Wyatt was afraid she wouldn’t come. Tal was a natural-born leader. She was proud, confident, and knew herself well. Would she move into his arms, or would she fight him, pulling away? Fear ate at him, because Wyatt knew their relationship was still new. And something like this could fracture it but good. Why the hell hadn’t he thought about that possibility a little more last night? He pulled her forward. She looked up, her eyes shining with tears, and he winced.
“I’m so damned sorry, Tal,” he said roughly, moving his thumbs across her cheeks, removing the tears.
She stood there, wavering, undecided as to whether she should walk into his embrace or not. Seeing the regret in his dark gray eyes, she whispered, “You don’t get it, Wyatt.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “I think I do. This is really about losing Brian, isn’t it? You falling hard for him and then having him ripped away from you.” His hands firmed up on her shoulders as he saw the agony come to her face, knowing he’d hit the nail on the head. He smoothed some strands of hair away from her temple. He could feel her weighing the situation, thinking about it, looking at what he’d done and why he did it. She was a sniper by nature and by training.
Wyatt expected nothing less, so he allowed his hand to fall to her shoulder once more, waiting. This was not a woman he could push, nor did he want to. Tal was slow to make up her mind, but that was typical of a sniper. She considered everything carefully. Wyatt felt like the guillotine was invisibly hanging above his head, ready to fall. There were things he could say, but they wouldn’t change the facts of the situation. What had changed was that she had finally given her heart to him after the years he’d spent waiting her out, waiting for her grief and loss over Brian to finally be worked through and released so she could come to him.
Tal was fearless as she looked up at him, meeting and holding his gaze. Wyatt wasn’t going to try to dodge this bullet. This moment was far too important to him. To them. He’d wanted Tal, dreamed of her being in his arms, in his bed, living with him, even marrying him, for so long. Tears slid down into the corners of her mouth, and she licked them away.
“Why did you wait, Wyatt?”
He moved his fingers lightly across her shoulders, which held so much tension. “I guess . . .” He looked away for a moment, searching for the right words. “I wanted to protect you. I know you’re a combat vet like me, Tal. You’ve seen and done it all, but, darlin’”—he cupped her cheek, holding her wavering green gaze filled with tears—“you’re the woman I’ve fallen in love with. You hold my sorry-ass heart. I don’t want anyone but you at my side when I wake up in the morning or close my eyes at night. It’s you.” He swallowed hard. “I love you, Tal. I knew my getting hit like that, my heart damn near leaping out of my chest, making me think I was going to go into full cardiac arrest, would upset the hell out of you.” He gave her a searching look. “I knew you were worried enough about me out there. I knew you wanted to be at my side. If you didn’t have that broken ankle, I’m sure you would have been.”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, I got that.” He saw a slight softening at the corners of her beautiful, kissable mouth. Wyatt could feel her slowly beginning to unwind and he breathed a little sigh of relief. “I should have told you up front. I couldn’t put it over the radio for fear someone else in comms was listening in, Tal. But I should have told you right off the bat when I got home.”
“Mark stayed with you because you were having fibrillations, weren’t you?”
Wyatt grimaced and muttered, “Yes, I was. He saw where I’d taken the hit, came and knelt at my side, dug out the bullet from the Kevlar to make sure it hadn’t made it past the plates. And it hadn’t. He could hear me breathing raggedly and knew the situation.”
“God,” she whispered, placing a hand over her eyes.
“It was bad,” Wyatt admitted quietly, running his fingers through her hair, trying to give her some of his calmness, a sense that everything was okay when it wasn’t. “I didn’t know if I was going to go into arrest or not. Mark stayed with me to make sure he’d be there to try to save me if I did.”
“He was a Recon. He had enough training in CPR to have helped you.”
Wyatt gave her a cutting, one-cornered smile. “Yeah, he had his fist balled up, ready to slam it into my chest to jump-start my heart back to normal rhythm if it happened.” He brushed his thumb across her cheek, drying it. “But it didn’t happen, Tal. In about five minutes, my heart went back to its normal beat on its own.”
