Still Waters (Greenstone Security 1)

Happy girls were the prettiest, after all. Audrey wasn’t wrong.

I just hoped that happiness lasted for a lifetime. For her sake and Craig’s.

I watched her, dancing with a smile the size of Kansas on her face, twirled around so her white lace dress spun with her movements. I stood next to my father, leaning against his shoulder, reveling in the peace and safety that came with his presence.

“I’ll always be jealous of that,” I said.

Dad followed my gaze. “The fact your sister has successfully flashed her undergarments to the entirety of her family at her wedding?” he replied dryly.

I grinned. “No. Her ability to dive into happiness, into life, headfirst without a thought, without a care. Like she doesn’t even know life can turn bad. Like she has no doubt in the world, that it would turn out nothing but good, despite first-hand experience to the contrary.” Laurie entered my mind. Then Polly’s haunted eyes standing beside my bedside two months ago. “I sometimes wish I was like that,” I whispered. “Not held hostage by my own knowledge of the world.”

I looked to Keltan, dangling his beer between his thumb and forefinger, talking to Rosie. His eyes seemed to sense my attention, for they moved from my best friend to capture me in his gaze. Reminders of everything we’d gone through to get here were ghosts around me. How everything had almost been nothing because of those ghosts.

Almost.

But life wasn’t made of almosts. Life was made of moments, not the ones that took your breath away but the ones that gave you your breath back.

Sometimes those moments were big, like when you said “I do” in a hospital bed after almost dying at the hands of a Columbian drug lord. Some of those moments were small, like snatched glances across the room that communicated a shared secret. And the promise of those moments, more of them, like when I presented Keltan with the sonogram photo nestled in my Prada—they were what life was about. Worth drowning for.

I sucked in an even breath. A clean one.

They might be worth drowning for, but I was certain I’d never drown again.

Dad’s hand found mine and he squeezed tightly, watching the man who had just become my brother, who I’d met all of twice, snatch Polly into his arms. She threw her head back laughing with unrestrained happiness, the melancholy of the months before this big announcement long forgotten.

For her at least, but I remembered. And I did not smile at the man twirling her around. I regarded him evenly, much like I had the two times I’d met him. Thinking about his car and the best way to make it explode.

With him inside it.

And make it look like an accident.

Because I saw it. The trouble that lurked beneath the surface of those eyes. And I didn’t like it.

So, I made plans.

Dad’s eyes moved to Keltan, who had moved his attention from me and was also looking at Craig with a hard stare.

He saw beyond the surface too. He always did. I knew he was thinking the same thing as me. Well, maybe not the exact same. He didn’t approve of explosions.

Must be a New Zealander thing.

My attention moved back to my father, whose twinkling eyes also saw beyond the surface. Who had done that since that day in the hospital and every day after that, to make sure my broken pieces were salvageable. So I could find my way to breathe with Keltan.

My original hero.

“Now, my little bug, why would you want to be anyone but who you are? You and your sister have always been different. She leaps without looking, loves without hesitating, and falls right out of it just as quick.” He watched the couple with hardened eyes reserved for a father who was ultimately certain no man would ever be good enough for his girl but with the grudgingly realization that he’d have to handle it despite that. “But you, my girl. Still waters run deep.” He leaned to kiss my head and then his eyes moved to Keltan, who was back to watching me.

It was something he often did now. Watch me. When he couldn’t put his hands on me, his eyes were following me.

I’d asked him about it, not unnerved by the gaze, but curious. It was intense. More intense than it had been.

“Babe. I sat on the sidewalk, with you bleeding in my arms, literally watching the life drain from you,” he’d rasped, grip tightening on my arms. “That’s not something a man forgets. Ever. That’s something a man learns to live with. Only way this man can live with that is to hold you in my arms as often as possible, or put my eyes on you. So I can watch the life course through you. Remind myself that was all that was. A memory.”