Holding Out For A Hero: SEALs, Soldiers, Spies, Cops, FBI Agents and Rangers (25 page)

“Go, sweetie. I’ll put it on the tab,” Mindy called from the other end of the counter. She then turned to glare at Jaymee’s father, but her voice was sweet. “Want something to eat, Bob? Coffee, perhaps?”

Jaymee didn’t wait for his reply as she walked out, after leaving a tip. She knew her father well; he wasn’t done yet. She suspected those two former workers had probably shared a couple of drinks with him and talked about the past, which usually led to more drinking and bitter memories. Suddenly, the bright sunshine outside the diner felt like hell on earth. She wondered what her new help was thinking as he walked silently beside her.

“Don’t you walk off like you own the business, Jaymee Barrows!” Bob Barrows called at them, a little out of breath. He stopped in front of the blue truck and coughed long and painfully. “I have a right,” he said, in between horrible wracking noises.

Jaymee sighed. “Go home, Dad. We’ll talk later, all right?” She gentled her voice. Sometimes that worked. “I’m going to the supply place to pick some materials up, then I’ll be back at work. You just rest up and don’t worry about the business.”

Bob snorted. “Don’t worry? You destroyed the business once. I’m going to keep an eye on you so you don’t do it again.” He finally caught sight of Nick standing by. “Who’s this?”

“He’s the new help.” She didn’t bother to introduce Nick.

“I get the picture now. A pretty face.” Bob’s face turned purplish with anger. “You let a pretty face take the place of two valued workers. You’re going to ruin my business, you are.”

He walked threateningly toward Jaymee, only to be blocked by Nick’s six-foot plus body. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Barrows,” stated Nick, pleasantly.

Bob Barrows looked up at the tall man, and undaunted, poked a finger into Nick’s chest. “You can’t lie to me, boy. You ain’t nothing but a distraction for my daughter. I can tell you ain’t even a worker, and she has work to do. She promised me! She promised to…”

“Dad!” Jaymee’s voice was arctic in spite of the melting heat, cutting off whatever Bob was going to reveal. “I’m getting into the truck and driving off now. If you don’t go home, I’ll be late for work. Do you understand me?”

That seemed to get the old man’s attention. “Work. Yes, work. Go to work,” he muttered and turned away. “You just keep working, Jaymee, and pay the debts.”

“Should he be driving?” Nick asked, as he got into Jaymee’s truck.

“He drove here. He can drive back,” she bitterly replied, and started the truck. She was mortified. Everybody in town knew about the Barrows’ story, so it wasn’t like it was a big secret, but somehow, she didn’t want Nick Langley to know. She didn’t want those see-too-much eyes to look at her with pity. Suddenly, she wished she could just forget the sense of duty that had forced her to endure her father’s bitterness.

Nick could feel the ice forming back around her, that armor that made her so machine-like at work, but could see the hurt in her hazel eyes and in the slight trembling of her hand as she shifted gears.

“Want to talk about it?” he invited.

“None of your business, Langley,” snapped Jaymee, her eyes on the road. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry my father was rude to you. He isn’t well.”

“Is that the reason he thinks you’re ruining his business?” He knew he was treading on forbidden territory, but for some reason, Jaymee Barrows was fast becoming more than a passing interest. Besides, one curious cross-examination deserved another.

She braked a little too hard at the red light. Tossing her head back, she flashed angry eyes at him. He noted they were green now.

“Look, leave the subject alone,” she grated, her voice slow and even. “It has nothing to do with you. You just started a job. Do it right, and I’ll pay you well, Langley.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have a friendly ear sometimes,” he casually commented.

“I don’t need anything friendly from you. Everything is under control. You work. I pay. The work gets done. Badabing, badaboom. Get it?” The honk from behind told her the light had changed back to green, and she cursed before accelerating jerkily.

Her fury was an interesting contrast to the cool and controlled woman with whom he’d been working all morning. “Nothing is ever so simple,” he pressed on, wanting to add fuel to the fire, wanting to push her.

Jaymee felt like screaming. She wanted to be alone, to calm down, but every sentence the man beside her uttered seemed to rile her further. He was just trying to be friendly and concerned, a small voice reasoned, but that made her even more furious. She pulled into the parking lot at the supply warehouse, tires squealing.

