Free Nightfire by Lisa Marie Rice Page B

impatient, just happy. Mike wasn’t radiating impatience, either. He looked like he could run a four-minute mile. Every line of his body spoke of power. Walking at her pace must have been excruciating, but you wouldn’t know it. He matched her slow pace, step by step.
    In the elevator, Mike dropped his hand and Chloe nearly jerked with consternation. It was as if an electric current running through her had been switched off. She missed it so much it shocked her.
    “I wonder if we can convince Manuela to make her blue corn tamales?” Harry asked, with a sidelong glance at Nicole.
    “Maybe,” she smiled. “Or maybe not. Manuela has her favorites, she has like this little celebration menu going and I wouldn’t want to mess with that.” She turned to Chloe. “It’ll be interesting to see what Manuela’s menu is for celebrating the arrival of a long-lost sister.”
    “O Happy Day, O Happy Day!” Ellen sang, voice clear and beautiful in the enclosed elevator, like someone ringing a perfect bell.
    “O Happy Day,” Sam rejoined in a massively out-of-tune bass.
    “Yesss!” Harry pumped his fist, kissed his wife’s cheek, then Chloe’s. “Women’s clothing, lingerie, hats, cosmetics and . . . sisters !” Harry mimed an old-fashioned elevator operator calling out the items on a floor.
    Everybody was giddy, Chloe included, by the time the elevator made it down to the subbasement level.
    “See you at the homestead,” Ellen called out as Sam and Nicole peeled away toward their vehicle. “We’ll swing by the Del, get Chloe checked out, and then we’ll come up.”
    Nicole’s shiny black hair belled out from her face as she looked back at them, Chloe holding her group back, as usual. “Okay, guys, champagne starts popping in an hour. If you’re not there we’ll just have to drink it ourselves.”
    “We’ll be there,” Ellen called out. “Make sure it’s French! The real deal! None of that wimpy California stuff!”
    Nicole didn’t turn around, just held up her hand and waggled her fingers. Her husband held the door open for her, helped her in, then rounded his vehicle and took off before Chloe’s group was even halfway across the garage.
    How humiliating. Harry and Ellen and Mike were keeping pace with her, crossing the vast expanse of the garage floor like a party of snails. Chloe tried to keep her voice steady as she smiled weakly.
    “I’m, uh, I’m sorry I walk so slowly. Go right on ahead.” She looked up at Mike. “You, too. I’ll get there.”
    He shook his head, turned to look her straight in the eyes. In the dim light of the garage his blue eyes glowed like twin rondels of sky. His face was drawn, tight, serious. “Chloe.” He picked up her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm, watching her face carefully, as if to make sure she understood what he was saying. “Right now there isn’t any place I’d rather be than right here with you.”
    Chloe blinked.
    Oh. Wow.

Chapter 6
     
    C hloe was embarrassed that she couldn’t walk fast. Mike’s heart painfully turned over in his chest at that.
    Chloe had survived something few people would have. She’d been brutalized as a little girl, had spent nearly a decade in a hospital, been operated on fourteen fucking times, was alive by a miracle and . . . she was embarrassed ?
    Harry had killed the motherfucker who’d whipped Chloe against a wall as if she’d been a rag doll, otherwise Mike would definitely go look the guy up himself. Have a word or two with him.
    See how he liked pushing around an ex-Force Recon Marine, ex-SWAT. See whether the fuckhead might find it a little harder to smash a 220-pound man who was an expert in close-quarter combat against the wall than a 40-pound little girl.
    Yeah, Mike would look forward to that.
    The underground garage of the Morrison Building was huge. Harry’s allotted parking slot was way the hell over on the other side of the building.
    Harry and Ellen were halfway there, Harry checking