Lightning Strikes (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy #3) (15 page)

“Nope.  I just want to know what you do.  I know you’ve worked your fair share of odd jobs.  Have you landed on something solid yet?  Or are you really the romantic drifter I suspect?”

She smiled, tightening her knees to her chest.  “I’m a call center rep, and trust me, there is nothing romantic about it.”

“When I made a lawyer joke to you earlier tonight, you got a little weird.” He smirked at her.  “Why did you get weird?”

“I’m afraid you’ve exhausted all your questions for this triple word score, Aries.”

“Did you want to be a lawyer once?” he asked.  “Is that why you got weird on me?”

“Are we having an actual conversation now?  Without Scrabble propping us up?”

“You tell me.”

She searched his eyes.  A long silence passed.   “Well, this might surprise you, but your girl actually made it halfway through her second year at CUNY School of Law before she had to drop out.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, at all.  In fact, it explains a whole helluva lot.”  He licked his lips.  “Why did you drop out?”

She breathed deep, and without answering, spelled out her next word.

Jack watched her do it, every once in a while shooting her sneaky looks, waiting for an answer.

She shot him sneaky looks right back as she finished spelling her word, reading it out loud.  “Pushy,” she said.  “Excessively ambitious.   Kind of like that question.”

“How lucky are we?” Jack tilted his head with a smile.  “Coming across all these letters that pertain to our bizarre dynamic so perfectly?”

Nina suddenly leaned over the bed and snatched up her bag from the floor.  She felt his eyes on her the whole time, and her smile broadened when his warm hand clapped around her thigh.

As she came back up, bag in hand, she saw the change that had occurred in his eyes, and she knew they were done playing Scrabble.

As his hand climbed her leg.  “There’s something so…” he tilted his head. “Irresistible about you.”

She unzipped her bag, swallowing thickly and trying to focus.  “I need some Chapstick,” she croaked.

His suggestive gaze fell to her bag, and the sexual gleam in his eyes immediately disappeared when clumps of hundred dollar bills came tumbling out.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, sitting up.

Nina gasped when he snatched her bag and turned it over, letting all of the money and contents spill out.

“A lady’s purse is her most sacred possession, Aries!  How rude.”

“Can I please…” Jack began gathering up all the hundred dollar bills on the bed, including the ones she’d scooped up in her hands.

As he cupped her hands with his, the warmth caught them both at once.  Their eyes met, fell to each other’s lips, and then met again, simultaneously, before Jack shook his head and tugged at her hands.  “Give me this please.”

“No.”  She tightened her hands around the wad of money, trying to get it away from him.  “It’s mine.”

“What do you think? I’m going to steal it from you?” Jack asked, attempting to crane her hands apart, smiling as she began to giggle amidst her halfhearted fight.  “You think I’m going to steal your little ten thousand dollars?  I wipe my ass with this kind of money.”

She released the crumbled bills, only because his words had forced her to put all of her energy into giving him the most disgusted look she could drum up.

“I know, I know.”  He took the bills and dropped them down into the pile he’d made on the mattress.  “I’m a vain, arrogant, self-serving narcissist.  Borderline sociopathic.  A textbook case that should be institutionalized.”

“Get outta my head, Aries.”

“I just can’t stand it for another moment,” Jack mumbled, getting to work straightening out each hundred dollar bill in the crumbled wad, laying them in a separate pile, one by one, frowning the entire way.  “Every time I see this wad of money it makes my eyeball twitch.  I feel like I’m on the verge of having a nervous breakdown every time I look at it.  How do you stand this?  How do you even count this?”

“I know it’s all there.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t take it anymore, so…”

She smiled at his tightened jaw as he wrestled her bills into a more orderly fashion.  “I bet your home in Greenwich is spotless.  Like I’d be afraid to even use your toilet for fear of dirtying it up.  We’ve been through hell and back the last three days, and there’s still something about you that remains so relentlessly…” She brought her hands into claws.   “Neat.  And tidy.  How do you do it?”

“If you could see inside my head, you’d know I’m anything but neat and tidy, doll.”