“What are you, a psychologist out of a job?” she lashed out. “Do you think it fun to try to analyze and understand me from a mere conversation? What, you’re so bored, you have to push and probe and pretend to make psychobabble conclusions?”

She was a lot closer to the truth than she realized, Nick thought. When under extreme danger, like disengaging an explosive, he liked to relieve the pressure by analyzing it. Sometimes, it added to the “fun.” His team sometimes didn’t agree. Unable to help himself, he grinned.

“Yeah,” he admitted, not getting out of the truck.

Jaymee stared at his lips. She watched the crooked wolfish smile slowly appearing on his lips. Confident. Cocksure. Somewhere in her mind, a warning siren started. She’d seen that smile before on another male face, one she’d thought she—

“Yeah, what?” she demanded, but she kept staring at the smile.

“Yeah, I want to probe and push.” He paused and moved closer, his body heat surrounding her, trapping her like invisible bands of steel. His head dipped and, pausing a few inches from her upturned face, he added, “I want to see what turns Jay Barrows into Jaymee Barrows.”

He had found her out. All thought disappeared when his head descended. She sat still as his lips touched hers, her heart roaring like a speeding train. She was prepared to fight and resist, but his lips were gentle against hers, soft and persuasive.

Nick didn’t deepen the kiss, only slanted his head for more access into her sweet mouth. It was an impulse he chose not to resist. He didn’t know why he felt the need to comfort her as well as hold her, but she drew a strange reaction from him. Her response was making promises to him he knew she wasn’t consciously giving. There was an enticing innocence about the way she sat there and kissed him back, and he knew, there and then, with absolute certainty he was going to take Jaymee Barrows to bed sooner or later.

Later. After he’d straightened out some things.

He reluctantly lifted his head, his breathing uneven. He smiled into eyes so slumberous that he wanted to start kissing her again. “Better?” he asked.

Jaymee could only stare back at him. She hadn’t been kissed in—God—years. Her last date was exactly a year and three months ago, a blind arrangement forced on her by Mindy, an awkward, uncomfortable experience she vowed she’d never repeat. She’d decided then she could live without dating until she got her life straightened out, and here she was, kissing a stranger. And probably a criminal on the lam.

“I ought to fire you,” she told him. It was difficult to sound boss-like when one’s voice sounded breathy and aroused.

Nick cocked his head, those long eyelashes unbelievably sexy as he watched her through half-closed eyes. “You shouldn’t. You’re shorthanded,” he reminded her.

That was like a wake-up call. She had a house to finish. “It won’t matter if we both die of heat stroke in this truck,” she retorted with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “Come on, I’ve got to get busy.”

She didn’t let him get through her armor again that day, and Nick was wise enough not to try. She kept the atmosphere thoroughly businesslike, giving him chores that had him climbing up and down the ladder. As the day ended, she let him do a couple of the last rows of shingles, showing him how to cut the rake of the roof. The other two roofers left at four, as most construction workers did, but Jaymee Barrows, he discovered, was either a workaholic or a woman on a mission. She kept on working till almost six. He stayed on, even after she told him he could leave any time. She didn’t object.

Jaymee had to get the house done, no matter how late it would be when she finished. She was one roof behind, and couldn’t put off the builder from insulating it tomorrow. Used to working past normal working hours alone, she was pleasantly surprised to find her new help willing to stay on. Of course, this was just day one. He could be gone after a few days of this.

With focused effort, she tried to keep the memory of his lips on hers at bay. That kiss unnerved her more than the confrontation with her father. She had thought herself quite able to control her emotions after eight years of practice, but in less than ten hours, this stranger had managed to get under her shield where she sometimes yearned to be touched.

Instantaneously, she ruthlessly pounced on that admission. Yearn. Oh no, not yearn. Jaymee Barrows did not yearn for anything from a man. Ever. Especially from someone who looked like this man. He would be a mistake, her second mistake. The cost of her first one had been high—her father’s health, her mother’s death, and more than one hundred thousand dollars in the hole, courtesy of her father’s business acumen. Nick Langley could cost her everything else.

