“I still don‟t know how,” he said after a while.
“How what?”
“That you knew I was having my nightmare.”
As she frowned in the darkness, she stroked his hair. “Ah…you wouldn‟t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“An angel came into my room.” There was a beat of silence. “He was…magnificent. A warrior…he woke me up and pointed to the door and I knew it was because of you.” Just so she 114
Crave
didn‟t sound freakish, she tacked on, “I guess I was dreaming, too.”
“Guess so.”
“Yeah.” Because angels didn‟t exist any more than vampires and werewolves did.
At least…she‟d believed that until tonight. Except what she‟d seen certainly hadn‟t felt like a dream.
God only knew how long they stayed like that, curled around each other, their collective warmth amplifying for a different reason than it had out in the bedroom: now, it was skin-on-skin comfort.
When Isaac finally sat up from her, she braced herself for him to thank her awkwardly and tell her to go. But instead, he traded places with her, his arms wrapping around her body, one behind her knees, the other at her back. Then he rose from the floor as if she weighed nothing and carried her out past the messy bed into the hall. He took the stairs without slowing or seeming to exert himself; his breathing barely changed even while he held her.
Up in her room, he laid her out in between her sheets and then just stood over her.
She could feel the hunger in him, but this time it wasn‟t sexual. It was for something that seemed even more important than all that desperate heat.
Grier moved over to make space, and after a moment, he slipped inside with her. Now, she was the one being cradled, that muscled chest of his somehow making all her problems magically seem smaller. And yes, the idea that she was falling into some kind of Cinderella state made her cringe, but she was too relaxed to put up a fight.
Closing her eyes, she tucked her arm around his waist.
As exhaustion slammed into her and knocked her out cold, her last thought was that it was okay to sleep. There would be time to say good-bye in the morning.
Isaac lay beside Grier, and waited for her to sink down solidly into REM territory. To pass the time, he reviewed vocabulary terms, because his mind was cannibalizing itself and he needed to redirect his neurons.
In the male lexicon of labels, the term
nancy
usually referred to guys who were a little light in their loafers: the kind who made women kill spiders for them, worried about how much starch was in their dry cleaning, and might possibly have a spice rack that was alphabetized.
Real men did not have spice racks. Or even know how to find them in a kitchen—much less what to do with what was in ‟em…At least, that was what his father had taught him and his brothers. And actually, in retrospect, that opinion sort of explained why their mother had gone off, married someone else, and started a new family before she‟d died. Clearly, she‟d known that a reboot of the system was going to get her nowhere and the only solution was to get fresh components—
What had he been thinking about? Oh, right. Nancys.
Next step up the vocab ladder—or down, as it were
—
was probably
pantywaister.
He wasn‟t exactly sure where that little ditty had come from, but it was synonymous with terms like
sissy
, the old-school
pencil-necked geek
, and the newer
little bitch
. These were the guys who might well have the impulse to change a tire for a woman, but would have trouble lifting the spare out of the trunk—and forget about working the lug wrench. They were also the sort who threw like girls, shrieked when they saw rats, and would call the police in a bar brawl instead of getting in 115
J.R. Ward
there to start punching.
His father had always believed women were weaker, and maybe when it came to hefting bales of hay for six to eight hours straight in the ninety-degree heat, he might have had a point.
But Isaac knew a lot of females in the service who could not only pitch baseballs like a man; they could punch as good as one, too—and had better aim.
Strength didn‟t have to be identical to be equal…
God, why the hell was he thinking about his father?
Right. Back to the Dictionary of Dickless Wonders. Which apparently his pops had been an editor of.
The lowest of the low…the bottom rung…the ball shriveler of them all…had to be
pussy
.
That was the kind of thing that, if your buddy was joking with you and busting you for something, he could throw it out and the shit was funny. If the word was said seriously, however, it was a leveler. In general, nonspecific terms,
pussy
could refer to a guy who, say, couldn‟t perform in bed with a woman he had the hots for. And then capped that lack of follow-through with…oh, say—and this was purely a hypothetical—maybe collapsing naked on the floor of said woman‟s loo and crying like a motherfucking baby.
Until she had to come and comfort him after he had let her down. After endangering her life and her professional career.
Yeah. Something like that.
As he groaned in the dark, he couldn‟t believe the fucking mess he‟d made out of the whole thing. Stopping in the middle? Going into the bathroom and pulling a hankie routine?
Why didn‟t he just put a dress and some nail polish on and call himself Irene?
Shit, the sex…the sex had blown his mind. Literally. And that had been the problem. Some kind of fissure had been opened in him the instant he‟d sunk into her wet heat, and with each pumping thrust, what had started as a hairline fracture grew into a vast divide.
It wasn‟t about fear. Or second-guessing his AWOL status.
It was the fact that when you were on the job with Matthias, you were so damn busy keeping yourself alive that you had no clue how under-the-gun you were.
And what do you know, bolting from the fold was just more of the same. Having that dream? More of the same.
But making love to a beautiful, warm woman in a soft bed that smelled of lemon in a house even he couldn‟t doubt the security of?
Too close to normal. Too safe. Too good to be true.
The juxtaposition of that and where he‟d been and where he was going in the morning had peeled him wide—which kind of proved what he‟d always suspected: It was just too hard to dip even a foot into the civilian way of life. The straddle to be in both worlds was unsustainable.
And on that note…
Shifting around to the side table, he reached for the remote of the DVD and hit
play
. When the menu came up, he chose
play all
, and after a beat, the
Three’s Company
logo came on over the shot of a beach scene. As the intro credits ran, John Ritter ogled a chick and ended up falling off a bike—and as he hit the sand, Grier‟s brows tightened…then relaxed completely.
