Athena Force 10: Countdown Page 10

  An FBI bomb expert with the life expectancy of a street cat, who was part Italian, who kissed like a gigolo, with eyes like neon sapphires, who cooked.

  “I had a cat at Athena Academy,” she said to distract herself.

  “Yeah?”

  She stuck her hands in her back pockets. “His name was Hop-A-Long because he lost a leg to a coyote when he was a kitten. Arthur, my mentor, saved him by banging the coyote on the head.”

  “Did the coyote die?”

  “No. He dropped the kitten and ran away.”

  With a circular gesture, he sprinkled goat cheese over the surface of the firming eggs. “Cat’s name should have been Lucky.”

  “He was a lifesaver for me.” She stepped forward with the spatula from the counter and handed it to him. “I was pretty lonely when I first went there.”

  Gracefully, Lex flipped thin egg over the filling. “Hold that thought a minute. This is ready.”

  “Want me to lift the pan?”

  “Please. This is tricky.”

  Together, they managed to get the omelet on the plates, and settled in to eat. Lex poured big glasses of milk. “Dig in, honey,” he said.

  When he sat down, she saw that he had massive circles under his eyes. “Thank you, Lex,” she said. “It was very nice of you to cook. Did they give you drugs at the hospital, too?”

  He nodded, displayed a bottle. “Will you open it? Childproof.”

  She did, and took out her own envelope. They popped their pills.

  “So you were lonely at school?” he prompted.

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.” She took a bite of omelet and it was very good. “Mmm. Very nice.”

  “Thanks. The cat. Being lonely.”

  Kim looked at him. Unusual that a man really did want to know something about a woman, rather than just wanting to tell all about himself. “Well, I have a big, close family—not just brothers and sisters, but cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody in the neighborhood, who know me, and my whole family—my whole history.”

  He smiled and nodded appreciatively.

  “And then I landed in this exclusive boarding school, and I was really happy to be there, but I was pretty young for my age, and they all seemed so glamorous and together and tough.” She made a soft noise. “I was very, very lonely, and Hop-A-Long helped.”

  “D’you have a pet now?”

  “It wouldn’t be fair—I’m not at home enough.” Her hunger took over and she fell into eating the perfectly cooked omelet. In companionable, exhausted silence, they ate.

  Dangerous, Kim thought. His kitchen, with the art deco designs in the tiles. His scent of cloves and man, which was surely the perfume of a devil or a demon. “My grandma,” she said, spearing a piece of egg on her fork, “would say Sicilians are all dogs who eat out of their pans.”

  He chuckled. “Would she?”

  “I gather this is some evil mark of culture, but I never quite got it. Why Italians would hate other Italians.”

  He drank his milk, nodded.

  “And anyway,” Kim said, “it’s no secret that Nana fell in love with Johnny Bacino when she was sixteen. He was practically right off the boat from Sicily and he broke her heart.” She lifted a shoulder. “So, forever after, Sicilians were dogs.”

  “Tough woman.”

  “She’s that.”

  “Mom’s mom or dad’s mom?”

  “My dad’s.” She took another bite of omelet. “This is the best omelet I’ve ever eaten, Lex.”

  “Way better than McD’s, huh?”

  She nodded. “My mom isn’t Italian. She’s Irish. My dad met her in Vietnam, brought her home.”

  “A nurse, right?”

  For a second, Kim hesitated. It seemed she was talking an awful lot. It wasn’t really like her. But what did it hurt? It wasn’t as if she was telling state secrets. “Yeah, a nurse. She works oncology now.”

  “Vietnam to cancer. She’ll get her wings in heaven, all right.”

  “My father wanted her to stay home, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She caused wars in Baltimore’s Little Italy, I can tell you. So independent and fierce, she made everybody mad.”

  “So you come by it honestly.”

  “I guess I do.” She blinked, feeling the warmth of food in her belly, the comfort of finally stopping after such a long day. There was a pleasant buzz at the base of her neck, and she blinked again, more slowly.

  Her body jerked, and she realized she’d very nearly keeled over right into her plate.

