Janie Crouch - Armed Response

For just a moment they were face-to-face near the floor.

“I taught you that move,” he whispered.

She leaped up to her feet and he followed, pushing off from his shoulder and straight onto his feet.

Lillian didn’t let him get resituated. She used her greatest advantage—her speed—and flew at him with a series of punches and kicks. Jace was forced to go on the defensive, and did a damn good job of it.

She stepped back as he nearly backed out of bounds, ending her attack. “You didn’t teach me that.”

He grinned. “I sure as hell didn’t. Impressive.” Without warning he came at her, forcing her to go on the defensive this time.

All in all, they were pretty evenly matched. Derek eventually called the match to a halt when it became apparent neither of them was going to win easily. “Let’s save some energy for the rest of today’s training. There’s a lot of hours still left.”

Jace took off his gloves and held his hand out to shake hers. “Nice job, Tiger Lily. Although I’m not surprised.”

You could’ve heard a grasshopper karate-chop a fly. Tiger Lily . Nobody ever called her Lily, not if they expected to live to see the next sunrise. And no one had ever called her Tiger Lily—the beautiful and exotic flower—but Jace. Hearing the words did something to her she couldn’t explain and didn’t want to delve into too closely.

So she kept her cool.

“Welcome to the team, Jace. And it’s Lillian. Just Lillian, nothing else.”

Chapter Four

“Lily, hold up.”

He smiled as he saw her shoulders stiffen at the name. Her curt instructions on the sparring mat not to call her anything but Lillian had just spurred his desire to call her by her old nickname.

But it was her whispered words as they had left the sparring area that had really caught his attention.

Don’t say anything about who we were.

Jace wasn’t sure if that meant their personal history or the gang-related activities they’d participated in during their youth. She might not have ever told anyone about that, especially the latter. Since she had never been arrested, nor had he, it wasn’t in either of their permanent records. She didn’t have to worry about him spilling her secret. Not that one anyway.

Working with her today, fighting with her, seeing how everyone else interacted with her... Jace couldn’t help being impressed. She had taken all the natural physical skills she’d had as a teenager—speed, flexibility, sheer grit—and had formed herself into nothing short of a warrior.

He’d known it from the first punch she’d thrown in the sparring ring. She’d always been feisty, but now she was deadly. Small but fierce.

She’d been the only woman in the room or on the field, and that hadn’t seemed to bother her at all. The men hadn’t treated her any differently than they treated each other. Even with their limitations because of injuries, the team members had relied on and functioned around each other’s strengths.

No point in Lillian being the one on the bottom hoisting her teammates up the fifteen-foot wall that was part of the obstacle course. Could she have done it if she needed to? Jace had no doubt. But it wasn’t her specialty, so instead the team had sent her up and over first. Nobody in this close-knit group played politics: you weren’t given an assignment just because you were a man or a woman, you were given an assignment because of your strengths and talents.

Part of the course had also involved an underground tube, which there was no way in hell Jace was ever going to fit through. Neither were most of the men on the team. But Lillian had no problem. So she was sent.

Again, nothing to do with gender, everything to do with what was best for the team.

The men respected her, she respected them. Even the outsiders, the couple of guys besides Jace who obviously weren’t regular members of the team, respected her.

And Jace would bet his next paycheck that everything Steve Drackett had said was true. Lillian had not been intimate with any of these men. There was no flash of recognition, no secret smiles...

No nicknames that had been only for them twelve years before. Like Jace had just said to her again.

“I told you, it’s Lillian now. Not Lily. Nobody ever called me that but you anyway. And definitely not Tiger Lily.”

He jogged the rest of the way to catch up with her. “Old habits. You know how it is.”

“It’s not like you’ve been saying my name very often in the past twelve years, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to make the change.”

“I’ll do my best.” He held his hand up with his fingers open in Mr. Spock’s Vulcan V symbol. “Scout’s honor.”

She thawed minutely. “Jackass.” She shook her head. “You were never a Boy Scout or a Vulcan.”

And he wasn’t going to stop calling her Lily, either.

They reached her car, a gray Honda Civic. About as unflashy a vehicle that was made. She opened the trunk and set her duffel bag inside. Then turned to him.

“Why are you here, Jace?”

Giving her as much truth as he could was probably his best option. “Ren McClement asked me. He and I served in the army together for a few years. You know him?”

She shrugged. “Not personally. But everyone knows of him. He’s pretty much an Omega Sector legend.”

“Steve Drackett and Ren said the team needed someone with experience who could jump right in. To help with this LESS Summit thing.” Jace looked over to where some of the others were coming out of the building. “No offense, but your team is a little shaky right now. And the two new guys are not exactly anything to write home about.”

Lillian rubbed her fingers against her forehead. “That’s for damn sure.”

“Carnell doesn’t play well with anyone. And that guy Saul Poniard is a little too flippant for my taste. That could be disastrous in a lot of situations.”

“I agree. Steve recognizes it, too, but right now we don’t have a lot of options.”

He took a slight step closer to her, unable to stop himself. “Exactly. Ren knows me and knows he can trust me. And you guys needed someone with my skill set.”

Talking coming from the parking lot caught their attention and Jace took a step back. They both waved to the other members of the team as they got in their vehicles one by one.

“And did you know I would be here when you said yes to Ren?” Lillian finally asked as her teammates drove away.

This was a much trickier question to answer. He knew he shouldn’t have any qualms about lying to her. After all, she had been the completely dishonest one all those years ago. But he found the thought of telling her lies to be more difficult than he expected.

“Ren mentioned there was someone else here from Tulsa. A Lillian. But I couldn’t be one-hundred-percent sure that it was you. You were impressive out there today, Tiger Lily.”

She glared at him but didn’t press the nickname issue. “Thanks.”

“Seriously. You can handle yourself. I mean, you’ve always been able to handle yourself, but this was so much more than that.”

Lillian leaned back against her car but didn’t meet his eyes. “Thanks. You, too. Of course, I’m not surprised or anything. You were always built like a military man. Physically and mentally. I guess you just honed that over the years. So you got out?”

He nodded. “Yeah. For almost a year now. I loved the army, but it was time.”

“Moving back to Tulsa?”

“No. Nothing for me there anymore. I actually bought some land here in Colorado. I’m opening a ranch of sorts.”

Her brown eyes got big. “A ranch? I didn’t know you had any interest in animals.”