by Cindy Gerard
She crossed her arms tightly under her breasts. “The trip to Peru was all about getting some control back. So the joke’s on me, because it seems I never had control in the first place.”
He walked across the room to her. “I know you feel like your life is rocketing through space in a tailspin right now, that you have nothing to say about what’s happening to you. But it’s all going to come back together. We’ll figure it out. We’ll fix it. This situation isn’t permanent.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she looked so sad it broke his heart. “Why do you have to be such a good guy? Why do you have to be so heroic, and sexy and sweet and so . . . Indy?”
Indy? He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“I wasn’t looking for anything like you in my life, Luke.”
So that was the root of her problem. This he could understand.
“I know,” he said as they stood there so close, they were almost touching. “I wasn’t looking for anyone like you, either.”
“It all comes back to the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing, is in my control,” she said. “It was all going to happen. You were going to happen. And just like everything else, what I feel for you, what I want from you, is out of my control.”
She moved in to him, looking beaten, resigned, and as vulnerable as . . . hell, as vulnerable as he was. Worse, she had developed this notion of who he was—and he wasn’t that man anymore.
“I’m not a hero, Val. Hell, I’m not sure what I am anymore. What happened in El Salvador,” he said, forcing the words around the lump in his throat, “the shooting . . . I’ve brought a lot of guys back over the years, you know? In the field, on hundreds of ops. I’ve patched them up, saved their lives. But as I lay there, knowing I was bleeding out, knowing I was dying and couldn’t do a damn thing to help myself . . .”
He broke off. Collected himself. “I was so pissed at myself. For letting those bottom-feeders get the drop on me . . . for failing the mission to keep Sophie safe . . . for letting the guys down.”
He turned away, scrubbed both hands through his hair, then wove his fingers together on top of his head. For a long moment he stood that way, staring off into space.
“Ten days later when I came to,” he said finally, dropping his hands, “the first thing I saw was my mom. Her face was swollen from crying. She looked so . . . so tired and scared. So . . . old. And I thought, Jesus, they killed her, too. We’re both dead. And I knew it was my fault. It was all my fault.”
He didn’t realize that she’d walked up behind him until he felt the touch of her hand on his arm. Didn’t realize he had tears in his eyes until he felt the burn of them.
Shit. He blinked them back. Cleared his throat. Got himself together.
“Anyway, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. About how I was there, then how I almost wasn’t. Can’t stop thinking about my mom. Of how much pain I’d put her through.”
When she slid her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his back, he let out a breath that felt like it had been backed up in his lungs for hours.
“I’m not the man that I was before,” he said turning in her arms and resting his cheek on the top of her head. “I question things now. Why am I doing this? When’s the next bullet going to finish the job? When is enough, enough? And you can’t do that. In this line of work you just can’t do that. Sooner or later, it’ll get you killed. It’ll get someone else killed.”
“And yet you’re still with the team,” she said quietly. “Why? Why haven’t you gotten out?”
The little lady had just asked the million-dollar question. He wrapped his arms tighter around her. “Because of them.”
“Reed and Mendoza,” she concluded accurately.
“Yeah. And Jones and Green and the rest of the team that you haven’t met. They’re my brothers,” he said quietly. The whole world, it seemed, had suddenly fallen quiet. “We’ve been through the fire together. Bled for each other.”
“And you nearly died for them.”
“Sometimes I think I really did die,” he said, fighting a despair he’d been beating back for months now. “Sometimes . . . hell, sometimes I feel like I’m a ghost of the man I once was. So . . . get the hero notion out of your head, okay? I’m not that man. Not anymore.”
She tipped her head back and looked up at him, her eyes shining with something that made his heart clench. “You are that man. You are that man and so much more.”
She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him with so much tenderness, he felt it clear to his soul.
When she pulled back, her eyes were glittering as she caressed his cheek with her fingertips. “You’re my Indiana Jones. My white knight. You’re the man who told me that it’s how you react to the fear that says who you are, and then you showed me exactly what you were talking about. Don’t you see that? Can’t you feel what strength you have inside of you? You are my hero. And you are definitely not a ghost.”
Not a ghost.
Her words hit him like a freight train. And for the first time since this wild ride had started, he realized that with her at least, it was different. With her, there was no hesitation, no doubt. With her, he was who he was trained to be. His reactions were automatic. His mission clear. Protect. Defend. At all costs.
Because there was no way in hell was going to let anything happen to her.
No way in hell was he ever going to lose her.
He touched his hand to her face. Looked deep into her beautiful, soulful eyes and knew he would die to protect her.
Without another word, he picked her up, lifted her in his arms and, eyes locked on hers, carried her to his bed.
He laid her down and turned on the bedside lamp. Then he undressed her slowly, lingering over each inch of satin skin, caressing her with his eyes, adoring her with his hands, cherishing her with his mouth, telling her without words what a wonder she was to him. What a gift.
When they were both naked, he knelt above her and moved between her open thighs. She was crying softly when he entered her, as overcome as he was with emotions too complex and too deep to put into words.
