Code Name: Aries by Janie Crouch

10

Wavy

I’d grown used to the fact that Oak Creek was always going to have more trouble than a normal town its size. The Linear Tactical guys, given their line of work and their pasts, were always going to be trouble magnets.

So when we’d gotten the call a week ago that there was an emergency, all-hands meeting—everyone needed—I’d gone also.

I might not have any special fighting or tactical skills, but these people were my family, and if they needed me, for whatever way I might be able to help, I was going to be there.

Ian, on the other hand, had all the useful skills. The type of person you definitely wanted around in an emergency situation. He’d been impressive—not a term I used lightly when talking about a group the caliber of my brother and the rest of the Linear guys.

Ian had stood out. He was definitely a leader. He’d made decisions quickly, not second-guessing himself. When it had been time for them to go after that Varela guy, he’d immediately jumped in and led the charge.

Impressive.

I hadn’t seen or heard from him again in the week since. He’d helped save the day, then . . . left.

I shouldn’t be surprised. And I definitely shouldn’t be hurt. The man had stated repeatedly that his reason for being here in Wyoming—hell, his reason for existence—was to stop Mosaic. Varela was a key piece of that.

But after that blistering kiss in my studio, I’d thought I’d at least hear something from him. He’d said he wanted to take me out on a date.

He had more important things to do. Damn it, I knew that. I didn’t need to be coddled. The man had important stuff on his mind, but still, it stung.

I’d spent a lot of the past week painting. It had been all colors—none of my traditional landscapes at all. The rainbow paintings. Damn Ian for giving them that title I couldn’t get out of my mind. They were never going to make me a living, but now I couldn’t stop doing them.

Leeann had asked me to trade shifts with her. I’d worked the lunch shift today and was about to get off as she came in for the dinner shift. I needed to get back into Reddington City for more art supplies. Maybe I could make it before they closed.

I’d been painting so much, I’d used up all my canvases. All I had left were the tiny pieces of canvas I’d cut up when I’d given Ian the baby rainbow painting with the pie.

I could make more of them, but who would I give them to? In my mind, they were only for Ian.

Ian DeRose. The man I couldn’t get out of my mind.

Ian DeRose. The man who probably hadn’t thought twice about me since he’d left town.

Ian DeRose. The man who . . . just walked into the Frontier Diner?

I stopped, tray in hand, staring at him. He was tired, exhausted, more than the last time I’d seen him. His jaw was hard, dark hair on edge as if he’d run his fingers through it repeatedly.

I set my tray down and walked over to where he stood in the doorway. He looked so much less sure of himself than he’d been a week ago when directing an assault on a group of terrorists.

I nodded toward the door, and he walked back out. I didn’t want to talk to him where our conversation would be monitored, then passed along to every single person in town. I pulled off my apron, stuffed it in the employee cubby, and said goodbye to Leeann.

I walked outside and found him leaning against the hood of his rental SUV, long legs stretched out in front of him, strong arms crossed over his chest.

God, I wanted to paint him again, just like this. My rainbows had been calling me all week, but right now, I wanted to do something realistic. Him.

He saw me and pushed off from the car. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself. You look tired.” Probably not the best thing to lead with, but I was concerned about him.

Whatever reason he hadn’t gotten in touch with me for the past week, it wasn’t because he’d been blowing me off. It had taken a toll on him.

I wanted him to know I was concerned about him. He worried about everybody else. Maybe he needed somebody who worried about him.

He ran his fingers through his hair again—definitely not to style it. “It’s been a long week. That doesn’t excuse what—”

I held out a hand to cut him off. “You had things you needed to handle. I don’t need to be coddled.”

“I know you don’t need to be coddled.” Now he scrubbed the hand down his face. “But maybe I want to coddle you a little bit.”

Wait, had he said coddle or cuddle? “Oh.”

“We had to get Varela back into Mosaic. He’s reporting undercover to me. The longer he was unaccounted for, the more suspicious it was. So time was of the essence.”

“Is he getting you the info you were hoping for?” I asked.

Ian nodded. “So far, he’s doing okay. It’s not an easy situation to be undercover with people who are going to kill you if they find out. But his other choice was to spend the rest of his life in prison. So, yeah, so far, it’s going fairly well.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” There was an awkward pause between us, and I shifted my weight back and forth on my feet. “I didn’t think you’d be back.”

“Honestly, I didn’t either.”

Wow. That stung more than it should.

I swallowed my hurt. “Well, I’m glad that Varela is working out for you. Are you here to talk to the Linear guys?”

“No.” He took a step closer. “I’m here to talk to you, Wavy. I’m hoping I can appeal to your kind nature and talk you into going out with me.”

I shook my head. “You don’t owe me anything. Not even a date. I don’t want to be something you have to fit into an already full schedule. It doesn’t matter that your schedule is full for important reasons.”

He took a step closer. “I won’t lie. My schedule is always full. But I don’t care. I’m not good with words, but I’m here because, once again, I tried to stay away from you but couldn’t. I’m here because if you’re going to consume my thoughts every fucking day, then I want to at least be in your presence. Feel your light, your smile. Your rainbow.”

“Wow.” I couldn’t stop staring at those brown eyes. “You’re better with words than you think you are.”

He stepped closer again. “I want to take you out on that date if you’ll let me.”

I’d never been the type of person to hold a grudge or refuse myself what I wanted in order to prove some kind of point. And I wanted Ian. He might be conflicted, but he wasn’t playing games.

I offered my biggest smile. “Sure, we can go out. When were you thinking?”

“Honestly, as obnoxious as this sounds, I was hoping we could do it right now.”

