by Janie Crouch
The warrior inside Brandon broke free. He was in Harry’s face in less than a second.
“That woman over there is an important member of a prestigious law-enforcement agency. What she did when you hired her—illegally, I might add, since she was a teenager—holds no bearing whatsoever to her ability to do her job now.”
Harry swallowed hard. Brandon barely refrained from grabbing the other man by his dirty T-shirt.
“If I hear one disrespectful word come out of your mouth again about her, I will personally see to it that every person you’ve ever hired, every license you have to operate and every code involved in running a business like this is investigated. And if there are any problems or discrepancies, you will be shut down.”
Harry nodded.
“Okay, I told them.” Andrea returned and touched Brandon on the arm. He took a step back from Harry. “They’ll be ready tomorrow.”
Brandon turned to smile at her. He knew she would be able to pick up what was going on between him and Harry and wanted to assure her it was okay. “Harry and I got some things straightened out, too. Isn’t that right, Harry?”
“Um, yes, sir. We’re all clear. I’ll have what you need by tomorrow. Anything to help catch Jillian’s killer.”
Brandon took Andrea’s arm and led her out the door.
Chapter Ten
Andrea was huddled against the car door, as far away from him as she could get in the small rental, as they drove back to town and the hotel. Brandon, despite his training, wasn’t sure what to say to her. But he knew it had to be something.
Finally she solved the problem by speaking first.
“I should’ve told you I had worked at Jaguar’s.” Her voice was small. Tiny. Ashamed. Part of his heart broke.
Brandon shrugged. “Maybe you should’ve this morning after we found out Jillian worked there. But before then it was pretty much irrelevant.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right. Because no one at Omega would care that I was an ex-stripper.”
He pulled the car into the parking lot of the hotel and shut off the engine, turning to her. “If I had been a carpenter or a janitor when I was twenty years old, would it make you think any less of me as an agent now?”
“That’s different.”
“How is it different? Most of us had a life—some of us had completely different careers before we worked for Omega.”
“It’s not the same.” She clenched her fists.
“Why?”
“I took off my clothes for money.”
Brandon took a breath. Damn, he was pissed. And he knew she would be able to feel it. But his anger wasn’t directed at her. He wanted to make sure she understood that.
“What you did was survive a situation most people never have to live through.”
“Nobody at Omega is going to care about that.”
Maybe it was time for a little tough love. “No offense, but nobody is going to care either way.”
That got her attention. She spun her head toward him. “What?”
“You do your job well. That’s all anybody at Omega cares about. You are an intelligent, gifted behavioral analyst.”
“What I am is a runaway high school dropout, ex-stripper.”
She got out of the car, so he did the same. Thankfully the parking lot was mostly empty. She stared at him across the hood of the car. At least there was some color in her cheeks and fire in her eyes. She didn’t need sympathy and gentleness. That just encouraged the vulnerable side of her. She needed someone to tell it to her straight.
A friend.
Brandon wasn’t sure she’d ever had one. Definitely hadn’t had one at Omega. Well, he could be one for her.
He may be a turned-on friend, but he could be a friend.
“You forgot dyslexic.”
Her eyes bugged out of her head. “What?”
“You’re a runaway, dropout, dyslexic ex-stripper. Throw in an unfortunate shark attack and you’ve got yourself a pretty tragic tale there.”
Now her eyes narrowed to slits. “Do you think I’m trying to get you to feel sorry for me?”
“No.” Although God knew there was plenty to feel sorry for. “But I’m trying to get you to see the truth.”
“That my past doesn’t matter.” Her lips tightened into a line. “You’ll have to forgive me if I disagree.”
She turned and began walking toward the side entrance of the hotel they’d used last night. Neither of them wanted to have this conversation coming through the main lobby. He jogged a few steps to catch up with her. Amazing how fast the woman could walk, even in heels.
“Of course your past matters. Everybody’s past matters.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Your past is filled with schooling and degrees and graduations. Mine is filled with thongs and sleeping in my car and getting beaten by my uncle.”
Brandon stopped her at the door. “Like it or not, our pasts are what make us who we are. But when it comes to Omega, you only want to concentrate on the bad parts of your past.”
“That’s because they’re the most important parts.”
“Says you. And you’re stuck in your own head.”
She started to reach for the door, but Brandon grabbed both her arms. He was gentle, but there was no way she was getting out of his grasp until he was ready to let her.
“You know what else is in your past? Four years of helping Omega solve cases. Saving many lives and assisting in putting a number of criminals behind bars.”
She shrugged, looking down. He put a finger under her chin and forced her face back up, ignoring the heat coursing through him.