“And that’s when Mark left your side? Took off?”
“Yeah.” He urged her into his arms and she reluctantly came; he saw anger along with relief in her expression. “Just let me hold you. All I was thinking about out there on that slope after getting hit was holding you, wishing I’d said some things to you that I wanted to share with you but I hadn’t yet . . .”
She sniffled and shook her head, moving blindly into his opening arms, clinging to him, her cheek pressed to his chest as far as she could keep it from that swollen bruise.
Groaning, Wyatt whispered, “God, I love you, woman,” and he held her gently, pressing small kisses along her hairline, watching the scowl on her brow dissolve under his warm ministrations, his care and love for her. Tal’s arms slowly eased around his waist, and he bit back another groan as she gradually surrendered herself over to him. This wasn’t a game on Tal’s part. His decision had hurt her deeply, and now he regretted it. Not thinking about how Tal had lost Brian was the biggest mistake he’d made in his reasoning. As she pressed her long, tall body against his, he welcomed her home, a swell of emotions deluging him as she yielded to him, her hair grazing his chin.
“I love you so much, Wyatt,” she whispered brokenly. Her arms tightened around his waist. “Please . . . don’t ever do this to me again. I-I can’t handle it. Not again . . . You’ve served your country. You’ve risked your life so often. It’s enough . . .” She choked up, burying her face against the folds of his shirt.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Wyatt felt the full brunt of her anguish, her hurt, and her terror at almost losing him. Smoothing his hand across her shoulder, sweeping it down her spine, cupping her sweet ass, bringing her flush against his erection, he rasped against her hair near her ear, “It won’t happen again, Tal. I promise . . .”
*
The dinner table was alive with everyone wanting to talk at once. Wyatt sat next to Tal. She wasn’t eating much because of their argument earlier and was the quietest of the lot. He understood she was still exhausted from the sudden lurch into that unexpected mission and then finding out he’d nearly died. All Wyatt wanted to do tonight after dinner was take her to bed and love the hell out of her. He was good with words, but he was better with his kisses, his touches, and loving her. There were things he could tell her in no other way than kissing her tenderly, bringing the full force of the love he held for her through the world of physical touch.
Throughout the dinner, he answered the questions everyone had as best he could. No one mentioned Mark, and he was grateful he could dodge that topic. Mattie, across the table from him, looked okay tonight. He didn’t see the normal bleakness in her eyes, and he drew in a sigh of relief. Maybe seeing Mark had done something good for her. He just didn’t know. Mattie wasn’t the easiest person to read. She’d had her heart broken by Mark. What was she feeling and thinking? If Wyatt wasn’t so damned tired and stressed out by his own screwup with Tal, he might have taken his sister aside to talk with her. But he couldn’t right now. He had serious damage control to do with Tal. She was his life. His focus. And he ached because he’d caused her so much unnecessary pain. Somehow, he wanted to atone for it.
Jake was less upbeat. “How do we know the Cardona cartel won’t keep using our property?”
“The DEA says it’s going to keep a drone in the area,” Wyatt said.
Jake grimaced. “Right, until some dweeb from the U.S. government decides it’s not in their budget and it gets crossed off the list. And o
f course, we won’t be told about it.”
“I’m hoping that Artemis, because of its unique relationship with the government agencies, will be notified if there’s a change,” Wyatt told them. “We can’t tell them to pull or add a drone, but we should at least get a heads-up if they’re removing a drone from that airspace.”
Jake snorted and shook his head, continuing to shovel in the pot roast, potatoes, and gravy.
“Will they stay in touch with you via Artemis?” Hank asked his son, opening up another homemade biscuit and slathering butter across it.
“Yes. We have a drone management team in-house,” Wyatt assured him.
“We also still have access to satellite data, and we can work with the Air Force regarding their passes over this ranch,” Tal told them. “We have good eyes in the sky.”
“Gonna need ’em,” Jake growled, giving them a disbelieving look.
“Nothing is perfect,” Wyatt agreed. “But when Tal and I get back to the office, we’ll assign people to keep an eye on our land. And if we see something, then we’ll be on the phone to Mom and Dad here, plus to the Border Patrol, among other people.”
