by Kit Rocha
Her body stiffened, and she realized what had been different. Not just his eagerness. Not just their total abandon. Jared had been so lost in her, he hadn't stopped to get a condom. And she'd been so lost in him, she hadn't remembered that she might need one.
Might. It was the slimmest possibility. She'd taken the fertility drugs months ago, and so briefly they might not have had time to take effect to begin with. But even that slim possibility made her stomach churn.
Not that she could tell him. Such a faint chance wasn't worth the stress it would add to his shoulders. She'd talk to the O'Kanes' doctor instead. Reassure herself. Rebuild her walls.
Jared didn't need a trembling Sector Five housewife who cracked under a missed dinner and a few short words. He needed someone like Lex—a partner who could be strong in her own right, who dealt with her own problems and always had his back.
He needed an O'Kane. And she could become one.
Chapter Sixteen
Lieutenant Malhotra had obviously not cleared his new no-more-bribes policy with the rest of Eden's Council.
Jared slid a fat envelope across Smith Peterson's desk and schooled his features to keep from wrinkling his nose at the sheer greed that lit the other man's eyes. "It's all there."
Peterson held up a hand, his other sliding quickly over the large inset tablet on his desk. A strange hum filled the room, and Peterson shrugged. "Can't be too careful, can we?"
A program to jam surveillance equipment, then. "I'm not wearing a wire."
"Of course not." Derision dripped from the words.
Jared bit the inside of his cheek to hold back a smile. No, he wasn't wearing a wire—but he had something better, something that Dallas's resident hacker, Noah, had pieced together. The tiny box hidden inside his silver cigarette lighter case was designed, as best as Jared could understand, to gather data being transmitted over Eden's ubiquitous wireless signals. All it needed was close range and enough time to complete the transfer.
Jared could keep Peterson talking. Hell, it might be able to scrape all his data before the man could finish lovingly counting Jared's money.
Which was what he was doing now. "In light of recent...unpleasantness, a less agreeable man might require an additional donation to the security fund."
"Unpleasantness?" Oh, he'd make the bastard say it.
"So much activity. Things breaking. Things being repaired. It's hard to turn a blind eye."
Especially hard, Jared assumed, when you were the one responsible. "It could have been worse. I do regret the loss of my rug, though. It was an antique."
"A pity." Peterson finished counting the bills and tucked them back into the envelope. "I could arrange for additional security, but it doesn't come free."
"Nothing ever does." Jesus Christ, this place was exhausting. He could barely fathom why Lili wanted to hear about his day when his day consisted of sitting across desks from smarmy assholes like Smith Peterson, smiling and playing nice instead of cracking their skulls.
And she did want to. The guilt rose again, choking and thick. She wanted to be part of his life, for him to share things with her, all the normal things you did when you were falling in love with someone.
It wasn't her fault that all he had to share were horror stories.
"It's your choice," Peterson said with an oily smile. "You may want to decide before your big night, though."
These Council bastards were nothing if not predictable. Jared pulled the second envelope he'd prepared from his inner jacket pocket and slid it across the desk. "I believe in being prepared, sir."
It was amusing, watching the man's greed war with his spite. Should he taunt Jared with the threat of destroying his opening night, or take all that beautiful money?
The money won. In Eden, the money always won. Peterson picked up the envelope and thumbed through it. "The Council appreciates your dedication to improving our city's security."
"Anything I can do to make it a better place." Including burning it to the fucking ground.
"Yes, well." Peterson cleared his throat. "In the future, visiting my office won't be necessary. Someone will check up on you weekly."
"I see. How should I prepare for this guest?"
"With the usual donation. Unless you have a guilty conscience about something…?"
Jared stared at him.
Peterson stared back, something far uglier than greed lurking behind his bland expression. "If you want to do business in Eden, an association with an unscrupulous reprobate like Alexander Santana can only hurt you. Especially when it's common knowledge that he's Dallas O'Kane's creature."
