Sheila's Passion

by Lora Leigh

  There was an obvious answer?

  She bit her lower lip, trying to figure it out. Because she knew Casey—if she asked, just out-and-out asked what that answer was, then there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to tell her.

  He would turn it into a puzzle and into a game and he would make her completely insane with it. She didn’t need that. Her heart had enough weight on it already.

  She cared for her father.

  She helped him.

  She covered for him.

  She scheduled for him.

  She carried information for him.

  And she had given up her own dreams of love the day she had learned that she was no more than a conduit to her father.

  It wasn’t Captain Rutledge’s fault. It was her own.

  But now, it was backfiring on her.

  “There’s an obvious answer, Casey?” She finally asked the one question she knew he wouldn’t answer.

  She wondered what game he would turn it into now.

  “Why yes, there is, and if you haven’t figured it out yet, then perhaps there’s nothing left for us to talk about.”

  There was no anger in his tone, there was no anger in his expression or in his eyes. There was something that went beyond anger and sent her stomach clenching with dread.

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked cautiously.

  “When you figure out the obvious answer, Sheila, let me know,” he told her with that icy calm that had come over him. “Until then, I’m tired of trying to move the mountain and I’m sure as hell tired of chasing after a woman who doesn’t want me.” He headed for the door. “I’m sure you can see your way out.”

  “I knew you would turn this into a game,” she cried out as his fingers curled around the doorknob. “I know a trick question when I hear one, Casey. Is this how you break it off with all your women once you’re tired of the pity fucks and the lessons in life?”

  He stopped.

  For a moment, Sheila wondered if perhaps she had gone too far. She had definitely exaggerated slightly, but it was just slightly.

  Casey had a tendency to take lovers who needed to awaken, whether they wanted to or not.

  “No, Sheila, I just thought this time, I’d found a woman who didn’t need to be dragged kicking and screaming into life.” He turned back and glanced at her for just a second. A very short, very disappointed second. “I guess I was wrong.”

  He opened the door and walked straight out of the room. The door closed behind him, an almost silent click that for some odd reason had Sheila flinching involuntarily.

  She felt her stomach drop, then clench. Tears sprang to her eyes and she didn’t understand why. She couldn’t explain the dampness or the sense of agony that tore through her.

  Her father had told her once, well, really, he’d told her several times that her habit of honesty was going to end up hurting her more than she was going to be able to heal.

  That might have just happened, and she couldn’t explain to herself why it had. All she wanted was the truth. She just wanted to know if there was a chance that he loved her. That he could love her.

  Pulling her boots, on, she pushed her toes forward as she jerked the expensive leather over first one foot, then the other.

  She felt the heel that contained the flash drive she had collected earlier that night. Before she had danced with Casey. Before she had asked him what he wanted for her and before she had experienced the most incredible sex of her life.

  What had she done?

  Shaking her head at the frustration caused by that question, Sheila moved slowly to the door and left the room as well. Rather than leaving by the public exit, Sheila moved through the dimly lit hallway to the door in the back.

  Pressing the code to the back door, Sheila slipped from the building and made her way to her car. She hit the remote to unlock it and managed to get inside before the first tear fell.

  How had this happened?

  Call him when she figured out the obvious answer as to why he wanted a relationship with her?

  What was the obvious answer?

  Laying her head against the steering wheel, she let the tears fall, though she tried to hold back the sobs.

  There was no obvious answer. Casey wasn’t a man who held a whole lot back in that way. He threw himself into whatever endeavor he took on. Whether he was laughing, drinking, fighting, or fucking, he gave it everything he had. If the obvious answer was “love,” he would have never allowed her to push him away. He would have never left the words unsaid between them.

  He would have told her he loved her. Wouldn’t he?

  A sob shook her shoulders, surprising her. The sound had her jerking her head up, wiping the tears away, and fighting back fresh ones.

  Crying didn’t help, she told herself. Feeling sorry for herself sure as hell wasn’t going to improve the situation.

  Pushing the key into the ignition, she started her car and pulled out of the parking space. She didn’t know if she could bear coming in night after night now, without Casey’s touch, without his determined seduction.

  How was she supposed to live without it now? How was she supposed to live without him?

  *

  Nick Casey’s woman left the parking lot, but it had taken her awhile to get going. And there was the suspicion she had been crying in her car.

  What had Casey done to make her cry?

  If Nick Casey was truly Beauregard Fredrico, then it could be any number of things. He wasn’t likely to break a tender heart, or to throw away a precious female he had seduced so effectively.

  He had been much sought after in Italy before the Fredrico empire had crumbled.

  Beauregard Fredrico, so handsome, so charming, and so disapproving of the families and the rules that had sustained them for so many generations.

  Making his woman cry wouldn’t change how he felt about her, though. And Nick Casey, despite the gossip that he cared for no woman, treated this woman far differently than any other he had taken to his bed.

  Yes, there was love here, and that was surprising. He wasn’t known for allowing his heart to become so involved with a woman. And neither was Beauregard Fredrico. Yet, all men loved eventually, didn’t they?

