His father wasted no time getting to the point. “Why were you asking your sister about Smith Donnell at breakfast?”
Because he snuck into her room last night.
But Jeff hesitated to tattle, loyalties divided. He loved his father and Arden equally. At camp this summer, he’d heard rumors that maybe he was part of the special bloodline that had created a secret society that would rule the world—he was jazzed to confirm that with Dad! And he was pretty ticked off at Arden about giving Smith the time of day after the way he’d treated her. But…
Well, since his mom had died, Arden had been trying to fill the role of mother and sister combined. She’d never treated him like just a half brother. The sibling bond of secrecy had to be strong for any family to survive.
Anyway, no one liked a tattletale.
So Jeff just shrugged—for now. “No reason.”
His dad gave him the evil eye, so Jeff laughed and lied flat out. “Some guys at camp were talking about their big sisters getting married. I wanted to make sure we weren’t gonna be dealing with a bridezilla anytime soon.”
It worked. His father grinned at the face of disgust Jeff pulled. “So glad to hear you have your sister’s well-being in mind,” he said drily.
“That’s our job,” said Jeff—dead serious, this time. Protecting Arden from Oak Cliff ruffians and loser ex-boyfriends alike. Being heroes. “Right?”
And his dad said, “Right.”
Before Greta could offer Smith the Sword of Aeneas for a second time, Smith had worked up one hell of a bad mood. Neither Mitch nor Trace showed up at their rat-hole of an apartment. They weren’t answering their disposable cell phones either, which had him worrying for his friends’ safety. This latest infiltration of the Comitatus through Donaldson Leigh’s meeting, to learn and usurp their plans, had mainly been his idea.
Smith hated guilt.
Worse, he’d left Arden. Again. That kiss, a bare taste of what he’d lost, hadn’t satisfied him for as long as he might have hoped. His mood wasn’t improved by the thought that it would have to last him forever.
All that, and he’d slept badly, dreaming of wooden ships and ancient warriors, of love versus duty.
Of making the wrong choice.
Again.
At least he would see Arden again today. The first thing he did after waking up alone—still no sign of Trace or Mitch—was to go by the coin-operated Laundromat to make sure that this time, he could at least be clean. Not that he expected another chance to take her in his arms and kiss her.
Laundromats rarely improved his mood, either.
Only when he caught a light-rail south to the Westmoreland station, and stopped by Greta’s to see how the security had held, did things click into place. Mitch’s latest fixer-upper of a car drooped tiredly in the yard. Although Mitch often drove a cab to earn extra money, he had to do it illegally, borrowing the taxi and permit. The rest of the time, he practiced his mechanical skills on downright embarrassing vehicles—which at least ran.
Greta didn’t answer the door.
Trace—and the cocker spaniel—did.
Trace was eating a cinnamon bun.
“Hey,” the larger man greeted, swinging the door open wider as if welcoming Smith to
his
abode, and not Miz Kaiser’s. “She made breakfast.”
Smith stared. “What are you doing up and out before noon?” Trace often did construction when he was home in Louisiana, but while he was in Texas, he mainly focused on fighting. For money. It was a nighttime activity.
“Up.” Trace licked a bit of frosting off his big thumb. “Not out.”
Automatically crouching to scratch the welcoming, wiggling Dido behind her silky ears, Smith took in Trace’s bare feet.
“You spent the night?”
“She offered! She’s got all kinds of spare room.” Apparently sensing Smith’s annoyance, Trace grumped, “Mitch stayed over, too.”
“I asked you guys to finish the security system, not to crash here!”
In answer, Trace popped the last of the bun into his mouth, folded his arms, spread his stance—and blocked the doorway more effectively than any security bars could have.
Smith had to grant him that one. “Breakfast, huh?”
Trace grunted but pivoted out of the way, and Smith headed back toward the kitchen with his four-legged shad
ow. He tried not to glance toward the panel that hid the Sword of Aeneas.
He failed. Was the wall
humming,
or was it…?
Just him.
Mitch, equally disheveled, bent to pet the returning Dido while he grinned up at something Greta had told him. “So you just
flashed
him?”
“I was wearing undergarments,” Greta clarified primly.
Smith wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this, but a laughing Mitch had caught sight of him in the hallway. “Hey, Smith! Back when women were still supposed to just wear skirts, some jerk told Greta she must be a guy for wearing pants, and she flashed him to prove him wrong! How great is she?”
Trace, following Smith into the old-fashioned kitchen, perked up. “Someone flashed someone?”
