“I appreciate the offer, but in case you forgot, I have never been one of those women who want others to fight their battles for them.” She put her hand down on the door handle, readying to step out.
He raised his hands in surrender. “I...just... Fine. Whatever.”
This whole thing? It was going to be impossible.
There was a knock on the trunk of her car and, looking back, Mike saw that there was a tall, Mack-truck-size guy staring daggers at him.
If this was her ex, it was no wonder she hadn’t wanted him to go have a talk. Mike wasn’t a small man by any means; he had even prided himself on being thick with muscle...not bodybuilder thick, but still stacked. And yet, if this thing came to blows, not even Mike was sure that he would win. This dude must have been the kind who lifted at least twice a day, seven days a week.
Yep. He had been right. The guy was an ass.
Or maybe, if Mike was being completely honest with himself, maybe there was a dash of inadequacy peppered through his psyche.
The man walked up to Summer’s side of the car. She opened the door in a hurry and jumped out, slamming the door behind her. Maybe she was afraid Mike would lose the fight too.
The guy kept moving, so Summer couldn’t block him from seeing him, calculated actions that indicated the dude wasn’t as stupid as Mike had initially assumed. Though he probably couldn’t take him at fists, he did have enough street skills to bring the man to his knees.
Though Summer had closed the car door behind her, Mike tried not to listen to their conversation, though it was barely muffled through the thin glass of the car’s windows. He turned around and faced the back of the car seat where Joe was sucking away on a pacifier.
“Hi, little guy,” he said, smiling at him in the mirror attached to the headrest of the back seat.
Joe smiled up at him, the pacifier teetering at the edge of his mouth.
“We are going to play football when you get bigger. Would you like that?” he asked, his voice high and pleasing.
Joe gurgled in response. The sound made him chuckle. But as the noise escaped him, Summer yelled, “No! That is crap. You have no business. How dare you!”
The teetering blue pacifier dropped from Joe’s lips and, at the sound of his mother’s angry voice, tears started to well in the baby’s eyes. His lip quivered. A piercing wail filled the air.
Mike unbuckled his seat belt, turned fully around and unstrapped the baby. “It’s okay, little guy. They are just doing adult stuff. I don’t like it, either,” he cooed, trying to comfort his son.
If this was how Summer and her ex communicated with one another, it was no wonder they hadn’t lasted. Though she and Mike had had their fair share of problems when they had been together, they had never fought like that. They had both respected each other enough not to let their disagreements turn into screaming matches.
He scooped Joe into his arms and started to gently rock back and forth with him as he hummed “Two Little Blackbirds.” Joe’s cries started to subside, but he still whimpered as his mother and Ben stood outside the car and yelled.
Mike’d never seen Summer like that before, that angry or that loud. Even when she had been royally pissed with him, she had stormed away. Had she changed since they had broken up? Had he turned her into this raging woman?
Ben called Summer a word that didn’t bear repeating.
That was it. That was the final straw.
He stepped out of the car, Joe perched on his hip as he walked around to the driver’s side. “Look, I know there is something going on here, and frankly I don’t care. But what I do care about is that you are having a screaming match out in the middle of the parking lot in front of your neighbors and my son. If you guys can’t control yourselves, then you need to go inside or put a pin in this until you both come to your senses and decide to act like adults.”
Ben stared daggers at him. “And who the hell do you think you are that you think you can come out here and talk to me like this?”
Mike handed Joe off to Summer. “First of all, I’m Joe’s father. The name’s Mike. And, second of all, if you are looking for a fight, I’m more than happy to oblige. At least you would be picking one with someone who stands a chance. Or do you just face off with women?”
Ben moved his head side to side as though popping his neck in preparation for a rumble.
Oh yeah, Mike was definitely going to get his butt kicked, but if it meant taking the pressure off of Summer, at least it was for a good reason.
“Look, Ben, I’ve heard all about you and what a crappy dude you were to Summer. So, I don’t know how you think you can stand there and talk to me like you have some kind of moral high ground. You are the lowest piece of garbage—”
Summer stepped between them. “Stop. You two need to stop.”
Two apartments down, a man opened his front door and stepped outside.
They were definitely drawing all kinds of the wrong attention.
“Look, let’s go to my place. We can all talk and—”
“There is no way that I’m going to walk into an apartment with this jerk,” Ben said, thrusting his thumb in Mike’s direction.
Yeah, he certainly felt like a jerk right now for stepping into the middle of Summer’s personal relationship, but then again, he wasn’t the one using expletives to talk about Summer. The man didn’t have any kind of room to judge him; at least he knew how to treat women.
“Yeah, you’re right, Ben, if we both walk into that apartment, only one of us will walk out.”
Ben laughed, the sound low and dangerous. “I know you think you are some kind of badass, that you kill people for a living and get away with it. But I’ve got your number. I know exactly who you are and what you are actually capable of.”