Perfect. She‟d trained herself to associate the TV with deep sleep, and the bubble of noise 116
Crave
and soft flickering light was going to help cover his tracks.
About fifteen minutes into the episode, Isaac slowly slid his arm out from under her head and then he eased from between the sheets. In his absence, Grier rolled over to face the TV and resettled with a sigh. Which was his cue to get a move on.
Hitting the stairs, he went down to the room he‟d been given.
Ten minutes later, he headed back to her, fully dressed, with his weapons. Standing over her, he watched her sleep for too long and had to force himself to bend down and pick up her hand.
Moving her carefully, he put her thumb on the remote to the security system and deactivated it.
After a green light flashed, he reengaged the alarm to see what kind of delay there was.
Which would be none: Immediately the red light glowed, and he was stuck inside.
Made sense. She‟d just trigger it after she locked the front door.
He checked his watch. Four a.m.
Grier made a little snuffle and eased her head deeper into the pillow, her blond hair falling onto her cheek.
He didn‟t trust himself to stay with her until she woke up.
Now or never, asshole.
Thank you
, he mouthed to her.
And then with a curse, he disarmed the system and left without looking back.
Downstairs, he was silent and quick as he went and checked the ADT keypad in the front hall. Just as he‟d hoped: disengaged. After all, when you had a rottweiler guarding your house, did you really need a yellow Lab as backup?
The front door was solid wood and three inches thick—so even though he couldn‟t engage the dead bolt, it was going to take a battering ram to get inside. His only concern was the glass doors and windows, but the frames were super sturdy and locked—and if you shattered panes the size of the ones in the kitchen, they made a hell of a noise.
So she was safe as she could be.
After cutting the exterior lights, he took his muscle shirt from his pocket and tore off a strip; then he stepped out and cranked that big ol‟ door into place. Quick pause to double-check the handle was locked and secure and he tied the strip of cloth around the wrought-iron lantern to the left.
Next move was to walk off into the chilly April morning.
Not a moment too soon, either. As this was New England, the sun rose real early, and he probably had only an hour or so of good darkness before the dawn‟s rays started to chase away the shadows. Going left, he headed across something called Pinckney Street, and less than ten yards down the hill, he found what he was looking for—one of the smaller town houses was under reconstruction, its windows on the first floor boarded up, a pathway of plaster dust running in and out of the front door.
And there were no lights on, inside or out.
Going in all Spidey and shit, he grappled up the house, using the moldings around the door and the windows to brace his feet and yank his weight up. A quick punch through a dusty pane and he waited for the scream of a security alarm. None came. So he flipped the latch, shoved the sash up, and hello, Lucy, he was home.
117
J.R. Ward
Total elapsed time: a minute and a half.
The place was rock cold and covered with more plaster dust, and he hoped like hell that this was a union job, given that it was Sunday—so he could stay as long as he wanted.
Casing the joint didn‟t take long, and similar to Grier‟s setup, the back of the house opened to a courtyardy thing that was gated—and there were no chalky footprints on the red brick there.
Obviously, the workmen arrived and left the front way.
To clear the exit route for some parkour action if he needed it, he popped the latch on the window above the rear door‟s transom; then he returned to where he‟d broken in and picked out all of the glass shards on the pane he‟d smashed—because no glass at all looked, from a distance, like nothing was wrong.
The vantage point he took was by the window on the far front right of the house, and to hide most of himself, he moved a piece of plywood over for cover. From where he took up res, he could see about seventy percent of Grier‟s bow-front. What was missing was the rear door and the upper terrace, but this was as good as it was going to get.
Leaning up against the cold wall, his eyes scanned the little park with its wrought-iron fence and statue and gracefully limbed trees. Might as well enjoy the view. He wasn‟t leaving until he saw Grier get into her car and drive away—without anyone on her tail.
Twenty minutes later what he feared most rolled up. The black unmarked was not what Jim‟s buddy had described from the night before: no dings or dust on this bad boy. And the darkened windows prevented him from seeing the driver or any passenger.
But he had a feeling who it was.
Shit, he hated when he was right.
And this was all his fault.
118
G
rier woke up at six a.m. and knew as soon as she saw the tail end of a
Three’s Company
episode that Isaac has left: She hadn‟t restarted the DVD when they‟d come up to her room…and yup, the security system was off.
She‟d obviously slept through his going.
Arching over, she checked her bedside table, thinking that maybe he‟d written her a note.
But the only thing he‟d left behind was the scent of the shampoo and soap he‟d used: the cedar-y fragrance was on one of her pillows and some of her sheets.
Getting up, she pulled on her sweatshirt and went down to the second floor. The guest room was neat as a pin, the bed made to military precision. The only sign he‟d been there at all was the single towel that had been hung to dry on the rack in the bath. He‟d even wiped down the glass walls of the shower so there weren‟t any water marks on the inside.
The man was a total ghost and she was a pathetic loser to think he‟d make some gesture of good-bye.
She headed downstairs to the kitchen and stopped in the archway.
Well, turned out he had left one thing behind: On the counter was the plastic bag of cash.
“Damn it. God
damn
it.”
She stood there for a time, staring not at the twenty-five grand, but at the Birkin he‟d tried to clean up for her.
Eventually, she went and got the home phone. The number she dialed was one she‟d memorized two years ago.
The public defender‟s office always had someone on call, because crime, like illness and accidents, didn‟t recognize any distinction between weekdays and weekends. And the guy who answered was an attorney she knew well. Although her resignation from Isaac‟s case was a surprise to him, when she stated that she had approximately twenty-five thousand dollars from the cage-fighting racket on her kitchen counter, he got on board PDQ.