And now he just felt silly.
She smiled, and it felt genuine. But, no. He wasn’t interested in help or anything else she might offer.
Maybe she figured it out because she added, “My name is Nat. Why don’t you let me buy you a drink while you wait for your friend?” She winked and pressed her hand to his chest. “You can tell your secret at how you stop pucks.”
“I don’t stop pucks, if you happened to catch the game.” He touched her hand, intending on moving it.
“You caught it. You just dropped it.”
He looked at her. “Even worse. Sorry, I really don’t want to talk about it. Besides, I need to find my friend.”
York, show up.
He’d heard about the man from RJ—in fact, she couldn’t stop talking about the American agent who had saved her life.
And apparently, Coco’s life.
No, Wyatt wasn’t jealous, but…fine, maybe a little. Because he wanted to be the one to save her life. Be a hero in her eyes, back before he’d screwed it all up.
He pushed past Nat and scanned the room again. The bar was filling up with players from other teams—Czech, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian. The press had found them—he noticed more than a few women with press passes. Waiters carried drinks to tables.
Jace stood in the corner of the room, his back to the lobby, talking with Deke.
Movement behind him caught Wyatt’s attention.
A woman. Petite. A little curvy, but mostly just small, athletic. Wearing a hoodie.
She turned and met his eyes.
Coco.
Seeing her hit him like a punch, right to his sternum, knocking the wind from him.
Time stopped as her luminous gray-green eyes stared him down.
Then the past grabbed his heart, and he was standing on the other side of his hotel room door, staring down at her, laughter spilling out behind them. Coco. What are you doing here?
Coco whirled and took off across the parquet floor of the lobby.
Not again.
He launched after her, pushing through the room, past Jace, and straight out into the lobby. Her name stung his lips, nearly pouring out, but she wasn’t just fleeing him, but a known assassin, probably, so he clamped down on his shout and lengthened his strides as he followed her path.
He hit the far hallway.
Gone.
Yeah, well, he had longer legs. He sprinted, rounded the corner, and caught sight of her quick-walking down the hall.
“Coco!”
He couldn’t help the shout and his voice practically boomed down the hallway and lit a fire under her.
For the love of— “Stop running!”
She pushed through the back doors out into a courtyard.
He caught the doors before they closed. She’d opened up now, moving fast as she wound her way around flower beds and planted trees in the landscaped garden.
He didn’t bother dodging them and ran right through the gardens, a straight line toward her.
She was cutting through a gazebo that overlooked the river when he caught up to her.
“Stop!”
And because he didn’t want to tackle her, he ran up and caught her around her waist, pulling her against him, easy. He braced his hand on a pillar in the gazebo, breathing hard. “Stop. Please.”
“Let go of me.” She turned in his arms, pushing against his chest.
“Not until you promise to stop running.”
“Fine,” she snapped.
And yeah, he should let her go, immediately, but, shoot, he’d missed her, and with everything inside him, he just wanted to wrap both arms around her and hold on. To breathe in the scent of her skin. Look into her eyes and see…well, there was a part of Coco that must still love him. He believed that with everything inside him.
Or maybe just hoped for it with the power of every heartbeat.
But he didn’t want to be that guy, the one who scared her, used his brute force on her. Made her feel helpless and small.
He let her go.
She stepped back, her mouth tight. Her hood had fallen off, and he nearly reached out and touched her hair, black as night, and startlingly bold and beautiful, despite his love for her usual red.
It only made her gray-green eyes stand out in a bright and terrible beauty, especially when sheened with tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said now, not sure why. “I just didn’t want you to get away. Why did you run?”
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I…” She swallowed and looked back at him. Wiped a hand across her face. “I’m not sure why I’m crying. I’m just—”
“Wow, I’ve missed you.”
Her eyes widened.
Oh, that sounded pitiful and heartbroken, but—
“Please tell me you’re okay.” Because he’d almost forgotten that she’d been shot just over a month ago. “Did you—are you—” He ran his hand behind his neck, squeezing tight. “RJ said you were shot.”
His heart fell when she nodded. “But I’m okay. I’m healing.”
His jaw clenched against a horrible roaring in his chest. “Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head.
His chest uncoiled from the terrible knot inside. “I…I was worried.”
That got the tiniest of small, tentative smiles. He wanted to reach out and touch the side of her mouth, capture it.
“I noticed,” she said. “How many messages did you leave?”
Oh. Those. “You…got them?”
She nodded. “But I was afraid to answer. I didn’t want…well, maybe RJ told you that—”
“Yes.” He held up his hand, glancing around. There weren’t others out here, but just saying the words—assassin, Russian general, and maybe even conspiracy—felt like it might alert some FSB tracking system. They were in the former Soviet Union. “I know everything.”
Her eyes widened, and he might have been imagining it, but it seemed she had paled, her breaths shallow.
He couldn’t stop himself from putting his hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay, Coco—”
“Kat. I’m Kat now.”
