Still Not Love: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Read online

  I let out a heavy sigh. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind about this?”

  “No. And I’d appreciate it if you stopped trying. We’ll be coordinating with an external security company. We need the privacy, the secrecy, someone who isn’t connected to the Washington insiders.”

  I suck in a breath, my anger draining, replaced by – okay, I’ll admit it – interest. This case smells like conspiracy.

  “You think it's an inside job? Someone with connections?”

  “I have my reasons to believe so. Which is why I’m turning to an old friend who knows enough about Secret Service protocol to do the job right, especially at the fundraiser event next week.”

  Oh, no.

  Oh, hell no.

  I know what he’s going to say before the rest is out of his mouth. I know because the only old friend in security that I know he’d actually trust, when he doesn’t trust anyone, is Riker Woods – another Gulf War veteran who was in Dad’s unit, a soldier about fifteen years younger who served under Dad’s command. Which means...

  “We’ll be meeting up with Enguard Security at the luxury lodge in Soda Springs,” he says, and my stomach sinks. “It’s some kind of asinine ski event – I didn’t plan it – but apparently it’s meant to attract certain types of donors. Good for campaign photo ops. It'll be easier to secure the event than my home or yours, and if anyone tries anything there, they’ll be easily caught in a public place. In the meantime, my connections will follow any leads both here and in D.C.”

  I hardly hear him. Even though every ounce of my training is telling me Dad’s holding something back, trying to shelter me by not telling me something, I can’t focus on that right now.

  Everything recedes into white noise, this blankness settling over the here and now, dragging me back into the hollow, ringing echoes of the past.

  That past is James Nobel.

  A whirlwind. A sweetness. A sting.

  A sunset and a storm of blinding tears so real it still cuts me with a raw, salty edge every day I let myself think about it. And you'd better believe most days, I don't let myself think anything.

  My heart feels savaged to the core, and for the first time in a good, long while, I want to run. I’ve disarmed explosives with only a second left on the timer and never felt anything like the dread and cold, sick nervous tremble I feel now.

  This is it. This is life post-librarian.

  I’m going to be trapped in Soda Springs for at least a week, in close proximity to the only man who ever broke my heart.

  And the only man who still holds the pieces.

  I'm seeing James for the first time in over five years and there's no way around it.

  He’s a senior part of Enguard. I'll admit I kept tabs on him.

  Just for a little while after I left the FBI. I found out he also left not long after something happened, some disaster that was kept hush-hush but that still shoved him out of the agency.

  He never answered my calls after that.

  Never spoke to me at all, and it hurt.

  It hurt so fucking much, and I want to hate him for it, but I can’t.

  The fire, the hurt, the loss turning my blood into molten magma for half a freaking decade has to come out one way or another.

  And I can’t trust what it'll make me do when I finally see him again.

  2

  Sonata (James)

  The only time I ever find peace is at the darkest time of night.

  That's when there’s nothing but me, the faint moonlight streaming through the window, and the caress of ivory keys beneath my fingers.

  Schumann, tonight. Scenes from Childhood.

  Probably ironic, when I’m in my grandfather’s workshop, stealing a minute alone with the sleek, majestic grand piano he’s been restoring for at least the past three years. The sound is almost perfect, mellow and sweet.

  The keys respond beneath my fingers, flowing with every touch to raise soft, sad notes that wind over the room like they're trying to bleed life into the antiques. They line every shelf, these strange, gilded objects, debris from other people's memories, perched all about like judgmental owls in the night.

  Watching over me, asking again and again, who, who?

  James Nobel, who the hell are you?

  I haven’t known the answer to that fucking question in a long time.

  But I feel the most like my true self now. Whenever I can pour myself into each haunting note and for just a few minutes, feel halfway human again.

  Feel anything at all, when somehow in the last few years, that’s become so very, very hard.

  They call me cold at work. Detached. Quiet.

  Landon, Gabe, Skylar, Riker – they always say they can count on me because I'm cool as ice. To stay in control, while everyone else worries about things that I know will work out one way or another.

  They act like I choose to be this way. As if I’m naturally just calm and focused, gracefully in charge of myself like some magic, tortured, half-human thing.

  The truth is, I don’t have a self to be in control of.

  Not anymore.

  That James was left behind years ago – my ghost, my soul, ripped out of me in a single moment and left behind in that burning, terrible night when I lost everything that ever mattered.

  This thing that’s moved forward wearing my face for all these years? It isn’t me.

  I’m gone. Marooned. Missing in action.

  But sometimes, when I slip into the music this way, I start to find myself a little.

  I start to find the man my mother raised me to be before life tore her away and shattered everything that made me happy.

  I manage a faint smile in the darkness, remembering her teaching me to play.

  I’d been small, so small, my feet dangling from the bench, unable to even touch the floor. She’d stand behind me with her long, golden hair falling over me, her hands covering mine to show me how to play scales.

  Then scales became Chopin, then Beethoven, all the classics up to obscure modern jazz. She'd always delight in finding something new and strange, some gem buried in the lost halls of composition history, something that fit her strange and wild Bohemian spirit that made her everything she was and everything she was never supposed to be.