“That’s as good as it’s gonna get,” Cat said, giving Jake a reproving look.
“Drug runners are constantly shifting strategies,” Tal told them. “At some point—and maybe hitting them in that ambush brought the message home—Cardona and his men will get that it doesn’t pay to go through your property.”
Daisy shook her head. “Who would have thought twenty years ago we would be where we’re at now?”
Tal heard the worry and regret in Daisy’s voice. “I don’t think anyone envisioned what is going on, and it’s going to continue.”
“Well, there are plenty of other ranchers along the Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona borders with Mexico who are also paying the price,” Wyatt said. “A rancher in Arizona was killed by someone crossing the border.”
“It’s not a good situation,” Tal agreed. “Until our government can figure out a solution, we’re going to continue to have a porous border.”
“It’s a pretty helpless feeling,” Cat muttered, cutting into her pot roast. “We have herds of cattle out in that area where the ambush occurred. We know ranches have had their cattle slaughtered and eaten by groups coming across. What are we supposed to do? Just sit back and let it happen?”
Wyatt felt his family’s frustration and mounting sense of helplessness. “In one way, we’re lucky. At Artemis, we have the latest photographic and electronic equipment known to mankind at our facility. And if we know someone in the federal government who has information we need, we can ask nicely to utilize it.”
“But it doesn’t fix the problem,” Tal told them. “It’s a fix for a specific area.”
“I wonder,” Mattie said, “if the Reuss Ranch is being used like that, too?”
Wyatt shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re friends with Sage. Have you talked to her about this?”
“No, but I’m going to,” Mattie promised. “They should know what’s going on.”
Wyatt nodded. “Next time you see her, let her know what happened over here. At least give her a heads-up.” He doubted seriously, since Mark was involved with the Cardona cartel, that the Reuss Ranch was being used. It made sense to him privately that Mark would make his family’s ranch off-limits to drug trafficking, for obvious reasons.
Saying nothing else, he continued to eat, noticing that Tal was still strained from their earlier talk. This vacation was turning out to be anything but. His conscience ate at him. Tonight after dinner and dessert, he wanted quiet time just to talk with Tal further. This was the first big issue that had erupted between them. And he wanted to fix it as best he could since he was the one who had hurt her.
Wyatt knew that she’d fallen in love with Brian at Bagram five years earlier. And he knew from speaking to Tal’s mother, Dilara, that she’d had very few relationships over the years. Alexa, the youngest Culver daughter, had a Teflon heart and had survived hookups and breakups, always ready to risk her heart again, but Tal was not built that way.
Dilara had talked to him privately one day in his Mission Planning office about Tal. They had shared a cup of Turkish coffee, which Tal made sure was available in the Artemis kitchens and cafeteria.
He found out that Tal, the firstborn daughter of Dilara and Robert Culver, had always been a serious, studious, super-reliable human being. And Tal took after her father in every respect, Dilara had told Wyatt. She was focused, responsible, and hardworking, and she made sure that her word was her bond. She also warmed up slowly to any man who might catch her interest. She was cautious with her heart, just as Robert was.
Wyatt had asked if Robert had a lot of relationships before he’d met Dilara in Istanbul, Turkey, when she was twenty years old. Smiling, her aquamarine eyes sparkling, Dilara had told him that Robert had exactly two relationships before meeting her, and that was it. He was very serious when it came to wanting depth, meaning, and emotional connection with a woman who interested him. Not just sex. He never ran after women, Dilara had confided. Rather, he’d allowed his relationships with women to take root as friendship first. She told Wyatt of her long courtship with Robert. They’d started off as friends and then later, their relationship developed into something deeper and very beautiful. It was another year after that before they got married.
Wyatt recognized that in Tal. He’d discreetly chased her for years after the death of Brian. Well, sometimes he wasn’t so discreet, he had to admit. He had made a point of showing up regularly in Tal’s life; she’d accused him of being like a bad penny. Wyatt made her smile, joked with her, and lifted some of that heavy weight she always carried on her proud shoulders. Tal had finally allowed him entrance into her heavily guarded heart, which had taken a nearly lethal hit when Brian died unexpectedly. That event had nearly destroyed her. In that way, Tal was a dead ringer for his sister Mattie. She was built the same way.
