Chapter Four

Jogging, Jake turned two more corners before the red brick building where Lacy lived came into view. Tucked between an abandoned textile warehouse and an all-night fast food drive-in, her apartment complex was as lackluster as everything else this time of year. Winter brought nothing but dismally bleak days and bitter cold to the East Coast.

Flipping up the collar of his ragged denim jacket against the chilly breeze, he lowered his head, hoping he looked less like a vagrant and more like a rent-paying resident. The cheap lock at the glass-paneled security doors of Lacy’s apartment didn’t latch securely most of the time. Like today. So in he went. The damned door squeaked like a banshee behind him, though. It slammed shut with a loud crack of aluminum against steel, another nerve-grating sound that didn’t need to be.

Most landlords were non-existent when it came to maintenance on their properties. If he had the time and the tools, Jake would re-attach the loose end of the pneumatic spring back onto the door jam. That was all that was wrong with it, and it wouldn’t take more than a couple screws and a screwdriver to fix it. A few drops of household oil on those hinges would solve the squeak. If he had time.

Up the stairs he went, two at a time. One more flight and he stepped out of the stair well on level three. Lacy’s door? Three doors to the right on the east side of the hall. He headed south, intent on making this visit quick and staying out of sight until he knew what was going on with Jamaal. It would’ve worked, except she opened her door and stepped into the hall at that precise same moment.

Jake froze. There was nowhere to run and nothing to hide behind, not that a Marine would hide, for hell’s sake. But still. The thought did cross his mind. She hadn’t seen him yet, intent on closing her door extra quietly like she was. The doorknob didn’t even click, she’d pulled it shut so gently.

He cringed, his shoulders half-turned in retreat. Sometimes, the better part of valor was to turn tail and run. Too late. Lacy pivoted with a sigh of relief. The second her forest green eyes met his, they lit up with that same glow of a thousand lost wishes. The tiniest smile tugged at the right corner of her mouth, like she might want to smile, but didn’t think she should. Just like that first day at the clinic with Jamaal. Damn.

His chest hurt in a ‘crazy good’ way. He couldn’t swallow, though, and his knees locked up. Who turned the heat up in this two-bit rental? He loosened the fake collar of his already loose sweatshirt beneath his denim jacket, like that was hard to do. And he, Jake Weylin, the guardian of Sector 18, was Puccini’s Rodolfo, just another helpless man caught in the orbit of a beautiful woman.

“Jake?” Lacy asked, and the sound of his name on her lips felt more like a prayer than a question. He licked his lips at the notion that hers and his might meet some day. His nostrils flared with the powdery scent of her. Damn. He was losing ground, and the conversation hadn’t even really started yet.

“Well, yeah,” he muttered hoarsely for lack of enough blood supply to fuel his oxygen-deprived brain. Shit. Why’d she have this effect on him?

“You’re here,” she said, her eyes pulling him into more than he was ready to admit to or allow.

He nodded. At last the reason he was there in her hallway—like a stalker—came back to his mind. “Umm, I saw Jamaal in your car. Is he okay?”

That was another thing he liked about this particular redhead. She turned crimson at the drop of a hat. The warmest, rosy glow spread up her neck, and he liked watching it come in waves like the sunset tide on a warm Malibu beach. Against all odds, that simple feminine response of hers declared him to be the masculine side of the equation. He could make her blood move. It almost made him a real man once more.

She made a funny face, ducked her head into her shoulders and looked so damned cute. “Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder toward nosy Mrs. Brown’s door. “He came into the clinic today needing stitches, but he’s real sick. I couldn’t let them send him to the hospital.”

“What happened?” Jake pulled himself together enough to act less like a love-struck puppy and more like the tough guy he was. He’d tangled with Mrs. Brown before. If anyone had to worry about her, it was him, but he wasn’t going to take her guff today. No way was she going to scold him for standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the street to make sure Lacy got out the door okay in the morning or made it home safely at night.

“Do you want to come in so I can explain without anyone hearing?” Lacy whispered, the smile gone as she took a step closer and got a better look at him. The delicate arch of her light brown brows furrowed. “Oh, my hell, Jake. What happened to you?”

Even the cuss words out of her pretty mouth were perfect. Pretty and tough. Sweet and salty. Yeah, he was in over his head and going down. He should run before he sank, but no. He wasn’t thinking fast enough, not with his blood supply pooled in his nether regions like it was. Neither could he duck fast enough to avoid her touch when she stretched her slender hand up to cup his jaw. “You’re hurt,” she told him like he didn’t know. “Who did this to you?”

An involuntary bolt of lightning shuddered down his spine at the gentleness of her touch. He couldn’t speak. This little woman was a good foot shorter than him and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, yet he was lost, damn it. Lost in the warm touch of soft clean fingers that meant him no harm. Only they did. Just in a different way. The kind of harm he might not survive.

He cupped the hand that was cupping him, holding it still before he came undone. No woman had touched him in years, and he couldn’t allow it. He had work to do. Important work. A good covert operator never got involved with their clients. Didn’t she know that? Oh wait. No, she didn’t. No one knew. Only he and Jamaal knew.

