Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(62)
His laugh was deep and warm. “You haven’t seen the camper. But okay. We leave in the morning?”
“Sure.” She raised up on her tiptoes, bringing her hands up and around his neck, and he pulled her close and kissed her.
oOo
It was dusk before Lilli got her work done and sent the re-encrypted document back through the labyrinthine security channels of the NSA. She’d spent—she checked the clock on her laptop—ten hours hunched over her work. She’d gone into her zone and never gotten up. Not to eat, not even to pee. Her shoulders felt like they’d been soldered to her neck.
She checked her phone to find that Isaac had called twice and texted once. No message—he almost never left a voice mail. The text read Stay here with me tonight, and he’d sent it about two hours ago. The last contact, the second call, had been about 15 minutes ago.
She hadn’t responded to his attempts to contact her—her phone was on vibrate, and she just hadn’t heard them. Isaac lived about 20 minutes from her house. Lilli went out onto the porch, and within a minute or two, he was riding up the gravel road that served as her driveway.
She walked down the deck steps and across the yard to meet him. He was off his bike fast, striding toward her. “Fuck, Sport—you okay?” He reached her and yanked her hard into his arms. “Shit, you had me worried.”
“I’m okay, love. I just had my head down with work.”
He sighed with evident relief. “You can’t do that, Lilli. Not with the shit goin’ down around here. I gotta know you’re okay.”
He hadn’t told her what the “shit” was going on with the club, and she hadn’t asked. If it was going to get in her way, they’d have to have a conversation, but for now, she said, “I can handle myself pretty well, Isaac.”
When he framed her face with his big, coarse hands, Lilli’s eyes fluttered shut at the thrill of it. “I know.
But I need you to keep in touch. I’m not used to giving this much of a shit about somebody, and it turns out I got a short drive to crazy. So check your phone, okay?”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
He bent down and kissed her. “D’you get my text? You want to stay at my house? We can get an early start.”
She’d only need her backpack for a weekend, so she could ride with him to his house. “Sure. Wanna help me pack?”
“I got silk and lace detail.” He swatted her ass, and they went into the house.
oOo
They stopped at the Chop House for dinner. It and No Place were the only places open for dinner, and Isaac didn’t want to get pulled into the scene at Tuck’s tonight. The Chop House was, by Signal Bend standards, more upscale, with dimmer lighting, a red and gold color scheme, and the kind of candles that came in red glass covered in white netting. The clientele was a town crowd, pretty much the same crowd Lilli had seen everywhere in the weeks she’d lived here.
People knew her now, and knew her as Isaac’s woman, and the suspicion with which they’d first met her had been replaced with a kind of artificial respect and affection. The suspicion had made Lilli feel more comfortable, ironically. It was honest. The near-fawning that happened now, especially from women, was just carry-over from Isaac. In fact, she had a sense that there was no small dollop of hostility from the women, and she suspected she knew why. If he’d been solo for as long as he said, then these women were all wondering what the hell made Lilli so special. She figured they were saying what they really thought in the church hall on Sundays, or over the fence while they hung up their washing.
That was a thing that happened in Signal Bend that Lilli found surprising in its preponderance. As if no one owned a clothes dryer, clothes and linens billowed on clotheslines every day throughout the town. The place was trapped in a weird kind of time warp. She’d asked Isaac about it, and he’d given her a lopsided smile and said, simply, “Sun’s free.”
Now they walked through the restaurant following Molly, the hostess, to the corner booth Isaac liked. It always took them time to get to their table, because everyone they passed at least said hello. Sometimes, they wanted a chat or had a problem to bring up to Isaac—whom almost all of them called Ike. He twitched every time, but let it slide. Lilli had learned that she was right about him—if there was power in this town, it was in Isaac. Even the mayor talked with Isaac before he brought anything to the town council. The Night Horde was both law and order here.
Molly got them to their table at last, and they sat. “You need menus?” They both declined. “Okay, I’ll have Beth over in a sec. You both want Buds?”
Isaac nodded, but Lilli said, “Maybe some red wine?”
Molly cast her a glance. “All’s we got is the stuff that comes in a box. You want that?”
Mostly she’d been curious to see what Molly would do, so Lilli smiled and shook her head. “No, thanks. Bud is fine.”
When Molly left, Isaac gave Lilli a nudge under the table. “Shit disturber.”
“What? I thought some wine would be nice with dinner.” That was true, but it was also true that she took most opportunities to test the limits of this town’s quirks.
“Never seen you drink wine, Sport. You just like sticking a wrench in the works.”
“I like wine sometimes. And it’s crazy that people around here expect everything to stay the same all the time. It’s like some kind of group neurosis. Hell, why even have menus? Or choices? They should do a prix fixe thing and be done with it.”