Wyatt didn’t feel good about his part in hurting Tal of late. There was no way to know how deep the wound had gone, because he hadn’t been completely forthright with her. His need to protect her warred with her need to know the truth about him on every level. He loved her. He’d never fallen so hard or so fast as he had for Tal. From the moment he’d accidentally met her at the helicopter terminal at Bagram, he’d been powerfully drawn to her. She was coming in off a sniper op with Jay, her Marine Corps spotter, face covered in greasepaint, tall, looking like the woman warrior she was. What had drawn him most was her confidence and self-assuredness. He saw that in men all the time but rarely to this degree in a woman. And it was such a helluva turn-on for him.
Being a SEAL, Wyatt had gone to great, stealthy lengths to find out who this woman Marine sniper was. She wore nothing on her uniform to indicate her status, whether she was enlisted or officer. But in Wyatt’s estimation, she had to be an officer because of the way she carried herself, though she didn’t lord it over anyone, either. She was what he termed a “good officer,” a damned fine manager of the enlisted people beneath her for whom she was responsible. And when he found out who she was and started tailing her discreetly to learn more about her, he realized she was one of those rare officers whom enlisted people would die to work for. Tal always inspired her people to rise to the level of the expectations she had for them, because she held herself to the same standard. She never asked anything from them that she wouldn’t demand from herself.
Later, he plotted seriously to meet Tal, which he did at the Olympic-size pool in the gym at Bagram. Wyatt gave swimming lessons to Afghan children, and he’d noticed Tal swam every day that she wasn’t out on an op. It was the first time they could meet and talk. It had gone well, and from then on, Wyatt made sure he would show up in her life from time to time, developing a friendship with her.
Now that Tal was a civilian and the CEO of Artemis, she led her company the same way she’d led her unit as a Marine captain. The firm had two hundred of the best people in the se
curity business from around the world working for it. And Wyatt enjoyed watching Tal be the consummate leader that she really was.
She wasn’t the kind to arbitrarily fire a person who’d made a mistake. Instead, she’d work with their department manager to find out why the mistake had been made in the first place. Then the employee was counseled so that it wouldn’t happen again, and things moved on without a ripple on the surface of Artemis. Mistakes, as Wyatt well knew, were going to happen in their organic, constantly changing business. But they also happened in personal relationships. He hoped that she would give him the benefit of the doubt, the same way she would with an employee who’d screwed up.
One way or another, over the next few days, Wyatt was going to carve out some of the quality time they badly needed so that he could really reach Tal’s heart and head. They had to iron this out once and for all so they could move on after learning from this mistake. The only question was: would Tal truly forgive him for his decisions? He was going to find out.
CHAPTER 9
Wyatt had Tal leaned against the brass headboard, several pillows behind her back, while he massaged her swollen ankle. She’d taken her bath earlier, and he’d taken his shower. It was nearly ten p.m., and most of the family had already gone to bed. On a ranch, it was early to rise and early to sleep. They worked dawn to dusk. Tal’s hair was down, the ends curled and slightly damp. He hid a smile; he liked Tal in those white and blue flannel PJs she’d borrowed from Mattie when she arrived at the ranch. They made her look girlish, not like the serious, mature woman that she really was.
She had leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes, hands in her lap, as he gently massaged the excess fluid out from around her ankle. A lot of the tension from earlier was gone, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “How’s that feelin’?” he asked her.
“Mmm, wonderful . . . you’ve really spoiled me, Wyatt.” She barely opened her eyes, smiling over at him. Her heart opened wide to him. She loved that glint in his dark gray eyes, the way his mouth tipped up boyishly at one corner. That laid-back Texan in him often served to put her in a state of calm, as it did now. Wyatt just didn’t get upset about anything. She supposed his training and years in the SEALs had also buttressed that natural proclivity.
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