It really was an awesome house, and part of her wanted to kick Jake for even considering selling it. He hadn’t even seen the place, but she knew if he did, he’d fall in love with it as much as she had. It was all natural wood and glass and granite and stone, situated on a rocky cliff that overlooked the Pacific. A wide deck ran across the back of the house, and steps led down to the beach. And the view out across the water . . . her pulse slowed just thinking about seeing it again. It calmed her when nothing else these last few days had done anything to make her relax.
She stepped out of the hall and into the combo great room and kitchen with its wall of windows that faced the ocean, then stilled. A man stood on the porch past the windows, hands on the railing, looking out at the view. A man dressed in faded blue jeans, a loose light-blue T-shirt, and—yes, even—blue flip-flops. A man who never wore flip-flops.
Almost as if he’d sensed her, Jake turned and looked at her through the glass. And Marley’s pulse shot straight up into the triple digits.
He crossed the deck, pulled the sliding glass door open, and stepped into the house. “Hey. This place is pretty amazing. Why didn’t you tell me it was like this?”
Hey? Hey? That’s what he had to say to her? She’d come here to get away from him, not to have him track her down like he’d done in Colombia. This was supposed to be the one place he never wanted to visit.
She set her shopping bag on the kitchen counter and told herself not to let her emotions get the best of her. Those emotions were the reason she was in this mess in the first place. He was obviously here for something that had to do with Aegis, so this time she’d listen, stay calm, and not get worked up.
“What are you doing here, Jake?”
“I was planning to ask you the same question.”
Crap. It was his house. She’d forgotten that for a moment.
“The realtor needed me to sign some papers.” She pulled the milk she’d bought out of the bag and turned to place it in the refrigerator. “I didn’t want to bother you with it.”
“You don’t work for Aegis anymore, though. Your signature won’t be valid.”
Dammit. He was right. Her excuse didn’t hold an ounce of water. “I didn’t think of that.” She closed the fridge and turned to face him, reminding herself to stay calm. “Is that why you came all the way to Carmel? To tell me that?”
“No.” He moved up to the other side of the counter and eyed her over the sleek black granite surface. “I came to tell you that I love you.”
For a moment, the words hung in the air, and she wasn’t sure she’d heard them right. But she was listening this time, not with her heart, but with her head. And sure enough, the words were definitely there.
“I know you love me,” she said quietly.
“You do?” His brow lifted in complete surprise.
“I’ve known for a long time.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
She reached into the bag and pulled out the eggs and cheese, surprised that she wasn’t falling apart. “Because it wouldn’t have made a difference.”
She opened the fridge again and slid the eggs and cheese inside, then closed the heavy wood door that matched the rest of the cabinets in the kitchen and jerked back. Jake was standing right beside her.
“It does matter. It’s the only thing that matters, and I should have realized that sooner but I’m—”
“Really fucked up?”
The words were out before she realized they’d escaped, and she pursed her lips as she stared up at him and berated herself for reacting with her heart instead of her head.
One corner of his lips curled. “Yeah. That. I am. As you well know.” His smile faded. “But I need you to know why.”
Dammit, she didn’t want to hear this. It wasn’t going to matter anyway. She turned back for her groceries. “Jake—”
“Eight years ago, when I was in the navy, there was this woman. She was an officer with the CIA, focused on uncovering the whereabouts of high-ranking al-Qaeda officials. She worked with our SEAL team on several occasions, providing intel on ops and terrorist locations. We hit it off. It wasn’t anything serious, I mean, she was stationed in Kabul and I was all over the damn world, but there was something there. Whenever she was back in the States and I happened to be on leave, we’d hook up. But Gabby was . . .”
He glanced around the kitchen as if looking for the right words, and Marley’s stomach tightened as she watched, unsure if she wanted to know more, curious at the same time about a woman who’d clearly meant more to him than any other he’d dated in all the time she’d known him.
“Independent,” he finally said. “She didn’t need a guy in her life, and she didn’t have room for one to mess up her career. And though we had this thing, she was stubborn when it came to what she decided.”
Like me, Marley realized, suddenly seeing a parallel between her and this mystery woman who’d obviously messed him up.
He rubbed a hand over his brow, and the guilt she saw in his face, it softened her. Way more than she ever would have expected. “What happened?”
“My team was in Northern Africa. Just hanging around the base, waiting for orders. She uncovered intel that the number-three ranking al-Qaeda leader was supposed to be in the Yemen area. She told me about it in confidence, said someone from her office needed to travel there to meet with a contact to confirm, but she was nervous about the meeting. Yemen wasn’t all that far from our base. I wanted to see her, and I talked her into making the trip herself. Our team was the closest one to the area; we would have been called to take the hit. I knew if she was the one to make contact, I’d get to see her. I knew she was hesitant about it, but it was just a contact. It wasn’t the cell itself. She finally agreed.”
