Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Nichole Severn

  His shoulders fell and he looked crestfallen. “You’re right. I didn’t think. I would have never asked you to marry me, I would have never dated you, if this is what I thought would happen. I have only ever wanted what was best for you.”

  Though she was fuming with anger, she believed him. Mike wasn’t a bad man. There was no way that he could have ever wanted to hurt her as he had, but that didn’t make the pain any less real. It only meant that he was as clumsy and as ill suited to love as she was.

  “You weren’t the only person in the relationship. I chose you and wanted the best too.”

  And though this was a low point, she couldn’t say she actually regretted falling in love with Mike. He had given her a beautiful baby boy and many hours of happy and blissful memories. And, oh, the way he had once been able to make her laugh.

  “You were proof to me that I could really love,” Mike said, sending her a soft look that made all the anger still pulsing through her seep through the tips of her toes and disappear into the ground.

  It was that look and his unexpected moments of sweetness that had made her fall in love with him in the first place. He had so many facets to him and, standing here, looking at him, she was reminded of what a great man he was...and how much she missed having him in her life. And yet she couldn’t let herself be swept up by him again. As sweet as Mike could be, he could become equally cold and hard.

  He moved in closer to her, so close she could feel his breath against the skin of her face. Her heart thrashed in her chest, just as confused by all the emotions it was feeling as she was. The ancient Egyptians had believed the center of all thought was the heart; and in this moment, she could understand how an entire culture could believe such a thing. Her heart definitely had a mind of its own, one totally independent of the logical and rational thoughts that filled her brain.

  He didn’t love her and she didn’t love him. At least, not like that, not like this moment, this closeness, seemed to indicate. Sure, she would love him as the father of her son and the man she had once promised her life to, but now it couldn’t be that way. They could only love one another for the people they had become, people who were strangers to one another. He only knew her before the pain.

  And yet, when he leaned in close and his lips brushed against hers, she didn’t back away. The kiss started slow, gentle as a butterfly’s wings’ caress against her skin. Perhaps he was just as afraid of what was about to happen as she was, but yearning for her as she was for him.

  Yearning. That was it. This wasn’t love. This wasn’t something so stupid. This was just her body needing his body. Nothing more. It was the familiar. He was the familiar.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through the back of his shaggy hair. It was odd how, in a moment like this, she was reminded of how much she had loved his soft hair and the way it felt in her fingers while his lips pressed against hers. It was the conglomeration of sensations—the soft and the firm, the hot and the cold, and the push and the pull—that had always made this man so... So right.

  She moaned into his mouth as his hungry kiss grew more voracious. He felt so good pressed against her, his body telling hers that he had missed her just as much as she had missed him.

  Maybe they weren’t really strangers, after all.

  Maybe his leaving her had just been a stupid mistake.

  She had made mistakes.

  She could forgive him.

  Yes.

  Especially if he kept kissing her. His lips moved down her neck and his hand moved up beneath her shirt, finding its way under the cloth of her bra. He thumbed her nipple, making it harden and ache for the warm softness of his mouth.

  And then Joe laughed, the sound bright and cheery.

  The sound stopped the advance.

  Mike pulled back and Summer readjusted her shirt, suddenly feeling like a teenager who had just been caught making out by a wayward parent.

  Running her hand over her hair, it came to rest on her neck in the place where Mike had just been kissing her. Oh, and had he been kissing her.

  Mike did a little sidestep and turned away from her to face Joe. He scooped him up in his arms and lifted him toward the ceiling, laughing as he moved. “You! You know how to ruin a moment, don’t you?” He laughed. “You are definitely my kiddo, Mr. Man.”

  Joe giggled, arching his back like he was doing a baby version of Superman as Mike walked him around up in the air. “‘It’s a bird. It’s a plane...’”

  “It’s mother nature’s best form of birth control,” she finished, laughing.

  Mike lowered Joe onto his hip. He came over and gave her a long, soft kiss on the cheek. “Maybe we should have had a kid together a long time ago.”

  His words came as a surprise. So much so, she didn’t know what to say.

  Just yesterday she had thought that Mike was going to be furious with her, that he was never going to speak to her again after she told him about Joe. And now, here they were almost falling into the trap of being a happy family.

  This...this was far too good to last. She had to tell him the truth before things went any further and she hurt him. If she told him now, he might still forgive her.

  “Mike, I have to tell you something.”

  The joy that filled his face drifted away as he must have recognized the reserve in her tone. “What?”

  “Promise me that you won’t be angry with me if I tell you,” she countered.

  He frowned. “That is like asking someone to forgive you for a mistake you know you are about to make, and yet you don’t stop.”

  Oh, this was going to be a mistake, no doubt. But some things had to be said, some truths had to be known. Without them, there were only false starts and empty promises.

  If he was going to come back into their lives, he needed to come back fully aware of what that would mean for them all.

  “You know I worked for STRIKE...” She paused.

  “Yeah.”