“I doubt there’s any facet of your life that hasn’t been wrapped up in a Tiffany bow.”

His laughter grew at that.  “You have no idea.”

“Try me.  I bet that every problem you’ve ever had in your life, combined, wouldn’t even
begin
to live up to the problems I’ve faced in the last month alone.”

Jack didn’t respond, moving slower than he had been before.

When he was silent for a moment too long, Nina followed his gaze to the pile, and her mouth fell open.

Between his fingers was a hundred dollar bill with a small photo stuck to the back.

The moment she caught sight of the sandy spiral curls, the bright brown eyes, and the snaggletooth grin lighting up that photo, she snatched it from Jack’s hand.

Jack jolted at the unexpected snatch, wide eyes meeting hers.

Nina peeled the photograph away from the bill, where it had been stuck by a runaway piece of gum.  She took in the photo, her eyes filling with moisture before she hid it between her palms.

“I thought I’d lost this,” she whispered, eyes lowered.

Jack leaned over and pressed his knuckles to the bottom of her chin, asking for her eyes.

She wouldn’t look up at him.

“Who is that, Nina?”

This time, she did look at him, inhaling sharply, trying to blink back tears.  “It’s my… my cousin.”

His eyebrows jumped at her answer.  “Your cousin?”

She sniffled, sliding he back of her hand under her nose before nodding.

“He’s got a great smile,” he said.

Her eyes returned to the photo.

When she leaped out of the bed, face still drawn, and climbed up the ladder to the top of the boat, Jack watched her go with his mouth hanging open.

***

He gave her time.  As much time as he could, until he couldn’t take it anymore.

It felt like a lifetime, but when he checked the clock on his phone, he saw that it had only been ten minutes.

Ten minutes and he couldn’t take it.  Being away from her.

He’d sat in that bed, that infuriating wad of money still only halfway attended to, watching those stairs with expectant eyes.  He’d managed to stop himself the first few times he’d gone for those stairs, turning back to the bed, reminding himself that he’d only known this woman for a short while.

But this time, he finished the job, clearing the ladder to the deck of the boat.

Nina sat with her back to him; swinging her legs over the edge of the boat, the photo still clutched in her hand from where she was cradling her arms behind her.

“Hey,” he called, offering her a smile when her eyes shot over her shoulder.  His heartbeat didn’t decrease until she gave him a smile in return.

“Hey, yourself.”  Her eyes followed him when he approached.

He groaned into a sitting position next to her.

“Sorry if I got weird back there,” she said, watching the full moon.  “Sorry if it freaked you out.”

Jack’s lips curled down at the edges.  “It didn’t.”

She pushed the photo into her bra, eyes going back to the moon.  She could probably feel his eyes burning a hole into the side of her face because she seemed to speak in direct response to it.  “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

Jack’s eyes went to the bra cup that the photo of the little boy had disappeared into.  “Okay.”

She took a deep breath.  “You know what I do want?”

Jack straightened when her eyes met his.  “What?”

“You.  Tonight.”

His eyes fell to her lips before he could stop them.  “Me too.”

She took his hand and stood, bringing him to his feet and guiding him back toward the staircase, and the bed that awaited them underneath.

Jack stopped just short of the ladder, gripping her hand.

She stopped, too, turning to him.  “Don’t get all sanctimonious on me now, Aries.”

Jack looked off, trying to hide a blush, but in the next instant, his eyes were back to where they really wanted to be—on her.

Her fingers went to his pants, and she popped the button.  When he covered her hands with his, licking his lips, she smiled at the newly moistened clouds.   “Don’t get all bleeding heart on me now.”

“Is there a reason my heart should bleed for you?” he asked.

“The man I met on the plane two days ago would never ask such an insightful question.”

“Maybe the man you met isn’t the man you thought.”

She took a deep breath when, this time, he allowed her to finish undoing his pants, pushing them down just low enough to get her warm fingers into his boxers.  He hissed in a breath between his clenched teeth when she got them around his twitching shaft.

