Amusement lurked in her eyes, but so did desire. And questions. It hit him then that she was willing. Was he willing to toss out his discipline and caution his first few days of freedom?
Hell yes.
Not the answer he wanted to hear from himself. That right there should cause him to drain his coffee, stand up, get his damp jeans and T-shirt out of the still-spinning dryer and get the hell out of here.
“Home can be anywhere. It’s more an attitude than a place.” Shane kicked off her boots, peeled off her socks and wiggled her toes. Her toenails were a brilliant deep and sparkly blue. Her fingernails were short, rounded and bare. “When my sisters and I were kids in Sweet Tea, we lived in the woods along the Pigeon River. We were practically feral, always out running around barefoot, sometimes naked or in our underwear swimming in the creek. Eating the bounty in the woods. The town kids called us witches. We would play into it—stare at them, pretend to speak some magical language, and do things with our fingers like we had an invisible wand or were casting spells.
Shane tilted her head back and looked up at the green metal roof with the thick beams strung with party lights. The lights highlighted the planes of her face, and the small flames dancing in the firepit behind her highlighted the white blonde of her hair.
“I bet the god-fearing families of Sweet Tea wet themselves in terror,” he said. She was casting a spell on him, and what was truly dangerous, there was a part of him that wanted to be ensnared.
Shane laughed. “It wasn’t nice,” she admitted. Her mysterious eyes held the faraway look of a pleasant memory. “We were always into music. We had our own band and would stand on the lunch tables at school and break into a cappella versions of Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears, Faith Hill, No Doubt, TLC, and Shawn Colvin hits. True devil-worshiping music.”
“I think Sweet Tea wasn’t big enough for you,” he said.
“Marietta’s not that much bigger.” Shane sighed, her light dimming. “I learned to become smaller.” She stretched out her legs on the bench and raised her arms up over her head, inviting him to note the irony.
Nope, not wearing a bra.
“My point is, Sweet Tea was home because of my family and nature,” she said after a comfortable pause. “LA was home because of my family and the ocean. When I was in college my friends and routines and decorations created a home for me. Same when I was working. Marietta’s home because of the beautiful views, the hiking trails and nature and the people. I’ve made my home here by finding a job I love and making it mine, making changes that I want, by making friends, by buying a house and changing it with my own labor, money and time so that it suits me. You too, Remy, can make a home wherever you want. It just takes the will.”
He felt like one of those poor trapped frogs in a high school biology class. “I think you can still cast a spell, Shane Knight.” His voice was rough, exposing him.
“You think I can?” She looked at him.
“Do you want to?” He could barely breathe. Damn. He should be good at this part. He was a big man, had a dangerous edge. Women in dangerous parts of the world and rougher bars responded to that. He’d never had trouble sealing the deal without much conversation.
But he’d never met a woman like Shane.
“Still thinking on it.”
“Don’t.” He took another long draft of coffee. Got up, helped himself to the rest. “You’re not that kind of woman.”
“What kind of woman?” Her eyes flashed. Good. He needed to piss her off. She was getting under his skin. Making him want.
“A hit-and-run kind of woman.” His voice sounded as rough as he felt.
“Hit?” Instead of standing while he stood, with the firepit between them, she drew her mile-long legs into what he dimly remembered his sister proudly calling criss-cross-applesauce after her first day of preschool. “My aren’t you masculine.” Her voice went syrupy Southern, and she fanned her face with her hand.
“So you think of sex like a hit on a woman and then you run?” She looked up at him. “Like a military op.” She smiled. “Women do serve, as I’m sure you know. Besides I was hitting on you.”
She’d confused him. No faux denial. No fake outrage.
“And you seem like a man who would stride away, no backward glance, not a man who runs.”
Where was all the air in this part of town?
“You got that right.” For some reason his mouth kept moving. “I’m here to carry out a task for a fallen brother. Then I’m gone.”
“Understood, Remy.” Her gaze was kind, the desire still there, but she’d made her own decision to back away and disappointment crashed into relief.
“No one has called me Remy in years,” he admitted.
Now she stood, approached him casually, but slowly as if he were a wild animal she didn’t want to spook. He supposed he was.
“How’s it feel?” Her fingertips skimmed his, and he had to fight the urge to hold her hand.
He was weak. Wanting a connection he absolutely could not have. He would let her down. Destroy her like everyone else he’d cared about.
“I don’t know,” he said, too restless to sit, too off-balance to leave.
Shane walked around him to pour more hot water into her cup from the outdoor kitchen. Somehow, not having her so close loosened more words so they could fall out.
“I could say that I’m not that man anymore, but Remy was never a man. I enlisted at eighteen. Was called Cross in basic and every day after that. But I was Cross long before I enlisted,” he remembered, hating bringing up the images, the turbulence, the rage that had stormed through him. “I was placed at a ranch for troubled teens a few years after my mom died when I was twelve.” His voice mocked the words because trouble hadn’t begun to cover the damage: to him, to so many others “I’d bounced around foster care for a few years before being sent to the ranch when I was fifteen. I was never called Remy again after that. Just Cross.”
Shane blew on the water steaming from her mug, her crystalline gaze locked on him. She closed the distance between them, moving more like mist than a flesh-and-blood woman. Maybe she really was a witch because his body came alive in a fierce fire that burned and belonged to her more than him.
“I don’t think you’re just anything, Remy,” she said.
Anger stirred, saving him. “What do you think I am?” He invited her scrutiny.
Bring it on, headshrinker.
“What?” She sounded thoughtful. Her beautiful gaze, lit by the glow of the party lights, was open, searching, whereas he, with his back to the lights, was as always in the shadows. “Not who?” With her thumb, she stroked along a scar that feathered out from his left eye, and then down his temple and jaw and lingered on his bottom lip. “You are anyone you choose to be,” she said. “But I think you are lost.”
That was a hard hit. “You going to find me?”
Women. Always thinking they could save men. They couldn’t.
“No. You are.”
Chapter Four
“Dead?” he repeated as if he’d never heard the word before.
“Ummmm, yes.” The young woman’s face creased in nervous sympathy. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Was Alex…Alexandria a…a friend of yours?”