  Lex caught her arm. “Hey, you all right?”

  She stood up. “I have to go to bed right now.”

  In an instant, Lex was beside her. “Come on.”

  “I’ll shower in the morning,” she said, swaying as she turned toward the hallway she’d seen.

  “That’s fine.” He took her elbow, led her down the hall and opened a door. He flipped on the light. A small bedroom with two narrow windows was revealed. The bed was covered with a green-and-white spread. The blinds were open and Kim noticed vaguely that it was still snowing. Lex moved to close them and she shook her head. “Leave them.”

  She sank down on the bed and started taking off her shoes. One landed with a thump. Then the other. She stripped off her socks.

  Lex said, “I’ll put a toothbrush in the bathroom and bring you some towels—”

  He said more, but Kim was tilting sideways, and his voice melted into a meaningless wash of sound as sleep rose up and claimed her.

  Chapter 10

  Wednesday, October 6

  Kim awakened one toe at a time. She couldn’t immediately remember where she was. The bed was deep and comfortable. She’d made a nest of pillows and blankets around her, as was her habit, and one foot hung over the edge of the bed.

  Opening one eye, she saw an uncurtained window, with snow falling past it.

  Chicago.

  Oh, yeah.

  Lex.

  She took a breath, started to throw off the covers, and groaned. Sore muscles cried out from every corner of her body—arms, ribs, neck. Her ear woke up and started to throb. Kim put a hand to it. Who knew a freaking ear could hurt so much?

  With effort, she sat upright and tossed the tangles of covers from her body. Through the window she could see that it was still snowing, swirls of big fat flakes. After a minute, she stood up to stretch out the stiffness. Her ankle immediately protested, and she limped a little as she crossed to the window to check out the weather. She blinked. “Good grief.”

  It must have snowed all night. Drifts half covered the cars parked on the street. There wasn’t a soul anywhere that she could see. No traffic. It was a side street, but it didn’t look as if there’d been any cars along the street for quite a long time.

  Her clothes were wretchedly twisted and uncomfortable. She straightened out her bra, shook down her jeans, thinking about how fast she’d passed out last night. Her mouth tasted like an alien died in it.

  Coffee. A shower.

  The room, now that she could see it, was as marvelous as the rest of the house. Clean lines. Simple stuff—blond wood with a little bit of a curve. On one wall hung a beaux arts painting of a woman in a green gown. A dresser, a night table and a bed were the only furnishings. It was small, but on a bright day, it would be very appealing.

  A pile of towels was on the dresser, and Kim spied a note on top. Lex’s handwriting was spare and slanted, oddly elegant.

  Hope you slept well. There is coffee in the pot—just hit the button. Feel free to take a shower and help yourself to whatever you need. I thought you might need fresh clothes, too, so try these (would you believe they belong to my sister?). ? Lex.

  She chuckled and picked up the clothes—a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt. They looked as if they’d fit all right. Much better than leaving on her wrinkled, crumpled, old clothes.

  Gathering everything to take with her, she padded out into the hall, dark and cool. Diamond-shaped tiles paved the length of it, dramatic in black and something lig
hter—maybe ivory. Light fixtures were frosted glass in the shape of fans.

  What a place! It had to be worth a fortune.

  She found the bathroom at the end of the hall, remembering what he’d said last night about noticing the room. It was fantastic. Ivory-colored porcelain fixtures had a carved pattern of lines around them, on the big deep bathtub, repeated in the sink and even the toilet. Wall tiles were a rich teal, edged with long, narrow rectangles of black. A divider of glass brick between the toilet and a shower area created a sense of light and space.

  “Wow,” she said aloud. Lex had set out a brand-new toothbrush on the sink. She unwrapped it and brushed gratefully, then turned on the taps for the shower. As the water heated, she stripped out of the old, tangled, slept-in clothes and let them fall on the floor, taking inventory as steam began to curl down from the ceiling.

  Her body was definitely banged up. A bruise the size of a dahlia bloomed over her ribs and side. Her ankle was black-and-blue, swollen.

