by Joyce Lamb
Flinn sank back into his chair. “How can you possibly know that?”
“You taught me to mine memories, remember? Do you think you’re immune? My question is, why didn’t you kill Arthur Baldwin a long time ago?”
He recovered his composure and gave her a bitter smile. “Revenge is sweetest when you can draw out the suffering. I’ve waited a long time for this. I won’t tolerate your interference, Samantha. You go behind my back again, and I’ll punish you. Do you understand?”
She braced against the fear that tried to weasel its way into her newfound bravado. He wouldn’t hurt her. He needed her. “I understand.”
Back on the bathroom floor, Sam couldn’t stifle a soft whimper as memories gushed into her mind like a waterfall pounding rock . . .
Sloan Decker slipped up beside her in jeans that hugged muscled thighs, a black cowboy hat and a denim Western shirt with pearly snaps. He saluted her with the drink in his hand, bestowing a charming, for-the-pretty-lady grin on her. “We’re aborting the mission.”
She smiled back, feigning flirty and flattered. “Why? All I need is a little more—”
“Flinn thinks you’ve been compromised.”
“I just talked to Adler on the phone. He sounded fine.”
“The intel is iffy, but Flinn doesn’t want to take the chance. We’ll have to use what you’ve got.”
She suppressed her eye-roll. “I can handle this.”
“Preaching to the choir, Sam. Meet me out back in two.”
She sighed.
“Sam.”
The set of his chiseled jaw gave off “just do it” signals.
“Fine,” she said. “Two minutes.”
A minute and a half later, Sam left her still-full Tanqueray and tonic on the polished surface of the bar and slipped off the wooden stool. As the beat of country music thrummed in her chest, she wound her way through the bodies crowded around the pool tables toward the back. How had Adler made her? She was certain that all he saw when he looked at her was sex on spike heels. All she saw when she looked at him: a slimy security specialist bankrolling a terrorist attack to boost business.
“Stormy, girl, where are you off to?” Vince Adler’s voice boomed behind her.
She turned a full-wattage smile on the over-tanned man, whose slicked-back black hair gleamed despite the muted lighting. “There you are. I was about to give up on you.”
“Got hung up in traffic. You weren’t leaving, were you?”
“I was in search of the ladies. Any clues?”
“I’ll walk you there.” His hand settled at the small of her back, subtle pressure steering her.
“Thank you.” She shifted to grasp his fingers, giving them a small squeeze as his intentions filtered into her mind. Get her outside and into the Caddy. Jimmy will take it from there.
Jimmy, his nephew, who had a knack for helping Adler get what he wanted. Bastards, both of them. And proof that Flinn’s intel was on the money.
In front of the ladies’ room, she said, “Thanks for the escort.”
Instead of letting her go, his grip shifted to her elbow and turned rough. He said nothing as he propelled her toward the exit.
“Vince?”
“Shut up.”
He shoved the door open, and cold air rushed in to greet them. Sam saw the black Cadillac Escalade—but no Jimmy—at the same moment that Sloan stepped out of the shadows and placed the barrel of his SIG nine mil against the nape of Adler’s neck.
“Let the lady go,” Sloan said, deep and low and menacing.
A grim smile curved Adler’s lips. “My men have you surrounded. You’re outnumbered three to one.”
Sloan snorted. “That was true about three minutes ago.” He jutted his chin at Sam and tossed her a pair of plastic zip cuffs. “Want to do the honors, Stormy?”
She pushed a red-faced Adler against the brick wall and zipped the restraints on him. “You took out six guys in three minutes?” she asked Sloan, as incredulous as she was impressed.
He grinned at her, all teeth and male ego. “There’s a reason my code name is Hammer.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Mac rolled onto his side, reaching for Sam in the dark, already smiling as naughty thoughts tumbled through his head. He’d start with her nipples, he thought. Fingers first, then tongue and perhaps a little teeth. Her nipples were extra sensitive, and he could make her arch right off the bed when he played them just right.
But Sam wasn’t in bed with him anymore, and the sheets where he hadn’t been lying felt cool to the touch.
He sat up and reached for the lamp on the bedside table. He heard a noise at the same moment that the light chased the darkness from the hotel room. In the bathroom. Not vomiting, thank God. Something else, though. Something he didn’t immediately recognize, and when he did, his skin flashed cold.
“Shit.” Shoving aside the bedclothes, he hopped out of bed, grabbed his boxers and stepped into them as he half-walked, half-stumbled to the bathroom door. “Sam?”
Nothing but silence on the other side of the door.
“Sam? You okay in there?”
He heard her sniff, followed by what sounded suspiciously like a hiccup.
He knocked a knuckle against the door. “Sam?”
When she still didn’t respond, and his heart started jumping all over the place, he said, “I’m coming in, okay?”
He turned the knob and pushed the door open a couple of inches. He froze when he saw her. She was on the floor, her back against the side of the tub and her face buried in a towel. Her hair hung around her face and hands in damp strands. She shook so much her shoulders quaked.
