The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (21 page)

“I used to get blonde highlights put in my
hair because my boyfriend didn’t like the red.”

“Again, more evidence that he was an
idiot,” Cory says, admiring her drying hair. He’s trying to imagine
what she’d look like with blonde hair, but it doesn’t fit. Her hair
is perfect the way it is. In its tousled
state,
it looks even better. It goes with her tiny
brown freckles, even the ones on her exposed bare shoulder since
his shirt is too big for her, enabling him a glimpse. She’s also
definitely not wearing a bra. No strap is showing where the
sweatshirt has slid down her shoulder.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asks.

A flash of lightning illuminates the cabin
for a moment. The color reminds him of her eye color, a pale,
iridescent, shimmery gray.

“You have bad decision-making abilities?” he
asks.

She shakes her head and bites her lower lip.
Then she steps closer to him.

“No, that’s not it,” she says
thoughtfully
, tapping her fingertip to
her bottom lip.

“Of course not,” he concedes because he’s
smart enough to know that this isn’t something he can win.

She sways hard, and Cory reaches out for her.
Somehow she stays upright and even waves away his offered help.
She’s stubborn as hell. It’s probably a good thing since that
likely helped keep her alive on the road for so long.

“Why am I unlovable?” she asks with sad gray
eyes.

Cory contemplates her for a moment before
replying.

“I can’t see that you are. Don’t be so
hard on yourself,” he
says
softly
, his gaze dropping to her full lower lip. Her
cheeks are rosy with high color either from the alcohol or the heat
of the fire or both. She looks completely
lovable in
this moment. Maybe not lovable exactly
but sexy would probably better describe his arch nemesis. He rarely
looks at her for any extended amount of time. She’s his best
friend’s sister. She’s off-limits on every possible level. Plus,
most of the time she’s railing at him like a super
bitch.

“I am unlovable. Trust me.”

A frown line mars the smooth skin between her
pale brows.

“Jason’s an idiot,” Cory tells her on a
nod.

“That was it. My one chance to find someone,”
she states emphatically and waves her hand in the air as if
swatting at bugs.

“I think you have more choices than you
know,” Cory informs her quietly.

“Nope. That was it. The well’s gone dry.”

“You don’t notice the guys looking at you
when we go to town. I have. Your brother for damn sure has. I think
that poor guy’s gonna need blood pressure meds one of these
days.”

“They’re probably just thinking about
cheating on me, too,” she says as if it is a statement of fact and
not a ridiculously silly comment.

“I don’t think so. More likely they’re
thinking about not letting you out of
bed
long enough to cheat on you,” he states and
places his hands on his hips. Paige steps toward him. Cory’s eyes
narrow suspiciously. Her eyes slide slowly from his stomach, which
causes the muscles there to involuntarily flex under her scrutiny,
up to his chest and then his face. “I think you should go to
bed.”

Cory half turns to move away when Paige
flings herself at him. Her arms link around his neck, and she
presses herself against his chest. Her mouth smashes against his.
His eyes widen, and he holds perfectly still. She doesn’t do
either. Her eyes are tightly closed. Her mouth moves painfully
against his. Her teeth even clink against his once. Her fingertips
dig into the long hair at his neck and curl tightly. There is no
way in hell he’s touching her. He’s not going to return her drunken
kiss, either. It is the most unmoving, non-sexual kiss of his life.
He can taste the hooch on her breath, smell it on her. She’s
reeking of alcohol, but under the scent of liquor there is a tint
of rainwater and something flowery. And she’s never going to
remember this tomorrow, so he doesn’t want to take it any further
with her. He really hopes she doesn’t remember this.

She presses her breasts against his chest,
which starts to stir something in the pit of his stomach. Then she
coughs once into his mouth, stumbles back, and projectile vomits
onto his bare stomach and chest.

“Oh my God!” she cries with wide, surprised
eyes.

Cory scowls hard at her and says with
sardonic humor, “Well, that was sexy.”