“Greta,” Mitch agreed, then hooted at the face Trace pulled.
“Unless I’m looking straight at you, I can still see you,” chided Greta gently, even as she poured a cup of coffee and turned to hand it to Smith.
“No offense.” But Trace’s expression didn’t vanish as he dropped comfortably into a chair.
“Ah.” Smith took the coffee with a murmur of thanks and inhaled deeply before taking a sip. “To be forty years older. Really,” he insisted when Greta waved the seeming compliment away. “The way things have been going this last year, I’m not especially confident about making it five years more, much less forty. So what’s this about my employees taking advantage of your kind hospitality, Miz Greta?”
Trace snorted. “Employees?”
“That term,” Mitch explained, as Smith took another swallow of good, hot coffee, “implies some form of wages. From you. To us.”
“I invited them,” Greta insisted. “First for dinner, if Mitch would give me a ride to the market—it was the least I could do,
after all that work you boys did on the security system. Then it seemed such a shame to send them out, once night had come.”
“Them being scared of the dark and all.” Smith arched a challenging brow at Trace.
“I haven’t slept so well for years.” Settling herself into a third kitchen chair, Greta opened her hand for Dido’s affectionate head. “Having a dog in the house is all well and good, but strong young men…”
“That—” Trace squared his broad shoulders “—would be us.”
Smith rolled his eyes over his coffee cup. “I didn’t imagine she was talking about the security elves.”
“And, the place doesn’t smell like feet,” noted Mitch, his blue eyes half closed in apparent bliss. “Did you ever notice how all our cruddy hotel rooms smell like feet? Maybe Greta would be willing to consider some kind of barter deal.”
“No. No barter deals. No settling in for coffee and home-cooked dinners and cinnamon—” Smith finally took in the sticky, empty platter in the middle of Greta’s table. “There aren’t any cinnamon buns left?”
“Didn’t know you were coming.” Trace licked his fingers again, adding insult to injury. Dido licked her lips.
“That’s because neither of you answered your phones!”
His friends exchanged looks that went from confusion to realization. “We silenced them during the movie,” Mitch explained. “After I got Greta’s VCR to work with her new large button remote control. She’s got some real classics on tape, and as long as we were here—”
“Never mind. Greta, could I see you in the front room?” Smith left the mug on the counter as he followed the older woman—and her dog—toward the parlor. At least from there he couldn’t keep stealing glances toward the hidden panel. “You can’t let them take advantage of you.”
“Shame on you!” Well—that surprised him. He hadn’t expected the old lady to go on the offensive quite this
quickly. Especially not when he was trying to be the chivalrous one! “Why do you automatically think
they
are taking advantage of
me?
”
“Well…because they’re…”
Younger.
“I mean, you’re…”
Female.
He wasn’t going to win this one, was he?
“A blind, senile old woman?”
“I never called you senile.”
Her smile seemed surprisingly dangerous, for a little, gray-haired matron. “But being old and blind and a woman are still counts against me? I’ve learned more in all my years than you will ever know, Smith Donnell, and being a woman gives me quite a few advantages, as well, especially when it comes to reading people. I read
you
correctly, didn’t I?”
Probably not, according to Arden—who would feel even more guilty about bringing Smith’s whole posse into Greta’s life than Smith did. What with Smith not doing guilt and all. “I just don’t want them—”
“Giving me rides to the market? Do you know how difficult it is to cart groceries on public transit? Or even to read the prices on the shelves? Or do you mean the way they cleared out my gutters, or mowed my back lawn, or fixed that running toilet in my upstairs bathroom? Mitch and Trace have been knights in shining armor, young man. Only one of you has refused me anything.”
Smith stared at her for a full two breaths before he realized what she meant. “The
sword?
”
Dreams. Battles. Honor versus love.
“If I can’t pass it on to a Kaiser, then at least I can see it go to one of the last honorable members of the Comitatus. You should take it, Smith. You were called to it. It’s
meant
for you.”
You could give it to Mitch. Or Trace.
But for some reason, Smith couldn’t bring himself to suggest that. Maybe he
was
selfish, at that.
He told himself it was because he didn’t dare out his friends as fellow society members. Oaths of secrecy, and all that. Yeah, that was it.
“Much as I appreciate the offer, Miz Greta, I don’t need a sword. Especially not an antique sword. Guns get the job done a lot faster.”
“But without as much history. Without as much honor.”
Smith shrugged. He was pretty sure they’d covered the him-not-being-that-honorable part already. “No. Thanks anyway. Listen, I’m going to see Arden, try to follow up on her Internet connection to your secret society. Try not to let my friends eat you out of house and home, ’kay?”