Rage surged, burning through Jared's veins like fire. A quick glance at his reflection in the window behind Peterson revealed no change in his expression, but what lay in his heart was pure murder. "Ace is a friend," he said, marveling at his miraculously bland tone. "He's also retired."
"From one sort of criminal endeavor, perhaps. But a man who wants to succeed in the city can't afford too many connections to the sectors."
"You'll have your money, Peterson." Jared rose and buttoned his suit jacket. "And since I won't even ask you to scrounge around for it in Alexander Santana's pants, I presume it will suffice."
Peterson's face froze. "Money buys tolerance. You'll never have enough to erase what you are."
"Have a good day, Councilman." He turned and headed for the door without waiting for a response. He had to, because everything in the room had started to look like a weapon—the phone on the desk, the vases and artwork lining the shelves on the far wall, even the chair he'd abandoned.
With just a few simple words, Smith Peterson had gone from necessary, irritating evil to being high on Jared's list of motherfuckers who needed to die.
The O'Kanes' doctor was a drug addict.
Perhaps addict wasn't the right word. As rough around the edges as Dylan Jordan appeared, Lili didn't imagine he was a man who had to make do with drugs that caused physical dependency. But she knew all too well that there was more than one way to need the quiet comfort of oblivion.
If Lili's eyes had been half as haunted as Doc's, it was a miracle anyone had ever had any hope for her.
"I wouldn't worry about it," he was saying. "The medications that restore fertility are short-acting. After three months, they're not even in your bloodstream anymore."
Lili couldn't quite help her relieved sigh. "I hoped you'd say that."
He held up a hand. "Some people are more sensitive to the drugs than others. There's a slight chance you could still get pregnant, but only if your partner was taking the meds, too."
A thought so preposterous, she couldn't even bring herself to worry. Jared had been neatly carving potential responsibilities from his life for months now. He'd barely allowed himself to risk a friend. Paying the exorbitant expense of fertility drugs just to risk a child?
"No," she said quietly. "That's not a concern."
"Then you should be fine." He hesitated, then laid his arm on her shoulder. "How is everything else?"
She couldn't tell if the question was from a doctor to a patient, or from one connoisseur of pharmaceutical dabbling to another. "Better. It was overwhelming at first, feeling things. But it's better now."
"Good. Lex was worried."
Even a few weeks ago, Lili might have argued that Lex was incapable of so soft and vulnerable an emotion as worry. But learning to see nuance had meant coming to see those around her more clearly.
Lex wasn't hard because there was no softness in her. Lex was hard because she was strong enough to be cold without losing her inner warmth. Noelle couldn't have done the same without losing the sweetness that made her who she was.
Lex could. And she did, so other people wouldn't have to. "If Lex asks, tell her I've never been better. It's the truth."
A hint of a smile curved his lips. It lent his face a startling attractiveness, transforming it from forbiddingly handsome to something warmer. "Take care of yourself, Miss Fleming."
&nbs
p; "You do the same, Dr. Jordan."
Lili left the office Doc used while he was on the compound, relief humming quietly beneath her skin. Relief for herself and for Jared, and for his mission and what it meant for the O'Kanes.
But not as much relief as she'd expected.
Not that she wanted a child. Maybe someday, in some hazy, less dangerous future, she could imagine the appeal. But the fear gripping her hadn't been the wild terror of helplessness this time, but wholly practical.
It wasn't a good time to be pregnant. But if it had happened—if it did happen—it wouldn't be the end of her life. Because she was not her mother. Jared would never be her father.
And the O'Kanes wouldn't abandon her to suffer through the ordeal alone.
She traced her fingertip over her wrist as she stepped out into the sunny courtyard, remembering Rachel's words. Membership was hers for the asking, because Dallas O'Kane paid his debts.
As if the thought had conjured her, Rachel stepped out of the warehouse a dozen yards ahead of Lili, a clipboard in one hand. The sound of metal grating against metal filled the air as the huge loading doors opened, quickly drowned by the rumble of trucks pulling in to the lot.
