by Bonnie Vanak
“One, maybe,” she muttered.
A crooked smile touched Sam’s mouth. He held up five fingers. Kelly ducked behind the menu.
“You kept track?”
“Only to set the bar higher,” he murmured.
The waitress set their drinks down. Sweat trickled down Kelly’s temples as she stammered out their orders. When the woman left, Sam squeezed her hand. “Chill, Kel. You look scared as a rabbit in a wolf den. I’m just playing with you, getting you to relax.”
“I can’t. Talk to me. I feel like everyone’s watching me.” She folded and unfolded her napkin. “How did you become a SEAL? Was it as hard as I’ve heard?”
“Worse.” Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “I had a real asshole officer in boot camp. He kept pushing me hard, goading me to drop out.”
“But you didn’t.”
“If I quit, I knew it was a matter of time before I did something stupid, like turning into a feral wolf again. The navy kicked my ass, taught me self-control.”
Kelly looked at him with new respect. “You were never one to take orders.”
“I learned, especially during BUD/S. Even BUD/S was nothing compared to training after I became a SEAL. More training to join Team 21. I had a werewolf, all two hundred pounds and teeth, nearly ripping my throat out. Was worth it to join the Phoenix Force. Damn best bunch of guys I’ve ever known.”
“Sam, what’s going to happen to me when all this is over?”
His gaze was steady. “My orders are to return you to the base first. Erase your memories.”
Panic crept up her throat. “You can’t do that.”
“I have to, Kel,” he said softly. “Just your knowledge of the team.”
And him. “Please, isn’t there some way around it?”
“It’s not so bad,” he said quietly. “Doesn’t hurt. You don’t feel a thing. Not like when you remember the bad things.”
Like when my family died. The words hung in the air, unspoken. Kelly shifted in her seat.
“Our memories make us who we are, even the bad ones.”
Sam gave a very unladylike snort. “Cut the psychobabble. I’d love to erase the past.”
“You’d wipe out all memory of it, including me?”
Raising her chin, she watched his jaw tense. “Not you. Your father. He set that fire on purpose because he hated my family.”
Sam had every right to his anger. Maybe if she told him the truth, it would help him deal, ease his anger. But what if the truth meant hurting him all over again?
“He didn’t hate your mother.”
“Right.”
“I have proof.”
Shock widened his eyes. He slapped his hands on the table, his body quivering, the thin shoulders in the white peasant blouse tensing. “What?”
She hesitated.
“Tell me,” he ordered. “Right now.”
Swallowing hard, she plunged ahead. “A few weeks after the fire I snuck back to check our quarters, see if there was anything I could salvage. My stuff was all in the trash. The Mage authorities had done a thorough search, looking for evidence.”
“Go on.”
“The only thing they hadn’t thrown out was the policies and procedures manual your father issued all Arcane servants. I was going to toss it but decided to go through it. Sometimes Dad wrote notes in the pages, reminders of stuff to do...”
Her throat closed up tight. “Dad had taped a note to the back of a page. Dated Christmas Eve.”
His gaze narrowed. “Handwritten?”
She nodded. “He’d jotted down a task list. Dad was involved in a small, underground group trying to secure equality for Arcanes. FES, the Freedom & Equality Society. And he’d found an ally within the walls of the mansion.”
Kelly clenched her fists until the nails bit tender flesh. “Your mother.”
Sam went very still. “Impossible. What did the list say?”
“It was just notes. Wednesday night, eight-o’clock meeting, FES, execute plan. Target—Chloe Shaymore.” Her heart banged hard against her chest.
He leaned forward. “What else, Kelly?”
“There was a notation. Oil lamp, spill, master bed.”
Red suffused Sam’s face. He swore in a low voice. “The master bedroom, where firemen said the fire originated. A hit list of the first Elemental to kill. My mother.”
“No!” Others glanced at their table. She lowered her voice. “It was a reminder about something. He scribbled those things all the time. Your mother’s name was listed because she was conspiring with him and the FES. Once or twice I saw them whispering together. She went with him to a Wednesday-night meeting.”
His tight expression warned he didn’t believe a word. “Why would my mother, who was queen of the Elemental social set, do something that dangerous? And every Wednesday night she went to her bridge club.”
“And who was her chauffeur? My father. At her tea party, one of her friends talked about how they’d had to cancel bridge until finding new partners. She never went, Sam. Instead, she was with my father at a secret FES meeting.”
Sam was utterly still, looking as if she’d stabbed him in the gut.
“Your mother was essential to his plans to gain more rights for our people. He’d have fought to protect her.”
“He was laughing as he fled. I saw him. Hell, you saw him! Does that sound like a man who wanted to save her?”
“I don’t know! But my father would never hurt anyone.”
“Why the hell are you telling me this now, Kelly?” Sam looked sick.
“I thought it might help you to know my father didn’t hate your family and couldn’t have set the fire.” Kelly reached across the table for his hand, but he drew back.
Muscles taut, he leaned forward, his gaze glittering. “What did you do with this note? Did you turn it over to the Mage authorities?”