“Were you in the same fight as Jamaal?” she asked, the light within her still at the stone gate he kept locked.

“No,” he whispered, struggling against what sure as hell felt like a losing battle. Lacy had some kind of magical power over him. How could a battle-scarred man withstand such gentleness? Such grace?

She eyed him suspiciously, her sweet glance skating over his face and down to his open collar. “You’re bleeding. Come in and I’ll get you cleaned up.”

He shook his head, not wanting to admit personal defeat, but speechless at the depth of compassion in her eyes. Darker flecks of green shimmered within the green forest around the black iris. If he didn’t know better, he’d say he was falling into them. Maybe diving. Head first. Would it hurt? Diving into green trees? They looked soft. And pretty.

“I ran into a couple of Poindexter’s men,” his dry mouth finally said. “That’s all. I’m good.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, her hand still in place beneath his. “Why’d they hit you?”

He shrugged. “Not sure. Rocky Rabbit and Ferret Face—”

“Who?” she asked, her brows knitted together into an adorable crinkle.

He had to get away from her. That fiery red gold halo of hair made her look too much like an angel who had no business consorting with the likes of him.

“Umm, shit. I mean, darn. Sorry, ma’am. I don’t know their names, but they’re Poindexter’s men. I know that much. The one guy’s got big old pointy buckteeth. I think he sharpened them to make himself look meaner. Anyway, he looks like a rabbit when he opens his trap and—”

“So you call him Rocky Rabbit? That’s funny.” Her eyes lit up, and the whole damned hallway filled with the most glorious light from heaven. Jake blinked, not wanting to miss one single beam of her smile. Damned if she didn’t glow.

He dropped his hand and took a full step back. Guys like him had no business with messengers from heaven. That was just plain—wrong.

A shadow cruised over her freckles. The light was gone, and he felt like shit. He’d done it again, spoiled the perfect moment. Made her worry if he was crazy or not. Well, she should worry because he was. Sometimes.

The hand that had been holding hers just seconds before raked over his hard head, tangling in the knots and rats of too many nights on the street until he wanted to pull his hair and beard out, hair by hair. But he couldn’t. He didn’t want to scare her.

Jake shifted his boots, uncomfortable in his own skin. It always ended this way. Tongue-tied. Dumb sounding. Worthless. Jamaal would have to fend for himself, not like that’d be tough with someone like Lacy looking out for him. “I gotta go.”

“No, wait.” She snagged that same hand back again and intertwined her fingers through his. “Stay.”

The sensation stopped him cold. People didn’t touch guys like him, not like this. Turning their joined hands over, he looked at the puzzle box she’d just created out of two very different pieces. The interlocking mechanism of his four fingers of graduating sizes linked with hers of coordinating sizes. It seemed an unlikely match, but they seemed to fit. His were longer, the fingernails dirty. Hers were slender, the nails pink and capped with a pure white edge of icy cleanliness. Only her thumb moved in a gentle circle at the heel of his thumb, calming the shit out of him.

Jake turned their conjoined hands over, flexing both of their fingers as he did. Damn. They did fit. Warmth seemed to be running like water in his veins, upward to his elbow and into his bicep. It kept on going past his collarbone until it invaded his ribcage, but gently, like a babbling stream tumbling over bones and sinew, until it blessed the barren desert deep inside of him with a life-giving trickle. Somehow it seemed to know that the wasteland he was inside couldn’t quite handle more than a trickle of something so sweet. So pure. Anything more would sweep the parched desert that was Jake Weylin’s soul off the face of the earth. Never to be seen again.

He couldn’t stop looking. Those tiny fingers of hers were strong, but that thumb. That kind, little thumb with the perfectly clean nail... He gave her hand a soft squeeze in return, not wanting her to let him go.

“Jake. Are you busy right now? Do you have time to help me?” she asked, tugging on that ten-fingered link between them.

“Sure,” he readily agreed despite the dry lump in his throat. “What do you need?” What on earth do I have that she could possibly need?

He tore his eyes off her thumb and fell back into her eyes. He couldn’t seem to catch his balance around this gal, but he’d always help her. That was his way. His code. Help the helpless. Protect the innocent. Stand between good and evil.

“Someone has to stay with Jamaal while I go back to work. I’m afraid he’ll be upset when he wakes up and doesn’t know where he is. I don’t want him to freak and tear my apartment up. Would you mind?” Lacy slipped her fingers out of his and reached into her pocket. At first, he thought she wanted to wipe the cooties off from having touched him, but a key popped into her fingers, and, oh yeah. She had to unlock her door. Duh.

He swallowed hard. He should’ve thought of that. Of course he’d stay with Jamaal. There was only one problem. He’d have to be indoors. Inside. And her apartment only had one door. Jake knew because he knew everything about this building and some of its occupants.

“Umm, in your place?” he asked hoarsely. “All the way, like inside with the door shut? Is that what you w-w-want?” His right boot started tapping. Kind of sounded like it was sending out an S.O.S.

“Well, of course. That’s the whole idea.” She’d already unlocked her door and stood waiting for an answer. “Hangout with Jamaal until I get back. Come on in. I’ve got heat.”

