Kiss and Tell (23 page)

She went back to the kitchen area for a bowl of hot water. Dreading what had to come. Hating that he was hurt. Scared because she was the only one who could do anything about it. And unsure of her ability.

He'd been holding her flannel shirt against his shoulder. Marnie took the damp clump of fabric and tossed it on the table. It left a smear of blood on the surface of the wood. She swallowed roughly and removed her jacket, dropping it on the floor behind her.

Jake tried to pull the skin-tight fabric up his body. His face contorted. Every drop of blood drained from her brain, leaving her light-headed and pukey.

"Here, for godsake Jake, let me do it." She climbed over his leg and sat on the trunk coffee table between his knees.

Duchess shifted. Brow wrinkled, she rested her chin on a sofa cushion and watched the proceedings with worried puppy eyes.

Very carefully Marnie started to peel the fabric up Jake's chest. The material felt slick, slippery.

Blood.

Little black dots flittered in her vision. She ignored them.

"You're bleeding pretty badly," she said calmly, keeping her gaze steady, the rusty tang of fear sharp in her mouth.

"I've bled worse."

She pushed his hands away as he tried to help her. "Let me do it. Hang on, let's see if—" Rummaging around in the metal box, she found a pair of scissors. "Perfect. I hope this isn't one of your favorite spy outfits!" The tight fabric sprang away from his body as she cut into it. His skin felt warm beneath her icy hands.

"What is this stuff, anyway?" The fabric wasn't silk; it was almost rubbery, cold and damp on the outside, but dry and warm inside.

"I call it LockOut."

"Why do you—" She stared at him. "Did you
invent
this?"

His cheeks darkened. "I told you I played around with stuff. Yeah, this was one of the better ideas. It's like a second skin. Traps in the body's heat. It also acts as a shield."

Marnie snorted. "That part didn't work so well."

"If I hadn't been wearing it, I'd be dead right now. It's not impervious. It did what it was designed to do – deflect the strike."

She shuddered. "It didn't deflect it enough for me. I'd demand a refund. And how did the bad guys get your invention, anyway? Aren't they wearing this same stuff?"

"Yeah, they are. But that's no mystery. Any special-forces operations have access to it. It's sold all over the world now."

"Great. In spy shops?" Marnie said under her breath.

She'd put off looking at the gory hole in his shoulder as long as possible. What was she supposed to do next? There was so much blood. Red. Thick. Pulsing. It blipped out of the jagged tear in his skin and ran in rivulets down his bare arm and chest.

For several seconds she thought she might just keel over. Considering her position between Jake's knees, she'd land nose first on his chest. His painful,
bleeding
chest.

"Tell me what to do!" How could her mouth be this dry when she was swallowing convulsively?

He leaned forward with a grunt. "Check out the back." He paused while she looked at the blood smeared over his hard muscles and tanned skin. "How's it look?"

Like cat food
. She swallowed and said mildly, "Awful." It wasn't a hole. But it was a deep, nasty-looking canyon of a gash across the top of his shoulder.

"Yeah? Well, it can't look any worse than it feels, but it's just a graze."

Vertigo swamped her; she gripped the edge of the table with clammy hands. "That's good."

"Hell, yes. You won't have to dig a bullet out."

Thank you, Jesus
. "Now what?"

"Get that brown bottle over there...yeah, that one. It's an antiseptic. Use a couple of those sterile gauze pads and clean it as best you can. Back and front."

Jake calmly gave her instructions and she followed them blindly.

"Talk to me."

Marnie dabbed carefully around the wound. "What about?"

"Tell me about your family."

She glanced up, the bloody cloth clutched in her hand. "Not now. I have to concentrate."

"Do that like you mean it, Marnie. I'm not going to break." He guided her hand more efficiently. "You can talk and do this at the same time." Jake gulped half the coffee and cradled the mug in one hand. "Come on, I need the distraction. Tell me about your grandmother."

Marnie suspected Jake wanted her to have the distraction while she worked. She swallowed the metallic taste in her mouth and dabbed more thoroughly at his wound.

Front.

Don't gag.

Grammy, guide my hands.

