“I’ll make you something. What do you want?”
He shook his head. “It’s late. Go home. I’ll be fine.”
He gave her an out. She should take it. She should ignore the strange comfort of his presence, and her secret elation that he was still speaking to her after their acrimonious game of pool. She should keep this professional, remind him to turn on the motion-sensor beams after she left and give him a follow-up call tomorrow.
She looked at the front door, then past Oz, in the opposite direction toward the kitchen. The wide-open sight lines in the house meant she got a full view of the pig’s blood still smeared across the cabinets and floor, and the outlines of swastikas drying on the granite countertop.
She should leave. But she couldn’t leave him to this.
“Why don’t you chill out in the study? I’ll bring something up to you.”
Frowning, he followed her line of vision into the kitchen.
He sighed, and it was so bone-deeply weary that Kate wished she could tighten her arms around him and shove all that oxygen back inside until he perked back to his usual, arrogant, contrary self.
“You don’t need to stay here and clean that,” he told her quietly. “I’ll get what I need from the cupboards and call my housekeeper in the morning.”
“Let me do it. I owe you.”
“For what?”
“Friday night. I know I won fair and square, but I could’ve been a little more gracious about it.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Beating me at pool doesn’t oblige you to clean hate symbols drawn in blood.”
“No, it doesn’t. Which is why you should probably take advantage of my offer before I realize that.”
His smile was faint, but it was the first one she’d seen all evening.
“Let’s do it together. I’m very particular about which cleaning products are used on which surfaces.”
“Of course you are.” She rolled her eyes playfully as they moved into the kitchen.
The metallic stench of blood was almost as offensive as the swastikas. Drips and smears stained most of the beautiful space.
Oz reached into a high cupboard and retrieved a series of cleaning products—all unfamiliar eco-friendly brands and probably twice the price of what she used at home. He launched into an explanation of what was to be used where and why, but after a few seconds she held up a palm to silence him.
“Give me a bottle, a cloth, and point me toward something. In the meantime I want you to eat.”
“Okay,” he agreed. With unprecedented obedience he passed her a microfiber cloth and a purple bottle for the counters, then found a spoon and a jar of peanut butter and settled onto a stool at the island.
Silence hushed the massive house. She sprayed and scrubbed and rinsed and sprayed again, enjoying the way the silvery flecks in the granite sparkled as they picked up the light.
If Oz had any criticism of her technique he kept it to himself, although his eyes never left her. The weight of his gaze grew heavier until she was hyperaware of every movement she made, every slight twist or turn. Her decidedly unsexy cotton T-shirt felt like silk as it shifted against her skin, and her nipples hardened inside her fraying sports bra.
She pressed her back teeth together. A man was watching her clean bloody swastikas off his kitchen counter. There had to be something wrong with her if she was getting aroused.
She stole a glance at Oz. His eyes were charred chunks of wood in a roaring fire—coal-black and dangerously hot. He sucked on the spoon in his mouth, ran his tongue over the back of it, dropped it with a clatter into the empty jar.
Then he was on his feet, snatching up a cloth and a bottle. “I’ll help you.”
They scrubbed in silence for a while, the kitchen quiet except for squeaks and squirts and the occasional splash. Oz dug out a mop and started on the floor, and she reached above her head to remove splatters from the top of the fridge.
She tried to think of an excuse to indulge her curiosity and open the cabinets or the freezer, wondering what their contents would reveal about this man that their sterile, uncluttered exteriors didn’t. Maybe everything was stacked in haphazard piles, half of it expired, most of it unused. Or maybe it was all arranged with the oldest purchases at the front, labels facing outward, alphabetically ordered by brand name.
Maybe most of the cupboards were empty. Maybe he followed one of those crazy celebrity diets and ate only raw, organic fruit and vegetables fresh out of the farmer’s field.
Or maybe he went completely the other way. Maybe he hated cooking but burned so many calories he needed to take in whatever he could, so stocked up on pasta, bread, cheese, and cookies.
She stole a glance at him from the corner of her eye, her fingers itching to tug open the refrigerator door. He appeared to be deeply focused on wringing out the mop. Would he notice if she took a quick peek? Would he care? His brow furrowed in concentration. What was he thinking about?
He raised his gaze to meet hers with such sudden intention she wondered if he’d read her mind.
“Why did you leave the army?”
She blinked, expecting a more serious, probing question. “My contract ended and I decided it was a good time to get out. I’d been in for eight years. It was time to make some real money.”
“So you took the job in Saudi Arabia.”
“The pay was amazing. I pretty much lived off my housing allowance and sent the rest home. My sister and my niece live with my mom, who’s usually one rude hand gesture away from losing whatever part-time retail gig she’s got. Long story short, in six months I paid off my sister’s car, bought my mom a dishwasher and set up a semester of afterschool tutoring for my niece.”
He stowed the mop in a tall cabinet, then leaned against the wall. “But Saudi Arabia was too terrible to stick it out for more than a year, even with the money?”
