Rebels and Lovers (34 page)

She took one more sweep of ship’s systems. A few readings were somewhat off, but nothing pressing and nothing that would kill them. Speaking of which, she located the self-destruct program for the warning drones and sent the command. No need for a warning and no need to leave a trail. She brought up the autopilot program with an undisguised sigh of relief. Adrenaline drained from her body. She leaned back in her chair, letting her head fall against the cushion. “Well. That was fun. And just think, in one hour we get to play with the ups and downs of slippery space.”

Boot steps sounded on the decking behind her, then warm hands grasped her shoulders. Strong thumbs massaged at the aches in her neck. She let herself go limp, eyes closing. If she were a cat, she’d be purring.

“If you’re applying for the position of captain’s personal massage therapist, you’re hired,” she murmured.

She heard Devin’s low chuckle. Then, from Barty: “I’d best go check on Trip.”

And give the captain and her lover a little privacy? Smart man, that Barthol.

Devin’s ministrations slowed. She swiveled her chair around, tilting her face just as he leaned down to brush her mouth with a kiss.

She pulled his hand from her shoulder and twined her fingers through his. “I already said apology accepted. But redundancy is nice.”

He braced his other hand on her chair’s armrest. “Let’s not ever do that again.”

The obvious relief in his voice made her smile. “Don’t ask me to make promises I can’t keep.”

“Okay. Let’s not ever do that again without at least Philip on the bridge.”

“Why Philip? You know, with your analytical mind, you’d probably make a damned good second pilot. I could teach you.”

He looked affronted. “Only second? Why not first?”

“To sit second pilot you need to be meticulous, smart, and detail-oriented. To be first pilot, you need to be meticulous, smart, detail-oriented, and crazy.”

“So you’re saying I’m deficient in crazy?”

“It’s something you need to work on.”

“I take it you can recommend a course of study?”

She gave him her best slow and sultry smile. “Come to my quarters later, after dinner.” They’d be through
the old trader gates by then. Slippery space was something she felt confident the
Rider
would handle flawlessly. She’d copied her father’s data on the old gates when she was in the academy. Those same codes, permissions, and passkeys now resided in the
Rider’s
comp. “I’ll give you crazy lessons.”

“Does your invitation involve either cards or cheese?”

“Nope.”

“Then I’ll be there.”

Trip recovered his space legs by the time they approached the trader gate and willingly sat at the nav console, determined, it appeared, not only to learn all he could but to prove his worth.

“Don’t fret about it,” Kaidee told him when he haltingly tried to apologize for his hasty exit earlier. “You hung in longer than most. I’ve worked regular gate transits that have puke on the decking.”

That made him grin and prevented her further explanation that the reason those crew members tossed their guts was that they’d been out drinking heavily hours before. Hangovers and choppy gate transits didn’t mix well.

She also saw why Trip was fascinated with his uncle Philip. He had Philip’s love of spacecraft and an unending desire to do better. Knocking Trip Guthrie on his ass only made him more determined to succeed next time.

Shame he’d be forced to fit into a corporate mold. There were downsides, she realized, to being a Guthrie.

“If you expect the turbulence,” she told him after they’d crossed the gate, “it’s not half as bad. If I hit an old smuggler’s gate and it wasn’t choppy, then I’d
worry. It’s not what the ship’s doing but whether what it’s doing is normal. Got it?”

“It’s like when Uncle Ethan’s sailboat heels over in a stiff wind. Your center of gravity is off but the boat’s performing as it should. You accept the boat is doing what it was designed to do.”

“You are totally apex, Mr. Trip.”

That got him blushing again and heading belowdecks for the galley—to see if his tweaking with the food dispenser would, this time, produce redberry ice cream.

A few hours later, she lay in Devin’s arms in the middle of her bed, listening to his laughter rumble in his chest. “Starship captain or chef, eh? Somehow I don’t think Jonathan would approve of either.”

