Lace & Lead (novella) (8 page)

Shit
. He’d offended her. Big time.

Now she looked up at him and, for some reason, meeting her gaze made him feel more than a little uncomfortable. “Why do you hate the aristocracy so much?”

I don’t want to answer this
.

“I don’t give a shit about the aristocracy. Most of them are the reason I’m still in business.”

She continued to watch him as he ate the noodles. Damn things were like live worms going down now.

“I’m not stupid,” she said with quiet ferocity. “I know that’s not the reason.”

“Look…I don’t want to talk about it.”

He put the noodles down and collected the clothing bag while she continued to eat and watch him.

“Here.” He tossed the bag on the seat next to her, hoping it would distract her from her current line of questioning.

She put down her beef and he went back to eating his noodles and standing around like a lame-ass.

As soon as she pulled out the first dress, he knew he was forgiven for being late back home. And that she’d forgotten to grill him about his blatant dislike of all things blue-blood.

“Oh, Peirce,” she whispered, running a hand over the simple fabric. He’d worried that all the clothes would be too plain for her taste, but the moisture rising in her eyes said otherwise. “This is why you were late? You did this for me?”

“I didn’t want you going out on your own.” His embarrassment was a surprise.

“Thank you,” she said in that same low tone, but her voice was throatier.

“Sure.”

Tension broken, they finished dinner together in mutual silence. She helped him clean up—a misnomer, since all they had to do was throw the leftovers in the fridge and trash the empty containers. She stood awkwardly in the kitchen for a moment before Peirce realised she was waiting to ask him something.

“Need anything?”

“Do you have an extra blanket? A pillow?”

“Yeah.”

“If you don’t mind, I was going to sleep on the couch.”

“Well, that’s a problem.”

Her eyes widened. “It is?”

“Yeah. See, I was planning on sleeping on the couch.”

“I—”

“You get the bed tonight, honey.”

She didn’t seem quite sure how to respond to the courtesy, so he did the only thing he could think of to move the conversation along.

“It’s been a long day for me, so you should know now that tonight I need my beauty rest. It’ll break your heart, but I can’t be between the sheets with you until tomorrow.”

She rolled her eyes and went past him to the bedroom.

No reason for her to know that the thought of being under the sheets with her was making him hard.
Again
.

“Good night, Peirce,” she said.

“Right. Good luck.”

Good luck? With what? Crashing and getting a few hours of shut eye?

“And Peirce?”

He looked at her. She was undoing her hair and the soft tendrils falling around her face made her look like too damn much of a temptation.

“I’m sorry you can’t make it to bed tonight,” she said with a shy smile. The door closed softly behind her.

Dammit
.

Chapter 6

Callie shook her head. “Don’t you trust me?” she challenged.

“Sure, I do. I just don’t trust those dumbasses to help you move the Crawler without doing more damage to it,” he shot back.

“Fine!” She threw up her hands, exasperated. “I’ll wait until you drag your sorry butt back here to help me.”

“Deal.”

Mock-argument over, Callie couldn’t help giving in to the smile that was tugging at the corner of her mouth. It was infectious and once it was there on her face, he couldn’t help grinning back.

“Good to know we still hate each other,” she joked.

“All brothers hate their little sisters,” Peirce said. “Always getting in the way, messing with our shit.”

“Stopping you from hooking up with Sergeant Bailey?”

Peirce shrugged. “It didn’t work out.”

“You dumped her because she talked bad about me at mess.”

“She was a bitch.”

“She didn’t know you were related to me.”

He shrugged again. “No skin off my ass. She’d have been a lousy lay anyway.”

Callie grimaced. “There are some things I should never know about my brother. Your sex life is definitely on that list.”

He was really going to make her squeamish when the radio crackled to life. Two minutes later, he was avoiding the rotating blades of an Eagle and scrambling in beside the rest of his assault team and two medics.

“See you tonight!” he hollered to Callie over the downdraft of the propellers.

“Love you, brother!”

It always irked him how she’d call that to him every time he took off. Made him feel like he was seven or something and she was chasing after him on his way to school, stopping at the corner of the sidewalk that she wasn’t allowed to go beyond, a tiny blonde thing in mismatched clothes calling how much she loved him to the world.

He was on the battlefield, ignoring the bullets ricocheting off the metal as he worked to get the Stallions back up and running. The medics and he had their hands full; IEDs had stopped the convoy dead in its tracks. At least eight men down, one Stallion unfit for anything but parts.

He got the other two back in order, running back and forth from the dead vehicle with stripped parts, maps, data chips, anything that could be used by the enemy, while the medics loaded up the wounded in the Eagle and the backs of the other two Stallions. Finally, they took off back toward Cordova.

He could remember the conversation. Jacob Miller’s wisecrack about how long it took Peirce to get the Stallions back in order. His retort that most gods had days to do what he’d done in seven minutes. Jacob’s next joke was cut off by the rumble that shook the entire Stallion.

The fireball in the distance.

He could hear her screaming.

Peirce jolted awake, lost in the fog of the nightmare. Normally he didn’t wake until he was thrown to the ground by his commanding officer while trying to run into the burning rubble of the garage to find Callie. Until he felt the hot metal and burning wood searing his hands, blistering them, leaving him to wake up with phantom pain from wounds long since healed.

