need to release it somehow. A good fight works, but sex works better.”
She just stared up at him.
“It’s totally normal,” he said, meaning to soothe and comfort. “It happens.”
“Oh really. It happens,” she said.
He hesitated at her suddenly overly careful tone, replaying what he’d just said and wondering how he’d screwed up so that she’d misconstrued his statement.
“Not to me, this doesn’t happen,” she said and sat up.
“Kylie—”
“No. I get it. Please don’t explain it again.” She got to her wobbly feet, moving around, picking up pieces of clothing and pulling it all back on.
“Kylie. Wait.” He got up as well, reaching out for her, but she pushed his hands away.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
His phone buzzed an incoming text. He glanced at it and grimaced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s my dad. I have to look at it.”
She nodded and he assessed the text.
I’ve been followed.
Oh, shit. His dad was going off the rails again. He hit his dad’s number. “What’s wrong?” he asked, relieved his dad picked up. He didn’t always because cell phones could be traced and he was paranoid.
“They’re tracking me,” his dad said. “Through the walls. They’re banging on the damn walls.”
Joe looked at the common wall between his place and his dad’s. The wall he’d just taken Kylie against. He closed his eyes. “Dad, no one’s tracking you. It was . . .” Hell. “The wind.”
“There’s no wind tonight.”
“Okay, then it was me.” Joe grimaced. “I was . . . hanging up some pictures.”
Kylie stopped straightening out her clothing, pivoted and gave him a brows up.
“You don’t have any pictures,” his dad said in his ear. “And it’s almost midnight. I’m telling you, someone’s coming to get me.”
“Dad, listen to me,” Joe said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No one’s coming to get you. I’ll be over in a minute. Do not do anything until I get there.” He shoved the phone into his pocket and turned around to find Kylie standing in front of his living room window, hugging herself, looking out into the night.
“Hey,” he said, coming up behind her, enveloping her in his arms. “I’ve got to—”
“I know.” She stepped away. “I’ve got to go too. I’ve got an Uber coming.”
She started to walk out the door, but he caught her by the wrist and reeled her back in. “What’s going on, Kylie?”
She tried giving him an innocent look. “What’s going on is that you’ve got to go.”
He pulled her around to face him and bent his knees a little to look into her eyes. “It seems like maybe it’s you who has to go.”
She turned her head away and he gently turned it back. “My dad lives right next door,” he said, “on the other side of this duplex. Unfortunately, he needs me to stop by right now, but I thought I could make us a late dinner. Us, as in you and me and him.”
“It’s nearly midnight,” she said.
“So everyone keeps saying, but my stomach doesn’t tell time. It just tells me when it’s hungry. My dad and I often eat really late. You in?”
“You cook?” she asked in surprise.
“I’m an awesome cook,” he said, not above wanting to impress her with his skills. He’d learned young that if he didn’t want to eat out of a can, he had to make his own food. He’d gotten good at it, and then even better once he’d hit puberty and realized how much girls loved the fact that he could cook for them. He’d gone on to use that knowledge ruthlessly to his advantage with women for a lot of years, but this would be the first time he’d ever cooked for one and his dad at the same time. Which meant that Kylie was different, a fact he already knew.
She was looking at him now, studying him with a slight furrow to her brow.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re like this really big puzzle. One of those with a thousand-plus pieces, and I’m not only missing a bunch of those pieces, I don’t even have all four of the corners.”
He had to laugh. “Yeah. And I don’t fit into a box very well either.”
At his smartass comment, the corners of her mouth curved in a very small smile that said not only did she have his number, but she also got him, as in all the way to the heart and soul got him, and it made his breath catch. He pulled her in for a hug, needing the contact in a way he couldn’t have articulated if he’d tried. But luckily he didn’t need to. She willingly snuggled into him as well, as if maybe she had the same need. Brushing a kiss to her temple, he closed his eyes and held on. He had no idea what he was doing, which was a hard thing to swallow since he made sure to always know what he was doing. But one thing he did know—he wasn’t sorry. And something else—he wasn’t ready to let her go yet.
She dropped her head to his chest. “I’m worried,” she murmured and his heart stopped. Because this was probably where she told him what he could give her wasn’t enough for her and then she was going to dump him—
“We’re getting nowhere,” she said, “and I have less than a week left before I’ve got to authenticate those pieces or lose the penguin forever.”
He let out a breath of relief. She was giving him a stay, a reprieve. She wasn’t dumping him.
Yet.
“You’re not going to have to do that,” he promised. “We’ll find the penguin.”
“I want that to be true,” she said.
“It is true.”
Kylie nodded and held on to him for another minute. She was fierce, she was strong, she wasn’t easy, and she always had something to say. She had flaws and he loved that. But he thought maybe his favorite thing about her was that when she got knocked down, she got right back up again. Something he could relate to, not that he’d planned on relating to her at all.