“No need to worry about me.”
But as Smith headed out, he heard her say, “That’s twice.”
He turned back, almost stepping on Dido, who tried to follow. “Twice what?”
“Did I say something?” Greta smiled, full of innocence, and called her dog back with a snapped finger. “Ignore me. I’m just an old lady, you know.”
Smith narrowed his eyes at her, then realized that—looking straight at him—she couldn’t see it, so the gesture was wasted. Now in a thoroughly bad mood, he stalked off toward Arden’s recreation center for underprivileged girls. His watch hadn’t reached eleven o’clock. yet, and already the August heat suffocated the streets.
Crazy lady.
Stupid antique sword.
He caught himself curling his right hand, as if embracing the memory of the sword’s grip, maybe from his dreams. It pissed him off.
A car with air-conditioning, now
that
he could use. Damning proof against the Comitatus would prove equally useful. Good credit. His long-lost trust fund. But an ancient sword, even one with a truly cool alleged lineage? Not so much.
Or so he thought.
Then he turned the corner toward the rec center and found himself with a knife to his throat.
S
mith feinted back, grabbed the wrist that held the knife and twisted. He noticed how slim his attacker’s sinewy wrist felt at about the same time that he registered the odd pitch of his gasp.
The knife clattered to the dirty asphalt. Smith stepped on it, looked up and found himself glare to glare with Arden Leigh’s baby brother.
The thick, curly black hair—and, to a lesser extent, the expression of disdain—was a dead giveaway.
“Jeff?”
God, the kid had grown a foot!
“Stay away from my sister,” commanded the teenager through gritted teeth. Smith had to give him points for chutzpah.
“Did you notice that
I
disarmed
you?
” Using his foot, Smith drew the knife across the asphalt, behind him and farther from Jeff. “Speaking of which—what the hell?”
He gave the kid’s arm a little shake.
“You dishonored my sister!”
“
What?
If there was any dishonoring going on, I would have noticed.” After a moment of further, mutual glaring, Smith got it. “Oh! You mean, when I broke things off.”
“And broke into her room last night!”
Oh. Smith remembered that fleeting moment of wariness—a sound? a movement?—that he’d ignored for Arden. He couldn’t wholly blame himself. After all…
Arden!
But it was a wonder he’d survived this long, all the same.
“Your sister handled the matter just fine, kiddo.”
“Well, she shouldn’t have to. That’s what she’s got me and Dad for.”
Her dad. Smith gritted his teeth at the very thought. He’d disliked Arden’s bombastic father long before he quit the Comitatus.
Stay the hell away from my daughter, boyo.
Yeah, right.
Unsure whether he found Arden’s brother more chivalrous or chauvinistic—talk about your double-edged swords—Smith shrugged it off. Insults were more fun, anyway. “So how’s that knight-errantry working out for you so far?”
“Give me back my knife and I’ll show you,” Jeff ground out in a fair imitation of
menacing.
Smith laughed. “Nope.”
“It’s
my knife!
”
“Yeah, and you used it to threaten
my person.
It’s forfeit, buddy.” Using one shoulder and arm to block Jeff’s sure lunge, Smith dropped into a crouch just long enough to scoop the weapon up, then flipped it in his hand and threw it with deadly accuracy.
The blade embedded itself in a live oak tree, some seventeen feet above the patchy grass and cracked concrete at the tree’s base.
Jeff yelled a few ripe words. The kid’s frustration under
mined Smith’s own annoyance. It sucked to lose to someone bigger like this—but every guy had to.
Maybe that was part of the problem with the modern Comitatus. So few of them had the chance to experience
losing.
Smith interrupted the kid’s tirade with, “How long ’til you turn fifteen, Jeff?”
“None of your damned business.”
Either way, Smith didn’t have a lot of time to try to immunize the kid against some of the Comitatus propaganda—one piece being that Smith was a bad guy. “Want to know where you went wrong?”
“Not attacking you the
last
time you dated my sister?”
“Actually, attacking me at all was pretty stupid. I’m stronger than you, and I’ve got a hell of a lot more experience. You should never completely trust anyone stronger and more experienced than you.” Glancing around, Smith spotted and scooped up a pair of long, dry sticks, also compliments of the live oak. “C’mon,” he taunted. “Or are you scared?”
As he’d expected, Jeff Leigh caught the makeshift weapon, too rough to even be called bokken, that he threw.
