Authors: Lynn Rae
“Then neither one of us have anything to worry about.” The major
turned his attention back to Citizen Kidd where he clearly preferred it. “This
tart is very good. We should make it again.”
“Yes, darling. Would you like another slice?”
* * * * *
Del had agreed to be escorted home by Lazlo because she
missed him, and even though she knew he was going to be leaving soon, she would
regret not spending time with him while she could. He looked more cheerful once
they left his supervisor’s apartment and she realized he’d felt the need to be
careful there as much as she had.
They walked close to each other along the corridors, passing
a few pedestrians but not rushing or talking much. Del wished he would touch
her but gave herself an admonishment. He wasn’t interested in her. He was going
away very soon for his new assignment. She’d just be friendly and maybe he
would message her a few times.
Del regretted not responding more openly to the overtures he’d
made in the last few weeks, but she’d been terribly busy with taking on more
cycling shifts and working hard to clear and repair all the damage at her
family’s property. She hadn’t had a day to herself, or even an hour other than
sleeping, since it had all happened.
So walking with him back to her home would have to suffice. It
might be the last time she would ever see him, considering how quickly he was
going to have to leave for his training. That thought made her feel desperate
and lonely, which was ridiculous since she hadn’t even talked with him since
she’d left his apartment that morning a month ago.
“Have you been well, really?” Lazlo asked as they passed a
few quick counters busily serving up fragrant coffee and fried dough sprinkled
with sugars to big groups of stevedores just coming off their shift. “I couldn’t
really tell from your messages.”
“No, yes, I don’t know.” Del stammered a reply, unsure of
herself. “I’ve just been so busy it’s hard to know if I am personally doing all
right. All my attention has been on getting the family and the business back
together. I would’ve liked to have talked with you when you called. I just
haven’t had a moment.”
Lazlo nodded, seeming to understand the reasons she hadn’t
been able to be chatty with him.
“I’ve been busy too, at least until the military police
showed up and picked up the patrols outside the port. We’d been covering them
and it was exhausting. Have you had your counseling?”
“Yes, a few sessions. I don’t like it.”
“It gets easier with time, when you’ve gotten to know your
counselor and have started to recover.”
“Have you had yours?”
Lazlo nodded, looking calm and content, so Del assumed he
was doing well. She wasn’t, not really. She was still nervous. Small rooms made
her sweaty, loud noises made her jump, and she would have unexpected flashes of
anxiety about her family. And her nightmares were epic. Her counselor said it
was normal, but it was still difficult to relax, or to anticipate her feelings
would improve.
“Do you need any help at your place?”
“No, not now. Most of the debris has been cleared, the new
glass is in the broken windows, we have three vehicles up and running and parts
are on the way for the other two. Dee Dee hated having to order and pay for new
parts—we’re a family of salvagers, after all. She has really taken over the
business side of things while my mother recovers. Which means all I have to do
is do what she tells me.” Del smiled at the idea of her sister’s new motivation
and determination. Dee Dee wasn’t the carefree woman she had been before the
deputies came and shook up their world. “I’ve been doing cycling runs twice a
day now since I’ve been back.”
“So no exploring?” Lazlo reached out a hand to guide her
away from a loader bot that was trying to back out of a doorway while overloaded
with pallets of bagged amaranth.
Del shook her head, wistful at currently being so tied to
the port. But her family needed her. “Not yet. But I really want to get back
out there. I have all of those places marked where I need to go back and
collect samples. There are several I keep seeing in my mind, like visions.”
Del turned and smiled at Lazlo and he grinned back, looking
tall and lovely and so attractive that she wanted to cry or grab him, she wasn’t
sure which. And he was leaving.
Del realized she had been holding the idea of Lazlo in her
mind like a sweet possibility, thinking perhaps sometime in the future
something would happen to bring them together. Now that he was leaving for much
bigger and much better things than Sayre it never would. Maybe this walk had
been a bad idea. They were close to the port gates, which meant her apartment
was only a few minutes away.