  Only then did she look at her face. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, but it wasn’t pretty. There was a cut on her eyebrow where she’d hit the table in the conference room, with small black-and-blue marks around it. A bruise bloomed on her cheekbone. Her lower lip was a little swollen. A look of general weariness tugged down her features.

  She lifted her hair to look at her throbbing, hot ear. Very ugly. Puffy, multicolored, laced with stitches. “Jerk,” she growled, thinking of the man who had attacked her in the conference room. His face with its curiously masklike expression flashed over her memory. She shuddered.

  The glass-brick shower was an open stall, and Kim felt strangely vulnerable in it, as if she were on display. And yet, it was delicious, too. His soap smelled like cloves—that’s where the scent came from!—and there were good bottles of shampoo in hotel-size samples in an open-weave plastic container in one corner. The teal-and-black tiles reflected through the glass brick, danced on the water.

  She washed. Thought of Lex, kissing her last night.

  Thought of that luscious lower lip, his long fingers spiraling circles over her palm.

  Thought of him in his bed somewhere not very far away. Did he sleep nude?

  Thought of him nude, wet, here, kissing her.

  She moved the water temperature to cold and let it shock her. Quit it, she told herself. He was way too right for her. Which made him all too wrong. She knew what happened when women fell in love with a man—little bits and pieces of them disappeared until the dreams and ambitions were memories and dust. She saw it over and over again.

  After her shower, she dressed in the T-shirt and yoga pants—which left about an inch and a half of tummy uncovered—and combed out her wet hair. She left the curls to air-dry on her shoulders and wandered into the kitchen. In spite of the cloud cover, the room was light and airy feeling, with windows on two sides. A back door she’d missed last night appeared to open onto a small, rooftop patio area. Planters, empty now, were piled with snow, and a table with a closed umbrella stood by a wall.

  “Jeez,” she said aloud, and turned on the coffeemaker. She wondered again what the place would cost if he’d had to buy it instead of inherit. And who had been pissed to be left out of that inheritance?

  As she waited for the coffee to brew, she picked up her cell phone to check for messages. It was, predictably, dead, since she’d forgotten to plug it in. And even if she’d remembered, the charger was in the backpack she’d left behind at the television station. She made a mental note to see if they could get that backpack mailed to her.

  Ugh. No cell phone. No computer, no way to contact the outside world. It made her feel twitchy. A laptop sat on the counter, but she wouldn’t dare open it. Not without permission. She could use a landline phone, but although she saw a modem line, she didn’t see an actual telephone. Maybe it was in his bedroom or something.

  Eyeing the laptop, she did have to wonder if he’d ever talked to her from this spot. It was connected via modem to the outside world.

  “Good morning,” he said from behind her.

  Kim jumped and put a hand to her heart. “You scared me!”

  “Sorry. The smell of that coffee brewing went right under my door into my head and woke me up. I had to come find it.” He stood in the doorway, shirtless. Spiky short hair bristled over the top of his perfectly shaped head. A grizzling of beard covered his angular jaw. His sweats rode low on his hips, showing a part of his lower abdomen, and it was slightly round, taut.

  She looked away. “It’s almost ready.”

  “Cups in that cupboard right above the coffeemaker there. I’ll be right back.”

  From the cupboard, she took two hefty mugs, black with purple interior, and set one on the counter for Lex. The other she filled midstream from the pot, unable to wait.

  She wanted him to be wearing a shirt when he came back.

  He wasn’t.

  And if he’d looked good to her in a photo, or dressed in a leather jacket last night, or standing outside the hospital, his head dotted with snow—well, it all paled by comparison. Shoulders, hard and round; chest scattered with exactly the right amount of dark hair, silkily and artfully spread between his dark nipples; that smooth belly.

  She aimed for a disdainfully arched brow. “Go put some clothes on, Luthor. You’re half-naked.”

  He touched his chest with his good palm. “Making you nervous?”

  Snow light caught along one rib. Kim wanted to taste the round line with her tongue. “No,” she said.

  “Liar,” he said with a smile in his voice.

  Kim met his eyes. “It would just be a bad idea.”