  And this man’s heart was well and truly involved with his woman. It was proven by the fact that he stood in the shadows watching as she left, his expression heavy—was that sadness lining it as well?

  It seemed this man felt much more for this woman than even he was comfortable with. How surprising. Judging by the look on his face, perhaps he and the woman had argued. Or was there a split? Because that was grief twisting his expression, and anger. Casey was not happy with his woman, or with himself. Perhaps some help was needed to draw them back together. After all, when a man and woman loved so fiercely, such separation should not be allowed. Nothing short of, well, death, should keep them apart.

  Unfortunately, despite the subtle moves that had been made to frighten his woman, Casey still appeared unconcerned, and had not made the phone call that would bring in reinforcements for only one man. Beauregard had an army at his disposal. He had only to make a single call to cash in on the vows made to him.

  And yet, he had not made that call. Perhaps he needed to be convinced.

  With a deft turn of the wrist, the ignition of the four-by-four pickup sprang to life.

  Pulling out of the shadowed parking spot and following Miss Rutledge took only seconds. Options began to come into focus and play out. Beau wasn’t getting a clue. He hadn’t yet realized his woman was in danger. A danger Beau couldn’t resolve on his own, and there was no chance he would tell the men he worked with about his past.

  That past was too rife with blood, the sins of a family, and the choices Beau himself had made, which hadn’t been exactly wise. No, his friends wouldn’t know who he was, or what he had been. And he would trust only one person to protect the woman who could be endangered because of that past.

  A few changes would have to
be made to force that call, unfortunately. Actually striking out at Casey’s woman would have to be the next move.

  With that move, the danger of actually harming her was increased. And it was a danger that would have to be faced. Faced and accepted. It was one that preference would have dictated unnecessary; unfortunately preference wasn’t an option any longer.

  Beauregard Fredrico couldn’t be allowed to escape so easily.

  He had to pay.

  And, just as in the past, a woman would have to pay for his crimes. Hopefully, this Nick Casey was the identity Beau had chosen. It meant no other woman would have to be endangered.

  With any luck, it would end very soon.

  NINE

  One week later

  Sheila stood at the large picture window in the center wall of her father’s office and stared out at the tall, evergreen border of trees that separated her small bungalow-style house from her father’s front flower gardens.

  Her mother had planted those flowers. Hundreds upon hundreds of perennials that filled the exquisite English garden her mother had created several years before her death. A garden her father worked in daily to keep it in the same pristine condition her mother had so enjoyed. Just as he kept the maid busy creating the dozens of flower arrangements that filled the house.

  Cutting through the immaculate acre of fragrant blooms was a stone path that led from the evergreen wall to the side of the house. The blossoms waved in the breeze, their soft fragrance wafting through the heated Texas air and filling the office through the AC unit positioned outside.

  Her father had tinkered with that unit for years to allow the fragrance from the air outside to fill the office. The office was the bedroom her mother had been confined to in the year before she had died. That bouquet from the flower gardens she worked so hard on had been her father’s last gift to the woman he had loved.

  The garden had once been a source of comfort, but now, Sheila watched them with a frown, wondering if they could hold something more sinister than the precious memories she’d always had of them.

  Memories of working with her mother to plant the fragrant blooms. Memories of gathering the ones her father had used to create the arrangement atop her mother’s casket.

  And with those memories was the one created last night. The one where she had slipped along that stone path, a feeling of trepidation breathing at her neck as panic had tightened her chest.

  Someone had been in her house.

  Crossing her arms over her breasts, Sheila closed her eyes and fought to control the fear.

  Who would have dared to have broken into her home? And even if they had dared, how had they managed to break the locks her father had had installed on both the front and back doors?

  She couldn’t think of anyone but Casey who could do such a thing; he was simply extraordinarily well-trained in such things.

  “Sheila, dammit, I can’t find my glasses.”

  Sheila nearly jumped out of her own skin.

  A squeak slipped past her lips as she jerked and turned around, facing her father breathlessly, her heart nearly choking her as it pounded out of control.

  Her father paused, a scowl tightening his expression. “Are you okay, dear?”

  For a moment, Sheila considered telling him about her suspicion of a breakin.

  He would lose his mind, though. Protective, overly so, and filled with fatherly concern, Douglas Rutledge would put one of his guards on her twenty-four/seven and she’d never have a moment’s peace.

  Which wouldn’t be so bad if someone had definitely broken into the house. The problem was, she just couldn’t be sure. She hated worrying her father without some sort of proof, or at least her own certainty that it had happened.

  Had she really walked away from her house and left the doors unlocked? Had she been so deep into her anger and need for Casey that she could have done such a thing?

  “Sheila, girl, you’re not answering me.” There was a hint of true concern beginning to edge into his tone.

  “I’m fine, Dad, just distracted.”