“You’re the only person I know who dreams about rocks,”
Lazlo said in an entirely affectionate way, looking as if he wanted to give her
a hug. Del wished he would. Her bruises were healed and the idea of his arms
around her, his hands on her, was making her tingle.
Just one more time, one
more touch.
“I dream about other things too,” Del defended herself and
he nodded and kept walking.
“Like what?” They passed through the gates with a nod at the
keepers. Now the night sky arched above them—rich purple with stars barely
visible in the drifts of orange and gold dust that glowed in the upper
atmosphere. Del breathed in the air, enjoying the humid and fragrant contrast
of the fields to the filtered and clean environment of the port itself, which
was sealed and atmospherically controlled for optimum efficiency. Two different
worlds and she knew where she belonged.
“You know the reward I got? For finding the weapons?” Del
said.
Lazlo nodded as they ambled along past a warehouse still lit
and buzzing with loaders and stevedores preparing a shipment of taro for an
early-morning freighter.
“I had hoped to use it to attend a mineralogical conference
on Weave. That was a dream I had.”
“But that one also includes rocks,” he reminded her with a
chuckle, reaching for her elbow as a loader rushed past them, stacked crates of
plump and fragrant ginger roots swaying in its arms.
Del grimaced. “You’re right and my other one does too.”
“You only have two dreams?”
“That’s all I can think of right now. I think that dinner
used up all of my brainpower. It’s been so long since I’ve had chicken, I’m
having a problem paying attention to anything but recalling how good it was.”
Lazlo laughed and guided her closer to the building as they
rounded the corner, the Browen property now visible across the service road—mismatched
metal walls and gates visible in the lights, damaged but still working, just
like Del was.
“You aren’t going to the mineralogical conference?”
“No, those marks are spent already. New parts for the carts.”
Lazlo watched her, not commenting or looking at her with pity, which she
appreciated tremendously. “I won’t be visiting Weave.”
Or seeing you again.
“Should I walk you in?”
“No, someone will be wandering around and anxious to talk
with a fresh face and then we’ll have to stand there for fifteen minutes
pretending we’re interested.”
“I don’t know. I might be interested. I like your family,” Lazlo
offered, sounding game. Del smiled at him. He was simply a nice person. She
just couldn’t get over it, or appreciate it enough. Lazlo leaned on the warehouse
wall, big shoulders braced against it, looking relaxed as he watched her with
kind brown eyes. She wanted to fall against him and bury her face in his chest
but that was certainly not the way to end this evening.
“Really?” Del finally replied, hoping to get herself off her
lustful thoughts. “They mostly make me a little crazy.”
“Another reason you miss getting to the Outlands.”
“Exactly. They all have expectations of me and jobs for me.
When I’m not around them I get to relax.”
Lazlo stopped smiling and touched her arm. “I know these
past weeks have been hard. I’m sorry.” He lifted himself off the wall and
stepped closer to her, both of his big hands gentle on her shoulders. “I am
serious about dinner too. I want to go out with you before I start that class.”
The reality that he was leaving hit her again and she winced
inside. “Yes, congratulations on that too. It sounds as if it’s quite an honor.”
Lazlo nodded and gave her shoulders a little squeeze before he released her. Del
wanted to kick something with disappointment.
“It’ll be a lot of work. I hope I can manage it.”
“You will.” Del automatically encouraged him. He was a
wonderfully capable person.
Lazlo looked unconvinced. “You sound pretty sure of that.”
“I am. You will.” Sighing because she really shouldn’t stand
there anymore, Del made her excuses. “Good night, Lazlo, it was good to see
you.”
“Good night, Del Browen. I’m going to message you about
dinner. I know you can’t be too busy to eat.”
* * * * *
“I’m coming back. Probably. Unless I’m reassigned after the
first class block.” Lazlo sounded irritated and Del feared she was pushing too
much. Several times during dinner she’d mentioned his upcoming departure,
mostly because she’d been thinking about it with constant distress since their
dinner with Major Sekar and Bara Kidd. “It’s just a thirty-five-day
introduction, ten months of coursework and another thirty-five-day practica and
examination.”
