Lost in You

by Lexi Blake

  When she was free, Robert scooped her up in his arms and she settled in, one arm around him, head on his shoulders. There were plenty of other scenes still going on, but they were done. In silence, he carried her out of the club to their room.

  Chapter Eight

  He was stuck in the dream again. The world here seemed dark, made of nothing but shadows. He could hear someone talking but couldn’t make out what he or she said. He didn’t even know who they were. Sometimes the fog would lift and he would get a glimpse of a face. Men. He was surrounded by men, but she was the one he wanted to kill.

  She’d betrayed him. She’d hurt him. She’d taken everything of his past and twisted it into a lie.

  He could feel his hands grasp her throat. Her skin was warm. He wasn’t going to let go until it went cold, until he felt her neck snap.

  “Rob?”

  She was still talking. Every word that had come from her mouth was a lie. She’d only told him the truth this evening. The truth about herself. About who she really was under the mask she wore. He would rip it off and see how ugly she was underneath.

  He would make her pay for everything she’d done to him.

  “Rob, it’s time to wake up. The pillow is perfectly dead, love. You’ve killed it right and good.”

  Ariel. Her lyrical voice cut through his anger. That voice didn’t belong here. Ariel didn’t belong in his nightmares.

  He opened his eyes, daylight causing him to blink, and she was kneeling at the side of the bed, a smile on her face. She’d put on his T-shirt and wrapped herself in a robe. She was soft and sweet and so pretty it almost hurt to look at her.

  He’d fallen asleep. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He’d promised himself he would hold her until she dozed off and he’d gotten caught in the trap of her warmth. He had his hands wrapped around her pillow. It was the one she traveled with, the one made of silk.

  He sat straight up in bed. “Did I hurt you?”

  He knew what he was capable of. He had no idea what he would do if he’d tried to hurt her.

  “Do I look hurt? Or worried and frightened? Although I do have some spectacular marks after last night, but those were fun. So no, I’m not upset. Though if you mangle that pillowcase we’ll have to go find another one. My hair looks dreadful if I sleep on cotton.” She picked up the pillow and fluffed it before placing it back on her side of the bed. “See. All good. I brought you some coffee.”

  He shook off the last remnants of the dream. “Ari, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  She tossed her robe aside and climbed on the bed with him, straddling his thighs. “And yet you did, and you slept all night.”

  It was shocking. He never made it through a whole night without something waking him up. “Did I disturb you?”

  She framed his face with her hands and looked at him like he was something precious. “You did. You’re a furnace, Rob. You wrapped yourself around me like I was a teddy bear, and I swear you give off so much heat. We need a fan. I’ll see if Peter can find one for us. Though I suspect I’ll love it during the winter. I’m quite cold natured.”

  She was missing the point. “I had your pillow between my hands. That could have been you.”

  She shook her head. “You won’t hurt me and if you start to, I know where your balls are located. I assure you once I’ve twisted your bollocks into a pretzel, you’ll wake up. Stop being pessimistic. You slept with me and we were fine. I loved having you in my bed. Now kiss me. I have to get ready to interview someone Ezra’s sending over. She’s going to be here in an hour.”

  “Who is this again?” He was having a hard time keeping up with everyone Ariel was supposed to meet with and decide whether or not they had any information.

  “Someone who came up in the investigation. Her name is Emily Seeger. She worked with Hank McDonald on several projects and her name came up in some of Hope McDonald’s old notes. The Dallas team looked into her and contacted Ezra.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. “Ezra is sending her here why?”

  “He wants me to interview her. There are a couple of odd things about her that aroused his interest. She works on an Army base here in Germany. She’s a nurse and military family advocate. That’s how she knew Senator McDonald. She testified a couple of times before the Senate Armed Forces Committee. She agreed to come down for the day.”

