Nightfire: A Protectors Novel: Marine Force Recon

  And he loved his wife, as much as Harry visibly loved his.

  It was there every time he looked at Nicole. It didn’t seem like a sick love, either, the kind Chloe now recognized had existed between her adoptive parents and had undoubtedly existed between her biological mother and her drug-addict husband and boyfriends.

  No, this was the real deal, and she could see why because Nicole was absolutely gorgeous and nice. Tall, slender except for the small bump of pregnancy. Long jet black hair, riveting cobalt blue eyes. And completely natural, without a trace of that complex, instinctive sense of competition beautiful women often had around other women. She’d hugged Chloe with genuine warmth, looked Chloe straight in the eyes without even a thought to her clothes or bag or shoes, and then kept a friendly arm around her friend Ellen’s shoulders as she smiled at Chloe.

  The body language could not have been more clear. For both women. Welcome. We are eager to be your friends.

  Mike Keillor—he was another story. Not as tall as the men he called his brothers, but seemingly twice as broad. He had the strongest shoulders and arms she’d ever seen on a man. A bodybuilder but without that bodybuilder stiffness and clumsiness. He simply looked . . . strong. Firmly planted on the ground, unstoppable, invincible.

  It was a little harder to think of Mike Keillor as a brother.

  The hugs of the two men, Sam and Harry—officially now her brothers!—and their wives, had been warm and brief. In the rush of excitement, she could hardly tell who was hugging her. Like plunging into a warm ocean, with lots of waves lapping at her.

  But when Mike hugged her, time stopped, somehow. She was instantly aware of everything, all sensations separate and discrete. Each one unusual. Each one exciting.

  The feel of him. That was what affected her so much. Harry and Sam were so tall she had to stretch up awkwardly to place her hands on their shoulders, up on tiptoe, brief hug, falling back onto her heels. The hug over almost before it began because hugging someone so tall was awkward.

  Mike, now—Mike was the perfect height, taller than she was but not too tall. And the strength of him. Wow. She had never in her life touched someone as strong as he was. Like embracing a man of steel. Superman, only without the leotard. Superman, only shorter, broader, but with—yes—piercing blue eyes and yes, that lick of dark hair over the forehead that just made you want to reach out and brush it back. She’d had to clench her fists not to do just that.

  He smelled wonderful, too. Clean, utterly male.

  For just a moment, instead of a hug, it had been an embrace. He’d simply rolled her into himself, put his arms around her and held her close.

  She’d loved it. That was a huge surprise. She didn’t have to reason it all out, like she did with most of her interactions with people. Should I do this, say this, and if I do this, what then? Is this normal, should I be feeling this, will they look at me oddly when I do that?

  Her usual exhausting head games when dealing with people. She had no natural sense for it, had always been bad at it.

  Maybe it was all those lonely years in the hospital, or having parents who never interacted with her. Whatever it was, sometimes Chloe thought that everyone in the world except her had been handed an instruction manual at the beginning of their lives and knew what the script was, whereas she was perennially in the dark.

  It was better once she was at Sacred Heart and afterwards, at university and out in the work world. But still, it seemed to her that she had no social instincts, only painful lessons learned in harsh schools.

  But that moment with Mike—that moment out of time—it had been sheer instinct. They fit together so perfectly. There hadn’t been even a split second of awkwardness. In a second, she was held against him, his arms around her back, his head close to hers.

  In that instant, something stilled inside her. Her constant inner monologue stopped dead. She had no thoughts, only feelings, rushing in, overwhelming her.

  Strength, heat, safety. Arousal.

  Wow.

  Mike moved away, and a lucky thing, too, because she was entirely incapable of it. She actually felt bereft when he stepped back. The whole front of her body felt cold, missing something vital. She stood still and looked in his eyes, those bright blue eyes, wondering if he had a clue that something momentous had happened inside her.

  He was looking serious. She had no idea what his normal expression was but right then he had looked deeply into her eyes, as if he could walk around inside her head. His face had been tight, a slight tic fluttered in his right eyelid. Chloe simply couldn’t look away.

