Big Bad Wolf (26 page)

When Grace was done, Jaymee offered her another glass of water.
She went to sit at the kitchen table, meeting her scrutiny with knowing eyes, as if she had been aware of being watched.
Her brown eye
s sparkled with a boldness
beyond her years, which from a quick guess, was either fifteen or sixteen.
She took several greedy swallows of water, reminding Jaymee of the earlier conversation in the woods.

“Tell me about your training,” she said, wetting a washcloth for herself.
“Are you sure you can’t take anything but water?”

“Don’t even show me any OJ,” Grace said, then rolled her eyes before smiling cheekily.
“Jed is drying me out. I’m doing survivalist training, a more sophisticated way of calling dieting to near-death.”

“Sounds horrible,” Jaymee remarked casually.

“It is horrible.
You should hear my tummy after two days without food.”

“What?”
Jaymee put down her cloth, shocked.
There was simply no reason to put a young girl through that.
Maybe they were just too poor?
“You’re going to eat right now.”

However, Grace just shook her head emphatically.
“Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Jaymee was outraged.
That cousin of Nick’s must be insane.
“You don’t have any extra pounds to lose, Grace.”
She walked to the refrigerator.
“Come on, don’t be proud.
What would you like to eat?
Chicken?
A hamburger?
Salad?”

Grace leaned back in her chair, her eyes clear and solemn.
“Thank you for caring,” she said, suddenly very polite, “but my dad and I have a program to follow.
We’ll eat tomorrow, don’t worry.
Maybe he’ll even let me have some juice.”
She tempered her refusal with a smile.

Jaymee shook her head in exasperation.
“This is getting more confusing by the minute,” she said to no one in particular.
“Tell me something, Grace, why did your father hurt Nick?”

The girl shrugged, playing with the rim of her glass.
“He was too slow.”

“What?”

“Jed would never hurt Killi…Nick intentionally, Miss Barrows.
Nick was...ah...not paying attention.”

“That doesn’t explain anything!” Jaymee exclaimed.
“People don’t go around hurling missiles at their cousins to see whether they’re paying attention!”

People didn’t go around with green hair either, but here was one person doing that.
In fact, people didn’t go around pretending to be construction workers when they were electronic experts either, and she knew of someone like that too.
All in all, she decided she was seeing too many people who weren’t what they seemed and she was getting heartily tired of it.

Grace just gave her a wink, then examined her fingernails, which were also bright green.
“I’ll leave Nick to explain that one,” she told her, humor in her dark eyes.

Jaymee looked at Grace across the room, not at all sure how to handle a fifteen year-old going on twenty.
“OK, tell me this.
What were you two doing on my property?”

“We traced Nick’s instructions to here, but couldn’t get him alone,” Grace explained.
“I guess Jed decided he didn’t want to wait another night outside the other house.
Too many mosquitoes in your woods, Miss Barrows.”

“Jaymee,” Jaymee said absently, still trying to untangle the knot of information in her brain.
“What do you mean, traced Nick to here?
Didn’t you know where he was all along?”

Grace stretched her back sinuously, reminding Jaymee of a lazy kitten.
Twirling the end of one of her pigtails with a finger, she sat considering an answer for a few moments.
Finally, she replied carefully, “Nick hasn’t told you anything at all, has he?”

It was humiliating to admit such a thing, especially to a cocky teenager.
She refused to feel angry or hurt, emotions she associated with the opposite sex, emotions she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for a long time now.
She had no one but herself to blame, since she had known all along Nick was hiding something from her.

Stiffly, she acknowledged, “He told me he wasn’t running away from the law.”

“Oh, he certainly isn’t a criminal.”
Grace looked in the direction of the door.
“In fact, I hear them coming right now.
I’m sure he’ll answer everything you want to know.”

“Right,” muttered Jaymee under her breath, walking over to refill the girl’s empty glass.
“Like his real name, for starters.
Didn’t you call him some other name?”

The younger girl grinned.
“It’s easy, Jaymee.
With men like my cousin, you just got to ask the right questions.”
She leaned confidentially over the table, a very female smile on her lips, and added, “I’ll teach you how to handle an evasive expert, if you like.”

Jaymee stared at her.
Evasive expert.
He’d used just that term the other day, damn his soul.
Was there anything he said to her
which
wasn’t part of a game?

“Oh joy,” she enthused in a flat voice.

*

Nick didn’t like Jaymee in her present mood at all.
He sensed the change in her the moment he stepped into the kitchen with Jed.
She was standing at the sink, washing the last of the dirt off her hands and arms, her hair tied back in a ponytail.
She glanced up, caught his stare, then looked away.
He especially didn’t like the look in her eyes.
They were that murky color again as she gazed at him like he was some strange insect.
He had expected anger, anticipated a heated argument, not this cool and withdrawn woman.
He didn’t like it.
It infuriated him she closed him off so easily.

After laying down the backpack, he walked in measured steps towards her, as she continued cleaning her hands with calm absorption.
He wanted to grab her by the shoulders, make her pay attention to him.

“Sorry to crowd up your kitchen,” he said instead, although he knew he needed to apologize for more than that.

Strange how very familiar he had become to her, standing there by her sink.
In her house.
Yet, she really didn’t know him at all.
“No big deal,” she told him, dropping a clean, wet cloth into his hand.
Averting her eyes, she turned to the other man.
“Want a drink, Jed?”