Chapter 19
#ShakenNotStirred
Kylie waited as Joe pulled some things from his fridge. Then he took her by the hand and walked her outside and around to the other side of the duplex. Not ten minutes ago, she’d been naked on his floor with him, a big deal for her. Normally right about now she’d be running for the hills, needing some time alone to process and assimilate. And to distance herself.
So the fact that she was actually still here and preparing to meet Joe’s dad staggered her. “Won’t he think it’s odd that I’m with you at this time of night?” she asked.
“My dad doesn’t keep track of time unless I’m late or he needs something,” he said. And then he paused. “But there’s something you need to know about him. He’s . . . different.”
Kylie smiled. “And you’re not?”
“Smartass,” he said with an answering smile, but then he hesitated again. “Listen, if he says any weird stuff, just ignore it, okay? He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“What kind of weird stuff?”
“He’s not always 100 percent present,” he said. “He came home from the Gulf War with some injuries, not all of them physical.”
Her heart sof
tened and she met his gaze. “And you and Molly take care of him.”
“Yeah. And he doesn’t like anyone else, ever, so don’t be insulted if he ignores you.” Joe knocked on the front door, four hard raps, then a pause, and then one more. “Dad?” he called out. “It’s me.” He unlocked three dead bolts and then knocked again in the same pattern as before as he opened the door. “Dad? You hear me?”
“Of course I do,” came an irritated male voice. “I’m not deaf.”
Joe didn’t step over the threshold. “And you’re also not armed, right?”
Kylie shot Joe a worried look. Armed?
Joe smiled reassuringly at her. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t have any bullets right now.”
Oh good. That made her feel all better.
“But he likes to hold his gun,” Joe warned her softly. “Just ignore that too.”
Kylie nodded, thinking she was doing a most excellent job of hiding her nerves until Joe squeezed her hand and smiled reassuringly.
“What’s taking you so damned long?” his dad yelled.
Joe stepped inside first, making sure Kylie was behind him. He took a quick look into the dark room and apparently saw something she couldn’t, because he sighed. “Dad, where are your pants?” He shifted, and then there was a click and a light came on.
The place was small and extremely neat, not a thing out of place. Well, except the man in the wheelchair in the doorway wearing only a wifebeater and boxer shorts.
Oh, and a rifle, which was lying across his knees.
In spite of his dark hair liberally streaked with gray and his equally dark eyes surrounded by a web of weathered wrinkles, Joe’s dad looked very much like Joe, and far younger than Kylie expected. The Gulf War had been nearly thirty years ago. She tried to do the math in her head, guessing that he had to be fiftyish.
“Pants are stupid,” he said.
“Yes,” Joe said. “And so is greeting visitors with a shotgun and no clothes and yet you do it. Put your gun away.”
Joe’s dad looked beyond Joe to Kylie. “Who’s that?”
Joe turned to Kylie. “This is—”
“Not you,” his dad said. “Her. I asked her.”
Kylie smiled at him. “My name’s Kylie Masters.”
“Huh,” he said. “I had a Masters in my platoon. Jeremy Masters. He was a class-A asshole. Is he your father?”
Joe shook his head. “Jesus, Dad—”
“No, it’s okay,” Kylie said to Joe, but kept looking at his dad. “My dad is a class-A asshole, Mr. Malone, but he wasn’t in the military. At least, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know for sure? How come?”
“Because he walked away when I was young and hasn’t always kept in touch.”
Joe’s dad stared at her and then nodded. “You can stay.” He turned to Joe. “What’s for dinner?”
“Nothing unless you’re going to be nice.”
“I’m always nice.”
Joe snorted and passed him and went into the kitchen.
“Thinks he knows how to cook,” his dad said to Kylie.
“I do know how to cook!” Joe yelled from the kitchen.
Joe’s dad lifted his forefinger and thumb about an inch apart.
Joe stuck his head out of the kitchen. “How about you call for takeout if my food sucks so bad?”
“And he’s as sensitive as a girl,” his dad said.
“Boys are just as sensitive as girls,” Kylie said. “Maybe more so. So probably you meant to say he’s as sensitive as a boy.”
Joe’s dad paused and then tipped his head back and laughed out loud. “Son, you went and did it now,” he yelled. “This one’s going to give you a run for your money.”
Joe didn’t respond to this, but Kylie could hear him banging stuff around in the kitchen. She told herself it didn’t matter that he didn’t agree with his dad about her giving him a run for his money. Because what they did agree on was that this was merely a friendship and a working relationship with a bit of holy-cow sex on the side. Which was fine. Because maybe there were some feelings developing for him deep down, but since she had no idea what those feelings were exactly, or what to do with them, it didn’t matter.
But she couldn’t deny that a small part of her would’ve filled with warm fuzzies if Joe had agreed with his dad about her at all instead of radio silence.
His dad rolled himself past Kylie and checked all the front door locks. He checked each of them exactly four times, paused, and then checked them a fifth time.