He made love to her with a tenderness he hadn’t known he was capable of expressing. With a reverence that he hoped showed her that this wasn’t about sex. This was about communion. This was about seekers who hadn’t even known they’d been searching. About lost souls who had defied fate and found themselves in each other.
Yeah, it was crazy. It was incomprehensible that this could happen. But his entire life had changed since he’d met her.
He totally got it now. It was this kind of connection, this against-all-odds union that had turned womanizing, self-indulgent Johnny Reed into a devoted husband. This was what Gabe and Sam and Rafe had discovered with the women who had become their wives. What Nate and Juliana had found to sustain a bond that defied all logic. This was what Wyatt and Sophie, separated for over a decade, had held on to that had inevitably drawn them back together.
Was it love? He didn’t know. But as he buried himself deep, poured himself inside her, he couldn’t imagine anything else in this world that could even come close.
21
Everything had seemed clear in the intimacy of the night, in the heat and intensity of the most profound emotional and sexual experience of Luke’s life.
Then morning, the bitch, showed up and muddied the waters again.
As soon as he woke up and the cobwebs had cleared, Luke realized he was alone in his king-sized bed. The aroma of coffee told him Val was up and that she’d been busy. The scent of his soap permeating the air told him she’d showered.
And even before he rose, dragged on his boxers, and followed his nose to the kitchen, he’d suspected that just because the walls between them had crumbled last night, that hadn’t kept her from building them back up this morning. The closed-off look on her face confirmed it.
He leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and crossed his arms over hi
s chest, watching her. “’Morning,” he said, his voice gruff with sleep.
She nodded but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I hope you don’t mind.” She lifted a hand toward the coffee pot. “I needed a caffeine fix.”
And he didn’t need a crystal ball to read what was going on in that busy mind of hers. If this was a marathon, she’d have already put miles between them.
“You okay?” He pushed away from the door, then picked up the mug she’d filled and shoved toward him across the island that divided the kitchen and living area.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She met his eyes briefly, then busied herself refilling her own mug. She was dressed again in the sweater and jeans he’d bought her in Cuzco.
“You could have worn a pair of my sweats,” he said. “They’d have been big, but at least—”
“It’s okay,” she said with a quick, tight smile. “I’ll make do until I get a chance to buy something else.”
He watched her above the steam rising from his mug. Yeah, she’d built that wall up good again. Brought in an entire crew with backhoes, cement trucks, and big-ass trowels to rebuild. There was no way in hell he was breaching it this morning.
The part of him that still believed he was half ghost was too chickenshit to even try.
He suddenly felt very tired. And very resigned.
Maybe she was the smart one here. Maybe until this was over and both of them could think past who was out to get her, it was better to just leave it alone. To back off to where they didn’t have to think about what the hell was happening between them.
Time to do his part. “Let me grab a shower, then we’ll head back to HQ, okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah. That would be best.”
Oh, yeah. Like him she’d chickened out, decided to deal with it by not dealing with it at all.
This was why he didn’t do relationships. Everyone brought too much baggage to the party.
“Sorry I don’t have the kitchen stocked, but there should be a loaf of bread in the freezer. Peanut butter’s in that cabinet. Last I knew, the toaster worked.”
“You want me to make you some?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind.” He headed for the bathroom.
Sure, let’s pretend that last night didn’t rock our worlds into the next galaxy. After all, falling couldn’t-draw-a-deep-breath in love happened to him every frickin’ day.
An hour later, they arrived at BOI HQ. Compliments of Crystal, who had rustled up a change of clothes, Val was now wearing a clean black T-shirt and tan cargo pants.
“Not exactly material for a Vogue cover shoot, but they’re clean,” Crystal had said with a grin.
“They’re perfect,” Val had said, thanking her. She’d used the locker room to change before joining the team in their situation room.
She now glanced around the large rectangular table. Besides Mendoza, Reed, and Crystal, two more team members, Gabe Jones and Rafe’s wife, B.J., had been there to greet them when she and Luke had arrived a few minutes ago.
While Crystal was a petite redhead, outgoing, friendly, and a blatant flirt who was clearly enamored with her hunky hubby, B.J. Chase-Mendoza was Crystal’s exact antithesis. She was a tall, willowy blond with a tangle of long corkscrew curls that she’d done her damnedest to wrestle into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her severely cut black pantsuit and crisp white shirt were all business and seemed to be designed to minimize her figure, just as her lack of makeup and utilitarian hairstyle appeared to be deliberate attempts to play down her striking good looks. None of her tactics had worked. B.J. was a beautiful woman. And until Val had seen her interaction with Rafe, the Choirboy, she would have assumed she was as cold as Alaska’s Malaspina Glacier, where Val had once done a very nippy photo shoot.
When B.J. looked at Rafe, her face transformed to a look so soft and vulnerable and intimate that Val had had to look away, feeling like she was intruding on a very private moment.
