She nodded, masking the leap of joy, and said, “Let’s go home.”
Colorado, USA
ETHAN AWOKE slowly, which was unusual for him. Even more unusual, he wasn’t alone.
It took him a moment to process the warmth of the woman beside him, and the unfamiliar furnishings that came into focus as he blinked against the light of a new day.
Then things clicked into place with a one-two punch. One, he was in a guest room at Blake’s mountain cabin. Two, he was sharing the bed with Nicole.
Despite all of his empty promises and vows, despite his best intentions, they’d come together twice in front of the fire, and once again after they dragged themselves, kissing and groping amidst half-hysterical laughter, up to the guest room.
The sex had been amazing, even better than before, now that they’d gotten to know each other and—
He broke off the train of thought. Don’t go there. She was home and hearth, he was casual, fly-by-night. He wasn’t good husband material, and he certainly wasn’t a suitable father for a child who deserved nothing but the best.
Like the best that currently surrounded them, he thought with a wince, knowing he’d been on the right track with the idea of hooking her up with Blake. They’d be good together, he told himself firmly, being careful not to look at her, careful not to remember how her fingers had felt on him, how her lips—
He lunged from the bed, fists clenched at his sides. Standing naked in the middle of the room, he cursed himself for being stupid. Being weak. He should’ve stayed the hell away from her, should’ve done anything but what he’d done.
“Ethan?” Her voice was low and sweet, and furred with sleep. She rolled from her stomach onto her side and sat partway up, the sheet slipping off one shoulder and baring the upper slopes of her breasts.
When he realized he was staring, he snapped his eyes up to hers. “Sorry.”
Her lips curved in a sensual, almost feline smile. “Don’t be.” But when he didn’t respond, when he just stood there, her smile dimmed and a twist of pain entered her eyes. “Oh. Oh, boy.” She sat up all the way and dragged a blanket over her shoulders until it cocooned her entire body, leaving only her face visible, and those dark, hurting eyes. “You’re kidding me.”
It seemed as though they’d had an entire conversation in that one look, but he couldn’t argue with the conclusion she’d reached. He could only stand there, buck-naked and feeling like a complete jerk when he said, “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Nicole.”
He expected tears, dreaded them. Instead, her eyes blazed and she snapped, “Oh, please. Spare me the martyr routine.” She wadded up one of the blankets and threw it at him. “Cover yourself. You’ve got to be freezing.”
He caught the blanket on the fly and wrapped it around his waist even as he bristled. “It’s not martyrdom to want the best for my child.”
“Which I’m guessing, in your brain, is not you,” she said with some asperity. “How about you trust me to have an opinion on that? The way I see it, this is my baby, my decision. Unless, of course, the whole I-wouldn’t-make-a-good-father thing is just an easy excuse.”
Anger kindled low in his gut, alongside something that felt surprisingly like fear. He rounded on her, close to snarling. “There’s nothing easy about any of this, damn it! Don’t you get that?”
“Frankly, no, I don’t.” She thrust her chin out, defiance warring with upset in her eyes. “Why don’t you explain your reason to me?”
“Reasons,” he corrected. “There are two reasons why I’d be no good for you or the baby. First, because I know what it’s like to live with someone like me, and second because you can’t depend on me.”
She rose and crossed the room to stand in front of him. “What do you mean, ‘someone like you’?” Her eyes glittered with anger, but her voice was almost soft when she said, “You say you’re not a leader, but you got us all out of the Vault safely.”
“A leader doesn’t automatically make a good father,” he said, hearing a faint thread of desperation in his voice.
“No, but a kind, brave and honorable man does.” She lifted a hand to touch his cheek in the barest of caresses. “I believe in you, Ethan. When are you going to start believing in yourself?”
“You don’t know me,” he said sharply, the words coming out far harsher than he’d intended. “Just because we’ve slept together a couple of times and we’ve spent some time together doesn’t mean you know me, that you know what I’m capable of.” He glanced down at his hands, which were fisted so tightly his knuckles ached. “My father—my biological father, that is—was a hard man, Nicole. He wasn’t abusive, but we knew he didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to be a part of the family. I grew up tiptoeing around him, trying to make him want to be home, because I could see how much it meant to my mother.”
Nicole let her hand drop away from his face, leaving a cool spot where his skin had been warm. Her voice was crisp when she said, “I’m not asking you for marriage, Ethan. I’m just asking you to give what’s between us a chance.”
“I can’t,” he said, desperation welling up and pressing on his lungs.
“You mean you won’t.”
Her eyes had gone cool and dismissive, and though that was what he’d wanted, some part of him couldn’t let it end this way. He needed to make her understand.
He took a deep breath, then let it out again. “I was married before.”
She nearly hid the wince, but her voice went cool. “What happened?”
“She died.” The words didn’t even begin to encompass what had happened, but he couldn’t force the explanation past his gritted teeth, past the knot of guilty regret twisting in his gut.
