A couple.
Crazily, yes, they were a couple. It was the sex, sure, because that had been spectacular. The best of her life. But it was more than that. She was attuned to him, dialed in to his frequency. She was aware of wherever he was in the room. She looked for him, constantly. Joe did the same. When he walked in, he didn’t look anywhere but at her.
He felt it, too.
The embrace lasted a minute, the time it took to reacquaint herself with his smell, with the feel of him in her arms, to search out that specific spot where she nestled her head. His body was an extension of hers, part of hers.
It would have been frightening, this immediate connection, if it hadn’t felt so right.
But because she was so attuned to him, she realized that something serious had happened while he was gone. He was holding her too tightly. His muscles were harder than usual, tense and stiff. That reassuring heartbeat, a beat per second, like a metronome, was speeded up. His breathing was speeded up, too.
She could ask when the others had left. Or she could wait for him to tell her what was wrong. Because intimacy ran both ways. She hadn’t told him about the Massacre. About the hell she’d endured after.
It was still too painful to talk about, still jumbled up in her head. She had things she wasn’t ready to discuss. Maybe he did, too. Maybe this was a business thing and it was confidential.
One thing she knew, though. She trusted him. If he felt it was necessary to talk it over with her, he would. If he didn’t, there was a good reason. Joe was a straight shooter. She felt that down to her bones.
By the time she lifted her head, both Lauren and Felicity had their coats on. So did Metal. Jacko seemed perfectly willing to brave the cold dusk with only a T-shirt on, a light denim jacket over his arm. Looking at that dark, impervious face, it was as if nothing affected him, except Lauren.
Metal had a hand to Felicity’s back. He gave Joe and her a two-fingered salute off his forehead and Isabel had no problem seeing the soldier he’d been. “See you tomorrow morning,” he said to Joe. “Felicity’s going to do some research.”
Felicity looked up at him. “I am? On what?”
“Conspiracies,” Metal said darkly.
She smiled. “Love me a good conspiracy. I’ll search the darknet. That’s how I found out the aliens in Roswell are secretly vampires.”
“You know,” Jacko said as he walked Lauren out the door. “That doesn’t sound too far-fetched.”
Felicity stuck her head back in the door. “But we have a rain check on that dinner, right?”
“Right,” Isabel answered. “Whenever you want.”
She cupped Joe’s jaw briefly when they were alone. “You want to tell me what this is about? Something happened over at your place, didn’t it?”
Joe took her hand, brought it to his mouth. She felt his lips, warm and soft, against the palm of her hand.
“I’ll tell you, yeah. Not right now, though. Not until I have more information. Do you trust me?”
She pulled her hand away, letting her fingers caress his cheek. Her faith in everything had been broken, shattered. The Massacre had poisoned her faith in everyone and everything. But to her vast surprise, she trusted him.
“Yes,” she said softly.
The taut muscles of his face relaxed a little. He checked his wristwatch. “Do you know it’s been almost six hours since you fed me?”
She smiled, rolled her eyes. “That long? You should call 911.”
“I should.” He kissed her hand again. “So what’s on the menu for tonight?”
* * *
Christ, a fucking army coming out of the bitch’s place!
Kearns was dressed in a tracksuit and had dumped some water over his face to look like he was soaking wet with sweat. With a watch cap, yellow wraparounds, scarf around his neck and lower face, he was sure he was unrecognizable.
Kearns had run three times past her house at half hour intervals. Couldn’t even tell if there were people in her place. But there were three vehicles parked right outside the house on the street so she had people over.
He was walking slowly, pretending to have runner’s cramps, when the front door opened and two big guys—one tall, one not—came out with two lookers. The ones who had helped Harris put up security cams and monitors around Delvaux’s house.
The men were operators. Kearns could tell by how they handled themselves, the way they looked around. It was pure luck that he was coming up on them as they walked down the little sidewalk and got into their vehicles. If he’d already passed them, and turned to look at them, they’d have made him. These guys observed everything.
Shit, this was getting impossible.
Level of protection the bitch had, he’d need at least a twenty-man team, and here he was in Portland, all alone with his ass hanging out.
Blake should be paying him ten times what he was for this.
His cell rang. One of the guys—the shorter one but still a big bruiser—glanced over briefly. At least Kearns had a reason to stop.
Jogger getting a business call. Or maybe a call from the little lady. When are you going to finish that run? The food’s getting cold.
“Talk to me,” Blake said. He wanted a report.
Kearns swore he could feel his spleen spurt bile. You send me out here with zero resources, no backup at all, I’m supposed to keep tabs on a chick that has navy SEALs protecting her?
He couldn’t say that, though. Because then Blake would want to know how long the SEALs had been around and he’d have to start defending himself.
Blake himself wasn’t scary. He was a politician and he was soft. Used to the good life. Had fucking drivers, probably had forgotten how to drive. Wouldn’t know how to mow his own lawn or fix his own car. But he had operators around him and those operators were scary. He was surrounded by guys who’d carried out the Washington Massacre. Almost one thousand people gunned down and blown up, one thousand Americans, and they did the job in ten minutes then disappeared slicker’n snot. Not even DNA left behind.