She repeats her religious invective four more
times.

Paige runs to the bathroom, slams the
door and continues her vomit eruptions into the toilet. At least,
Cory hopes she’s puking in the
toilet
and not hitting the floor. He has to clean himself. He
doesn’t really have a desire to clean vomit from the bathroom
floor, too.

Left with no choice, he goes outside to the
hand-pump water spigot. He splashes handfuls of icy cold water onto
his chest and stomach all while getting rained on again. He’s
pretty sure he invents a few new cuss words in the process of
freezing himself. What the hell was she thinking? Homemade
moonshine is a dangerous, inhibition-removing tool in the wrong
hands. He knows that Simon’s sister hates his guts. She basically
lets him know this every possible opportunity she gets. She glares
at him, insults him, threatens him every chance she gets and openly
judges him. She’s a royal pain in the ass most of the time.

When he goes back inside, she’s still in the
bathroom. Cory knocks once on the new door that Derek installed the
other day and enters. She is still kneeling and praying to the
porcelain gods for forgiveness and empathy that isn’t likely to
come. He steps into the tiny bathroom and holds her hair back. It’s
the least he can do. She dry heaves a few times and seems to have
emptied her stomach. Lucky for him, she’d only hit him with alcohol
and not the giant wedding feast they’d all consumed earlier.

Cory flushes the toilet for her and helps
Paige stand by pulling her up by her slim arm. He takes the cup
from the small ledge of the sink where they brush their teeth and
pours some water for her. She rinses her mouth and spits. Cory
rushes to the other room again and grabs a clean shirt from his
pile. He passes it into the bathroom without looking in. Then he
leads her from the bathroom once she’s in another one of his
shirts, a navy blue long-sleeved tee.

When they get to the other room, he
even helps her
into bed
, which
for her is a mattress on the floor next to her brother’s bed. He
pulls her blankets to her chin and squats beside Paige on his
haunches.

Without meeting his
gaze
,
she says,
“Sorry. I was…”

“Nothing. It’s forgotten already. Don’t
worry about it,” he forgives her. If their roles were reversed, he
highly doubts she’d so easily let him off the hook. From what
little he knows of women, they can be
fairly
good grudge holders. Hell, Paige hates him
for a threat he’d made a month ago when he thought she was with a
group of criminals who’d taken over the farm. He’s apologized for
it, but she is reluctant to let it go. This one seems to hold the
record for grudge holding.

“Simon’s…” she says
on
a groan and doesn’t complete her
thought.

“Doesn’t need to know. Like I said, don’t
worry about it,” Cory tells her, trying to alleviate her
embarrassment. “Just get some rest. You’ll feel better tomorrow.
And if you’d like, I’ll go to town and beat the shit out of
Jason.”

Paige offers a small but still slightly
inebriated grin and says, “I don’t know if he’d be worth it.”

“Maybe I’ll just beat him up a little bit
then,” he jokes and brushes her hair back from her forehead.

“Yeah, just a little,” she agrees with a
toothy grin.

She looks young and innocent when her guard
is down and she’s smiling like this with her wild red hair tangled
around her head on the pillow like a halo of fire. The hard lines
that nearly four years on the road has etched around her lovely
eyes soften and disappear.

“Get some sleep, kid,” he tells her.

“I’m not a kid. I’m older than you,” she
corrects him on a long blink.

“I don’t think so,” he says with a
disbelieving frown.

“I am. My birthday’s
before
yours by like six months or something. Simon
told me,” she says.

Her remark is one of superiority as if she’s
older and wiser. Cory would like to remind her which one of them
just puked the liquor they couldn’t hold.

“Yeah, well I’ve got some city miles on me,
so I think I’m still older,” he says lightly.

“I have miles, too. Everyone probably does.
We’re all going to look like we’re forty in a few more years,” she
says sadly and closes her eyes. “The whole world’s a mess.”

