by Kait Nolan
“Lead on, Boy Scout.” He was glad to see her eyes spark with amusement. She’d been sober and withdrawn since dinner.
He steered her through the crowds, studiously ignoring everyone he could, smiling and nodding at anyone he couldn’t. But he didn’t stop until they’d reached the outskirts of the throngs encamped on the banks of Hope Springs.
Across the water, the last vestiges of daylight bled to night, only a faint blush of orange left in the sky. There were still a good forty-five minutes until the fireworks started. People milled around them, chatting, snacking on the contents of coolers brought from earlier cookouts, wrangling kids. It wasn’t how he’d planned to end the evening. His original intent had been to take her to one of his favorite haunts from high school, far on the other side of the springs, to encourage some private fireworks of their own. But in the wake of her admission about being bullied in school, she’d been too much in her own head. He could’ve distracted her with the physical, but that wouldn’t get at the thing still gnawing at her. So he’d brought her here, where an audience would keep their libidos in check, and he could, hopefully, figure out what to do to banish this demon of hers.
He unfolded the blanket he’d brought from the car and spread it on the grass. Slipping out of his shoes, he sat, stretching a hand up to Riley. “Come here.”
She toed off her sandals and stepped onto the blanket. Taking his hand, she sank gracefully down, smoothing her dress before crossing her feet primly at the ankles and settling back against his chest.
Liam wrapped his arms around her, everything inside him going quiet and content as he tucked his chin against her shoulder. “You smell…sort of lemony. What is that?”
“A blend of lemongrass and eucalyptus oils. Natural mosquito repellent.”
Of course, there was an oil for that. It was Riley.
“Definitely more appealing than Deep Woods Off.” Unable to resist, he pressed a kiss to her neck, pleased to feel her faint shiver. But she wasn’t entirely focused on him. “What’s going through that busy brain of yours?”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that your mom has been shipping us since high school.”
Not what he’d expected. “She’s been what now?”
“Shipping. As in hoping two people will get together in a romantic relationship. Though usually the term is used in conjunction with fan fiction, books, and TV shows rather than real people. Like, I ship Oliver and Felicity on Arrow.”
“That sounds like an Autumn-ism.”
“Given her romantic leanings, it’s a favorite word of hers.”
“Huh.” Liam turned that over in his head and decided he kind of liked the idea. “Does it bother you that Mom hoped we’d get together?”
“Not…bother, exactly. I’m kind of embarrassed, I guess.”
“Why?”
“You have no idea how hard I worked not to moon over you back then. You never noticed, and Wynne never said anything, so I thought I pulled it off.”
“You mooned over me?” He smiled to himself, inordinately pleased by the idea.
“Having a crush on your best friend’s big brother is a special right of passage. And mine had a hefty dose of hero worship thrown in.”
“I’m no hero.”
“You were always my hero,” she said softly. Abruptly she stiffened
He didn’t have to ask why. “No, I never told her what happened. Whatever she saw between us, it was nothing to do with that.” He rubbed light circles on the back of her hand until she eased again.
“Don’t you find the whole thing a little…I don’t know. Weird?”
“Not weird. I guess I’m surprised. And a part of me feels like I shouldn’t be because she knows me—apparently better than I know myself, since she figured this out way before I did. She loves you like a daughter, and I guess I worried she wouldn’t be okay with this. It wouldn’t have stopped me if she did, but it’s nice to have her approval.” Of course, that came with a whole helluva lot of pressure not to screw it up.
“What about Wynne? I haven’t heard from her, and, frankly, I’m just as nervous about her reaction as Molly’s.”
That was a whole other kettle of fish.
“Oh, she called and read me the riot act last weekend. Said she’s glad I finally got my head out of my ass to notice you were awesome, and I’d better take care of you, or I’d be answering to her.”
Riley opened her mouth, then closed it again, shaking her head. “Maybe I wasn’t as good at hiding my crush back then as I thought. How did she even know about us?”
“Evidently quite a few pictures of us at the playground made their way to her on Facebook, and she saw the announcement that Ruby won the pool on who I’d pick.”
She twisted around. “Ruby? Seriously?”
“Apparently I wasn’t so good at not mooning over you.”
“Could’ve fooled me. I spent most of the last month wanting to die of embarrassment every time I saw you.”
“If your mama hadn’t shown up, we’d have been doing this a helluva lot sooner.” Liam rubbed his lips over hers, a lazy, teasing kiss.
“We’re gonna wind up on Facebook again,” she murmured.
“Don’t care.” He just kept right on with that slow taste, thinking she was the perfect dessert.
Until something thunked him against the side of the head.
Liam jerked back, already noting the breathless, “Sorry!” being called, as he looked around for what had whacked him. He picked up the frisbee and winged it back to the little girl still chanting, “Sorry!” as she jogged over.
“No problem!”
Riley had gone very still. He followed her gaze to a young woman waving a second apology for the little girl. She stood near water’s edge, gesturing for an older boy to move out of range of the crowd. The empathy in Riley’s expression clued him in.
“That’s her, isn’t it? The girl from the market that your mom was talking about.”