“I don’t think anyone is really the person they are when a new pair of eyes sees them for the first time.  We all have a lot of things we’re running from Jack…” She tugged his earlobe between her teeth, lowering her voice to a whisper.  “And even more things we want to forget.”  The gasp that left her lips when she got her fingers around the head was topped only by his own.  She let the precum at the tip moisten her palm, spreading it along his shaft, tightening her grip as she went.  “And what better way to forget than to have a little fun, right?”

The moment the words left her lips, Jack hissed and stepped back.  He met her eyes, saw the tears threatening to spill over them, and his heart sank.  When one tear actually did fall, racing down her cheek, he eased her hand out of his pants.

As his eyes jammed shut, he could hear the sharp gasp that left her lips.  It took him several long moments to compose himself before opening his eyes and meeting hers.

“Not like this,” he said.

Brows raised high, watery eyes big and lips falling open; Nina looked downright stunned.

“You’re upset,” Jack said.  “And I won’t make you talk about it if you don’t want to.”

She held his gaze.

“But not like this,” Jack finished, shaking his head.  “Let’s just…” He swallowed, closing his eyes.  “Let’s just lay down.  I’ll even hold you; if you’d like that.”

When he opened his eyes and met hers, the smile that spread on her face nearly ended him.

She pressed her knuckle into his chest, right against his heart.  “That’s the one, Jack.  That’s the man who saved me.  God do I love it when you let him out of his cage.”  She turned away from him, smiling over her shoulder as she interlaced their fingers.  “Let’s go to bed.”

He didn’t know what time of the night it started to happen.  When he’d kicked himself awake and reached for her, only able to drift back into his deep slumber when he grazed her arm, her leg, any body part he could get.  He felt like it went on for hours, and when he found himself still trapped in the subconscious universe between sleep and awake, rubbing his hand along the empty sheets, Jack jolted completely awake because he felt nothing next to him.

He bent his neck, squinting passed the sleep in his eyes, caught sight of her, and then let his head fall back on the pillow with a groan.

Nina smiled at him from over her shoulder.  She sat at the end of the bed cross-legged, with the TV next to the stairwell playing on mute.  Sunlight shone in through the door’s tiny circular window.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she said.

Jack covered his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, still struggling to join the waking world.  “Hurricane?” was all he could grumble.

She shook her head.  “Decimated our city; Newark and JFK back in operation, but LaGuardia is still drowning.”

He pushed onto his elbows.  “And the strike?”

“Still going.  Looks like air traffic control aren’t playing
any
games this time around.  They want what they want, and they want it now.”

He moaned.  “Coffee?”

She laughed.  “Brewing.  You’re lucky.  Whoever owns this boat installed a state of the art machine.”  She thought about it.  “Or maybe I’m lucky.  I can’t imagine what a crankster you are when you’re feinding for your daily hit of caffeine.  Do you take it in a mug or straight to the vein?”

“No more talking,” Jack sat up, frowning at her smiling face.  He stared off into the distance for a while, just blinking, looking around.

She watched him, biting her knuckles gently before she leaped at him with a scream, putting him on his back on the bed.

“Jesus,” Jack grumbled, frowning when she climbed on top of him, pressing her forearms into his chest.  Her curls tickled his biceps, spinning all over the place and laying gently against her breasts, which were currently squished against his chest.

“Last night was…” she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes.  “Illuminating.”

His gaze went straight to her black eye, which had deepened in darkness and doubled in size, and he reached for his own eye.

She slapped his hand away before he could.  “Don’t.  Let it heal.”

“This is nuts,” Jack said, letting one hand settle on her back and the other plop against the mattress.  “I can’t believe we’ve been drifting for four days.”

“Maybe there really is some karmic curse on our shoulders.  One we were destined to endure together.”

“You’re still on that fate kick?”

“You said it yourself.   It had to be you, and it had to be me.  Could you imagine all of this happening if it were with any other person on that plane?  Like the woman in the row in front of us?”

“The one who kept asking the flight attendant
why
it was illegal to smoke in the lavatory?  And if an exception could be made, just that one time?” Jack chuckled.  “No.  She and I would not have made it.”

