Never Been Kissed (6 page)

“Noelle,” Ashley said. “Why are you even here?”

“Don’t look at me like that, Ashley,” Patty said. “It’s the very least you can do for your brother, who has worked so hard to get you freed.”

Ah, it took a very special woman to heap guilt onto the already battered shoulders of her daughter, particularly when she was trying to use those bruises for political gain. But Patty was just that kind of special.

“Can’t it wait? Just until I’m … I’m better. After I talk to Kate—maybe I can ask her not to mention me.…”

“No. Ashley, it can’t. You go on air with those bruises and it’s all people will talk about. The way Americans are preyed upon overseas. In fact—” There was a pregnant pause. “—this might give Harrison an angle on foreign policy. Noelle, contact CNN and see if we can’t get Harrison on with Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper.”

“Listen,” Ashley said, her voice level, and he imagined her taking deep breaths, which of course must have killed her ribs. “If you politicize this, foreign agencies
that count on American funds and volunteers will suffer, and my kidnapping had nothing to do with that!”

Brody hissed. He was stirring the soup too hard and it splashed up on his hand. He sucked the broth off his fist.

“You have always cared more for poor strangers a world away than you ever have for your own family.” Patty’s words were a cudgel. Her guilt, her disdain, her privilege, even the racism she would swear she didn’t have. They were blunt force objects she used against Ashley. He imagined Ashley crying. Overwhelmed. This brave, amazing woman, who’d done nothing but thank him and keep it together and even managed to crack a joke or two in the last forty hours, didn’t deserve this.

Enough,
he thought.
That’s enough.

He poured the soup in a bowl and pushed open the door, planning how he could manage to spill it on Patty before she did any more damage.

Patty whirled away from the feast she was making of what was left of her daughter’s strength and stared at him, her body stiffening as if he’d come in waving a gun around.

She didn’t like it when people witnessed the raw moments between her and her daughter. Or she hadn’t when he was the bodyguard for Ashley and Harrison, and considering the way she was looking at him now, she still didn’t.

Or maybe it was because Brody’s skin was dark, or because once upon a time, Ashley had endangered her father’s campaign with her feelings for him.

Hard to say with Patty.

Unimpressed by her manners or her reputation or all her money, he stared right back at her.

“I’ll let you get some rest,” Patty said, spreading a hand down the front of her jacket, across the buttons, as if putting together everything she’d pulled apart, bit
by bit. “Noelle and I will be back tomorrow morning to help you get ready. The conference is at ten.”

He waited. Listening until the sound of heels against the floor ended with the ding of the elevator arriving.

When he turned to Ashley, she was trying to push herself off the couch.

“What are you doing?” He set down the bowl of soup on a low table next to what looked like a giant beetle in amber and stepping to her side.

“What are
you
doing?” she snapped, getting to her feet. “Why are you still here? You were dismissed, remember?”

He followed her as she made her way into the back bedroom.

“Ashley—”

“I’m leaving, Brody. I can’t do this press conference. I can’t deal with my mother. I have to get out of here.”

“Where are you going?”

One-handed she opened drawers of a dresser tucked in the corner of the room. Wincing—she must have pulled the stitches in her arm—she threw T-shirts and underwear onto the bed.

“You are in no shape for Dabaab,” he said, worried about what she was thinking. She was hardly rational.

Her laughter was a dry gasp. “I know.”

“Then where?”

“I’ll stay in a hotel.”

“You have a concussion, Ashley. Stitches. You can’t even feed yourself right now. You shouldn’t be alone.”

She paused, licked her lips, and finally looked up at him. He’d been avoiding her eyes as best he could because they were dangerous, those eyes. He saw everything through them, her emotions, her thoughts. Grief. Hurt. Loss. Laughter.

And right now, he watched her realize she had no friends to count on in this situation.

She had no place to go where someone would take care of her.

Her family—even Harrison to some extent—had abandoned her.

It was a hideous realization, for anyone.

“Where do you live?” she asked, lifting her chin. He wondered if she knew how much she looked like her mother when she did that.

