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“Endelle requested you on this one, no one else. She never pushes me about assignments so she must have her reasons. Besides, she didn’t have any details. She saw something in her meditations, which as you know do not always pan out.”
“I’m better off battling. With the mood I’m in, I could crush skulls with my bare hands tonight.” His biceps flexed and quivered, a thoroughbred at the gate.
“Sorry. She wants you.”
The song ended abruptly and Kerrick’s voice boomed the length of the building: “Fuck you.”
All conversation, from one end of the club to the other, got knocked off track for about three long seconds. Kerrick glanced around and anyone looking his direction immediately looked away. Warriors weren’t known for their sweet tempers.
Thorne rose from his seat, his hazel eyes hard as steel. He met Kerrick’s gaze dead-on. “You don’t have a choice.”
“The hell I don’t and that would be Jeannie.”
“Jeannie?” Thorne cried. “What the hell are you talking about?” His phone buzzed, and he flipped Kerrick off again as he drew the card to his ear. “Give,” he barked. “Oh. Hey, Jeannie. Sorry. What’s up?”
Jeannie worked at Central Command. All the night’s assignments flowed from Central straight to Thorne. Central mapped the entire metro Phoenix area and knew exactly where the enemy operated and where the warriors needed to be. Kerrick narrowed his eyes, his fingers flexed around his tumbler. He imagined his sword in one hand, dagger in the other. His heart rate increased.
“Got it,” Thorne said. He returned his phone to the same pocket and let another juicy set of obscenities fly. “Okay. You’ve got a reprieve. Four pretty-boys active in a downtown alley. You know the drill.”
“Four,” Kerrick murmured, nodding. He almost smiled. He clapped Thorne on the shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “But please just get me the hell out of this other bullshit assignment.”
* * *
Alison Wells sat in her office, perched on the edge of her cream-colored wing chair, the therapist’s chair, her BlackBerry clamped to her ear. The last thing she wanted to do was have a conversation with her sister about her love life, but for some reason Joy was pressing her to start dating again.
Taking a deep breath, Alison said, “I think you’re forgetting that the last man who made love to me ended up in the emergency room … bleeding … and unconscious.” She gripped her phone hard, painful memories crowding her head.
“Not so loud,” Joy cried. “I have regular eardrums, remember?”
“And I’m telling you that I don’t want to talk about my ex. I closed this chapter on my life the same night I rode to the hospital and nothing, nothing, will cause me to open it again.”
“Lissy, it’s been three years. Maybe things have changed. Maybe some of those special abilities of yours have calmed down a little. Maybe you could find some huge bodybuilder who could handle all your power. I mean … really. You should try again. Really.”
Alison sighed as a familiar longing filled up her chest until she could hardly breathe. Why couldn’t she have been more like Joy, even a little bit, Joy the younger sister, the normal sister, the sister with the gorgeous husband and nine-month-old adorable baby boy?
They were like night and day. Joy with her curly brown hair and dark eyes who resembled their father, while Alison with her straight blond hair and blue eyes took after Mom. The only thing she shared in common with her sister was her height. At six-foot apiece, they’d both been teased all through middle school and well into high school.
Joy had made the best of it and took up cheerleading.
Alison had known her height for what it was, one more thing that set her apart from everyone else.
Her gaze skated over the empty wall unit opposite as well as the pictureless walls. She had sold the furniture a week ago to the therapist taking over most of her practice. Other than the foot-high unity statue sitting in the center of the coffee table, her office was a desert, as dry as the air outside, as lifeless.
Her gaze shifted to the alabaster carving, and a silent curse worked her tongue. The last remnant of her eight-year stint in private practice was that aggravating statue. She smoothed back hair already pulled into a tight twist. If only her sister hadn’t called to discuss her love life, maybe she wouldn’t feel quite so ready to scream.
“Please, Lissy,” Joy said in a voice that sent a warning chill straight down her spine. “I really, really think you should try again.”
All the breath left Alison’s body as she stared at the alabaster family. She thought of her nephew whom she loved more than she had ever thought possible, one of her links to normalcy as Aunt Lissy.
Her heart fractured then broke into a million pieces.
This couldn’t be happening, this truth, which Joy’s desperate tone had finally unveiled, the reason for her phone call.
Oh. No.
At last she drew breath. She took several. “Joy,” she whispered. Her heart thumped through a couple of questionable beats.
“Yes?” Nothing more than a squeak this time.
Dear sister. Dear normal sister. “How far along are you? Six weeks? Eight?”
“Did you just read my mind? You’re not supposed to, remember? You just broke Mom’s rule.”
“I didn’t read your mind. I wouldn’t, not without your permission.” Another breath, another effort to calm her unsteady heart. She needed the truth, but she didn’t want to hear it. “It’s just that you haven’t brought up my love life in, oh, let’s see, three years. Really. So how far along are you?” She didn’t want to know. Joy, please don’t say it.
A heavy sigh followed. “Two months, one week. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”
Alison used her free hand to white-knuckle the armrest of the chair. “And you thought I’d be upset?” Dammit, her eyes burned like she’d just rubbed them with chili peppers. Upset didn’t begin to describe what she felt. Upset would have been a lazy walk on the beach.
She squeezed her eyes shut and bent over, folding up like a taco to keep everything inside from spilling out. She had only one wish: that the world would end right now.
A second child. A husband, a home, little T. J., and now another baby on the way.
“Of course you’ll be upset,” Joy said. Her cadence had slowed down. “You think I haven’t noticed how anytime we’re together you pick T. J. up and don’t give him back until we’ve loaded the car? Even then I have to pry him out of your arms.”