  His eyes, even sleepy, were electrically blue. “What would be?” He stepped closer, and Kim found her back against the counter. His gaze moved down her face, lingered at her mouth, moved lower. It felt as if he were touching her, and in reaction, her hips softened. She forced herself not to react, not to do anything but meet his eyes with a steely glance of her own.

  “Having sex,” she said, and was pleased by how level she sounded.

  “Maybe I was just thinking about kissing you,” he said.

  “No, you weren’t. And anyway, that’s probably not a good idea, either.”

  “Oh, well,” he murmured.

  And did it anyway.

  It was so smooth, so easy that Kim couldn’t even bristle. One minute he was standing in front of her, the next he bent fluidly and slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her. She winced a little, and he whispered, “Sorry,” then more gently kissed her. His whole body seemed to take part, coaxing her body into it. His mouth opened and invited her to come exploring. His hands moved slowly on her back, which she discovered was arched, pressing her bare lower belly into the bareness of his lower belly, and he noticed it, too, and moved, back and forth. A large, lazy snake of an erection rose and nudged into her thighs. Kim made a soft noise.

  “Kissing is good, hmm?” he said, and bent his head lower, to kiss her neck. Lazy hot tongue coiling circles around her throat, lazy hand curling up her body, lazy nudging of his cock against her leg.

  It was crazy, but he felt really good. He smelled exactly right, too, and his tongue, moving on her throat, made a ripple of arousal rise up her spine. He slid his hand beneath the shirt, stroked her side. “Should I stop?”

  “Probably.”

  “You’ll have to sound more definite than that, sweetheart.”

  His hand rose beneath her shirt, hot, smooth palm sliding up her side, her ribs, heading upward for the breasts that were primed and tingling in anticipation of the contact of bare palm, nude fingers. Instead of pulling away, as she sensibly should have, Kim found herself pressing closer.

  He moved with deliberate laziness. Slow hands, Kim thought, and welcomed the touch of his full lips when he raised his head to kiss her again. His tongue swirled into her mouth, his fingers teased her nipples to fierce points, and he rubbed closer to her thigh.

  Kim touched his erection, stroking it with her
fingers, testing the size and heft of it. “Very nice,” she whispered, and he was kissing her again, deep and long.

  “It’s all yours, honey.”

  He slid his hands beneath her T-shirt, pushed it upward and Kim lifted her arms to let him take it off, glad when he made a cheered and satisfied sound over her breasts. Delighted when he bent his big head and sucked a nipple into his mouth. He knew how to do that right, too, slow and probing, then a little harder.

  It was crazy. It was too fast. She had to sometimes work with this guy, but she didn’t care. She wanted him. Now, today, this minute.

  A sound like a ping or a rubber band or something—

  “What—?”

  Lex knocked her sideways and something crashed on the counter behind her. The glass in the kitchen door shattered into the room. Kim hit the floor, covering her head and eyes instinctively.

  “Stay down!” Lex yelled, and scrambled, crab-like, across the kitchen floor.

  Kim stayed plastered to the floor for a few seconds, her hands over her head. The tile floor was cold on her naked torso, and she felt her ear begin to throb again. Another bullet blazed into the kitchen and slammed into the tiles near the door to the hallway. Absurdly, Kim felt protectively furious over the beauty of the apartment and wanted the shooting to stop before it hurt something precious.

  She sized up the direction of the shooting, then scrambled behind the island where they’d been sitting last night. “Can you see the shooter?”

  Lex, plastered along the kitchen wall, peered through the door. “Can’t see anything through the snow. Gotta be right across the street, though. There’s nothing else.”

  “Or he’s right on the roof.”

  “Snow is deep. We’d be able to see footsteps.”

  Without her shirt, Kim felt exposed and foolish. The T-shirt lay where Lex had dropped it a few minutes before, on the threshold to the other room, a good twelve feet away. Huddling beneath the lip of the counter, she crossed her arms over her breasts, but it wasn’t much help. Flesh spilled over, and she still felt stupid, crouching beneath the table, half-naked.