“Except that I can’t trust you.” No idiot, Arden’s baby brother.
Good.
“Why do you care?”
“Because it would destroy Arden if you ever got yourself killed,” admitted Smith, improvising a salute with his stick. Hilt to heart, then to lips, then to the sky, before he spread his arms and gave a small bow, eyes still on the kid. “Knives and swords really can kill, you know. They aren’t just symbols. And if you’re going to be protecting her, you need to be a
lot
better.”
Jeff scowled—but he also lifted his stick, then spread his arms in a half-assed version of Smith’s salute. “Like you’re so good?”
Ah, the confidence of youth.
Smith hefted his stick, trying not to remember dreams of battle, dreams of a legendary, powerful sword. Then he went
on the offense, cutting—well, swinging—toward the kid’s right. The kid moved to parry…
And the fight was on.
Arden sensed someone at her office door even before glancing up from her phone call. “I’m so pleased that the evening went well, Ms.—I mean, Molly. The recreational center received some impressive donations, too.”
While the state comptroller-slash-gubernatorial candidate related more positive follow-up, Arden watched Val lean into the doorway.
Arden mouthed,
Is it important?
Val whispered, “Oh, honey.” The mixture of amusement and disbelief in those words drove all images of a new female governor for Texas out of Arden’s thoughts. She escaped with a few more polite murmurings and swept out of her office after her friend and partner.
Val hadn’t been smiling, but that wasn’t surprising.
The twist of the darker woman’s lips was enough. “You’ve got to see this to believe it,” she promised.
So Arden followed her through an expanding cluster of interested teenage girls, past the fenced edge of the rec center’s property…
…to the sight of Smith Donnell playing pirate with Arden’s little brother, Jeff.
Swashbuckling
pirate.
They took sideways steps toward and then away from each other with each clash of…branches.
“Attack sword-first,” Smith chided. “Defend body-first.”
Jeff said a word that he shouldn’t, and Arden frowned. The teenage girls behind her giggled their approval.
Smith said, “Your mouth wasn’t on that list. Try again,” and thwapped Jeff on the upper arm with his stick.
If those had been real swords, Jeff would be bleeding—but
they weren’t. Her brother was fairly safe. Just
how
safe he seemed surprised Arden. Apparently she trusted Smith more than she would have thought.
She didn’t giggle like a teenager. But, watching Smith’s athletic expertise, she found herself pressing her lips together to stop a smile. His footwork alone…
“He can
fence?
” murmured Val.
Arden nodded. “He and his friends were on the fencing team in college.”
“Gotta love a man who’s good with his sword.”
Arden shushed her friend a little too sharply, but flushed—she’d never experienced Smith’s “sword” herself. That was no cause for embarrassment, was it?
After they’d broken up, the lack of that particular memory had been a relief. Bad enough that the melodrama of their imbalanced courtship had begun to dominate her life, her dreams. By the time their last six-month trial period had drawn toward an end, she’d longed for their consummation as much as she’d hoped for a ring.
When he dumped her, she’d been glad not to have given up that last, significant piece of ground. Bad enough to lose her heart without feeling cheapened, as well.
Today, watching the play of his shoulder muscles under his worn T-shirt, his blue-jeaned thighs as he danced in and out of Jeff’s reach, she couldn’t help but remember how those shoulders had felt under her greedy hands last night, how those legs had felt pressed against hers. And the sight of his patience with Jeff!
“A horizontal block for a vertical strike,” Smith reminded her brother. As Jeff raised his branch over his head, Smith poked him gently in the ribs. “And a vertical block for a horizontal strike. Come on, that’s as basic as it gets.”
Jeff swung his stick downward a little too violently. Luckily, Smith, practicing what he preached, stopped the
arcing blow with a horizontal block. The wood made a loud crack at impact, and bits of dust and bark flew off.
“Enough!” Arden declared in her authority voice, stepping out from the crowd. “We have a no-violence rule at Girls First.”
Jeff obediently lowered his stick.
Smith smacked him lightly across the butt. “Hah! Don’t get distracted.”
“With her dressed like that?” protested Jeff. Arden looked down at herself in confusion—standard jeans, a ruched cotton top—and heard another smack.
“Hah-ha,” Jeff sing-songed back at Smith, who, when Arden looked back up, was rubbing his arm and looking sheepish. And great. The exercise had flushed him with vitality…and the memory of his lips on her, last night, didn’t exactly distract her from his already handsome form.
“Very funny,” Smith chided Jeff—and a belated piece of memory clicked into place.
