The Enemy Within (Daughters of the People Series Book 3) (4 page)

“I don’t mind.”
He picked up the keys from his desk and crossed the room to stand beside her.
“Probably for the best anyway, since I brought the truck.”

She pressed her
lips together to stifle the humor tugging at her. A strong man with a truck
indeed. “I appreciate that.”

He opened the
door and placed a hand on the small of her back in a touch that warmed her
through and through. “Figured you’d want to get that furniture in as soon as
possible.”

She let him
escort her through the building, and noted with uncharacteristic spite that
Laura had abandoned her post. “You figured correctly. I don’t mind sleeping on
the floor once in a while, but it gets uncomfortable night after night.”

They entered the
elevator and he punched the main floor’s button with a roguish grin that made
her blush. Why had she brought up
sleeping
around him, of all people?

She blew a
silent breath out when he let it go and forced herself to carry on a natural
conversation with him that did
not
include anything related to sleeping
or beds or the attraction sparking so brightly between them.

* * *

Bobby took her
to a chichi deli a block away from his office and insisted on paying for their
lunch. After they placed orders for a turkey sub each, they found a table off
to one side, away from the windows and the lunch crowd streaming in.

Indigo sat down
across from Bobby. “You know, I was supposed to treat you as a thank you for
helping me today.”

He shrugged.
“Yeah, but I’m the man.”

She looked up
from the sandwich she was arranging in meticulous portions across the butcher’s
paper that held it. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“This isn’t
Tellowee where Daughters run amuck and bully and coddle their men into
submission.” He grinned at her. “This is America and I’m the man. Here, when we
take beautiful women out, we pay.”

She paused with
one quarter of her sandwich halfway to her mouth. He thought she was beautiful.
After all this time and all the things that had passed between them, the
heartache and disappointment and anger, he still thought she was beautiful. A
gooey warmth nudged at her heart, right where her resolve was supposed to be.
How was she supposed to fight him off when he said things like that?

He raised his
eyebrows and pierced her with a look that seemed to see right through her. “No
rebuttal?”

“I’m not letting
you pay every time we go out.”

“You say that
like this is an official date.”

She gave him a
quelling look. “Besides, this lunch was my idea.”

“Still the man.”
When she started to speak, he nudged the plastic basket holding her lunch with
a  finger. “Are we gonna argue or eat?”

“I wasn’t
arguing,” she said primly. “I was clarifying.”

“Uh-huh.” He
took a bite, chewed thoughtfully as his eyes lingered on her. “How did you like
working on the Sandby borg site?”

“It was fun,
right up until the robbery. Dr. Lindberg, the man in charge of the dig,” she
said when he raised a questioning eyebrow, “he was a lot of fun to be around. A
bit of a rascal, too, but only around his wife. I think they’ve been married
fifty-five or six years now, and are still very much in love.”

He glanced down
at his sandwich, hesitated, then took a bite of it almost mechanically. She
nibbled at her own sandwich as the silence dragged on between them. Why had she
mentioned the l-word around him? No matter what had passed between them, he
deserved better than to have her prod an old wound. She sipped from her bottle
of water, searching for a safer topic. “How did you meet Hiro and Drew?”

His shoulders
relaxed as his gaze lifted and a smile tugged at his mouth. “In the Army. We
went through, ah, training together.”

“Training.” She
took another bite, waited for him to elaborate. “What kind of training?”

“Can’t say.” His
grin grew a fraction. “Classified.”

“Honestly,
Bobby.”

“You’re so fun
to tease.” He held up his hands at her impatient look. “Ok, ok. We went through
OTC together.”

She inhaled
sharply and said in a harsh whisper, “Delta Force?”

“Mmm. Pretty
much everything after that really is classified.”

“But the Delta
Force, Bobby? That’s so dangerous.”

His expression
hardened. “I enlisted for the danger, Indi.”

No, he’d
enlisted to escape what had happened between them and the Army had taken him in
like the lost soul he’d been. A wave of guilt flooded through her, dimming her
pleasure of the day. He could’ve been killed or, worse, captured and tortured,
all because she’d been too cowardly to handle his heart properly. “I can’t
believe your mother allowed that.”

“I was sixteen.
Didn’t give her a say in the matter.”

“You weren’t
sixteen when you were selected for OTC.”

“No, I was a
little older.” His grin returned, though his eyes held a dangerous glint. “And
thanks to your training, Maetyrm, I had an interesting enough skill set to
attract the right kind of attention.”

“So you slew
them with your mad grammar skills, huh.”

“That wasn’t the
only thing you taught, and you weren’t the only teacher I had.”

Her appetite
fled abruptly and she pushed her basket away. Every Daughter and Son went
through rigorous training from an early age. Martial arts, gymnastics, outdoor
survival, weapons training, and a host of academic skills that placed them well
above their mortal human peers in myriad ways. Many wound up in the armed
forces or worked as mercenaries precisely because of the intensive training
they’d received as children. “How did you make it into the Army at such a young
age?”

“How do you
think?” he retorted. “Every teenager in Tellowee knows who to go to if they
need an ID.”

She’d used such
services herself over the years, each time she needed to alter her identification
to reflect her apparent age, which hadn’t changed in nearly a century and a
half. “So you paid someone to fake a birth certificate and school records,” she
guessed.

“Something like
that.” He nudged her basket again, inching it closer to her. “You need to eat.
We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

“I’m not
hungry.”

“Eat anyway.”