Marley’s stomach sank. She knew instinctively that something bad had happened.
“It was an ambush,” he said quietly. “She and two others from her team were killed. The cell knew the CIA was onto them.”
Her heart hurt for him. Because he’d taken a chance on caring for someone after all the neglect and abandonment he’d lived through as a kid, and in the end, it had ended tragically.
“I’m sorry, Jake. That’s awful. But it was an accident. You didn’t know. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was though. If it weren’t for me—”
“If it weren’t for you, someone else from the CIA would have died. They were going to that meeting regardless of what you said or did. You can’t blame yourself for something someone else—a terrorist of all people—does.”
“Yeah, but she would have been alive. That’s the difference.”
Marley looked down at her bare feet against the hardwood floor as understanding dawned. No wonder he’d freaked when she’d run off to Colombia. No wonder he’d tracked her down and stayed by her side the entire way. And no wonder he felt so bad about what had happened with Gray and the fact he’d given up trying to warn her.
“Marley.” He stepped toward her. “I’ve overreacted. I haven’t trusted you. I haven’t tried to see your point of view because I’ve been too afraid of what will happen if I opened myself up. But I don’t want to do that anymore. I love you. I love the way you make me feel when we’re together. I even love it when you’re arguing with me because it means you care.”
Marley’s heart squeezed tight, and all those emotions she’d tried not to think with came raging back. She pressed both hands over her face as she struggled to sift through them, and remembered what her father had said.
Yes, she believed Jake loved her. Yes, she believed everything he was saying, but at the end of the day, they were just too volatile to make this work. Their relationship was too much like her parents’. And she didn’t want to ruin him the way her mother had ruined her father. Didn’t want to ruin herself, either.
She dropped her hands and looked at him. Really l
ooked at him. At the scratch his cheek from that fight with Gray, at the heartache and hope reflected in his dark eyes. And she knew in her heart that she was always going to love him, but that it wasn’t enough.
“I love you too, Jake.” He took a step toward her, but she held up a hand to keep him back, needing to get the words out before his touch distracted her. “But you were right the night of that party. We’re explosive together. It’s not healthy. If we let this go on, we’ll just make each other completely miserable. I don’t want that for you.”
“Marley—”
“No.” She stepped back, out of his reach, fighting back the rush of emotions begging her to give in. Knew she needed to leave fast before that happened. “You’re too much like my father and I’m too much like my mother for this to ever work. And that ended so badly, my father’s still reeling from it thirty years later. I won’t do that to you. I can’t.”
She moved around the opposite side of the counter so he couldn’t touch her and swallowed hard. “Stay here, enjoy the house.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the gorgeous view. “Do yourself a favor and don’t sell it. You need this kind of peace and quiet.”
“No,” he said softly, “I need you.”
Marley stared at him, wanting nothing more than to give him that and so much more, but her brain took over, pushing her feet out of the living room and down the hall toward the door.
Hands shaking, she pressed her fingers against the wall in the entry and slipped on her flip-flops. She was just about to reach for the front door when she spotted a contract on the entry table with her name typed across the top.
She stared at it. Picked it up. Read the front page, then read it a second time. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Heat and disbelief and bone-jarring shock.
She rushed back into the great room and lifted the contract in her hand. “What the hell is this?”
Jake turned from the fridge where he was putting away the rest of her groceries and folded the paper shopping bag, not showing any kind of surprise that she was back. “The proof you need.”
Her heart raced beneath her ribs. She looked down at the contract in her hand. “You’re giving me half of Aegis. Just giving it to me for no reason?”
“Not for no reason.” He moved around the counter to stand in front of her. “It’s partly because of you that it’s grown into what it has. The guys are all loyal to you, not me. They only put up with me because I sign their paychecks.”
Her hands grew sweaty. “But this is your business. This is what you love.”
“No, Marley. You’re what I love. Aegis doesn’t mean anything to me unless you’re part of it. And before you go jumping to conclusions, it’s not because I need you in the office. I don’t. I want you to be as involved in whatever part of Aegis you want. And if that means working in the field, then I’m okay with that, so long as you let me tag along.”
He smiled, a warm loving smile, but she was still too shocked to process. “I-I don’t even know if I want to work in the field anymore.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I mean, yes. I mean . . .” She threw her hands up. “I don’t know anymore. I obviously have trouble listening to directions.”
That sexy little smirk made her heart beat even faster. “That’s true, you do. We can work on that. And I can work on not taking unnecessary risks. I have to do better with that. I have something important to live for now.”
She stared down at the papers in her hands. Swallowed hard. He was giving her half of Aegis. He really really loved her. More than her father had ever loved her mother. Mason Addison never would have done something like this for his wife. For all his talk about how bad he felt regarding their failed relationship, he’d never sacrificed anything for her. And never, not in a million years, would he have ever sacrificed his precious company for her.