All of that sounded like at least a year away to Del and she
shriveled inside. Lazlo, her favorite new person, was leaving and she missed
him already. He’d been there with her through some traumatic events and she was
getting used to him. She liked knowing he was around the port and she might see
him as she went about the family business. She didn’t make friends easily and
Lazlo was her friend.
When he’d tracked her down at the compound the day before
and insisted she go to dinner with him tonight, Del had been giddy for several
hours after he’d left. Just being near him, seeing his eyes light up with
happiness when she’d agreed, had filled her with sparks of excitement.
Dee Dee’s advice from earlier in the day echoed in her head.
Her sister had told Del to have a wild night with the man before he left, as a
going-away present to him and for an experience Del could relive during the
many long and lonely days to come. Dee Dee had said a good romp would leave Del
in a much-improved state of mind, which she needed since she felt like crying
right now as she watched Lazlo’s lovely face as he concentrated on one of his
bots.
Being assaulted, stunned and having her family business
nearly destroyed had overhauled Del’s sense of what she wanted from her life,
just as Dee Dee had refocused afterward.
Why not have sex with Lazlo
tonight? Why wait for things that are never going to happen?
Del watched Lazlo’s big fingers move as he tried to assemble
a wall-walker bot that had fallen and broken when he’d activated it a few
minutes ago. They were seated on the floor in his apartment after a wonderful
dinner at the self-service snail restaurant, and Lazlo was trying to get some
of his experimental surveillance bots to work so Del could see them in action.
He was wearing microspecs as he looked over the device, the
magnifying lenses glittering in the lamplight of his living room. Tiny metallic
bits and snips of wire were scattered on a chipped dinner plate and the minuscule
wall-walker was resting in his hands, looking more like a smashed insect than
any sort of spy.
“Regardless,” Del said, not wanting to argue with him about
good intentions versus the lures of abandoning dirty and fungal Sayre for
living in a much more pleasant place like Weave, where there were beaches and
forests and lovely views and pretty girls. At least from what she’d seen in the
entertainments. No one had ever made an entertainment about Sayre. “I’ve been
thinking about something,” Del started to explain, watching Lazlo nod and
continue to study his broken little bot with apparently deep thoughts. “I’ve
been thinking about tonight.”
“Yes, I have too. Dinner was good, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was very nice. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Lazlo wasn’t making this easy. His polite
niceness was keeping her polite and nice in return, which was hardly
flirtatious. Not that she was adept at flirtation. Del needed to approach this as
if she were cracking a geode—identify likely pressure points, select the
correct spot, use the proper amount of force and then the beautiful interior
would be revealed. Or the rock could shatter and she would be left holding
dust.
“That’s not all I’ve been thinking about.”
“What else?” He looked up from his project with a grin, his
big shoulders hunched. “You probably weren’t thinking you were going to be
watching me destroy my latest project. I thought I had these bio-synth joints
worked out. There was this new formulation on the advisory panel that was
supposed to be impervious to dust contamination. I grew the sheathing last
night and it looks as if they’ve developed these microfissures.” He sounded
confounded.
“No, I wasn’t anticipating that. Hadn’t really thought about
bio-synth joints at all,” Del agreed, feeling more and more nervous the longer
it was taking before she communicated to him what she wanted. What approach
would work with him? But first things first, she needed to make sure the way
was clear. “You aren’t involved with anyone right now, are you, Lazlo?”
Lazlo stopped inspecting his bot and looked at her, one eye
comically enlarged by the lens of the microspecs. “You mean intimately? No, I’m
not. Not for a while. Why?”
Del swallowed hard. Her mouth was dry and her heart was
pounding like a drilling hammer.
Be brave
, she told herself.
Try to
live tonight.
She could have died before and now she wanted to live. And
she really wanted him. There was no getting away from it. Lazlo Casta made her
hot.