"I adored her. Bless her heart. Grammy was all of four foot eight, with a backbone like a steel rod and a heart big enough to shelter the world."

Don't cry. Clean. Disinfect.

How much blood does he have in his body? Fifty gallons? she wondered frantically as it kept seeping and she kept blotting. It seemed most of it was on the cloths she kept exchanging. Marnie ran her tongue over her dry lips.

"As – as far back as I can remember, her hair was white," she went on, her throat raw with tension. "She always smelled of Pond's face cream and Yardley's lavender eau de cologne, and she had the softest, most gentle hands in the world. Whenever I was sad I'd lay my head in her lap, and she'd stroke my hair."

Marnie worked to stanch the blood and felt it crust beneath her fingernails. She swallowed bile and doggedly kept going.
Breathe
.

"Put more antiseptic on the... Yeah, good. Okay. Keep talking."

"I'll remind you that you said that one day." Marnie forced a smile. "Grammy was a benign despot. She ruled the house with a hard stare and chocolate chip cookies. Every kid in the neighborhood wanted to hang out at our house."

"Hold that there a little longer. Up a bit." He shifted her fingers. "Yeah, here. That where you learned to cook? At Grammy's knee?"

"Hang on I have to concentrate— Yes, I did." Marnie paused to smile at the memories, then resumed what she'd been doing. "She was an inspired teacher. I had to spend so much time indoors, and she made cooking lessons fun. Even though I would've much preferred being outside with the boys, finally I did learn what she was trying to teach me. Along with how to cook a roast and how to crush the bejesus out of a clove of garlic, she had a great deal of advice to impart."

"Like what?"

"Like 'Never run after a man or a bus, there's always another one in five minutes.' "Marnie smiled without glancing up. "Like 'Live out loud.' Grammy was full of helpful little homilies for every occasion."

"How about, 'No good deed goes unpunished'?"

Marnie
tsked
. "Cynic."

"Pollyanna," he replied without heat. "It goes without saying she spoiled you rotten."

"Actually, she was the only one who
didn't
. She made very few concessions for my illness and allowed me to do a lot of things with the Musketeers that my dad had a conniption about later. She was the one who taught me to ride a bike when the males of the family thought it too strenuous. She's also the one who encouraged me to climb trees... How's this feel?"

"Fine. Did she spoil your brothers, too?"

"Of course." She glanced up to find him watching her intently, and gave him what she hoped to hell was a reassuring smile. Marnie swallowed the saliva pooling in her mouth and bent her head to see what she was doing.

"It was really hilarious when they got into trouble. There was this itty-bitty little old lady confronting one or more of my six-foot-tall brothers. You should have seen them blush and quake. She never had to raise her voice, either."

She wiped her sweaty cheek on her shoulder. "I miss her so much." Dip. Twist. Wipe. "I wish I could cry for a week and get rid of this sore spot around my heart."

Jake frowned. "You haven't cried?"

"Not enough. It's there, a whole flood of tears just building up, waiting to explode."

"Did you cry when your mother passed away?"

"
Big
time. But I was six. She dropped me off on my first day of first grade and on the way home had an accident." She glanced up to find his eyes on her. "Drunk driver. She died instantly."

"Shit."

"I won't say it was easy not having a mom, but I never lacked for anything. Dad, Grammy, and the Musketeers made sure of that."

"No wonder your father and brothers are so protective of you. A bad heart, all those surgeries, no mother. Hell, it's understandable they'd want you to lead a stress-free life."

"I think having me to worry about helped them get over losing our mom. In a way, though, I let them keep on believing I needed them far longer than I really did. Oh, I didn't fake it. But I certainly went along with whatever they suggested when they suggested things, because I knew it made them happy. It became a habit. A bad habit. That's why I'm determined to change ... to change... Never mind."

She was babbling like a fool. Talking about Grammy now, of all times. Knowing Jake could so easily have died out there made her voice thick and her throat ache.

The last thing she wanted to do was talk about death.
Anybody's
. The dam of grief hoarded behind her breastbone pressed for release. Her eyes burned, and her skin prickled, and moisture pooled in her mouth.