Riley offered a friendly smile along with her wave. “Tara Honeycutt. She’s barely twenty and has sole custody of her two younger half siblings. Brother and sister. Austin is about ten, I think Ginny’s seven.”
“How did she end up with them?”
“Their mom dropped them off with their dad—which is Tara’s dad—and disappeared. Then Wayne got busted for burglary and sent to prison. Tara quit school and came home to take care of them rather than see them go into the foster system.”
“That’s a lot of responsibility to take on at that age.”
“She’s busting her ass, working two jobs to make sure they’ve got everything they need. So somebody like Hopper coming along and implying she’s lazy or some kind of reprobate would probably be enough to send her over the edge. I so completely understand that.”
She’d tensed up again, so he began to stroke and soothe. This was the opening he’d wanted. “It explains a lot about you.”
“Oh, you mean the fact that I’m mule stubborn?” She shot him a self-deprecating smile.
“Well there’s that—” He gave her a squeeze to take the sting out “—and how you got to be so strong. A lot of people would’ve buckled under those circumstances.”
“My mother did. And I probably would have, if not for your family.” She tipped her head to his shoulder. “Y’all were my collective rock. Always. Not everybody’s so lucky.”
“Are,” he corrected.
“Sorry?”
“We are your collective rock. What’s between you and me may have changed, but that hasn’t. I hope you know that.”
“I do. But I’m not in this for you to take care of me. I hope you know that. That’s my mother’s M.O. Not mine. I don’t expect that from a relationship.”
He could’ve been offended. He could’ve argued that the entire point of relationships was taking care of each other. His parents had been a glowing example of that. But this wasn’t about her not needing him. It was about her not being willing to need anyone. Chipping away at that wall
would take time and finesse.
Liam brushed a kiss over her brow. “You’re nothing like your mom. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m here to support you. Whether you think you need it or not.”
She relaxed into him. They lapsed into silence as the fireworks began. Throughout the show she spent more time watching Tara and her siblings than she did the festive explosives. Liam spent his time watching her. Something was percolating in that brain of hers. He waited, patiently, to see if she’d let him in on it.
When the last burst of color died away, Riley straightened. “What time is it?”
“Coming on close to ten.”
“Will you do something for me?”
“Anything.”
“Will you drive me to Lawley?”
“Sure. What for?”
“To pay it forward.”
~*~
“Stay here, while I scout the perimeter.”
“No way,” Riley whispered. “This was my idea. I’m going with you.” She wasn’t about to admit she felt a little squeamish standing in the woods by herself in the pitch black dark of midnight. There could be…creatures and crawling things. Some things she was fine being a girly girl about.
She couldn’t make out Liam’s face in the shadows, but his long silence suggested he probably knew it.
“Fine. We’ll come back for the cargo. Step where I step, and test each one before you put your full weight down.”
Riley fell into careful step behind him.
Heeled sandals were absolutely not the correct footwear for a covert operation. The flirty sundress was hardly appropriate either, but going by her apartment to change would’ve meant running into her mother. There was no explanation for why she needed to be dressed in black from head-to-toe that Riley cared to give. The whole point of this mission was secrecy.
A single light burned in the back of the little one-story house. Tara, probably, taking some rare time to herself or maybe figuring out how she was going to make ends meet for another month. Riley was well-familiar with that kind of late night.
They crossed the yard at what felt like a slow crawl, until Liam finally motioned her to press up against the side of the house. He eased through the weedy flowerbed. Riley followed until they both crouched beneath the edge of the lit window. Using hand signals that she could only presume meant raise up slowly, Liam turned to face the house. Like a pair of cartoon robbers, they moved in sync, unbending just enough that they could peer in.
Tara sat on a stool at some kind of work bench, an oversized t-shirt slipping off one shoulder. A bright desk lamp illuminated the small tools, wire, and other detritus scattered across the surface. Her jewelry making station, Riley realized. The long artist’s fingers twisted and fastened, picking up a tool here, a component there, then checking the overall composition beneath a large magnifying glass mounted with a spring clamp to the lamp. A satisfied smile spread across her face, and, for once, she actually looked her age. As they watched, she set aside whatever she was working on and turned out the desk lamp, before crossing to the bed in the corner.
Liam tapped Riley’s arm and motioned back toward where they’d left the supplies. As they made their way back toward the woods, the last light went out.
“We wait ten minutes. Let her get good and settled, slide on into sleep. Then we make our move.”
“You’re good at all this stealth stuff,” Riley whispered.
“Ought to be. Nice not to have to do it while worrying about IEDs or mortars.”
Riley closed her eyes and swallowed hard. She’d been making a concerted effort not to think about what he’d faced in the Middle East. After twelve years of worrying about it, that part of his life was finished. Thank God.
Liam’s hand tangled with hers. “You okay?”
“I used to keep a map.”
“Of what?”
“The world. Every time we got an update on you or your brothers, I’d note down where you were supposed to be. But given Jack is military intelligence and Cruz is a sniper, we usually didn’t know where they were, so it was mostly you. I’ve got a record of your entire service. What we knew of it, anyway.”
