Inescapable (Men of Mercy Novel, A) (12 page)

“You’d better fucking behave yourself with Callow, Reagan,” Axl warned.

“Or what?” Reagan challenged. Jesus, the girl had no idea when to back off. Kai sank back into his chair and shook his head. Mike had been the same—more guts than sense.

Axl stepped away from Reagan and turned to the window. Reagan took a step toward him but Kai caught her eye. He added a stern back-off look to a shake of his head and Reagan, thank God, came to her senses and abruptly stopped. She stared at Axl’s broad back before quietly saying, “I don’t understand you, Axl.”

Axl didn’t reply and Reagan turned on her heel and left his office, slamming the door behind her.

Kai looked at Axl’s tension-filled back and sighed. There was nothing to say, nothing that Axl wanted to hear. He and Reagan would have to work their own shit out . . . just like he and Flick would. He glanced at his watch. And if he didn’t haul ass then he was going to be late meeting Tally, and he knew that if he was late, then she’d use it as an excuse to run.

“You staying in Mercy or leaving?” Kai asked as he walked over to the door and snatched his leather jacket off the hook.

“I’ll stay the night at your place if that’s okay, and I’ll leave in the morning,” Axl answered.

“You still have your key?” Not that Axl needed a key; he could ninja his way into Fort Knox if he wanted to. Kai’s house was child’s play. But this was Mercy, and with his luck, he’d have some nosy old bat watching his house who would notice if Axl picked the lock on his front door. Or his back door.

“I still have a key.”

“Okay. I have something to do but I’ll be back later. What about food at the Fox in a couple hours?”

Axl finally turned and Kai saw that he was fully back under control. “That where all the pretty girls hang out?”

Kai grinned. “Yeah.”

Not that he had eyes for any girl but a certain brunette, and he suspected that Axl wasn’t that interested in anyone but Reagan either. But they were men—they frequently lied to themselves and to each other.

***

Tally was already at the diner when Kai arrived. Shrugging off his jacket and hanging it on a hook, he took a moment to study the girl. She was like Jane, he thought, the same shape face, the same wide eyes. Give her a couple of years and ten extra pounds, and a bit less attitude, and she’d be stunning.

Just like her mother. God, Janie. What the hell were you thinking? I know next to nothing about kids, teenagers,
teenage girls
.

He couldn’t slide over the veil to ask her but he could talk to her daughter—not that he had the faintest idea what to say to her. His commiserations would sound hollow and his condolences weak. He’d never been good at the there-there talks. He preferred action to talking.

Kai slid into the booth and pushed his fingers into his hair. When Tally just continued to stare out of the window, he sighed. “Do you want something to drink? Eat?”

“I already ordered,” Tally said, not looking at him. “I wasn’t sure that you’d show up.”

Kai narrowed his eyes in frustration. “Tally.”

He tried to keep his voice even, calm, but wasn’t sure if he succeeded. He needed her to look at him, to make an eye-to-eye connection.

She still didn’t turn around, so he tapped her hand with his index finger to get her attention. When she finally met his eyes, he leaned across the table and spoke again. “There’s something you should know about me, right here, right now. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. No excuses, ever.”

Emotion flickered in her eyes and he wasn’t practiced enough to know whether it was relief or disbelief. They were a similar shade to his own. In fact, they shared many facial characteristics. A thin mouth, long nose, olive skin. Tally could be his daughter except for one salient point: Kai and Jane had never been anything other than friends.

“Look, Tally, I’m as much at a loss about what to do right now as you.” Kai attempted to keep his voice low and soothing. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what to do or say to you. I’m not sure what your Mom was expecting me do either.”

“I’m not sure she knew. She just kept telling me that I could count on you.”

To do what?
Kai wondered. Was he supposed to give her money, a place to live, an education? That seemed a bit excessive, especially since he hadn’t spoken to Jane for more than fifteen years and didn’t even know that she a daughter. Keep an eye on her—what did that mean? He needed specifics, dammit.

“Do you have money?” he asked, after being interrupted by a waitress who took his order of coffee. He wished it was whiskey. He could do with a shot right now.

“A little.”

