“I think you’re so full of—” She broke off as a woman came into the doorway, clearly agitated, so much so that she seemed to completely miss that Malichai was even in the room.
“Amaryllis?” It was Mrs. Stubbins, the owner of the bed-and-breakfast. “I know your break isn’t over for another fifteen, and you were up half the night already for me, but would you mind helping out in the kitchen right now? There’s something wrong with the dishwasher and I can’t get Jacy to settle down . . .” She trailed off when she noticed Malichai sitting at his table. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought everyone was finished.”
“I was late coming down this morning,” he said. “Is there something I can do to help? I’m not bad with fixing things like dishwashers. Fixed Nonny’s a time or two.” Mostly she never used her modern dishwasher and critters ate the wires, but he wasn’t going to say that.
“No, no, you’re a guest,” Mrs. Stubbins said.
Malichai had been ordered to take leave and to continue with his therapy by swimming in the ocean. The women and little girls were happy to gather around the Fontenot table in the kitchen with brochures spread out and decide his fate. They’d chosen the little bed-and-breakfast in San Diego, California. A beachfront property, it was reputed to have amazing cuisine, which was the only thing he cared about. The owner had been investigated because one didn’t have a multimillion-dollar piece of high security equipment running around without knowing everything about where he was going or who he might be coming in contact with.
Mrs. Stubbins was a widow—the widow of a soldier who had lost his life fighting for his country three years earlier. She was struggling financially, mostly because her daughter’d had two operations on her heart and those didn’t come cheap. Malichai liked her and everything he’d read about her in the file they had on her.
She bit her lip. “Besides, I think that dishwasher is just old and has given up the ghost.”
“Mrs. Stubbins, if I didn’t help you out, my grandmother would have my hide. Lead me to the broken-down piece of equipment and let me see what I can do.”
He rolled up his sleeves, revealing the tattoos up and down his arms, and went to her, keeping Amaryllis in his sight the entire time. She left the book and came around the table hastily, as if she feared he intended Mrs. Stubbins harm.
“Please call me Marie. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all, Marie. Give me something to do. I’m not very good at vacations.”
Amaryllis trailed after them. He didn’t like her behind him, so he deliberately, and gallantly, stepped aside to wave her past him. She hesitated for just one moment, but then hurried to catch up with Mrs. Stubbins. She actually slipped on by her and was in the kitchen first, so she had her back to the wall and her eyes on him as he strode in. She didn’t seem afraid so much as leery of him.
Marie Stubbins swept her hand toward the large commercial dishwasher she’d already pulled out. “I tried to check it out myself, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“I can look it up on YouTube, and maybe find a checklist we can go over ourselves,” Amaryllis suggested sweetly. “That way Mr. . . .” She trailed off, expecting Malichai to supply his name. Marie had been the one to check him into his room on his arrival.
He didn’t. Instead, he sat on the floor and looked at the impressive amount of tools Marie had laid out. “Thanks, Amaryllis. I’d appreciate the help. While you do that, I’ll look this over and see if I can find anything that jumps out at me.” Ignoring her, he looked up at the owner of the bed-and-breakfast. “You say it just stopped working?”
“It was working fine last night, but then this morning when I went to turn it on, it wouldn’t budge.”
Malichai was very aware of Amaryllis staring at him indecisively, and then she flounced out of the kitchen. He couldn’t help smirking. They were off to an excellent start.
“Don’t worry, if I can’t get this thing going, I’ll help Amaryllis with the dishes, and we’ll figure something out.”
Marie looked as if she might protest, but clearly she was too defeated. She just flashed him a wan smile. “I don’t know how to thank you. We can take a day off—”
He held up his hand. “I’m always looking for food, woman. I think I’m always starving, and my grandmother says with what I eat I should weigh a thousand pounds.”
Marie laughed. “I can cook. I’ll make certain you have plenty of food.”
Amaryllis must have set a record for running, or her small tablet was close. She rushed back into the room and pulled up short when she heard Marie laughing. Malichai glanced at her and his breath caught in his lungs. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to really see her body. She wore a pair of yoga pants that fit her like a glove. The little racer-back tank clung to every curve—and she had them. She might be on the shorter side, but she was breathtaking.
He peered into the machine as if it were his life’s work. He wasn’t going to get caught staring at her and reveal that she had the upper hand. That woman had an impressive body packed into those yoga pants and that tank.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Marie said. “No worries, though, Amaryllis, I haven’t forgotten I owe you hours of time, including last night and this morning. I’ll bus tables and clean up the dining room while you do this. I have that appointment with Jacy’s doctor this afternoon, but I can do dinner . . .”
“I’m fine with cooking dinner,” Amaryllis said. “I haven’t poisoned anyone yet.”
Malichai thought that might be a pointed jab at him, but Marie didn’t seem to take it that way. She laughed as if she found Amaryllis very funny.