“Bobby.” She
rubbed her suddenly damp palms over her thighs. Everything he’d been through
since the moment she’d fled from him had been her fault. Every day under the
Army’s thumb, every day in a backwater hell, surrounded by people who would as
soon kill him as spit on him. All of that because of her. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”
She took a deep breath, tried to exhale the guilt and worry tangled up with her
nerves. “You joined the Army because of me, because I pushed you away.”

“I joined the
Army because I wanted to be there.” He speared her with a flinty gaze. “Don’t ever
try to own that again. Being there was my choice. If I hadn’t liked it, I
wouldn’t have kept re-upping.”

She sat back in
her chair, nonplussed.

“Seriously.
You’re not to blame for what I did.” He switched chairs, taking the one beside
her. “Here, guess I’m gonna have to feed you, since you won’t feed yourself.”

“You’ll do no
such thing,” she said, though she smiled and ate her lunch, as he’d no doubt intended
her to.

Their
conversation drifted to other things, to Indigo’s relief. How Hiro, Drew, and Bobby
had schemed and plotted and finally opened their business together two years
before, after they’d gotten out of the Army. About her travels during the last
decade, mostly from one archaeological dig to another, with a short stint as a
teacher at another of the People’s centers in Europe. And about trivialities.
Books read recently, the best grocery stores outside of Tellowee, who was
dating whom in the insular community.

Gradually, the
awkwardness faded between them. Sometimes, she thought Bobby might be holding
back, especially when he talked about Hiro and Drew. He was very open about
what he did share, though, and she tried to be as well. They were working
toward some sort of friendship, after all. If he touched her hair as they talked
or held her hand when they wandered through crowds, she put it down to his
solicitous nature. He was a toucher. She’d seen him do the exact same things
with his sisters, during that
before time
she refused to dwell on. If
her hand tingled from the warmth of his touch and sparked off a chain reaction
of dizzy heat that rocketed through every cell in her body, well, that was her
problem. She could deal with it.

After lunch, he
drove her to a huge furniture store in Buford. Once inside, she paused in awe
of the sheer size of the selection.

“Bobby, really.”
She looked around at row after row of furniture grouped into functional
settings for every room in the house. “I only need a serviceable sofa and a
bed. We’ll never sort through all of this in one day.”

“Sure we will.”
He placed a hand on the small of her back. “C’mon.”

Indigo allowed
him to guide her through a series of artfully arranged living areas. He stopped
at a grouping consisting of a large couch, a loveseat, and a recliner, along
with a coffee table, matching end tables, and more accessories than she would
ever need.

She bit her lip
and searched for a polite way to tell him no. “I don’t need this much.”

“You don’t have
to take the whole thing.” He grinned, took her hand, and led her toward the
couch. “Let’s try it out.”

He sat in the
middle of the couch, pulled her down beside him, and draped a friendly arm
around her shoulders. A tang of his soap tickled her nose, sharp and masculine,
like Bobby. She shivered when his hand grazed her upper arm through the thin
sleeve of her blouse.

The couch was
soft and cushy, easy to snuggle into. Maybe a little too easy, especially with
an attractive man sitting next to you with his arm draped over your shoulders. “This
is comfortable.”

“Sturdy, too.”
He patted the cushion with his free hand. “Easy to clean. This model has a
fold-out bed.”

“A useful addition.”
She turned to look at him and her breath caught in her throat. His mouth was
inches from her own, sensual and tempting. “You’ve done this before, I take
it.”

“Mmm.” He rubbed
a finger over her lower lip, slowly, carefully, as if he were memorizing the
shape and texture. “The extra bed comes in handy when you’ve got a large
family.”

“I suppose it
does,” she murmured. His gaze dropped to her mouth and his arm tightened around
her shoulders, drawing her closer, and she put a hand on his chest, to stop him
or encourage him, she didn’t know.

He blinked and
drew back a moment before she heard footsteps approaching. Indigo stood, as
much to pull herself together as anything, and managed a smile for the salesman
walking toward them. The not-quite-kiss she shoved out of her mind. She
couldn’t do a thing about the heat that lingered from Bobby’s touch.

In the end, she
chose to take the sofa and a recliner in a deep chocolate brown, not because
they were sturdy and easy to care for, but because Bobby looked so comfortable
there. Since he looked comfortable, she reasoned others would as well.

Buying the sofa
had absolutely nothing to do with her sudden need to encourage him to drop by
her home. Nothing at all.

Bobby talked her
out of looking for bedroom furniture at that store, saying only that he had
something else in mind. She let it go and set her attention to haggling the
price down on both pieces, then arranged for them to be delivered to her
apartment. When they left the store, Indigo said, “Just out of curiosity, why
aren’t we taking the sofa back with us?”

“Because we need
the room for your bedroom furniture.”

He helped her
into his truck before walking around and getting in himself. Once they were
underway, she shifted in the seat, studying his profile. He drove with his eyes
fixed on the road and his left hand at the top of the steering wheel. His right
hand rested on the bench seat between them, edging closer to her in tiny increments.

“What was wrong
with the furniture at that store?”

“It’s not what
you’re looking for.” He merged onto the highway and accelerated to match the
flow of traffic. “I saw the way you eyed the coffee table in there.”

Her lips curled
into an unladylike sneer. “It looked fake.”

“It’s cheaper
wood with a veneer. Still wood, but not the kind you’re used to.”

“Oh? What kind
of wood am I used to, then?”

He glanced at
her long enough for his mischievous grin to reignite the desire he’d stirred in
her earlier, a heat her body hadn’t quite forgotten. “The real kind. Trust me.
You’ll love what I have in mind.”

“How do you
know?”

“You liked the
sofa, didn’t you?”