She burst out laughing and clenched her robe together. “Look at the two of us. We’re ridiculous. Can’t keep our hands off each other for anything.”
He winced and stepped back, tucking himself in and zipping up. “Sex wasn’t my intention when I—”
“I know. Mine, either, but we can’t seem to help ourselves, can we?” She sighed heavily, then started to say something else, but stopped short when he lost his battle against a massive yawn. She touched his stubbled cheek. “Oh, Travis. When was the last time you slept?”
He honestly didn’t know the answer. As if his silence confirmed what she’d already expected, she nodded, entwined her fingers through his, and dragged him toward the bedroom. “You need some sleep.”
He couldn’t agree more. The sex had wrung every last bit of energy from him, and his limbs felt like they were encased in cement.
But…
He pulled her to a stop before she decided to tuck him into bed like a child. “You keep saying we need to talk.”
“We do.” She shooed her cat off the bed and drew back the comforter, then disappeared into the en suite. When she returned, she wore an oversized T-shirt that fell just short of her knees. She looked so damn adorable with her mussed hair and stubble-burned cheeks, and a deep shame turned his gut into an acid pit.
“Mara, what I did to you, walking out like I did—” He stopped, the words clogging his throat. There was no excusing his actions, he knew that. They were the actions of a coward, but at the time it had seemed like the right thing to do. If he had stayed, he would have subjected her to his unpredictable mood swings and migraines and blackouts and all the other unknowns that came with his medical issues. Not to mention all the other baggage he carried. He was a mess, not fit to enter into any kind of relationship with her beyond the physical, but after only a week together, they had been headed fast down that path. So he’d walked away before he got in any deeper. And he hated himself for hurting her like that.
“Christ,” he finally managed. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a little too late, but I am. That’s why I came here tonight. Not for sex, not for—” He dropped to the edge of the bed and flopped his hands in a helpless I-don’t-know-what-else-to-say gesture. “I wanted to apologize.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again, and the hurt in her eyes as she stared across the bed at him tore him up inside. “Are you going to walk out tonight?”
“No.” He infused the word with every ounce of conviction he could muster. “I’m staying this time.” As long as you’ll have me, he tacked on silently, but he had a bit too much pride to say it out loud. With a lump the size of an Abrams tank lodged in his throat, he was already dangerously close to a man card-revoking breakdown.
She glanced away, but not before he saw the flicker of doubt. And that hurt. Christ, did that hurt, but he couldn’t blame her for keeping her expectations low. They both knew she was slumming it with him. And they both knew that, whatever this thing was between them, it had no hope of lasting very long. Still, he wanted to keep her. It was ridiculous and selfish and he knew it couldn’t happen, but he wanted her as his woman. At least for a little while.
“Okay,” she finally said and climbed into bed. “We’re both exhausted, and to say the evening has been emotionally trying is an understatement. We can talk tomorrow.”
He climbed into bed beside her and hesitated only a beat before wrapping her up in his arms. He nuzzled the back of her neck and felt a delicate shiver go down her spine. “I’m not going anywhere, Mara. I promise.”
…
As the couple stepped inside the house, Urban continued past the duplex, then hung a right at the end of the road and cruised around the block. He parked down the street and shut off the Explorer he’d borrowed from a buddy stationed at Fort Bliss. As soon as he’d realized Quinn was headed to the airport, he’d checked flight records, then hopped the first direct flight he could find, landing in the city several hours before Quinn’s plane arrived. He’d spent the extra time staking out the airport, wondering why Quinn would take a red-eye on New Year’s Day to El Paso of all places, but none of his theories had hit anywhere close to the truth. And when he pulled his laptop out of his bag in the backseat and ran a search on the duplex’s address, the result had him laughing.
Holy shit. This could not possibly get any easier.
He grabbed his cell phone from the cup holder and dialed Captain Cold. “Sir, you good to talk?”
“Yes. What’s happening?”