“How much is a little? Enough to feed and house you for a week? A month? A year?” Kai asked, leaning back.

“I have her savings. It’s not enough to pay for school but it’ll be enough to keep me going until I find a job and a place to live.”

Kai thanked the waitress, who placed a mug in front of him and filled it with hot coffee. It wasn’t Flick’s special blend but it was hot and, he presumed, filled with caffeine, something he desperately needed to fire up his sluggish brain cells. “You can’t stay in your old place? You can’t keep renting there?”

Tally shook her head. “We were living with Morris, Ma’s significant other. Staying with him is not an option.”

It didn’t matter how far Kai wandered from the streets, he could still read the subtext below innocuous statements. Tally’s words were spoken with tense shoulders, flat eyes, hard mouth. “Does he want Jane’s money or does he want you?” he asked.

Tally didn’t bother to lie and, better, he saw respect in her eyes. She just shrugged in a way that was both weary and infinitely sad.

“How long has he been coming onto you?” Kai asked, his tone hard. “And did your mom know?”

“He came onto me the day of the funeral. Told me that we need to comfort each other.” Tally rolled her eyes. “He wouldn’t have tried anything while my mom was alive—she would’ve skinned him alive.”

Kai smiled. The Jane he knew would’ve done exactly that.

“I packed up our stuff and I’m renting some space from a neighbor across the hall. She’ll look after it until I find a place.”

“Where were you living?”

“Shipley Terrace.”

He knew the area well. While it wasn’t as bad as others he knew intimately, it wasn’t Georgetown or Adams Morgan.

“Give me the address and I’ll have it shipped here. I’ll store it at Caswallawn for you.”

“Can’t do that. Can’t pay you to do that.” Tally lifted her chin. Stubborn, just like her mother. And proud. That was all Jane too.

“Do you want to keep your Mom’s stuff? C’mon Tally, you and I both know how it works. You ask a friend to look after your stuff but they invariably, at some point , need cash.”

He could see that Tally wanted to argue but common sense won. She reluctantly gave him the address. “I want you to keep a record of how much I owe you.”

Choose your battles. You’ve won this round and you can argue about money later.
“So, what’s your next step?”

“I suppose I should go back to D.C., find a job, an apartment that I can afford.”

He knew how expensive renting an apartment could be in the city, and Tally didn’t look like she could afford to rent a shoebox. In a crap area infested by drug dealers, pushers, and pimps. Sending her back there was not an option. Kai sipped his coffee and used the cup to gesture to the view of Main Street. “What do you think of Mercy?”

A smile almost touched Tally’s lips. “It’s nice. I like the red brick buildings and the plants and the trees. The air smells clean, like leaves and grass and . . . nature.”

Oh, God. Another convert to the cult of cute. “You like nature?”

“Sure, I love it. Don’t you?” Tally sat back as the waitress placed a massive cheeseburger in front of her. Tally immediately popped a handful of fries into her mouth.

He’d spent enough time in nature—in jungles and deserts and fucking cold mountains, usually having someone trying to shoot his ass off—that “nature” had lost its appeal. “I prefer the business of a city.”

But, he silently admitted, Mercy was nature-lite; pretty, happy, and insidiously soothing. The itch between his shoulder blades had also calmed down.

“A city is the loneliest place in the world,” Tally told him, picking up her burger and biting down.

Yeah, but he liked that. He liked the anonymity of a busy place. He could sleep with a woman and not have it be all over town like a rash by the next morning. He liked not having sly glances sent his way from the men of Mercy, not reading asinine comments about him, Flick, or a combination thereof on that stupid online forum, and he preferred not to be given the stink-eye from the older generation for seducing and thereby corrupting their beloved Flick.

But he really did like sleeping with Flick. Pity that he wasn’t going to be doing any more of that in the near future.

You’re losing focus again, Manning. Right now you need to focus on Jane’s daughter.
The easy option would be to pay for her meal, maybe her motel bill, and send her on her way. He could do that. He didn’t have to agree to fulfill Jane’s dying request. But there was something immensely powerful in a last request, something that went far beyond a run-of-the-mill favor. It had to do with trust and acceptance . . . it was a benediction, a belief. It wasn’t something, it
shouldn’t be
something that could be ignored or shrugged away.