“Please, thanks,” Jed answered, putting down his backpack.
He looked at his daughter.
“How many glasses?”

Grace showed him two fingers.
Nick, unable to catch Jaymee’s gaze, joined his niece at the table.
He gave her an affectionate smile as he wiped away the blood and dirt.

“Why the green hair, trouble?”

Grace shrugged.
“It seemed a good idea at the time.”

“You should have seen her date,” Jed said.
He accepted the glass of water and washcloth from Jaymee.
“Thanks, Miss Barrows.
He had purple hair.”

Laughing, Grace defended her date.
“I thought he looked cute.”

“So your dad punished you by making you train with him, huh?” Nick teased, ruffling her green hair.

Grace wrinkled her nose.
“Nah, I was going to drop him, anyhow.”

“Why, didn’t you like the poor boy?” mocked Nick.
“Or, did daddy scare him?”

“I don’t scare her dates.
I reason with them,” Jed said, leaning against the counter.

Grace looked at Jaymee and rolled her eyes.
“He reasoned by standing threateningly outside on the porch and not saying a word to poor Tommy.
Pfffft!”
She stretched, again reminding Jaymee of a sleepy kitten.
“Oh well, it saved me from hurting his feelings that night.”

“Why?” Jaymee asked, intrigued.
Her own dating experience had been sadly lacking, and certainly never would have encompassed a purple-haired date.

“His hair color clashed with mine,” Grace explained with such dead seriousness the adults in the room burst out in laughter.

Well, two of them, anyway, Jaymee corrected.
Jed merely smiled, if that slight tug of those lips could be called a smile.
“We can’t have that,” she agreed.

“I’m staying at the beachside.
You can bunk there, if you like,” Nick told Jed.

“A bed?
A shower?” Grace chipped in, grinning.
“Wow, what’s that?”

Jaymee frowned.
This was going too far.
She usually disliked prying into other people’s business because she resented it when others did it to her, but the idea of a young girl being forced to live without food, bed and shower was too difficult to accept.
Didn’t she need to go to school, or something?
She must help this child.
She looked at Jed.

“Where were you two staying when you were waiting to get Nick alone?”

“I’m sure you know that we were trespassing on your property, Miss Barrows.”
Jed’s light eyes met hers squarely.

“Please call me Jaymee,” she said.
“I don’t understand this training business Grace has been telling me about.
You can’t do that to a growing girl, not allowing her to eat for two days!
It’s unhealthy, to say the least.
And what’s this about no shower or bed?”

Jed shot Nick a glance, which the latter answered with a crooked grin.
“It’s called survival training for a reason,” he told her, in his soft-spoken manner.

“Training for what?” retorted Jaymee.
The man had to see he couldn’t starve his daughter.
“Armageddon?
I’m taking her to an outdoor birthday party tomorrow, and she’ll be eating and drinking.”

She stared back challengingly at the dark and brooding man, very aware of Nick’s watchful gaze on her.
She was still afraid of this cousin of his.
There was something very elemental about him that made her extremely uncomfortable when he stood too near.
But Grace brought out inexplicably motherly instincts in her, and she felt the girl needed a woman’s hand.
There was something wild about her.

Grace laid her head against Nick’s shoulder and purred out, “I like her.
She’s yelling at Dad.”

“Better him than me,” murmured back Nick amiably.
He hid his frustration as he willed Jaymee to meet his eyes, something she had steadfastly avoided since he and Jed came in.
“She does have a temper, Jed.”

“We’ve witnessed it first hand, when she yelled on the roof,” Jed told him.
He placed the empty glass on the counter and straightened up.
“Grace is supposed to eat tomorrow, anyway, so
I won’t argue.
She can go with you.”

“You can come along too,” Jaymee invited.

“No, thank you.
I don’t attend parties.”

“Free food, Dad.
Come on,” coaxed Grace.
“You can torture me later.”

“You go ahead.”

Nick stood up.
“Come on then.
I’ll take you to my place.”
Tossing Jed the keys to his Jeep, he added, “I assume you know which vehicle outside is mine.
I’ll join you in a few.”

Jed nodded.
“Grab the backpack, Grace.”

His daughter obediently did as she was told, and the two of them went outside after greeting Jaymee goodnight.

Nick studied Jaymee as she gathered up the empty glasses and dirty washcloths.
She was banging the glasses a lot louder than needed, although the blank expression on her face betrayed nothing.
He felt his own anger surging as she gave him the silent treatment.
Oh no, she wasn’t going to withdraw the same way she did every time her father bothered her.
He wouldn’t allow it.
A few swift strides and he was behind her at the sink and without warning, he turned the water off.

Jaymee calmly wrung the washcloths dry.
She fought the urge to lean back against his hard body, to feel his arms around her again.
“So, where did you learn how to move like that?” she casually asked, flapping the wet cloths.

Nick reached over and pulled the cloths out of her hand before turning her around.
“It won’t work, you know.”

“What won’t work?”

“I won’t let you withdraw from me, Jaymee.
You can try your polite sarcasm on someone else, like your father.
Look at me, damn it!”
He forced her chin up.
“I know I owe you some answers, but I’ve to go with Jed right now.
Will you be up late tonight?”