Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) (14 page)

“Just need the bathroom.”

He smiled and released her wrist. “First door on the left.” She stood, swayed, found her feet and moved gingerly to the bathroom.

Yep. Quite sore. She peed, carefully cleaned herself, and then looked for a glass so that she could get a drink. Nothing. So she put her mouth to the stream from the faucet and drank that way.

When she came back to his bedroom, he was sitting up in bed, his legs under the covers. His bed was gorgeous. A dark, reddish wood, polished to a high gleam, it was a four-poster bed with heavy, elaborate posts. He’d neatened the linens and turned the other side down for her. A bit suspicious of what was going on, she eased her sore self into the bed and looked at him, waiting for . . . something.

He handed her a tall glass of ice water. “Thought you might need some hydration.” Smiling, she took the glass and nodded her thanks.

His expression was concerned. “You okay, Sport?”

She drank the water in long, loud gulps, draining the large glass. “Yeah. Just . . . sobering up.

“Should I be sorry about what we just did? Did I take advantage?” He handed her his half-full glass of water, and she drank that, too.

“No. Just—I usually know a guy better before I do that.” She was feeling
really guarded as the giddy tequila haze ebbed away. Jesus Christ. She was in his house. She had no idea where he lived. She was naked and had no idea where her clothes were—oh, wait. By his front door. He’d ruined her top. She had no weapon. She was completely vulnerable to him. She’d let him—no, she’d
begged
him to—go up her ass. Without a condom. This was a ton of trust she’d inadvertently given him, this man at whom she’d been aiming a kill shot not much more than a day ago.

He took the second empty glass from her
and set it on the nightstand before he scooted closer, picking up her hand in his. “I think we’re getting to know each other in the important ways first.” He lifted her hand to his mouth for a kiss. His lips still brushing the back of her hand, he said. “You amaze me, Lilli. I’m not afraid to say I’m gettin’ caught up here.”

So was she; she knew it. She shook her head. This was all a bad, bad idea. She had no business getting involved with him. “Isaac, I”—she was overtaken by a huge yawn. Embarrassed, she stuttered, “God. I-I’m-I’m sorry.”

He laughed. “It’s cool. Let’s sleep. We can talk tomorrow.” He shifted to lay his head on the pillow, and he stretched out his arm to invite her close. He wanted her to lie on him and sleep. No. That was another bad, bad idea.

He obviously sensed her hesitation, because he smiled and said,
“Lilli, I don’t bite—well, only when you ask me to. I just want to feel you. There hasn’t been a woman in this bed in a very, very long time.

Every time he said her name, she felt like he was pulling her closer to some point of no return. She relented, and lay down in the warm curl of his arm, her head pillowed on his firm, gorgeous chest. He kissed her head and turned out the light.

~oOo~

“Lilli! Fuck—Lilli!”

She came awake with a start. She was straddling Isaac, and he was holding her hands—curled into claws—away from his head. She relaxed immediately and leapt away from him and off the bed. Her head felt like elephants were doing the merengue on her cerebellum.

“Sorry. Sorry. Fuck.” She backed toward the door. Goddamn it, she wished she knew how to get back to her place.

He got up and came toward her. “It’s okay. You just freaked me out. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just a dream.”

“Helluva dream, Sport.”

“Yeah. I’m okay—it’s gone now. I’ll just—you have a couch or something I can sleep on?” It was still
too early to be light.

He reached her and took her hands. “Nope. No couch for sleeping. Come back. I’m cool. You’re cool. We’ll just go back to sleep.”

She didn’t want to, but
fuck
her head hurt. “Okay. Got any aspirin?”

He grinned. “You bet. Here, just get back in bed”—he helped her in and covered her up—“and I’ll be right back.”

He brought her aspirin with another big glass of water. She took the pills and drank all the water. When he got back into bed, he pulled her down, her back to his chest. Tired, hurting, and freaking out, Lilli didn’t resist. They spent the rest of the night, quietly, sleeping like spoons.

~oOo~

When she woke again, the room was bright with morning sun, and Isaac was sitting, fully clothed in his usual Johnny Cash ensemble, on the side of the bed, his hand on her leg.