  “Does she understand why we’ve asked her for an interview?” He suddenly didn’t want to work. He wanted to strip off the T-shirt she wore and see those marks he’d left on her. The night before had been beyond satisfying. It had blown his damn mind and rocked his world. She’d been everything he’d ever wanted in a woman.

  The memory of the way she looked when she came was burned onto his brain.

  She brushed her hands across his chest, staring at him like she could eat him up. “She’s talked briefly to Theo and Erin. She knows I’m with a private investigation firm looking into the death of Senator McDonald. She doesn’t know why.”

  “I want you to be careful.”

  “It’s an hour interview at the worst. Basically I’m going to decide if she’s worth talking to further. We know she did some work for Hope McDonald. McDonald had a couple of projects going on before she had to go underground. I don’t think anything’s going to come of it. I’m much more interested in Rebecca’s friend, Louisa.”

  “I’m more interested in getting back to London.” Where he would start thinking about moving in with her. She was right. He had made it through the night and she was far stronger than he’d given her credit for. Maybe they could have some normalcy. He needed to trust her. She was smart and she knew what she could handle.

  She stared down at him, a thoughtful look on her face. “Come on. Don’t you want to know?”

  He wanted to know if she was already soft and wet and wanting a little morning hello from him. “Know what?”

  She sat back, her luscious ass right on his dick. “Have you thought about the fact that if Tucker really did travel to Paris with Veronica, maybe they were lovers. They wouldn’t be the first pair of employees to cover up their affair.”

  “Rebecca said she couldn’t stand him.”

  “And yet they snuck off to Paris together. I know Tucker’s worried about it, but I think she’s the key. I think she cared about him. She knew what he was doing there. Why else would McDonald wipe his memory unless Tucker was trying to do something good?”

  He could think of a hundred different reasons McDonald might have done it. According to Rebecca, Reasor had been ambitious. The most obvious reason he could think of was Tucker trying to take more credit than McDonald was willing to give him. “You are an optimist.”

  She shrugged. “What’s there to be pessimistic about right now? I’m afraid you’ve caught me in a thoroughly good mood. Someone seems to have taken all my stress away.”

  When he’d taken her to bed, she’d looked peaceful. He’d felt the same peace. It was likely why he’d fallen asleep. “I still want you to be careful.”

  “I promise,” she vowed with a smile. “Peter’s picking her up from the train station soon. If you want to sit outside my office and make sure she doesn’t try to murder me, you should feel free.”

  “I can do that. And maybe later on we can sneak out for a walk. Just you and me. There’s a park a couple of streets down and it’s a beautiful day.” He wanted to pretend for a while.

  She kissed him, a sweet, affectionate brush of her lips over his. “Take a shower with me.”

  That he could do.

  Twenty minutes later, he watched through the big back windows as Peter helped Emily Seeger out of the van. Peter was talking and gesturing around, likely telling her the history of the neighborhood. She was pretty, with dark brown hair and big eyes. He put her at five foot three or four, and she maybe weighed a hundred and ten pounds.

  She wasn’t something to be afraid of. And yet he was. Something about the woman made his muscles clench.

 
“Rebecca is doing some therapy with Owen, and Dante and Sasha are still asleep. What’s on the schedule today? Another long day of staring at a computer screen and pretending we’re not hiding out from the cops?” Tucker nodded toward the door below. “She’s cute. This is the woman who worked for the senator?”

  “According to Ari.”

  Tucker leaned against the wall overlooking the first floor. “Meeting new people scares me now. I always wonder if I tried to assault them at some point in time. It’s kind of playing hell with my game. How can I pick up women if I’m always afraid they’ll slap me for something I did years ago? I liked it better when I thought there was an evil twin version of me out there somewhere.”

  “Who says there isn’t?” If Ariel was going to be optimistic, he could be, too. “It’s not like evil twins haven’t popped into our lives before. Kayla’s came back from the dead.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be that lucky,” Tucker replied. “I’ve been dreaming about it at night. Just flashes, but I can see McDonald, and she’s not treating me like she did as Mother. We’re in a lab and she’s handing me work.”