Malichai waited until Marie was out of the room before he turned and looked at Amaryllis again. She gave off the kind of energy he felt when he faced an enemy in combat. There was something else as well. If it was at all possible, he would have thought she felt very much like a fellow GhostWalker. They normally recognized one another, although there were a few who were shielded from the others, and they could shield an entire team when needed. He was far from home and the only women he knew who were GhostWalkers had been previous experiments Whitney had deemed failures.
He ignored the little lift to her chin. “You got anything for me, a starting point, because just looking at this, it all looks good. She said it worked fine last night, but this morning . . . nothing.”
“You’re really going to fix her dishwasher for her?” Sarcasm dripped from her voice.
Malichai looked her up and down. “I don’t know what your problem with me is, and frankly, I don’t care, but Marie seems like a very nice lady with too much work and too many problems. If I can fix her dishwasher, it’s a very small amount of my time to help someone who seems deserving. If you don’t want to help me, that’s okay. I’m capable of looking up the same things you are.”
She stared at him for a long moment, the clock ticking in the background. She blinked, a sweep of her long lashes. “You really are planning on fixing it for her, aren’t you?”
“I told you so.”
“Men like—” She stopped what she’d been going to say. “People aren’t usually that nice.”
She’d been going to say men like him. He didn’t ask questions. “I told you, my grandmother wouldn’t like it if I didn’t help.”
She studied his face. “You don’t have a grandmother.”
“Technically, she’s not my blood, but I claim her and, thankfully, she claims me. We all call her Nonny and she’s the center of the family. A good woman. She’s lived her life in the swamps of Louisiana, is as smart as a whip and about the kindest woman I know.”
Amaryllis glanced down at her tablet. “Start with the switch on the door. The latch, I mean. No, wait. It’s an assembly of latch switches.” She held out the tablet. “Like that. It says if it’s defective then the door can’t lock, and the dishwasher won’t work.”
“Jacy’s been pretty sick again. She has a heart condition. Marie lost her husband and Jacy’s all she’s got. She’s very worried.”
“Is it her heart again?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think Marie does either. But she’s scared.”
“That’s too bad.” He didn’t know what else to say, but it worried him. It wasn’t right that the widow of a man dying in the service of his country was facing financial ruin and the possible loss of her daughter because Jacy had a heart problem. “Give me something else to check. This looks good.”
“The thermal fuse. You’ll have to access the control panel and you’ll need the meter. Do you know how to use that thing?”
“I’m surprised she has such good tools.”
“Her husband had them. He was really the one to come up with the idea of a bed-and-breakfast. He would be the maintenance man and she would be the cook. They’d both do the household chores together. They bought this place as a fixer-upper and just when they had everything in place, he was killed. His teammates still drop by occasionally, but she never asks them for help.”
He checked the thermal fuse twice before ruling it out. “I don’t think this is the problem either.” He glanced over his shoulder as Marie came in carrying far too many dishes. “Whoa, woman, you’re not a pack animal. You’re going to hurt your back. I can get those for you.”
Marie laughed. “Malichai, that’s silly. I do this every day, or Amaryllis does.”
Marie had registered him, but still, just hearing his name said in such a friendly tone surprised him. Some of his teammates were married. His brother Ezekiel was married. The women in their “family” were also GhostWalkers, every bit as lethal as their male counterparts. They sometimes joked and teased with him, but outsiders, as a rule, didn’t. He put it down to his looks. He knew he was intimidating.
“That doesn’t mean you should, ma’am,” he countered.
“Marie,” she corrected again. “Just please, call me Marie. If you call me anything else, I’ll feel far older than I already do.”
He doubted if Marie was even thirty yet. He glanced at Amaryllis. “We’re narrowing this down fast. Hopefully, if we don’t need a part, we’ll be using the dishwasher for all these dishes. Otherwise”—he lowered his voice as if entering a conspiracy—“I haven’t told her yet that I volunteered the two of us to do the dishes for you.”
Amaryllis covered her smile with her hand. “As I often clean the kitchen and do the dishes that don’t fit into the dishwasher, it isn’t unexpected.”
“You hear that, Marie? She’s beginning to reach the conclusion that a man can be helpful at times.”
“I didn’t say that,” Amaryllis hastened to deny.
When she smiled, those blue eyes of hers lit up her entire face. She had smooth, beautiful skin and it looked radiant when she smiled. Her voice was extremely pleasing. Soft and melodic. He noticed it in particular because it seemed to get inside him somehow and replayed almost every word she said to him.
Marie put the tub of dirty dishes down and went back for the warmers, shaking her head and laughing softly at their antics.
“She’s pretty terrific,” Malichai observed. “She’s going to be another Nonny. Growing up, I wasn’t around too many women. My brother Ezekiel raised us. He was a kid himself, but I didn’t view him that way. He was tough as nails and when someone tried to take our food or our territory where we slept, he beat the holy shit out of them. When Mordichai or I didn’t follow every dictate, which was almost never, he beat the holy shit out of us.”
“Why does it not surprise me that you didn’t obey every dictate?”