“I’m sorry.” But Nic shook her head. “I know this is going to sound callous, and I’m sorry about that, too, but I was engaged and the bastard cheated on me. I’m not saying that’s better, but at least your wife didn’t have a choice about leaving you. More importantly, I haven’t let Jonah’s behavior rule my life.”
“Haven’t you?” Ethan couldn’t stop himself from saying. “It seems to me that you celebrated the one-year anniversary of your dead engagement by picking up a stranger in a bar.”
“And I’m not letting how that turned out run my life either,” she fired back, then paused before she said, “I’m trying to give us a chance, Ethan. I’m asking you to do the same.”
Panic battered at the back of his throat. Desperation. The feeling of sinking and not knowing when or where he was going to hit bottom. “Caro didn’t just die,” he said finally, the words leaving an old, bitter taste in his mouth. Like tears. Like blood. “I killed her.”
Any other woman might have gasped in shock, or snapped an immediate denial, but not Nicole. She simply lifted her chin. “Tell me.”
He couldn’t not tell her, not with the memories crowding so thick around him he could barely see straight. “I’d just finished my tour of duty, had my discharge papers in hand. We were living in Vegas then, because that’s where I’d been stationed, and we headed out to the strip to celebrate. You know, hit a casino, take in a show, all the silly things the locals hardly ever do.” He blew out a breath, smelling the damp air, seeing the wet streets glittering beneath a thousand neon lights. “The other driver was drunk. He crossed the yellow line and cut all the way across my lane, doing sixty, maybe seventy. I swerved the wrong way.” He closed his eyes against the remembered jolt, the crunch of impact and the powder blast of the air bags. “The guy hit the passenger side. If I’d just kept going straight…” He trailed off, having learned long ago that there was no such thing as “if only.”
“And that’s why you think it’s your fault?” Nic said slowly. “Because you swerved the wrong way?”
“No. It’s my fault because I moved her.”
He’d been stunned for the first thirty seconds or so after the crash, maybe he’d even blacked out, he wasn’t sure. The first thing he remembered was seeing Caro’s face, her eyes open and sc
ared. The first thing he remembered doing was reaching for her, trying to pull her toward him.
And the light in her eyes had gone out.
“I was a medic,” he said, tipping his head back in an effort to force the grief back down where it belonged. “I damn well knew better, but I panicked. And because I panicked, she died right there, in my arms.”
“I’m not going to bother telling you that it was a natural reaction, and that you shouldn’t blame yourself for something you did while you were probably half-conscious,” Nicole said softly, pain echoing in her words. “I’m sure you’ve heard all that before. So instead, let me ask you a question. Why does that make you a bad candidate for fatherhood?”
Anger was a bitter taint at the back of his tongue as he snapped, “If you don’t want to get it, I can’t make you.”
Matching rage flared in her eyes. “And if you want to use your wife’s death as an excuse to keep coasting, I can’t stop you.”
He gritted his teeth and steeled himself against the glint of tears, telling himself it was better this way. There would be no more second chances for them after this. “Are we done here?”
She looked at him for so long, her eyes so sad, that he thought she’d try again.
Instead, she simply nodded. “Yeah, we’re done.”
SHE WATCHED him walk out of the room and knew in her heart that he was walking out of her life. And yes, that was probably overdramatic, but she figured she was due for some drama after the week she’d had. Was still having.
“So deal with it,” she said aloud, swiping her hands across her eyes and refusing to shed another tear. “He’s just as big an idiot as Jonah was, only in a different way. I’m better off without him.” She touched her stomach beneath the draped sheet. “We’re better off without him.”
Only she didn’t feel better off as she showered in the guest bathroom, and when she opened the door and found her clothes in a neatly folded pile, she nearly crumbled.
Instead, she gritted her teeth, pulled on the clothes and strode downstairs with her chin up.
Ethan met her at the bottom of the stairs, fully dressed, with a cell phone pressed to his ear and a triumphant gleam in his eyes. He waved for her to wait as he ended the call with, “You bet. I’m going to swing back to the Vault to pick up my Jeep, and then I’ll meet you at the safe house.” Then he snapped the phone shut and said, “Robert and Evangeline are safe. Even better, they got Clive, and he’s all but confessed to masterminding everything.” He grinned at her, though shadows remained in his eyes. “It’s all coming together. They flew through the night and landed a few minutes ago. With Clive’s information, the cops should be able to round up the last of his secondaries by the end of the day.”
“That’s fantastic.” Nic tried to inject enthusiasm into her voice, but all she felt was numb. It was over. In a few hours she and Ethan would say their goodbyes.
How had she miscalculated so badly? She’d been so sure the night before had been the start of something wonderful. Not a mistake. Not an ending.
But though Ethan might be a leader, he was also, deep down inside, an emotional coward. He thought it was better to rebuff connections than to take a risk, better to be alone than be vulnerable. He might tell himself he was making sacrifices to protect her from his bad decisions, to protect the baby from a bad childhood, but in the end he was simply protecting himself.