Summer talking about Mike to anyone, especially another one of her lovers, felt like a huge slap in his face. He had always thought that, given the nature of his work and the promises they had made to one another, she would never divulge any of the information that he had shared with her about him or what he did. He was supposed to be nothing more than a shadow in her life, a faceless someone from her past—as far as other men were concerned. And yet it seemed as though she had compromised his safety. But that was a fight he was going to have to shelve for now.
Mike smiled, matching Ben’s malice. “That’s good. Then I don’t need to tell you how serious I am, and how much I mean that if I ever see you again, or if you are ever around my son or Summer, I will hunt you down.”
“I sure as hell know you don’t know who I am, but I hope to hell you do know the woman you are trying to stick up for.” Ben looked over at her and smirked. “She isn’t the pristine little angel she pretends to be. She might as well be called Black Widow with as many men as she has killed when they walked out of her bed... It’s a wonder you and I are even still alive.”
Summer pulled a gun from behind her waistband and pointed it square at Ben’s center mass. “Get the hell out of here, Ben, or you will be the next one I kill.”
CHAPTER SIX
Summer had not anticipated things going as they had, or she would have just kept on driving until they were back in Missoula. Now, she had a whole hell of a lot of explaining to do.
They watched as Ben got into his car and squealed his tires as he pulled out of the apartment complex’s parking lot.
She couldn’t blame him for being pissed off with her; she hadn’t wanted to get into a yelling match, either. That was always the last tool in her arsenal...well, that and her Glock. She slipped the subcompact back into the holster nestled into the crook of her stomach just over her appendix.
“Please tell me that was the one and only time you have ever pulled a gun on someone you didn’t intend on shooting.” Mike took Joe back from her, like her pulling a gun on the man who had threatened to do her harm in some way made her a delinquent
parent.
“If he didn’t leave, who said I wasn’t going to shoot him? You don’t know what Ben is capable of.”
“No, but he seemed to know exactly what you are capable of...and me for that matter.” Mike hesitated, but she had already heard the hurt in his voice. “How does he know about me? About my past? Does he know who I work for? What I do?”
She stared at her feet. “I never told Ben what you did. He just sort of figured it out over time. He doesn’t know who you work for or what you do...at least not really. He just assumed.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell him not to assume certain things?” Mike countered. “You know that his knowing severely compromises me. Who in the hell else knows who I am and what I do?” As he spoke, his words came faster and faster as the rage burned through him. “And now he knows what I look like, he could pick me out of a lineup. Do you want him...do you want me...to end up dead?”
“You know I would never intentionally put you in danger, ever. Your secrets have always been and will always be safe with me. I didn’t tell him anything. He just wanted to get a rise out of you. Please. Mike, believe me.” Her chest clenched as she thought about the times she should have stopped Ben from ever even broaching the subject about her exes. Yet, Ben had always been adamant in comparing himself to all the others she had once had in her life.
Keeping him at arm’s length while she had been investigating him and his job at Rockwood had forced her to make far too many compromises when it came to her own well-being. Being a spy and infiltrating the Rockwood network to find out who had been stealing secrets had been more of a challenge than she could have ever expected. It was why she had broken things off with Ben and then requested more training before she was thrown too deeply back into the Rockwood—or any—clandestine investigation.
It was hard to believe her past, present and future were all colliding into this one epic mess.
She didn’t know what to say or to do to make things right; avoidance seemed like her only option. So she smiled, the action forced, but it was the only appeasement she knew would work in a moment like this. “You want to come in and see my place? It’s not much, but it is mine.” There was a touch of sultry familiarity in her voice.
Mike sighed, as though he knew exactly what she was doing to get him to ignore the awkwardness between them.
Without waiting for him to speak, she walked to her door and let them in. As he made his way into her box-filled den with its one leather recliner and a baby swing, she was overcome with embarrassment. This place was a far cry from her Barbie dream house, but after the breakup it was all she could find. Great Falls had some nice apartments, but mostly they had military families and officers from nearby Malmstrom Air Force Base as their long-term tenants.
Mike put Joe down and he sat upright for a moment, then he broke in to a mad-dash crawl toward a stuffed octopus near the swing.
“Dang. That kid is fast,” Mike said with a laugh.
He could pretend not to notice the stains on the carpet and the dog scratches at the corner of the entryway all he wanted, but she knew what he had to be thinking.
“I don’t plan on being here for long. I just need to figure things out at work and then we will get a real place. Ya know?”
“You don’t need to worry about what I think about your place. I told you, I get it.”
“Do you want something to drink?” she asked, pointing to the only chair in the place. “I’ll go get you something. I think I have some...” She did a quick inventory of what she could possibly have in her fridge. If she remembered correctly, there may have been a beer, but only one.
“Water is fine.” He looked toward her kitchen and had to have been noticing that the only thing on the counters was a bargain-basement toaster.
