by Dana Marton
For the most part, he was big on keeping his distance.
Of course, there’d been a time or two when he’d slipped. Like their one night together. He hadn’t made that mistake since. If sex was offered and the time was right, he took it. But he was always up front about what he was and wasn’t willing to give. There was no loss of control, no passionate coming together against all reason with…with a virgin who had stars in her eyes, for heaven’s sake!
His teeth ground together. Between the shoot-out he was leaving behind and the memories that were quickly surfacing, sending heat straight to his groin, he was getting more morose by the minute.
“Where are we going?” Her voice was nearly back to normal.
“Someplace safe,” he bit out, even as his mind worked a mile a minute trying to think of such a place. He could only come up with one. Oh, hell.
“Who were those people?”
He turned left at the next light. “Not now.” They’d finally made it to Brooklyn. He pulled up a familiar street, slowed in front of an unassuming row house, hit the garage opener, pulled in, closed the door behind them immediately.
She peered through the darkness. “Is this where you live?”
“Mostly.” And he’d never, ever brought anyone here before, friend or foe. He would have to move now. Dammit.
He grabbed her hand and dragged her across the seat, out on his side as he left the car. He froze in place for a second when she stumbled against him. “I’m not going to turn on any lights. Just follow me.” Stepping away from her, he punched in the security code then opened the door that led inside.
She tripped a couple of times, not knowing the terrain, but he couldn’t slow for her. He wanted them in the den with its reinforced walls and his arsenal of weapons close by.
“Here.” He stopped by the hall closet and handed her his Kevlar vest. “Put this on.”
She obeyed without a word.
Then they were all the way in. He pushed her down onto the couch and went to stand by the window. The street was quiet. Not that he allowed himself to relax. He’d been in the game far too long to make that mistake.
“What happened back at the restaurant?” she asked.
And he closed his eyes for a second against the voice he hadn’t forgotten in the past two years, the voice that had said, “Yes, oh yes, Reid, please,” as she’d come apart in his arms on the bread table in his bakery, another undercover job that had turned into a disaster.
The muscles clenched low in his belly.
“What are you involved in?” She folded her arms in front of her awkwardly, the vest, a little big on her, limiting range of movement. Moonlight glinted off her full lips, off the dimple in her right cheek.
He turned fully toward the window, getting her out of his peripheral vision. She was nothing to him. A hot memory from his past. There was no reason why the sight of her on his couch, in his house, should bother him at all. She had no power over him.
She could have had. He’d realized that early on. Which was why he’d made the decision to never go back. He took her power away by reducing her to a memory, a sexual fantasy. He could take her out when he wanted to, and he could put her away.
“Are you involved in something bad?” Her voice held a new twinge of nerves.
He gave a short bark of a laugh. “What do you think?”
Silence stretched between them.
“I’d like to go.” Her dress rustled as she stood.
He turned back to her, which was a mistake. The black silk clinging to her thighs did nothing for his focus. He fought the impulse that was pushing him closer to her. “You can’t.”
“Reid—”
“They saw me leave with you. It won’t take long for them to ask a waiter who you were with in the restaurant. Then they’ll go and ask your boyfriend about you.”
He swore under his breath. Somehow, his cover had been blown. The shooters would connect Lara to him. Her boyfriend was probably being worked over right now. Chances were good the poor bastard wouldn’t live to see the morning.
“I need to go home.”
“By now they know where you live. It’s not safe.” He gentled his voice with effort. “You can stay with me.” Until he could get the authorities to take custody of her and figure out long-term protection. Which, he hoped, could be arranged in the next couple of hours. He had to get back out there and find Jen’s CD before anyone else did.
That CD was his holy grail. The cell’s leader had trusted Kenny with its safekeeping. There had to be something on the damned CD that would provide a clue on the planned attack.
“It’s all over now,” he told Lara. For her anyway. For him, there was still a long way to go. “I’ll make sure you’re protected.”
Instead of thanking him for the offered protection, all hell broke loose as she flew at him.
“Why isn’t it safe to go home?” She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, looking ready to tackle him if necessary.
She’d always been a strong woman—had gone to school on a sports scholarship, been sidelined by a knee injury, had taken over her uncle’s butcher shop when the guy had retired.
He captured her wrists, tried to pull her against him to subdue her. Easier said than done. She was almost six feet of wriggling fury.
“They’ll go to your house,” he tried to talk sense into her.
And then she started fighting in earnest, this time to get away from him, her eyes on the door. “Let me go.” Her arms were wheeling like windmill paddles.
“Lara?” He caught an elbow in the chin, and swore under his breath. All he needed was to get his arms around her, but she wouldn’t cooperate.
“I have to get to Zak and Nate.” She kicked him, backward, viciously in the shin.
“Whoever they are, they’ll have to take care of themselves.” How many men did she have in her life?
“Are you crazy?” She screamed the three short words, elbowing him in the chest this time, doing her best to cause permanent damage. “They’re babies.”
Babies.