If Blake snapped his fingers there would be no place on earth for Kearns to hide, because that was another thing. Blake seemed to have unending money. Rivers of it. Oceans. World-changing money.
So he said what he had to say.
“Nothing’s changed. It looks like she hasn’t even left the apartment today.”
“It looks like?” Blake said, his voice icy.
Fuck.
“I’m alone here. I make the rounds every two hours, but I can’t do more because someone is going to notice something. I haven’t seen her go out. And last time she did go out she was shaky. Today’s cold and there’s ice on the sidewalks. I figure she won’t go out when it’s this cold.”
“Next report, I want more facts. And make sure you brief me on any changes.”
“Roger that,” Kearns said evenly, keeping the resentment out of his voice.
No changes, asshole. Just a pack of navy SEALs. Nothing worth reporting.
* * *
Dinner was something called spelt soup with onion and cheese bread. Joe didn’t actually know what spelt was but learned all about it from Isabel. One of the oldest cereals known to man. Mentioned in the Bible, older than wheat. Isabel said that some specialty microbreweries made beer from spelt and promised to find some for him. She said it had a special nutty flavor.
God.
He’d never eaten like this in someone’s home. Home for him meant takeout or something scrounged from someone else and put in the freezer for a rainy day. Lots of rainy days in Portland.
Metal was a decent cook and Joe loved eating over at his place, but it was nothing like this.
“So. You ran a food blog?” Joe pointed his spoon at Isabel.
She smiled sadly. “Ran is the operative word. I haven’t posted anything since...” She swallowed, kept her voice even. “Since the Massacre. I haven’t even looked at it since then. I’ll have lost all my readers.”
“How many readers di
d you say you had again?”
“About a million and a half.”
Fuck. “Your readership was more than the number of active personnel in the US military. That’s a lot. Literally an army of foodies.”
She’d been tracing a pattern in the tablecloth with the tines of her fork and looked up. “Yeah. I guess so.”
There was something in her voice.
“You ever think about starting it up again?”
Isabel sighed. “Off and on. And only in the past few weeks. But it would be like starting over and it took years of very hard work to get to where I was. I don’t think I have that kind of energy anymore. And I did a lot of research and sometimes I traveled to get local recipes and pictures.”
“I don’t think you’d have to work that hard,” Joe protested. “I mean these things go viral, don’t they? As soon as word gets around that you’re starting up again, readers will flock back.”
“Maybe.”
“And, well, if you can hold off for when I’m free, I’ll accompany you on your trips. We could do it on weekends. Don’t know anything about food but I can carry your bags for you. Prime bag-carrier, top tier. And I work cheap. For food.”
That brought a smile to her face, a little less sad. “Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.” Joe put certainty in his voice. Very aware of the fact that this was the first time any kind of future was mentioned between them. It was going to keep cropping up because he had no intention of leaving her side. Did she want to go to Tallahassee to research chitlins? Joe was right there. “Is it still online?”
Isabel’s eyes widened. “Do you know—I don’t know. Isn’t that crazy? I haven’t looked at it once since...since the Massacre. It probably is.”
It wasn’t crazy. Joe was firmly of the suck-it-up-and-move-on school. Her life had come to a standstill and she’d just dropped everything. But Isabel loved what she did. It had given her joy and maybe it could give her joy again.
“Lately, even before the Massacre, I’d eased up because I had another project.”
Her eyes had gone back down to the tablecloth.
“Which was?”
“Well, I was taking notes for a book. I wanted it to be a big book, full of beautiful illustrations. Full of information and recipes. A celebration of food. A book you can dip into and always find something interesting. An agent was interested.”
Joe put his hand over hers. “That sounds fantastic. I’m sure it would be a great book, a bestseller. Do you still have those notes?”
“Oh yes,” she breathed. Joe looked into those beautiful eyes and saw something that made his heart thump hard in his chest.
Hope.
Isabel had hope again. She was coming back and she would be stronger than before, because that was the way it worked. If you were broken and came back, you were stronger in the broken places.
He squeezed her hand gently. “Sounds like writing a book is going to be in your immediate future. And picking up the blog again too. Can I see it?”
“The blog?” Isabel rose and Joe noticed that she seemed to be moving more easily, too. He was beginning to see the magnificent woman she must have been and would be again. Beautiful beyond words, graceful, smart, knowledgeable. Capable of moving millions of people with her own passion. “Sure. If it’s still there.”
She went to her desk and clicked a key to turn the monitor on. In a second she’d pulled up a home page. She turned the screen so Joe could see better. He pulled up a chair and sat down and was instantly lost.
The blog was beautiful to look at. Across the top a carousel of brightly colored photos floated from left to right. Aged, agile brown hands kneading bread, a smiling farmer holding a bushel of small intensely red apples, two women in hairnets pulling on mozzarella in a vat, making knots, another woman rolling rice inside a grape leaf...the images went on and on. The quality was exquisite, many of the images were in sunlight and all of them celebrated the joys of the products of the earth.
“You’ve got a great photographer.”
