CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BRUNCH AT THE diner was awesome. Eggs and bacon were timeless. Then there was the coffee, not to mention bacon and toast with butter and grape jelly. She absolutely loved grape jelly. It was her jam. Was it possible for a jelly to be a jam?
Regardless, Kendall loved being able to have breakfast for lunch.
“You sure I’m not keeping you from class?” Holden asked as the waitress brought them two big glasses of orange juice and a fresh bottle of ketchup.
“What class?” Kendall asked as she buttered her toast. Nothing bothered her more than unevenly buttered toast.
“You know…college class. Expensive textbooks, boring professors, lectures, homework, huge student loans? Any of that ringing a bell?”
Dammit. She’d completely forgotten about her cover. For a moment, she was simply a woman having a late breakfast with her incredible boyfriend after a night of earth-shaking sex. She did her best to cover her reaction by reaching for her juice and taking a quick sip. Anything to give her a chance to get her crap together.
“I just meant that I don’t have classes on Tuesday and Thursday,” she explained. “And I’m blowing my homework off until the last possible second. I work better under tight deadlines.”
Holden nodded, apparently buying her lame excuse and cutting into his eggs and bacon. She immediately joined him, shoving food in her face so she wouldn’t be tempted to say anything stupid.
They ate in comfortable silence for a while, during which Kendall was able to calm down and trust she hadn’t slipped up and completely blown her cover. But it had been damn close. And it was all because of last night.
Sex with Holden had been out-of-this-world ah-mazing. Actually, that description wasn’t strong enough for last night. Being with Holden was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. And she wasn’t just talking about the physical act of making love. She couldn’t put a name to it yet—she wasn’t sure if she even wanted to—but she and Holden had clicked together like two pieces of a puzzle right down to their very souls.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Holden was still a thief and she was still an FBI agent. No matter how much it twisted her into knots to think about it, in a couple days, she’d be forced to arrest him and put him in prison. The reminder made it suddenly hard to breathe. How could she have let things go this far?
“You don’t like the eggs?” Holden asked, jerking her out of her dismal thoughts. When she looked up at him in confusion, he gestured at her plate. “Do you want to order something else?”
Giving herself a mental shake, Kendall picked up her knife and fork and cut up her two eggs over easy with guacamole on the side. “Of course, I like eggs. Is there anyone who doesn’t? They’re a quintessential basic. Like bread, cheese, pizza, and chocolate. Everyone likes eggs.”
Holden snorted. “I hate to mess with your quintessential logic, but my mom didn’t think much of eggs at all. Now, that was probably because she was so horrible at cooking them. But if you made a list of the anti-egg crowd, she’d be at the top.”
He bit into his toast and chewed slowly, staring down at his plate. She could tell he was a million miles away. Kind of like she was.
“Tell me about her,” Kendall said. Not because she was an FBI agent trying to get information out of him, but because she wanted to know everything there was to know about Holden the man, not Holden the thief.
“Not much to tell, really.” A small smile tugged at his lips. It was a fragile thing that slipped away long before it ever touched his eyes. “Mom died when I was nineteen.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, truly meaning it.
He shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ve made my peace with it after all these years. But back then it was rough. You’d think since she didn’t play a big part in my life that her death wouldn’t be a big deal, but it hit me harder than I would have ever thought possible, especially considering the fact that I saw it coming.”
She wanted to ask more, but wasn’t sure if she should. Finally, she went with her instincts. “Was it drugs?”
He nodded, wiping the remains of his egg yolks up off the plate with a piece of toast. “She’d used drugs as long as I could remember, but it got worse as I got older. That’s why I started working for McKinney. In return, he got her into rehab. There was no way I could have afforded something like that without him.”
“It didn’t help?”
“It did for a while,” he said. “But in the end her addiction to drugs was stronger than her desire to stay with the people who cared about her.”
Kendall reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “I’m sure that’s not how it was. She loved you enough to try, but addiction is addiction. It’s a lifelong battle and unfortunately, she lost. That doesn’t mean she didn’t care about you.”
She expected Holden to point out she really didn’t have enough knowledge of the situation to make statements like that, but instead, he nodded again.