  Time stretched . . .

  “All right!” Harry clapped his hands and Chloe jumped, the entire room zooming back into focus. Harry and Sam were closing up shop, shutting down computers, putting paper files away. Her brother smiled at her. “Chloe, we’ll swing by the Del, get your stuff, and get on home. Your room will be ready by the time we get there, but we’ll be eating up at Sam and Nicole’s.” He stopped, looked at her with a frown. “You’re looking shell-shocked,” he said gently, picking up her hands. “Is all this too much for you?”

  His hands were so warm. Chloe smiled up at him. “It is a little overwhelming. But in a good way.” She tried to still the trembling in her throat. “I’m still finding it hard to believe that I found you. That I have a brother.”

  He bent and kissed her forehead. “I know what you mean. At least you had some time to get used to the idea before you came here. I was blindsided.” He pulled back to look down at her. “But now, you know what? I feel like you’ve been there all along, it’s just that I didn’t know.” He swallowed heavily. “And now I do. It changes everything.”

  “Yes, it does.” Tears prickled. She gave a hollow laugh and swiped at her eyes. “At some point I’m going to stop crying, I promise.”

  “I’m not, not for a while, anyway.” Ellen came up and kissed her cheek again. “I don’t have a family, either, outside Harry and Grace. So for me it’s like finding a sister. We’re all so happy.” She spun around in the room, hands up in the air. “And now we’re going to party! Let’s get out of here and get home!”

  “Here.” Behind her, Mike’s bass voice. Chloe turned, startled. He was holding her coat up. She slipped into it. His heavy hands rested, briefly, on her shoulders. It felt good, really good. Events were swirling around her, almost too fast to follow, making her dizzy. His big hands grounded her, slowed everything down, made everything real.

  “We’ll be there in about half an hour, forty minutes.” Nicole was talking into her cell, and snapped it shut. “Manuela’s still crying, but she’s also cooking up a storm and she is going to be very angry if everything gets cold. You do not want to make Manuela angry.”

  “No, ma’am,” Sam said fervently, and winked at Chloe. “Without Manuela I’d never eat. Ouch,” he said mildly when Nicole elbowed him in the ribs.

  She smiled sweetly at her husband, narrowing her eyes until only a cobalt blue slit gleamed. “Another crack like that and I know what else you’ll never do again.”

  Sam mimed horror and zipped his lips.

  Chloe laughed and then barely refrained from clasping her hand over her mouth. Old habits. Her mother—her adoptive mother—had frowned on laughing in public. But she wasn’t here, would never be here again. Everyone smiled when she laughed and Sam winked at her again.

  “Okay!” Harry twirled his finger in the air. “Heading on out. Chloe, you’re coming with us.”

  “I’ll come with you, too, Harry,” Mike said. “Barney is picking up my SUV. I left it in Logan Heights last night.”

  For some reason, Harry and Sam shared sharp glances. Before she could puzzle out what it meant, a strong hand closed over her elbow. Mike, at her side.

  They moved out en masse, crossing that enormous lobby. The clients had all departed. Several of the secretaries were standing, putting on their coats. They filed out, calling out cheerful good-byes.

  There was a happy atmosphere in this company,
Chloe saw. Her brother had created something good, together with Sam Reston and the man still holding her elbow, Mike Keillor. They had created an atmosphere of harmony, as unmistakable as that created by her nuns at the Sacred Heart.

  Chloe had felt her heart lift, even that first day. A new girl, a damaged new girl, from another country. Shy and unused to much contact with people. The transition to London had been so fast she’d barely had time to dread it by the time she’d arrived and discovered she didn’t have anything to dread.

  Just watching the way the nuns treated the girls, the way the girls interacted with one another, it had been such a joy. No coldness, no withdrawal, no hidden cruelty. Just happiness and serenity.

  That’s what she was seeing here. The body language of people who worked in a successful environment and who worked well together, in an atmosphere of respect.