  He turned to Tucker, a little surprised. They’d been given two different versions of the drug. He and Theo had a slightly milder drug. They’d been rescued before Dr. McDonald had perfected her treatment. Dante, Sasha, Jax, Tucker, and Owen had been given the final drug, the one that had supposedly wiped their memories for good. “You didn’t tell me you were getting flashes.”

  “I think we’re all having them,” Tucker replied. “You know Rebecca said it could be only a matter of time before the memories started to come back if her therapy worked. I’ll admit, though, that I had a couple even before we started working with her. They were weird and not very focused. They were more like feelings. After I started working with Rebecca, they got clearer. I hoped mine would be of my childhood or something. Not a reminder that I worked with McDonald. Are we going to parade me by the new girl and see if she smacks me? That should be fun.”

  “It would be informative,” he mused. “Did Ariel ask you to stay in your room?”

  Tucker shook his head. “She did not. Of course, no one told me they were bringing in a woman who could be from my past, so I expect the timing doesn’t mesh. If they thought she might know me, I would be locked away somewhere. Damon’s careful about those things.”

  Something about Tucker’s tone worried him. “Are you starting to have doubts about Damon and the McKay-Taggart crew?”

  He seemed to carefully consider his words. “No. I think they have our best interests at heart.”

  “But?”

  Tucker sighed. “What happens when the pressure is really on? How long can we maintain this? At some point the wrong person is going to see one of us. The Agency still thinks we were the only ones who broke into The Ranch.”

  The Ranch had been a secret testing facility in Colorado where McDonald had done some of her early research. It had been shut down quickly and they’d found a lot of her work still sitting there in the empty facility. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been alone there. “There are people in the Agency who know damn well who got away with the majority of that research.”

  Levi Green had left Jax alive, but he’d taken almost everything Jax and River had found.

  “Yes, but we all know they won’t talk about what really happened, and if it comes down to it, we’ll be the ones to take the fall,” Tucker pointed out. “What happens if they decide to implicate McKay-Taggart? Have we thought about the authorities raiding The Garden? Or the Dallas offices?”

  The door below came open and Emily walked in with Peter.

  “I have to think Big Tag and Damon have thought this through.” The pressure seemed to be building among his men and he had to find a way to solve the problem. It was probably time to talk to Ariel about it.

  “I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany. My husband was stationed here for a couple of years and we fell in love with the place,” Emily was saying. She had a husky voice.

  “It’s a beautiful part of the world,” Peter said. “Ah, here’s Dr. Adisa.”

  Ariel stepped out into the hallway. She was wearing a pretty green dress he’d zipped her into an hour before. She held her hand out and shook the other woman’s. He couldn’t see her face but knew she would have a professional smile on her lips. Not the one she saved for him. The smiles she’d started to give him were intimate, a promise between the two of them.

  What would he do if his brothers wanted to ditch London and go off on their own? He couldn’t leave her.

  “Why don’t you join me in the office? It’s upstairs. I’ll have some tea brought up,” Ariel was saying.

  “I would love that. I’m intrigued by what Mr. Fain told me. I’m going to be honest with you. I never liked the senator. I worked with him because he could actually get things done, but he always seemed sketchy to me. I assumed it was because he was a politician and they all seem sketchy.” That was the moment Emily Seeger looked up. She stopped, her hand on the railing. “Oh, my god.”

  She seemed stuck there, her body going completely still.

  Robert wondered if that was how Rebecca had looked the first time she’d laid eyes on the man she’d known as Steven Reasor. He hated that this would push Tucker further into his shell.

  “Shit,” Tucker said under his breath. “Ariel’s going to kill me.”