  She had just lied to her father. Sheila almost winced at the thought. Of course, it wasn’t the first time. There had been the time she had slipped out to go to that party with a college boy during her senior year. She’d told her father she was staying all night with her friend Cara Cartwright. And there had been the night a few weeks ago when her father had called and asked her at the last minute to accompany him to a dinner in Corpus Christi with the city’s mayor.

  Sheila had told him she wasn’t feeling well. At that exact moment, Casey had been undressing.

  “And what has you so distracted?” He moved into the office, obviously thoughtful as he began searching the room.

  Sheila walked over to him, tapped his shoulder with a smile, and then, as he turned to her, lifted the glasses from his graying hair and handed them to him.

  “Hmm.” He held the glasses and glared at them accusingly before looking up and giving her a sheepish smile. “I should remember to look here, huh? Your mother was always doing the same thing. She’d find them and hand them right to me.”

  Sheila nodded wistfully. “I remember, Dad.”

  “You look just like her,” he sighed. “Some days, I can almost swear she’s home again as I watch you move around those gardens.”

  She could hear the loss in his voice. For all his full and busy life, she knew her father desperately missed the woman he had called his wife. Just as she knew that he had felt no woman would ever compare to her.

  He patted her on her shoulder, a gesture of affection, before dropping a kiss to the top of her head and going to his desk.

  “I had a call from Cooper earlier,” he told her as he slipped his glasses back on his face, sat down, and looked up at her.

  “What does he need?” Sitting on the side of the desk as she had even as a young girl, she pulled her jean-clad legs up to the top of the side of the desk, crossed them, and watched her father expectantly.

  “The network is doing very well.” Her father sat back in his chair as his face creased thoughtfully. “Cooper’s group is one of our best, and the information he’s been pulling in has been damned important.”

  Sheila nodded. The Broken Bar wasn’t the only operational location set up to gather intel on criminal and terroristic activities, and it wasn’t the only location under her father’s command, but as he said, it was one of the best.

  “So why did he call?” she asked.

  “According to Cooper, you’ve been slipping in, getting the intel, and slipping back out. You’re not coming in at your usual time, and you’re acting nervous.”

  Sheila looked beyond his shoulder to the gardens outside. Rather than facing the question in her father’s gaze, she avoided it.

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Yeah, that heavy social life you have,” he grunted with what she called his loving sarcasm. He had a way of saying things to her that let her know he was clearly disapproving, and/or disappointed. Sometimes just plain disbelieving.

  In this case, perhaps it was all three.

  “Yeah, my social life is just all that,” she agreed with the same tone.

  “Yep, it’s matching Casey’s if my suspicions are correct.”

  And there it was. Sheila had wondered how long it would take her father to say something if he was aware of the relationship. Or the non-relationship. Whatever the hell it was. Or had been.

  A wave of pain swept through her as she fought to keep from dragging in a ragged breath.

  God, she missed him. She missed his touch, the sound of his voice, the amusement in his gaze, and that crooked smile he often carried.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she finally said faintly.

  “Yeah, avoiding him will do that.” She watched him nod from the corner of her eye as he continued to watch her. “Is it working?”

  She shook her head, not bothering to lie any longer.

  It wasn’t working.

  “How did you
know?” she finally asked without meeting his gaze.

  “Ah yes, how did your father find out you were sleeping with one of his agents when you were so very careful to hide it?” That disappointment was there. “I’ve known since the first night you didn’t come home because you were at his apartment,” he revealed. “I swore to your mother I’d watch out for you, Sheila. I almost messed up with Ross Mason, but I haven’t messed up since.”

  “You didn’t mess up, Daddy,” she sighed as she lifted her hands and began to pick at her nails rather than letting her gaze meet her father’s.

  If her father saw how much it hurt, he might blame himself. She didn’t want that.

  “I almost messed up,” he reiterated. “I almost didn’t introduce Mason to the general out of pride. I knew what he wanted, what he was, but seeing how it hurt you would have broken your mother’s heart. I couldn’t have that, you know.”

  A sad smile pulled at her lips as she nodded again. That was her father’s way of saying it had hurt him to see her hurt.

  “I got over it, Dad,” she promised him.

  “Not all the way,” he guessed softly. “You weren’t in love with him, so you got over the man, but you didn’t get over the lesson, did you, baby girl?”

  “Dad—” she began to protest.

  He lifted his hand, silencing her immediately. As always, she clenched her teeth, irritated with herself because that one moment could immediately remind her that if she didn’t quieten, then her father could refuse to speak to her for days.

  It had happened once, and only once, when she had been no more than five.

  “Now, look at me.”

  She lifted her gaze slowly, emotion clogging her throat as she met the concern and affection in her father’s eyes.

  He’d been a stern disciplinarian when she had been a child, but he had been a friend after she’d passed that unruly teenage stage. He was her boss and, sometimes, her sounding board, but he was always her father.

  “Daddy, I don’t want to talk about Casey,” she stated, her tone respectful but determined. “This is my fight, not yours.”

  “And why is it a fight?” he asked softly. “What is it, Sheila, that has you watching the road expecting him, and yet refusing to make that first move?”