  Next to her, Mike looked so serious. Harry was beaming, Sam had his arm around his wife’s waist, bending down to her and smiling. Only Mike wasn’t smiling. Harry and Sam seemed somehow uncomplicated next to Mike. Reading their body language easily, in Sam and Harry Chloe saw two contented men, happily married, loose and relaxed.

  Mike was harder to read. He didn’t look particularly happy but he didn’t look unhappy, either. He was just serious. And close by her. Like her shadow, always in proximity. Anyone who didn’t know them walking out of the company offices and heading down the big corridor would have assumed that there were three couples.

  Harry and Ellen. Sam and Nicole. And Mike and her. She was a slow walker, but he kept pace with her exactly, as if that were his normal speed, when actually she’d seen his normal speed when he came in, zipping across the huge lobby area in a couple of seconds.

  She had never been so conscious of another human being’s presence. He was so large it felt like he had his own gravity field around him. She had to work, and work hard, to keep from looking at him and—surprisingly—from trying to get even closer. He still held her by the elbow, not a hard grip but one she imagined she’d have to make an effort to break.

  Not for anything in the world would she want to break his grip. She couldn’t even begin to imagine wanting to. His grip felt wonderful.

  So here she was, walking down the corridor, having somehow acquired four new family members, and the fifth—well, he didn’t feel like family so much as a man interested in a woman, utterly focused on her.

  God, who would have thought such a reversal of fortune could happen in only a couple of hours?

  Two hours ago, she’d walked this same hallway, sick with anxiety, trembling with piercing fear and tenuous hope. Completely alone in the world, without a compass or even a heading.

  On her way over in the taxi, she’d game-played how the encounter would work out. When she allowed the tiniest chink to open inside her to let just the smallest ray of hope beam inside, she’d thought that maybe, just maybe, she and Harry could . . . what? Maybe have lunch together? Talk, certainly. She’d imagined it would be awkward, but she didn’t care. She’d been doing awkward for a long time now. All her life, in fact.

  And she’d try to dance around the big 800-pound gorilla—why didn’t their mom’s sister adopt both of them?

  Chloe discovered the answer to that in a diary kept in the safe, tucked away among bank statements as if even in a safe, it wasn’t supposed to be read. In it, Lauren, her adoptive mother, described what she found after the authorities had tracked Lauren down as the sister of Carol Bolt née Tyler, deceased. Lauren had reluctantly flown, alone, to San Diego, the new bride of a man she was slowly beginning to realize had sick desires and a tendency toward violence. But he was rich and powerful and Lauren wanted that. Craved it.

  Unwilling duty brought Lauren to the Open Clinic in San Diego, which she’d noted with distaste in her diary was a “poor person’s hospital.” Chloe could almost feel Lauren’s hostility rising off the pages like steam as she wrote of seeing Christine, her niece, a small bundle, heavily sedated, almost every bone in her body broken, lying barely alive, a tiny lump on the hospital bed.

  Then she’d gone to see her nephew. A tall, big boy. As strong as a man, and dangerous. He’d already killed a man. She’d watched from outside as he’d raged violently, hurling dishes at the wall, screaming his fury at the world.

  No contest. Her husband could possibly tolerate her adopting a little girl who probably wouldn’t live. A big strong man-child who was violent? No way.

  Chloe understood very well that Lauren had condemned Harry to social services. Lauren had refused to rescue Harry, refused to take him home with her.

  Harry so far had been nothing but happy that Chloe had survived. Still, she’d been perfectly prepared to accept his bitterness that he hadn’t been rescued along with her.

  She’d been ready for anything—from tepid acceptance to anger. She’d even have accepted it, in exchange for just seeing him. Just knowing that there was someone else in the world she was related to.

  And if he held her at arm’s length, she’d understand. Maybe they could meet once a year and with time, over the years, maybe some of the awkwardness would pass, if he wasn’t too angry. Maybe they could exchange Christmas cards, the occasional email.

  She’d have been grateful for the smallest crumbs he’d be willing to offer.