She paused, considering whether or not to tell him the full story.
“I didn’t quit my job there. I was fired.”
“Really. Why?” He resumed his seat at the kitchen island.
She wrung out her cloth and draped it over the edge of the sink, quickly surveying the kitchen to see what else needed to be cleaned. It was spotless, but she picked up a dry cloth and started buffing the faucet.
“The woman I was supposed to protect, the oil executive’s wife, was attacked.”
Her back was turned, but she read Oz’s silence as his request for her to go on. “The residential compound was out in the desert, but there was a town nearby—a city, really. Maybe a hundred thousand people. For the most part the Americans stayed in the compound, but occasionally my client went into the city to shop, go to a restaurant, attend a doctor’s appointment, and I went with her. We wore abayas and headscarves and spent most of our time in a chauffeured car, but every so often we walked from one place to another.”
She sucked in a breath, smelling the exhaust fumes, hearing the cacophony of SUV engines and beeping horns, blinking away the sand constantly swirling through the air.
“Usually Saudis give foreigners a pass,” she explained, turning to prop her hip on the island. “As long as you’re making an effort to respect the laws, the muttaween—the religious police—don’t give you any hassle. That day we were standing outside a shopping mall, waiting for the driver to come around the block and pick us up. We were both covered from head to toe, holding bags from the shops we’d visited. This guy came up to us and started shouting in Arabic, gesturing to the bags. Then another one joined him, and another, and another. It was a crazy, random mob scene, and we were in the middle, unable to understand what we’d done.”
She closed her eyes, briefly revisiting the vivid memory she still hoped might fade. Her private-security skills put to the test for the first time and failing as, unarmed, off-guard, she was no match for the ten men crowding around the
m.
“I tried to move in front of her,” she continued, opening her eyes but not able to look at Oz. “I tried to shove her out of the way, but it didn’t work. One of the men pushed her down—maybe accidentally, it was hard to tell—and she cut her cheek open on the concrete.”
Kate ran her finger across her cheekbone to illustrate the damage. Oz winced.
“The blood freaked the men out, I guess. They didn’t want to be responsible for damaging another man’s property. They scattered as quickly as they gathered, just in time for the driver to arrive.”
“Did you figure out why they were so angry?”
“The driver guessed it was the picture of a woman on the outside of one of the bags. It had been Photoshopped to cover her cleavage, like everything is there, but you could still see her neck and part of her shoulders.” She shrugged. “My client needed stitches and a plastic surgeon to fix the scar, and I was thanked for my service and relieved of employment.”
She was pleased with her ability to recount the incident with barely any hint of the devastation and deep-seated worthlessness that underpinned that experience. She wasn’t over any of it—not the event, not being fired, not her failure to do her job and protect her client.
But she sounded like she was. A step in the right direction, at least.
Oz whistled. “Tough.”
“It was probably for the best. I hated the job, but would’ve struggled to convince myself to quit considering the salary.” She smiled bitterly. “I have a tendency to be a victim of—What do you call it? Inactivity? When just nothing happens.”
“Inertia?”
She snapped her fingers. “That’s it. Inertia. Sums me up in a single word.”
“That’s not the word I would choose.”
She glanced at him sharply but he was on his feet again, his expression closed and inscrutable. He swept up the few bottles of cleaning fluids on the counter and took the cloth from her hand, then stowed everything underneath the sink.
“Thanks for your help tonight. Cleaning up pig’s blood is definitely beneath your pay grade.”
She waved off his comment. “The least I could do. If anything, I should apologize for going off on a tangent about getting fired.”
“No, that was interesting. Sometimes my life is so immaculate it borders on sterile. It’s good to be reminded that not everyone’s world is quite as tidy.”
“I think most people would trade.”
“I know.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not one of those woe-is-me rich people. I was born lucky. Stable, well-educated parents, natural athletic talent, and the right coaches and mentors to develop it. The greatest trauma I ever endured was getting five stitches after I cut my shin on a diving board in Turkey.”
“Until tonight.”
“Until tonight,” he echoed, his tone darkening. Kate instantly regretted her words, which lowered the mood they’d only just managed to lift.
“I should go.” She ducked around him to leave the kitchen, heading for the bag she’d tossed on his dining-room table.
He followed, watching her levelly as she dug through the clutter to produce her car keys. “You can stay if you want.”
“Why would I want that?”
She asked the question in jest, but Oz’s response was dead serious. “To protect me. In case they come back.”
She put down her bag. “Do you want me to stay?”
“I defer to your professional judgment.”
She narrowed her eyes, studying his expression and examining his tone for any clue to his intent. Was he making fun of her? Testing her?
Either way, it didn’t matter. They couldn’t do this. She could lose her job to those big, searching eyes. She could lose her whole self.
“I think you’ll be fine,” she decided. “Turn on the alarm and the beams. The local tactical team will respond in less than three minutes if anything happens.”
He inclined his head, accepting her verdict. She slung her bag over her shoulder.
He followed her to the door and reached around her to open it.
