Winds of Change Read online

  If that turned out to be the actual scenario, then it didn’t seem so odd that the stranger with the gray-green eyes would also possess extraordinary talents. Were those talents genetic? Was that the connection?

  He thought that theory seemed very plausible. None of the test subjects had any known gifted siblings, but that was because they were all adopted, or, like Natalie Delacroix, were orphans who had been brought up in the foster care system.

  Which meant they all might have brothers and sisters out there in the world with their own unique talents.

  How many people might be involved in this?

  Randall Lenz had no idea, but he knew he had to find out.

  No matter what.

  It was beyond wonderful to wake up in his own bed and have Addie sleeping there next to him, her hair a fall of brown silk over his bare arm. She stirred almost as soon as Jake moved, her eyes widening for a second or two before she seemed to remember where she was.

  “Sleep well?” he asked, and she nodded.

  “Really well. It helped so much to have you here next to me.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Those were the only words they shared, but they both seemed to reach the same understanding, because in almost the same moment, their mouths met in a kiss much hungrier than the ones they’d shared the night before. Addie had needed that time to sleep, to heal, but it seemed obvious to Jake that now she knew she was home and safe, she needed to be with him in every way possible. Her fingers reached for the waistband of his underwear, and a moment later, she had taken him in her hand, was stroking him up and down.

  Damn. He’d been wanting her, of course, but for some reason, he hadn’t thought she would be quite so…forward. With low growl in his throat, he took hold of her nightshirt’s hem and drew the garment over her head, then followed up by pulling down her leggings and the panties beneath.

  His fingers dipped into her, and he could feel how ready she was for him.

  “Oh, God, Jake,” she moaned, and he continued to stroke her even as she slid her fingers up and down his shaft.

  Oh, God, was right. He knew if she kept up with that for much longer, he was going to come then and there. His hands wrapped around her waist, and he pulled her on top of him, let out a moan of his own as he sank into her. She began to move her hips, sliding up and down, and he thought then that nothing could be as amazing as being able to feel her surrounding him as she looked down into his face with those glowing agate-hued eyes of hers.

  The climax arrived faster than he would have liked, but to his relief, she came only a few seconds later, her head tipping back as she cried out in ecstasy, her hair brushing against the bare skin of his thighs. Afterward, she lay on top of him, breasts warm and welcome against his chest.

  “What was that charm again?” she murmured, and he smiled.

  “Blessed Brigid, now is not the time. Bestow your blessings elsewhere.”

  A nod, but then Addie pushed herself up slightly to gaze down into his face. Her skin was glowing, her eyes bright, but something in her expression seemed almost troubled. “It’s okay, isn’t it?” she asked. “To say the charm?”

  “Of course, it is,” he assured her.

  “Because I don’t want you to think that I don’t — that I don’t want — ”

  “It’s fine,” he said, knowing he needed to disabuse her of that notion right away. “I want a future with you, Addie. And I want everything a future like that might hold. But it’s like the charm itself says — ‘now is not the time.’ We have so much going on. I don’t expect anything more than just being with you right now.”

  She smiled at him, relief clear in her expression. A whisper of the charm’s words, and then she carefully eased herself off him so she could lie pressed up against his side. “I love you, Jake.”

  “I love you, Addie,” he said. “Never doubt that. And never doubt that this is all going to work out all right.”

  A second or two passed as she lay there in silence. For a woman who’d just been reunited with the man she loved, she looked very troubled. “I want to believe that,” she said. “But I can’t stop thinking about Randall Lenz out there somewhere. He’s like — he’s like the goddamn Terminator or something.”

  That comment made Jake chuckle, even though he thought he understood what she was trying to say. “He is kind of relentless, I’ll give him that. But he’s just a man. He’s not some unstoppable machine. And we just threw a big monkey wrench into his efforts, so I think he’ll be sidelined for a while.”

  “You really think so?”

  His arm tightened around her, pulling her close. There had been such a note of plaintive hope in her tone, a need to believe everything was going to be fine…even while she feared it definitely would not.

  “Well, if nothing else, he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do to his superiors,” Jake said. “He may be running the show at his project, but he’s a government employee, and that means he’s got plenty of people above him in the food chain.”

  Her full mouth curved slightly as she appeared to assess that statement. “I think I’d pay money to watch Randall Lenz try to explain how one of his test subjects vanished right in front of him.”

  While that might have been fun, Jake thought he was just fine with having several thousand miles separating them from Agent Lenz. With any luck, he’d stay out of their orbit indefinitely.

  He pushed a lock of glossy brown hair away from Addie’s brow and marveled at the silky feel of it under his fingertips. “I have a better idea. We’ve got the rest of the morning free — let me take you out for breakfast, and then we can come back and wait for everyone to arrive.”

  “I thought you weren’t big on breakfast,” she replied, her green-gray eyes glinting with amusement.

  “I’ll make an exception in this case. It’ll be a celebration of having you back.”

  Her expression sobered, and she nodded. “I think I’d like that. But we need to do something else first.”

  “What?” he asked, mystified. Maybe she needed him to make some coffee before they headed out— they’d been up pretty late the night before.