“Quinn has a girlfriend.”
A beat of silence passed. Then another. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, and get this. She’s Marisol Escareno, the stepdaughter Senator Ramon Escareno just disowned because she got pregnant out of wedlock.”
“And you think it’s Quinn’s child?”
“I’d bet my career on it.”
“Yeah, you are. Yours, mine, and the careers of everyone else involved in this clusterfuck.”
“It’s his,” Urban said without a doubt. “Why else would he fly out here to see her?”
More silence, and the lack of reaction was starting to piss Urban off. After all, he was practically handing Captain Cold a get-out-of-jail-free card wrapped up in a goddamn bow.
“Sir, this is better than anything we could have engineered. You want him out of the country so I can put a bullet in him without consequence? If we grab her, he’ll go after her. Hell, maybe we’ll even kill two annoying birds with one bullet—eliminate Quinn and HORNET, because they’ll almost certainly follow him.”
Finally, Captain Cold made a sound of agreement. “If they take on any more fucking missions like Colombia or Afghanistan, they’re bound to stumble onto something we don’t want them to find. They’ve already come too close.”
Tell me about it, Urban thought. Captain Cold and the rest of them had gone batshit when they found out Quinn had been to Bagram Air Base back in November, trying to convince his former commander of an impending nuclear threat. Luckily, Commander Bennett had been able to brush him off as crazy, but Quinn had said just enough during that meeting to make Bennett sweat. For the past two years, they’d all banked on Quinn not remembering the events leading up to his car accident, since trying for him again so soon after the accident would have raised too many suspicious eyebrows. Last thing they needed was an investigation into his death when they didn’t know what he had done with the damning information he possessed. But now all the signs pointed to his memory returning, and they had no choice but to do something about it. Hence, the start of what Urban liked to think of as the Kill Quinn Initiative, which so far had been the most pain-in-the-ass mission he’d ever taken on, full of missteps and false starts.
But not this time. This time, they had him. All they had to do was take Marisol Escareno.
After another long stretch of silence across the line, Urban lost the little bit of patience he had. He might be the low man on this totem pole, but he had just as much to lose as the rest of these fuckers. He had a family to feed, a wife with expensive tastes, and a ridiculous mortgage. If the navy had paid him better for risking his neck year after year, maybe he wouldn’t have turned to the black market to make sure he could send his four kids through college debt-free. But now he’d grown to like the extra paycheck and the lifestyle it provided for him and his family, and he wasn’t about to lose it because Captain No Balls here couldn’t make a decision without debating it for hours first. “I’m grabbing the woman as soon as Quinn leaves.”
“All right,” the captain said, and he sounded relieved to have the decision taken out of his hands. “I’ll make arrangements with one of our contacts to hold her somewhere OCONUS. Call me for your orders as soon as you have her.”
Chapter Three
“I’ve never seen anyone sleep so hard,” Mara whispered into the phone and cracked the bedroom door open to peek in on Travis again. Yup. Still sound asleep. “Lanie, he’s been out for over twelve hours. I’m starting to worry. What if he’s s
ick or—maybe I should call Jesse for advice?”
“And explain everything to him, including your condition?” Lanie said doubtfully. “And how do you think that overprotective cousin of yours will take the news?”
“Crap. You’re right. Jesse’s going to flip his lid.” Just like her stepfather and mother had, and she’d prefer not to go through another ugly scene like that again. She winced and pressed a hand to her belly. Would Travis also reject her and the baby? In the weeks since she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d feared the answer to that question was a hard yes. But now…
“He says he’s staying.”
“Your cousin?” Lanie asked, confused.
“No. Travis.”
“So you told him about the baby?”
“Um…”
“Mara! You didn’t tell him? Don’t you think you probably should? It’s kind of a big deal. That’s the whole reason I risked getting fired to track him down for you.”
