by Susan Stoker
Chapter 3
“Who is it?” Emily called through her closed door.
“Fletch.”
Feeling her heart rate increase just at hearing his voice, she tried to get herself under control so she wouldn’t jump him the second she opened the door. Emily unlatched both chains and unbolted the lock before opening the door. “Hey, Fletch.” She tried to sound calm and composed, when inside she felt like a giddy teenager, happy to see her crush.
“Hi.”
“What’s up?”
“Two things.” Fletch didn’t beat around the bush. “I brought something for Annie.”
Emily looked down at Fletch’s hands and saw he was holding a bag.
“I’ve enjoyed spending time with her over the last couple of weeks and saw this and thought of her.”
“Oh…um…” Emily wasn’t all that thrilled that a man she really didn’t know all that well was giving her little girl presents.
When she didn’t reach for the bag, Fletch put it on the ground near the door. “The other thing is that I came over to tell you I’ll be out of town for a while.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I brought the keys to the house, and I hoped you might still be willing to look in on it and make sure everything is okay, as well as bring the mail in?” He pulled a keyring out of his pocket with a single key dangling from it.
“Of course. I’m happy to help,” Emily told him.
“Mommy!” they heard from inside the apartment. “Hurry up! I can’t read as fast as you and I wanna know what’s gonna happen!”
The adults smiled at the impatience in Annie’s voice. Emily turned her head to yell back at her daughter, not even thinking about how it probably wasn’t the most ladylike thing to do in front of Fletch. “Keep your pants on! I’ll be right there!”
Fletch smiled wider. Emily and her daughter were adorable.
Emily stepped out and closed the door behind her then held out her hand for the keyring. “Any special instructions?”
“Yeah, I have an alarm. When you enter the house, you’ll need to enter the code or you’ll have the cops descending on this place within minutes.”
Emily laughed nervously. “Oh, okay. Although you should know, I suck at alarms. They make me uneasy and inevitably I panic and put in the wrong code, or don’t put it in on time or whatever. I’m not allowed to open or close the PX anymore because I set it off too many times and my boss finally realized that I was hopeless.”
Fletch grinned at the fidgety woman. She was wearing a pair of black yoga pants and a purple tank top. She wasn’t flirting with him or trying to catch his notice in any way, and maybe that’s why he did notice. She was slender, but had curves in all the right places. He could almost picture his hand smoothing up her stomach to her tits and—
He shook his head. Not the time or the place. He had a mission to prepare for and didn’t have the headspace at the moment. Fletch cleared his throat and tried to reassure her.
“It’s easy. You want to come over and see how it works? Or I can write down the code and you can figure it out later.”
“I’d better come now. With my luck, I’d lose the paper or not be able to find the keypad when I got in.” She turned the knob and eased the door back open before yelling inside, again not caring that Fletch was standing there. “Annie! I have to go next door for a moment. Come lock the door behind me!” Emily knew it was probably overkill, since she was just going to Fletch’s house for a few minutes, but she’d gotten used to locking the door every time she left when she lived in the other apartment complexes; it was hard to break the habit.
They waited and heard little feet running to the door before Annie’s voice whined, “I wanna go too!”
“I’ll just be a second, baby, you can stay here…”
“I wanna goooooooo!”
“Ann Elizabeth Grant,” Emily warned her daughter in a stern voice.
Annie stuck her head out the door and looked up at Fletch. “I wanna come, Fletch. Please?”
Fletch looked at Emily. He would never go against anything she said in front of her daughter, but he gave her a look that he hoped said he didn’t mind if the little girl tagged along.
Emily laughed and shook her head. “Lord, what a hangdog look. Fine, Annie, you can come, but don’t touch anything in Mr. Fletcher’s house.”
“Yay!!”
“Go put on your sneakers. Don’t bother changing out of your pajamas, we won’t be gone that long.”
“Okay! Be right back. Don’t leave without me!”
Emily smiled as her daughter ran back into the apartment to find her shoes. She turned and looked up at Fletch. “Thanks for letting her come too. We won’t stay long. Just show me the code and what to do and we’ll get out of your way. I’m sure you have a lot of stuff to do before you leave tomorrow.”
Fletch found himself lying. “Nah, I don’t have too much I need to get done. It’s fine.” Actually he had orders he needed to review, maps that needed to be examined, and it was his responsibility, as it was all the guys on the Delta Force team, to come up with a plan of action. They’d all explain their plans the next morning, and they’d figure out the best way to go forward. But he couldn’t resist spending a few minutes with Emily and Annie. They always made him smile.
Annie came rushing back at them and almost tripped over the bag sitting on the floor in the doorway. “What’s that?” she asked with childlike curiosity.
“It’s for you,” Fletch told her, picking it up and holding it out.
Annie didn’t even reach for it, instead she looked up at her mom as she’d been taught. Emily nodded, letting her daughter know it was okay, and only then did the little girl reach for the bag Fletch was holding out to her.
She looked in and Fletch swore her eyes grew three sizes in her face. She looked up at him. “For me? Really? It’s not even my birt-day.”