It was a harsh reality to see a person’s makeshift life through the eyes of another. “You can tell I’ve become a bit of a minimalist.” She laughed nervously as she walked to the kitchen, grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap.
“How long have you been living here?” Mike asked, sitting next to Joe on the floor and picking up the octopus. He tapped Joe’s nose with one of the octopus’s tentacles, making Joe gurgle and smile.
“Just a few months.” Well, if a few meant about six.
“How long did you and Ben date after we broke up?”
She didn’t know that exact date, either. Ever since the wedding had been called off and she had given birth to Joe, everything had been a whirl of well-baby checkups and trips to the store for baby supplies added into the jumble of trying to get her career moving in the right direction. Ben had been a stepping stone for her career, but she could hardly tell that to Mike.
“I don’t know how long we were together, to be honest. I mean we were friends, then stayed together a lot, and he was great with Joe for the most part...”
“Does he really work for a petroleum company?” Mike prodded, the question coming from out of nowhere.
She gave him a befuddled look as her body clenched. “Why do you ask?”
“Don’t you think it a bit odd that your boyfriend was working out of North Dakota, but living dozens of hours away in a nowhere town at the edge of a military base best known for nuclear weapons?”
She had contemplated Ben’s inane cover story more times than she had wanted to, but it was how he had always asked her to introduce him. “What about it? You know just as well as I do that most people can telecommute now.”
“I agree. But you can’t tell me that he moved to Great Falls because of the beauty of the place.”
Great Falls was as nasty as Medusa’s stare in the winter and hot, dry and unforgiving in the summer. It was flat and desolate, and the winds ripped through the plains all year ’round, but there was an austere, understated beauty to the place. It definitely wasn’t a tropical paradise that drew in nature lovers, though. Problem number two with Ben’s story. But it had been his story.
“You and I both know that, given the nature of our jobs, we tend to respect secrets.” She wanted to tell him the truth, tell him who Ben really was, but now wasn’t the time. It would only make this fight worse and threaten their safety.
“And yet you told him what I did.”
So, he wasn’t going to let it go. Odd that her palace didn’t make him so gobsmacked that he forgot about their fight. She chuckled, the sound admittedly out of place and wrong in the tense world that rested between them. “I already told you, I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Have you lost your damned mind?”
Oh no, you don’t. Her hackles rose as his inflammatory accusation drifted down like a spent ember.
“Excuse me?” she challenged, letting his words flitter through his psyche so he could hear exactly how wrong they were before she chose to answer.
“I...” he started then said, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean, I am surprised that you would let a man like Ben, one whose story doesn’t quite fit, this close to Joe. You have always been the kind to ask too many questions, to make sure that everything lines up and is triple-checked. What happened?”
Again, did he really want to ask her that question? It seemed like he was asking her to rain fury down. And yet his words struck home. She had made a mistake, a huge mistake in letting Ben in their lives. But she had been doing her job, and sometimes the lines between personal and professional had to be blurred because of Joe’s age and his intense needs.
“First, things between Ben and me were never what I would call serious.” She took a quick breath, trying to check her anger before it flew from her lips. “You. Joe. Life. That is what happened to me. I don’t know if you can tell or not,” she said, motioning all around her apartment, “but I’m struggling a bit right now. I’m trying my hardest to do all the things and do them well, and when a man came into my life wanting virtually nothing but to be a source of love and kindness, I
let down my guard and let him in. Can you blame me after all you put me through?”
The silence between them was broken only with the sounds of Joe talking gibberish to his toy.
“I think it’s ridiculous that you think you can come in here and start judging me for the way I’ve conducted my life,” she raged. “I had a plan. I had a man I loved in my life. I had my world figured out and I was preparing to run, to make this life everything I had ever dreamed of, and you pulled it all out from under my feet. You are the one who needs to answer for what life has become. Not me.”
She was pretty sure she could see a red welt rising on his face where she had just slapped him with her words.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Mike said, moving near enough that he could wipe a tear from the corner of her eye.
Damn it, why did she have to cry when she was angry?
She moved away from his touch, not letting him console her.
He had done this. He deserved to watch her fall apart in front of him. To bear witness to the ravaging effects of one decision...a decision she had not been able to make with him and yet that had had the power to strip her future away.
Screw him.
From the way he moved into her, she could tell that he wanted to pull her into his arms and console her. He’d always been so damned good at making her forget the pain, and yet she doubted his touch would work like it once had. After a person crushed a soul, they no longer held the power or tools to rebuild it.
She was the only one who could rebuild her life. And right now, that meant boxes where there should have been chairs and questions where there should have been answers. Mike was just going to have to deal with what she had done with her life, whether he liked it or not.
“I never thought—”
“Yeah, that’s one of the truest statements you’ve ever made,” she said, her words laced with venom.
Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 22
