Secondhand Smoke (Dartmoor Book 4) (23 page)

              But Aidan knew. Surely they all knew.

              Well, those of them who knew Tango’s secrets, anyway.

              “A friend,” Ghost said evenly. “Now, I say we don’t waste that gesture of friendship…”

              And plans were decided.

~*~

The semicolon was vastly underused in modern society, Sam decided as she sat grading essays in her cramped little office at work. Between the choppy, unimaginative sentences, and the run-on sentences, she had little hope left for the English education of future generations.

              The last two nights, completely distracted by Aidan, she’d neglected work. This evening, she’d decided to stay a little longer at the school, force some discipline on herself. So far, she was having to reread sentences three and four times, red pen hovering impotently over paper that seemed to swim in and out of focus.

              She had a boyfriend. And she really, really wanted to be home with him, rather than here with crappy essays.

              Someone rapped on her open office door and she jerked, hand closing tight around the pen as her head snatched to the door. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but she didn’t figure an attacker would like the feel of it puncturing his eyeball.

              All the fight drained out of her and warmth filled her, head to toe, when she saw who stood in her threshold.

              Aidan shoved his hands in his pockets and braced a shoulder against the jamb. His grin twisted her insides. “Is that special just for me?” He nodded toward her hand and she dropped the pen down onto the desk.

              “I thought you might be the UT Strangler,” she defended, smiling back.

              His expression sobered. “
Is
there a UT Strangler?”

              “No. Not that I know of, anyway. But things happen on university campuses all the time.” She shuddered. Why had she gone there, of all places?

              “I scared you,” he said, stepping into the office, standing in front of her desk and tipping a serious look down into her face. “I’m sorry.”

              “I get a little absorbed.”
In thoughts of you
. But she gestured to her papers. “And all of a sudden I hear a sound, and I remember I’m the only one on this floor at the moment.” She shrugged. “I’m a little jumpy, I guess.”

              Aidan frowned and glanced through the door. There was a window set in the far side of the wall, a tall one with a pretty view of the nighttime campus, the glowing security lampposts and the shadowed sidewalks.

              He turned back to her and dropped his voice. “Are you armed?”

              “Armed with…” She flicked the red pen with her fingernail.

              “Nah.” He pushed aside his cut, and showed her the gun weighing down its inside pocket. “That kinda armed.”

              She gestured for him to cover it and he did, sighing. “Those aren’t allowed on campus,” she whispered.

              “Baby,
I’m
probably not allowed on campus. I meant for you.”

              “I’m not allowed to have one here either.”

              He made a face. “Do you think anyone here to hurt you would be worried about what he was ‘allowed’ to do?”

              A chill rippled across her skin, made her want to pull her sweater shut. “Is someone going to try to hurt me?”

              His eyes shifted away, jaw tightening. “World’s dangerous.”

              “So are you,” she said softly.

              He hesitated, gaze coming back to her face. When he realized she was mostly teasing, his tension eased. “You’ve probably got me confused with one of my brothers.”

             
Probably not
, she added in her head. “Hey, how did you know where my office was? You’ve never been up here before.”

              “I asked Ava.”

              “You wanted to talk about your Shakespeare paper?” she guessed.

              “I didn’t want you walking to your car in the dark.”

              Oh…that could melt a girl. “I walk to my car in the dark a lot of nights.”

              “Yeah, but that was before me.”

              She sat very still a moment, letting his words hit her full force and then double back to wrap around her. Her smile felt natural, warm, happy. “Before you, huh?”

              “Yeah.” He grinned back, a small smile that seemed private, quiet, just for her.

              Melting. So much melting.

              She started gathering the scattered essays across her desk. “I can finish up here if you’re ready to go.”

              “Nah.” He dropped into the chair across from her, the one where her students sat when they came for a consult. “Finish working, then we’ll go home. I’ve got nowhere else to be.” He gave her another of those smiles, like there was nothing else he’d rather do than watch her grade papers.

              “It’s boring,” she warned.

              “You aren’t, though, and that’s what I’ll be looking at.”

              “Are you trying to make me swoon?”

              “Is it working?”

              “Yes.”

              “Then yeah.”

              Grinning like a lunatic, she shook her head and tried to clear her thoughts. Shakespeare. Focus.

              For almost a half hour, she worked in silence, falling into the rhythm of the words, red pen wielded sparingly. She understood grammar and punctuation, and therefore wanted to see it within the papers…but she understood the way the mind didn’t always work cleanly, too. She knew that skill could be cultivated, and artistic appreciation was something innate and precious that needed nurturing, rather than squelching.