He tugged her against him. The cheek he pressed to hers was a little bit rough with stubble, but the way he held her was anything but. “I’m sorry I worried you. I don’t know if it would’ve changed anything if I’d known, but I’d have at least made more of an effort to let you know I was okay.”
Riley pressed her face into his shoulder, holding him tight. “I know it’s been hard on you, but I’m so glad you’re out.”
“I thought about writing you.”
“Really?”
“A hundred times. I kept that letter you wrote with me all the time. Read it and reread it until it fell apart and had to be taped back together.”
The idea that the words she’d written him in anger had been a constant companion to him in battle made her vaguely ill. “Why? Why on earth would you want to reread a guilt trip?”
“That wasn’t the part I reread. Not most of the time, anyway.”
That only left one part.
“Do you remember?” he asked softly.
As if she could forget. “Take care of yourself, Liam Montgomery. You’d better come home safe to all the people who love you, or I’ll never forgive you.”
Liam stroked a hand through her hair, tipping her face up toward his. “I took comfort in the idea that you might be one of them. That’s why I wore the medallion all these years. I didn’t think you’d have given up a piece of your dad if you weren’t.”
She was. Of course she was. She always had been. And she’d never been able to handle it.
Riley closed her eyes. “God, I’m glad you didn’t see me before you got out. I was hateful to you. I wouldn’t have wanted you to take that back out into the field.”
She could see his smile even in the dark. “Well, I admit I was disappointed you didn’t fall into my arms at my welcome home party. But I consider myself damned lucky to have you here now.”
“Me, too.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “C’mon Let’s get this done.”
It took two trips to get it all. They’d gone, perhaps, a little bit overboard with the three styrofoam coolers and dozen bags of other non-perishables. Once Liam had realized what she had in mind, he’d gotten into the whole thing. There was enough here to feed the family for a month. They arranged the lot of it neatly in front of the main door to the house.
“That’s everything. You ready?” he asked.
“Wait.” Riley laid a hand on his arm. “Do you think we should really wake them up?”
“If you just leave the coolers, there’s not enough ice to guarantee no spoilage by morning. And you run the risk of stray dogs or raccoons getting into them or the rest of it. You wanted anonymity, this gives it to you.”
“Okay, fine. You’re right.”
“You go on ahead. Once you’re back to the treeline, I’ll pull a ding dong ditch and make a run for it.”
“Oh wait, I almost forgot.” Riley pulled the note she’d scribbled out of her pocket. Prying up the cover of one of the coolers, she wedged the edge of the paper in and closed the top.
Liam arched a brow in question.
“In case she’s too afraid to open them. People pull mean pranks on those less fortunate with far more regularity than anybody likes to think about.”
“Fair enough. Go on.”
Using the same tactics he’d shown her to cross in the first place, Riley headed for the trees. As soon as she was safely hidden behind an oak, Liam rang the bell and bolted, his long legs eating up the distance, as a light snapped on in Tara’s room. He made it to the woods just as the front porch light came on. The door didn’t open.
“We probably scared the crap out of the poor girl.”
“Just wait,” he said.
The door cracked open and the barrel of a shotgun peeked out.
“Good way to lose your gun,” Liam remarked.
“Told you we scared her.”
Evidently assured no one was there to molest her, Tara opened the door further and caught sight of the bounty piled on her porch. Riley saw her jaw drop and felt the rest of the ice that had lodged in her belly at dinner melt. Yes, this was what she’d needed tonight. To do something kind for someone who needed it, no strings, no identity attached.
Tara stepped further out, looking around for her benefactor. Seeing no one, she took one quick swipe at her eyes and started hauling things in. They waited until she’d carried it all inside, before melting back through the woods the way they’d come.
Riley felt buoyant. By the time they emerged where they’d stashed the car, a laugh bubbled out. “That. Was. Awesome!” All the covert ops stuff had her blood pumping in exhilaration.
“Feeling better?”
“So much.” She threw her arms around him. “Thank you for helping me.”
“It was a worthy cause all around.”
Feeling the hard press of Liam’s body against hers, her heart came up with an entirely better reason to thud in her chest. “Seems like you’ve earned a reward.”
“Oh yeah? What did you have in mind?”
“Well, there is that backseat you mentioned earlier.” She skimmed her hands down his back to grip his very firm backside.
“Have I mentioned I like the way you think?” He opened the car door. “After you.”
Riley tipped the seat forward and climbed in.
Liam followed, shutting the door behind him. “Now, I believe I had a bet to win.” He shifted to crawl toward her and bumped his head, then a knee. “Damn it. I wasn’t this tall in high school.”
She swallowed back a laugh at his look of consternation. “Ah, I’m not the first girl you’ve had back here.”
“You’re the first woman I’ve had back here.”
“Nice save, Boy Scout.”
“And, to be clear, I’ve never gotten past second base in this car.”
“I can see why. There’s not any room to maneuver.”
“I could send your mom on an all expenses paid trip to…I don’t know. Somewhere.”
She stiffened, shoving at him. “No.”
He smiled, trying to put her at ease. “I was just—”