Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(102)

Are you kidding? I’m just a clueless gearhead, he wanted to yelp, but the part he’d been relentlessly training swallowed hard and nodded.

“I’ve put in some hours with Sean and Davy at the gun range. Let me just finish this.” Miles leaned over the keyboard and typed,

gotta go. Check back in 2 hrs?

Ur a tease, Mindmeld666 typed. Will check back. Bye4now.

He followed Con downstairs, and took the gun.

“Heads up,” Con said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Miles paced the foyer. His brain buzzed like a hive of bees. He couldn’t sit still. The house was dim, just the orange glow of streetlamps from the window. The gun felt heavy and strange and alien in his hand.

“Oh. There you are.” The soft voice made his heart jolt and skip in his chest. “I was just looking for you.”

He turned. Cindy’s body resolved out of the infinite shades of gray in the kitchen entrance. Just as he’d thought. A tight string tank. Not a thong, but those low-slung form fitted shorts were just about as bad.

“You should be sleeping,” he said.

“Can’t.” Her voice was fretful. “I’m wound up from the gig. We were hot tonight. Too bad you weren’t there. Holy cow, Miles. What the hell are you doing with a gun?”

“Guard duty,” he replied. “Connor’s gone off to check on your mom’s place. Somebody tripped the alarm.”

She tossed her head back, making her hair do that seductive swirl thing. “Someone has to protect us against the fanged monsters, right?”

He refused to let himself be needled. “The monsters are real, Cin.”

“You’re as bad as they are.” She sauntered close enough so he could smell her honey-vanilla scent. The details of her body came into focus in the dimness. He gulped, and looked out the window.

“Can I hold that gun for a sec?” Her voice was teasing.

“No,” he said.

She folded her arms over her belly and slouched against the wall. “Are you afraid I’ll sexually assault you, or something?”

“Connor asked me to guard this house until he got back,” he said tersely. “I’m goddamn well going to do it. So don’t bug me.”

Cindy slid down the wall until she sat on the floor, hugging her knees tightly to her chest. “Are you ever going to stop hating me, Miles?”

He let out a long, careful breath, trying to choose amongst the hundred thousand completely contradictory replies he could give to that statement. “I don’t hate you, Cin. I just hate the way you made me feel. I hated being your personal slave while all your dickhead boyfriends treated you like shit. I really, really hated that.”

“I’m not with any dickhead boyfriend right now,” she protested.

He shrugged. “It’s just a matter of time. I’ve got better things to do than run errands for you while you track your next dickhead down.”

She covered her face with her hands. “Nobody forced you to do all that stuff for me.” Her voice was small. “You could have just said no.”

“That’s true. That’s what I finally did, Cin. I just said no.”

She sniffled. “You hate my guts because of this morning, right?”

Oh, yeah. Right. He almost exploded in hysterical laughter. “No, Cin. I told you. I don’t hate you. I wish you well. All the best. Really.”

She chewed on that. “Wish me well,” she repeated. “I wish Great-Aunt Martha well. I wish all the poor children in the world well. I wish the humpbacked whales and the bald eagles and the panda bears well.”

He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing against whales or eagles or pandas, or Great-Aunt Martha. And I’ve got nothing against you.”

She covered her face with her hands. He was appalled to hear soggy sniffling sounds again. He clenched his teeth. “What do you want to hear? That I love you? I’m not going to say that. I had a crush on you, but I’m over it. I’m not letting you wipe your feet on me anymore.”

“I wouldn’t,” she whispered. “Ever again.”

“Wouldn’t what?” His voice hardened.

“Wipe my feet on you.” She brushed tears out of her eyes, sniffing hard. “I’m sorry if I ever did. I never meant to.”

The soft invitation in her trembling voice tore him to pieces. He wanted it so badly. His fantasy of Cindy, just how he wanted her to be. Grown up, chilled out, feet on the ground. And wanting him.

Fantasy, though. The key word here was fantasy.

He stood there, throat frozen with fear and pain, until the question in the silence between them became a flat, implacable answer.

Cindy let out a shaky sigh and got gracefully to her feet, padding through the kitchen. She stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Miles?”

He braced himself. “Yeah?”

“I wish you well, too,” she said. “I really, really do.”

She had a tone in her voice he had never heard before. She wasn’t trying to sock in a zinger, or impress him, or shock him. She wasn’t trying to jerk the world around until it was the way she wanted it.

Her voice was sad and flat. Facing reality. Dealing with it.

It almost made him change his mind. Having Cindy be real and straight with him was all he had ever wanted from the universe.