A Genetic Predisposition Chapter 10
Chapter 10: Opportunity comes in many forms
“I hope you’re rolling up those sleeves because you understand that you’ll be taking off that shirt.” Nadia watched his arms appear below the blue denim shirt and licked her lips.
“Perhaps I was just about to show you how I killed Irina Derevko.” Jack stopped in front of Nadia. He reached out his hands and laid them heavily on Nadia’s bare shoulders, as heavily as he felt the weight on his own shoulders.
“I did ask that question, didn’t I?” Nadia took a step closer, wondering if he was trying to frighten her, testing her again. Or was he testing himself? Concentrating in the dimness of the kitchen -- illumined only by light reflecting from the living room -- she reached up once again and unbuttoned the first clasped button of his shirt. When he didn’t stop her, she reached for another. Then stopped, her fingers worrying the button, as she wondered what the hell she was doing. They were discussing the death of her mother and she was unbuttoning the shirt of the man who admitted killing her?
“Yes. You did.” Jack slid his hands in until they rested on the curve of her neck, with his thumbs resting on her collarbones.
“And the answer would be?” Nadia asked, tilting her head back to meet his cautious gaze. So much caution. Had he looked cautious even as he’d spilled himself inside her? She exhaled softly as he rubbed his thumbs up her neck. “Did you strangle her?” She curled her hands around the open collar of his shirt and pulled him closer.
“The answer would be...” Jack ran his thumbs over her jaw and then over her cheeks before cupping her face. He lowered his head until his lips brushed against hers, once, twice, then whispered, “No,” and raised his head again. Why the hell were they having this conversation? If there was ever a conversation he did not want to have, it would be this one. He looked over Nadia’s head.
“Jack. Tell me. How did she die?” Nadia stared, seeing the deep discomfort in Jack’s face he was making no attempt to hide as he looked down as she spoke.
“You asked. I’ll tell you.” Jack nodded. He removed his hands from her, stepped away and walked over to the sink. Flipping the sink handle up, he watched the water run until it grew hot, then poured a dollop of liquid soap into his hands. Carefully washing his hands, he said over his shoulder after a long silence, “A blow to the head.”
Nadia paused, wishing the lights were on, wishing she could see his face a little better. Finally, she said softly, “I see.” She nodded too. “You killed her with a blow to the head.”
“Yes.” Jack said firmly and stared into Nadia’s eyes, before looking back at his hands. ”It was a blow to the head.”
“Does Sydney know that?” Nadia took a step toward him, then another, pulled toward him by inexplicable shared pain that seemed to lessen with every inch she grew closer to him.
“No.” Jack shook his hands into the sink and reached for a towel, folded neatly to the side of the sink. Nadia snatched the towel away and staring at his hands, began drying them slowly. He watched her, felt her warmth through the soft towel, sensed her acceptance of whatever he might say. He opened his hands wide at her urging and allowed her to dry between each finger as if...As if, he realized, she were caring for him. She looked up and he saw what lay in her eyes.
He relaxed his shoulders slightly as he accepted the impossible - that before him lay opportunity. A wise man needed only opportunity to find what he sought and he’d like to think that over the years he had acquired at least a modicum of wisdom. He held up his other hand and opened it wide for her gentle ministrations. “No. Sydney doesn’t know,” he reminded her when her movements slowed and halted as she seemed lost in thought.
“Why not?” Nadia asked, refolding the towel and setting it back down, wishing she had another excuse to touch him. But did she need an excuse? He... for this weekend at least, had made his intentions clear. He was willing to answer questions and answer needs she hadn’t realized she possessed. She could do the same for him. She knew it. Felt it. Had ever since the first time she had opened her eyes and seen him looking down at her. Did he remember that? If not she would remind him. Later. She was no fool. She would use this opportunity, this weekend, to...
She pulled his hand up to her mouth and pressed a warm kiss into the center of it before reluctantly returning it to him. Opening her eyes, she looked back up, gazing at the base of his neck revealed by the partially-open shirt. She reached a finger up and laid it against the pulse beating against his skin and then slid her finger back down to the shirt and began opening another button.
“She never asked. And frankly, I’m surprised you did.” Although frankly, Jack thought, gazing down at her dark hair and darker eyes, he was so damn surprised at being here with her, at having been inside of her, that it was almost as if his heart had gotten a jump start. Had she noticed that when her fingers had been on his skin? He watched her hands work their way down his shirt and couldn’t imagine why he’d stopped her before.
“Are you? Why?” Nadia reached the last visible button and pulled the shirt from the waistband of his jeans.
