by Beth Rhodes
Malcolm rested a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “We’re going to find him.”
She nodded and leaned in. She was starting to tire, which unsettled her. Nerves fluttered through her stomach, and pain shot through her shoulder, but the warmth at having Malcolm hold her made the physical discomfort worth it. The only real pain was of regret, exploding inside her heart.
“Are you okay?” Stacy watched her like a hawk, which seemed funny to Marie, more a sign she wasn’t tiring but was already tired. “No regressing on my watch. If you need anything, I want you to say something right away.”
“I’m okay. Really.” Marie shrugged. “The doctor wouldn’t have let me go if I wasn’t ready.”
Jamie Nash pounded down the stairs and entered the kitchen.
“I thought you were supposed to be enjoying the beach down in Belize,” she said. Craig, John, and Emily followed him in.
“He can’t stay away,” Malcolm said without cracking a smile, still somber but not forcing distance, which was his usual modus operandi.
“Heard there was trouble up in the Pacific Northwest,” Jamie said. “Couldn’t miss the chance for a free ride to the Pacific. Not to mention that saving his ass is what I do.”
“So,” Marie began hesitantly, “what happens next?” She knew they’d all been planning while she was at the hospital.
No one spoke right away, and uncertainty rose in her gut. She looked to Malcolm for the safe feeling he always gave her, even when he was scowling and disapproving. The scowl was there.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Hello in the house,” a man called out, his voice vaguely familiar. Not only familiar, though. Her heart raced, pounding painfully against her ribs.
“It’s him,” she whispered as the need to fight, to protect—hell, to run—shrieked through her brain. The man from the Dimitru estate. The one who’d almost caught her in the gallery. He was here.
“He’s one of us,” Malcolm said.
Confusion clouded her brain. “What?” Survival kicked in. She backed up, looking for an exit. “No. He’s—”
“Hello again. I’m Agent Graham,” said the man with the British accent.
“He’s with the FBI.” Macolm shrugged, keeping an eye on her. “He’s been undercover at Dimitru’s for the last six months.”
“Two days. That’s all I needed. Now this cluster…”
He had known she was there. Not she, but someone, and he’d overlooked her.
“Is my uncle still alive?”
***
Malcolm stepped up to her, crossing the kitchen as if approaching a cornered lion. The agent had thrown her, as he had thrown Malcolm. But he had more at stake.
If the FBI pressed charges, he could lose her. The newly blossoming—possibly fucked up—protective instinct for her rooted itself even deeper into his heart.
He stood next to her and faced the man, who was about to set them on a path Malcolm was fairly certain he wasn’t going to like.
“Your uncle is alive—barely,” Graham said.
She tensed. “I need to go get him.”
“We’re working on it.”
“We? Who? Me. I need to go get him.”
Malcolm pulled her back with an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s not irritate the officer of the law.” He grinned. “She’s…”
“…a thief,” Graham said. “I know.”
“I am not a thief,” Marie said.
“I was going to say ‘passionate about her family,’” Malcolm said.
For a woman with such a small stature, she sure knew how to stand up straight and take charge. “That piece is mine,” she continued. “I was taking it back—”
“What you did was blow the cover on my months-long investigation.” Graham’s words were fact, no malice in the tone. “As it is, the shipment of women we’ve been waiting for has been indefinitely postponed, and I’ve been put on a leave of absence by Dimitru. He trusts no one. Security is tight as a cock ring now, thanks to you.”
She cringed.
Graham ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair.
“I never meant to involve anyone from the company.” Her gaze went to Malcolm and back to Hawk. “It’s why I went alone. It’s why Malcolm never should have come back for me.”
Malcolm growled when she took another step away from him. Stop moving, he wanted to yell at her. He’d seen Uncle Bert gunned down. He wasn’t going to let the same happen to Marie.
“I can get back in.”
“No,” Malcolm said firmly. “Abso-fucking-lutely not.”
“I have something he wants.”
“No way.”
“Hawk—”
“He has nothing to say about this, Marie.”
He saw the fire in her eyes and knew he wasn’t doing himself any favors by being so high-handed, so ridiculously scared for her.
“You have nothing to say about this,” she replied.
Hawk stepped between them, surprising Malcolm into taking a step back and taking a deep breath. He had the urge to take off his flannel. Was it hot in here? Fuck. Fuck, he really needed to stop saying and thinking that word. So far, it wasn’t doing anything for him.
“Let’s take a minute,” Hawk said. “No one is going anywhere at this point. The FBI hasn’t invited Hawk Security into their investigation—yet,” he said with a pointed look at Graham. “Until then, I think it’s time we had a meeting and got all the facts on the table. Then then we’ll talk about where to go next.”
Malcolm ran a hand across the back of his neck and squeezed the tightened tendons. He stepped around Marie and out the back door onto the porch. Maybe he hadn’t been there long enough to call it home or some cheesy shit, but she had put a spell on him here, made him dream of calling a place like this his own.
The breeze cooled his skin, sharpening his thoughts.
What was he doing?