“I’m sure Trip knows that.” She snuggled more tightly against him. “But he needs to find outlets that aren’t Guthrie-designed. I’m sure eventually he’ll be another Jonathan or Devin or J.M.—”

“I rank ahead of J.M.? I’m flattered.”

“—or whatever his corporate specialty turns out to be. But he needs to be Trip too. A little rebellion now and then is good for the soul.”

He sighed, his hand absently skimming up and down the curve of her bare hip. “That can be problematic sometimes.”

“If you weren’t a Guthrie, what do you think you’d be doing?”

That garnered a low snort.

“No, seriously,” she said. “Didn’t you ever have dreams? I mean, I can’t believe that when you were five or ten years old you said, oh, yes, I want to be
chief financial-operations officer of Guthrie Global Financial Assets.”

“If I remember correctly,” he said slowly, “when I was five or ten years old, I was told that’s what I was going to be.”

Kaidee turned on her side, propping herself up on one elbow. “That sucks.”

“There were times I thought so.” He gazed up at her, his eyes half hooded. “Right now I think it’s incredibly wonderful.”

She smiled and trailed her fingers down through his dark mat of chest hair and over the taut muscles of his abdomen. “Then I think it’s time for another crazy lesson.”

His breath stuttered as her fingers caressed the length of his erection. He pulled her face to his, his kiss fierce and demanding. Intoxicating.

Incredibly wonderful. Totally Devin.

A series of discordant chimes woke her three hours later. Ah, slippery space. It liked to invent navigational points that didn’t exist. She’d already patched in one code fix to the autoguidance system. Time for the second.

“Makaid’n?” Devin’s voice was a low, sleepy growl.

“Hush.” She stroked his hair. “Minor nav tweak. Be right back.”

He snorted something and rolled over.

She slipped out of bed, grabbed for her sweatpants and thermal shirt, and padded to the main cabin, pulling her clothes on as she went. Fifteen minutes later, she not only had autoguidance back on course but she was, annoyingly, wide awake. She peeked into her bedroom. Dev was sleeping heavily.

She went back to the main room, ordered a hot sweet tea from the slurp-and-snack, then settled into the chair in front of her data terminal. She played a few hands of Zentauri against the computer, then, bored, closed out the program and brought up the news-feed database. The bombing of Devin’s office puzzled her. It seemed so unrelated to Halsey’s death and the kidnapping attempts on Trip. How could someone possibly know Devin would be the one to try to rescue Trip? Or was the bombing of his office another matter entirely?

She’d been away from GGS for two years, and she hadn’t paid all that much attention to their corporate machinations when she was there. So she initiated a search on all news data in the past planetary month for both Garno and Sylvadae that contained the Guthrie name. Maybe there was a merger, a lawsuit, a change of command. It could be anything where someone felt they were wronged or slighted. It might have nothing at all to do with Trip—

Grallin Emberson and Tia Delaris Emberson are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Tavia Delaris Emberson, to Devin Jonathan Guthrie
.

The images that jumped out at her were beautiful, sophisticated, and left no doubt that it wasn’t someone else with the same name. It was Devin, elegantly suited, the perfunctory GGS silk scarf threaded through the collar of a cream-colored shirt, silver-rimmed eyeglasses framing smoky-blue eyes.

His right arm wrapped around the waist of a tall dark-haired woman who was … gorgeous. Skin the color of burnt honey, large dark eyes slightly tilted, full mouth in a poised and confident pout. She was vidstar slender, her white sweater clinging to full breasts. A seapearl-and-diamond necklace that probably cost
as much as the
Rider’s
entire nav system encircled her throat.

Tavia. She remembered Devin mentioning a Tavia.

Kaidee couldn’t breathe. It was an aborted jump transit, a bone-jarring and damned-near-fatal dump-out all over again. But it was happening within the confines of her body, her heart, her mind, and not her ship.

… announce the engagement of their daughter, Tavia Delaris Emberson, to Devin Jonathan Guthrie
.

