Willing Sacrifice (Knights of the Board Room) (39 page)

“His mother and sister were his home,” she said.

After a pause, during which he was clearly evaluating how much she knew about their common subject, Dale inclined his head. “Not sure he knows how to make one without them.”

“Besides which, he’s still down range, isn’t he? Still working the mission.”

Dale’s eyes sharpened on her. She leaned forward. “Are you helping him find the last one?”

“Are you going to tell me he shouldn’t be doing that, that he should be moving forward with his life?”

“What do you think?”

He sat down across from her. When she pushed her coffee over to him, he took a sip, handed it back to her. “You take it strong. No cream or sugar?”

“I don’t like diluting the full strength of something meant to be strong.”

“I’m liking you better and better. You won’t be able to talk him out of it.”

“I get that. But did he try other options? The police?” She knew the hypocrisy of pointing it out, but she cared enough about him she asked anyway.

Dale grunted. “Max has a healthy respect for the law, the Constitution—the real deal, not the crap that people and politicians twist to serve their own purposes. But he gets there’s a difference between justice and the law sometimes, and justice gets served first when we have the ability and choice to make the call. This call is his choice. No muss, no fuss, no drama. He’s not going to talk about it, but I guarantee it takes up about a third of his brain space every day.” He cocked his head. “I expect the other two-thirds is probably about you. So you still have the majority of his brain cells, if that’s a comfort.”

“Competition is not my major concern, not when it comes to this.” She met his gaze. “Why do you limp, if it’s not too personal to ask?”

“Amputation below the knee. Lost it during an explosion.”

Her gaze swept downward, and now she noticed how one pants leg seemed to crease differently below the knee. At her look, Dale reached across, closed his hand on hers. He rested it on what felt like a plastic cuff molded to his knee joint beneath the denim. Continuing downward on her own, she felt the solid metal shaft he had instead of a leg. He wore hiking shoes, such that except for the slight limp, she wouldn’t have guessed it.

She looked up. They were almost eye to eye. He gave her a faint smile, nodded and straightened.

It affected her peculiarly, feeling metal and plastic where a firm calf should have been. She moved her touch to his other leg for comparison. It was intimate, forward behavior, but Dale didn’t object. She gripped the calf as he flexed beneath her touch and offered her a somber wink. When she sat up, sat back, her stomach was doing an odd flip-flop. That could have been Max. Or instead of losing a limb, he might not have come home. His sister would have been all alone in the world, and Janet would never have known him.

You might as well say it. I’ve known since the hospital…
She hadn’t said it. Unlike him, she wasn’t ready to accept the strength of his feelings, let alone her own. This moment didn’t really leave her a place to hide from that, did it?

She reclaimed her coffee, took a bracing swallow. “You know what happens when you break them down, break them open. You understand who and what they are. There’s no compromising that. I wouldn’t want to compromise what Max is, but I have a real problem with him doing anything that would take him away from me, by death or imprisonment. I’m a selfish bitch that way.”

“Well, God bless you. Hope that he starts to see things your way.” Dale fished a card out of his pocket, slid it across the table to her. A phone number was handwritten on it. “My cell,” he said. “In case you ever need it.”

Janet lifted her gaze, held his. He had unusual blue-green eyes, but in them she saw a clear message. With a nod, she slipped the card into her pocket, took another sip of coffee.

“You know, sound carries through this house like a megaphone,” Max said, arriving in the doorway.

“Don’t kid yourself, Ack Ack. These walls are thin enough people could sit in the street and hear you,” Dale said comfortably. “Brought you the yard and plumbing tools you wanted for Gayle’s next weekend.”

“Appreciate it. I would have come and gotten them.”

“Eh. I was in the neighborhood.”