  It's not the mechanical action of pressing keys that does a damn thing for me.

  It’s memories that truly make me feel human again, if only for a second.

  They make me feel like there’s still something left inside besides whispers.

  I’m almost through Schumann, pulling from memory to remember the final fingering, when I hear creaking floorboards in the hall outside the workshop.

  Grandpa must already be two fingers in or more with his usual extended nightcap, to be walking so heavily. Either that, or just waking from a blundering sleep and still staggering around.

  I let my hands fall still on the keys and glance at the yellow-faced antique wall clock, its bronze hands faintly gleaming in the moonlight through the window. It’s nearly two in the morning.

  I’ve been down here for three hours, without even feeling time pass.

  Grandpa leans around the doorway. In him, I can see myself in another thirty or forty years, tall and rangy and silver at the temples, blending into pale blond.

  But there’s a warmth in him, too. Like he was shaped by a kindness and wisdom I’m not sure I’ll ever possess.

  That warmth shows in his smile now as he settles in the doorway, a half-full glass tumbler dangling from one hand, a whiskey bottle in the other. The smile he offers me is a little fuzzy, but generous, quiet, searching. Understanding.

  Sometimes I hate how his eyes seem to see me in all my raw glory.

  You shouldn’t be able to see a ghost.

  “You’re still good,” he murmurs. “For a minute, I thought it was her.”

  “That would be something.” I muster a faint smile, happy a piece of my mother lives on in my fingertips. “I’m sorry if I woke you.
Didn't realize how late it was.”

  “You didn’t, son. I keep myself awake. Can’t hear a damn thing on the top floor, anyway. But I knew I’d find you down here. I always do.” He pushes away from the door and steps into the workshop to deposit the glass on the top of the piano, within my reach, then takes a swig straight from the bottle before nodding toward the smaller player piano in the corner, gleaming and freshly restored and repaired.

  I nod, too. Respectfully. This is his pride and joy, bringing these old, forgotten things back to life.

  “Feel like putting that pretty girl through her paces? I’ve got to drop her off at the neighbor’s next week, but I don’t have your ear for the finer notes. Help me make sure it’s perfect before it goes back?”

  “Of course.” I lift myself from the grand piano's bench, catch the tumbler in my fingertips, and cross the space to the smaller piano, settling on the bench. With a small sip of smoky, stinging whiskey, I run through scales, making the piano sing like rainfall notes, a glissando of escalating delicate plinks.

  Grandpa closes his eyes in quiet pleasure, just listening.

  It’s a moment of communion for us, in a way. A quiet in the space between notes where we can remember we’re more alike than we are different, no matter how we may disagree on things.

  And I can already feel a disagreement coming, sure as a storm.

  Even now, he's weaving his way toward the old filing cabinet tucked behind his cluttered corner desk, just as I finish playing.

  I know before he finishes opening the bottom drawer what I’ll see. Fuck, not again.

  The letter.

  We call it the letter, but what it really is?

  More than three hundred meticulously handwritten, yellowed pages, the ink starting to fade, the pages curling at the corners. It feels like a letter from beyond the grave, and it has since the moment Grandpa found Mom's unfinished manuscript hiding in the attic, tucked away among her old things that we just can’t stand to throw away.

  It's her novel. A beautifully crafted story of love that’s just waiting for one of us to do it justice with an ending that would honor her properly.

  The loosely bound pages thud against the desk, the wind of their landing making the stacks of invoices and inventory bills rustle. My grandfather’s chair creaks almost as loudly as he does as he lowers himself with a groan, then thunks the bottle down next to the stack.

  He flicks through the first few pages, then riffles to the end. I’ve stopped playing without realizing it, my hands resting loose and quiet on the keys as I watch him silently across a cluttered room that still, in this moment, feels too empty.

  “It should be you,” he says, gruff, raw, his voice thick. He’s always been an emotional man, but the whiskey makes it hard to keep it inside. “I can’t do this. Every time I look at it, every time I see it cut off like this, I just keep thinking about her being cut off and...and I break down like a damn old fool. Can't do it, son. I’ll ruin it. I’ll ruin it, James.”

  “Like I’ll do any better?” I say, trying to control the sharpness creeping into my tone. “Whatever emotion that story needs...there's nothing in my life that compares. No reference to draw. No inspiration. It would feel inauthentic, shallow, and false if I –”

  “If you what?” he flares, smacking his palm down against the desk hard enough to make the books and pencil cup and trinkets scattered all over it jump. “If you stop acting like your life is already over and start to feel something again? Look, I know the accident screwed things up. But it sure didn't kill you. James, you have something left inside. You think you’re cold, but that girl –”

  “Leave Faye out of this,” I snarl, almost by reflex.

  Just saying her name out loud makes me feel like my lungs have been punctured, but I’m still trying desperately to suck air through the ragged, painful holes anyway.

  I can’t stand this bullshit lunacy.

  I can’t stand to feel this, to worry whether or not the old man's right. That’s why it’s easier to retreat behind an icy wall, push it down, swallow it until it’s buried so deep I don’t even know where to find it again.

  I take a deep breath. Then another and another before smoothing my hand over my shirt and standing. “The piano is fine. Your client should be pleased. I’m going home.”

