Underground Warrior (7 page)

“So I come after the dog? Great.” Only when he saw the hint of a smile fade from her expression did he realize it even had been there, and maybe not all for Dido after all. He could read Greta’s grandmotherly disappoval more clearly.

Yeah. He was a ladies’ man, all right. Figuring he couldn’t make things worse—in the next few seconds, anyway—he offered a hand to help Sibyl back up, by way of apology.

With one last kiss for Dido—lucky dog—she gave hers. Trace liked the feel of her cool, slim hand in his and held on to it a moment longer than necessary after she stood, beautifully balanced, not needing his help at all.

“I’ve made gingerbread, dear,” offered Greta. “Would you like some?”

Sibyl looked from Greta to Trace, as if confused.

“I’d like some,” he admitted, and Sibyl nodded. Belatedly she added, “Thank you.” To one of them. He couldn’t tell which. He hated feeling stupid.

Moments later they sat at Greta’s old kitchen table with frosted gingerbread squares and two glasses of milk, and all Trace could notice was Sibyl’s knee touching his thigh under the table.
Damn.
“I called you,” he accused. Just in case she hadn’t gotten the message he’d recorded.
Sorry it got weird. You okay?

She nodded, taking a delicate bite of the cake.

Trace wanted to point out that she hadn’t called him back, but she probably knew that. Also? He’d been kind of relieved not to hear from her. As much as she fascinated him, as surely as she aroused his protective instincts, as amazing as she’d felt in his arms—and under his hands and his mouth—he didn’t need to get involved with someone as delicate and educated and freaking confusing as her.

Also? Trace wasn’t a girl. No return call? Message received.

He took his own bite of sugary goodness—damn, but Greta could bake!—and so had his mouth full when Sibyl suddenly looked back up at him.

“I like you,” she announced gravely. “I don't like that you're a LaSalle—”

She knew he was—? “I'm not a LaSalle," he corrected sharply. “Not anymore. I’m a Beaudry.”

“And I like you.”

He stopped chewing and studied her. Sibyl scowled quickly back down at the slice of gingerbread in front of her. He looked at Greta, who raised an eyebrow before turning back to the refrigerator. He looked back at Sibyl, who radiated tension. Ladies man, Trace was not. But even he knew those words shouldn’t sound so forced.

Then again, she already knew he was poor. She knew he was Comitatus. Why else would she say it, unless she meant it? She’d seemed to like him back in her loft, before it all went to hell. He swallowed the gingerbread, then grinned despite himself. “Really?”

She slanted her gaze back up at him, and her wariness eased into incredulity. She even started to smile back before she abruptly looked away and nodded. So—she liked him, but didn’t want to? She didn’t like him, but said she did because…why? She liked him but wasn’t sure how to convey it?

That last one seemed downright cute, and it made the most sense. Especially with the whole virgin business, which seriously scared the crap out of him. The one time he’d slept with a virgin, he’d been a virgin, too, and the whole thing had been clumsy and embarrassing for them both. On the plus side, it had still been sex. And he’d gotten significantly better in the decade since.

Slowing down for the note-passing, head-ducking, hand-holding crap? He’d lost all chance at that since he turned fifteen and got sucked into a world of far more sophisticated girls. But those women were in his past now. And Sibyl…well, she intrigued him. And he had to say something.

“Thanks. You don’t suck yourself.”

When she looked back up—no dodging his gaze this time—her eyes had widened in disbelief at him. He bumped her knee with his thigh, under the table, grinning wider. “Got you to look.”

Her mouth opened, then closed. Hah—Miss Vocabulary had no words? Lesson One, Smartypants: liking someone has nothing to do with words, especially on the guy’s part.

He nudged her knee again. This time she took up the unspoken challenge and nudged his thigh back. So he swung his booted foot around to catch her delicate, leather-protected ankle. She slung her free foot around to pin his ankle between both of hers, still under the table. Foot hug. Over the table, he reached around her to tickle her in the ribs, on her off side—that’s how small she was compared to him. When she twisted away from his attack with a yelp—a laughing yelp, thank goodness—she started to fall off her chair but ended up right against his side, soft and warm in the nook under his arm, just where he’d wanted her.

To his surprise, he really did want her there.