  The glint returned to her eyes. “How big is your shower?”

  Ah. His body warmed as he realized what she was asking. “Big enough,” he responded, then bent down to kiss her, taste her sweet mouth.

  “Let me show you.”

  14

  Jake took me to a little hole-in-the-wall place just a few doors down from the Blendz tasting room where we’d mixed our own custom wine. That night felt as though it had taken place a century earlier, in another lifetime, but I realized, as I counted out the days on my fingers, that it had only been two weeks ago. So much had happened, I barely could process all of it, but amongst all the insanity, I knew I was sure of one thing.

  I loved Jake Wilcox, and he loved me back. Everything else would get worked out in time.

  Or at least, that was what I tried to tell myself as I sat down at the shabby booth with its worn red vinyl seats and cracked Formica tabletop. I wanted to raise an eyebrow at Jake’s choice of our breakfast location, since he had only taken me to nice places so far, and, it being a Sunday, I assumed there were other venues where we could have gone and gotten a nice brunch.

  But the coffee was excellent, strong and rich, and once the food came, I realized that this was one case where you really couldn’t judge a book by its cover — my omelette was bursting with farm-fresh tomatoes and crisp bacon and pepper-jack cheese, and the hash browns that accompanied it were crisp and moist at the same time, perfectly golden.

  “How did you know about this place?” I asked.

  His brown eyes seemed to laugh at me from across the table. “This is my hometown, Addie. I know every restaurant here. Wilcoxes have been coming to the Downtown Diner for years — generations, probably, since it’s been here since the 1950s. It’s not fancy, but it’s great for breakfast…if you’re into that sort of thing.”

 
After our…energetic…morning, I was definitely into breakfast, even though generally, I was a grab-and-go kind of girl. But I thought there was something to be said about relaxing and eating a hearty meal at the beginning of the day, especially if the food was that good.

  “Well, let’s just say I may be changing my mind about breakfast,” I said.

  “Good thing the diner’s so close, then.”

  Which it was. The day had started out bright and sunny and showed no inclination to change from that model, so we’d walked the few blocks from Jake’s house, hand in hand, not talking, simply enjoying our closeness and the time spent together. In those precious moments, I realized once again how I’d never thought it could be so easy to be with someone, to talk when we wanted to talk, to be silent when no words were necessary, breathing in the other person and letting them surround you and fill you.

  I had that with Jake, and I knew I wasn’t going to let anyone take it away.

  “We’ll have to come back soon,” I said. “I liked walking over here.”

  “Might as well enjoy it while we can,” he said. “The walking’s not so easy in the winter.”

  No, I supposed it probably wasn’t. Right then, the snows of December and January felt as though they were years away, thanks to the beautiful weather I’d been able to enjoy since I’d come to Flagstaff. But walking in the winter could be fun as well, although I supposed if the sidewalks got icy enough, it would be safer to drive.

  Was it crazy to be thinking of a future six months away when I knew that Randall Lenz was still out there, most likely plotting how he could track me down? Maybe, but I understood that I needed to believe in a shared future with Jake Wilcox. Otherwise, everything else I’d gone through so far would be too difficult to bear.

  “That’s a long ways off,” I said. “There’ll be plenty of beautiful days between now and then.”

  His eyes caught mine and held. “Yes,” he said, “I know there will.”

  We didn’t say much after that, content to eat our breakfasts and bask in the miracle of one another’s company. After we paid the bill and walked back to the house, I helped Jake tidy up a bit and then made a big batch of iced tea in preparation for the meeting with Connor and Angela and everyone else. He got some wooden folding chairs from the basement and mixed them in with his regular furniture, since his dining room table didn’t have enough regular chairs to accommodate everyone we were expecting.

  Still, we had everything ready a good twenty minutes before eleven, and so we headed out to the backyard to sit in the sun for a bit before the crowd started to arrive. It was the first time I’d really had the opportunity to relax there and look around, and I liked everything I saw. Nothing fussy, just a large flagstone patio and a green lawn that maybe needed a bit of mowing, surrounded by beds of old-fashioned flowers — pansies and snapdragons and hollyhocks. Their cheerful blooms made me feel a bit better about the world. In surroundings like those, it was hard to imagine that someone like Randall Lenz even existed.

  “Feeling better?” Jake asked, and I nodded.

  “Much,” I said. “How did you know I needed this?”

  He was silent for a few seconds, and then he smiled. “Because I did.”

  We were sitting at a patio table, glasses of water in front of us since we were saving the iced tea for when everyone arrived. I reached over and touched his hand, which rested on the tabletop next to his glass, and his fingers clasped themselves around mine.

  “What was it like?” he asked, and I found myself tensing. I really didn’t want to think about those few days I’d spent at the SED facility, even though I’d been able to escape relatively unscathed.

  “Maybe I should wait to talk about that until everyone’s here.”

  Jake didn’t seem upset by my unwillingness to talk. Instead, he nodded, then asked, “So…what do we do now?”