“Not to mention you dropped out of high school but then got your GED, so I think you can stop using the dropout title. Plus you’re actively going to college. At twenty-three, it’s not like you’re some grandmother going back to school.”
He could tell he was getting through to her. Her posture was relaxing, her body angling more toward him.
He wanted her; he could feel it in the tightness throbbing through his body. He wanted to sweep her up in his arms and carry her down to his room like a grand romantic movie. Wanted to make love to her for days until neither of them had strength to move.
But more than that he wanted her to see the truth about herself. How much she brought to the table.
He released her chin when she nodded. She opened the door and they both walked into the hallway.
“It’s hard for me to get past. Hard for me to think anyone else could get past it, either, especially at Omega. Best of the best and all that.”
“I would argue that your talent, your ability to read people, makes you one of the best. And your past—even the part when you worked at Jaguar’s—helped make you into who you are now and what you can do.”
“I just wouldn’t know how to tell anyone about it.”
“Why would you have to? Have you ever been in a briefing where we all sat around talking about our complete history? No. Because that’s not what matters. Tell people you waited tables. That was true, also.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
He wanted to shake her. Or hug her. Or definitely kiss her, but knew it wasn’t the time for that. “You have a natural gift. Everybody knows it, and no one questions it. You don’t have to have an origin story to tell everyone.”
She laughed a little. “That’s good, because I’m not a superhero.”
They were at her door. He wanted to say the most important thing before she left. “You don’t have to tell anybody anything about your past. Most people won’t ever ask, and hardly anyone would care even if they knew all the details.”
She nodded slightly.
“But the true issue here, I think, is not even about what judgments people might make if t
hey knew about your shark-attack past and the rest.” He tried to keep it light, before making his ultimate point. “The true issue is that if you embrace your past and own it, you’ll be forced to stop treating every good behavioral analysis choice you make like it’s a happy accident.”
Her head jerked up to look at him.
“Embracing, or at least accepting, your past means accepting your present and your future at Omega. It means having to trust people. Not about knowing your past, but about allowing you to make mistakes in your future and not hold it against you.”
He kissed her forehead gently, although he wanted to do much more than that. “You hold yourself away from everybody to try to make yourself perfect. Being real, being part of a team, means showing others you’re not. And giving them a chance to accept you in spite of that.”
He stepped back from her. “The past doesn’t have to control your future anymore.”
Brandon turned to walk to his room. He heard Andrea’s door click and hoped he hadn’t said more than he should.
* * *
WAS BRANDON RIGHT? Had she kept her distance from everyone these years at Omega not because she was afraid of what they’d think of her past if they knew, but because of her refusal to take the responsibility of her job as a behavioral analyst?
How many times had she called herself a fraud? Too many to count. Was it because it was easier to think of herself as a fraud who got lucky with some of her analyses?
She’d certainly lived in fear the past four years of doing something majorly wrong and getting fired. Of getting fired for no reason at all.
Either way, maybe it was time to stop letting her feelings about the past control her every action. It had stunted her growth professionally, for sure. But it had also stopped her from making any friends.
From having any intimate contact with anyone at all.
All the stuff Brandon had said, she was going to have to sort through. It would take a while. Some of it wasn’t correct, but some of it was dead-on.
Especially the part about not letting the past control her future anymore.
She’d hated seeing Harry today. Hated even worse seeing the stuttering idiot she’d become around him. The same with her aunt and uncle in the car yesterday, afraid to face them.
These people were from her past and didn’t have any control over her unless Andrea gave them that control.
She was tired of giving control over to anyone or anything else but herself. She’d lived without things she wanted—friendship, companionship—for too long. Let her fear convince her to give them up.
She wanted sex and she wanted it with Brandon Han.
She shot off from where she’d been sitting on her bed, the fading evening sun shining on her through the window. She was out the door and knocking on his before she could let herself overthink it too much.
“Hey,” he said to her, his eyes traveling all over her face. “Are you okay? I was afraid I said too much, that I overstepped my bounds—”
Andrea grabbed his tie and pulled his mouth down to hers, stretching up on her toes to meet him. She didn’t have far to go in her heels.
She thought for a second he might pull away, refuse, but he didn’t. Instead he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her rapidly, fully, against him. He spun them around, getting her out of the doorway so he could shut it.
The heat was instantaneous. Overwhelming. It seemed to pool through her entire body. The fact that Brandon obviously felt it too just made the heat increase.
She’d wanted this man for years. She’d been afraid to show her attraction, to move on it, because of her past, of what he might find out.
But now he knew. And beyond that, damn her past and the hold it had had over her for so long.
He backed her up until she was against the wall, their bodies pressed so close against each other there was no room for anything else. Still, her hands gripped his waist, tugging him closer to her before sliding up his back to link behind his neck to capture him. The heat of his body against hers thawed something that had been frozen in her for far too long.