“I win,” he growled softly down at her. And the bright, unguarded smile she turned up at him… He could hardly breathe around the sudden lump of fear in his gut. Because the smile turned her slender face from pretty to downright gorgeous. And the weight of her smiling only at him…

It almost convinced him that he wouldn’t screw this up royally. Almost.

Greta cleared her throat. Sibyl flushed, then straightened. Trace just grinned at the old woman because, abruptly, he felt like grinning at everyone. Sibyl liked him. Not Smith Donnell of the Fort Worth Donnells. Not Mitch Talbott of the Lauderdale Talbotts.
Him.
She’d smiled just for him.

“If you spill that milk, you’re cleaning it,” warned Greta.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Trace, and winked at Sibyl.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sibyl, ducking her head again. But her avoiding his gaze didn’t worry Trace as much as it had, a few minutes earlier.

Bad idea or not, lousy timing or not, he felt flattered as hell. Sibyl liked him.

Pretending to like Trace proved both easier and more difficult than Sibyl had theorized. Yes, he represented the best chance she might get to learn about Judge LaSalle, possibly to uncover secrets darker than a bastard son. And yes, her greatest fear, that she couldn’t convince him, had proved irrelevant. But she hadn’t factored in the possibility that her affection might threaten to become more than an act.

Trace really was the birth son of her greatest known enemy. In the last week, she’d obtained pictures from the Judge’s youth. She’d been able to see similarities in Trace’s eyes. Nose. Jaw. She could see the resemblance in the genomic imprinting of his cleft chin. But now that she’d mustered the courage to face him again, he’d looked nothing like the Judge and a hundred percent like Trace. And he’d grinned at her. And he’d touched her. Offered his hand. Pressed his leg against hers. Tickled her ribs.

She liked being touched. She liked not feeling so isolated in her own body.

He’s your enemy.

But he was also her best source. Maybe LaSalle’s greatest weakness.

She only had two choices. One? Stay away from Trace and risk never learning enough to bring the Judge and his cohorts down. Or two? Risk getting close to Trace and pump him for information. She’d hungered for revenge far longer than she’d hungered for anything as pedestrian as human touch.

That first afternoon, after they finished their gingerbread, she helped him with his home improvement project and used what information—dependable, non-threatening information—she’d collected about ninth-century French swords to start the sharing process.

It got her talking again, anyway. Providing information proved much easier than sharing anything about herself.

“The sword could be Charlemagne’s,” she admitted, holding a piece of molding that Trace called a chair rail against the wall, just under waist height, as he secured it with small nails. He needed only one blow each.
Wham!
But just as the violence of the hammer began to frighten her, he guided her gently sideways, toward the half he’d secured, so that he could continue on her other side. The contrast unnerved her. “He’s a heroic French conqueror and epic hero. Other epic heroes of the period include Roland, of course, and Girard de Roussillon, Aymeri de Narbonne, or even Saint William of Gellone.”

She tried not to notice the way the soft fabric of Trace’s T-shirt strained against the breadth of his shoulders. Noticing such things hardly helped her concentration.

Trace snorted through the nails in his mouth and said, muffled, “You think a sword like that belonged to a saint and not a warrior?”

“William—Guillaume, in French—was sainted for killing Muslims,” Sibyl clarified. “The ancient Comitatus was all about conquering and killing.”

Trace continued to secure the nails—
whap!
—without commenting.

“Did they tell you that, before you joined?” she continued, as he finished with that length of chair rail. Trace looked guilty when he glanced at her. Because he took vows of secrecy, she reminded herself. “They had to tell you something, before you took vows.”

Trace shrugged and picked up another length of molding. One-handed. “So who’s this guy you’re house-sitting for?”

Wham!

He changed topics as subtlely as he pounded nails.

She reminded herself that she wouldn’t learn all his secrets in one afternoon. So she lied about her fictional house-sitting job, and he told her a little bit about his “Ma’s” bed-and-breakfast in Stagwater, Louisiana, and she felt satisfaction at the afternoon’s progress. Before he would ever get to the good stuff about his dad, he had to trust her, right? She let him walk her back to the light-rail station, despite not feeling particularly at risk on the “poor side of town.” He didn’t hold her hand, or put his arm around her. She wasn’t wholly sure what was normal, and didn’t want to show her ignorance, so she didn’t reach for him either. She surreptitiously watched how he scanned their surroundings as they walked, like a predator on the prowl, simultaneously hunting both prey and rivals. Even the gangbangers gave him wide berth. She wondered what he did on the rare occasion that a rival, in size or toughness, actually appeared.