I couldn’t help it, I patted my hair. I knew what I looked like after a full shift at the diner. “You mean for dinner?”

“Yes. If you’ll allow me, I have somewhere special I’d like to take you. No strings attached, nothing expected of you.”

“Do I have time to go home to shower and change?” Shit, that meant driving all the way out to Mom’s house.

“If you want to, absolutely. But you’re fine in exactly what you’re wearing.”

What I was wearing was jeans and a button-down pink shirt. Not very exciting. At least he wasn’t planning on taking me anywhere fancy. Which was fine with me. Fancy wasn’t my style.

He lifted my wrist, so he could study it. “You’ve been painting.”

“Yeah. A lot.” I didn’t need to go into any further explanation than that.

“If you want to go take a shower and do whatever, that’s fine, but honestly, I’d rather have every second I can with you.”

I broke out into another smile. “Okay, at least let me change my shirt and shoes.” I didn’t want to go out on a date in my black working sneakers, although I had thrown away my cute flats after all the blisters. But I had some sandals in my studio as well as a lightweight sweater that at least accentuated what few curves I had. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be back here.”

Now he smiled. “Deal.”

* * *

I hurried. Like him, there was nothing more I wanted to do than spend the limited hours we had together.

I changed my shirt and my shoes—hopefully, I wasn’t going to be running miles through the wilderness again, because these sandals were definitely worse than the flats. I freshened up my makeup but left my hair as it was, since my messy bun was still on the cute side, rather than the crazy.

He was waiting for me, just like he’d said he’d be once I got back.

“You look great. But you always do.”

“Even running through the wilderness with killers on our heels?”

He opened the passenger door for me. “Especially then.”

I wanted to ask where we were going, but forced myself not to. When he drove out of town, I thought maybe he was taking us to Reddington City. He was in jeans, too, with a button-down blue shirt that should have seemed mundane but brought out the olive tones in his skin. My fingers itched for my paint brushes again.

When we stopped east of town at the regional airport, I stared out at the sole airplane waiting on the runway. Not an airplane, a jet. His jet.

I looked over at him, one eyebrow raised. “Is this for us?”

He returned my stare. “Is that okay?”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere special.” He lifted my hand to his lips. “I think you’ll like it. If not, we’ll go somewhere else.”

“Lead the way.”

I’d been on commercial planes before, but never a private jet. The pilot informed Ian that they were ready to take off whenever he was and that the flight plan had been cleared. There was one male flight attendant who also served as a co-pilot.

“This is yours?” I asked him as we took off into the late afternoon sky. The flight attendant served us drinks then went into the cockpit.

“Technically, it’s Zodiac Tactical’s, but since I own Zodiac Tactical, yes, it’s mine.”

“How did you get into the security business?” I liked that we were sitting across from each other and I could look into his face.

He shrugged. “Probably not unlike how Finn and Zac started Linear. Private security seemed like a natural extension of the work I did in the Navy SEALs.”

“Zodiac is already established enough that you have a jet at your disposal?”

He leaned back against the headrest with an air of familiarity. He’d done that hundreds of times before, maybe tended to sit in that same seat when he was on this plane. “Technically, I owned the jet before I had the company.”

“So you made your fortune and then decided to start a security company?”

He smiled. It always caught me a little by surprise. “Yes, technically. I made my money the old-fashioned way: I inherited it when my father, whom I hadn’t talked to in more than ten years, died.”

“Isn’t that how everyone makes their fortune?”

He turned and looked out the small window without saying anything else. There was a lot more to his story, and I wanted to hear it, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to tell it right now.

“So, you started Zodiac to have something to do? Because you obviously didn’t need to do it for the money.”

He shrugged. “I started it because there were things—jobs, missions—that needed to be done, and I knew how to do them. Or knew who to get to do them. My inner team is the best in the world when it comes to defense and security. No offense intended to your brother or any of the Linear guys.”

I laughed. “Oh, I’m sure it would be a challenge to the death if they heard you say that, but they are all officially retired. Although, you wouldn’t know it sometimes from the amount of trouble they get into.”

Ian nodded. “I know they’re good. I would hire every single one of them if they wanted a job. I have actually tried to recruit them multiple times. You know that Gavin Zimmerman’s brothers work for me.”

Gavin was one of the core members of Linear Tactical. I’d known him for years. “Yeah, Tristan and Andrew. I know them, not well, but they are a pain in my ass every once in a while, like Gavin.”

“That’s the joy of small-town life, right?”

I nodded, taking a sip of my drink. “Yep. How about you? Where were you born?”

“I grew up in Baltimore.”

Again, he fell back into silence. I tried to get him to talk more about his life, about anything, but he turned the conversation around to my art. I didn’t know why he was interested, but I answered questions as best I could.

He asked me what I’d painted this week, to describe the colors and the strokes, like he was envisioning them in his head.

Nobody had ever done that before—been so interested in my art that they’d keep pressing for more details.

He kept me talking until we landed an hour later. I looked out the window, but I still couldn’t tell exactly where we were. We were once again at a smaller airport, not one in a big city.

We got out, and I thought we would be heading for a car, but instead we got into a helicopter. He slipped a headset over my head so we could talk.

“Wow.” I couldn’t keep the wonder out of my voice, so I didn’t try. “Your dates are pretty impressive.”

“This isn’t the date.” He shot me another smile. “But we’re almost to the date.”

I grabbed his hand as we lifted into the air, staring out the window. All I wanted to do was take in the city below me.

“That’s Denver, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.”

Of all the places I’d thought we might be going, this definitely wasn’t it. “What’s in Denver?”

“My home.”