In Her Sights (Away From Keyboard Book 2) Page 6

  Taking a seat before I get any more aroused, I pick up a menu, glad for the distraction. “Have you been here before? I think Cam’s had a couple of team outings upstairs in their event space, but this is my first time.”

  “No. I…don’t get out much.” She runs her hands over the menu on the table, not meeting my gaze.

  Why is she nervous? She’s gorgeous. Witty—at least over text. Perfect skin, just a hint of an exotic accent, and her eyes sparkle when she smiles.

  “That’s hard to believe. I mean…w-work or was there someone special, or…?” Fuck. Pull your foot out of your damn mouth, soldier.

  Before she can answer, a server with spiked blond and purple hair approaches. We’re both martini fans, dirty, of course, and that leads to a chuckle, breaking up a bit of the tension.

  Inara lifts her gaze, and uncertainty dims the light in her eyes. “No one special. Not for a long time. Between my job, Hidden Agenda, and training, I don’t have a lot of free time for…’getting out.’”

  “Training?” I grab onto the single word, hoping it’ll be a safe topic. I’d rather not go into the whole “brain-tumor-stroke-couldn’t-walk-or-talk-for-weeks” saga before drinks.

  A single brow lifts, and she smiles. “Cam and West haven’t complained about Ryker’s insane training schedule?”

  “No. To be fair, I haven’t seen them much in the past few weeks.”

  With a slight quirk of her head, she searches my face. “I thought you and Cam were close?”

  That’s a whole can of worms I don’t want to open all over this polished wood table. “We’re…complicated. Lots of baggage between us until a few months ago, and we haven’t unpacked it all yet. She’s family. But until last fall, we hadn’t really talked in years.”

  Guilt raises a lump in my throat, and as the server delivers our drinks, I take a moment to try to force those regrets down deep.

  “Earth to Royce.” Inara holds her drink aloft. When I mirror her movements, my cheeks flushing a bit, she says, “To trying a new bar with someone who likes their martinis as dirty as I do.”

  I couldn’t respond if my life depended on it. My mouth’s suddenly gone as dry as sand, and I touch my glass to hers before taking a healthy sip.

  “So…what do you do with Hidden Agenda?”

  “Sharpshooter.”

  Thank God I’d set my glass down. “Fuck. Seriously?”

  Her eyes narrow. “Why ‘seriously’? Because it’s a man’s job? I spent seven years with the Rangers—” The edge to her voice warns me I’ve crossed back into foot-in-mouth territory, and I rush to explain.

  “Hell, no. Cam was my explosive ordinance specialist for six years. Best instincts with a bomb I’ve ever seen. Most snipers, though…they come back pretty wrecked.” Too many of the guys I knew—not well, but enough to grab a beer off base once in a while—ended up committing suicide within a few years of retirement.

  Her shoulders relax, and she sinks back in her chair. “I have a very good shrink. And a few coping mechanisms that…usually work.” Inara’s voice drops, and I have to strain to hear her. “The dead will haunt you if you let them. I can picture every one of my kills. Most of us can, I think. At least now, I get to choose when I pick up my gun and how I do my job. The ideal mission leaves the kidnappers unconscious or tied up, not dead. But it happens. West’s first mission…”

  “He told me you saved his life.” She flinches. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about—”

  Though her eyes have gone glassy, she waves her hand. “That mission was FUBAR from the time we touched down in Colombia. Bad intel. We’re lucky we made it out of there at all. It was kill or be killed, and I have a very strong desire to stay alive.”

  She takes a long sip of her martini, the liquid in the glass shimmering as her hand trembles slightly. “Enough of that shit. We’re supposed to be having fun. Ryker’s a good guy. Smart, dedicated. With West running our ops, we’re a solid team—even if the new guy does need some serious work on his rappelling skills. We train three nights a week. Work out together, run simulations. Keeps us on our toes. Once a month, I head out to Eastern Washington on the weekend for long-range target practice. My brother-in-law has fifty acres out near Wenatchee.”

  “Does that leave you any time for fun?”