“And if I’d ended up with the guy sitting next to us, with the dragon’s breath that I could smell all the way across the aisle?  I would’ve murdered him by now, for sure.”  She searched his eyes.  “Damn.  It doesn’t feel like it’s only been four days.   Feels like it was a year ago.”

“It’s strange.”  Jack nodded his agreement.

“I thought we were going to die on that plane.  I honestly did.”  She pursed her lips.  “But I wasn’t afraid.  I think moments like that, when you’re sure your life is over, are the best ones.  There is no better way to remind yourself of what really matters.  Who really matters.  Most people don’t get to act on those epiphanies because they end up biting the dust.  But we got lucky.  We got to see who and what really matters.  The first people who enter your mind when you realize you’re peacing out.”

“Peacing out?” he chuckled.

“Who was the first person you thought about?” She ran her finger slowly along his abs, letting the beds dip into each peak and valley.

“Who was yours?”

“Stop countering me, Council.”

His laugh tickled her cheek.

“I asked you first,” she said.

His chest took her head with it as it lifted high in the air, relaxing again as he exhaled.  She counted his heartbeat as silence stretched on.

“My brother, as always, was the first thought that entered my head and the last to leave it.”

She looked up at him.  “What’s his name?”

He pushed his fingers into her hair, breathing out a laugh.  “This is why I can’t tell you things.  You will always claw for more, more,
more
.”  He sighed.  “His name is Chase.”

His voice tickled her cheek through his skin, again, but she didn’t dare turn to face him.  There was something about direct eye contact that made him seal himself shut like a steel trap.

“He looked like an angel in that news segment,” she said.  “He’s so handsome.”

“Of course.  He’s an Almeida.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Well, he looks nothing like you.”

“Nah, he took after our Mom.”

She nodded, laying her hands on his chest and pressing her chin into it.  “What’s he like?”

“He is…” He took a deep breath.  “Good-natured… and valiant… and unapologetically perceptive.  Bright.  He’s… everything I’m not really.”  He chuckled, letting his fingers run along the line in her back.  “And you?”

She sat tall when his eyes met hers, cradling her forearms on his hard stomach.  “Me?”

“Who was the first person you thought about?”

“Noah,” spilled out of her lips before she could think to stop it.

“Who is Noah?”

She didn’t answer.

Their eyes danced, and the silence grew heavier with each second they did before she turned away from him and pressed her cheek into his chest, once more.

The longer she went without answering, the more Jack’s heart sped up.  She closed her eyes, letting the muscle in his chest betray his cool exterior, pounding his truth into her cheek with more ferocity every second until her eyes fluttered shut.

Just as they were dozing back to sleep, a loud pounding on the deck of the boat sent their eyes flying open.  Heavy footsteps followed, pounding in time with both their hearts as they flew out of bed.  Gasps of shock blazed past their lips as they raced to the staircase, squinting up just in time to see the door open and the bright morning sun spilling in.

A pair of aviator sunglass appeared with a gold badge flashing next to them, shooting blinding light in their eyes as it reflected the morning sun.

Jack cursed under his breath.

“LAPD,” the unsmiling officer said.  “Please step out of the boat.”

***

Jack jolted as the gates of the jail cell slammed closed… with him on the other side.

“We’d like a voucher for the items you confiscated please?” he asked, for the millionth time that morning, watching as the retreating overweight officer shook his head with a chuckle, pretending not to hear him.  Jack cringed after him, pressing his forehead into the grimy black bars.  The anger on his face only wavered when the soft cries from the cell next to him rang in his ears.  “Stop crying,” he said to the wall.

Sniffles followed his command, but silence only fell in for a moment before the weeps had picked up again.

“Nina,” he said, hand curled into fists in his pockets.  “Stop crying.  I’m going to take care of it.”

“They took all my money.  I really needed that money.”

“They’re required by law to confiscate everything.  We’re going to get an itemized voucher, so your money is protected.”

“Right, because law enforcement has proven themselves
so
trustworthy when it comes to cold, hard cash.  Shouldn’t we have gotten the voucher
before
they booked us, not after?”