“Yes, squirt. For you. I don’t know when your birthday is, but I saw them and thought you might like them. It’s a special thing, though. Don’t expect a present every day. Call it a ‘welcome to your new apartment’ gift.”
Annie kneeled down on the landing and reached into the bag and pulled out two packages. They were GI Joe dolls. Fletch had seen them in a store that morning and thought of Annie. They seemed like the kind of thing she’d like. They were dolls, yes, but Fletch figured the military thing would cancel out the fact that they were the very kind of toy she previously said she didn’t like to play with.
Annie reverently put them on the wooden boards of the landing and gazed down at them. She ran her little fingertip over the plastic on one of the boxes and looked up at her mom. “Mommy, they’re new.”
“I see that, sweetie.”
“Brand new,” Annie breathed again, leaning over and putting her face right next to the package, as if talking to the plastic soldier inside. “Hello, soldier man. I’m Annie.”
Fletch watched the little girl in confusion. He’d never seen anyone accept a present as Annie had. It was touching, cute…and sad all at the same time. Most children would gleefully rip open the packaging to get to the toys, but Annie didn’t look like she was in any hurry to actually get her hands on them. She was gazing down at one of the dolls through the packaging as if it was precious and fragile.
“Annie, do you still want to come with us? Or do you want to stay here with your new toys?” Emily asked in a gentle voice.
The little girl looked up and answered immediately. “With you and Fletch. Will you wait while I put these inside where it’s safe and they won’t get dirty?”
“Of course, baby. Go on, we’ll wait. Take your time.”
Fletch watched as Annie carefully picked up one of the packages and placed it back inside the bag. Then she did the same with the other one. She stood up and eased inside the door, disappearing into the apartment again.
“How’d you know she liked military figures?” Emily questioned.
Fletch shrugged and put his hands i
n his pockets. “She told me the other week.”
Emily opened her mouth to say something else, to explain why her daughter was so enamored with the fact that the toys were new, but Annie returned before she could think of how to explain.
The little girl went straight to Fletch and grabbed him around his thighs. She held on tight and squeezed hard. “Thank you, Fletch. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.”
Fletch ran his hand over Annie’s head. “You’re welcome, sprite.”
He stood there awkwardly for a moment, feeling his heart expand at the sweet affection Annie showed him until Emily urged her daughter, “Come on, let’s get going, it’s your bedtime, Annie.”
The little girl looked up at Fletch, and nodded absently. “It’s the bestest thing I’ve ever gotten. Thank you.”
Fletch nodded, thinking that if the ten-dollar GI Joe figurines were the best things Annie had ever received, it was kind of sad, and he’d have to see what he could do to spoil her further…without hurting Emily’s feelings, of course. If she couldn’t afford to get her daughter new toys, he didn’t want to upset her in any way. He cared about both of them…especially Emily. There was just something about her that made him want to wrap her in his arms and hold on tight.
The trio walked across the yard toward the house and Annie held both her mom’s hand and Fletch’s. She babbled on as they went, apparently back to her old self. They entered the house and Fletch showed Emily where the keypad was for the alarm. He didn’t let her know that not only was the alarm system hooked up to the local police department, it was also wired to alert a few other special people Fletch knew and trusted, including Tex back in Pennsylvania.
“The code is two-six-four-three-seven. When you come in, hit those numbers, then the green button. That will disarm the alarm. When you leave, hit the same numbers, two-six-four-three-seven, then the red button. You have one minute to get out of the house when you leave and to punch in the numbers when you enter. If you’ll be in here for any length of time—feel free to watch a movie or whatever—hit the same numbers, two-six-four-three-seven, and the yellow button. That will arm the house, but the motion sensors inside won’t be activated so you can walk around freely without worrying about setting it off. Got it? Want to practice?”
“Uh…yeah, although I still don’t think this is a great idea. I didn’t know you had motion sensors.”
Fletch watched as Emily nervously keyed in the numbers and set the alarm. Then she punched in the same buttons and hit the green button to turn it off.
“You got it. Easy. I told you.”
“That’s if I remember the numbers,” Emily joked.
“It’s easy, Mommy,” Annie told her. “It’s my name.”
“What?”
“My name. Well, it’s spelled sorta wrong, but it could still be my name.”
Fletch crouched down so he could look Annie in the eye. “How’s it spelled, sprite?” Fletch thought to humor the little girl.
“A-N-I-E-S. Like it’s mine, but with only one N instead of two.”
“What are you talking about, Annie?” Emily asked in confusion.
Annie looked at Fletch and whispered, “It’s like the Indian code talkers…it’s code. We learnded about them in school.”
“The Navajo code talkers?” Fletch asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“You wanna let me in on the secret code?”
Annie nodded solemnly. “It’s the phone code.”
Fletch looked into Annie’s blue eyes. She’d leaned into him so trustingly. It was then that he realized exactly how smart Emily’s little girl was. “The phone code. Yeah, you’re right. It is.”
“Do one of you want to enlighten me?” Emily asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Watching the handsome man who she thought about way too often kneeling on the ground, talking with her daughter as if she wasn’t abnormally smart, was making her heart pound and making her wish for things that were probably only dreams.