  Her laugh may be my new favorite sound—particularly when it clears the ghosts of the past from her eyes. “Not as much as I’d like, but I make time for what’s important to me.” With her fingers wrapped around the stem of her glass, she fixes me with an intense stare. “What about you?”

  “I’ve got nothing but time right now.” Flexing my left hand in my lap, I try to steel myself for my next words. Even though most people would never know it to look at me, the memories of being half-paralyzed haunt me every day. “I…uh…a few months ago—”

  The petite server saves me, and we order enough food for at least four people before we’re alone again and I struggle to figure out what to say.

  “Royce,” Inara says as she reaches across the table to touch my hand. “We don’t need to talk about your…stroke…unless you want to.”

  I stare down at our hands as the warmth from her fingers seeps into my skin. If given the choice, I’d never mention it again. But that wouldn’t be fair to me or to her. Inara needs to know what she’s getting into before this goes any further than drinks and a few appetizers.

  “I haven’t really talked about it. With anyone. Except Cam. She and West…uh…basically moved in with me for two weeks after my surgery. Hell, he was still recovering from Columbia. But I was messed up enough that I couldn’t be alone.”

  “Shit, Royce. I’m sorry.”

  For a split second, pity darkens her gaze, but she blinks, and it’s gone, replaced by regret. She starts to pull her hand away, but I stop her, curling my fingers around hers. “I need to be blunt.”

  “Okay.” She draws the word out, uncertain.

  “When we exchanged numbers at West’s the other night, I felt something. At the risk of sounding like a ss-stalker, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head.”

  “You’re not the only one who felt that way,” she says quietly.

  “Before this goes any further, you deserve to know what happened.”

  Twirling the olives around the mostly empty glass, I take a deep breath. “Three years ago, I was diagnosed with a brain stem glioma. Basically, a benign tumor. At first, it wasn’t too bad. Some nausea. Headaches. But then…” Can I really confess everything on our first date? The seizures? The personality changes? Mood swings? Anger? No. Not yet.

  “Then?” Inara prompts, her brows arching subtly.

  I take another sip of my martini. “Nine months ago, things got bad. I could barely get through the day. Trying to hold myself together at work, not let my family see how fucked up I was when I flew home for the fourth of July... My doctor gave me two options. Surgery, or let the damn thing kill me.”

  Inara

  “For days after the surgery, I kept thinking it was all a dream. That I’d wake up and be able to talk. Or get out of bed.” Memories haunt his eyes, and he fidgets with his napkin as our server slides a plate of roasted vegetables in between us. “Took me a week to manage more than the easiessst sounds. More than a month to walk.”

  “Royce—” I don’t know what to say. I’m shit at offering comfort, and I don’t think he wants it. Or needs it. But staying silent doesn’t feel right either. “I couldn’t tell. At West’s the other night.”

  He forces a smile and runs a hand through his hair. “Cam ordered me around a lot the first month. They didn’t expect her to walk again after the bombs. Hell, they almossst took her leg. I…wasn’t there, but the other guys in the unit kept me updated. She fought for every step. Then she had to do it all over again—with me.”

  His control slips, just for a moment, and raw anguish tightens lines around his eyes and lips. But just as quickly, he slides the mask back into place and puts it away.

&
nbsp; “Even when she was at Emerald City for fifteen hours a day, she’d send me emails. Demanding I get up, take a loop around my condo. Or she’d call and make me recite one of the tongue twiss-twisters my therapist gave me. And…it worked.”

  He smiles, and I melt a little. I can hear the stutters now. The long “s” sound as he tries to form certain words. And when I took his arm, needing someone to hold onto after my little flashback in my car, I thought his gait was a little uneven.

  Worry tingles along my spine. “I always thought strokes happened to…older people.”

  Royce drops his gaze to the plate of vegetables between us. “Me too. Turns out, one of the meds I was on before surgery can sometimes cause blood clots. I had a brain scan last week. No tumor, no clots.”

  He says it almost like he’s trying to prove something to me, and shame heats the back of my neck. I’m about to apologize when his voice takes on a rough edge.