Heat was good. Inside was not. Stall tactic. “Can’t I just hang around out here in the hall and listen for him? He’s noisy when he wakes up. I’ll be sure to hear that big mouth of his.”

Lacy shook her head, her smile filled with gentle humor. “No, silly. You need to be inside where he can see you if he wakes up. Please?”

Silly? Me? The word almost sounded like an endearment the way she said it.

Hmmmmm.

“You got windows in there?” Big windows? He already knew the answer to that, too. Heat wasn’t the problem. A fast getaway was. He didn’t like being trapped inside four walls, not any more. The cloying grasp of claustrophobia always wound its slimy, creeping tentacles around his throat when he stayed indoors for too long. The damned stuff never stopped trying to kill him. He’d already been inside too long as it was, but the thought of crossing that threshold of hers and entering a smaller room induced a suffocating sort of panic. His throat would close off next. Then he’d be in real trouble. So would she. His S.O.S. was louder now, but—seeing would confirm, and after all was said and done, she had called him silly. Somehow that—helped.

Lacy pushed her door all the way open and took his hand again, but not pulling. Just holding. That was kind of nice. “I’ve got one big window with the most awesome brick art for a view. You want to see it?” she said with another funny face. For a second there, she was a little girl, and he was just a kid. It was summertime, and they were playing hooky.

Oh wait. Kids don’t play hooky in summer unless they’re going to summer school and… Whatever.

Without taking one step, he tilted his body forward enough to peer through her open door. She hadn’t lied. There was a good-sized window on the opposite wall. The curtain was open. It was easy to see clear through the entire place where she lived, where she might walk around in her pajamas after work. Where she might want to watch a football game and eat caramel corn and maybe drink a cold beer. His toe tapping slowed.

Hmmmmm. A man could get out through that window if he needed to. Even Jamaal would fit if push came to shove. Jake’s discomfort faded. The claustrophobia let up. The S.O.S. faded to nothing. But what did she mean by brick art? Looked like a damned wall to him, but then, what did he know? Only that... She called me silly.

With the cutest smile and a gentle tug, Jake was lured over her threshold, past a dingy yellow refrigerator, and, shezam. He was all the way inside of her four walls. Damned if the door wasn’t still open, and here he was—still breathing.

She didn’t seem to have a problem with him being here, didn’t even think twice when she broke the magical connection between their hands to gesture toward her kitchen. “Eat what you need. Drink what you want. I’ll be home between six and seven. Can you stay until then or do you have someplace else to be?”

He stood his ground and nodded emphatically. No Marine ever admitted he couldn’t handle easy duty. Jamaal seemed to be dealing with it okay. He did look a little worse for wear, all sprawled out on her couch like he was, his head tipped back and his big mouth wide open. The oaf had a few bruises, some stitches, and the prettiest red blanket snuggled under his chin. One might say he looked like a little boy, an ugly little boy with a hairy face and bad teeth.

“Okay, then, thanks. I was worried about leaving Jamaal alone, but now that you’ll be here, I feel better. Do you like Chinese?” she asked, her cheery smile restored. That magic thumb of hers hooked a strand of silky red hair behind her right ear.

“I like most people,” he answered, though where that odd question came from he had no clue. “’Cept most of them Taliban assholes. Maybe a few Muslim clerics. A couple congressmen. Terrorists.” Okay, so maybe I don’t like most people, now that I think about it.

Another mega-watt smile lit up his world. “I meant do you like Chinese food, silly,” she corrected, her face aglow with pure sunshine. “I’m bringing rice noodles and honey walnut shrimp home for dinner. Would you like a couple egg rolls and dipping sauce to go with it? Maybe an order or two of Chow Mien?”

“No,” he said firmly. No Marine worth his salt accepted charity. “Don’t worry about us. Me and Jamaal will be fine. Once he comes to, we’ll be on our way.”

Her left brow lifted, and he had to look away before he got sucked back into that incredible vortex spinning around her. It had been a long time since he’d wanted to kiss a woman like he wanted to kiss Lacy now. Hadn’t even thought about it in years, well, not much anyway. She did kind of make him think about it, but just the hint of being this close to a pretty woman cranked his anxiety into the red zone. She’d lit a fire deep in the pit of his belly, and if she didn’t leave soon, he’d burst all over her. And it wouldn’t be pretty. There’d be blood. Gore. Other stuff.

“Okay then, but lock the door while I’m gone,” she said evenly. “Don’t forget. I’ll be back between six and seven, Sarge. Bye. See you later.”

Like a warm spring breeze, she blew out of her apartment, closed the door behind her and was gone. Jake stood there staring. Sarge?

His heart stuttered. Who just left? Emile? It took a full minute to get his brain to reboot. Not Emile. Lacy. Are you sure? He nodded to himself. “Yes. Lacy,” he said out loud to confirm what his mind was telling him. “Lacy lives here. This is her place.”

She hadn’t even argued, and he honestly didn’t recall how she’d persuaded him to enter her apartment in the first place. Her home. The place she would be coming back to. But calling him Sarge? She shouldn’t have done that. It made him feel responsible and important, but it made him remember things, and, oh hell. Once he got things sorted out in his head, it made him feel good.