“Morning, hellcat. You feelin’ okay?”

She was, actually. Some residual headache, and some soreness in her nethers, but she felt okay. “Yeah. Hungry. Do you have breakfast things here?”

He winked and patted her thigh. “I’m not much in the kitchen, but there’s coffee, and a bunch of different kinds of cereal, hot or cold.” He dangled a black t-shirt on his finger. “I owe you a new top, and I’m good for it, but you can have this for now. The rest of your clothes are on that chair in the corner.” He nodded toward a really nice wood and leather chair, on which she could see her jeans and underwear.
“I put out a fresh towel if you want a shower. Sorry I don’t have an extra toothbrush, but the paste is on the counter.

She felt awkward and shy. She hadn’t been in this position in . . . she’d never been in this position before. “Thanks, Isaac.”
She sat up.

He moved closer to the head of the bed and leaned over her, his hands on either side of her hips. He kissed her gently, running his tongue softly over her lips. “Mmmm. Don’t mention it, Sport. You and I need to talk, though, I think.”

She agreed, so she nodded.

“Okay. I’ll meet you in the kitchen. Down the hall, to your right, through the living room.” He gave her another quick kiss and left the room.

~oOo~

She felt fresher, less sore, and nearly at full power when she found him in his kitchen. She’d taken a mini-tour on the way, not snooping, but paying attention to what
she saw. There was a lot—a
lot
—of beautiful wood furniture throughout his house. Must be worth a fortune. What décor he had was mostly wood, too, some amazing sculpted pieces made of different colors and types of wood. Even the picture frames were lovely. There was a wall of photos in the main hallway, and she’d lingered over those. Isaac seemed to have come from a family of four—mom, dad, older sister, and Isaac. The photos seemed to stop when Isaac was in his early teens. As she went on through the living room, she noted with pleasure a full wall of gorgeous bookcases, nearly overflowing with books.

The kitchen was a very basic country kitchen which didn’t seem to have been updated since the
1940s. Even the appliances were old—a monstrous white double gas range, and a refrigerator that long predated the “frost-free” era. The sink was a huge porcelain thing with drainboards on both sides. The cabinets were wood, painted white, with fabric front panels. Lilli thought there were tiny, faded strawberries on the fabric. The floor was an old fashioned sheet linoleum in a faded red color with little gilt flakes in it.

There was a long, narrow table, with beautifully turned legs, under a big window. On it sat a coffeemaker, a pop-up toaster, and a microwave.

Lilli was starting to get the idea that Isaac lived in his childhood home. He lived alone in his childhood home.

In the
center of the room was an oblong table made of cherry or mahogany. It had a lustrous finish, like all of the wood she’d seen as she’d found her way into this room. He was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. When she’d come around the corner, he seemed to be simply staring into space. He turned now and smiled broadly as she entered. “You look good, Sport. I’m thinking there’s nothing you look bad in.”

She liked wearing his t-shirt. She swam in it, but she still felt sexy wearing it. “Well, orange is very much not my color. For future reference.”

He winked. “Better stay out of trouble, then.” She didn’t catch the joke at first, then—
oh, orange jumpsuits
,
got it
—she rolled her eyes.

“Cereal’s in the left cabinet, bowls
and cups in the right. There’s milk in the fridge and coffee under the window. Help yourself.”

She could feel him watching her as she crossed the room and got out a bowl and a cup. She put them on the table and then turned for some cereal. When she opened the cabinet, she squealed.

Isaac jumped in his seat behind her. “Fuck! What?”

“Oh. My.
God
. You have Cookie Crisp? Chocolate Chip Cookie Crisp? I
love
Cookie Crisp! I haven’t had any in
years
.”

He laughed. “I have a thing for cereal. I don’t cook, and if I’m too busy to hit the diner, I’ll just have cereal. I like the sweet shit for when I’m stoned.”

“I like the sweet shit for when I’m
breathing
. Oh, this just makes my day!” She brought the box to the table and filled her bowl until it mounded above the rim.

“How are you gonna get milk in there?”