“I have an apartment in the city.”

“New York?”

He shook his head, not surprised that she was trying this route. She was nothing if not resourceful.

“D.C.?”

He nodded.

“Perfect. You can take me there.”

“Your family is not paying me to hide you,” he said. They weren’t paying him anything. But the reminder that he wasn’t her friend—not really—seemed to be necessary. For both of them.

“Then I will.”

He laughed. She’d been a relief worker in Africa for most of the year. That job didn’t come with a livable wage. “You need to lie down. You’re getting punchy.”

“My grandmother left me this apartment and all her money,” she said. “Don’t write me off, Brody. I can pay you.” She blinked and he realized tears were filling her eyes. He glanced away—she had the right and every reason in the world to cry, but he couldn’t handle it.

And he would do just about anything to make it stop.

“I know you must hate me for what happened ten years ago, but I have nowhere to turn. Nowhere. Please—”

“Stop.” He didn’t give a shit about ten years ago. He’d been taught a lesson he needed to learn. It was the
please,
brave and defiant all at once, that ruined him. He held up his hand. “I’m serious. Lie down before you fall down and we’ll talk this out.”

She collapsed onto the bed as carefully as her ribs would let her. He walked over and helped lift her legs. No one realized how much that move hurt when your ribs were bruised.

Not broken, thank God.

“You’re going to help me?” she asked. The tears were still there so he focused on taking the pile of clothes and setting them on a chair. Then he grabbed the old bedspread and folded it over her body.

“We can’t go to my apartment,” he said, and her face fell. “It’s tiny. Too small for two people.” It was basically where he stayed between flights to jobs. The garage he kept his car in was bigger.

“Then where?” she asked. “I need to go someplace my family won’t find me. Just until … just until I’m better. Until I know what I’m going to do next.”

Keep her safe. All the way.
That’s what Harrison had said and Brody’s conscience was agreeing. You didn’t go into the lion’s den only to leave what you’d saved for the vultures. In the end, the only decision was where would she be safe. All the way.

Luckily he knew a place.

“I can take you somewhere no one will find you,” he said.

And he could leave her there. Sean would take care of her. Dad might even like having her around. Brody could drop her off, she could soak up the sun, heal, and go out to fight another day.

“I’ll pay you,” she whispered. “Whatever you want.”

Christ. She really had no one.

“I’m going to make some arrangements,” he said. “You sleep. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Where … where are we going?”

Home. As much as he had one.

“Go to sleep, Ashley, I’ll take care of things.” Her eyelids were drooping and he resisted the urge to tuck
the bedspread around her a little more carefully. That shit had to stop. It had been one thing on the plane, when she woke up terrified every twenty minutes, but now they were back to real life and his job wasn’t to comfort her. It certainly wasn’t to be her friend.

He was keeping her safe and walking away.

Meanwhile, there was a whole list of stuff that he needed to do to get her out of town. Flights. A car rental in Memphis for the hour and a half drive across the Mississippi into Arkansas and down to Bishop. He had to call Clint and tell him he’d need a few more days off. Just enough to see her settled.

He walked to the door, so he didn’t see her eyes close as he left.

He didn’t see her smiling.

In movies, when orphans had memories of long-dead mothers, they somehow remembered a smell. Which was bullshit, if you asked Brody. People made it up because they wanted to remember something besides being scared. Or alone. Because fear didn’t smell good.

But when Brody felt … lonely, he thought of the smell of Bishop, Arkansas, in summer. Which, frankly, was mostly stink from the Mississippi and L’Anguille Rivers.

For some reason it was the specific smell of missing a nameless, faceless someone.

Outside the car it was a velvet southern night. Deep and dark. Thick. Brody rolled down the window and put his hand out into it.

It was early August, so ungodly hot. But it had rained and the breeze smelled of mud and mulch and fishing with Sean.

In the passenger seat, the phone from Harrison buzzed and Brody grabbed it.

About damn time.
He and Ashley had left New York City hours ago.

“Harrison,” he said in greeting.

“This is a joke, right?”