  She hadn’t meant that as a question, but she was glad for the moment to collect her thoughts. “Well, things go a little deeper than that.” She looked down at her hands.

  But did she really need to feel as sullen as she did? She’d not known this would be where things would head with them; if anything, she had just been looking for the right moment to really open up to him and tell him the truth. She needed to know, regardless of their past, that she could still trust him.

  And though she wasn’t entirely sure she could, she had to try. She had to tell him the truth about Ben, and what he had come here for, and then let the chips fall.

  She wanted Mike to say something, but he just stood there looking at her, studying her and waiting for her. The silence was more painful than she could have expected.

  “You were right about Ben. He doesn’t just work for a petroleum company—it’s a little more complicated than that.”

  He scoffed, stepping back from her. “No crap. I called that.”

  She chewed at her bottom lip, wishing she had allowed the kiss to keep going instead of standing there and exposing her weak points.

  “He wasn’t here to get back together, was he?” Mike continued.

  She shook her head.

  “What did he want from you?”

  She swallowed back the fear that had pooled in her throat. “He and I...we both worked for the same team at a certain point. We don’t anymore. And when I quit, apparently they came to suspect some things about me, thanks to Ben. Things I can’t tell you about. But if they find out that there is any validity to the rumors, they are going to take Joe and kill me. Mike, I’m afraid.”

  Mike’s eyes widened and she was sure she saw flames at their centers. “And here I thought I needed to be a gentleman. If I ever see Ben again, he’s as good as dead.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mike wanted to go back in ti
me and take Ben out. One little tap of the trigger and Summer’s problem would be handled for good. He really should have trusted his gut about the guy, but it was hard to look at any situation objectively when it involved an ex and their newest fling.

  He just couldn’t get over the fact that Summer had let this man into her life. Seeing Ben as merely a jerk of an ex, a man who didn’t know how to treat women, was bad enough, but then add a death threat and it took his hate toward the guy impossibly deeper.

  Ben had to go.

  “I’ll take care of him. Where does he live? He can’t be that far ahead of me. I bet I can still get the drop on him.” Mike’s thoughts were a flurry of whats, buts and whys. He needed to be logical. Stop his mouth and click on his brain. But first he needed some answers. “Does he think you will tell me who he is? The threat I pose to him?”

  If the guy was smart, he would already be heading for the hills in anticipation that Mike would be just about to come bearing down on him. No matter the status of Mike and Summer’s relationship, she was the mother of his son and if anyone dared threaten them, hell would have no greater fury.

  The man had to know his ass was on the line. That meant any sort of element of surprise was well out of the question.

  If only he had taken the lead when he had first heard about this dude, maybe it wouldn’t have played out like this. Mike could have lied about who he was, what he was doing there...if only Summer had told him the truth earlier. If only she had been honest about her ex with him well before their confrontation.

  Summer opened her mouth, about to answer, but Mike waved her off. “Never mind. I answered my own damned question.”

  He paced around the apartment, thinking about the resources he had on hand and what he could quickly access if he was in a pinch. STEALTH had operatives all around the world and if he needed... No, this was a personal matter. He didn’t want to bring in his siblings or any other members of the team to handle this. He could kill the bastard himself.

  “Wait. Ben isn’t the bad guy here,” Summer said, raising her hands in surrender. “I mean he isn’t a good guy, but he isn’t the one threatening my life—he was only the messenger. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

  The anger seeped from his pores, but instead of diminishing, it changed direction. “What in the hell are you talking about? I thought you just said that he came here and threatened you and Joe, that you were in danger.”

  “Yes, but it’s the entire group I’m worried about. Even if we take Ben out, they could be coming for me.”

  He was so confused. What all had she gotten herself into? And how had she fallen prey to this group who threatened her life?

  “You need to explain to me what the hell is going on. If not, I can’t... I’ll take care of Joe, but...”

  She looked at him like he had just asked her to tell him the location of the last unicorn so he could go and murder it.

  “I know this is uncomfortable. I know you don’t want to tell me. And I’m not going to judge you for whatever the hell happened to wrap you up in this mess. But I need to know what I’m going to face. We need to be prepared in order to keep you and Joe safe.”

  She chewed on her lip. “If I tell you the truth, you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone... Ever. And you can’t judge me for this. I... I have been struggling.”

  He nodded, but fear rattled through him. What had he done to her that she’d felt compelled to get involved with Rockwood—and maybe worse—to provide for herself and her son? If only he had followed through on their wedding, none of this would have ever happened. Instead, they could have been living in a house of their own, maybe something along the river like they had always dreamed about, and he could be playing out in the yard with Joe. Instead, here they were, needing to run for their lives, and it was all his fault.

  He had tried to do the right thing, and it had come back to bite not only him but all of them square in the ass.

  “I have no room to judge,” he said, trying to not self-flagellate when he’d have years to think about all the things he had done wrong. “I’m here to listen and help, nothing more.” It felt strange saying that, but he absolutely meant it.