The same pattern Joe had used to come inside.
Kylie watched this with a sudden lump in her throat, understanding now exactly how much Joe cared about his family. And—whether he realized it or not—just how big a capacity he had to love.
Joe’s dad finished at the front door and grunted in satisfaction before wheeling to the windows, checking each of those four times as well. And then a fifth. There was one window that was too high for him in his chair so Kylie crossed to it herself and checked the lock. She did it four times. Then paused and checked it a fifth time.
When she turned around, Joe’s dad nodded in satisfaction. “Yeah,” he said. “You’ll do.”
She looked up and found Joe watching them both, his expression unreadable. “Kitchen,” he said, and vanished.
She and his dad exchanged a look.
“He’s probably getting his period,” his dad said.
Something slammed in the kitchen and his dad grinned. “Yeah, definitely he’s getting his period. Maybe we should buy him some of that shit, what’s it called? Midol.”
There was another bang in the kitchen.
Joe’s dad laughed. “For such a tough guy, he’s an easy target.”
Kylie bit her inner cheek. “You’re messing with him.”
“Well, of course I am.”
“Why?” Kylie asked.
His dad shrugged. “I cheated on Joe and just finished a season of Pretty Little Liars without him. I’m bored.”
Joe stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Hey, PLL was supposed to be our dirty little secret.”
Kylie was smiling. “You watch Pretty Little Liars?”
Joe scowled and vanished back into the kitchen.
“Told you,” his dad said, grinning at her. “He’s sensitive as a little . . . boy.”
“Food,” Joe yelled. “Come and get it or I’m eating it all myself.”
They entered the kitchen. Joe’s dad went straight to the sink and jabbed a finger at the stack of dirty pots and pans. “What’s that?”
“Dinner first,” Joe said. “I’ll do dishes after.”
“Around here, we always do dishes first.”
“Not tonight, Dad.”
“Since when?”
“Since it’s midnight and I’m tired and you’re being an asshole. On purpose.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of the table. “Sit.”
“I’m already sitting,” his dad said, sounding irritated, but when Joe turned his back, the guy winked at Kylie, in that moment looking very much like his son.
Joe served pasta and sauce and a salad. Kylie smiled when she saw that the pasta was little noodles in the shape of the alphabet.
“Hey,” his dad said, poking at it. “This isn’t Chef Boyardee.”
“Nope,” Joe said.
His dad pushed away his bowl. “You know that I only eat my SpaghettiOs from a can. That’s how I like ’em.”
Joe pushed the bowl back at him. “We’ve been over this. The stuff in a can that you ate all through the eighties like it was going out of style has way too much sodium. Your doctor said you have to cut back. And it’d be a lot easier to feed you if you’d agree to eat something other than pasta.”
His dad picked up a fork. “You know what you are? You’re a pants-wearing, sodium-hating commie.”
Joe nodded. “Impressive. You managed to fling insults without using the F-bomb.”
“My PT and nurse both threatened to quit if I didn’t
stop saying it,” he confessed. “They gave me a book on how to swear without swearing. I don’t give a shit what Nurse Ratched thinks, but my PT’s alright.”
“Well look at you, learning to be social,” Joe said.
His dad snorted, but still only poked at the food.
“Dad, just try it.”
“Fine.” He took a bite with exaggerated caution.
“Well?” Joe asked.
“Eh.” He chewed. Swallowed. Took another big bite. And then another. “It’s nothing you’d see on Iron Chef but it’s okay.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks. Do you remember that time the power went out and in order to eat we had to heat cans over a fire pit we made in the backyard?”
His dad took another bite. “The power didn’t go out. It was turned off because those fuckers—er, I mean those effers didn’t tell me that my check had bounced. And since you couldn’t find a can opener, you used a battery-powered screw gun from the garage and poked holes in the can. And also in your own damn finger. Bled like a fire hose. It was so bad we couldn’t tell the difference between the sauce and the blood.”
“Needed stitches,” Joe said fondly, as if proud of this moment. “We used superglue, remember?”
“Hell yeah, I remember. We saved hundreds of dollars in ER bills.”
Kylie stared at the two of them laughing together over this rather horrifying memory. She was starting to realize just how much responsibility Joe had on a daily basis. How much responsibility he’d always had, starting from way too young an age, taking care of both his little sister and his dad.
She might not have had her parents, but she’d had her grandpa. He’d taken care of her, always. She’d never felt the weight of the world on her shoulders as surely as Joe had felt it. Still felt it.
When his dad’s bowl was empty, Joe nodded in approval and rose, collecting all the dishes, ruffling his dad’s short hair as he moved to the sink. It was a small thing, a quick little gesture, but it portrayed such love and acceptance that Kylie felt her throat go tight.
Joe’s cell buzzed an incoming text. He glanced at it and his expression went grim.
“What’s up?” his dad asked. “Work?”