“Should we let her in on the secret code?” Fletch asked Annie playfully and winked at her.
She giggled. “Yeah, she’s mommy, I think she should know.”
Fletch nodded in agreement. “Yeah, keeping secrets from Mommy isn’t a good thing.” He looked up at Emily. “The phone code. Each number on a phone has certain letters assigned to it. For example, the number two has A, B and C. The number three has D, E and F, and so on.”
Annie picked up where Fletch left off. “Yeah, and four is G, H, and I. So the number to his code two-six-four-three-seven can spell lots of things, but one thing it spells is Anie’s…with one N instead of two.”
Emily looked down at her daughter, dumbfounded. Jesus, she had to look into getting her into a gifted school.
Fletch ruffled Annie’s hair as he stood up. “You’re one smart cookie.”
“I know,” Annie told him, smiling.
“Seriously, I said it before,” Fletch told Emily, “but please don’t hesitate to come over if you want to watch a movie or something. You can put my mail on the counter in the kitchen. I don’t think you’ll forget the code now, will you?”
“No, I don’t think I will,” Emily agreed, still a little shell-shocked after hearing proof of how smart her daughter really was.
“Good. I’ll let you keep that key for whenever you might need it. Come on, I’ll walk you back to your place.”
“We’ll be fine, it’s just across the yard.”
“I’ll walk you back.”
Annie took Fletch’s hand and pulled him toward the door. “Hurry up, Mommy, I wanna get back and look at my toys!”
They walked back across the yard and up the stairs to the small apartment over the garage. Emily unlocked the door and Annie tore inside, not bothering to say goodbye to Fletch, too excited to get back to her new toys.
It didn’t escape Fletch’s notice that Annie said she wanted to get back to her room to look at her toys, not play with them. He didn’t think it was a mix-up in words. He’d learned over the last few weeks that Annie said what she meant most of the time.
“Thanks for the gift again, she loves them,” Emily told Fletch.
“You’re welcome.”
“How long are you going to be gone? Soldiers get deployed for months at a time, don’t they?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I’m in a special group, not with a platoon or unit. I can’t really talk much about it, sorry. I’m not sure how long we’ll be gone this time. Our missions sometimes last one day, or they can be long-term, up to a year, but I’m pretty sure this one will be short, hopefully around a week.”
Emily gaped at him. “A year? Really?”
“Yup, although they’ve never been that long in the past.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You’ll be okay here?”
“Yeah, we’re great. The apartment is perfect for us. I love it.”
“Good. I appreciate you keeping your eye on things while I’m gone.”
“Who’s looked after it in the past?”
“I’ve had some friends from work stop in every now and then,” Fletch told her.
“Ah. Okay, well, I’m happy to get your mail and make sure all is good for you.”
“Thanks. I guess I’ll see you when I get back.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“Take care of yourself and Annie while I’m gone.”
The words were surprising, but they made her feel good. “I will. Don’t worry about us, we’ll be fine. You be safe. Okay?”
“I will, thanks. See you soon.”
“See ya.” Emily closed the door behind Fletch and leaned against it. How the hell she’d be able to keep her hands off of him in the future was beyond her. He was beautiful. But as much as she’d hoped he might make a move, he was apparently immune to her. She was way out of practice in flirting. She loved Annie with all her heart, but the little girl wasn’t a very good wingman.
Oh well. Maybe when Fletch got back from his mission, she’d see if she could turn on t
he charm. It probably wasn’t very smart and she might make a fool out of herself, but Fletch was so damn sexy and it had been way too long since she’d even been attracted to a man. In the meantime, she’d continue to dream about him.
* * *
Fletch locked the door behind him and set the alarm. He checked the monitors and watched as the lights went off in the apartment across the yard. He sighed. He was having a hard time keeping away from Emily. She seemed to be everything he liked in a woman. Hardworking, compassionate, easy on the eyes…and she was a great mother. That much was obvious. He’d found himself daydreaming more and more about stripping off her clothes, how she might look up at him with passion in her eyes as he caressed her body.
He’d had a doozy of a dream the other night where he’d stood over her and watched as she masturbated for him. It was hot as hell, and not something he thought he’d get off on. But he’d woken up with a hard-on so intense, he actually turned his head to see if somehow it wasn’t a dream. Unfortunately for him, he was alone in his bed, but Fletch immediately shut his eyes, bringing back the image his unconscious mind had dreamed up, and within minutes he’d brought himself to orgasm.
Thoughts of Emily were actually turning into sort of an obsession, one that Fletch knew he needed to do something about. He’d never been the kind of man to sit around and wish for something. He went after what he wanted—and he wanted Emily.
And then there was Annie. Fletch had never thought of himself as the fatherly type, but remembering the look of awe in the little girl’s eyes as she saw the military figures he’d brought her, he knew he wanted to see it again and again. He felt protective of her, and wanted to do everything in his power to make her happy.
But he wasn’t a good bet when it came to a relationship. Not only was his job extremely dangerous, he’d never felt the need to claim a woman for himself for all time. He never wanted to be so consumed by someone that it affected his work…but he was afraid it might be too late. His new tenant had gotten under his skin.