Nick padded through the dark kitchen to the fridge, pulled out the large jug of milk and moved over to where he knew Mrs B. kept the biscuits. He smiled as he opened the jar and grabbed the oat and raisin one that she knew were his favourite. He was a spoilt son of a bitch. As he was filling his glass and loading up his plate with his spoils, he noticed the door to the boot room was ajar. As silently as he could, obviously nowhere near Goodie’s level but he thought he was doing pretty well, he walked over to the door and pushed it open. He blinked down at the blanket laid out next to Salem, who was curled up in the centre of the tiled floor with Xavier. No Goodie. Maybe she’d decided to listen to him. He backed up a step preparing to leave, then felt cold steel on his neck and froze.
‘Don’t ever try to sneak up on me again,’ she whispered in his ear and he let out a slow breath as the knife pressed in for a moment before falling away.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he swore, spinning on his heel to see Goodie crouched on top of the utility sideboard, her arms resting on her bent legs and her hands, including the one holding the knife, hanging between them. She was almost unrecognizable from earlier in the evening, now wearing dark skin-tight trousers with a black hoody. He glanced at her short hair and saw that it was mussed on one side; the only sign that she had been asleep. For some reason that uncharacteristic sign of humanity made his chest feel tight and he had the inexplicable, given that she had just been holding a knife to his throat, urge to hug her. ‘You’re a bloody lunatic.’ He gestured towards her, causing some of his milk to spill onto his hand and a biscuit to fall to the floor. ‘Shit.’
Goodie was staring at the milk before her eyes dropped to the biscuit. Nick could just about make out the corners of her mouth turning up very slightly, her cold expression banished briefly as her eyes danced. She slid forward and off the counter, bending down to stroke a now awake Salem’s head (the pug was still snoring at his side), tuck the knife into an ankle strap under her trousers, and finally retrieve the lone biscuit. As she straightened to standing, she held the biscuit out to him, placing it on top of the stack on his plate.
‘You’re eating? Now?’ she asked, her eyes still focused on the plate and her almost imperceptible smile still in place. Nick shrugged.
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
‘So you … eat?’
‘Ugh, it’s comfort food … stuff I used to have as a child. Didn’t your mum ever give you milk and biscuits when you couldn’t sleep?’
Goodie’s gaze shot from the plate to his, and her amused expression blanked back to her natural cold one. ‘No.’
Nick waited a beat, hoping that maybe she would give something away, but when he saw a muscle tic in her jaw he knew it was futile. ‘Well, you’ve been missing out. Come on.’ He backed out through the door, the memory of cold steel on his neck making him reluctant to turn his back on her. When she didn’t follow he stopped and waited at the doorway to the kitchen. ‘I’m not leaving until I’ve seen you eat some milk and biscuits.’
‘I am not a milk and biscuits type of woman.’
‘You are tonight.’ They went into stare-down, and to Nick’s surprise, after a robust shove from Salem into the backs of her legs in the direction of the biscuits, she sighed and gave in. Nick smiled, backing further into the kitchen so he could put his glass and plate down on the table and pull out a chair for Goodie. She looked from him to the chair, gave a slight headshake and let her eyes close for a second whilst running one hand over the mussed side of her hair. She must be tired, thought Nick, her movements are somehow more … human. As she went to sit in the chair he pushed back to retrieve the milk, another glass and the biscuit tin, setting them on the table in front of Goodie before delving into the tin and throwing one of them to a waiting Salem. He sat down opposite Goodie, took a bite of his own biscuit, and waited. Goodie rolled her eyes, another rare sign of humanity, then extracted a biscuit from the jar and bit into it.
‘There,’ she said after swallowing her first bite, ‘happy now? May I sleep?’
‘You can do whatever you like, Goodie,’ Nick said softly, noticing that now she’d started the biscuit, she was devouring it at a fairly rapid rate. She took a sip of milk and threw Salem another one. ‘Okay, you and your mother may be onto something,’ she conceded, as she was halfway through her second. Nick sat back in his chair and smiled at her, watching in fascination as one side of her mouth actually curled all the way up for a moment. It might have been a half smile, and it might have only been for a second, but it was something.
‘You told me you weren’t going to sleep in the boot room again, Goodie. The alarm is up and running now.’
Goodie shrugged. ‘I lied,’ she said simply.
‘I realize that,’ he huffed. ‘What I want to know is why; when I expressly asked you not to and when there is no bloody need.’
‘It is still the weakest point of the house. It’s where I would choose to come in if my target was inside. Alarm system or not.’
‘Is that something you’ve done often then?’ he asked. Goodie stared at him and lowered her half-eaten biscuit back onto her plate.
‘I think I’ve had enough,’ she said. Nick didn’t know if she was talking about the biscuits or the questions, but the return of her cold expression had him gritting his teeth. She pushed back her chair and gestured for Salem to follow; he sent the biscuit tin a longing look before reluctantly traipsing after her.
Nick watched the boot-room door close and ran through his options: he could attempt to throw Goodie over his shoulder and carry her to the guest room – this option had a few drawbacks, not least that he would likely end up in intensive care; he could shut off the downstairs heating, but somehow he wasn’t convinced that the less-than-freezing spring temperatures would have much effect on Goodie. So what was he left with? Making his decision, he pushed away from the table.
