by LJ Evans
Even though Henry’s kids had gone to elementary school with me, we hadn’t hung out together. Carson was right; I’d hung out with a group of skaters. Mini societal rebels. People I probably would have raised hell with and gotten in trouble with if I’d stayed at the public high school here in town. Henry’s kids had been scholastic all-stars, and I had a vague recollection of them ending up at Ivy League schools and setting records. Now, they obviously owned a law practice and bled success.
After the discussion of families was over, Carson and Henry went to work on their plans for increasing distribution channels, adding on to the online store, developing more health products, and sourcing new plants for the new lines. I just listened but realized their strategy was complex, complicated like any other strategy Carson engaged in.
At nine-thirty, I got a text from Dani.
ATHENA: We have the video meeting with the FBI and Brady’s team in thirty minutes. Are you going to be here, or should we hold it without you?
A stab of guilt flew through me. I’d left flowers for her and then not been back to enforce their meaning with a kiss. I certainly didn’t want her to think the flowers had been a goodbye token. Quite the opposite.
“I have to go,” I said, standing in the middle of Henry’s sentence. “Sorry.” I stuck out my hand, shaking his as I added, “It was really good to see you again.”
I turned to my uncle, a mix of old and new emotions flowing through me. “See you back at the house later?”
He nodded, and I left, texting Dani back with a brief I’m on my way.
I jogged out of the building, hopped into the golf cart, and sped off toward the house with my history trying to right itself. With my future trying to take shape. I pushed it all aside to concentrate on the one thing I knew for sure: I needed Dani in my life.
She was set up in the library at Carson’s desk in a top that showed every delightful curve. She smiled up at me from the huge chair. I swirled it around, leaned on the arms, and kissed her, hoping I was sending all the right messages about us. I was in unchartered oceans. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find my footing on the seafloor with all the swells that were hitting me unless she stood and helped me carry the boat.
We were both breathless when I left her lips to touch our foreheads together. “Good morning.”
“It certainly is,” she said smiling, and my heart leaped for joy. I could make her happy. I could make her happy with just a kiss.
I looked at the work she had sprawled out on the desk, and my eyes caught on a bud vase with the two camellias I’d given her. They were no longer alone. An iris had been added to them. Hope… My breath got stuck in my chest. The word was surrounding me today. Hope for Carson. Hope for me. Hope for Dani and me together.
Her phone buzzed, and she tore her eyes away from my face to turn it over.
“It’s just my reminder. Grab a chair.”
“What I really want to do is sit in that one with you on my lap, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t let me get away with it.”
“No. You’re right. I wouldn’t, but we can talk about sharing a chair later.” She winked at me, and I went right back to kissing her.
She pulled away, laughing. “Go get a chair.”
I did as she wished, grabbing a chair from the other side of the desk. I slid it so that we were sitting close together, knees bumping, as she pulled up the video meeting software and logged in.
There were several other faces in the meeting. Tanner, Brady, and Lee were on one screen together with Garner in the second. On the last screen was the FBI agent, a huge, dark man in a black suit with a straight face and an aura of pissed about him. Tanner had his perpetual look of dissatisfaction on his face, and Lee appeared slightly disheveled as if he’d been playing referee.
Garner was the first to speak. “Thank God you’ve joined us; perhaps you can talk some logic into this lunacy of a plan.”
“What plan?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.
“Dani, Nash, this is FBI agent, Cruz Malone. He’s been assigned to us with the situation crossing so many jurisdictions,” Lee told us.
Malone asked, “You’re the SEAL?”
My arms crossed over my chest, and I nodded.
Malone kept talking. “As I was explaining, this isn’t my normal detail. I’m in the middle of an investigation that’s requiring my coordination with CIA, NSA, and DEA. I don’t have time to sit around and just wait for this Fiona woman to strike.”
“We’re so sorry our little attempted-murder situation is getting in the way of your career,” Tanner said snidely. For the first time, I had to agree with something he’d said.
Malone didn’t let it rile him up. “I’ve been requested to handle this situation because of my knowledge of the music business, and like you, I just want it to be over and done with as quickly as possible.”
“As safely as possible,” I uttered, and Malone seemed to meet my eyes over the computer screen.
“Of course, as safely and quickly as possible.”
“I hardly think it’s safe to put Dani and Brady together in the limelight,” Garner said.
“What?” My voice went down ten octaves, trying to catch up to their meaning.
Malone grunted. “We’ll have your team and an entire team of FBI agents. Nothing is going to go wrong.”
“Wrong? You’d better take ten steps back and state the plan for me,” I said.
“The American Music Award ceremony is a week from Sunday. As you’d already planned on attending, I’m suggesting we put Dani at Brady’s side as his date and ensure that Fiona’s attention is focused on one, and only one, place.”
“Absolutely not. You’re not using Dani as bait,” I said, my hands curling tightly.
Dani put a hand on my arm before she spoke for the first time. “Do we think she’ll even attempt something at this large of an event? It has to be darn near impossible. The show has security on top of anything else we’d bring to the table.”