“I know! And I owe you for that more than I’ll probably ever be able to repay. It’s just…” She shut the bedroom door as softly as possible and moved into the kitchen, where her conversation was less likely to be overheard. She was fairly certain he was still asleep, but just in case he wasn’t, she switched on her iPod dock for background noise. She sat down at the kitchen table and stared out through the sliding glass door into her backyard. “Lanie, I never expected to see him again. I called him several times, and he never responded to my messages. I mean, with the way he walked out, I assumed he wasn’t interested in hearing from me. I had resigned myself to doing this alone, and then he shows up looking like death warmed over, and he’s obviously upset about something, and ‘hey, you’re going to be a dad’ is not exactly a great conversation opener and—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Lanie said. “Take a breath.”
Mara sucked in a lungful, as instructed, and let it go in a rush. “I slept with him again.” Just the memory of the way he’d held her pinned against the wall had her cheeks heating up.
“Oh, Mara,” Lanie sighed. “You didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.” Groaning, she dropped her head to the kitchen table and banged it lightly against the wood a few times. “I don’t even know how it happened. It was just like this summer all over again. One minute we were talking like somewhat reasonable adults, and then he was kissing me and I was kissing him back and…”
“And you ended up fucking like bunnies,” Lanie finished.
Mara huffed out a laugh. It was such a Lanie comment. “To put it indelicately.”
“Girl, I don’t do delicate. And I gotta ask, was it as good as you remember?”
Mara felt her face go warm again against the cool wood of the tabletop and was glad her best friend wasn’t there to see the blush. “Better.”
“Wow. I’m…actually a bit jealous. How is the pregnant lady getting more action than me?”
BJ scratched at the back door and she got up to let the dog outside. The January morning air was crisp, the sky brilliantly blue, and she lounged in the doorway while BJ sniffed around the yard for a place to take care of business. “I don’t know what to make of him showing up like this.”
“Well, look on the bright side. At least he can’t knock you up again.”
“You’re not helping.”
“Do you believe he’s going to stick this time?” Lanie asked seriously after an extended silence.
Oh, God, she wanted him to. She wanted to see if they had anything more between them beyond the explosive sex. When he came back and stayed for a week in November, she’d thought they might have something, the kind of something that could last. They had similar tastes in TV shows and movies, their views on religion and politics lined up, and he even shared her love of bowling, which had been a complete surprise.
But then he’d left without a word.
Mara sighed. “I…I don’t know. Part of me hopes so. Really, really hopes so. And the rest of me’s calling that part an idiot. Men like him don’t stick.” She noticed movement out of the corner of her eye and turned. Someone was walking through the kitchen of the empty house next door.
Strange.
She didn’t think it had sold yet, but maybe they were having an open house today. And now that she thought about it, she remembered seeing an unfamiliar car parked out front when she took her trash to the curb this morning.
BJ came trotting over and dropped a half-dead lizard at her feet, distracting her. “Oh, gross. I have to go. BJ just brought me another lizard.”
Lanie laughed. “Dumb mutt has about as many brain cells as a lizard. Call me if you need anything. I mean it. Anything, even if it’s just to talk because that bastard walked out and broke your heart again.”
“He didn’t break my heart.”
“Uh-huh,” Lanie said before hanging up.
Mara set the phone aside and, fighting back a surge of nausea, dealt with the mess on her porch. She wasn’t as naive as she’d been six weeks ago, and she had accepted Travis into her bed last night with no expectations of commitment. But, yes, they would have to talk when he woke up. She didn’t expect commitment from him—wasn’t even sure she wanted it at this point—but now that he was here, she couldn’t very well let him leave without telling him about the baby.
He deserved to know. She just wasn’t sure how he’d react when he found out. Would he be disgusted? Thrilled? Would he claim the tiny human growing in her womb wasn’t his? She didn’t know if she could take that rejection so close on the heels of her family’s disownment.
Maybe she should wait a few more days, see how things went with him before she broke the news?