  I guessed that he didn’t mean the collective “we.” Whatever Connor and Angela and everyone else decided was the best thing to do about Randall Lenz, I’d probably go along with their plans, if only because I’d tried to go my own way already and it hadn’t worked out so well. Wanting to be independent was one thing; walking into danger a second time just because I refused to follow the advice of those who were older and more experienced than I was a recipe for disaster.

  No, I understood that Jake needed to figure out where we stood, if only because we needed to present a unified front before we sat down with our clan’s primus. It felt odd to think of the situation in those terms, and yet I realized that I needed to start looking at it that way. I needed to accept myself as a Wilcox, as the half-sister of the man who was running things. True, most of the Wilcoxes had absolutely no idea who I was, just because Connor had held off on making any announcements about our relationship until the situation was more stable, but that didn’t change the truth at the heart of the matter. I was a Wilcox, and therefore whatever I did would affect the clan as a whole. It was an odd feeling, when I’d spent most of my life completely disconnected from any family other than my mother. At the same time, though, I welcomed knowing I was part of the Wilcox clan. It meant I had someplace I belonged.

  “Well, we can’t go back to Riverton,” I said. I figured I might as well lay it out on the table so Jake would know I’d abandoned that particular pipe dream.

  “Probably not,” he agreed, and left it there, as if he knew I was the one who had to feel her way through this particular maze.

  Part of me wanted to sigh, but I told myself it was silly to feel much of a sense of loss over a place I’d only lived for a few days. No, it was more what Riverton represented — a place to get away from who I was, the path that I’d found myself on.

  But since I’d already learned that running away didn’t solve a damn thing, I put the fantasy aside. Anyway, as cute as Riverton was, it didn’t compare to Flagstaff. My days spent in the Wilcox clan’s hometown had told me it was the only place I wanted to be.

  Then again, possibly that had a lot to do with the man who currently sat next to me, watching me with quiet dark eyes as I sifted through everything that needed to be done.

  “So, I need to get in contact with Tracy and tell her I’m moving out,” I said. “At least I didn’t sign a lease, and she’s paid through the end of the month, so I’m not leaving her totally hanging.”

  “She’ll understand,” Jake said, but in that one thing, I didn’t know whether he was right. After all, it wasn’t as if I could tell her any of the truth behind my sudden departure. I’d seem like a flaky girl who’d thought she could start over in Riverton and then had decided it wasn’t for her after all.

  “And I need to call Leona at the casino and tell her I’m quitting.”

  Jake shook his head. “She already knows what’s going on, Addie,” he told me. “Or at least, I think Carson has told her as much as is safe. She knows there are extenuating circumstances and that it’s not like you walked off the job without telling anyone because you didn’t care.”

  Well, that was something. I knew in the grand scheme of things, it probably wasn’t a big deal — people took off from minimum-wage jobs like that all the time without giving notice — but my mother hadn’t raised me to act like that, and I didn’t want Leona to think I was a total flake.

  “Okay,” I said, and left it at that. “So…I’m back in Flagstaff for good. No matter what happens.”

  “Here with me.”

  He spoke the words without any of the rising inflection of a question, and yet I knew he was asking all the same. We’d made love twice that morning, first in bed, hard and fast, and then later in the shower, reacquainting ourselves with one another’s bodies, and yet we hadn’t made any promises to each other, except the promise implicit in our murmured words of love.

  “Yes, Jake,” I said. “Here with you. If that’s all right.”

  “‘If that’s all right’?” he repeated, surprise clear in the words. “God, Addie, that’s all I want. I know it hasn’t been easy, but
I keep pushing on, telling myself that there’s a future for us here if we do our best to see it through.” He paused there, dark eyes scanning my face. “Unless…unless it would be strange for you to live in a house Sarah and I bought together. We’d only shared the place for a few months before — well, before it happened — but I can understand why you might not be comfortable here.”

  The last thing I wanted was to make Jake leave his home. And all right, maybe at first glance, it would seem strange for me to be okay with living there, but I loved the house, already felt safe there in a way I hadn’t in a very long time…if ever. It was okay that he’d bought the place with the woman he thought he was going to marry. I’d rather live in a house that had been bought with love, with the expectation of shared hopes and dreams coming true there, than one where the previous occupants had fought all the time and left their own negative energy behind.

  “I want to be here with you, Jake,” I said. “Yes, in this house. We can make our own future here. Not to erase the past, but — ”

  “But to look forward to something new,” he finished for me, the worry in his eyes fading as if it had never been there at all.

  We leaned in, mouth brushing against mouth. However, we didn’t have the opportunity to deepen the kiss, because from somewhere inside the house, a doorbell rang. The sound made us both startle and pull apart like a couple of kids sharing an illicit embrace at a high school party rather than a pair of adults who could do anything they liked.

  “Sounds like the troops are arriving,” Jake said, and I nodded.

  “Go ahead and get the door — I’ll bring the glasses into the kitchen.”

  He kissed me again, just a quick brush of his lips against my cheek. Then he was moving quickly inside, while I scooped up our water glasses and followed at a more sedate pace. A quick pause to deposit the glasses on the kitchen counter, and then I went on to the entryway, where Jake was exchanging greetings with Connor and Angela.