He drew that in. Um, never, but he didn’t say that. “So, here’s the plan. You’re an American citizen, so you don’t need a visa to get into the country. I’ve got a flight out in a couple days. We’ll leave tomorrow with the team, go to the US Consulate in Vladivostok, tell them you lost your passport, and they’ll issue you a temporary one. Then we’ll fly out with the team and—”
“No.” She backed out of his grip. “I’m not leaving, Wyatt. I…I appreciate that you came all this way, but…I can’t leave.”
He had nothing, her words reaching in to steal his heartbeat. His breath.
His entire future, the one that still made him look into the stands in hopes she might be there, cheering for him. Waiting for him after practice.
In his world, where she belonged.
“You’re in danger here, Co—Kat.” And yeah, he was pleading, but, “Please come back to the US with me. I can keep you safe—”
Even as he said it, it sounded hollow. He wasn’t Tate the bodyguard. Or Ford the Navy Seal, or even Knox or Reuben who had their own brand of toughness.
He was just an athlete. And a cover model—yeah, that had made him feel silly, but Nick Coyote, his publicist, said it was good for his image.
Wyatt had wanted to turn all the copies face in on the newsstand.
So no, Wyatt probably couldn’t protect her. But he wanted to, and maybe that counted, right?
“You’ll be safe on the ranch” was all he could come up with.
She was shaking her head. “I…I just can’t, Wyatt. But I did bring the evidence you need to prove that RJ is innocent.” She pulled out a jump drive, a tiny USB stick, and held it out to him.
He stared at it as if it might be a bomb, his world sort of exploding.
“No—” He met her eyes. “No. I want you, Coco. I want—please.” And now he couldn’t stop himself—he touched her face
, earnest. “Please. I haven’t…I miss you. And I—”
“You have plenty of friends,” she said, looking away, a flash of hurt in her eyes.
He frowned. Shook his head. “I don’t—”
She swiped his hand away from her. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t leave. I won’t leave.” She looked back at him, and a tear slid down her face.
It shattered him as it dripped off her cheek.
And he just…
Oh, no, he kissed her. Because he’d lost his head and he didn’t know what else to do to show her how he felt, so he slid his hand behind her neck, bent down, and pressed his mouth against hers.
He was desperate and pitiful, and oh, how he’d missed her. He drank her in, kissing her with so much of himself outside his body, he didn’t have the strength to rein it in.
And heaven help him, for a second, it worked. Sure, at first she froze, probably from shock, maybe anger, and if she’d fought him in the least, he would have let her go, but…
But she grabbed his shirt with a fist and held on. And in a glorious, beautiful, breathtaking moment, her mouth softened and she kissed him back, as if she missed him too.
He gentled his kiss, moved his arm around her, pulled her against him. She’d always been such a perfect fit in his arms, and even now, the old feelings rushed over him, hot, a strange sort of homesickness he hadn’t tasted in years.
Coco. He’d take a thousand more hits at goal for this moment, to feel her body relax against his. To know—
She leaned away, shaking her head, her hands pushing against him. “No, Wyatt…no, no—”
He let her go, her words like fire, flashing over to scorch him. “Coco, c’mon—”
“You can’t kiss me and then just walk out of my life.” She pressed her hands to her mouth, shaking her head. “Don’t—it’s not fair.”
Not. Fair—? “Walk out of your life—what are you talking about? You’re the one who left! Who…” Broke my heart. “You left me. Twice—no, three times.”
She looked away. “Twice because once you didn’t even notice I’d left.”
He stared at her. What? “Coco, I don’t get it. I don’t understand any of it. Why you came to me in Russia two years ago. Why you even left Montana in the first place. You…” And then, he couldn’t take it. “You broke my heart, okay? I thought after we…” His voice wavered, and he swallowed hard. Fought the urge to reach out to her again. “I thought we meant something to each other.”
Her breath hiccupped. “We did, Wyatt. But…” She shook her head.
The kiss was right there, lingering between them, and the way she kept looking at him, half fear, half hope.
A huge part of him could swear she wanted him to kiss her again.
But maybe he couldn’t read her anymore.
Still, he couldn’t let it end again. Not like this. He fought to school his voice, away from desperate, back to rational.
Nobody played well with their emotions spilling out everywhere.
“Listen. I know we have something. We always have, and I…I want you to come to America. With me. I want us to be together. Be happy.”
Her jaw tightened at his words, her eyes sparking. “Yeah, well, guess what. Life doesn’t give us what we want. And happily ever afters don’t exist and…our best hope is to survive. I appreciate that you came all the way over here, Wyatt. But I can’t go with you.”
“Why not—”
“I can’t!” She clenched her jaw. Swallowed. “Listen. I’m sorry, but…you should just forget about me.”
Forget—?
“Take this home and clear your sister.”
She shoved the USB drive into his hand and closed his fingers over it.
Then she met his eyes.
His had started to blur.
“Goodbye, Wyatt.” She swept her hand across her cheek. “And, by the way, great game. You deserved to win.”
Then, while he gaped at her, she turned and ran out of his life.
Again.
So, that wasn’t at all how her clandestine meeting was supposed to go.
With Coco blubbering her way through some flimsy explanation that probably made no sense, shoving the USB drive into Wyatt’s hand, and for the third and probably final time, fleeing.