“Watch and learn, watch and learn.” She went to the fridge and pulled out a glass bottle of milk. Then, in the system she and her girlfriends in middle school had perfected, she slowly poured milk into the cracks and crevices left by the little cookie wafers. She got plenty of milk in the bowl without displacing a wafer.

Isaac nodded. “Impressive. If you love that shit so much, why don’t you just buy yourself some?”

Lilli sat at his beautiful table and tucked into her bowl of delicious decadence, feeling relaxed and happy. With her mouth full of cereal, she shrugged and answered. “Don’t know. Wasn’t breakfast at our house, and I never think of cereal when I’m at the store.” She swallowed and filled her mouth with more scrumptious morsels.

He laughed. “You’re fuckin’ cute, you know that?”
He stood and got himself a bowl, then reached for the Cookie Crisp and milk. Lilli resisted the urge to bat his hand away from the box. It was his, after all.

A
s they ate, Isaac watched her, his sideways smile planted on his face. Then, when they were done, and, still grinning, he’d watched her drink the milk from the bowl, he put the dishes in the sink and said. “Okay, Sport. Time to talk.”

Suddenly, Lilli felt a great deal less relaxed and happy. She waited for him to sit back down, and then she started, “Isaac, about what you said—”

He held up his hand to stop her. “We shouldn’t start there. We should start someplace else.” He stood again and left the room. When he came back, he was holding a small sheaf of white printer paper. “Let’s start here.” He laid the sheets in front of her and sat back down.

Lilli looked down at a print-off of an article from the online edition of The Stars and Stripes, the newspaper of the US Armed Force
s. The first page showed the headline: ON THE FAST TRACK: BLACK HAWK PILOT, YOUNGEST WOMAN TO REACH O-4 RANK. There was a photo of Lilli, in her flight gear, her helmet under her arm, standing next to her copter. The caption read, simply,
Maj. Lillian Accardo
.

Fuck
.

CHAPTER TEN

Isaac watched Lilli read the headline of the article about her and waited for her reaction.

He’d had some time to process the information he had. He’d been shocked at first, then a good deal more suspicious. As he thought about it, though, he couldn’t see the threat. What he’d learned of Lilli over the past several days didn’t jive with some military intrigue focused on his club or his town. What had happened between them the night before had only strengthened that understanding. So now he was simply impressed.

Bart, genius geek that he was, had managed to find a crack along the sides of that wall. He still couldn’t get through it, so Isaac had no idea what the fuck Lilli was doing in Signal Bend, but he had this, and so he had her name. Bart was working on getting more of her history, but Isaac was hoping that he would now hear it from Lilli herself.

She turned and said, “How long have you had this?”

Understanding why it was an important question, he answered, “Yesterday. After I left your place. That call I got? Was Bart.”

“What else do you know?”

“For now, that’s it. Bart found that article. He’ll be looking for more, of course, but not till tomorrow. I’m hoping he won’t need to bother. Will he?”

For a full minute or more, Lilli just stared at him. He could almost see the gears turning; he just didn’t know where they were headed. Finally, she cleared her throat shifted sideways in her chair. “You have plans today? That phone going to go off and interrupt us?”

“No plans. Shit shuts down on Sundays, for the most part. That phone rings, it’s an emergency. My other phone rings, I’ll ignore it. We talkin’?”

Her expression was flat and stony. This was not the woman squealing over kid cereal fifteen minutes ago. “We’re talking. First thing I’m saying, before I give you anything, is my guy is better than your guy. I know more about you than you know about me. You want to hurt me, I take you and your club down, too.”

His stomach coiled into a knot
instantly. Christ. Had he misread her that badly? Had he put his club at risk for a good fuck? He leaned forward, his forearms on the table, and snarled, “You here to hurt me and mine?”

She shook her head. “No, Isaac. I knew nothing about your club until
a couple of days ago. When you threatened me that morning, I got myself some security. That’s all it is. I’m not here for you, and I have no wish to hurt you. I’m protecting myself.”

“But your guy knows what you know.” Fuck.
Fuck
. He’d misplayed every turn.

“He does. He won’t hurt you, either.”

“So now I’m trusting someone I’ve never even seen?”

“Looks that way.”