Brody should not have been surprised by Harrison’s tone, the accusation. That he was surprised, Brody could only blame on his own exhaustion and those hours in the Nairobi hospital when Harrison had stopped seeming so much a Montgomery and more like a man.

“I’m keeping her safe, Harrison, like you asked.” He glanced in the rearview mirror that he’d situated so he could keep an eye on Ashley as she slept, curled up in a ball in the backseat.

“I didn’t ask you to kidnap her, Brody. There are things at play here that matter. That are important.”

Ashley was what was important. Everything else was bullshit. It was too bad the Montgomerys never seemed to understand that.

“Where are you? My mother—”

“Harrison,” Brody interrupted. “I don’t care about your mother.”

“If I had known you would go rogue—”

Brody laughed.
Listen to the hot shot—go rogue!
“Ashley was going to go to a hotel. Alone. When she realized that wouldn’t work, that she couldn’t care for herself and that there was no one else she could ask, she turned to me for help.”

“And you were all too happy to oblige.”

There was something insidious at the edges of Harrison’s voice. Something that had its roots in the events of ten years ago.

The wet swimsuit falling from her chest.

It was the low desperate maneuver by a low, desperate man. Brody was silent.

“I’m sorry.” Harrison sighed and Brody could actually hear the scrape of the man’s body between a rock and hard place. “Things have been tense.”

That wasn’t Brody’s problem and he didn’t care and he had gotten pretty good at letting his silence say as much.

“Can I talk to her?”

“She’s sleeping.”

“Can you tell me where you are?”

Brody was silent, watching the soybean fields pass by in a purple and black blur outside the car.

“I see. Can you at least keep me updated?”

“When she feels like talking to you, I imagine you’ll hear from her.” Brody wasn’t going to lie. In some ways it was satisfying to dick around with the Montgomery state of mind.

“Did you know what your mother was planning?” Brody asked.

“The press conference? No. Though, I’m not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.”

Maybe there was hope for the man yet.

“Your sister will be in touch,” Brody said.

“Thanks,” Harrison said. “And about payment—”

Brody hung up, threw the phone onto the passenger seat, and picked up his personal phone. His thumb stroked the face for a moment as he considered his non-options. This … coming back to Bishop, the call he needed to make, the help he was going to have to enlist, it banished the nostalgia and made him claustrophobic.

At Camp Lejeune for part of his SERE training, he’d once had a black bag over his head for ten hours in the back of a truck. A hostage exercise. All the physical shit required of Marines, he never had a problem with. But the night of that black bag … that was as close as he ever got to wanting to quit.

If it was claustrophobia or a panic attack, he wasn’t sure, but he’d frozen. He couldn’t pay attention to which direction they were traveling, identifiable sounds. Smells. None of it. His whole world shrunk down to that black bag.

And the prospect of calling his family made him feel the exact same way. Frozen. Lost.

All of this was a weird reaction, he got that, disproportionately dramatic. Ed was a good man. And Sean … well, he missed Sean, at times. Missed his chatter.

They weren’t a threat or asking him to be different.

But in the end, he just couldn’t convince his body of that.

Chili was supposed to push Thursday night poker at the Pour House over the edge.

After all, what poker night wasn’t improved by chili.

And drink specials. Dollar drafts!

The stools were full, and half the tables, but no one was eating chili. And no one was playing poker. People weren’t playing darts, or even talking to one another.

When Sean had taken over the bar from his dad, he’d dreamt of making The Pour House the social hub of the town. Of the county. It was going to be the place to go for fun. For dates. For Friday night hookups. He wanted The Pour House to be a place people gathered to celebrate and commiserate.

A party, that’s what Sean wanted. Every night of the week.

What he got was three drunks at the bar and Tammy Wynette on repeat.

“Doomed,” Sean muttered from behind the bar. “Poker night is just doomed.”

“Talking to yourself, Sean? First sign of lunacy,” Bill Barnes commented, from the stool at the edge of the long mahogany bar he called home. There were days Sean spent more time with Bill Barnes than with people he actually liked.