The guy at the restaurant was probably her husband. A cold sensation spread through his chest. Which was beyond insane. He barely knew her. She was a mistake he’d made two years ago. A momentary loss of control that should have never happened. What did he care if she’d gotten married since then?
He almost had her where he wanted her when, suddenly, she dropped her whole weight in some self-defense trick, and took him to the floor with her. But he was too quick to be shaken off so easily. He was on top of her the next second, his hands restraining both wrists above her head as he used his weight to hold her down in a pose that brought back some old memories and woke up his body.
She strained against him, which didn’t help any. “If anything happens to Zak and Nate, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?”
He was aware of the curve of her hips under him, her long legs entwined with his. More memories rose and flooded him. His limbs went paralyzed. For a second, he couldn’t move anything from the neck down. And there wasn’t much activity from the neck up either.
For a heartbeat, nothing existed but searing need.
Dammit. He’d thought he was done with this.
Then his body came alive with a bolt of pain as she kicked him where it hurt the most and shoved him off her. She dove for the door.
He couldn’t breathe. He rose anyway and lunged, caught her by the knees and brought her down harder than he’d intended—he didn’t exactly have full control. “Sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t enough.” She kicked at him one more time, missing his face by an inch.
He compartmentalized the pain and somehow got her pinned under him again, more carefully this time, taking no chances. “Stop for a second, would you?”
“Get off me.” She did her best to head-butt him. Her eyes burned with hate and desperation as she wriggled, hissing and threatening murder.
Hot memories aside, one thing was becoming crystal clear: this Lar
a wasn’t the Lara he still dreamed about sometimes, still fantasized about, the Lara who’d so sweetly surrendered to him.
Where the hell was the timidly curious virgin he remembered?
Chapter Two
She had grieved for him.
Lara fought, blind with fear and anger. She’d grieved for him when his bakery had burned, with him inside, hours after she’d left him that night. And she’d grieved again when she’d found out that she was pregnant, grieved for her babies who would have to grow up without a father.
But he hadn’t been dead. He’d been alive; he just hadn’t cared enough to tell her, too busy taking knockout blondes to dinner. He was involved in some nasty stuff, probably organized crime or drug dealing or something.
God, what an idiot she’d been.
“I go to your grave almost every Sunday, you jerk.” She tried to shove him. Might as well shove a brick wall.
Reid looked taken aback. “I have a grave?”
“The town buried you when no relatives came forward. They paid for the lot. There was a collection to pay for the coffin. I paid for the service. From my insurance money.” Even with him standing in front of her, she could still feel the lingering grief. Obviously, her mind was having trouble catching up with reality.
“I’m sorry.”
She tried to heave him off. “If you say you’re sorry one more time, I swear I’ll kill you.”
He managed to restrain her at last, the bloody bastard. “You’re a lot more violent than I remembered.”
She stilled. Mostly because there was little else she could do. And also because he was right. She was acting completely out of character.
She’d threatened murder twice in the last ten minutes. This wasn’t the kind of person she was. It wasn’t the kind of motherly example she would want to set for her boys.
“Must be rubbing off from you,” she shot back, as confusion, pain and humiliation hit her in quick succession. She tried to shift under his familiar weight, looking for a way out. “Please let me go.” For her babies, she would beg. “I won’t say anything to anyone. I’ll forget I ever saw you again. You can be dead to me again. I want you to be dead to me.”
Some dark emotion passed across his face, but it was gone before she could identify it. He waited a beat, measuring her up, then pushing away. “Okay. Cease fire.”
She nodded because he was stronger than her and she had no other choice. He’d always been tough and rough, had bad boy written all over him, the very thing that had drawn her to him in the first place. He was the hottest-looking guy she’d ever known, opening up shop right next to hers the week after she had. She was a goner the first time she’d laid eyes on him—six feet four inches of muscle and attitude.
She swallowed hard, pushing those memories away as she sat up. “Are you sure those men will track me down?”
“They’ll follow any lead they think might lead to me. Your kids are at your house?”
“Yes.” She buried her face in her hands. Her heart beat out of control. “With a babysitter.” God, she’d known that going on a date as far away as New York City was a huge mistake. But Allen had asked, not for the first time, and everyone she knew was on her case, telling her that she needed to get a life and move on. So she’d said yes.
The guilt was going to kill her. If worry didn’t kill her first. She rose to her feet and glanced at the door, weighing her chances of getting by Reid.
He was dialing his phone. “Hey. I’m fine. I’m heading out. I’ll call you back when I’m on the road. One thing right now. I need protection in Hopeville, P.A.” He gave her address.
Strange that he would remember. He hadn’t bothered coming back to tell her that he was okay. She couldn’t have been that important to him.
“Whoever you have closest. Local cops, fine. Outside surveillance, not to go in unless needed. Anyone approaching but me should be considered armed and dangerous. There are kids inside,” he added, then hung up and walked to a wall panel that opened to reveal a frightening cache of weapons. He tossed boxes of ammunition and guns into his bag, along with hand grenades and other things she didn’t recognize.