Only as they hiked across the parking lot to the Westmoreland DART station, hearing the distant whistle of the northbound train’s approach, did he clear his throat and say, “Let me know when you’re coming back. I’ll meet the train.”

“That’s stupid. I can—” But something about the way his expression darkened clued her in to her near misstep. He had a ferocious scowl. The expression reminded her that he could probably break her neck with one hand. He wouldn’t, LaSalle blood or not. She felt sure. But still…

“I don’t like talking on the phone,” she confessed instead, and felt her cheeks flush despite the nip in the air. Because it was the truth. The Comitatus couldn’t know what had happened to “Isabel Daine” after her parole—unless they’d tapped her mother’s phone out in Oregon or wherever she’d moved after remarrying. Sibyl didn’t want to involve her mother, anyway. And she had nobody else. But how had she become the one parting with secrets now?

He shrugged. “So one-ring me, and I’ll head this way.” No questions. No judgment. Just that simple a solution.

Before she could stop to think—she didn’t dare think—Sibyl hugged him. Her hands couldn’t meet be hind him, but her head tucked perfectly against his thrumming heart under his flannel shirt. Belatedly, his arms wrapped her thoroughly in return, hard and warm, and his head tipped down over her. His body and sawdust scent surrounded her. No escape. Why wasn’t she more frightened?

“So you’ll call?” he demanded toward her hair, and it took her far too long to remember what they were talking about. She’d gotten distracted by how she’d begun to equate his scent with safety.

She nodded, rubbing her cheek against his shirted chest like a cat before she pulled back and ran for the train.

She wanted to wear his smell back to the loft.

That couldn’t be good.

The next time she went to see him, two days later, she did as he asked. She dialed his number, let it ring once, then disconnected. Sure enough, when she stepped off the train onto the wet, windy platform, there he stood, arms folded. He wore a wrinkled canvas field coat, blue jeans, work boots and a scowl. His scowl eased when he spotted her. He raised his eyebrows at her instead of waving, clearly aware that she couldn’t help but notice him towering over the rest of the public.

“Mitch loaned me the car,” he said as she reached him, and he hustled her to another of his friend’s primer-colored works-in-progress. He touched her jacketed back to guide her, opening the passenger door for her. She slid onto the duct-tape-patched vinyl bench seat and pulled the door shut against the November rain. In contrast to the cold, the car smelled of age, and warmth—and the faint scent of Trace, even before he swung into the driver’s seat with another blast of cold.

“If you’re bringing Greta to the rec center today, let one of us drive you,” he growled, after swiping some of the moisture off his dark hair. Growling seemed to be his natural speaking style, when he didn’t make an effort to hide it.

“Okay,” she said, as if he had the right to tell her what to do. She liked him, after all—was
pretending
to like him. Wasn’t that what you did, when you liked a man? Except…

He nodded, satisfied, and started the car for the short drive to Greta’s. But all of this felt so strange—being met at the station, being given rides—that she had to try talking, even if it wasn’t about simple information. “Trace, what do
you
get?”

“From what?” He almost grunted the words, what with paying close attention to the traffic, and to the pedestrians dodging trains, through the wet windshield.

She concentrated, hoping her words wouldn’t mark her as a complete idiot. “You walk me to the station,” she tried finally, a block later, glad he hadn’t rushed her. “You pick me up. You drive me to the rec center, albeit with Greta, so that may be an outlier….”

“Outlier?” he repeated, as if he didn’t quite understand, but she didn’t dare pause to define the term or she’d lose her nerve.

“I appreciate the convenience, but what do you get? Why…?”

In no time, they were pulling into the cracked concrete drive in front of Greta’s house. Trace braked and killed the headlights, but he didn’t turn the ignition fully off. The heater drew chill from her skin. The windshield wipers kept up their percussive vamp. Raindrops splattered across the roof and windshield. He turned to her with an are-you-serious? expression.