“I burned it. I couldn’t risk them jumping to the wrong conclusions and using it to frame him for murder.”
“You protected him.”
“How could I trust them?”
Sam went silent as their food was served. He picked up the fork, pushing the chicken around the plate. “You could have given it to my uncle. He’s fair and just. He’s the one who argued for your release and got you out of jail after the fire. Al has been a voice of reason for all Arcanes.”
“I couldn’t risk it. Elementals aren’t interested in justice, only revenge. They’re all narrow-minded.”
“Does that include me? I’m Elemental,” he asked quietly.
“Of course not! I’d never think of you like that. Trust me, Sam.”
A snort of harsh laughter. “Trust you? Why should I? You’re acting as biased as those windbags on the council, except you’re prejudiced against my people. I see whose side you’re on.”
“I don’t want to take sides.”
“Too late.”
* * *
To her dismay Sam booked them a room in one of the town’s motels. Kelly barely noticed the polished tile, the freshly painted walls and the bouquet of fresh flowers on the front desk when they registered.
Instead, all she focused on was the fact that they’d be sharing one room. One bed, when an entire town right now wouldn’t be big enough to cover the silence hanging between them.
Kelly bit her lip as he counted the money for the room. Gone was the carefree camaraderie between them. Sam had taken charge, assertive in skirts, a no-nonsense attitude.
The red-tiled room had bright blue painted walls, a simple pine desk and one nightstand. An overhead fan lazily swept the air over a small, narrow bed.
She turned to see Sam’s glamour vanish. But this time he was dressed in an olive-green T-shirt, camouflage pants covering his long, muscl
ed limbs.
The compassionate, funny Sam vanished, replaced by the efficient soldier known as Shay.
She had taken the man and turned him into a machine. Somehow, she had to reach him again, get inside to find the real Sam.
“We can’t stay here. We have to push on to La Aurora,” she said.
“It’s too late. Time to take a break.”
“I don’t need a break.”
Sam unzipped his pack and withdrew his pistol. “I do. I’m not thinking clearly. I need to calm down. And you need sleep. You’re on the edge of collapse.”
“But the kids... What if the rogue Arcanes get to them before we do?”
He glanced up, hazel eyes hard. “I know you don’t like to take risks, but that’s one you’ll have to take.”
Ouch. Kelly winced as he tossed back her own words. Sam’s expression softened. “They won’t get to them. I suspect they’re more interested in getting to you.”
He gestured to her head. “You’re exhausted and your glamour is fading. Look.”
The mirror on the bathroom door showed a man with reddish hair, soft mouth and...she glanced down to see rounded hips.
“Change back. Then shower and get to bed. I need you fresh and alert. We’ll leave before dawn.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but seeing his expression, she changed her mind. Kelly closed her eyes and summoned her true form. The mirror now reflected a redhead with sallow skin and purple shadows beneath her eyes.
Sam was right, dammit. She looked exhausted. Yet he was tough as steel and showed no signs of stopping.
Hating the distance between them, Kelly investigated the bathroom, a tiny area where she could barely turn around. Checked tile walls of red, blue and yellow were accented by a bright yellow cabinet. She looked longingly at the miniscule shower.
“Go.” Sam sat on the bed with his pistol, turning it over in his hands.
“Aren’t you going to shower?”
“You first. I have other priorities.” At her expression he added in a hardened voice, “This is a mission. Checking my weapons and the equipment comes first.”
An air of danger quivered in the air, emanating from the man on the bed, holding a pistol in an experienced grip. Somehow, she had to break through that reserve, find the Sam she’d glimpsed before. The Sam who once had believed her, trusted and listened to her.
Even though he had no reason to do so.
Kelly dropped to her knees before him, putting a hand on his sleekly muscled thigh. He stiffened.
“Sam, I didn’t mean to say that about all Elementals.”
“But you can’t help but thinking it deep inside. We’re all the same. Can’t be trusted.”
Drawing back, she curbed her temper. “Hard to trust you when you left after paying my bond, no forwarding address, just a formal letter ending everything.”
Sam looked away.
“You left me, because I was an Arcane. No longer just Kelly.”
Lacking her father to arrest, the Mage authorities tossed her in jail for twenty-four hours. Sam had paid her bail but had vanished. It was the roughest time of her young life. Missing Sam dreadfully, wishing he were with her, teasing away her fears with his wicked charm and humor.
Too terrified to trust anyone, grieving for Sam’s family, heartsick over her father, she finally went to the cabin where they’d first made love...and saw an envelope from him. With eager, fumbling fingers, she’d torn into it, knowing Sam, the man who professed his love, wouldn’t abandon her.
Instead, she found a key and a crisp letter directing her to a bank safe-deposit box, along with instructions to use the money to start over and “forget about us.” Sam had severed the ties between them with words as sharp as the ax her father used to cut trees.
A heartbeat of silence passed. Sam picked up the pistol, turned it over in his hands.
“I had to leave. Wasn’t possible to stick around. Not when I’d lost so much.”
“You didn’t lose me.”