“Girls,” instructed Arden, “please go on back into the air-conditioning. There’s no more to see here.”
“I want to learn how to do that,” protested Latashya Jones, lingering.
“We’ll see what we can do to add fencing to our activities. But for now—Val?”
Val stepped in, herding their charges out of earshot, and Arden turned on her menfolk.
Especially the shorter one.
“Is this tomorrow, Jeff?”
Smith looked confused. She didn’t care.
“I specifically told you not to come down here today.”
“Because he was coming today, right?” Any camaraderie she’d sensed between Jeff and Smith vanished.
“That is none of your business, young man. I have the right to see whomever I wish, whenever I wish.”
“Exactly,” said Smith. “That’s why I was fighting him. As your, you know…champion.”
Knowing a lie when she heard it—especially when his eyes danced like that—she was careful to use her most scathing tone to say, “My hero.” Even if something about the idea of Smith as her champion gave her a fleeting, not-unpleasant warmth.
In lieu of turning on herself for such idiocy, she turned on him. “And, you! If you ever lift a hand against my baby brother again—”
“Arden!” protested Jeff, flushing.
Some of the girls still clustered around her giggled.
“I
am
calling the police. And no, it doesn’t matter that you were just using sticks. Even sticks can be dangerous. Weapons are
never
the answer.”
For some reason, Smith looked intently at Jeff as he said, “You’re right, Arden. I apologize.”
Jeff just glared. “Why’s
he
allowed to be here?”
“Still none of your business, but it’s because I invited him.”
“You said you two broke up.”
“We did. We have business today, not pleasure.”
Jeff’s narrowed eyes didn’t seem to believe her, but she wasn’t the one who had planned an ambush at work. She didn’t owe him explanations about whom she saw—even in her room—or why.
He
was the child here!
Smith, curse him, said, “Not that any time with your sister, even for business, could fail to be pleasurable.”
Arden scowled at him.
He grinned back, unfazed. Tousled.
Sexy.
Sugar.
Smith supposed it made sense that any meeting with a conspiracy theorist would be shrouded in mystery. But the
plan that Arden explained to him two days later put everything in favor of her elusive Internet source, Vox07, instead of them.
Or it would, if Smith didn’t have a couple of secret weapons.
“He said to come alone,” worried Arden, shifting uncomfortably in her seat at the West End barbecue restaurant that overlooked the downtown Dallas light-rail line. Despite the historic district’s popularity, with its brick streets and restored-warehouse shops, they were the only customers using the patio seating—with the exception of a skinny teenaged girl reading a paperback. But Smith didn’t think the summer temperatures were the cause of Arden’s discomfort, and not just because the restaurant’s outdoor fans helped push the August heat around some.
“They
always
say to come alone.” He hadn’t lied to Jeff. Considering how little he would get of it, time spent with Arden was a real pleasure. He loved watching how neatly she managed to eat something as messy as a pulled-chicken sandwich. He loved how, when he asked for the salt, she passed both it and the pepper with one hand, as if the pair should never be separated—she’d always done that. She’d always done a lot of little, delightful,
proper
things.
Which had always made her improprieties all the tastier.
Even after a year, he remembered how she liked her iced tea—sweet—which she now sipped delicately. “Won’t Vox refuse to talk to me, once he knows that I lied?”
“He might.” Seeing that he’d already plowed through his barbecued brisket, while Arden had taken only a few nibbles of her own late lunch, Smith forced himself to slow down on the fries. Just because he was hungry didn’t mean she had to know it. “But he wants to know what
you
know, too.”
“Wouldn’t him refusing to talk invalidate our entire reason for coming here?” Arden, on the other hand, seemed far less enamored of her time with Smith. That made sense. He hadn’t just burned their bridges when his exile from the Comitatus
had prompted him to set her free. Drunk. Over the phone. From a bar.
He’d kind of blown those bridges to smithereens.
Then he’d burned the smithereens.
Of course he was still in love with her. These last few days in her company only emphasized how depressingly little that had changed. But apparently he’d done his job in alienating her too well. Sure, she’d kissed him the other night. A momentary weakness. A goodbye.
She’d
stopped
kissing him, too.
So. Business. Vox07, the mysterious Internet stranger who may have narced Arden’s investigation out to the Comitatus in the first place. Arden had let Smith read the e-mails Vox07 had sent her asking for a meeting to trade further information. The stranger knew a lot about the Comitatus to not
be
Comitatus.
Especially since Mitch’s attempt to trace the informant’s e-mail had led to a sophisticated series of feints, blinds and remote servers.