  “James...”

  “Goodnight, Grandpa.”

  “James!”

  I stop. Just stop where I stand, my hands hanging at my sides, while I stare blankly at the door.

  It's pure hell, knowing I can’t walk away from him when there’s so much emotion in his voice.

  He’s like a vessel filled to bursting. One more tiny drop and he’ll shatter and spill all over me. I can’t leave him when he’s hurting.

  “Please,” he asks softly while I shake my head. “Finish it for her. You're the only one. If you'd try –”

  “I can’t. Hire a ghostwriter. Anyone but me.”

  “It has to be you,” he growls. “There’s more of her left in you than anyone!”

  “I’m nothing like my mother.”

  “Only because you don’t want to be.” His chair creaks again as he stands, the floorboards groaning under him as he steps closer to me. I can smell the whiskey on his breath, and the old tobacco scent of him, as he stops at my shoulder. “I’m asking you again, James. Just think about it. Please.”

  Something rustles at my shoulder. I look down.

  It’s a thick sheaf of pages.

  Not the entire book, but what looks like the last chapter with its terrible final, empty page left hanging for so many years. He waits in silence, watching me with his rheumy eyes wet, and I close my eyes with a sigh, then snatch the pages from him. The paper has been so worn by repeated handling that it feels like touching soft skin.

  “I’ll take a look,” I say. “But no promises.”

  He nods and lets me go without a word.

  I walk out into the night, to my car, and to my solitary apartment, which feels much too big for me right now.

  I’d barely touched my drink at Grandpa's house. At home, I pour myself a fresh two fingers of bourbon and sink down at my desk, staring at my closed laptop and the pages stacked on top of it.

  It's a sick joke.

  Who the hell knew I'd be scared by a stack of paper? I deal with bullets, blood, and non-stop danger working for Enguard. I'm sure as fuck not laughing.

  I press two fingers to my temples, closing my eyes. I’ll try because I told him I would. I'll try, even though I know the outcome.

  This won’t end well. There's no way.

  I've bought myself time, and lately, there's plenty of that.

  Things have been fairly quiet at Enguard the past few months, ever since we last tangled with a dangerous crime syndicate called the Pilgrims.

  The calm almost defies Riker’s superstitions about bad things coming in threes. My friend can't really say the Pilgrims bust ended badly, considering it landed him a wife.

  We've spent the last few months protecting easy, predictable clients. Then the tedium of coordinating with the police to provide additional info as they chase the last few Pilgrims out of their ratholes, as well as depositions about using justifiable force during the last operation.

  At the moment, there’s nothing that requires my complete focus, so I’ll take the time to play Hemingway with Mom's magnum opus. Even if I don't have the first clue where a man should start playing editor with a goddamned romance novel.

  Is Gone With the Wind on Netflix for inspiration?

  Still, I have a strange, eerie sensation I might never get the chance. A wicked premonition tingles down my spine.

  Maybe it’s something in my grandfather’s genes. He doesn’t trust quiet times any more than Riker does, and always insists things have a way of blowing up.

  I'd rather prefer they didn’t.

  I insist they won't by faith.

  That’s the problem, though. Faith isn't ironclad.

  And life doesn
’t care what I’d prefer.

  Life doesn’t slow down to wait for me to be ready to deal with it.

  Life operates on its own timeline, its own rules, and in order to keep up, I find my ways to cope.

  Healthy or not, they keep me moving and functioning.

  They save lives.

  They make sure I don’t break down when people are depending on me.

  That’s all that matters in the end. Anything that happens to me as a result is just collateral damage.

  I toss my drink down, pursing my lips as the last of it explodes in my guts. The haze of bourbon settles over me in a warm shroud, heating my blood and making that sense of danger, of warning, feel far away.

  I sink back in my chair, staring at the ceiling, just letting myself drift.

  In a few moments, after the initial burn fades from my blood, I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow’s another day.

  “Just another mundane, ordinary, goddamned day,” I whisper out loud.

  I have to tell myself it'll blend into the others without changing. No matter what happens, who’s missing or hurt or hunted or dead, nothing ever changes for me.

  And nothing ever will.

  * * *

  I really should have listened to that premonition.

  When my phone buzzes at four a.m., I’m awake in a second. Old training makes me ready in an instant, immediate minuteman awareness the moment I open my eyes and hear a noise.

  There was a time when the FBI could wake me up in Portland at two o'clock in the morning and have me in Baltimore by seven, and I’d hardly feel the strain.

  Now, all I feel are the last dregs of booze leaving my body. Slept away, leaving me clear-headed as I sit up and swipe my phone from the nightstand, reading the text from Landon.

  Everyone to HQ. We have a job, and it starts now.

  It’s a group text, sent to the whole senior staff.

  But I still don't have a clue what’s waiting for me until I’m dressed in a freshly pressed suit and joining the others at our big board table. This late in the year, there's a lingering darkness by the time I arrive at five.

  The only lights are the street lamps over the parking lot and the fluorescent bars inside the office’s war room. In the cold, pale, fake morning light, everyone looks, quite frankly, like hell.