"Now what?" she asked roughly. The wound looked clean. Icky, but clean. She suppressed a shudder of empathy and felt no surprise when her tears refused to rip free. Now wasn't the appropriate time, anyway.

Jake explained patiently how to use the ninety-nine miles of bandage her nervous fingers had unraveled. With trembling hands she rerolled the bandage, then followed his direction.

She ducked her head and swallowed tears. "Your t-turn in the hot seat."

"I'm not in a chatty mood."

"I don't care. Do it anyway. Where'd you grow up?"

"Working-class neighborhood outside Chicago."

"Jeez, Jake, this is like dragging a kid to the dentist! What did your dad do?"

"To me? Nothing. Absolutely not a damn thing."

"No," Marnie said gently, "for a
living
."

"He was on social security. On permanent disability from some accident at the construction site where he'd worked. He was as healthy as a horse, despite chain-smoking and drinking himself into oblivion. But they paid him to sit home and watch game shows all day. And that's pretty much what he did."

It sounded like an awful B movie. Marnie's chest ache grew. "And your mom?"
Please tell me she adored you and protected you from your father's neglect.

"She didn't get social security."

"I don't understand."

"She was exactly the same as he was. She just didn't get a check every week for it."

"That's child abuse."

"They never raised a hand to me."

"They
neglected
you. That's a form of abuse, Jake." She couldn't keep her palm from curling around his jaw. His cheek felt bristly and warm, and she wanted to lean forward and kiss him, but there was still bandaging and cleanup to be done. And Jake didn't look as though any show of sympathy would be welcome right now.

"So you ran away from home to join the navy. You said you were only sixteen?"

"Big for my age, and smart enough to fake ID— Pull that taut."

"Lift your arm. Does this hurt? Stupid question. Sorry... What did your parents have to say when you joined?"

Jake shifted so she could pull the elastic bandage around his chest and up over his shoulder.

"Since I wasn't there at the time, I have no idea." He didn't so much as flinch as she worked. "It probably took them a couple of weeks to notice I wasn't around. And before you get all misty about it, both my parents were alcoholics. If they remembered they had a kid, it was to send me to the liquor store for more booze."

"Were they at least happy with one another?"

Jake snorted. "Not a damn thing made them happy, except for the booze. Unhappiness hung like smog over my folks. Hell, over the whole house. My mother was forced to marry at sixteen. And she never let either me or my old man forget that she had been forced to be where she didn't want to be. Stuck with a kid when she was a kid herself.

"My old man was silent, long-suffering, morose. He drank to block out the complaints of my mother. My pathetic discontented mother drank to block out how useless she'd let her life become. Neither, as far as I know, ever did one damn thing to change their lives for the better. They whined, complained, and drank.

"I can't remember any occasion they weren't irritated or downright angry with each other or with me if I was in the way. It was a blessing to get the hell out of there. I left and never looked back."

"That's awful. Wasn't there an adult you could go to for help?"

"No."

"Friends?"

"I was sick of trying to come up with new excuses for people who— It was easier to— No, no friends."

Marnie wondered about the bottle of Scotch on his kitchen counter in the cabin above them. The
sealed
bottle of Scotch. Another way for Jake to show himself just how inviolable, how strong, he was?

"And before you ask, I don't drink, for obvious reasons. Doesn't mean the propensity isn't there, though."

Another conversation she should have left well enough alone. He was already physically hurt; now she'd made him talk about another painful time in his past.

"Yet despite all that, you've made a wonderful life for yourself."

Jake laughed. "Yeah, haven't I, though? Kicked out of the organization I've worked for half my life, marooned on this damn mountain with assassins after my ass, nobody to give a shit what the hell happens to me one way or the other. Yeah, I've made a damn fine life for myself."

"
I
give a shit."

"Yeah? And how long would
that
last in the real world?"

"As long as you'd want it to."

"Not interested, cupcake. Okay, wrap this up."

"I'm sorry, Jake, you're right. Let's change the subject."

"Let's." His words were counterpointed by the music still soaring out of the CD across the room. "Spinning Wheel." Now that was appropriate.