  Something seemed to break Emily out of her statue-like state. One minute she was standing there staring at them and the next she was striding up the stairs, her eyes wide. Her hands had started shaking and there was a wild look on her face. He stepped in front of Tucker. No matter what he’d done in the past, he couldn’t let this version of Tucker pay for those crimes.

  “Maybe you should go back to your room and let me sort this out,” Robert offered. He would explain to this woman that the man she used to know as Steven Reasor wasn’t the same man today. He looked to Ariel, who was following Emily up the stairs.

  “Russell? I can’t believe it. I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming.”

  “I have another name?” Tucker asked.

  “Ms. Seeger, perhaps we should talk about this,” Ariel was saying.

  Emily Seeger stopped right in front of Robert and tears streamed down her face. “Russell? I don’t understand. You died. You died. We buried you.”

  A chill went through him. She was talking to him. She was calling him by another name and looking up at him like he meant something to her. “I’m sorry. We’ve never met.”

  “I’m your wife.”

  The room threatened to spin and he looked at Ariel, whose eyes had gone wide.

  His past was here and nothing would be the same again.

  Chapter Nine

  Robert felt sick. This couldn’t be happening and yet here he was with a crying woman in his arms, and it absolutely wasn’t the woman he wanted in his arms.

  Emily Seeger had practically collapsed, and he’d caught her out of pure instinct. She hadn’t seemed capable of walking on her own, so he’d picked her up and carried her into the communal space where they usually spent their time playing video games or watching TV.

  “I don’t understand.” Emily wouldn’t let go. When he’d tried to set her on the couch, she’d wrapped her arms around him and refused to move. She stared up at him, tears streaming down her face.

  “Maybe we should talk for a moment or two.” Ariel’s voice was shaky.

  Ariel was here and he had his hands on another woman. He didn’t want them there, didn’t want Ari to think for a second that he wasn’t fully hers. He took a step back. She tried briefly to keep her hold on him, but he gently broke it. He turned toward Ariel, who shook her head.

  Damn it. Nausea threatened. He needed to talk to her, but she was clearly not ready for that. Calm. He needed to find his calm and deal with this the way he’d been trained.

  This woman had information. That was how he needed to look at it. But first he needed to ascertain if she was even t
elling the truth. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been lied to. He looked up at Tucker, who was watching the whole scene play out. “Could you go and update the rest of the group on what’s happening? They might want to start gathering some data for me.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  He was not about to put up with Tucker’s love of drama. Not now. “Yes, I need you to do your job.”

  Tucker’s eyes turned somber as he glanced at Ariel and he nodded and left.

  “I’ll be outside if you need me,” Peter said before he followed.

  “Ariel, I would like for you to stay.” He didn’t want her walking out until he could walk with her.

  Emily looked from him to Ariel. “What’s going on here? I was told this was some kind of query into how Senator McDonald died. I thought you people were investigators, and then I walk in here and my dead husband is standing there looking at me. Don’t try to tell me you’re not Russell Seeger. You look exactly like him. You sound like him. I know my husband. What kind of game are you playing with me?”

  Ariel shook her head. “It’s not a game. The man standing before you has severe retrograde amnesia. He can’t remember anything about his life before his traumatic brain injury.”

  That was one way to put it, but then Ariel was telling him they were going slow with this woman.

  He stared at her. He felt absolutely nothing for the woman with tears in her eyes. He didn’t have any sense at all that there was something between the two of them. All he wanted was to haul Ariel off and tell her that nothing had changed.

  “Amnesia?” Emily wiped the tears off her cheeks. “I don’t understand.”

  Ariel found a box of tissues and handed them over before settling herself in the seat across from them. “Why don’t you tell us how Robert died?”

  “His name is Russell,” Emily insisted.

  “He knows himself as Robert.” Ariel had gone straight into therapist mode. He’d seen her do it a thousand times when emotions were running high. A placid mask came over her and her voice took on a soothing tone. “He doesn’t remember anything about his life before. You need to understand that he’s spent the last several years as Robert McClellan.”