Love in the Time of the Dead (21 page)

“Hey, stranger,” she said as they approached. His absence had done her good. Even exhausted, Mitchell was a fine specimen of a man. She could almost forget how much he drove her nuts.

He looked up at her voice, and his face brightened considerably. He whistled a catcall, and she rolled her eyes.

“Any action?” she asked as she came to a stop in front of him.

“Not a bit,” he said as he ruffled her hair annoyingly. He laughed when his move had the desired effect of sticking it out in all directions.

She punched him in the arm and tried to smooth her unruly tresses back into place. “At least you have a shot at some. Working the gardens is going to put me in a coma just to escape the boredom.”

“Glad to hear you love your job so much,” a feminine voice sounded behind her.

Vannessa and Nelson approached the gate.

“Hey again, Mitchell,” the girl said flirtily. “Don’t tell me you requested this gate just so you could see me again.”

“Uhh,” he stammered as Vanessa elbowed her out of the way to put her arm possessively through his.

The move angered Laney into silence. She couldn’t even explain why she cared. Or why she watched Mitchell’s face as he looked down at the attractive girl clinging to him.

“Permission to pass,” she gritted out.

The other guard checked their names off of a clipboard and opened the gate.

“Later, Mitchell,” she grumbled before pulling Eloise through. She sniffed the air. A cautious look around showed the coast was clear.

Vanessa chattered happily away at his side, but his eyes stayed trained on her as she left. Why was that so important to her? Two other guards approached the gate to relieve the night shift.

She turned back around and growled in frustration.

“That guy is hot. Not as hot as Aaron, but he’s still an Adonis,” Eloise said.

Laney took another quick glance behind her. Mitchell was taking his leave. He hadn’t even waited to see if she got to the gardens safely. He was so different from Sean and his overbearingly protective requests. She sighed in an attempt to relieve the annoying ache in her chest and picked up her pace to catch up with Eloise. She couldn’t sift through her feelings or emotions. They swung so wide, there was no point in trying to understand them.

“Yeah, he is good looking,” she admitted.

“I don’t know how you don’t just jump on his leg when you’re around him. That man is sexy.”

Laney shrugged and knocked on the garden gates. “We’re just friends.”

“Put that down,” Laney commanded as she heard the click of her Mini behind her.

Nelson put it back down on the bale of hay that it and the rest of her weapons were lying on.

“Can you teach me how to use it?” he asked enthusiastically.

“No.”

“Why not?”

She straightened her spine and leaned on her shovel. She huffed air out of her mouth and blew a sweaty strand of hair out of her face. “Because I am obviously busy, Nelson.”

“I can get Vanessa to give you a break so you can teach me.”

“If you could wrangle a break out of Vanessa, I would have a newfound respect for you, kid.”

“I can, I know I can. Vanessa is my sister. She’d do it if I begged.”

“Your sister? I’m sorry.”

Nelson snorted. “She’s not so bad to me. She just doesn’t play well with others. I’m on her good side. I’m family.”

“Speak of the devil and she shall appear,” she said loudly enough for an approaching Vanessa to hear.

“Nelson, I need to speak with you,” Vanessa said quietly with nary a smarmy retort for her.

Laney went back to fertilizing.

“You,” Vanessa said, rounding on her.

“What did I do now?”

“You came in with Sean Daniels, right? Right?” she asked frantically.

“Yeah, why?”

“Is it true?”

Laney sighed. “Could you be a little more specific?”

“Everyone is talking but no one knows any details. Did the Denver colony fall?” Bad Attitude Barbie was bordering on panic.

Laney looked from her to Nelson, who had gone white as a sheet. “I don’t think I should be the one to talk about it with you guys,” she said, searching for an escape. A storm was coming, and every instinct pushed for her to take cover.

“Yes or no?” Vanessa screamed.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Did anyone escape?”

“I don’t know. There were survivors. We tried to bring them with us, but Sean’s second in command had them convinced they should stay and fight. We couldn’t get a single civilian to leave with us.”

Vanessa grabbed her arm, sinking her nails in, and dragged her to the nearest building. She jerked her arm out of Vanessa’s grasp and rubbed the torn skin gently. The cat had claws.

“Describe the survivors,” she demanded. “Do it!”

“Uh, I don’t know. They were mostly armed guards. There were some women and children in the auditorium too.” Laney wracked her brain for faces but came up short. Her mind had already started to block the memories from that night to protect itself. “Look, your best bet is to ask Sean. Maybe he would have recognized faces, names —”

“Sean wouldn’t talk to me. He doesn’t even know me.” Vanessa gave her a predatory glare. “But he would talk to you. Where is he right now?”

“What? I don’t know.”

“Where is he?” Vanessa screeched, barely in control of herself.

Best to give the crazy lady what she wanted.

“He was assigned to the sawmill. He’s probably working there today.”

“Good. I need you to take a four-wheeler and a trailer and go pick up a shipment of wooden stakes for the garden. Nelson will tell you how to work it.”

After a brief lesson on the ins and outs of a manual transmission ATV, Vanessa slapped a piece of paper with a list of names into the palm of Laney’s hand. There was no please or thank you, and she was off without further ado.