Jane had trusted him with her beloved child, and he couldn’t just dismiss that and walk away. Even though Tally was, technically, an adult, Jane had wanted someone to be there for her and Jane had selected him. That was faith and belief and trust.

All because he’d helped her out of a bad situation so long ago.

“Why don’t you consider hanging around Mercy for a while?” He chose his words carefully, thinking that if he told her what to do she’d deliberately do the opposite. Because that’s what he would’ve done at eighteen.

“Why should I?” Tally asked, belligerent. Yep, exactly how he’d been. All bravado and no common sense.

“Because rent is cheap and we could probably find you a job here until you decide what you want to do or until you’ve saved some money.”

Kai watched as Tally polished off her burger, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “Why aren’t you saying ‘nice to meet you’ and moving on?”

Kai looked her in the eye. “Because I was eighteen once and full of shit, so very convinced that I needed nobody. That I was an adult and I could handle the big bad world on my own.”

“You look like you did okay.”

By the time he was eighteen he’d had a decade’s worth of practice at being emotionally self-reliant. It was a bitch of a road to navigate alone. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “Pride and self-reliance can make you cold and heartless, emotionally bankrupt.”

“Is that what you are? Emotionally bankrupt?”

Ouch.

Tally’s pointed question was spear-sharp. The sadness and speculation in her eyes stopped him from answering flippantly. He intuitively knew that she, like him at that age—like him at any age—preferred to be hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie. “Possibly. It’s a hard way to live, and I don’t recommend it. Pride and loneliness make for crappy bedfellows.”

Tally leaned back and folded her arms across her narrow chest. In that moment, beneath the mascara and the lipstick and the eyeliner, she looked about fourteen and so damn scared it rocked him. “And you think that I should stay here? In Mercy?”

“It’s an idea,” Kai replied. “Just until you get back on your feet, until the ground stabilizes beneath you a bit.”

Just call him Dr. Phil.

“And you won’t try to boss me around? Tell me what to do?”

“I might,” Kai replied honestly. “We’ll argue but, as you said, you don’t have to listen to a thing I say. You can always say no.”

Tally looked out of the window and sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “And you won’t, you know, like, demand a key to my apartment or anything like that?”

Fuck. Underneath the table Kai banged his tightly clenched fist on his thigh. “No,” he said, convinced that enamel was flying off his teeth he was grinding them so hard. If he got his hands on the person who put that fear into her eyes, he’d rip his throat out. “You’ll be under my protection, Tally, just like your mother was. Besides, you’re about half my age and I’m not interested in teenagers.”

Tally’s shoulder slumped in relief. Oh yeah, something bad had happened. He chose his next words carefully. “I’m an ex-SEAL, Tally, and so are my best friends. We’re not opposed to dishing out some street justice.”

Tally considered his statement for a moment and a small smile touched her lips. “I’m good, but some distance away from D.C. . . .” she hesitated, ”. . . wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“You need my help, you yell.”

“Only if I can’t handle him myself.”

Kai narrowed his eyes in warning but she wasn’t intimidated. That was all the information he was going to get, but he could live with that. If she ran into trouble she knew that she could count on him. That was all she needed to know.

Tally pursed her lips. “Getting back to me staying in Mercy . . . I’d prefer not to prolong my stay at the motel, so I need to find an apartment, and a job, quickly.”

Luckily he knew people, like Flick, who knew everybody in town. If she couldn’t help him, them, then nobody could. “Let me talk to someone and I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Maybe that Flick woman has some ideas,” Tally said casually as he pulled some cash out of his wallet to cover her burger and his coffee.

“She might. My partner Sawyer has also lived in this town all his life and knows everyone,” Kai replied.

“Yeah, but you’re going to talk to Flick first,” Tally said as she stood up. “I’m a great excuse to talk to her, aren’t I?’

Wise guy. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kai said, placing a light hand on her back to guide her out of the restaurant. She immediately stiffened and he dropped his hand. Yeah, someone had definitely done a number on her.

Tally made herself smile. “Not that it’s any of my business—”