              After a while, she lifted her head, saw Aidan staring at her, in an unconscious way that told her he’d been studying her the entire time she’d been studying work.

              “I didn’t ever have the patience for it,” he said. “The kind of stuff you do. Books and words.”

              “It’s never too late to get started.”

              She expected him to wave her off, but he gave her a considering face, head tilting again. “Ava thinks I’m stupid.”

              “You’re street smart.”

              “Is that enough for you?”

              She recoiled. “Aidan, I don’t have specifications. You know that I…” She almost choked. “How I feel about you.”

              He stared. “Yeah?”

              “Yes.”

              His smile was slow. “How much longer, teach?”

              “All of it can wait until tomorrow.”

              When he stood, she took the hand he offered, and let her gun-wielding man lead her out to her car.

~*~

“Do you like kids?”

              The question caught her by surprise. Sam lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, hovering above Aidan who lay face-down on the pillow beside her. She traced his tattoos with a meticulous fingertip, by the light of her dresser lamp, following the careful patterns of the clusters of red roses across his shoulders. Warm with post-coital bliss, it took her a second to register his question.

              Her hand stilled, finger braced in a lush red petal. “What?”

              “Do you like kids?” he repeated, his back tensing beneath her. “I mean, do you want them? Like them?” He shrugged, roses jumping. “Whatever.”

              Sam stared at his beautifully inked skin a moment, thinking, trying to read intention into his words. Why was he asking this? Why now, when they’d made no promises to one another?

              “I do,” she said, carefully, not wanting him to feel any expectation. “I like them. You’ve met my sister. She pretty much qualifies as a kid.”

              “Yeah.”

              “As to wanting them…” She trailed off. She hadn’t really thought about it, and said as much. “Dad died, and I had to help Mom, look after Erin…I haven’t put a whole lot of thought toward having a family of my own.” When he didn’t answer, she dragged her nail lazily across the outline of a green thorn and whispered, “But I want one. A family. You know that.”

              “Yeah.”

              “Maybe it’s too late. Who knows. I’m thirty-two.”

              “Pssht. It’s not too late.”

              “Maybe not.”

              “It’s not.”

              She flattened her hand over his spine, wishing she could read his thoughts through the touch of his skin. “Why?”

              The pause went a beat too long to be casual. “Dunno. No reason.”

              Yeah right. But she wasn’t going to push. He wasn’t telling her he didn’t want children, and that was a good sign. “Tell me about these,” she said, continuing her exploration of the roses. “They’re beautiful.” And big, which meant they must have some importance.

              “My roses,” he said in a voice she hadn’t heard before, something low and tender.

              She stilled, arrested by that voice, captured in its dark magic.

              “Mags has always loved red roses,” he said.

              Sam waited for him to say more, but then realized he wasn’t going to. They were for Maggie. Gorgeous bouquets on his shoulders, his back, bleeding down his arms.

              She rested her cheek against his skin and listened to air fill his lungs, through the layers of skin and bone. She loved him, and she was so afraid to say it.

              “Halloween,” she said, and he tensed beneath her.

              “Yeah?”

              “I want to come.”

Eighteen

“You didn’t have to,” Shane protested as Emmie slid his brown bag lunch across the island.

              “You say that every morning,” she said. “And every morning I tell you that I have to make the rest of our lunches and wouldn’t think of leaving you out.”

              His smile in these situations was always warm, kind, and tinged with awkwardness. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

              “You’re not.” She smiled back, hoping to convey her genuine warmth.

              Walsh’s half-brother was a sweetheart in every sense of the word. Kind, careful, always apologetic and respectful. If she was honest, Emmie had a difficult time imagining that they’d actually patched him into the club. She wished he’d learn to just take his lunch and not feel guilty about it.

              “Ta,” he said, palming the bag.

              “What is it today?” Walsh asked, moving up silently beside her.

              “That leftover roast chicken we had, on sourdough.”

              “Mustard?”

              “The spicy kind.”

              He flicked a small, pleased smile.

              “I checked on your mom,” Emmie added, “and she’s still asleep.”

              He nodded. “Good.”

              Bea had been struggling with arthritis pain the last few weeks, and not sleeping. Several mornings, Emmie had come downstairs at six-thirty to find the house spotless and breakfast already in the making. Which of course meant Bea’s pain was even worse. “I can’t sleep,” she’d complained, dark eyes full of tears, small frame bent nearly double. Walsh had come up with some oxy last night, and clearly it had worked.