  “I guess you could call me lucky. There’s no proof, but a couple guys in my unit had similar growths. Lungs, liver. My doc is pretty sure we were all exposed to something during our last tour that caused this.”

  “Cam too?” I don’t know her well, but with how West talked about her when he drove me home the other night, something like this could kill him.

  Royce drains his water glass. “Different tour.” With an uncomfortable pinch to his features, he clears his throat. “After Cam was injured, I joined another unit. Chemical weapons disposal.”

  “Shit. We always used to think those guys were insane,” I say. “And my unit broke into Hell.”

  Glancing at his empty martini glass, Royce sighs. “You aren’t wrong. But that’s…a story for another time. With a lot more alcohol.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to be.” I smile and finish off my drink. With a quick glance at my watch, I add, “And I still have three hours until pumpkin time.”

  Royce laughs, and the demons that haunted his eyes as he recounted his diagnosis, the surgery, and waking up unable to speak or move shift into something darker. He signals the server, and we order another round, but when she rushes off to the bar, he settles back in his chair.

  “I was pretty messed up after Cam was hurt. The bombs didn’t touch me beyond a single piece of shrapnel.” He gestures to a long scar on his forearm. “But this was my team. I didn’t know how to go back. So I went to my CO and requested the most dangerous, fucked-up assignment he could give me. Said it was either that or I was out.”

  I clench my fists under the table. Even now, years later, I can see the pain in Royce’s eyes. “And your CO listened to you?”

  He shrugs. “I didn’t give him much of a choice. Command needed a team leader for a chemical weapons disposal unit, and I jumped at it. Got the hell out of Bagram and threw myself into the work.”

  The last of our appetizers sits forgotten between us, and I worry I’ve lost him to his memories. But then the next round of drinks arrives, and he forces a smile. “Enough of my shit for a while. Why did you decide to become a sniper?”

  Turnabout’s fair play, I suppose, and watching Royce battle some of his demons—and win—gives me hope I can do the same. I tuck a curl behind my ear. “My mother was born in Iran. She legally immigrated to the United States a couple of years before the Shah went into exile. Her brothers, though, stayed. We heard stories of the protests, and once the Ayatollah Khomeini took power, communication…was difficult. She worried so much for them. Still does. Uncle Ebrahem got out ten years ago and the stories he told… He lives in London now.”

  “How old was your mother?” We order dessert, and I twirl the olives around in my martini glass.

  “Nineteen. She worked as a flight attendant, and met my father, a British diplomat, not long after the hostages were released. Both of them agreed that the world was not the place they’d thought it to be.”

  My mother’s scream echoes in my memories, and I shake my head to banish the sight of her blood pooling on the sidewalk. Digging my short nails into my palms, I fight for control. “They taught me languages, and by the time I was fifteen, I spoke English, German, Persian, and French fluently.”

  Royce’s mouth forms an o, and he sits back in his chair. “All I could ever manage was a little broken Pashto.” He offers me the last slice of prosciutto, and the time allows me to reflect on just how few people I’ve told my story to. My platoon knew most of it. But…when your heritage includes one of the nations your army is fighting against, you keep a lot of that shit to yourself.

  “I took two years of college classes, but then my father had a heart attack.” I clear my throat, refusing to let my control slip. “Between the medical bills and his…death, money was tight. So, I took a leave of absence and joined the army. I thought…I could make a difference.”

  Royce nods, and I wonder where our similarities end. “I had to prove myself. Both as a woman and as an Iranian. Even though I was born here, my name, my skin color, the shape of my eyes…they brand me. The hazing never let up.”

  My voice cracks, though I won’t go back there. Some of the worst days of my life. Even worse than the past few months. Royce reaches across the table, and his warm fingers caress my wrist. Forcing myself to meet his gaze, I take a deep breath. “In the third phase of basic, I left everyone in the dust on the qualifications course. Forty targets. I hit thirty-nine of them. Next best guy on the course took out thirty.”

  “Shit. I only managed twenty-seven. Barely passed.” Respect tinges his voice, and I let myself smile.