Eloise lifted her hands in question as Laney headed out, but she just shrugged. She’d tell her about it later. The guards at the garden gates let her out without question, and she guided the four-wheeler down the narrow path between barbed wire fences. It barely fit, and by the time she pulled it to a stop outside of the colony gates, she was sweating with the stress.

The guard Laney recognized from the day before opened up the gate. “Where you headed?” he asked.

“Vanessa wants me to pick up a load of stakes from the sawmill.”

The guard wrote on the clipboard, and then opened the gate wide enough for her to pull through.

“There is a trail through there for the ATV. It’ll take you straight to the mill.” He pointed to a double row of small wheel tracks headed off through the pine trees.

“Okay, thanks.”

The actual blades of the antique sawmill were in an open area, covered by a roof with no walls. A large building stood close by, and the place was surprisingly busy with men and woman loading, unloading, running logs through rows of blades, hauling wood, and stacking finished lumber. A few of them looked up at her arrival but kept to their work. Sean was nowhere to be seen.

She turned off the four-wheeler and headed for the building beside the mill. The smell of sawdust was overwhelming and comforting at the same time. It was the smell of newness. Inside the building there was just as much hustle and bustle as there was outside. It seemed to serve as storage for much of the lumber they cut until it was ready to be shipped off or used for construction or fences. The lumber was stacked so high in places that it was impossible to see around it. On tiptoes, she scoured the rows, looking for Sean. She was on the farthest wall, still not having located him, when she spotted a man and woman arguing beside a stack of two-by-fours. The woman blocked the man, and Laney could only make out the woman’s back, so she advanced and did her best to ignore them. She searched the rooms one by one with no success. The last one to check was the closest room to the argument. No help for it.

The woman moved a little to the side to reveal Adam. Laney drew up short and panicked. She in no way wanted to interrupt Adam and his wife arguing, so she ran into the last room and pressed her back against the wall. With her breath held frozen and her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she waited for them to bust her. Had they caught her movement?

“Hey, Laney. What are you doing here?” Sean’s deep voice asked from a desk in the corner.

She squeaked and held her chest. “Shh!”

The arch in his eyebrows said he thought she was insane, but the room was quiet enough to hear the argument between Adam and his wife.

“I just don’t understand why you didn’t destroy that damned picture of you two in the first place,” Adam’s wife said shrilly. “Was it so you could go look at her picture and remember her face?”

“No, Sabrina. It’s not that and you know it. You are all I need. It just didn’t feel right to rip something off of the board is all. She’s nothing. I barely remember her, it was so long ago.”

Sean had tiptoed to where she was frozen to better listen. Sympathy pooled in the deep blue of his eyes. If only she could plug her ears against the world. Just drown out everything so she could have one uninterrupted moment of peace.

“You said she was ugly,” the woman accused with a hitch in her voice. “She isn’t ugly at all, Adam!”

“Baby, yes she is. You barely got to see her in the dark. She isn’t beautiful like you. I’m not attracted to her in any way. You have to believe me.”

Sean clenched his jaw. He reached across Laney and tried to shut the door against the horrible things being said, but the door creaked loudly and they both froze. The argument stopped.

“Wait here,” Adam told his wife.

The rhythmic thud of slow, booted steps sounded against the rough wooden floorboards, and she looked around frantically for a hiding spot. The room was small, and besides the cubby hole under the desk that was easily visible, there was nowhere to disappear to.

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Sean growled.

He pulled her to the desk and lifted her hips until she sat on top of it. Shock stifled her protests. His strong hands opened her legs and pulled her until they were wrapped on either side of him. Sean threw one last glance at the door and then slid one hand around her waist and the other behind her head. His piercing eyes held hers for just a moment before he leaned closer.

And then he kissed her.

Chapter Fourteen

L
ANEY
H
AD
B
EEN
L
EANING
B
ACK
on her hands, but at the gentle caress of Sean’s lips, she pulled forward, closing the space between them. The kiss was slow, an undulating fire on her mouth that made her stomach clench and warm.

The door creaked as it opened, but she didn’t care about anything other than the physical connection that tethered her to Sean.

He pulled away and glared at Adam. “Hey, man, do you mind?”

“Oh. Laney? I am
so
sorry. I thought—”

“I couldn’t care less about your thoughts,” Sean said furiously. “Shut the door!”

Adam backed out and shut the door firmly behind him.

“You sure know how to pick them,” he said after Adam left.

“Yeah, well you know. I tend to like boys that borderline hate me.”

“Nasty habit, that one.”

“You’d think I’d learn my lesson,” she said through a smirk.

Sean held her gaze questioningly for a moment more and then helped her off the desk. “Why are you here?”

The smile faded from her face as she remembered the reason for her unannounced visit. It was hard to fall back to earth after that kiss. “I was looking for you.” She handed him the list Vanessa had given her. “Rumors are swirling about the fall of your colony. My boss wanted me to ask you if any of these names were still alive when we left.”

“I didn’t get a good look at everyone, but I will see if I can remember any of these from the auditorium. It may take me a while. Do you mind if I give these to you at dinner?”