She was watching the screen with him, the colors so intense they reflected off her pale skin. “Thanks. I took most of those.”
Astounded, Joe watched more images march across the header. His first impression was right. The photographer was inspired. And the photographer was Isabel.
“These are incredible images. Makes you want to reach into the screen and pull something to eat out.”
“Thanks. I’ve traveled a lot and I like to take photos. I had a whole bunch in my archive so when I started the blog I put together a slide show of some of the photos I’d taken. It was just a question of balancing out the color palette and making sure there was a flow from one photo to the next.”
“Huh,” Joe grunted. He’d never have thought of that for a blog header, not in a million years. The blogs he read had to do with geopolitics and gear. But now that he was paying attention, he saw that from photo to photo there was a slow continuity of color, an intensely pleasing sense of balance.
He scrolled down and saw that the blog was dated two days before the Massacre.
“I didn’t have time to update the blog at all,” Isabel said quietly. “My father was preparing to announce his candidacy and everything was in an uproar. My next blog was going to be a three-parter—celebratory foods throughout the world.” She huffed out a breath. “Because I thought we’d all be celebrating.”
No, they didn’t celebrate. They were all dead.
Joe scrolled down, read the last entry. “The Humble Chickpea.” He read for half an hour, fascinated. The history of the chickpea dating back to the Bronze Age, its nutritional value, the use of chickpea flour, different ways of making hummus. She’d even unearthed some poems praising the chickpea, translated from Lebanese Arabic. At the end of the post were four recipes arranged according to difficulty, which even he, ignorant as he was, saw was smart. The blog appealed to beginners and sophisticated cooks alike.
He scrolled quickly down and saw feature after feature on various foodstuffs, giving the history, interesting factoids, the same scale of recipes. All lavishly, beautifully illustrated.
He couldn’t imagine the amount of work that went into it, the vast research behind the highly readable and entertaining articles. Toggling left, he saw that the archives could be accessed by foodstuff, by recipes, by ethnic cuisine.
“This is amazing, Isabel,” he said seriously. Joe was ashamed of himself. When he’d heard Isabel had run a food blog he’d thought—how cute. This wasn’t “cute”. It was a very serious labor of love that a lot of people found useful. She was an expert in the very thing that kept humans alive. Food.
They had that in common. It just so happened that he was an expert, too, on one of the other things that kept humans alive. Weaponry.
“You need to bring this blog back to life. And you need to write your book. Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”
She looked him full in the eyes, this incredibly talented woman. This incredibly beautiful and talented woman who was his. The smile reached her eyes. “I promise.”
She was coming back to life right in front of his eyes. Putting herself back together again, picking up her life where it had been blown up.
He knew all about that. He’d picked himself up, too. The difference was he’d had a lot of help along the way.
“It’s late. Are you tired?” Startled, Isabel checked her wristwatch.
Joe didn’t bother checking his watch, he had a perfectly functional one in his head. It was 10:35 p.m., give or take a minute. He didn’t give a fuck what time it was, though. All he knew was that it was time.
“Because I’m tired,” he said, rising. He cupped his hand under Isabel’s elbow and she rose, too. “I think it’s time for bed.” Either he took her to bed or his dick was going to explode.
Right now Isabel was absolutely impossible to resist. The Isabel he’d met had been like a wounded bird. He’d wanted to touch her, kiss her, bed her, but also curl himself around her
and protect her. But there was another Isabel inside, not wounded, a confident woman, talented and worldly. Incredibly sexy. Like she was the woman sex had been invented for.
Joe softened his hands. He wanted to hold her tight, kiss her hard, but he had big strong hands and he had to watch himself. To make sure he didn’t clutch her too hard, he placed his open palm against her back and kept it open as he moved her toward the bedroom.
She looked up at him in amusement. “So, it’s like that, is it?”
He wanted to smile but it was hard to do when he was shaking with lust, trying to control himself. “Exactly like that.”
In the bedroom, Isabel immediately veered for the bathroom. Yeah. Okay. Chicks wanted to be all fresh before they had sex. Joe didn’t need that. He’d want her if she just came off a marathon. He wouldn’t care.
He sniffed his armpits just to see if they were rank, but they weren’t. Let’s hear it for twenty-first century deodorant. Inside of five seconds he was naked and under the covers. He was boiling hot but he had the blankets up over his crotch because his cock looked almost inflamed, and it felt harder than it had ever felt before.
It almost scared him and it was his cock. So he didn’t want her to see it and run screaming. He wanted her to scream all right, but not that way.
He sat up against the headboard, hands behind his head, waiting. She was doing something in the bathroom. He heard running water, then silence. Oh God, she was naked in there. He shut his eyes because his cock had given a painful pulse. He didn’t think it could become harder than it already was, but it did.
Because Joe knew what she looked like naked. She was designed specifically to drive a man wild. Soft skin, full breasts with pretty pale pink nipples, only the very tips became cherry red when she was aroused. All that honey blonde hair—enough for six women—fluttering around her shoulders. Those long slender legs, a pale little cloud between them, groomed and neat, pink-and-red folds peeking through.
The folds glistened when she was excited.