“Why would you want to know the details of the death of this woman who meant so much to you?” Jack looked down as Nadia finished unbuttoning his shirt.
“You’re being...snide.” Nadia glared at him and with jerky motions, tugged on his shirt futilely.
“And you’re being surprisingly calm for someone who was ready to kill me over this not long ago.” Jack pushed her hands away from his shirt.
Nadia grabbed onto Jack’s hands and held on as she looked up into his eyes. Did she see a fleeting flash of need there before his face assumed a careful neutrality? Yes. She narrowed her eyes, determined to break through the mask he wore. With... The truth. Yes. She nodded and turned her hands within his and slid them up to hold onto his wrists as she asserted quietly, “If you killed Irina Derevko, you must have had an overriding need to do so. The man who spoke to me of that picture and asking a woman to marry him based upon her ability to love their child, that man is not someone who blithely shoots her down. Or pistol-whips her in the temple.”
Jack nodded at her, acknowledging her words. To himself, he acknowledged the fact that this inexperienced woman before him represented the greatest threat to his assumptions that he had known in... decades. Looking down at her soft curves and open eyes, he acknowledged that her loveliness represented the greatest threat to his self-control that he’d known in equally as long a time. And her ability to make connections far outpaced her sister’s, certainly. And thankfully. Rotating his wrists within her easily-broken grasp, he reminded her, “I could have been setting you up, with that story, to believe just that -- that I would be incapable of cold-bloodedly killing the mother of my child.”
“Then you would have said it matter-of-factly. Sydney says that’s how you lie to her. And you weren’t matter-of-fact about telling me the story of the photograph.” She slid her hands up from his wrists along his forearms until she could slide under the rolled cuffs of his sleeves.
“Perhaps I knew Sydney would tell you that truth about me and I amended my behavior accordingly.”
“And perhaps I don’t believe you spend every waking hour playing some damn game!” Nadia slammed her hand on Jack’s chest.
Jack stepped back. “And you believe that you know me so well? Better than Sydney or--”
“And I can trust my instincts!” Nadia growled at him, then jumped when he circled her waist with his hands and pulled her towards him.
“Can you?” Jack pressed, just as he pressed her body against his in a swift, sudden motion. “Given that those same instincts also impelled you to plug Martin Bishop full of unnecessary holes and sent you unprepared and vulnerable to confront me over a mother you had never known? A mother who was hardly Betty Crocker.”
“I....” Nadia stopped. She couldn’t explain it. She looked up at Jack and blinked at the compassion she saw there, then blinked again when he slowly wrapped her in his arms as if she were fragile. Sighing she rested her head against his chest, using her chin to nuzzle inside the denim to rub her cheek against the soft black cotton of his tshirt.
“Or was it not instinct, but something else? Was the hope, the illusion of a loving mother, more important or more satisfying than the reality? Worth killing to keep that illusion alive, as perhaps it had kept you emotionally alive?”
“Yes,” Nadia admitted slowly after several minutes of silence and listening to his heart beating against her cheek. “Because the reality is that...she was an international terrorist. Like my father. Obsessed with Rambaldi to the exclusion of all else. And just as I’d constructed this fantasy of my father who would some day rescue me, I had this fantasy of my mother who...”
“Go ahead. You can tell me. I know all about maintaining illusions about that woman.” Jack bent down, kissed her hair and let her go.
“I suppose you do. But...” Nadia shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it right now, not when she was so close to getting answers to more important questions, so close to being...close to Jack. Priorities were critical, after all, she realized slowly, as slowly as she realized her changing priorities. Or perhaps, acknowledged them for the first time. “Enough of that. Why? Was I right? Was it to protect Sydney? Why?”
“Why don’t you call Sydney and ask her?” Jack asked as he reached behind him and flicked on the light switch.
“Why don’t you just answer my question?” Nadia blinked in the sudden brightness of the overhead light and looked around. A utilitarian kitchen. Large, but nothing fancy. A table, six chairs. Six...Who had sat here? Had that table ever been full with a family or... She looked up as Jack pointed toward a phone on the counter.
“How about we make a deal? You call Sydney and ask her and I’ll answer any questions you have after that?”
“I’ll...accept that negotiation. On one condition. Take off your shirt.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “If it’s not questions, it’s negotiations.”
Nadia tapped her foot on the floor and pointed her finger at him. “Admit it, you enjoy it. You had fun the other day negotiating who was going to get that last bit of the cannoli at that restaurant.”
“You are so naive.” Jack said it with what he hoped was enough smugness to begin to annoy her.
“What...”
“Do you honestly think I didn’t want the opportunity to see you suck that cream out of the pastry tube?”
TBC at Chapter 11