Kiera was back, boy was she ever, just as stubborn and as dead set on having things her way since the day he'd met her. Why had she gone away in the first place? Though she had returned, there was nothing sentimental about it. The expression, 'falling off the ends of the earth' had never rung truer. Kiera had not contacted him in any way. He'd tried worming the reason for her exodus out of her, but her stonewalling was predictably intransigent. Just like old times, Carlos mused. Why would she be forthcoming about where she'd been, what she'd been doing? Her unwillingness to yield was her trademark.
Oh, how it so messed with his head.
His having not heard from her had messed with it more than he would have thought it ever could. What was it about this woman?
He swore that he wouldn't call her, but in the end his refusing caved. Once he had learned of her return, he sought excuses to make contact. He found himself needing to reach out to her.
Before Carlos had called her, he'd thought about just how much he had missed her. He wouldn't breathe a word of it to her. Despite their having shared a kiss before she had taken off, the embrace hadn't been some vague sort of seal, an approval on a relationship. She had sounded somewhat pleased to hear from him, but it was hardly a shout of jubilation. They worked great together, which had nothing to do with their becoming more.
Carlos blinked; a pout was beginning to form. What had he just thought? She and he having something more between them than just thwarting terrorists, as well as bringing less flamboyant, though no less villainous lawbreakers to justice? Though it pained him, whenever he allowed himself to think this way, Kiera Cameron was out of his league, way, way out.
He was a good detective, not Robocop 2013.
Why in the world would he want a committed relationship? He within one wasn't a good fit, judging from his past of failed ones. The one woman, an ingenuous young thing, whom he had given his heart to had crushed it.
Of course, he considered, while slugging down his last bit of coffee, how Kiera's being back was going to mess with his head so much more. Having her close to him probably wasn't what he needed, but a part of him was over the moon that she was going to be. Nobody treated him like he was nothing special the way she did.
He smiled, going deeper into his thoughts. The enigma with the beautiful face would do nothing to relieve his endless questions about who she really was. Carlos feared that Agent Gardiner would have his pound of flesh, her lovely meat with moxie, sooner or later. He told himself that thinking like that was worse than defeatist. It was disloyal. That wasn't what Kiera needed right now. She required his allegiance, his dependability. She could count on him one hundred percent.
He wouldn't make discrediting Kiera easy for that scrounger Gardiner.
As he had just begun thinking that he would have her back regardless of what she asked of him, he had a visitor. He ignored the caller until the apartment doorbell sliced into his musings a second time.
"Yeah, coming."
Carlos threw open the door, not inordinately surprised by his visitor's identity. Kiera glided past him, his back pressed up against the door to make ample room for her passage.
"Had your first cuppa joltin' Joe yet?" he hailed.
"No. Not yet. Wouldn't mind some." She actually smiled and it wasn't some anemic imitation of one. What worked her lips affected what he saw in her eyes, those incredible eyes he'd missed so, so much.
"Comin' right up." Carlos' body language suggested that she take a seat where she customarily did and he'd fill her cup. He was an agile sprinter. "Any leads on the mayor's assassin?" By rote, he knew how she took coffee, not wholly black, but close enough, with no sugar. He lightened up her not completely black coffee with light cream. The first time she'd taken his brew her way, her eyes had lit up. A ripple of warmth and homespun retrospection had sizzled in those excellent dark brown orbs. It had been a revelation, his having had the privilege to watch her inexplicably thaw in that moment of time.
Carlos set her cup down close to her fingers and sat across from her at the island in his kitchen. It was a functional, yet inviting setting wherein he was in the habit of showing off his culinary skills. Kiera recalled that occasion he had made paella. Maybe, if he didn't see it as an imposition, she could get him to make it for her again.
"No, not yet." She held back for a moment, recalling the promise she had half-promised to herself during her absence. After much introspective and retrospective soul-searching, she had resolved to be a better communicator for his sake, and perhaps for hers too. "LiberEight is all over it."
Silence hung between them as time kept lengthening.
"All over it as in a member of the original cell made the shot?"
Kiera, with the lip of the cup resting on her lower lip, looked as if she used the cup to mask the lower half of her face. Into the vessel she concurred, "Yes."
"Your new friend—"
"What new friend?" Kiera arched, the honed edge quality of her voice clanked in Carlos' ears. Something dark and unreadable festered in her eyes. For a moment or so, she had difficulty forming coherent thoughts. She had no friends here, save for this exotic, straight-shooter of a man, who liked fixing her coffee just so before serving it to her.
The kiss they had shared took some of the edge off when she added, "Someone we know in common?"
"Wish I could say we didn't. None other than our mutual pain-in-the buttocks, Agent Gardiner. Paid me a visit at headquarters after I left you at Stanley Park."
"Oh?" Her icy nonchalance belied the qualms giving birth to the sickish feeling in the pit of her stomach, growing in intensity and duration whenever she heard that bane's name. "Thirsting for my capture so he can hurl me into a perpetually-locked cage, is he? So he can have the satisfaction of hearing me howl till I go deaf?"
Carlos arched an eyebrow, drilling into her eyes a strange look. Where had that come from? "Huh?"
Kiera shook her head in dismissal. "Oops…my paranoiac tendencies showing."
"You? With those?"
"Doesn't everybody?" Her tone became the one he was used to, the one that brooked no levity. "Why did he visit you?" Then she thought to inform, "He paid me one too yesterday."
"That man, in a word, is a nuisance. Claims he'll be keeping tabs on us along with you." Carlos was at the sink, placing his drained coffee cup into it. The cup joined the rest of assorted unwashed dishes and utensils. They should have been in the dishwasher. Crime fighting dictated its own schedule, which left little time, sometimes, for tending to household chores.
"He thinks I can't be trusted."
"He's the one," Carlos averred, turning around fast so his eyes aligned with hers. "We're not going through all that again." He was at her side in three large steps, glaring at her, but his slow burn lacked antagonism. His eyes were too soft. "Kiera, I trust you. Never stopped."
Just as solemnly, she replied, "Carlos, I trust you. Never stopped. Won't. Not ever."
He claimed both of her hands, brought them to his lips and kissed the twin pairs of knuckles. "Signed, sealed, delivered…I'm yours…"
Unable to stifle the sudden rush of heat and attendant color to her cheeks, overcome with a slew of simpering emotions, eager to boil, she replied, "Agreed."
"Welcome back." Carlos held on to her hands as though giving them back was out of the question.
"Good to be…back." Her mask of impasse developed a sizeable chink; sentiment jammed through. "It's your job, Dillon's too. Arresting the mayor's assassin and stopping LiberEight on the line as well. I've got it. All of it. But not without you backing me up, Carlos."
Stunned, he resisted the urgent necessity of pulling her into his arms and smothering her with the cornucopia of his affection. Their eyes locked, their lips were moments away from following suit.
Kiera faintly heard her mobile phone ringing. Before Carlos surrendered her hands, she squeezed his. His fell away so she could answer her phone.
"I…I've got to take this."
It was Alec. Finally.
TBC…