Lili hurried her pace, stopping by Rachel's side as men began to stream from the warehouse, loaded down with wooden cases branded with the O'Kanes' logo. "That's a lot of liquor."
"This?" Rachel blew her bangs out of her face. "This is your boyfriend, waiting until the last minute to stock his bar. Not that I blame him, I guess. Not under the circumstances."
Worry immediately kindled in Lili's gut. "Did something happen? I haven't seen him in a few days."
"No. Shit, no," Rachel said quickly. "I'm talking about his place getting busted up."
Lili tried to school her expression, but it was difficult. Her guard wasn't up, and the pain slashing through her was a new sort of hurt, the kind she wasn't used to managing.
She'd never trusted someone enough to feel betrayed before.
Rachel glanced at her, then did a double take. "He didn't tell you, huh? He was probably right not to. I mean, it's not a big deal."
"It's not?"
"It happens. Anytime you're trying to do something that doesn't fit with Eden's image, they try to knock you down." Rachel slid an arm around her shoulders. "They trashed his bar, but no one was there. No one got hurt. And Jared probably didn't want you to worry, that's all."
Except he'd worried. Alone. The nights he'd spent at the bar made a different, chilling sort of sense now, as did the late hours. Redoing all of his work, protecting it from further harm—and having to face coming home to her and putting on a good front.
"I'm going to worry either way," she said, leaning into Rachel's support. "I want to help him."
"You want to help him?" She took a step forward, pulling Lili along with her. "Come on. Let's grab a box."
Just like that, Rachel dragged her into the warehouse and shoved a heavy crate into her arms. No one looked at her like she was too fragile or too delicate to pitch in. But she had been, not so long ago—and maybe that was why no one had asked.
Maybe that was why Jared never asked. More than anyone, Jared understood how thin her protections were. Jared understood how easy it would be for her to view requests for help as conditions put on her continued safety. She'd been looking for the strings attached to every kindness from the moment she arrived here, starting with his.
Of course Jared wouldn't burden her with stories of the political backstabbing she'd escaped in Sector Five. Of course he wouldn't ask for her help.
She had to offer it. And as soon as these trucks were on their way back to Eden, she'd figure out how—and how much.
No one in Sector Four wanted a trophy wife. But a man playing politics in Eden might need one.
Chapter Seventeen
In spite of his nonstop work, Jared had a hundred things left to do before opening night. Some things on his list were big and some were small, but they all needed doing.
What he needed was a friendly face.
He knocked on Lili's door and tried to manage the wave of relief that washed over him when she greeted him with warm eyes and a ready smile. "Jared. I didn't expect to see you until after your opening."
"I wanted to—" He closed the door behind him and leaned against it. "No, I needed to see you."
"I'm here." She caught his hands and stepped back, tugging him along with her. "Come and sit down. I actually have something to drink in here. Something Nessa gave me."
Her hands were warm in his, and he wanted them on him—anywhere. Everywhere. "She must be fond of you."
Lili laughed. "Free range of the kitchens makes it easy to bribe people. Everyone has something their parents or grandparents used to make. Finding the spices for Vietnamese recipes wasn't easy, but Zan helped. Which got him a bottle of the good liquor, too."
She was finding her place, carving out a spot in the O'Kanes' hearts as surely as she had his, and Jared was glad. It made the distance bearable as he geared up to properly launch his mission in Eden.
He might be alone, but she wouldn't be, and that was what mattered.
Lili nudged him toward the edge of the bed and retreated to her vanity. "It's not what I imagined, you know. I thought I'd have to work all the time to put three meals a day on the table, but most of the O'Kanes are used to feeding themselves. And when someone wants something special, they offer to trade."
"That's what most people in the sectors do. What they're used to."
"Being paid for my work is novel." She smiled again and waved a hand at the top of her vanity, which was cluttered with tiny tins and bottles. "I might have gone overboard with Tatiana's generosity."