“Jesus, Sam,” he murmured, opening the door fully and going in to drop to one knee beside her. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, face still buried in the towel. She was crying. No, not just crying. Sobbing.
He reached for her without thought, and his alarm grew as his palm brushed over her back and he felt the cold, wet material of the pajama top plastered against her back.
“You’re soaked to the skin. What the hell happened? Did you have a nightmare?” As he asked, it hit him: flashback. A really bad one this time.
“Oh, baby,” he said softly, and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “Let’s get you into some dry clothes, okay?”
She raised her head finally, her swallow audible. Tears and grief had left her eyes red and puffy. “I’m fine. I can change myself.”
His chest muscles squeezed at the ragged hoarseness of her voice. “I know you can. But you don’t have to. I’ll help you.”
“You’ve done enough.”
He stilled at her flat tone. This was not the same woman he’d made love with repeatedly throughout the night. “Talk to me, Sam. What’s going on?”
He thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then her eyes latched onto his for about half a second before skipping away. “I remember everything.”
His stomach did a slow roll. “Shouldn’t that be something to celebrate?”
She pushed to her feet and brushed by him to go to the sink, where she splashed water on her face then blotted it dry. Then she headed into the bedroom, dragging the sodden top over her head along the way.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I have to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Away from here.” She fished a top and jeans out of the Dillard’s bag and started tugging off the tags. “My instincts were screaming at me not to come here, but I agreed to it anyway. I should have listened.”
He followed her around the room as she dressed. “Maybe you should take a breath and think this through. You’re safe here.”
“But you’re not.” She stopped in midstep and covered her face with both hands. “Oh, God.”
He put a hand at her hip to steady her. “What, Sam?”
“Charlie and Alex.”
“They’ll be here soon.”
“It’s not safe for them. They . . . y
ou . . . all of you can’t be anywhere near me.”
He grasped her shoulders and turned her fully toward him. “You need to calm down.”
“I don’t have time—”
“Take time. Please.”
She pressed her shaking hands against his bare chest, palms flat, and looked into his eyes. Her gaze lost focus, and a light shudder coursed through her. A moment later, she was back, eyes overflowing as she quietly shattered before his eyes.
“We made a mistake,” she said. “I made a mistake. I never should have let this happen when I had no memory.”
He released her and stepped back, dread buzzing to the top of his head. “Is there someone else?”
Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks. “No.”
“That Sledge guy you wanted to call when we first got into this. Is he—”
“No. He’s a friend. That’s all. There’s never been anyone else, Mac. Only you. But I can’t do this. I can’t be here at all.”
He had the impression that she never allowed herself to cry like this, especially in front of another person. “You need to talk to me, Sam. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She swiped at her running nose. “Flinn will use Charlie and Alex to flush me out.”
Surprise that she’d actually told him threw him off, but he recovered quickly. “We’ve taken precautions. No one can possibly know they’re coming here.”
“And what about after we leave? I can’t protect them forever, Mac.” Her voice broke on his name. “I have to go.”
The anger rolled over him in a wave, eroding his usual, easygoing control. “So, what, you’re just going to take off on your sisters again and not look back for another fourteen years?”
She winced and looked away, closing her eyes for a brief moment before sniffing and meeting his gaze, stronger now, resolved. “You know it’s not what I want.”
He turned away, unable to look at her without wanting to shout at her to stop being a damn spy and be the woman she’d been the past three days. “I think it is what you want. Going back to Lake Avalon would be hard. Making things right with Charlie and Alex would be hard. And you’re all about the easy way, aren’t you?”
“You don’t understand.”
He whirled toward her. “No, you don’t understand! I’ve been friends with Charlie and Alex for a long time. You broke their hearts when you ran away, Sam. And now I’ve brought you back to them, and you’re going to walk away before you even see them again? What the hell?”
“This isn’t about Charlie and Alex,” she said softly.
“Like hell it’s not.”
“I didn’t want to come back here. I told you—”
“Oh, so it’s my fault your sisters are going to lose you all over again. That’s bullshit, and you know it. You’re the one in control here. You’re the one who gets to make the decisions, and your decision is to run. That’s easy for you.”
She advanced on him fast, and the next thing he knew, she’d shoved him up against the wall. “It’s not easy. It was never easy.”
He grasped her wrists and turned fast, twisting her around so that her back was against the wall, the maneuver far more gentle than she’d done with him. When she struggled against his grip, he leaned into her, front to front, subduing her with his superior weight. She might have been a trained fighter, might have been able to take him apart limb by limb when in fighting form, but at the moment she was shaky and drained, and he easily pinned her.
“You can’t muscle your way out of this one, Sam.”
She tried to yank away, but he held fast. “You can’t just pack up and walk out of here like the past three days didn’t happen. You have people who care about you, who want to help you.”
“You don’t know anything—”
“You think I don’t know what it’s like to find yourself at rock bottom? Believe me, sister, I’ve been there. I was there a week ago, stressed out of my mind and in danger of heading straight for the bottom of a bottle. Your sisters snapped me out of that. Now I’m returning the favor.”