Acting like an idiot. She’d betrayed him. Maybe I forgive you.
Now he was ready to defend her. Needed to, with everything in him.
Maybe the old adage about men thinking with their dicks was true. He never should have slept with her. Fat chance of that not happening. He was weak for her.
She’d stolen his good sense.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Malcolm found an old door in the basement, leaning on its side against the cement wall.
As the discussion on how to integrate the two efforts against Dimitru dwindled, he’d needed an escape. The basement offered the quiet, damp cool after the hot scenarios had been flying through the air all evening.
Looked like Marie would be able to redeem herself by helping out. He’d profusely stated his concerns and gone unheard. Yesterday, she’d been in a hospital. She was weak, even if she didn’t want to admit it. And he had no doubt Vladimir wasn’t only looking for that stupid-ass armband. He’d had his leering eyes on Marie since day one.
“It’s not helping,” he muttered to no one. “And why the hell does anyone need her to redeem herself?” He turned the door over and leaned it against his knee. There was a split down the side, but it was better and more secure than the bullet-holed one upstairs. He hoisted it up to his shoulder and took the stairs back up. Kicking the door at the top of the stairs open into the kitchen, he lowered the door through the doorway.
A thump from the other side preceded the offended “Hey!”
“Sorry,” he called out as he hefted the replacement door down the hall to the front of the house and set it up against the wall. He turned and found the big, blond-haired Craig standing there, looking a mite put out. “What?”
“Do you even know what you’re doing?”
Malcolm looked from the door to Craig and pulled a screwdriver from his pocket. “How hard can it be?”
Craig rolled his eyes and then stepped up and took the screwdriver from his hand. “Let the pro handle this.”
“You’re
a carpenter?”
“Eh,” his teammate said. “I was raised with a dad who had me learning whatever I could in construction and building, remodeling, you name it. Was worried I’d be a fuck-up, pretty sure.”
Malcolm supported the front door while Craig unscrewed the hinges, starting at the top.
“So, you and Marie, huh?”
“Mmm,” he said, not really answering. Talk about whatever was between him and Marie wasn’t going to happen, not here, not now, not ever.
“I guess we saw it coming.”
Malcolm held his silence and the weight of the door as Craig pulled the last screw.
After setting aside the one with bullet holes, Malcolm turned for the other door and set it in place. Craig stepped closer and shifted it a few times to line it up, then worked, one screw into the bottom and one into the top hinge, repeating his system until the door was held by the bolts.
Malcolm had kept his distance from Marie and from the team after the agent arrived. He would do whatever was asked of him; he’d learn to follow orders in the Army. He had his strengths, and they were clearly marked for support. He never minded taking orders.
There was a time and place for utter control—in his personal life. There, he was in charge. He didn’t take orders from anyone.
“Only one reason a guy ignores a good-looking woman as long as—”
“Shut it,” Malcolm said, holding his hand out for the screwdriver.
“You can’t handle a woman like Marie, and everyone knows it. You haven’t trusted a woman in years, much less dated one for more than a week or two at a time. And this one is an actual thief.”
Malcolm refused to respond. He took the tool in his fist and then slugged Craig’s arm.
Didn’t matter what people thought of him, what his teammates thought of him.
Fuck Craig. He was a kid who had his eye on the boss’s daughter.
As Malcolm passed the staircase, a movement caught his eye, and he saw Marie standing at the top of the stairs, staring down at him. He held her gaze for a moment, wondering what she’d heard. Not caring what she’d heard.
Or caring too much.
She knew who he was. As it was on any team, they’d lived closely for the past several months. He dated. Not a ton, but enough. He wasn’t a fucking priest, like John. Yet even as he thought regret was wasted energy, he regretted. Maybe regretting all others was what it meant to find the one.
He wanted her fiercely, felt the ache of arousal already beginning low in his gut at the sight of her. With a nod to her, he continued to the workbench downstairs in the basement and put away the screwdriver. He stood for a moment and gripped the edge of the workbench.
He could handle her.
But he didn’t want to handle her.
The fight was completely inside of him. He shouldn’t want her, but he did.
He didn’t want a better version of her.
He wanted her.
Shaking off the internal war, he went back upstairs, where someone had finally made dinner—probably Stacy. Or Jamie. Those were the only two in this house who could truly do it well. And he was hungry. He hadn’t realized how long it had been since he ate until he smelled the food.
He grabbed a plate and took it to the far corner of the dining room, where a cooler full of water bottles sat in ice. He grabbed two and sat in a chair at the table. The others sat around him. The talk had turned light and there was the typical teasing and joking that happened during off hours.
“Did you grow up here, Marie?” Emily, the former FBI sharpshooter and John’s woman, asked from the other end of the table. The couple had only been together a little while, hooking up after a man out for revenge had tracked her down and almost killed her. Malcolm was pretty sure they didn’t even live together. They were waiting. A shiver ran up his spine at the thought. How that was even possible, he had no idea.
For him, sex was the one release crucial to survival. He might not have had quite as many partners as their own Bobby, but he wasn’t an uptight prick, either. He knew how to relax, blow off steam.