Mara shook her head. Such a coward. Putting it off longer would only make it harder. She knew that, and yet she hoped he was still sleeping as she ushered her dog inside and went to check on him again.
The bed was empty.
For a second, her heart stopped. Had he walked out again without a word?
But then her bathroom door opened and there he stood, wearing the same clothes he’d arrived in, his hair damp from a shower. She took a step toward him, but the look on his face stopped her in her tracks. It wasn’t anger but an emotionless void, almost as if he was wearing a stone mask, and it sent a chill racing over his skin.
“You said we need to talk?” He tossed her bottle of prenatal vitamins on the bed. “So talk.”
…
The relief on Mara’s too-expressive face when he stepped out of the bathroom was short-lived. Her smile faded, and she fiddled with the too-big watch on her wrist—a nervous habit he remembered from his previous stay. She stared at the floor as if she wanted it to open up and swallow her.
The little hairs on Quinn’s arms stood at attention, and he got the distinct sense he was not going to like what was coming next. “What are those vitamins for, Mara?”
After an uncertain moment, she sucked in a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, lifted her gaze to his. “I called you because I’m pregnant. Six weeks.”
Holy. Fucking. Hell.
Quinn opened his mouth, but his fucked-up brain was still scrambling to make sense of the words that had come out of her mouth, and no sound emerged.
Mara was pregnant.
And he…well, now there was only one explanation as to why she would have called him. He was the lucky genetic donor.
Mara clasped her hands together in front of her mouth and watched him with worried eyes. Silence stretched for several long minutes between them.
“Travis,” she finally blurted, “aren’t you going to say anything?”
Unable to remain standing since his knees had gone rubbery on him, he staggered a few steps and sank to the edge of the bed, feeling as if he’d just been dealt a second traumatic brain injury. He couldn’t seem to make the thoughts in his head come out his mouth.
Or, no, scratch that. Speaking the chaos in his mind out loud was a bad idea. Very bad idea. If she knew about the firestorm of panic going on inside him—
&nb
sp; “Travis?”
“You…” His voice came out rusty and he cleared his throat. “Don’t look it.”
She flapped her arms in a what-do-you-want-me-to-say gesture. “I won’t start showing for another few weeks.”
She’d always had curves—in fact, those curves were one of the things that had initially attracted him to her. He remembered kissing his way over the gentle swell of her belly, adoring the bit of fat that softened her figure. She’d been so self-conscious about it, claiming she’d recently switched to the night shift at the animal hospital where she worked and started eating too much junk food in an effort to keep awake during the wee hours of the morning. He’d told her he didn’t like skinny women, then spent the next hour showing her just how much he enjoyed her body. He doubted he’d have noticed even if she were showing.
Mara crossed to her nightstand and took a string of grainy black-and-white pictures from the drawer. She handed it to him, and his mouth went dry. All he saw on the image was a tiny blob. But it was a blob that would eventually become a baby.
Mara’s baby.
And…he was going to be someone’s father.
Oh, shit.
He suddenly couldn’t suck in an entire lungful of oxygen and bolted to his feet. He needed air. Needed to leave now before he did or said something stupid, and he almost made it to the front door before she caught his arm, looking so beautiful and…hurt.
Goddammit.
He should say something. He knew it, and yet he couldn’t come up with a damn thing to say. He turned away from her searching gaze and opened the door.
“Travis, wait.”
He hesitated only a second. “I don’t want this.”
She flinched as if he’d slapped her. “But…” Her voice was little more than a squeak.
“I gotta go.” He didn’t look back, but he could feel her eyes on him as he climbed into his rental.
Somehow, he managed to start the car and drive away, but Mara’s scent lingered on his body and reminded him of the pain he’d put in her eyes. He stopped at a red light and only then realized he still had the sonogram clenched in his hand. He flattened the strip out on the steering wheel and studied the images. A chill raced over his skin, raising goose bumps on his arms, and a headache drilled into his brain behind his eyes. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel.
Broken Honor Page 3