“Sometimes they run behind, but I am your witness, and I know how much money you gave them.  If a single dime is missing once we get out of here, I
will
make them regret it.” He waited.  More sniffles, but no weeps.  He lowered his voice, watching the wall with wounded eyes.  “Now please calm down before you make yourself sick.  I’m going to take care of it.”  He tried to shut up, but a gentle, “I promise,” snuck through.

Silence.  He couldn’t tear his eyes from the wall to his right, and found himself stepping closer to it, pressing his forehead against the concrete.

“I’m sorry, Jack.”

He lifted his head, pressing his hands on the wall.

“You were right.  I can’t even live my life without complete disaster striking.  Everything I touch just whirls into a huge shitstorm.  Hurricane fucking Nina.”

He let his head drop.   “Easy, doll.”

“You were right, and we both know it.”

“I wasn’t right,” Jack said, tapping the heels of his palms on the wall.  “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong in my life.”

More silence.

Sniffles.

He opened his mouth, hesitated, and then cursed.  “I really care about—“

“You’re only being nice to me because we’ve been making out for the past two days.  You sense booty on the horizon.  Any man with a lick of sense would be all over that.”

He frowned at the wall, unable to stop the slow smile crossing his face when he heard the joking tone to her voice.  “That’s not true.”

“Of
course
it is.”

“Well, I’m not going to apologize because I enjoy kissing you.  Did I enjoy it?  Yes.  Even if we are in jail right now because of it.”  Her laughter lit up his life.  “Would I like to do it again, sometime?  Absolutely.”

“Shut up,” she mumbled, the smile in her voice counteracting her words.

Jack swallowed.  “When we get out of here…” He took a deep breath, shaking his head as he pressed his forehead harder into the wall.  “When we get back to New York… Maybe… Maybe we don’t chuck the deuces right away.”

Silence.

He clawed his nails into the wall.

“Maybe,” she whispered.

He released a breath he didn’t even know he was holding and, with his palms still pressed to the wall, kneeled down.  After listening to her breathing for a moment, he looked down at the floor, searching for an area that wasn’t completely disgusting, before he turned and sat down.  He bent his long knees and cradled his elbows against them, his head falling back against the wall.  Through the cell bars, he could see the front desk of the small Marina Del Rey police precinct, and wondered when it was going to hit him.

He was in
jail. 
Him.  A man who’d never gotten so much as a speeding ticket.

Jail.

He was in
jail.

He knew it hadn’t hit him, because if it had, words would not be pouring out of his mouth.  He would not be so entrapped in the sound of her breathing that he eventually, subconsciously, aligned it with his own.  He would not be waiting with bated breath for her to say something, anything so that he wouldn’t feel like the only one starting the conversations.  The only one wrapped up.  The only one lost.

“This
is
all your fault, though,” he said, jamming his eyes shut the moment the words left his mouth.  “We are in jail because of
you
.  Not karma.  Just you.  I told you the boat thing was a bad idea. You break the law; you go to jail.”

“If you’re so damn smart, why the hell did you climb inside that boat with me?” she asked.  “You could’ve just left me.  I even gave you your pants back so you could.  Why didn’t you?”

Jack frowned at the opposite wall, pulling his hands into fists.  “I don’t know.”

He jolted at the sound of heavy boots pounding down the hallway outside their cells and sat taller.  The overweight officer passed his cell completely, stomach jiggling the entire way.  The keys on his hips sang out and filled the air, along with the officer’s voice, as he stopped at Nina’s cell.

“Nina Grammio?  Your bail’s been posted.”

Jack frowned, and when he heard a bewildered,
“Huh?”
coming from Nina’s cell, he was relieved that he wasn’t the only one completely lost.  He leaped to his feet just as the officer passed his cell again, not even bothering to make eye contact with him.

A newly freed Nina followed behind him, looking back at her cell as if there had been some sort of mistake.  She met Jack’s eyes as she passed his cell and shrugged at him.

Jack followed her, letting his fingers trickle against the bars.  She did the same on the other side, and their fingers brushed in the middle of every dip.

When someone called Nina’s name from the lobby of the precinct, Jack couldn’t see them, but he did see Nina’s face fall.

And then, tears came to her eyes.