  “After that, the abuse died down. Hell, most of the guys were afraid of me. My CO put me in for sniper training the next day.”

  Something in his touch soothes me, and I turn my hand to link our fingers. “Now that we’ve both shared some of the messy stuff…what do you like to do for fun?”

  Two hours later, Royce and I huddle under the overhang outside the bar. A light rain slicks the city streets, and the scent of the sea hangs in the air. “I don’t want to let you go,” he says as he pulls me close. “When can I see you again?”

  I run my hands down his strong chest. “I have training tomorrow, but Friday? Dinner? And…maybe…”

  “Breakfast on Saturday?” His voice is suddenly rough, and as I mold myself to his lean frame, something inside me warms. When he cups my ass, my core clenches, need driving me up to my toes so I can press my lips to his.

  He tastes of the chocolate cake and espresso we shared, and when he deepens the kiss, his tongue seeking mine, I let him take. Royce tangles his fingers in my hair, pulling hard enough to send tiny pinpricks of pain along my scalp.

  I push him back against the wall, and he angles my head, his lips traveling along my jaw, back to my ear, and down to the curve of my neck. “Oh God,” I whisper as my knees weaken. “Yes. Breakfast.”

  If we weren’t in public, I’d cup his rather obvious erection through his black jeans and grind myself against him. But modesty prevails as the Lyft driver pulls up to the curb and gives the horn a quick tap.

  Royce pulls away, silver flecks sparkling in his blue eyes. “Text me when you get home?”

  “I will.”

  He waits until I get my bearings before he lets me go, and the absence of his warmth leaves me wanting as he walks slowly backward towards the car. “Rest up, pumpkin,” he says with a wink. “Friday night, you’re mine.”

  I wait until he shuts the car door before I whisper, “All yours.”

  6

  Inara

  My shoes kick up splatters of water as I push myself through a grueling five-mile run—complete with a monster hill on Phinney Ridge—and when I reach the top, I rest my hands on my thighs and try not to wheeze. Something shifted in the air last night, and I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t snow before the end of the day. My lungs burn, and there’s a harsh edge to the air. Not yet 5:00 a.m. and the sun hasn’t peeked over the Cascades. The streetlights cast shimmering shadows on the rain-slicked pavement.

  Once I can breathe again, I start j
ogging the last few blocks to my neighborhood coffee shop. The Daily Bean doesn’t brew the best coffee in Seattle—hell, West probably wouldn’t be caught dead here—but they know my name and my preference for a quad-shot Americano after my morning runs. Plus, they donate a portion of their proceeds every Saturday to the local battered women’s shelter.

  I roll my head around and crack my neck as I wait for the light to change so I can cross the street. Thoughts of Royce—and the final kiss we shared—woke me more than once, and now I wonder just how I’m going to make it until tomorrow feeling this…needy. I haven’t dated anyone in more than five years. I didn’t know how much you could miss human touch. I want him. But at the same time, I hate this feeling. This ache inside me for a man who seems to get me—and who might understand why I feel so out of my element.

  Tires squeal, an engine revs, and I spin around just in time to see a black SUV barreling towards me, fishtailing on the slick roads.

  I react—training taking over—and jump back, but the large electrical box behind me stops my momentum with a bone-jarring crack of my hip against metal. The SUV’s almost on top of me, and I scream, “Stop!” as I try to make my throbbing right leg work. The electrical box saves me once I grab the top of it and haul myself up. The SUV jumps the curb and passes me with only inches to spare.

  “You fucking asshole!” I scream. I’m too slow pulling my phone from my pocket—plus my hands are shaking too much to take a photo—and I only saw two digits of the license number.

  Corrine, the morning barista, races across the street. “Oh my God. Are you okay?”

  I’m still crouched on top of the electrical box, shaking, and when she repeats her question, and I can’t form words to answer her, I realize I might not be.

  Corrine slides her arm around my waist and lets me use her shoulders for leverage as I half-climb, half-fall to the ground. My legs won’t quite support me.

  “N-not hurt,” I manage. “Just…shaken up. Give me…a minute.”