Janet turned to see Max shrugging into his shirt. Today it was tailored silk and cotton, coupled with slacks. Matt had an important meeting at the Omni Royal, one that called for his driver to wear formal attire to properly impress the attending members. As he buttoned the shirt, Max moved into the kitchen, touching her shoulder before claiming his own coffee from the counter. He didn’t seem particularly perturbed by Dale’s discussion with her, but from the glance the men exchanged, she realized Dale wouldn’t have imparted anything to her that Max wouldn’t want her to know.

“So did you check to see if he had a prosthetic ass while you were groping him?”

“That looked nicely real to me,” she said without missing a beat. “But I’d be happy to verify.”

“Better not challenge this one,” Dale advised. “She’ll kick your balls into your throat. And then grope my ass while you’re curled up like a shrimp on your dingy-looking tile floor. Jesus, buy some cheerful linoleum. Something with little yellow and blue flowers. At least a freaking potholder. I’m getting you a potholder for Christmas.”

Janet looked between the two men, amused, but then focused on Max, brow raised. “Ack Ack?”

Max rolled his eyes. “My nickname.”

“Kind of like Maverick or Ice Man from
Top Gun
, only a lot less cool-sounding.” Dale winked. “It’s from an early John Cusack movie,
One Crazy Summer
. There’s a character in it who’s a mild-mannered Boy Scout. He always comes through in a pinch. Face like a choir boy, heart of a lion and stubborn as hell when he’s sure he’s right. His nickname was Ack Ack. It fit, on all levels.”

Scraping back his chair, Dale rose, giving her a nod and another wink, then directed his parting words to Max. “I’m due at the community center. Let me know if you need anything else for Gayle.”

“Thanks for bringing them by.”

Dale raised a hand, letting himself out the back door without another word. The minimalist communication of the
Homo sapiens
male, Janet thought. A moment later, they heard the diesel roar of the truck starting up.

She put down her coffee, just in time to have Max lift her under the arms, turn and sit her up on the counter, putting himself in between her knees. He pushed up her short work skirt, his fingers sliding along her thighs under the hem. “You wore stockings just to drive me crazy,” he muttered against her mouth. “I need you.”

She gave back as good as given on that heated kiss, but then she pushed him back, holding him off. Somewhat. He started on her throat, his body pressed close enough to her core that she felt his erection grinding against her. “I thought you said we had to be to work on time.” Despite her protest, she slid her arm over his shoulders, bringing him closer.

“We will be. Need you. Just need you, Mistress. Please.”

It was the please that did it. The almost desperate request of a man who always seemed so self-possessed. Maybe her being here, amid the bare evidence of his life outside of his work, had sparked this response. She was real and alive, part of the present and his tentative future. A stark contrast to his past, that poignant desolation provoking a clash between the light and the dark.

She knew that feeling. At particularly bright moments, she still occasionally experienced it, that blot of darkness on the sun, the memory of blood in a bathroom. Hacking through a throat with a meat cleaver. She clung to him tighter and surrendered to their mutual passion, willing to be swept away from nightmares together.

* * * * *

The emotions he’d stirred up there at the end lingered with her, making her feel unsettled. Not wrong, exactly, not after such an incredible weekend, but emotional upheaval was emotional upheaval, and even the good kind could stir the silt at the bottom. The war between dark and light wasn’t something that could be shrugged off lightly.

One member of the K&A team knew that better than anyone. Unfortunately, it appeared the condition was contagious this morning, because when she arrived Ben sounded as unsettled as she felt.

She heard him snarling at someone on his phone, then he slammed it down with a creative combination of oaths that could fill a swear jar to the brim. “Alice,” he snapped.

Janet dropped her purse and keys on her desk and moved down the hallway to his office. It was in a separate wing due to the confidential nature of the things he handled, but in this mood, he could be heard clearly. “Alice is off this morning. Doctor’s appointment, remember?”

“Great. Fucking great.” He muttered it under his breath, so she decided to let it pass. He looked tired, telling her he’d been here all night. When his therapy session dredged up particularly difficult things and he got in a foul mood over it, sometimes he came to his couch here, rather than taking the attitude home to Marcie. Janet knew he’d do better if he went home to her, but men could be stubborn about that, especially a man determined to give the woman he loved only the best side of himself. He sometimes forgot that what Marcie wanted most was all of him, good and bad. It made Janet think of her discussion with Dale again.