She turned her head aside, closing her eyes tightly, as if she could shut him out by pure will. He jerked her forward by the wrists and waited until she looked at him again. He didn’t have to wait as long as he’d expected.
“All I’m asking,” he said, “is that you think about what you’re doing. You’re not yourself.”
“I haven’t been myself for the past three days.”
“I don’t think that’s true. You’ve been more yourself the past three days than you’ve been in fourteen years.”
“There’s no way out of this, Mac. Don’t you think I would have tried a long time ago?”
“It’s time you made the choice to trust someone to help you.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“Flinn will kill you. He’ll kill Charlie and Alex. My parents. He’ll take everyone I love away from me. You don’t know him like I do. He’s . . . evil.”
“And what’s to stop him from using any one of us, or all of us, to flush you out after you leave?”
“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet, but I will. You’ll have to trust me.”
“Sam.” He said her name softly, and for the first time in his life, words failed him.
So he kissed her.
It took her several seconds to respond, but her arms finally went around his neck, and she kissed him like she was dying. She tasted of salt and grief and desperation, and he gave her everything he had to show her they could get through this. Together.
When Mac carried her to bed, she let him. When he gently laid her out and undressed her with intimate care, she let him. When he murmured and sighed and kissed her eyes and brows and temples, caressed her aching breasts with reverent hands, she let him. She lost herself in him, lost the thread of why she had to leave this man, lost the fear and doubt and pain. Love rolled in to fill the empty places left behind, love and warmth and security.
When he slipped into her, hot and hard and oh so sweet, she arched to meet his thrust, her eyes open and fixed on his, his name on her lips.
“Mac.”
He smiled as he moved, slow and easy, taking his time building the pleasure, never looking away from her gaze as he stroked into her. He made love to her with tender ferocity, telling her with his body and his eyes that if she left him, she’d die. Again. Sam Trudeau died fourteen years ago. Mac Hunter had resurrected her in three days.
A tear slipped back into her hair, and he stopped it with his lips. His breathing grew ragged in time with hers, and he kissed her more urgently as the pleasure grew, kissed her with lips and tongue and teeth, demanding that she accept what he was showing her, giving her. His heart. His soul.
“I’m falling in love with you,” he murmured against the side of her neck, against the throb under her skin.
Her heart soared with those words, followed by her body, the climax detonating inside her like a supernova, flashes of light and heat and release arching her head back on a serrated moan. He followed a moment later, a harsh groan escaping his lips as his body vibrated against hers. When he buried his face in her neck, his breath fast and uneven against her skin, she opened herself to his release. It rolled through her on a second wave, just as intense and blinding as the first. Her muscles stretched taut, and her name echoed in her—his—mind.
Sam. Oh God, Sam.
The depth of his emotion and love shook her, shocked her. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve him.
And yet she clung to him, reluctant to let go.
He started to withdraw, but she put her arms around him to hold him in place, savoring the connection, the minute twitches of his softening cock nestled inside her. He responded with a soft kiss at the corner of her mouth, a nuzzle of his nose against her cheek.
“We’re going to be okay, Sam,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes as he set
tled beside her and gathered her into his arms.
“We’re going to be okay.”
She wished she could believe that.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Sam eased out of bed, careful to not jostle Mac even the slightest bit. When he stirred and murmured in his sleep, she leaned over and pressed a tender kiss to his forehead.
“I’m falling in love with you, too,” she whispered as she trailed gentle fingers down his temple and over the sandpaper texture of the light beard covering his jaw.
Then she grabbed her clothes and went into the bathroom, where she cleaned up before quickly pulling them on. When she looked in the mirror, she paused, surprised by the flush in her cheeks, the dazed expression in her eyes. She looked like a woman who’d been thoroughly loved, thoroughly satisfied. And yet was thoroughly confused.
She ran a hand down the front of her body, over her abdomen. As if in answer, her stomach lurched and churned.
She braced a hand on the vanity as her knees trembled. What was she doing? She didn’t have the strength to take on Flinn by herself. She needed help.
But how could anyone else help without endangering themselves? Flinn would do anything to get her back, not because he wanted her or couldn’t live without her or valued her work as a spy, but because of the life she carried.
She closed her eyes, fighting against the nausea, fighting the sense of violation. If she were indeed pregnant—and she believed she was—she knew when Flinn had done it. She’d known when it happened but hadn’t had enough information to pull the threads together. Now she did.
She’d awakened the morning after, out of it and woozy. Flinn sat in the chair beside her bed, waiting for her to wake up. He laughed at her, saying she’d drunk too much the night before. She obviously couldn’t hold her liquor.
He’d brought her home after dinner and put her to bed. Stayed with her in case she woke in the middle of the night and needed something. The kind, caring boss and friend. He’d even made her scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, chattering away about innocuous news events and other topics she couldn’t follow because her head hurt too much.