  Not in any way had she allowed herself to imagine what had actually happened—full, immediate, warm acceptance into his life. Being instantly folded into his family. Into an extended family because, unlike herself, Harry had managed to forge strong relations. He’d created an actual brotherhood.

  That extended family now included her. A couple of hours ago, she’d had nobody. Right now, it appeared she had Harry and Sam and Mike. Ellen and Nicole. Merry and Grace. And another little niece on the way.

  And a partridge in a pear tree.

  Mike looked down at her, bright blue eyes so very observant.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d end up eating lunch at a brother’s house today, did you?” He kept his deep voice low, only for her.

  She smiled. “You’re reading my mind. Do you have psychic abilities?”

  Mike snorted. “No, of the many things people have called me, psychic is not one of them. It’s just that you looked so scared and anxious when you came. And now you look happy.”

  She looked up at him, amazed at this instant connection she felt, such a rare thing for her. “I was feeling anxious and now I am happy, so you called it.”

  Mike nodded his head forward, where Harry and Ellen and Sam and Nicole had already stopped at the elevator. The cab arrived with a ping and they filed into it, shiny brass internal walls reflecting them so that they looked like eight happy people instead of four. Ellen whispered something in Harry’s ear and he laughed.

  “You can’t possibly be happier than Harry right now. And Ellen and Sam and Nicole.” He waited a beat, his hand tightening slightly on her elbow. “And me.”

  There was no comeback to that one.

  Harry was holding the elevator door open with one big hand. “Come on, honey,” he called out to her.

  No impatience, just eagerness.

  Chloe made people impatient sometimes and there wasn’t much she could do about it. She simply couldn’t move too fast. Walking was a complex miracle for her. It had taken her years and years of effort. She just couldn’t go much faster than a slow walk. If she did, if she tried to hurry, she sometimes fell down. It had happened a few times to her intense humiliation, and once she’d broken a bone that had been broken before. The doctors had told her she couldn’t afford to break it a third time. Better to walk slowly and absorb the impatience of others.

  But Harry wasn’t impatient, just happy. Mike wasn’t radiating impatience, either. He looked like he could run a four-minute mile. Every line of his body spoke of power. Walking at her pace must have been excruciating, but you wouldn’t know it. He matched her slow pace, step by step.

  In the elevator, Mike dropped his hand and Chloe nearly jerke
d with consternation. It was as if an electric current running through her had been switched off. She missed it so much it shocked her.

  “I wonder if we can convince Manuela to make her blue corn tamales?” Harry asked, with a sidelong glance at Nicole.

  “Maybe,” she smiled. “Or maybe not. Manuela has her favorites, she has like this little celebration menu going and I wouldn’t want to mess with that.” She turned to Chloe. “It’ll be interesting to see what Manuela’s menu is for celebrating the arrival of a long-lost sister.”

  “O Happy Day, O Happy Day!” Ellen sang, voice clear and beautiful in the enclosed elevator, like someone ringing a perfect bell.

  “O Happy Day,” Sam rejoined in a massively out-of-tune bass.

  “Yesss!” Harry pumped his fist, kissed his wife’s cheek, then Chloe’s. “Women’s clothing, lingerie, hats, cosmetics and . . . sisters!” Harry mimed an old-fashioned elevator operator calling out the items on a floor.

  Everybody was giddy, Chloe included, by the time the elevator made it down to the subbasement level.

  “See you at the homestead,” Ellen called out as Sam and Nicole peeled away toward their vehicle. “We’ll swing by the Del, get Chloe checked out, and then we’ll come up.”

  Nicole’s shiny black hair belled out from her face as she looked back at them, Chloe holding her group back, as usual. “Okay, guys, champagne starts popping in an hour. If you’re not there we’ll just have to drink it ourselves.”

  “We’ll be there,” Ellen called out. “Make sure it’s French! The real deal! None of that wimpy California stuff!”

  Nicole didn’t turn around, just held up her hand and waggled her fingers. Her husband held the door open for her, helped her in, then rounded his vehicle and took off before Chloe’s group was even halfway across the garage.