  “After our breakup, STRIKE and I had a bit of a falling out. They weren’t using me much, I’m sure it was because I was a massive train wreck.” She sucked in a long breath and, as she paused, he could almost hear what she was going to tell him next. “Another company approached me, asked if I would like to be involved with their cyber team working on government-issued contracts. They had me working undercover.”

  He chomped on his lip, trying to stop himself from saying anything that would upset her and stall her confession.

  She looked away, guilty. “I was doing really well as a double agent, and after Solomon Scot—Kate’s father—was killed, the group I was working for with Ben had me doing industrial espionage, spying on ConFlux, trying to get military engineering secrets. I got them and handed them off to Ben. Before Ben and his colleagues could use them, the codes were changed, access denied. I came out okay, and ConFlux didn’t lose anything.”

  “Were you gathering and selling state secrets, Summer?” He took his phone out of his pocket, thinking about Zoey. Maybe she could help them, maybe she knew someone in the higher-ups who could pull some strings and get Summer out of this jam. Treason was serious business.

  But he put his phone down on a nearby box. No. If he told Zoey, she would want to know everything. She would ask far too many questions he didn’t know the answers to. He had to play this smart. They had to.

  “It appeared like I was—at least to the people whose group I was infiltrating. But all I knew at the time was that I was to find a way into the ConFlux network, grab a specific set of codes for my main team, and then leave the door open for the rest of the teams. Kate was in on it. She knew that we were trying to bait a trap and pull out anyone who was trying to steal American military secrets.”

  Mike didn’t know what to think about all of this. There was so much information, so many secrets and so many twists. Summer had gotten herself much deeper into the world of spies and counterspies than he could have imagined.

  “It was then, when I met up with Kate, that Ben might have seen me. Maybe he connected the dots, or someone did... I think I may have compromised my work.”

  “This is crazy,” he grumbled. “You. Me. This is crap. You were stealing military-grade secrets.”

  She raised her hands in supplication. “That’s not it... I was just doing my job. I am working for and loyal to the good guys. I swear.”

  Mike opened his mouth. She hadn’t told him enough so that he could really believe her, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted her to bring him any deeper into her blurry-lined world than she already had. She was a spy. What if she was using him to spy on STEALTH? She had been asking questions about Rockwood, too.

  He struggled to connect the dots based on everything she had told him so far.

  Joe crawled toward the couch, and after bonking his head on the corner of a box, he started to cry. Mike swooped in and picked him up just as Summer moved to get him. “He’ll be okay,” she said, her tone soft and cooing as she gently cupped her son’s head and nodded. “He’s a tough boy. Aren’t you, baby?”

  Joe rubbed his eyes as he sniffled and then took hold of Summer’s finger.

  The simple action threatened to rip out Mike’s heart and trample it on the ground. This was his family; he had unintentionally made this family and, as angry and upset as he was, he would do whatever it took to make sure they were all safe.

  He rocked him, trying to comfort his son. As he swayed side to side, it occurred to Mike that this little man in his arms was perhaps a sponge for all the emotions swirling around him. If that was the case, even though he didn’t understand the conversation, it was still doing the child no good.

  Joe stuck his thumb in his mouth
and looked up at him, his blinks starting to get slower and slower.

  “Do you have somewhere we can put him down for a little nap? I think our boy is getting sleepy,” he said.

  “As soon as you put him down in the crib, he will wake right up. He hates being alone. But you’re right, our little guy looks sleepy. Most of the time, when he fights it, I take him for a little drive in the car.” Summer looked toward the window. “We left his seat out there in the car. We can take him for a short ride. You know, drive around a bit until he’s fast asleep.”

  The last thing he wanted to do was to put the kiddo down and upset him.

  He chuckled as he realized what he had been thinking. Here he had only known he was a dad for a day and yet this little being already had him wrapped around the tiniest of his fingers. It was only too easy to fall so desperately in love with a child.

  It was strange, but once upon a time, he had fallen in love with Summer almost as quickly.

  “I’m going to freshen up and grab some things for his diaper bag. I will meet you out there in a few minutes,” she said.

  “I’ll go put him in the car seat. Sound good?”

  “Great.” She headed toward the back bedrooms. “The car’s unlocked, but the keys are beside the door.” She motioned to the peg where her keys were hanging.

  He looked down at Joe, who was sucking away on his thumb, still fighting the sandman. “It’s okay, little man, you can give up the ghost. Papa has you, you’re safe.”

  As she disappeared down the hall, Mike made his way outside. Ben was nowhere to be seen and the apartment complex had slipped into the midday sleepiness that came when it was a warm late-fall day. It was cooler outside than it had been in the apartment. No wonder Joe liked sleeping in the air-conditioned car far more than sitting in the muggy crib.

  Truth be told, Mike could have gone for a nap too. His mind wandered to Kate and Summer working together. Had Summer told Kate about Joe? Had Kate told his brother? Did people in his family know that he had a child and yet no one had told him?