Page 196 of Lone Star

There’d been a faint line of tension between her brows when she first turned, but now that he held the leftovers it had vanished, and her smile had widened, become truer. “Just preheat the oven to three-fifty, take the top off, and let it bake for about twenty minutes. You could microwave it, but the noodles will get soggy.”

“Okay.” He had no idea how to preheat an oven, but figured someone at the clubhouse did. He could ask Chanel, and then Boomer could glare at him some more. “Thank you,” he remembered to say, belatedly, and she beamed.

He headed for the door, and she followed. “Where’s Roman?” he asked.

Kristin paused in the act of opening the front door. He didn’t use to ask questions; Reese supposed it was an adjustment for both of them.

“He’ll be by later.” Her voice didn’t manage to be unbothered.

“After I’m gone.”

“Well…”

“He’s afraid of me.” Reese felt a pulse of satisfaction. Of all the new emotions and sensations in his life, satisfaction was the one whose exact parameters he found most slippery.

“No!” Kris said, face flushing. “No. He’s notafraid. He’s just…”

Best not to say what he was, probably. Reese didn’t disapprove of him – Roman had been the one to get them out of Colorado, after all, the one to finally convince Kris to take the risk of running from Badger – but he thought his sister could do better. Would be safer and better cared-for with someone a little less…Roman. With someone like Mercy, but Mercy was married, and so Reese supposed they all had to settle for third-best.

Kris sighed. “Goodnight, Reese. Thank you for coming.”

She was always thanking him for coming; for letting her feed him.

He nodded, and left. Stowed his leftovers carefully in one of his bike’s saddlebags and pulled out of the apartment complex.

He passed Roman on the road, and received a little wave that he didn’t return. The slight gave him another bit of satisfaction, no less slippery.

It was a strange thing, to be out on the road after dark, and for the reason to have been innocent. Dinner at his sister’s house: a normal thing for so many – for all the people he passed on the sidewalks, and in their cars trundling through the heart of the city, behind the big, well-lit windows of restaurants. People went shopping, and they had dinner, and they went to movies, and they moved about in these benign, unimportant, but to them, deeply fulfilling circles of which he’d never been a part. Before the Lean Dogs, if he’d been out after dark on his bike, he was on his way to or from an op; covered in fresh grease paint, or cooling blood, most times, with hands that smelled of cordite.

The clubhouse gate at Dartmoor was open, lights burning in the windows. He parked his bike, and carried his glass square of now-cold pasta inside, stowed it in the fridge alongside packages of meat and a number of similar glass containers. Should he label his? So no one else ate it? He decided he didn’t really care – it didn’t matter what he put in his body so long as it gave him the necessary fuel – and it was more the act of Kris providing for him than the food itself that was important.

The lights were still on in the common room, but he didn’t find the crowd he’d expected. Usually Boomer and Deacon were playing pool, or watching something loud and incomprehensible on TV. They’d been watching lots of boxing matches lately, and Reese found them boring because both parties usually survived the ordeal.

It wasn’t late, and he could have picked up the remote and flicked through the channels until he found something worth watching; nature documentaries were his favorite. He liked gathering knowledge. But someone might come out to see what the noise was about, and then they’d want to talk, and, honestly, he’d used up his allotment of language on his sister tonight. The idea of small talk left his skin itching. So he headed for his dorm with a mind toward reading one of the books Mercy had lent him. He foundThe Iliadparticularly fascinating. Achilles was…

Reese halted half-across the threshold of his dorm room. Hisprivatedorm room, that he didn’t have to share with anyone. He felt a bit like he’d walked straight into a wall, caught totally off guard. His mind went blank, all thoughts of Kris, and normal routines, and reading abandoning him.

His private room was not empty.

Tenny stood slouched back against the dresser.

And a woman he’d never met before sat on the end of his bed, legs crossed, playing idly with a curling strand of her golden hair.

This is my room, he thought, a faint protest he was too shocked to voice.

Tenny chuckled. “Told you,” he said to the woman, and then she chuckled, too, a low, throaty sound that sent goosebumps shivering down the middle of Reese’s back.

He gave himself a mental shake and conducted a fast threat assessment. Tenny – while hated and, as Aidan would say, a douchebag – couldn’t really be considered a threat, not at this point. The woman – he did a basic visual scan, head to toe – wore a dress too tight to conceal any weapons. Her shoes were open-toed, high-heeled things, so no knives stuck down there. She could have slipped something small into her cleavage – which was, he noted, very deep and exaggerated. And there was something of malice in her smile as her red-painted lips parted.

His hand settled on the gun he wore at his hip, hidden beneath his jacket.

“Oh, bollocks,” Tenny swore, and shoved off the dresser, came to stand in front of him. “No, no, no, stand down, soldier.” Standing like this, he blocked the woman from view – had presented his back to her, so either he was being stupid and reckless again, like in Texas, or she truly wasn’t a threat.

To be honest, Reese had no idea why he’d even thought that, only that his skin was too tight, and dread was tickling at the back of his mind, and he could tell something was going to happen – something bad.

“Reese,” Tenny said, and his voice had changed. Less crisp, less commanding – more like a real person voice. Without all the usual mockery. He wasn’t even sneering, his expression strangely soft and open. “Shut the door, and I’ll explain.”

Reese hesitated long enough that Tenny sighed and stepped around him to shut it himself. The woman on the bed had leaned back, weight supported on one arm, one high-heeled foot idly swinging back and forth. She watched them like a predator.

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