Apparently, that’s what she did best. Run. From the only real family she’d ever known, from the love of her life. She’d even run from the shadow existence she’d pieced together in Moscow as the personal computer genius-slash-hacker for one of the most powerful generals in the Russian military.
Her father.
A man who’d recently nearly been assassinated. A man whose daughter was probably a valuable pawn to nab, manipulate, and hold hostage.
Aw, maybe she should have said yes to Wyatt’s really bad but earnest escape-from-Russia plan.
She nearly did. Nearly stepped back into those amazing arms and let him rescue her.
Wake up, Kat. She did not need rescuing, thank you. She’d been on her own since she was eighteen, and frankly even before that had learned how to take care of herself.
Coco slid into the Lada parked down the street from the Intourist Hotel, locked the door, and sat in the darkness.
Stared at the hotel.
She could go back inside. Tell him the truth. I can’t leave Russia without my son. Our son.
She closed her eyes, imagining how that might play out.
Shock? Certainly. Anger? Most definitely—and rightly so. She should have told him she was pregnant five years ago, or three, or two or…anytime over the past year when he’d tried to chat with her online.
No, when she told him, it would have to be the perfect place and time.
And most importantly, when everyone was safe.
She started the Lada and pulled out, driving down Karl Marx Street, turning off onto Lenin Street, then onto a side street toward one of the older buildings at the end of Lermontova, and parked in the lot. The nine-story apartment building was one of the newer ones, but she passed by a monument of a World War II or 2–era tank on her way inside.
These newer apartments came with security codes at the door, and she punched in the code and entered. The difference between the Russian streets and the apartments could be startling—going from crumbling buildings, weedy, broken parking lots, and trash-littered alleys to bright and shiny, clean and new apartments. She took the lift up to the ninth floor and hit the buzzer.
The inner door opened, and a blonde woman, her hair cut short in a bob, answered. She wore a pair of leggings and a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows. “Hey,” Sarai Novik said through the window in the metal door as she inserted the key into the lock.
It whined open.
“Hey.” Coco stepped past her.
“You don’t look so good. You all right?”
Other than her puffy face and the fact she’d only stopped crying? “Yeah, I’m fine. I just…oy!” She stepped over the threshold into Sarai’s four-room apartment and was nearly mowed down by a five-year-old on a bike riding down the hallway. She caught the handlebars, dodging the front wheel.
“Vitya, I told you—no riding your bike in the house,” Sarai said and shooed him off the bike.
He could wreck Coco with his smile. Blond like his mother, with hazel-green eyes like his father, Roman, and a little older than Mikka.
Coco simply stared at him as he dropped his bike by the door and scampered down the hallway to his room.
“He’s got the energy of three boys,” Sarai said, motioning Coco to the kitchen. “Roman installed a jungle gym in his room, complete with a pull-up bar and a rope swing so he could burn some of it off. But he’s more exhausting than a roomful of trauma patients.” Sarai patted a kitchen chair. “Let me take a look at your wound.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sit down.”
“It’s healing fine,” Coco said, but sank into the chair, pulling off her hoodie. She tugged down her waistband enough for Sarai to look at her wound, now a bri
ght, angry red scar.
“Want to talk about it?”
Coco sighed. “No.” Yes. “I saw someone from my past.”
Sarai probed the wound, then got up. “And…?” She turned the heat on under a tea kettle, the Russian way to solve every problem.
The door lock bolts slid back, and Sarai turned just as her husband, Roman, walked into the room. A former special ops soldier, he now trained militia and other spec ops types. Vitya ran down the hall, and his father scooped him up.
Roman had spooked Coco the first time she’d met him, at the train station. He’d worn a black sweater, a pair of black pants, and sort of blended right into the night. He’d materialized only after York practically carried her off the train, his help volunteered by an American consulate director they’d met in Moscow.
The consulate director just happened to be Sarai’s brother, David Curtiss. And a friend of Roman’s.
With short hair and probing, hazel-green eyes, Roman had borne the grim look of a soldier as he drove them to his flat. York told him about their run-in with the Russian mafia, who York believed had hired the assassin, and finally the circumstances of the shooting, namely said assassin finding them in a dark alley in Yekaterinburg.
Roman had agreed to hide Coco, under his physician wife’s care, as Coco healed.
York didn’t know Roman either, but the two hit it off in a camaraderie born from understanding the sacrifices of patriotism. York had left her under Roman’s protection while he returned to Moscow and tried to track down Gustov.
He’d called last night, needing help with a hacking project, with the news of the meet, and the reality that he’d be delayed. Hence Coco’s field trip to the hotel.
She probably would have found herself at the hotel anyway, her traitorous heart begging to see Wyatt.
Why oh why did she always set herself up for heartache?
Roman set Vitya down and patted his bum. “Time for bed, lapichka. Scoot.”
Sarai got up and headed down the hall, running her hand over Roman’s arm as he headed into the kitchen.
“So? Did you make the handoff?” Roman asked.
“The USB drive? Yes, I gave it to Wyatt Marshall.”
“That hockey player?” Roman said. “I saw his picture on television.”
Roman had played a little hockey himself, back at university.
Wyatt Page 3