“She was escalating before you all took a runner. By the time we get to the show, she’ll be even more frustrated that her plans were disrupted. Our profiler feels she’ll want whatever comes next to be visible, big, and painful,” Malone said.
Dani swallowed, her fingers digging into my arm. I grabbed her hand, holding it below the desk, running my thumb along her palm as I had in the elevator in Tallahassee.
“Which is exactly why Dani won’t be anywhere near the AMAs,” I reinforced.
“Exactly what I was saying. I can’t guarantee either of their safety if we do something so ludicrous,” Garner chimed in. I hated that I was on the side of Tanner and Garner. I had no desire to pick their side of any battle, but I also wasn’t going to put Dani in the crosshairs of someone out for blood. I’d lay down my dead carcass in the way before that happened.
“Don’t I get a say in any of this?” Dani asked. “I mean, I know I’m just some lowly woman you’re all trying to beat your chests to protect, but seeing as I’m the one who’s had the knife and the poison literally pointed at her, I believe I should at least have a modicum of input into any plan you create.”
I was shaking my head no, but so were Tanner and Garner, and again, I hated being on their side. Hated it enough to try to step outside of my own emotions and look at it from the perspective of a mission. A mission where we were trying to get our target back safely with a terrorist group breathing down our necks.
I hated to admit that using the target to draw the enemy out was often the right choice. Not the safe choice, but the right choice if we wanted to end the battle before it developed into a full-out war.
When none of the men on the call said anything, Dani continued. “I want this to be over with. I want us all to go back to our normal lives. I’m in. Whatever you need me to do so we can catch her, that’s what I want.”
She wanted to go back to our normal lives. Those lives had us barely brushing across each other’s peripheral vis
ion. I’d spent my morning thinking of what-ifs, and she’d spent her morning trying to get back to the moment when I wasn’t in her life on a daily basis.
I brushed all those thoughts out of my head to concentrate on Malone and the scheme he was spouting. I wouldn’t be able to tell if it was sound, logistically, until I saw the venue's floorplans, personnel placements, and the day’s schedule. I tucked any of the emotions I’d had swimming through me all morning behind the wall I’d created over the years of military school and military training. Everything else would have to wait.
Dani
MAKE YOU FEEL MY LOVE
“I know you haven't made your mind up yet,
But I will never do you wrong.
I've known it from the moment that we met,
No doubt in my mind where you belong.”
Performed by Adele
Written by Bob Dylan
After we ended the call with the FBI agent, Lee asked me to hang on with him and Brady to discuss some additional business. Somewhere during the meeting, Nash’s open face full of affection had disappeared behind a wall that had become his norm since Darren had died.
I wasn’t sure if it was just his game face, or if something I’d said had tipped the edge. I wanted to reach out, touch his cheek, and ask him to explain it to me, but he didn’t give me a chance. He got up, put the chair back where it belonged, and left with a curt, “I’ll let you work.”
I tried to put him out of my head and concentrated instead on the rumors which were circulating about Brady since our disappearance. The three of us talked for a long time before Lee had to take another call, leaving Brady and me.
“So, now that we’ve taken care of all the issues across my entire platform, and we’re finally alone, spill the beans,” he said with a grin.
“What beans are there to spill?” I asked even though I knew exactly what he meant.
“Don’t be coy. I saw him holding your hand. Have you two finally stopped growling at each other and started kissing instead?” Brady’s grin was infectious. He wanted everyone around him to be happy. It was just Brady.
“If I were going to speak about my personal life with my boss—and that’s a big if—I would admit I kind of like the growling almost as much as the kissing.”
Brady burst into laughter. “I knew it.”
“Who were you planning on taking with you to the AMAs?” I asked, changing the subject.
“No one. I was going to go stag,” he said.
I put my hand to my chest. “Do not ever say those words to your PR manager again. No stag. Ever. Do you understand me?”
His smile dimmed slightly. “I get it, but sometimes it’s just too hard to fight off the expectations of where the night will end.”
“Wait, did the sex monger himself just basically say he didn’t want to have sex at the end of his night?” I teased.
He brushed a hand through his hair and then fidgeted with the leather bands at his wrist. “If it was just sex, it would be different. But it’s never just sex. There’s always this hope of theirs that it will turn into something more, and I haven’t found that yet—the person I want to have more with.”
I nodded because I understood completely what he was saying. Russell and I had been more mostly because it was convenient. I had liked him. I liked that he was smart and witty and whispered sensual words to me in five different languages. But if I was being honest, I’d never, ever thought of a lifetime with him. If I had, it probably would have had me running for the hills, because as much as I’d liked Russell, I also knew his views on marriage were pretty primitive. He wanted a wife who would stay home and raise the two and a half kids and the family pet while he was out slaying the world in Latin.
That hadn’t been me. I hadn’t been willing to sacrifice one thing in my life to have him.
But the man who’d left me in the library, the man who made my body burn just by standing next to him…that man I could see myself making sacrifices for. I just wasn’t sure what they would be.
“Do you have a way to get a dress for the AMAs?” Brady asked.