Isaac shoved his chair back and stood up, nearly tipping it over. He stalked around the kitchen for a minute and then came back and leaned on the table, facing her. “If my club or my town gets hurt because—because of—this”—he gestured wildly between them—“I will rain unholy fire, I swear to God.”

“It’s called Mutually Assured Destruction. I can’t hurt you because you can hurt me, and vice versa. I’m going to tell you what’s behi
nd the wall that Bart won’t breach—not for weeks, anyway. He’s really good, though, to have found this”—she pushed at the pages in front of her—“I could get him a contract if he wanted it.”

Isaac snorted. “He’s a convicted felon, Sport. Government won’t want him.”

“You’d be surprised who the government wants for certain kinds of jobs. All the hackers I know have records. But that’s beside the point. I know about the meth. I know your contacts. I have interesting details that you think you protected. I don’t care about any of it, unless you’re coming for me. It’s not why I’m here.” She crossed her leg over her knee. “So the question is, are you coming for me?”

She had completely blindsided him. He’d been prepared—or he told himself he was, anyway—for her to be working against the club
somehow. He’d hoped—and expected, truthfully—that she had no interest in the club at all. It seemed he’d been right, until he’d made her feel threatened. Fuck. Now, she was primly telling him that she could fuck him, his club, and his town hard whenever she felt like it. And he had nothing on her but an apparently glorious military record. He slammed his fist into the table. “FUCK!”

Very calmly, she said, “Isaac, sit. I don’t want to hurt you. If we’re being straight, then let’s be straight. I will tell you
some things, but it cannot—
cannot
—leave this house. And there are some things I just can’t tell you. In fact, I can’t tell you a lot that has to do with the reason I’m here under an assumed name.”

He sat. “What the fuck? That’s what I need to know.”

“I’m not in the Army any longer. Now I do very highly classified contract work. My identity is concealed because there aren’t many who do what I do. It’s also why we don’t work from DC. We’re spread out in out-of-the-way places. I’m out of bounds to tell you that much. I won’t tell you what it is I do.”

“Why is the wall so obvious?”

“So that they know as soon as someone starts looking. Well-concealed security has a blind spot; it takes time to see that anyone’s poking around. A hacker who hits a wall like this, though, is known right away. Bart is tagged, I’m sure. No matter how good he is, if he probed hard enough to come up with that article, then they know he’s looking. He needs to wipe his slate and start fresh. You should probably use that only-for-emergencies phone and tell him that now, in case he’s putting in some off-the-clock time. The biggest threat I posed to you before I did my own digging was you digging into me.”

Isaac nodded, stood and pulled his burner out. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was so angry his hands were shaking. But who was he angry at? Her? He felt betrayed, but had she betrayed him? How? No—he was angry at himself. He’d been sloppy. And he was in deep with this woman. He’d spent most of the hours after her nightmare watching her sleep, fucking
guarding
her, feeling protective and—and—FUCK.

Bart answered, clearly from a deep sleep. Good; he hadn’t been working. “Yeah.”

“Stay off the Lilli thing, Bart. Do NOT fuck with it again. She says she’s sure you’re tagged. Do you know what that means?” Because Isaac didn’t, not really.

“Fuck. Yeah. I’m on it.”
He sounded fully awake now.

Isaac ended the call and came back to the table. “Is this talk gonna have any satisfaction for me, or are you just going to keep ruining my fucking day?” Jesus, he needed to punch something.

“You know my name is Lilli Accardo. You know I was an officer and a pilot in the Army. I’m not from Texas. I’m from California. The rest of it is just normal stuff that people share in the process of getting to know each other. It’s protected because it’s identifying, nothing more. So if you still want to get to know me, then we should maybe spend the day doing that. Both of us. But I’m still Lilli Carson in this town. Anyone who doesn’t know differently right now should never know differently. I assume your club knows how to keep quiet.”

He nodded. But t
here was too much missing. The moves weren’t clear. “You haven’t told me shit I didn’t know. Why here? Why Signal Bend? Nothing you’ve told me should have put you in need of protection from us. You have something else to hide, something that can hurt you.”

Again, she simply looked at him, thinking.
Then: “If I tell you the rest, it stays between you and me.
Only
you and me. The risk I take to tell you is huge.”