              “You guys gonna be in the shop today?” Emmie asked.

              “Yeah,” they said in unison.

              It was the new normal, this morning routine. Emmie woke at ten till six, showered, dressed, and headed downstairs while Walsh showered and shaved. They all checked in with each other in the kitchen, before work. The family. She wanted to pinch herself most days because she couldn’t believe the good fortune of this gorgeous house, her beloved farm, and the man who’d given her a family.

              “What are…” she started, and the doorbell rang.

              A single whip crack of tension moved through all of them; she felt it in her stomach, saw it in their faces.

              The doorbell
never
rang.

              “Stay here with Em,” Walsh told Shane, and headed toward the front of the house.

              Emmie rolled her eyes, gave him a five second head start, then followed.

              “Emmie,” Shane said, hurrying in her wake.

              Walsh stood in the open front door, posture openly hostile. Emmie pulled up short, shocked to see that kind of rigidity in him, and approached at a more cautious place, tiptoeing up to peek around his shoulder.

              A man stood on the front porch, dark sweatshirt under his Lean Dogs cut, thick dark hair rumpled from a helmet. He had big, beautiful blue eyes, and they were better proof than a birth certificate. This was Walsh’s brother.

              Walsh had to feel her pressed up behind him, but he ignored her for the moment. “Why are you at my house?” he asked the man on the porch. His normally flat voice was sharp at the edges with a coating of ice.

              “I heard you had a posh place these days,” the brother answered. “I wanted to see it for myself.”

              Shane joined them, stepping up on Walsh’s other side. “Fox.”

              “Oh look. Little Shaney. Still letting King fight your battles for you?” It was a jab, sure, but it was delivered with such cool, calm, Walsh-like elegance that Fox came off seeming sinister, rather than annoying.

              Shane exhaled loudly, but said nothing.

              Fox’s eyes slid over and settled on Emmie. “I heard you got married, too.”

              The tension was the stuff of not just knives, but meat cleavers. Emmie thought it was ridiculous, so she squeezed around Walsh and extended a hand to Fox. “Emmie,” she introduced. “Nice to meet the face behind the phone call that woke me up yesterday morning.”

              His hand was cool and dry; he gave her one squeeze and then let go, his eyes searching across her face in a clinical way.

              Emmie shivered – in a
bad
way. She was struck by his similarities to her husband, but where Walsh projected competence and quiet, this brother radiated understated threat.

              As she pulled back, Walsh’s hand curled around her wrist, like he wanted to draw her back against him. “We’re heading into Dartmoor now,” he said, indicating Shane with a tilt of his head. “You can come back with us.”

              A staredown ensued.

              Finally, Fox said, “Okay.”

              Emmie kept her sigh to herself. She had no idea what sort of bad blood ran between them, but it was thick and sticky. A story for another time, maybe when she had Walsh trapped in bed in the dark, and work wasn’t an excuse to avoid his emotions.

              “Awesome,” she said. “Not that this little family reunion isn’t delightful, but can we move out of the doorway please? The horses need to eat.”

              They all gave her nearly identical looks of mixed amusement and scrutiny, like they were trying to see inside her head.

              “Oh yeah,” she muttered, stepping into her clogs and brushing past Fox to head down the steps. “You’re brothers all right.”

~*~

Ava was worried about her man. There could never be any secrets between them, not when they knew one another so completely; were attuned to every facial twitch and every passing mood. Ava didn’t want them to be any less entangled than they’d always been, but such a connection meant she picked up on little eddies of disquiet, his frowns and sighs like screaming alarms.

              Today, she knew the root source of his disturbance. And unlike the trash service failing to pick up, or an unexpected rain shower ruining a nice ride, this particular bother had the ability to damage him. Emotionally. And that was always the deepest kind of hurt, the kind that lingered in the heart and mind.

              She finished buckling Remy into the front seat of the double stroller and set off across the parking lot.

              It was a quiet stroller, and the boys were too consumed with the wonder of the brilliant sunny day to be fussy, but still Mercy noticed them long before they reached the open doors of the shop.

              It was nippy out, so he had his long hair tied up and stuffed under a black knit stocking cap, heavy Black Watch plaid flannel under his embroidered garage shirt. Big, blue collar, and nothing you’d want to run into in a dark alley.

              Ava smiled. She loved him so damn much.

              “
Fillette
,” he greeted, voice loud and cheerful, his grin stunning as he stepped out of the bay and into the sunlight. “You brought my boys.”

              “And your lunch, if you have time to sit down with us a second.”