His lips were the perfect blend of firm and soft. Her eyes slid closed as his large hands came up to cup her face, to take control of the melding of their mouths. Andrea was glad to give over the control. She wanted him to give her whatever it took to ease the hunger that clawed at her every time she saw him.
Brandon kissed his way across her jaw and over to her ear. She couldn’t stop the quiet gasp that escaped her when he bit gently on her lobe.
“Are you sure this is what you want, Andrea?” he whispered. She could feel his hot breath against her cheek.
More than anything else she’d ever wanted.
“Yes,” she murmured, her eyes still closed, her arms sliding to his shoulders, trying to force his big body closer to hers.
But he held firm. “We can wait. It doesn’t have to be tonight.”
Her eyes flew open. Had she misread him? Did he really not want her? How could she have been so wrong about something like this?
“Is this not what you want?” She choked the words out.
“Oh, it is very much what I want.” He stepped his body up against hers so there was no space between them whatsoever, leaving her no doubt that he did want her. “I’m just trying to be a gentleman.”
“I don’t want a gentleman. I want you.”
He smiled. A wicked, hot smile that had her insides melting.
Then his mouth was instantly back on hers, the kiss harder, more urgent. He licked deep into her mouth and they both groaned. He slid his arm around her waist, pulling her off the wall, closer to his chest, so he could ease her blazer down her shoulders. He tossed it over on the small table where his also lay.
He brought his lips back to hers and began unbuttoning her blouse. “You cannot imagine how many times I’ve wanted to get you out of the perfectly professional suits you wear.”
She smiled against his mouth. “I’ve had a few similar thoughts about you and those shirts and ties.”
“Well, then.” His brown eyes were so clear she couldn’t look away. “I think we’ve delayed gratification long enough.”
They made quick work of getting rid of the rest of their clothes.
He reached down and crooked an arm under her knees, swinging her up in his arms as though she didn’t weigh anything at all and carrying her over to the bed. He laid her gently on it and reached down to devour her mouth again as if he couldn’t bear to be away from her lips for another second.
A hot ache grew in her throat as his lips moved down her jaw to her neck and bit gently; her fingers slid into his thick black hair. His lips grew more dominating as his hands moved downward, skimming either side of her body to her thighs and back up, before pulling her tightly to him in a raw act of possession.
He hoisted himself up onto his arms for a moment so he could look down at her body then back up to her face.
“Mine,” he whispered fiercely, and she almost didn’t recognize him as the controlled, intelligent being he usually was.
It ignited something inside her. A burning she knew only he could ease.
Andrea pulled him closer and forgot about the past, forgot about the future, forgot about everything but the heat and desire between them.
Chapter Eleven
He caught her trying to get back out of bed in the middle of the night. To sneak back to her room.
“Not this time,” he murmured, reaching an arm out to hook her waist and pull her back into bed next to him. “No sneaking off.”
“I should probably go back to my own room,” she said.
“In the morning,” he said, snuggling into her neck. “Sleep now.”
He held her close, her back to his front, running a soothing hand slowly up to her shoulder,
then back down, catching her waist then following the line of her body down to her hip and outer thigh, then back up again.
He wanted her to rest, to relax, to get the sleep she needed. Even before the mind-blowing sex they’d just had, it had already been a pretty overwhelming day. Hell, the whole week had been stressful for her.
The warrior in him wanted to protect her, to keep her in his arms until she got the rest—the peace—she needed. He wanted to hold her and keep her safe from anything that would harm her. But even more he wished he could go back and protect the girl she had been. The one who had been forced to work for the likes of Harry Minkley at Jaguar’s just to survive. His teeth ground thinking about it—about her on a stage she hated with men leering at her—but he forced the hand that touched her to remain calm, soothing.
He soon realized she was not relaxing under his touch and definitely wasn’t going to sleep.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” he asked against her hair.
“I’ve never slept with someone before. It’s weird. I can’t relax.”
Brandon tensed. “What? You’ve never...” Had he heard her right?
“Well, I’ve...you know...had sex before. A couple times in high school. But it was a quickie and never in an actual bed. At night. Ugh.”
She pulled the cover up over her head, embarrassed.
It made sense that she hadn’t been with anyone since high school. She’d kept herself so apart from everyone else at Omega, there couldn’t have been much chance to find someone she was attracted to.
It hurt him again to think of her alone for all those years. Especially when she hadn’t needed to be.
He pulled her in closer to him and wrapped an arm around her waist. He slid his other arm under her pillow so her head rested on it.
“There’s nothing to it. You just take a few deep breaths and let your eyes close.”