“I . . .” Her legs grew weak. He stomach swirled. She backed up until her butt hit the sofa behind her. “I-I didn’t expect this.”
“I did.” He moved closer, until the heat of his body swirled around her and made her lightheaded. “And I knew you’d be stubborn about it. I wanted you to be. Because I needed to prove that I love you. And that I’m not going anywhere. I can’t. You own half my damn company.”
Unable to find words, she watched as he tugged something slim from his pocket and held it up. “You took this off,” he said softly. “You weren’t supposed to do that, you know.”
Her gaze dropped to the leather band in his hand, then shot to his face. His smiling, warm, gorgeous face. And she watched as he stepped back and pulled up his pant leg so she could see the leather band around his ankle.
Oh . . . “You put it back on?”
“I never took mine off.” He dropped to one knee and carefully tied the band around her ankle. Her skin tingled wherever he touched, and heat gathered in her belly. A heat only he could create. “I think you’re stuck with me, Addison. I mean, I know you tried to marry someone else, but I’m pretty sure it’d be damn near impossible to find that village again and get this thing annulled.” He looked up at her, and his voice turned so sweet and dreamy her heart felt like it was about to lurch out of her chest. “I know I don’t want to.”
Love and a future she’d been too afraid to hope for reflected in his eyes, and all the reasons she thought she’d needed to hold back from him drifted away.
“That was completely unfair,” she whispered, blinking through the tears.
“No, this is unfair.” He pushed to his feet and pulled a ring from his pocket. A ring with a large blue stone. The same color as his shirt. “Call me old-fashioned, but as much as I love the Amazon wedding bands, they’re just not very visible. And I want everyone to know you belong with me.”
Her eyes widened. “Is that a sapphire?”
“No. A very rare diamond. You said you liked the color blue.”
She had. During that op in DC he’d changed without telling her. He’d been listening. She blinked back tears. “Oh my God.”
He chuckled, took the papers from her hands and dropped them on the couch behind her, then he slid the ring on her finger. “Wilson did not give me a deal on this, just so you know. Wouldn’t even take back that sapphire I bought for you, so you’ll get that when we get home. I didn’t bring it with me.”
Her gaze darted from the ring to his face. “You bought me a sapphire? When?”
“That night, in DC. I wanted to give it to you when I got back, but, well, I was afraid you might read too much into it.”
She couldn’t stop the laugh that slipped from her lips as she looked down at the ring through watery vision. “As opposed to now.”
“This time I want you to read into it.” Closing his arms around her, he drew her into the warmth and safety of his embrace. “I know we’re going to fight. I’ll make you so crazy sometimes you’ll want to rip your hair out. And I fully expect you to put me in my place when I get out of line. But I also know I wouldn’t want it any other way. And I know I am never going to stop loving you. No matter what happens in our lives or where we go or how nuts our kids make us, this right here is the only thing that matters. Because you are everything to me.”
Kids. He’d just said kids. Ankle bracelets, rings, and kids. Tears blurred her vision as she pressed her face against his throat.
“All I want,” he whispered, “the only thing I need, is to make you as happy as you were that night in the jungle when you danced around the fire for me. If it takes my whole life, that’s exactly what I plan to do.”
“Jake.” She sniffled, pressing her hands against his solid chest. “I was higher than a kite that night. Are you sure that’s the measure you want to go by?”
“Absolutely.” He drew back and gazed down at her. “Because that’s the night I fell crazy in love with you, wife.”
Wife. He’d called her that in the hut. The morning after t
heir wild night. And just like it had then, her heart warmed and skipped, spreading heat throughout her entire body. Only this time, she knew that heat was love.
She lifted to her toes and kissed him with everything she had in her. And as his arms tightened around her and his body came to life against her own, she knew everything—finally—was different.
“Oh.” He drew back a breath. “One more thing. We’re not selling this house.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and rolled her eyes. “Geez, already back to being bossy. I should have expected it. Fine. If you really want the house, I guess I could force myself to vacation here now and then. I’ll call the realtor in the morning. After, that is, you spend the next few hours proving just how sublimely happy you can make me.”
He grinned and lowered his lips to hers, then kissed her until she was breathless. “That I can do, wife. That I can most definitely do.”
about the author
Photo © 2010 Curtis Almquist
Before topping multiple bestseller lists—including those of the New York Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal—Elisabeth Naughton taught middle school science. A voracious reader, she soon discovered she had a knack for creating stories with a chemistry of their own. The spark turned into a flame, and Naughton now writes full-time. Besides topping bestseller lists, her books have been nominated for some of the industry’s most prestigious awards, such as the RITA® and Golden Heart Awards from Romance Writers of America, the Australian Romance Reader Awards, and the Golden Leaf Award. When not dreaming up new stories, Naughton can be found spending time with her husband and three children in their western Oregon home.
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