*****
Goodie allowed herself to smile as she curled around Salem under the blanket and buried her face in his thick fur. A thirty-seven-year-old man sneaking down to the kitchen for milk and biscuits in the middle of the night was one of the funniest things she had ever seen. He hadn’t even been embarrassed to be caught; but then again his absolute and total confidence seemed to override embarrassment in most situations: he shrugged off Clive’s obnoxious taunting about his protection being provided by a woman; tonight he might have been dragged to the dance floor by his sister but once there he had danced like a maniac (at one point Goodie’d lost him in the crowd and was about to radio Sam when she realized that the reason he wasn’t in her line of sight was because he’d dropped down to the floor to perform some sort of break-dancing move for Arabella. The fact that he could not actually break-dance did not seem to hamper his enthusiasm and he’d ended up doing some sort of bizarre forward roll, much to Arabella’s delight judging by her unbridled laughter); he interacted with people seamlessly, talked easily, smiled readily; he was … charming. Yes, that was by far the best word to describe him: charming. And … and he was kind. He gravitated to the people on the outskirts of the party, pulling them into conversations, making them feel at ease, listening earnestly to whatever they had to say. It was clear he was protective of Bertie and that he was growing tired of Clive’s continued subtle digs at him; she noticed that he’d started stepping in whenever Clive tried to give Bertie a backhanded compliment – more often than not turning things around to help Bertie come across as the eccentric but hilarious man he was, and not the fool Clive for some reason wanted to make him out to be.
Yes … he was kind. Goodie swallowed, her throat for some reason closing over. What was the matter with her? A plate of biscuits, a glass of milk and someone giving a shit that she slept on the floor and she was turning into some kind of pussy. She needed to pull herself together. Her eyes flew open as she heard footsteps on the stairs in the main house. She lifted her head from Salem to listen; the tread was unmistakable. Clenching her teeth, she sat up against the cold wall and waited. After a minute or so (his progress through the corridor and kitchen was surprisingly slow and peppered with low expletives and at least one chair falling to the ground), he pushed open the boot-room door.
All she could see at first was a massive duvet suspended in midair before a large hand reached up to pull the top down and Nick’s smiling face appeared above it, complete with that fucking dimple. Goodie was rarely affected by men and the way they looked; she could usually manage to view them in a rather abstract way. She could tell if a man was attractive, she could sense that appeal; it just never affected her the same as it would other women. But with Nick … she couldn’t put her finger on it but over the last two months those smiles, those brown eyes often shining with humour, his strong jaw and that fucking dimple were working their way under her skin. They made her feel … odd. They made her stomach hollow out and her chest feel tight.
Maybe she was ill? She could have easily picked up dengue fever on that last job she was on.
‘Room for one more?’ he asked, shoving the duvet and about four pillows in through the narrow doorway with some difficulty. Salem looked at Nick, then at the mass of bedding next to him, gave a loud humpf and turned away from the chaos to go back to sleep. Goodie wished she could do the same but had a feeling that was not going to happen any time soon. Nick scooted down next to her and sat up against the wall, close enough for their arms to be touching. Goodie could feel his heat, smell his masculine yet clean, citrussy scent, and was gripped by a desperate urge to move away – but that would show weakness, that would show he affected her, it would expose vulnerability; and Goodie never showed weakness, she never allowed herself to be vulnerable. So she sat perfectly still where she was, hoping he’d give up on whatever game he was playing and simply go away.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said into the silence, as if reading her thoughts. ‘If you’re going to sleep on the floor then I’ll sleep here with you.’
‘Have you always managed to get your own way?’ Goodie asked, and Nick shrugged.
‘Most of the time,’ he told her unrepentantly. ‘Although I find most people easier to manipulate than you.’
Goodie sighed. ‘I’m tired,’ she admitted before she could stop herself, and felt his body jolt in surprise. She could see out of the corner of her eye his face turning towards hers, but her gaze remained fixed straight ahead.
‘Do you know,’ he asked, then paused as he reached up to her chin and turned her face towards his, ‘that’s the first time I think I’ve ever heard you admit any kind of frailty.’ He was staring straight into Goodie’s eyes, and his breath was fanning her cheek. She stopped breathing. For some reason she felt like she was falling; she felt out of control. Then his hand left her chin and reached up to the side of her head, smoothing her matted-from-sleep hair down as his gaze roved over her face and his mouth hitched up at the side in a small smile.
‘What –?’ Goodie started to say but was cut off by Nick’s mouth on hers. I was a light kiss, tender even, and after a moment he pulled back a small distance, searching her expression as if asking for her permission. Her chest felt tight, her heartbeat stopped altogether and then sped up uncontrollably and she experienced a flash of real fear.
‘Goodie?’ Nick whispered, concern now washing over his features, his brows drawing together in a frown. Goodie closed her eyes slowly, blocking his out. Her quick mind was able to step back up into gear now that she had broken the connection between them, and she went through her options at lightning speed. She had slept with targets and informants before, but rarely clients. However if she needed to manipulate someone she would do what she had to do to get the job done. Nick’s concerned face flooded her mind and she knew that he must have seen the fear in her eyes. If she backed off now she would be confirming that to him; she might even garner his … pity. The thought made her feel sick. She could treat this like any other job. All she had to do was claw back her shields and go to the place in her mind she always went whenever something intimate was on the agenda.
She would wipe that look of pity from his face.