Gabe Jones . . . well. There was no mistaking who he was nor what he did. He was a warrior. He was also a big, brooding man who literally filled up the room with his presence. That he was yet another excruciatingly handsome operative didn’t surprise her anymore.
Every minute that she was in their company, observing their easy camaraderie, and the precision with which they functioned as a team, it became that much clearer that these weren’t ordinary men and women. They were highly trained, highly skilled, and profoundly dedicated to their cause. It didn’t take the American flag hanging on the wall above the bank of computers to tell her that they were also patriots.
One other thing had become clear. Last night in the kitchen over Rafe’s enchiladas, Crystal’s rundown on the other players making up Black Ops, Inc. had made Val realize that every man among them had paid some price for what they did.
Looking at Luke, who sat across the long table from her, his jaw hard, his eyes averted, she saw that he was as determined as she was to avoid dealing with whatever was happening between them. That he was struggling with it just like she was.
Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong life.
She fought the urge to tell him how life-altering last night had been. To confide that she was scared senseless of the feelings she had for him, that she’d made so many bad decisions in her life about men that she couldn’t afford to make another.
The door to the situation room door opened, drawing her attention to a tall, lean man with eyes as sharp as razors.
The sound of a metal chair scraping on the tile floor filled the room as Reed shot to his feet, stood at attention, and saluted crisply.
The man stopped, scowled, and heaved a heavy sigh. “All right, you clown. At ease. It hasn’t been that long since I’ve been here.”
“Just showing my respect, sir,” Reed said with a smart-ass grin. “It’s not often we’re fortunate enough to be in the company of such greatness.”
“You are such a drama queen, darling,” Tink said, her affection tinged with forbearance.
“What he is, is a kiss-ass.” Mendoza fired a paper clip across the table at Reed, who laughed and dodged the missile. “And payday was yesterday, so you’re wasting a performance.”
“Val,” Luke said, breaking into the mix, “this is Nate Black. Nate—Valentina Chamberlin.”
The moment he’d walked in the door, Val had suspected that this was the head of Black Ops, Inc. The man had a commanding quality that exuded control, leadership, and respect. According to Crystal, Black spent most of his time in Bahía Blanca, where he oversaw the business from a remote location and supported his wife in the medical clinic she ran there. From the curious looks on the faces of the people around the table, they were surprised to see him, too.
“It’s a pleasure,” Black said, extending his hand. “Crystal has been keeping me apprised of your situation. How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine,” Val said, returning a handshake that was as strong and steady as the man delivering it. “And very appreciative of your team.”
His dark eyes were as kind as they were sharp as he smiled. Then he planted his hands on the back of a chair. “Someone give me a sit rep,” he said, taking command of the meeting with a no-nonsense style that his team clearly respected and responded to.
Crystal took the lead. “Still digging for clues as to who’s after Valentina and why. Luke brought us tons of goodies.” She spilled the contents of a large manila envelope in the center of the table.
Val felt a chill when the wallets Luke had taken from the bodies of the men they’d left in the mountains fell out. The tags he’d cut from their shirts and the red, green, and gold ribbon holding the medal he’d taken from one of the bodies were also in the mix, along with the SAT phone.
Gabe leaned forward and reached for the medal. “Military. North Korean?” he speculated, glancing at Crystal.
She nodded. “Combat decoration. We ran it against a database B.J. managed to ‘borrow’ from her friends at DIA.”
Val glanced at B.J. Crystal had to
ld her that before B.J. joined the BOI team, she had been a field operative with the Department of Intelligence Agency. She and Rafe had met as adversaries when they’d been at cross-purposes on an operation in Caracas.
“Tough as nails, that one,” Crystal had said with admiration in her voice.
Val could see that. B.J. was kick-ass, as was Crystal.
“Only four of these medals have been awarded to North Korean military personnel in the past decade.” B.J. lifted a remote control and pointed it toward the far wall. A viewing screen dropped down from the ceiling, then four headshots appeared side by side.
“Number three. That’s our guy,” Luke said flatly and without hesitation, IDing the man from the mountains after a quick glance.
Nate scowled at the screen while B.J. made a few clicks, dropping the other three photos and enlarging the one of the man Luke had identified. “So what’s a decorated soldier in the North Korean army doing in Peru chasing an American model?”
“Former N.K. soldier.” B.J. clicked to another screen that showed an official-looking document written in what Val assumed was Korean. “According to this, our guy separated three years ago.”
“To do what? Become a hired gun?” Eyes on the photo, Gabe leaned back in his chair and laced his hands together behind his head.
“Walks like a merc, talks like a merc, must be a merc,” Reed said, rising to grab the coffee carafe and refill his cup.
“Dig up everything you can on this guy, Tink,” Nate said unnecessarily. She was already tapping away at the keyboard on her laptop.
“As expected, we got no hits on the IDs from the wallets,” Rafe added. “Which means they were fakes, which is information in and of itself. These guys didn’t want to be ID’d dead or alive. The labels from the clothes are pretty standard issue. Could have bought them online, army surplus, or Mercs-R-Us. So the clothes are a dead end.”