He grinned at her. “I can’t imagine. It’s not the thermal fuse. What’s next on the list?”
“This says to check the timer or the electronic control.”
He scowled up at her. “Woman, seriously. Don’t try my patience. Cough up a little more information than that.”
She flashed a genuine smile and his heart went into overtime. The more he looked at her, the more beautiful she was. That smile of hers was enough to trigger a serious reaction in his body, one that wasn’t welcome when he was sitting on a kitchen floor trying to repair a dishwasher.
“I’m so sorry, I thought maybe you were born with dishwasher files in your head or something. Let me read this.”
“Dishwasher files in my head?” he echoed. “The only thing I know about dishwashers is Nonny doesn’t always like to use them. It doesn’t even make sense. One minute it’s okay and the next, not so much and she needs volunteers for dish duty.”
“She sounds fun.”
“She is fun. She’s more than that. Nonny sits in her rocking chair looking out over the swamp, a pipe between her teeth, with a shotgun inches from her hand, and she is the swamp. The people. She knows every plant and what their properties can be used for. She puts out food and clothes for those less fortunate, and she always has a pot of gumbo or fish stew on the stove for any of us who come in hungry.”
“She sounds amazing.”
Malichai nodded. “She is amazing. What is most amazing about her is she claimed us right away. I remember going home with her grandson Wyatt that first time. I was shot up all to hell. We all were. We arrived very late, came up the river and tied up at this pier. I can’t explain to you, but I never had a home. I lived mostly in the streets of Chicago and there I was, in the swamp, this sultry, beautiful weird world all its own. We walked up the stairs to the porch where she was just sitting in that rocking chair, her pipe smelling like spices. She looked at me and I swear to you, it was like coming home.”
He hadn’t ever told anyone that story, not even Wyatt. He didn’t understand why he’d told Amaryllis. He looked up at her. She was staring down at him as if she thought he’d grown two heads. Malichai sighed. That was just like him. Impressing her with a child’s tale hadn’t been his best idea, although to him, that had been a defining moment. No matter what, he clearly would never be considered the cool ladies’ man.
“You continually surprise me, Malichai, in a good way.” There was genuine surprise in her voice.
“I think that’s easy enough to do, honey. You don’t have high expectations of me.”
Color climbed up her neck to her face, turning that pale complexion a soft rose. “I’m sorry. Am I coming across as a hag?”
“You’re coming across as someone protecting her friend from a stranger. I know I don’t look like a nice guy. I expect a little bit of resistance when I’m helping out a woman who works far too hard.”
Amaryllis studied his face for a long time. He could feel that look, drifting over his face like the brush of fingers, barely there, but taking his entire focus.
“I don’t know why you think you don’t look like a nice guy. You look tough, like you can handle yourself, but you don’t look mean.”
He sat back and looked up her. “Then why are you afraid of me?”
At once the wary look crept back into her eyes. “I’m not afraid of you.”
That was very decisive, and he wanted to smile, but held back. Yeah. She was afraid of him, but not in the way he’d been talking about. He was dangerous to her in more ways than was good for either of them.
“Good. Then we can get this done before we have to do the mountain of dishes Marie is piling up for us.” He turned back to the machine, making certain that he could keep her in his sight at all times without appearing to do so. He was still uneasy. There was something a little bit off about Amaryllis. “What do you have for me?
”
“I’m looking. Apparently, dishwashers drain any standing water out as a first step.”
“Wait. There can’t be leftover water if we didn’t start it.”
“There’s standing water in the bottom that didn’t drain. If you didn’t hear the pump, then it’s possible the timer is the cause. Is the timer on that one electronic or manual?”
“First, the damn thing won’t start so I’m not hearing a thing, but”—he held up his hand to stop her before he could finish—“I’m looking.”
She laughed, the sound settling somewhere in his gut, creating a strange rolling sensation that should have been small, but wasn’t. God, she got to him. The longer he was in her company, the stronger the attraction to her became. And she smelled so damn good, he was afraid he might throw down the tools any minute and spread her out like a feast on the counter so he could devour her.
He forced his attention back to the dishwasher. “It looks like it’s a manual timer.”
“According to this, the timer supplies power to all sorts of things. The pump motor, inlet valve . . .” Her head went up and she frowned at him. “Do you even know what an inlet valve is? Maybe we should call someone.”
“I know what an inlet valve is.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You are lying to me. You don’t have a clue.”
“Baby, have some faith.”
She rolled her eyes. “Beside the pump motor and inlet valve, the timer thingy provides power to the heat circuit and to the drain pump motor in the right progression. The timer uses a series of electrical contacts that are driven by a small motor. All of that is encased in the timer housing. I’m reading this and hope it makes sense to you.”
“Yeah. I’ve got it now.” He glanced a second time to make certain the machine wasn’t plugged in. When he did so, he watched Amaryllis out of the corner of his eye. He was very leery of things that didn’t add up, and she was one of them.
Lethal Game Page 4