And the guns weren’t the scariest by far. The measured way he moved, his cold method as he assessed each weapon before selecting it spoke of a man who wore danger and violence like a second skin. How could he have hidden it so well two years ago when it was obvious now?
She inched toward the door. She really, really needed to leave. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked without looking her way, keeping up with his preparations.
He could have been the hero of some action movie. Or the villain. Two years ago, with his tattoos, the fact that he rode a bike, with those bedroom eyes of his that awakened her body for the first time to the fact that she was a woman, he was the most dangerous man she’d ever met. Just talking to him had always been a thrill. But he was so much more than she’d ever known.
“Please let me leave.” To think that despite her stunned reaction at the sight of him in the restaurant, she’d been so incredibly happy to see him. Sitting there, alive, he was the answer to all her prayers. She used to have dreams like that. His coming back, telling her it was all a big mistake. The two of them making a real family. His promising that he would love her forever, would never leave her again.
And now her fondest dreams were turning into a nightmare in front of her eyes. She pressed her jaw together for a second until the pain passed. “Please let me go home,” she entreated once she could breathe.
He barely looked up. “I can get you there faster than anyone else. Guaranteed.”
He was going to take her? “No offense, but I’m not sure I want you anywhere near my babies.” She thought of the gunfight at the restaurant. The way he’d left his date there, lying in a pool of blood. Okay, she was sure she didn’t want him anywhere near Zak and Nate. And she kind of wished she’d never told him about the twins. She’d been still too shaken up. Hadn’t been in her right mind. Hadn’t been able to think.
He closed the panel. “I’m one of the good guys.”
She kind of figured that from the phone conversation, and would have been lying if she said that wasn’t a great relief. But… “Good guy and dangerous aren’t mutually exclusive,” she pointed out. “Whatever you’re involved in, I want no part of it.”
“Too late.”
Was that regret in his voice?
He took the few steps necessary to reach her, and she had to look up at him. He was a good couple of inches taller and almost twice as wide in the shoulders—and she wasn’t a small woman.
He hesitated for a second, then huffed some air out through narrowed lips. “I was working undercover tonight.”
A couple of things clicked into place. Her mind raced. “And back in Hopeville when we met?”
He tossed her a coat, then once she’d put it on, grabbed her by the wrist, heading out to the garage. “Yes.”
Of course. He’d been new to town. But then again, she’d been new, too. They had bonded over being outsiders who were trying to get their small side-by-side shops going, trying to fit in.
“Is Reid Graham your real name?”
“Yes. I was hoping to find a way into the cell through an old army acquaintance who knew me back then. He’d gone the wrong way after he quit the army. He has a cousin on the fringes of the cell. My record was doctored to make it look like I quit, too, shortly after him. I ran into him ‘accidentally’ and was trying to get into his confidence. Anyway, I had to use my real name.”
“Who was the blonde at the restaurant?”
“An asset. She had information I needed.”
A disposable asset, apparently. Obviously, his business involved using people and casting them aside if necessary. Then she thought of something else, and her throat constricted.
“Was seducing me part of your cover?”
“You came to me.” His voice was low, tightly controlled. “But regardless—” He paused while he let his ca
r quietly roll out of the garage. He was scanning their surroundings. “What I allowed to happen…plain bad judgment on my part.”
Tears burned the back of her eyes as they reached the street and he stepped on the gas. She looked away from him, blinking rapidly, staring out the side window at the houses that zoomed by.
“I have a situation here.” He was talking on his phone again. “Personal. I need a safe house somewhere near Hopeville, P.A.” He listened. “Not much. I have the tag numbers of the SUV the shooters drove.” He rattled that off, then looked at her. “What’s your husband’s name?”
Husband? Oh, Allen. “Allen Birmingham.”
“Anybody by the name of Allen Birmingham at the restaurant?” His face darkened as he listened to the response. “I figured,” he said before ending the call.
She gripped the seat belt. “What? What happened to Allen?”
“The cops talked to him when they showed up. They asked him to wait in the manager’s office because they needed to talk to him again about your kidnapping, after they secured the scene and got what they could from the rest of the witnesses.” He looked at her, regret in his cinnamon eyes. “By the time they came back to him, he’d disappeared. Hey.” He took her hand, his fingers warm and strong around hers. “I’m sorry.”
“You think those men took him?” She was beginning to feel light-headed. “They wouldn’t hurt him, would they?”
He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her hand, the car flying over the road. It was getting late, so that traffic was beginning to thin, not much standing in their way.
She pulled away to wrap her arms around herself. “He isn’t my husband,” she said at last, dazed.
“Boyfriend? I guess he’s the father of your boys?”
She held Reid’s somber gaze when he glanced over. Bit her lip. Sooner or later… It wasn’t as if he wanted anything to do with them anyway. God, she’d been dreaming about this moment, wishing for this miracle for so long. And now that her most impossible dream had come true, nothing was as it should have been. It broke her heart.