Behind the dumpster, and out of sight, Jaymee touched her lips. He could cost her what she thought she had mended with super glue—her heart and her pride. She wasn’t going to allow the past to repeat itself.

***

By the end of the week, on payday, Nick was feeling the soreness of previously unused muscles. He was a superb athlete, trained to swim for miles to escape enemy land, able to climb up cliffs to avoid being detected by dogs, and had undergone covert programs to shift physical and mental pain when tortured. However, a man’s body, he admitted, wasn’t created by the Almighty to squat and kneel for untold hours on end, dragging a tool attached to hundreds of feet of heavy air hoses. Especially, he added, a long, lanky body that had to bend more than normal to nail a shingle.

In the short week, he’d discovered his kneecaps could protest with noisy complaints after a daily regimen of eight hours of being squashed into kneepads and being subjected to crawling like a toddler up a slope. The arches of his large feet, clad in soft-sole rubber, ached from the constant pressure of his weight pushed on the front. He imagined those ancient Chinese women who bound their feet probably felt like this, as he ignored the pain and kept on laying shingles. The fingertips of his left hand were raw from constantly scraping against the fiberglass shingles as he pulled them apart to be nailed. And, his nose was sunburned. That was the most difficult part, ignoring the heat and continuing to work with speed as the day got hotter and hotter.

His boss, the cool Jay Barrows, was totally unaffected by the weather. She watched over him like a hawk, spotting every mistake he made. She was a tyrant, a pint-size general, approaching each roof like a battle in a great war. After only four days, Nick had a healthy respect for her. She might look tiny next to him and could barely carry a five-gallon can of roof cement across the length of the roof, but the lady could outwork every man around her, with a horse thrown in for good measure.

She had been so very polite all week, except that one time he messed up and walked all over the shingles with tar under his shoes. He had trekked black prints up a whole side of the roof’s hip before she noticed, and the colorful language she’d used while tearing off the whole row of shingles would have put his fellow operatives to shame. He still grinned at the memory. Wouldn’t Command just love to see a tape of one of their top commandos standing meekly while being dressed down with heavy sarcasm by a barely five foot-two termagant?

The thought of Command sobered him. Getting paid tonight would give him some cash. It wouldn’t be enough to buy cheap electronics and the hardware he needed, but it would be a start. He wished he could just use his credit card and buy a damn laptop. He shrugged. If necessary, he would build a crude system, if he had to. He rejected the easy use of a phone, since phones could be traced, and he hadn’t any control of the fiber optics without his usual toys. And emails would be monitored as well. His agency had a super-computer that would trace his exact location within minutes and right now, he didn’t want to be found.

No, he would bide his time. Knowing Command, they would give him a reasonable amount of time before deciding he was dead. Or before sending a tracker on his trail, he added, rubbing his jaw. Damn, he didn’t like trackers, mean S.O.Bs who shot first and asked later.

The little house at the end of the dirt trail came into view as he followed Jay’s earlier instructions. The property was a few acres, surrounded by a wooden fence. He could see some sort of a lake behind the house. Parking the Jeep next to the familiar blue truck, he slowly got out, looking around. Behind him, two other trucks pulled in. Dicker and Lucky were in one of the vehicles. Two other men got out of the other mud-splattered truck. Nick nodded at Dicker and Lucky.

“Hey, Langley,” greeted Dicker. “Getting your first paycheck, huh?”

“Yeah.” The two roofers didn’t talk to him much, and he never encouraged them.

“How do you like roofing?” asked Lucky, lighting a cigarette. “The sun tough on you?”

“It’s all right,” Nick answered, taking in the two approaching strangers. They were, undoubtedly, roofers; they had tar all over their clothes. They nodded at him, but didn’t seem very friendly.

“This is the new man we’ve been telling you about, Chuck,” Dicker said, gesturing at Nick. “Nick, this is Chuck and that’s Rich. They used to work for Jay just prior to you showing up.”

Lucky’s gap-toothed smile was positively wicked. “Yeah, you boys can forget about convincing Jay to give you another chance. Nick here replaced both of you.”

The one named Chuck spat to one side. “Sure, that’s for one week. How long do you think he’s going to last?” He looked suspiciously at Nick. “You ain’t no roofer, man. How long are you going to stick around?”

Nick shrugged.