Ben launched into another tirade. “Somebody down at the courthouse royally fucked up the filing of the Watkins affidavit. Missed the deadline. The asshole judge, who likes to jerk our chain, has rescheduled the hearing for fucking two months.”

“I’ll call Stacie in the clerk’s office. She owes me a favor. She might be able to fix that.”

“Fine,” he snapped. “Fucking do it then.”

As Janet patiently waited, he stopped, closed his eyes. Pivoted away from her. She could almost hear him counting. He didn’t turn back toward her, but when he spoke, his tone was more even. “Sorry, Janet. No excuse for that.”

“No, there’s not. It’s just a piece of paper or two.” When he glanced over his shoulder at her, she kept her expression neutral. “Are you all right?”

“She made me agree to marry her. This spring. I was going to let them know this morning, before the Omni.”

“I assume you mean Marcie.”

“No. The hooker on the corner who gives me insider trading tips. Yes, Marcie.”

It made sense now, what had dredged up the same attitude he had after a bad therapy session. Despite the fact he likely wouldn’t welcome it, she crossed the room and touched his arm, drawing his green eyes to her. “You deserve her, Ben. You belong together. She loves you tremendously. And you staying here on the evenings when you can’t make it all make sense? It’s stupid and wrong, and it hurts her, shuts her out.”

He gave her a narrow look. “You finally decide to put down the whip and see a guy without a leash, after how
many years, and you want to talk to
me
about shutting people out? Sounds like you’re the real expert on that.
Mistress
.”

The derision in his tone was intended to cut, and it did. It was ironic that she recognized the tactic so well, exactly because of what he’d just pointed out. They weren’t all that different. Except she could step back from this and see his misery. His fear.

She dug her nails into his wrist, right above his insanely expensive Louis Vuitton watch. “Ben O’Callahan, you’re being rude and cruel. Do it again, and I’ll slap your ear through your head.”

His jaw tightened further. “I didn’t ask you to come in here. And if you draw blood and get it on my cuff, you’re paying for the dry cleaning.”

“Stop it,” she said. “Ben, think about Dana, and her PTSD. She worked through it, because she wanted to heal, to be the best person possible for Peter. He loves her so much, doing anything less is unacceptable to her.”

He stared at her, then his attention shifted to the window. Sensing a similar shift of his mood, she touched his jaw. “What you’re doing, trying to heal the scars of the past to be a better person for yourself and Marcie, it would be tremendously difficult for anyone. But you’re doing it, Ben. You are a remarkable man. I think you forget that far too often.”

When his gaze flickered, she caught a glimpse of what she was painfully aware lay behind the formidable Master, the exemplary lawyer. The younger version of himself, so unsure of his own worth.

“Let Marcie be everything for you that you want to be for her,” she said gently. “That’s the deal, and as much a part of healing as anything else.”

He didn’t say anything, but when she dropped her hand to his arm again, he glanced at it. “You’re such a pain in my ass,” he said gruffly.

“Yes. I love you too.” The worst had passed. She squeezed him, moved back toward the door. “I’ll take care of the affidavit with Stacie. You get ready to tell them your good news. They’re going to be thrilled.”

Coming out into the office area, she saw the insulated bag with her homemade lunch on her desk. She’d left it in Max’s truck by accident, but of course her SEAL had noticed, brought it up for her. The gesture cut some of the tension the confrontation with Ben had provoked, but not as much as she would have liked. She rubbed her forehead, rolled her shoulders.

At least when she came around her desk, she noticed the light on her phone that indicated Ben’s line was engaged. It stayed that way for nearly ten minutes, telling her it was likely that he’d called and talked to Marcie. Either way, when he emerged from his office and came toward the boardroom for their pre-Omni Royal strategy session, he looked easier.