              “Absolutely.” He kissed her, and then placed a hand on both the boys’ heads, his dark, dirty hands contrasting with the unblemished clean perfection of the babies. The tenderness in his touch, the total reverence, squeezed her heart every time.

              “
Mes fils
,” he told them quietly, then looked at Ava again, dark eyes bright with happiness. In the true spirit of the song by the same name, he was a simple man, and he didn’t need anything extravagant. An unexpected lunch date with his little family left him ecstatic. “What’s to eat?”

              Ava lifted the thermal tote she’d brought. “How about red beans and rice with a whole lotta andouille in it?”

              He grinned.

              They set up at the picnic table beside the shop, napkins threatening to flit away in the breeze. Ava unpacked the food: the promised red beans and rice with sausage, cornbread, steamed broccoli for a little something green. She’d already fed the boys, but Remy wanted to sit in Daddy’s lap and pick things off his paper plate.

              Mercy forked up a bite of rice and then sent her a level look over it. “So what’s going on?”

              Busted.

              She sliced a small bite of andouille and shrugged. “Nothing. I wanted us to have lunch.”

              “Right.”

              No secrets. Deception just wasn’t a possibility.

              “Your brother’s here today,” she said.

              “
Half
-brother.”

              “Yes, well, he’s here, and he’s technically your brother, at least partway,” she added when he frowned, “and you
did
try to kill him the last time he was here.”

              “I don’t
try
to kill people, baby,” he said in a perfectly normal voice. He grinned. “But sometimes pretty girls get in the way and distract me.”

              “Things ended on a good note, though,” she continued, “before he left for New Orleans. So things should be okay now, right?”

              He made a face.

              “Merc.”

              “I haven’t killed the guy yet,” he said, exasperated.

              Ava mopped at her beans with a bite of bread and switched tactics. “Imagine if you united and used your combined powers for good.”

              That surprised him so much that he forgot to be ticked off. “What?” he asked, grin touching the corners of his lips.

              “Take the Avengers,” she continued. “They’ve all got their special skillsets. The team needs each one of them. But think about it. When heavy lifting needs to be done, it’s Captain America and Thor, every time. They’re the heavy hitters. That could be you and Colin,” she said, aiming her fork at him. “With your superhuman strength, you could be an unstoppable force for good. Good for the club, obviously. No offense but I don’t see you saving the world anytime soon, baby.”

              His brows lifted. “Quite the analogy.”

              “Isn’t it though?”

              “So who am I? Cap or Thor?”

              She pretended to consider. “Well, neither of them tortures people for a living, so…”

              He laughed. “Yeah.”

              “Try to get along with your brother, for you own sake,” she urged. “You’ll be happier for it.”

              He nodded and returned his attention to his food, one strong hand holding Remy firmly in place.

~*~

“It’s too crowded,” Michael said, arms folded as he stared through the window toward the clubhouse. If he hadn’t been Michael, and hadn’t looked as surly and scary as ever, Holly would have said he was pouting.

              It was lunchtime, and though Holly had packed him a sandwich and chips to eat at the clubhouse with the guys when he was on break, he’d come here, to her office instead, out of sorts thanks to the additional members in town.

              “It’s only four extra guys,” Holly said innocently, careful to keep her face neutral.

              He glanced over at her, eyes sharp and pale with disapproval. “Four guys is enough to change the…” He made a grasping gesture with one hand.

              “Dynamic?” she guessed.

              He nodded.

              “Well, I for one am glad you came to have lunch with me,” she said, attempting to draw him from the window and his foul mood. Her poor Michael; he was even more fucked up than she was. “Come sit down,” she encouraged, laying out her own lunch of salad with leftover chicken on top.

              He sat, still anxious and tense.

              “Tell me about the big party,” she said. “What’s that gonna be like?”

              He shrugged and unwrapped his sandwich. “Crowded. Loud.” He shot her a pointed look. “Not exactly your scene, honey.”

              A quick flutter of distress in her stomach. “I figured that. Do you…do you want me to stay home?”

              “No,” he said immediately, emphatically. “I mean, if you want–”

              “I want to be with you. Always.”

              He nodded, but his expression didn’t change.

              “You don’t like when there are visitors,” she said quietly.

              “I don’t like the reason they’re here.”

              She shivered.

~*~

Sam was just shutting down her computer that afternoon when Aidan appeared in her office door, sparking an instant grin from her, a slow stir of heat in her belly. He had the sleeves of his white thermal pushed up over his muscular forearms, a look that drove her more than a little nuts.