I shook my head. “I have no idea what the shopping is like in Thomasville, but I’ll figure something out.”
“Just send Alice your dress and shoe size. She’ll get something for both of us so we don’t clash,” he said.
I looked at him dubiously. “I don’t know. I don’t like other people picking out my clothes for me.”
He laughed. “She’s good at it. She’ll know what you like from having seen you in a million outfits already, but send her a list of dos and don’ts. She’ll follow them. I’ve never been disappointed in anything she’s made me wear.”
“Showing up in a gray or black tux is different than how much skin I will or will not show and exactly where it needs to fit on my body.”
He nodded. “I get it, but it’ll be one less thing for you to worry about. Send her all the measurements you want. She’ll come through; she always does.”
We said goodbye, and not even two minutes later, Alice sent me an email requesting I shoot her all my measurements. With a huge sigh of apprehension, I gave her the numbers the best I could and then closed my computer.
I searched the house for Nash and finally gave up, sending him a text instead.
ME: Where are you?
I’d just about given up when my phone finally buzzed.
OTTER: In the gym. If you’re done, get your ass out here for more training.
ME: Ask nicely.
OTTER: That was me asking nicely. I can come get you if you’d rather.
I debated his command because the thought of him coming and getting me sent swirls down my entire body, landing right at my core. But the movement of one of the cleaning people in the hallway reminded me of Maribelle’s words from this morning, and I certainly didn’t want to put on a show for anyone else.
ME: Give me five minutes to change.
OTTER: I’ve set the timer.
I laughed and ran upstairs, taking off the champagne top with just a hint of disappointment. I’d imagined Nash running his hands over the ribbing and unbuttoning the buttons slowly and methodically in a way that would have had me squirming.
I was just going up the stairs at the back of the carriage house when the door flew open. He watched me from the doorway as I climbed up to him. His arms were crossed, stance wide, glower on his face. When I got to the top, I realized his phone was chirping. I laughed at the timer going off.
“I have to tell you, I almost allowed you to come and get me,” I said with a smile and an arched brow.
His eyes slid over me, taking in the small tank I was wearing with the pair of workout shorts I’d opted for rather than my normal yoga pants. He reached out and put his hands around my waist, thumbs skimming the naked flesh, lighting me up. The soft-cup exercise bra did nothing to hide the reaction I was having to his touch.
“You’re so goddamn beautiful,” he said, the huskiness in his voice causing shivers of pleasure to hit me.
I didn’t know how to reply, so I pulled a hand from my waist and kissed the knuckles. He’d changed from his jeans into workout gear which did nothing to hide the reaction he was having to me just as I’d reacted to him.
But we needed to have a conversation before we lost ourselves in each other again.
“We didn’t talk yesterday,” I finally said.
He gave me that curt nod of his as if he was accepting a mission.
“I need to know what you think this is,” I said, placing a hand at his waist and drawing my body up tight against his. “Is this something that lasts while we’re here, or is it something that follows us into reality?”
He swallowed, never looking away from my face. Never blinking. He was still wearing the wall of protective gear he’d put up around his emotions since the phone call with the FBI agent, and I wasn’t sure what was on the other side of it. But I didn’t want to be afraid of myself anymore
. I wanted to take the risk of a broken heart because the possibilities were worth it. Nash was worth it.
“What do you want it to be?” he asked.
“I don’t know that I have a complete answer.” Which was still a lie. I’d been pretty damn sure ever since the day at the pool that I loved him. Like forever-and-ever-amen kind of love, but I wasn’t sure he was ready to hear that yet. “But I know what I don’t want.”
His gaze still didn’t falter, but he was holding his breath, waiting for me to finish.
“I don’t want to always be your second choice. I don’t want Tristan to need you and for you to go running if I need you more,” I said, proud my voice didn’t waver as the night at The Oriental and Russell’s abandonment threatened to consume me.
He tugged on my ponytail with one hand and pulled my hip with his other. “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that Tristan won’t be a part of my life. She, Hannah, and Molly…I’m responsible for them.”
I closed my eyes, because no matter how much it hurt, I wasn’t going to cry in front of him. He’d already seen me at my weakest too many times.
His lips moved so they were teasing mine. A whisper of a breath at the corner of my mouth. “But Tristan will never be the person I need to see when I open my eyes each morning. If I give up my present for a future, Athena, that future better damn well be yours.”
My eyes flew back open to meet dark-green ones, pulse thudding through my veins.
It was so damn romantic. Like the flowers which meant destiny. So unexpectedly heart-grabbing. And I didn’t have enough words to say back without them being the ones I wasn’t prepared to say yet. So, I answered by crushing my lips to his and tugging at his T-shirt.
He groaned and picked me up, carrying me inside the gym where we found our way to the padded floor, training our bodies in a much different way than planned. Training our bodies to know each other’s as well as we knew our own. Training our bodies for the marathon that would be our time together. Maybe it wouldn’t be forever; maybe it would be months or years or decades, but to have the possibility sitting there was enough. Would always be enough.