God, he was thinking like a douche.
He shouldn’t have lost his cool with Craig and let words bug him.
“For the most part, yes.” Marie cleared her throat and looked to him. The way his thoughts had wandered had him wondering if she knew he was thinking about her naked body over his. Malcolm shifted and dropped his plate to the table. “We lived on the road some after my parents died, but this has always been home,” she continued.
Tomorrow, Marie would go back to Dimitru’s. They were using the armband as incentive, hoping Vladimir would see her as someone who wanted to work with him—not just to get to her uncle, but to acquire more of the Romanian gold. They were going to use her reputation as a thief and a gold digger.
They wanted her to go in and finish the job they started in order to take down his human-trafficking ring.
Malcolm hated it already.
Her voice sounded husky, worn out…and sexy as hell. Of course it was. He was drawn to her, a thief, damn it. He’d gotten to know her, and there was the crux of his problem. The last three days—the last year after plucking her off the street in Germany—had shown she was no typical thief.
She was courageous, grounded, loyal, and nothing like his ex-wife had been.
***
When he got up and left, Marie knew the gap between them, despite the last week, was significantly larger now. He wouldn’t talk to her, had barely looked at her since they’d come back here. Craig had forced Malcolm’s hand in the front hallway, and what a hand he’d shown.
His silent gaze from below her had spoken louder than any angry or hateful words might.
She would prefer if he lost his temper or came at her and confronted her.
The silence made her nervous and uncertain, and the uncertainty pissed her off.
So, why was she still sitting here?
Dinner was over. The kitchen had been cleaned. Hawk and Stacy had walked out toward the coastline. John and Emily were sitting on the couch in the living room, holding hands or some such shit. Craig had gone for a run. Agent Graham was back in town, arranging to get the armband back from the police.
She had one night, because when this operation was over, she would go back to face the consequences. Whatever those happened to be.
Agent James had offered her leniency in exchange for her cooperation.
Not fool enough to think one agent’s word against formerly pressed charges with the police department were truly going to help her, she still appreciated he was willing to testify for her. It was more than she’d gotten from Malcolm.
And she didn’t want to admit that her feelings hurt. She deserved the cold shoulder. He’d warned her to be good. And she’d let fickle emotions rule her head. Her uncle dying. Her parents’ deaths. Her stupid, stupid family heirloom, which she would give anything to have. Why?
As if she hadn’t learned a damn thing in all this time.
Marie swallowed the last of the whiskey in her cup and set it down on the counter. She was going upstairs, and she wasn’t going to let him avoid her any more.
In her room, her ambition deflated. He wasn’t there. She opened the closet even though she knew there was no way he was in there, either. Like most older houses in the area, the closet was small, barely able to contain half the clothes from her wardrobe. Across the hall, she knocked on the door to the bathroom.
No response. With a frown, she opened the narrower door that led to the attic. “Malcolm?” she called up into the dark cavern.
The dust on the steps hadn’t been touched in years. He definitely wasn’t up there.
She opened the closet door and smelled the scent of his cologne. He’d gone down the tunnel. For some reason, hope filled her. This was her place, her spot. Would he be down here if he didn’t want to see her?
Down the ladder she went, and then trailed the edge of the tunnel. She reached out and flipped the switch on the wall, whi
ch set off the string of lights Uncle Bert had installed the year after her parents died.
The light blinded her for a moment, making her squint, but then she saw him. He sat on the ledge of flat stone on the opposite side of the pool. He had his shorts on, but no shirt, and in the light, she made out the tattoos covering his side and arm.
“Needed a swim in freezing cold water?” As soon as she said it, she heard the implication of why he would need to cool off. “I mean— That’s not what—”
“Just needed some space,” he interrupted.
Since there was no way in hell she was swimming across water straight out of the Pacific in November, Marie sighed and sat on her side of the pool. “Is that it?” she asked, wondering if she needed to spell things out for him. Are we over? Are we friends? Was making love to you the biggest mistake of my life?
He didn’t answer and lifted himself off the ledge and shoved off into the water.
“Great. Way to get him to open up and talk to you, Marie. Make him feel like you’re interrogating him or that you think everything’s a joke.”
His fingers broke through the water in front of her and gripped the edge of rock below her, and she found herself face to face with all sorts of regret in the form of a broad chest, tattooed arms, and washboard abs.
“You are such an idiot, Marie Feur,” she muttered to herself as he climbed out, stood in front of her, and shook off, splashing water all over her.
“Hey!” she screeched. The cold of each splatter raised goosebumps on her skin, but it was the predatory look in his eyes that stopped her, had her staring and licking her lips. “Hey,” she said, this time in greeting, as if to start over. “What’s going on, Malcolm?”
He confused her. He’d been at the police station, saving her. He’d said he maybe forgave her.
He wrung his hair out and tried to do the same with his shorts, his arousal obvious. He was close enough she could touch him, so she reached out and ran a hand down his calf. The hair on his legs tickled her fingers, the damp of his skin reminding her of their night together—two sweaty bodies.