“Wrong,” he said quietly. “I lost you the moment you insisted on Cedric’s innocence, even after we’d seen him run from the house. The fire destroyed my family, my life. But your fidelity to your father, and your own kind, destroyed everything between us, Kelly.”
“I had to defend him. They were set out on a witch hunt. It had nothing to do with you.”
“It had everything to do with me. Even though he’d disappeared, you chose him over me. It used to be you and me against the world, and you turned it to your people versus mine.”
Torment shadowed his eyes as he stared at the wall. “I felt so alone, trying not to show it. When the Mage authorities showed up that night and kept questioning us, you didn’t just insist Cedric was innocent. You ranted at them, saying they automatically blamed an Arcane. You said, ‘Because that’s what you damn Elementals do. You’re all the same, nothing but arrogant, rich, entitled, powerful aristocrats.’”
Tension pulled his muscles tight. “Every insult you lobbed at my people included me.”
“Never!”
He ticked off his fingers. “Rich. Arrogant. Entitled. Powerful. Aristocratic. You called me all those once, as a joke maybe, but that night you weren’t joking.”
Shock punched her low in the gut. Sickened at this revelation, Kelly drew back on her haunches.
“I couldn’t deal. Not after my heart was ripped to shreds and all I had left was a crumbling shell of a home and three gravestones. I needed you badly, Kelly. You were all I had left. But you weren’t there for me.”
“Sam,” she choked out. “Oh, gods, why didn’t you tell me? I never knew how you felt. It would have changed everything.”
“Would it?” His broad shoulders stiffened. “Go take your shower. I’ll secure the room.”
Trembling, she stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Once they’d been lovers, had laughed together, planned a future as they lay close, talking long into the night. One night had changed everything, damaging them both.
Her throat constricted as she undressed and stepped into the tiny stall. The shower was cool and refreshing. She stood beneath the trickle of water, letting it wash away dirt, grime and tears.
* * *
After placing safeguards on the windows and doors so he’d detect the slightest tap, Sam returned to the bed. His hands curled around his Sig. He hated the hurt look on Kelly’s face, knowing he’d put it there.
The steady patter of the shower conjured images he didn’t want. Kelly, standing naked beneath the shower, head thrown back as the water cascaded down her breasts, a droplet sliding in between those lush mounds. His body grew tight and hard as he thought about tracing each drop with his tongue, his hands splayed around her hips, the musk of her womanly scent drowning him...
He was a SEAL and trained hard to deploy on the toughest assignments in the world. This was one. Maybe Curt should schedule more training time on how to deal with ex-girlfriends on a mission, he thought humorlessly. Lesson one: close-quarters defense when faced with a woman you badly wanted to fuck.
He’d deal with it. And then what, when he returned Kelly to the States and into Mage custody?
Shay didn’t see a way around it. He lived by the rules. They kept him centered and focused when his world had fractured, kept the feral wolf inside him at bay.
Not anymore. She was naked, just a few feet away.
The bed was soft and the sheets crisply white. He closed his eyes, remembering how they had once tangled together in hot, slick need, perspiration glistening on her soft skin as he loved her long and hard.
Shay gave a bitter snort. He loved her once. And then one Christmas Eve everything had shattered, and her loyalty proved exactly how brittle love was.
When she emerged from the bathroom, patting a ragge
d towel on her hair, a fresh linen shirt damp against her skin, he steeled himself against a hard kick of desire.
“Sam, I’m sorry for everything that happened.” Sorrow filled those big blue eyes. “Can you forgive me for not being there for you?”
He could not speak. Instead of answering, he headed past her into the bathroom.
“Do you always bring a gun into the shower?”
Only with you, he thought. The Sig was a hard reminder of his identity, his obligation to the team.
Not to a pretty Arcane who’d shattered his trust all over again.
The door closed behind him with a firm click.
Chapter 13
“It’s okay, it’s okay, Sam, wake up!”
Velvet-soft voice, urgently calling. A light snapped on. Cold sweat trickled down his temples as Shay sat up, ready to coldcock the new threat.
No threat. Just memories of the past and the fire that changed everything. Instantly he surveyed the surroundings. Motel room.
Eyes wide, Kelly sat on the bed. “You were having a nightmare. I wanted to wake you up, but you were thrashing around and I didn’t want to get punched.”
Shay shook off the nightmare visuals. “Smart. Never try to wake me up abruptly. I could hurt you.”
She glanced at his hands fisted in the sheet and the curve of his biceps. “Even though you wouldn’t mean it.”
Kneeling beside him, she placed a soft hand on his tensed shoulder. The thin blanket beneath him was soaked. He’d slept on the floor, giving her the bed. The golden glow from the bedside lamp sheened her face, sharp with worry.
Aware of his half-naked state, the sheet falling to his waist, Shay looked around for his pants. He pulled the sheet around his waist.
“You called my name.”
“Um.” Embarrassed, he couldn’t speak.
“A bad one, huh?” Sympathy tinged her husky voice.
“No big deal.”
“I’ve had dreams. I know how bad they can be.” She gave a soft smile and sat on the bed, patting it. “That floor looks really uncomfortable. Come on up. I need to talk to you.”
