Confused, he stared at the now-closed doors as the last of his employees left. Rachel took all business calls that came into LSI-WC, only sending to his professional voicemail those that only he could handle. Opening his encrypted computer, he logged into his voicemail. There was only one since the last time he’d listened, and he tapped the keyboard to begin playing it.
His body jolted, each muscle strung tight as he heard Jeannie’s voice begin. “Carson, please don’t hang up when you hear it’s me. I know you don’t want to talk to me, and quite frankly, I have no desire to talk to you either, but I need to let you know of something that happened today. Quite by accident, I discovered a bug in Maggie’s cane. I had no idea it was there, but that’s how information must have gotten out. I still contend that I did nothing wrong, but I thought it was important for you to know. There’s no need to call back… in fact, don’t. Goodbye.” Then, in a whispered voice, he heard, “Stay safe.”
“Goddammit!” he growled. “A fuckin’ bug in Maggie’s cane! Put there, no doubt, by Penny at Juan’s direction. Shit!”
He jumped to his feet, but uncertainty filled him. Tapping his keyboard again, he re-listened to the message. I have no desire to talk to you… I did nothing wrong… Don’t call back. He lifted his hand, dragging it through his hair, and squeezed the tension at the back of his neck. Christ, I fucked this up. As upset as Jeannie was with him, she’d still called. Maybe it was for vindication since she’d been right, but it was the last two words in her sweet, whispered voice that almost sounded like they’d slipped unbidden from her lips that kept rolling around in his head: Stay safe.
Pacing the floor, he tried to make sense of the tumultuous thoughts pressing in, but only one outlasted all others. She still cares, and so do I. Grabbing his keys, he secured the compound, bypassed his house, and climbed into his SUV. Blasting the air and the music, he hit the road.
Carson once again found himself in the middle of the night standing outside of Jeannie’s apartment. The last time he’d been here banging on her door, he was both glad that none of her neighbors called the police and alarmed that they hadn’t done so. With my luck, they probably will this time.
He knocked firmly several times but heard no movement from the inside. Just when he pondered how best to break in, he detected a slight shuffling from behind the door. Standing squarely in front of the peephole, he called out, “Jeannie, let me in.”
He heard the deadbolt click just before the door opened a few inches, the chain latch still connected. Even with only the narrow visibility afforded to him, his heart raced at the sight of her, a combination of adorably sleepy and surprised and a dose of irritation. Not giving her a chance to deny him entrance, he said, “Jeannie, please let me in.”
“I assume you’re here because you got my message. I told you everything I know, I don’t have anything else to add.”
Her words were spoken with a chill, and he would have much preferred them to be heated with emotion. “You might not have anything else to add, but I do,” he said, leaning forward with one arm propped on her door frame and his face close to the opening.
She snorted and shook her head. “Oh, no, Carson. I think you said quite enough the last time you were here. I have no desire for a repeat performance.”
Now it was his turn to shake his head, but he kept his gaze pinned on hers. “No repeat performance, I promise. But please let me in. I’ll do this standing in the hall if you want me to, but I’d rather my words just be between us.” Seeing her continue to hesitate, he added, “I just need to talk to you, Jeannie, and then I’ll go if you want me to. I promise.”
A heavy sigh left her lips, and her shoulders slumped. She closed the door, and he heard the chain unlatch just before it swung open. She stepped back a couple of feet, allowing him just enough room to enter, and closed the door behind him. She looked up as she crossed her arms around her middle and straightened her shoulders. “I’m tired, Carson. Really, truly, exhaustingly exhausted, and I don’t even know if those words make sense. But I’m warning you right now, I have no energy in me to spar with you, so just say what you came to say and then leave.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes closed in a slow blink then opened, her brow crinkling as she stared at him. He had a lot more to say but thought it was necessary to say the most important thing before she grew weary and booted him out the door.
“You’re sorry?” Her voice held incredulity, mixed with a heavy dose of uncertainty. “You’re sorry for what exactly?”
“For a lot of things. For being an ass. For being presumptuous. For not listening. Thinking I had all the answers. For not working things out together. Thinking I had to make a choice. For saying things that were hurtful.” As he spoke, the furrow in her brow deepened, but he wasn’t finished. “For not putting you first. For making assumptions. Making a decision about both of us and doing it myself. For hurting you. For hurting us—”
She unwrapped her arms from her middle and waved her hands in front of him. “Stop, stop. I get the picture. You’re sorry for completely, totally, unequivocally fucking things up even though you did all of those things because you said you were fucking up several days ago. So, which is it, Carson? Fucking up the first time or you’re sorry because you thought you fucked up when you really didn’t fuck up?”
He wanted to hold onto his expression of contrition but felt the corners of his mouth turn upward. As soon as her gaze dropped to his mouth and her eyes narrowed, he pressed his lips together tightly. They stared, neither speaking for a moment until she finally dropped her chin, shook her head, and chuckled. And for the first time in days, he felt as though he could breathe.
He stepped closer, his fingers twitching by his thighs to keep from reaching out and holding her. “I want to say the right thing, Jeannie, but you threw a lot of fuckin’ ups in your question and I got a little lost.”
She nodded slowly, then stepped back, adding to the distance between them. She turned and walked into the living room, calling over her shoulder, “I’m too tired to keep standing by the front door, and since it seems like you have a lot to apologize for, we might as well sit down.”
Thrilled she wasn’t kicking him out, he followed her, trying to hide his grimace when she sat in the chair, leaving the entire sofa to him. He’d rather they be closer, but at this moment, he’d take what he could get. Settling, he noticed she pulled her legs into the chair with her, her arms wrapped around her shins and her chin resting on her knees. She couldn’t be more tightly positioned if she’d stuck herself in a box. He hated that the last time he was here he caused her to feel so defensive. One more thing I need to fix.
She lifted a brow and sighed. “Okay, Carson. Let’s get this over with so you can go home and I can crawl back into bed.”
Lust shot through him at the idea of her crawling back into bed, preferably not alone. Tamping down those thoughts, he shifted slightly, leaned forward, and propped his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him. Even with the distance, he wanted to be as close to her as he could be. “I told you about the accident when we hit the IED. That’s the version everyone knows. Hell, that’s even the official version. But the actual truth was a little less clear-cut. I trusted my team completely, but we were working with another team that had a hotshot lieutenant that was doing his first tour on special ops. I had to rein him in several times, but finally, the day of the accident, he ignored some of the intel and had us on a road we shouldn’t have been on. The first truck hit an IED, and he panicked. By the time I took charge, another vehicle flipped into us, and I was trapped. If it hadn’t been for Mace and his team coming along, I probably would have died out there. I’d always been the kind of person who wanted to do things the right way. Carefully. Thought-out. Planned. And after that experience, I became even more so.”