She paused in the doorway, stupidly reluctant to leave, to walk away from this brief, trusting period in which she’d felt so comfortable. Like she was in exactly the right place. “Will you call someone to stay with you tonight? Because I can wait.”
He shook his head. “Like you said, I’ll be fine.”
“Okay.” She glanced at the hushed darkness beyond the front lawn, the light from the doorway casting a slanted rectangle on the porch. “The other night in the bar, playing pool, maybe I—”
“You won.”
“I know, but—”
“But nothing. It’s done. We’ve moved on.”
She shifted her weight. “We have?”
He said nothing, fixing her with that unblinking, inscrutable stare that seemed to be his default. Was this poker face the key to his success on the pitch? The fans did call him the Wizard, so maybe—
His lips were on hers, without warning, without so much as a glance at her mouth or angling of his chin to lessen the surprise. She started, then froze.
And then relaxed. Exactly the right place.
This kiss was different from its predecessor. Sincerity replaced coy flirtation; impulse and honesty guided the pace. As she flattened her palm against his chest she thought she’d learned more about Oz in the last ten seconds than in all the time she’d known him.
He raised his fingers to her cheek and her whole body eased, as if someone cut a string that was holding her upright. His arm came around her waist as she pushed against him, the pressure of his mouth increasing to complement the growing softness of her posture.
She didn’t know why she was able to let go of her anxieties and enjoy this kiss, as opposed to the one in Boise. Because of the comforting backdrop of crickets chirping in the early-summer evening? The quiet camaraderie between them as they’d cleaned the kitchen? The way the vast house and empty street made it feel like they might be the only two people left in Atlanta.
She didn’t know, and she didn’t care. She kissed Oz like the end was nigh, like this was her last chance. Like she’d never heard of consequences.
Except she had. And when he withdrew gently, she could think of nothing else.
“Go,” he urged, rough-voiced. “Before I do something stupid.”
Like sleep with a redneck security contractor who was fired from her last job, and might very well get fired from her current one with this kind of behavior. “Sure. I get it.”
“You don’t.” He squeezed her arm above the elbow. “But you will. Just not tonight.”
She frowned, but she was too tired and overwhelmed and still reeling from their kiss to bother trying to figure him out.
Instead, she jangled her car keys and stepped backward onto the porch. “We’ll talk soon.”
He nodded.
“Put the alarm on,” she reminded him, then turned to make her way to her car. The long rectangle of light on the grass told her he still watched from the doorway, and she marveled that her feet touched the ground when she felt lighter than air.
Chapter 10
“Oz! Over here!”
“This way, Oz!”
“What the—” Oz cut himself off just in time. Kojo was giving him a lift and the West African hated swearing.
Kojo shook his head as he steered the car past the knot of press photographers and reporters at the entrance to Skyline’s training complex. “These people, they have no shame,” he pronounced in his thick French accent.
His fellow defender parked, and as soon as they got out of the car the frenzy increased.
“Oz, do the police have any leads?”
“Are you afraid to be in your home?”
“Is it true that Citizens First is sending you death threats?”
; “Do you plan to fast during Ramadan?”
“What do you think about the growing hostility toward the Muslim community?”
He waved Kojo inside, shouldered his sports bag and walked toward the clamoring crowd. Microphones bobbed and cameras flashed, and one photographer leaned so far over the red-and-white boom pole Oz thought he would fall flat on his face.
“I’m glad to see you’re all taking an interest in me,” he began, the group hushing as they clicked on their tape recorders. “I’ve been in Atlanta for a few years now, was a CSL Player of the Year twice, and have scored more goals than any other Skyline defender, but I never seem to hear from any of you. To be honest, I even considered firing my publicist.”
He offered them the flash of a smile. A few of the reporters piped up with questions but he continued, “I assume you’re all here to discuss my footballing ascendance and Skyline’s outstanding season, right? Surely it hasn’t taken a hate crime to spark your interest in someone who plays the most popular sport in the world.”
“So you’re confirming it was a hate crime?” a reporter lobbed back, setting off another wave of shouted questions.
Oz drew breath to launch into a long-winded tirade on the lack of diverse sports reporting in America and its impact on future generations of soccer players, but before he could begin a member of Skyline’s PR department arrived at his elbow, breathless from her jog across the parking lot.
“Hi everyone, thank you, but Oz is late for training. Later this morning Skyline’s press office will release a statement regarding the act of vandalism carried out against one of our players. Any further questions or requests for interviews should be directed through your normal channel of contact with the team.”
She tugged Oz away with her hand on his forearm.
“I know,” she acknowledged before he could speak. “I heard you, and I don’t disagree. Do you know why I told them that last point about normal channels of contact? Because none of them have any, and I have piles of unused credentials for Skyline press conferences to prove it.”
The PR assistant did her best to pacify him, but by the time he entered the dressing room his mood was black. It didn’t help that all his teammates abandoned their conversations and rushed up to him the minute he stepped through the door.
Defending Hearts Page 10