But this time was different because someone was actually screaming.

He ran to the bedroom, adrenaline surging, and shook Emmaline as she scissored on the bed.

“Emma! Emma, wake up!”

She stopped once his hands were on her, his fingers digging into her shoulders with enough force he worried she’d be bruised. She stared up at him blankly.

He didn’t know why, but it felt right to press his forehead to hers, stroke her hair, run a hand up and down the column of her throat as he whispered promises that she’d be okay, that the nightmare would fade. Gradually, she stopped whimpering with every breath she took in. Her pulse stopped fluttering in her neck like a bird flinging itself against cage bars. She rolled to her side and buried herself against him, wrapping his huge body over her tiny one like he was some kind of blanket.

Even though his mind told him he should move once he felt her body relaxing again into sleep, he couldn’t pull himself away from her.

In fact, he was almost asleep when she asked tremulously, “I woke you up?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You stopped the worst part.”

“Cordova?”

“Every time.” He pressed his face down into her hair, grateful for her warmth and scent and softness. “Plymouth?”

She shuddered against him and he tightened his grip on her. “I can’t forget it,” she admitted.

“It’s okay to accept that.”

“Have you?”

“I’ve accepted she’s gone.”

Silence.

Finally, “Do you acknowledge that you couldn’t have done anything else?”

She had him there. He shifted uncomfortably. “No.”

She didn’t let him pull away. Instead, she nuzzled in closer. When she sighed, he could feel her body loosening even more, the pull of sleep winning her over. “You’ll keep me safe from them?” she asked.

Mercenaries or nightmares, his answer was the same. “Of course.”

Emmaline blinked slowly, trying to shrug off the remnants of the dream. There was darkness, the sensation of weight across her chest, uncertainty of where she was. There was a low grumble next to her and the weight on her chest disappeared.

She turned her head and saw Peirce stretched out beside her. His blonde hair was plastered down unevenly from his fitful sleep. She took in his long eyelashes, the narrow scar across an eyebrow, the sign of a formerly broken nose.

It was his mouth that really fascinated her. Even in his sleep, Peirce scowled. Before she’d seen him smile, she’d wondered if he didn’t know how to move his face into any expression other than a scowl, a smirk or a leer. Now she knew that he only smiled on rare occasions.

She couldn’t help herself. She traced his lips with a finger, still unable to comprehend
this
mouth had been on hers. She’d never tell him since it was far too embarrassing, but his kiss had been better than she’d ever imagined.

Her fingertip had just brushed the other corner of his mouth when those blue eyes snapped open and stared right at her. She was frozen, finger still on his lips, nervous and guilty about getting caught.

To her surprise, he just blinked at her and closed his eyes again.

“I—” she began.

“Give me ten more minutes and I’ll get up to shower,” he interrupted, settling in deeper to his pillow.

“Oh. Okay.”

She was getting out of the bed when his arm snaked out and pulled her back to him. He made a noise of appreciation and mumbled, “You smell good.”

“Thank you?”

But he was out again. Probably a military trick…He must have been used to getting sleep whenever and however he could.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to doze for a little bit.

She didn’t wake until the shower turned off. Peirce emerged wearing nothing but a towel and some lucky water droplets. One slid down his shoulder, over his pec, down to the scars, tripping over the uneven skin and vanished as it soaked into the towel.

She swallowed when she saw the scars, but they didn’t upset her like they had the first time. They were reminders of what he’d been through, that was all. She had a few scars of her own, so who was she to cast the first stone?

“I’ve got to go meet your dad,” he said casually as he pulled clothes out of his drawers.

Panic squeezed at her chest. “Why?”

“To let him know he broke contract.”

“I thought he didn’t want to meet you for a few days.”

“True. But I’ve decided I don’t give a shit what he wants.” He looked back at her, taking her in slowly. “I want you to be able to have a life again.”

She managed a weak smile. “No more being trapped in an ivory tower?”

“Not unless you want to be there.”

She had to stall him somehow. “Would you take my jewellery with you? See what you can get for it?”

He nodded his assent. “Kai’s better at it than I am. I’ll hand it off and bring back what he gets for it.”

“Okay.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and waited patiently while she tugged at the hem of her skirt. But after a few minutes, he wasn’t so patient. Heaving a sigh, he finally passed her his knife, which made the process far easier. She handed over all the jewels and his knife, which he placed on the dresser.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

But she couldn’t stop the dread that was seeping into her bones. She blurted out, “Do you have to meet him face to face?”

Peirce gave her an inscrutable look. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

She saw his jaw tighten. He grabbed his clothes and went back to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. She waited anxiously as he got dressed, wishing she could explain what was running through her mind.

Rationally, she knew Peirce could handle himself, but the irrational Emmaline was afraid that something would happen to him.

Peirce stepped back into the bedroom. His canvas pants were worn but clean, his t-shirt tight across his chest. He ignored her as he put on his belt, cuff, comm and gloves. The knife was slipped into a boot sheath. The jewellery tucked into one of the many pant pockets. He took a slim armoured vest from one of the hooks in the closet and strapped it on, wincing just a little as he pulled on his shoulder. His jacket covered the vest but allowed access to the gun he strapped at the small of his back.