She doesn’t open her eyes again, but zonks
out like Arianna after a long day of play and tormenting the boys
on the farm. Cory allows his gaze to trail down over her sleeping
form, noting the indentation of her waist and the length of her
legs under the blanket. Then he immediately gets to his feet and
gears up. Since Simon’s sister is alive and well, sort of, he’s got
a job to do.

He changes into dry, camouflage pants and a
black shirt. Cory pulls on a black zip up hoodie and his boots. His
plans of crashing for the night are forgotten.

“That it is,” he says to the comatose
woman. “But it’s my job to put it back
to
order.”

With this statement, Cory retrieves his rifle
and leaves the cabin and his best friend’s sexy sister.

Chapter Ten

Reagan

It’s been nearly two weeks since
Talia’s wedding, and the activity on the farm has reached a fever
pitch. The men are harvesting the wheat as well as working on the
wall in town nearly every day. Kelly is even working with K-Dog
from the condo community on training a militia to work full-time
in
town
and on guard patrols at
night. The sentry posts near the wall are almost complete, and
they’ve even tapped into the old natural gas lines with the help of
Cory since he saw how it was done up in Columbus. Now the guards
will have a limited amount of light to work with at night on their
patrols with the gas lines rigged up to power lanterns on a few of
the lamps near their towers.

Today she’s working on canning the last
of the beans with Paige,
Talia,
who has come for a visit, and Sam. Then they’re making soap
since they’re about out of their supply. She wants to get Samantha
to talk to her about whatever it is that has her down. She’s been
drawing dark images lately, too. Reagan found a few moody sketches
laying on her desk in her bedroom when she’d gone looking for Sam
one afternoon to go for a ride with her. Sometimes they go alone,
which Reagan has come to relish. Her adopted little sister means so
much to her. She used to be more open with Reagan and would
sometimes talk about her feelings, about what happened to her. But
for the past few years, she only seems to turn to Simon.

They just about have all the jars
filled with beans and ready to go into the canner. This isn’t her
area of expertise, but Hannie and Sue are busy outside on other
projects. And since Reagan’s not working at the clinic today, she
thought she’d volunteer. Even though she really doesn’t like being
stuck in the kitchen, she’s
reasonably
confident that she won’t give anyone botulism.

Talia wants to learn more about canning
and making soap, so Reagan called over on the radio to Chet this
morning. He drove his new wife and little Maddie over on his
four-wheeler. She and Paige were happy to be reunited for some
quality
girl-bonding
time.

“Oops,” Paige says as she drops a spoonful of
beans onto the counter.

“Those can be our snack,” Reagan jokes and
gets an unsure smile from Simon’s sister. She’s also out of her
element. “Right, Sam?”

“What?” the dark-haired doll answers from the
pantry on a search for salt. “Oh yeah. We can eat those ones,
Paige. Don’t worry about it.”

Sam emerges from the pantry again,
carrying the
crock
of salt. Cory
brought home a few containers of salt, which was good because they
can never have enough of it. Reagan misses having salt on a
buttered ear of corn. She misses a lot of the frivolous things that
have been taken away. Last year, they traded salt for a side of
beef with one of Grandpa’s former patients from a neighboring town.
He’d come with his two young sons and his wife to their clinic for
medical care. They were all the family he had left. But he’d been
glad to give up his salt for beef since he was down to a few
backyard chickens and a dairy goat.

This is what they try to do for many
items they need. They trade with those who have a need of their own
for things they might have or for medical care. Mr. Peterson in
town makes toothpaste powder for anyone who needs it in exchange
for milk and eggs. He brings it
by
the clinic on occasion, and Grandpa or Simon greets him with
the eggs and a few gallons of milk. So far, it’s worked because
none of them has had a cavity. She and Grandpa are certainly not
dentists, nor does Reagan have any desire to be one
anytime
soon. The clinic keeps her busy
enough as it is with sickness and injury. Just the other day one of
the men working on the third guard tower fell and broke his collar
bone. She hadn’t needed an x-ray to tell it was broken.