"You're happy," he murmured.
"I was already happy." She returned with a glass of a honey-colored liquor and offered it to him. "I've been happy since you helped me see what was going on right in front of me. You gave my new life context."
He'd only told her that what she needed was there, and that she could have it. Everything after had been entirely Lili's doing. So he lifted his glass. "To new beginnings."
"New beginnings," she echoed. But instead of fetching a glass for herself, she picked up a shirt. His shirt, the one he'd been wearing the night of their dinner with Ace, Cruz, and Rachel. The shirt she'd ripped from his body.
It was pristine now, expertly mended, the missing buttons replaced and the shirt itself as crisply pressed as if he'd had it done in Eden. "I don't know if this is really your favorite shirt, but if it is... I wanted you to have it. Maybe you can wear it tomorrow."
He took it from her and ran his thumb over the starched collar. "You didn't have to do this."
"I know." She settled next to him on the bed, slipped her arm around his waist, and laid her cheek on his shoulder. "I need you to believe that. I know what I have to do, and what I don't. I understand, finally."
He couldn't stop looking at the white cloth, perfect, inviolate. As if it had never been ripped. As if that moment had never happened, had been erased from the fabric of time as well as the literal fabric of his damn shirt.
He understood, too. Lili had meant to mend his shirt as a helpful gesture, a way to show she cared, but it resonated on another level. Slowly, piece by piece, he'd been separating himself from Sector Four. It had started as a half-measure, a matter of practicality, but what if that wasn't enough? What if the best thing was to simply let go?
He didn't know if he could.
Her arm tightened around him. "Jared?"
A thousand things flitted through his head, and not a single one sounded reasonable, rational. "I'm tired, Lili. That's all."
"I know." She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. "Let me help you. Not because I have to, but because I want to."
The words made as much sense as the ones tripping over his tongue. "What?"
"Rachel told me about what happened. I helped her load up the liquor this morning, and she told me you waited until the last minute becau
se someone had wrecked your bar."
Fuck. "That's… I don't like to bring that shit back here with me." Eden, always Eden, clinging to him like dirt and grime he couldn't wash away.
Her fingertips skimmed up his back to rest between his shoulder blades, where muscles knotted from tension ached. "But you do, even when you don't speak of it. I'm strong enough to help you carry this weight."
"It's not about being strong, Lili." He set his glass on the nearest surface—the edge of her piano—and rose. "I don't want to talk about it. It doesn't help. So when I leave there, I just want to put it behind me instead of letting it drag me down."
"That's not what I meant." She rose, too, wreathed in a sort of confidence he'd never seen in her before. "This is what I spent my life training to do. I know how to put these men at ease—"
"No." The word ripped free of him before his brain caught up to it, an instinctive reaction to the purpose radiating off of her.
She talked right over him. "—and I know how to make them talk, Jared. I could do it in my sleep. I did it on drugs. Let me do it for a good cause. I can help you."
On his worst days, Jared felt like the city was a great, yawning mouth ready to snap shut, not on his body—that much, he knew as fact—but on his soul. Nothing had ever been more horrible than the thought that he might lose himself to it, forget all the reasons he was fighting in the first place.
Nothing...until now.
"I don't need you to convince me," he told her, firm words through numb lips. "No, Lili. You could ask a thousand times—a million—and it would always be no."
Her hands fisted. "Because you don't think I can do it?"
He thought of Peterson, of his ugly comments and even uglier eyes. "Because no one can. If you don't understand that already, you have no business there, Lili. None."
She went still, and her eyes turned cool. "I understand what powerful men do when you cross them."
"It's not the same as your husband thinking your family was a threat to be eliminated." His throat wanted to close on the harsh words, but he forced himself to keep going. "Your mother could have rallied support behind her—maybe not in Five, but in the other sectors. She could have taken control from Beckett in a heartbeat. In Eden, you don't have to be a threat. They'll kill you if they don't like the idea of you."