The date. It had to be something from years ago. Though her whirling brain couldn’t remember any talk of Devin being engaged when she piloted the
Triumph
, maybe it was old news. An old entry. It was …

… last week. The announcement was dated the day she found Trip in the back corridors of Dock Five.

God. Damn. It. God. Damn …
She shoved her fist into her mouth and bit down, hard, on her fingers. The physical pain jolted her, kicking her brain back into gear.

It was Kiler all over again. Kiler and his lies, his false declarations of love, telling her what he knew she wanted to hear so he could get her to do what he wanted her to do. In Devin’s case, he needed a ship and he needed a pilot, and he’d paid for the services of both. Obviously his definition of services was in line with his brother Ethan’s.

And why should that surprise her? More than once she’d watched Ethan in some spaceport bar, his right hand at the waist of some suggestively clad young woman while in his left he held his pocket comm, telling his wife back on Sylvadae that he loved her and missed her.

Kaidee hunched over, wrapping her arms around her midsection. God damn Devin. A man she cared
about. A man she believed was honorable. This hurt. This really, really hurt.

She lifted her face and stared toward the short darkened hallway leading to her bedroom, shame washing over her. She was sure Barty knew not only that Devin was sleeping with her—oh, hell. Let’s be realistic. Screwing her. Devin was screwing her, and Barty not only knew that but knew about the lovely bejeweled bride-to-be, Tavia.

Kaidee felt cheap, dirty. Betrayed. Again.

Every inch of her wanted to charge back in her bedroom, rip the sheet from Devin’s body, and kick him out into the corridor. Naked. Cold. With luck, he’d break his glasses and his nose when his face hit the decking.

But then he and Barty could laugh about what low-class trash she was, punching it out with him like a common prosti.

She stared at the screen, the words of the engagement announcement blurring. She wiped at her eyes, then reached out and touched the print icon in the screen’s lower left corner. The only sounds in the room were her own ragged breathing and the soft shushing of the thin sheet of paper moving across the tray below the data terminal.

With a trembling hand she pulled it out, padded softly to the bedroom, and then slipped it under Devin’s glasses on her nightstand. Then, just as quietly, she plucked her uniform shirt, pants, and boots from her closet and headed for the bridge. The only place she truly belonged.

Devin rolled over, the slow increase in illumination bringing him to wakefulness. It was morning—or, rather, shipmorning, given where he was. Which was in the middle of something Makaiden called slippery space. Bumpy space was more like it. He stretched, reaching for her …

The sheets were cold to the touch.

He opened his eyes. No Makaiden. Then a hazy memory surfaced. Something about the navigation program. And slippery space. Next trip, he promised himself as he swung his legs out of bed, he was hiring a pilot so he and his beloved captain could at least wake up together. And continue their crazy lessons or dancing lessons or whatever their hearts and bodies wanted at that moment.

At this moment, he wanted Makaiden.

He perched on the edge of the bed, listening. No sound of movement from the main room. No encouraging aroma of tea or coffee.

“Makaiden?”

No answer.

Hell. He reached for his glasses, his fingers brushing against a sheet of paper with—

He froze. His own face and Tavia’s stared back at him. He didn’t need to put his glasses on to know what he was looking at: the engagement announcement his mother and Tavia had drafted. No, more than drafted. Polished, perfected, and released.

His gut clenched as if he’d been sucker punched.
No, no, Makaiden didn’t understand. That was … not him, not his life anymore. “Makaiden!”

He shoved himself to his feet and lunged for the main room, naked, his glasses dangling from his fingers. “Makaiden!”

He whirled around, heart pounding. The room was empty.

Damn it. Damn it! He plowed back into the bedroom, grabbing underclothes, pants, shirt, pulling them on, unconcerned with what was tucked in, what was straight. He needed to find her, explain, apologize. God, what must she be thinking … A dozen damning things came to mind. She didn’t understand. He had to make her understand.