“I know that now,” he said. “Hell, I probably knew it then, but I was too young and stupid to process it. Which was why I walked away from the whole mess and found myself in a Navy recruiting office. Two weeks later, they had my name on the dotted line and I left for basic training. So, in that regard, I give my mom credit for me going in the Navy. I ran away from the life I wanted to leave behind.”
Kendall smiled. “Good thing you ran into a Navy recruiting office. Imagine how different your life would be if you’d ended up in the circus?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. I think I’d look good in those tights the acrobats in Circus Du Soleil wear.”
She considered that. “I guess, but if it’s all the same, I think I’d rather have you naked.”
He lifted a brow. “I’m not sure the world is ready for naked acrobats.”
She shrugged. “I think it could be the next big thing. I know I’d pay to see it.”
Holden snorted but didn’t say anything as a waitress came by to refill their coffee. They fell into that comfortable silence again as they finished eating. After they were done, they sat there sipping coffee and gazing at all the people passing by on the busy sidewalk outside. It was close to mid-day, so the tourists were already out in force, giving them lots to look at.
Regardless of how interesting the tourists might be, Kendall couldn’t help thinking about the stuff Holden had said about his mother. Especially the part about him taking the job with McKinney just so he could get his mom into rehab. It seemed the more she learned about Holden, the harder it was to judge him as a criminal. He’d done what he had to do to survive and take care of his mother. It was difficult to condemn him for that.
It was tough to think poorly of McKinney, too. He’d helped a street kid get his mother into rehab, for heaven’s sake. How could she hate on the man for that? Even if he’d done it to get his hands on a skilled thief like Holden.
It made her wonder how McKinney had been willing to let Holden walk away and join the Navy.
“So,” she said, not sure how to phrase the question in a way that didn’t sound like she was snooping. “McKinney didn’t have a problem with you joining the Navy?”
When Holden didn’t answer right away, she thought she’d finally asked him for more than he was willing to reveal. But finally, he looked at her.
“He didn’t like it, but he understood why I had to do it. And in the end, we made a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” she asked hesitantly, not sure if she really wanted to know.
“Nothing big,” he said, his voice casual even if the expression in his eyes said it was anything but. “He agreed to let me walk away, and in return, I agreed not to use the skills he’d taught me.”
Kendall knew it was stupid, but for some reason she started to breathe easier. He’d walked away from that life to become a SEAL and never looked back. Holden couldn’t be the one who’d stolen the Key.
But the evidence the FBI had said otherwise.
“Of course, there was the additional proviso that if I ever did that kind of work again, it would only be for him.”
Kendall swallowed hard. “And did you ever do that kind of work again?”
She held her breath as she waited for him to answer, even though she didn’t want to know. But before he could say anything, the waitress appeared with their bill, telling them to have a nice day as she placed the bill on the table. Holden took out his wallet and tossed some money on the table, then slid out of the booth and offered Kendall his hand.
She followed him through the crowded diner, not missing the fact that Holden had conveniently forgotten to answer her question. A part of her was glad. That way, she could keep lying to herself and believe he was innocent and that this was all some kind of horrible mistake.
Holden led the way outside and along the sidewalk. It wasn’t very crowded at the moment and they had the walkway mostly to themselves as they headed back to his Jeep, Kendall matching her gait to his, letting her hip brush against his muscular thigh.
Why the hell did being with him feel so right?
And why did everything have to be so complicated?
Kendall was so lost in those thoughts she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the roar of a car engine revving nearby, immediately followed by the squawk of spinning tires. She jerked her head up just in time to see a black sedan sliding across several lanes of traffic, right toward her and Holden. Then she saw the man in the back seat and the automatic weapon bucking in his hands, the flash from the muzzle bright enough to see even in the sun.
The windows of the shops behind her and Holden exploded into a million pieces and a strong arm wrapped around her waist, dragging her to the ground. Holden tried to keep her under him, attempting to put his body between her and the incoming rounds. But she fought him, every instinct she had screaming at her to protect him instead.
The result was an awkward impact with the concrete, her head slamming down so hard she couldn’t even hear the shooting anymore. Then everything faded to black.