No, it wasn’t. She’d seen to that. “That’s why you got intel on us, right? So there wouldn’t be that risk?
You seem pretty fucking safe.” She was like a completely different person. Not the prickly, bantering woman he’d met, not the wild bedmate, not the free and delightful drunk. Not the kid eating cookie cereal. This version was calculating and eerily calm.

“I’m here to kill someone.”

Stunned, he sat there with his mouth open, unable to think what to say. Finally, words happened. “Are you telling me you’re a government
assassin
?”

But she shook her head. “No, this is a personal project. Someone who hurt me and mine very badly in Afghanistan and got away with it. I consider it an assassination, as do the people helping me. But legally speaking, I plan to murder him.” She smiled. “And now you can hurt me, too.”

Oh, shit. Isaac’s mind raced, trying to fit this new information into his understanding of her. And now he had a whole new set of problems related to Lilli. “Who? Someone in Signal Bend? In my town?”

“No, but someone fairly close. I wouldn’t move into the same small town as my target. There’s some modest distance between us.”

He tried to think. He knew everybody in town and virtually everybody in a radius ten miles or more around the town. Who’d been in Afghanistan? He could think of a few people, but no one he’d peg for doing something that would warrant that kind of retaliation. He took a calming breath. Stepping back from this a little, he ordered his thoughts. His club and his town were safe from her. He believed that. She had nothing to fear from him, so he had nothing to fear from her. And if what this guy did was as bad as all that, then he’d help her take the fucker down. “You gotta tell me who he is, baby, and what he did.”

But she shook her head. “No, Isaac. You need to stay out of it. Knowing any more than what I’ve told you puts you at risk if I go down. And that puts your club and town at risk.”

“And if I want to help?”

“The people with the most vested interest are involved. There’s a plan in place, and we’re working it.” She leaned forward. “Is that enough to trust me?”

She was sitting at his table, wearing his t-shirt, her beautiful hair long and loose, lying over her shoulder. He was falling in love with her; he’d understood that last night, watching her sleep. He wondered if the dream she had—the nightmare—had to do with this guy she was after. If someone had hurt her, Isaac wanted him dead.

He trusted her. From what he could tell, she played it straight or said why she wasn’t. And he wanted her. He wanted to be able to trust her, and he wanted her to trust him. “Yeah. I trust you. I get any of that back?”

“I trust you, Isaac. I wouldn’t have told you any of this if I didn’t. I’d have just used what I know and gotten you out of my way.”

“Jesus, Lilli. That’s cold.”

“No. It’s smart. Getting involved with you is not. But here I am.”

Isaac got up from his chair and went to squat next to hers. They had an opportunity to turn this conversation, this day, this thing between them around. He put his hands on her thigh. “Are you involved with me, Sport?”

She slid her hand under his, and he folded his fingers around it. “Yeah. Way too deep.” She leaned down and kissed him.

With a sigh, Isaac laid his forehead on her leg. “What are we gonna do about that?”

She laughed. “Why don’t you show me around your house?”

“Good idea.” He stood and held out his hand.

~oOo~

He showed her around the house, told her that his family had lived in it for generations. He was the first to live in it alone, in fact. The family farm had been large, but all of the arable land had been sold off, and now only the homestead, on seven acres, was left. His grandfather had been the last to work any farmland; Isaac’s father had been the last to sell it.

Lilli made several comments about the beauty of the wood pieces throughout the house, and he was glad to hear it. He was looking forward to taking her outside. But first, she wanted to look at the wall of photos. That gallery had grown for generations. Isaac was the only one not to have added a single photo. He’d changed the frames but had not added any new pictures.

He pointed out
grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and people so far removed generationally they could rightly be called ancestors. She pointed to pictures from his life, and he identified his parents and his sister. “That’s my mom. She died when I was twelve.”

“She was beautiful.”

“Yeah, she was. She hanged herself.”

Lilli turned fast, he
r eyes wide. He never talked about his mother—hell, his family—at all. There were patches who only knew what happened through rumor and gossip. She put her hand on his arm, and he muscled away the urge to shake her off.