Well, he was right about one thing, Nic told herself firmly. She could do better than him. She didn’t need a man who made her fight tooth and nail for every small emotion, and the baby could do better than a man who didn’t want to be part of their family.
So she lifted her chin and said, “Good. Let’s go. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get back to my real life.”
The words without you hung suspended in the air between them until a soft chiming noise broke in, followed by the crunch of tires.
Someone had found them.
Chapter Thirteen
Ethan spun and reached for the 9 mm he’d tucked into his waistband, then relaxed when a quick glance at the video monitor beside the door showed Blake’s silver BMW.
Ethan knew he should be relieved by his friend’s arrival. The fact that a spurt of irritation tightened his chest with a possessive, jealous burn only served to remind him how badly he’d messed up. The more he’d tried to stay away from her, the more he’d wanted to be near her, until last night, when he’d made a huge mistake and wound up with her stuck inside his mind, inside his—
No, he thought quickly. Not his heart. Never in his heart, which is why he’d been right to end things between them.
“Stay here,” he ordered, but was unsurprised when she followed him out the door.
Blake climbed out of his Beemer looking tall and handsome and rich as sin in creased jeans and cowboy boots, an open-necked shirt and a leather bomber that probably cost more than Ethan’s mortgage.
Ethan stopped opposite the other man and forced himself to smother a spurt of resentment. “Hey. Hope you don’t mind us crashing here last night.”
“Of course not. Mi casa and all that.” Blake’s eyes went beyond Ethan. “Morning, Miss Benedict.”
Ethan sensed her smile, and it put his back up, as did the lilt in her voice when she said, “It’s Nic, remember?”
“Of course…Nic,” Blake said, voice light, but when he turned back to Ethan, the teasing glint left his eyes. He nodded to the beat-up motorcycle, which still sat in the driveway. The formerly gleaming black-and-chrome bike was dust-covered and dented. “Looks like you had some trouble getting up here. What can I do to help?”
Ethan wanted to say he had it under control, but that would only prolong the inevitable, so he said, “I’d like you to hang with Nicole for the rest of the day.”
“You want me to be a bodyguard?” Blake’s grin was quick, but gave a glimpse of steel beneath, a hint of the warrior Ethan had come to know and respect the year before. “I thought that was your gig.”
“Consider these special circumstances.” In more ways than one, Ethan thought. He didn’t dare turn and glance over at Nicole, didn’t dare see what was in her eyes at the knowledge he was ditching her ahead of schedule. “Besides, the priority level is down—we’ve got the head scum and now we’re just mopping up the grunts. It should take a day, maybe two. I want you to make sure nobody hassles her until you get the all clear from me.”
Apparently catching some of the tension in the air, Blake glanced at Nicole. “That sound okay with you?”
Her shoulders stiffened beneath her bedraggled clothing, her chin lifted, and she didn’t even look at Ethan before she said, “Sounds perfect. I’m looking forward to spending some more time with you.”
The words were innocent enough, the edge beneath them anything but.
Blake tipped his head as though acknowledging both. “If you want to grab your stuff, we can head out now. We’ll stay at my place—it’s the safest option.” He glanced at Ethan. “Is it cool for us to swing by her place so she can change?” He quirked an eyebrow in her direction. “No offense intended, of course.”
“None taken. I’d love to go home.” Her voice carried a layer of relief alongside a hint of defiance.
Ethan didn’t like the idea, but there was no logical reason for her not to go home. The cops had been watching the place for days now, and before he left, Robert had searched her apartment for booby traps and surveillance, and had come up empty.
They’ll be fine, he told himself, fighting to quell the buzz in his gut, the one that went along with the mental image of Nicole and Blake together, no matter the location.
He nodded stiffly. “That should be okay. Keep your eyes open, and call me if anything hinky happens. And I mean it,” he stressed to the other man. “Anything.”
“Then it’s settled,” Nicole said, voice cool. “I’m ready to leave when you are, Blake.”
A gentleman to the bone, he escorted her around the BMW and opened her door to ushe
r her into the car’s plush, leather-lined depths. Ethan glanced from the Beemer to the dusty, dented motorcycle and reminded himself that was the point. He was dented and barely functional. Blake was a damned luxury vehicle.
After closing Nicole’s door, Blake walked around to the driver’s side, pausing near Ethan. “You sure about this?”
Ethan nodded. “You guys will be fine.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know.” Ethan wished the circumstances were different. Wished he were different. “Go on ahead. I’ll lock up before I leave.”
But he stood watching as the BMW eased down the drive, as the sound of its engine faded. Then, and only then, he allowed himself to kick at the gravel, a frustrated vent he hadn’t wanted anyone else to see.
When that didn’t make him feel the slightest bit better, he took a last check of Blake’s cottage before locking up and setting the security system on a time delay that would give him a few minutes to get down the driveway. Then he climbed aboard the dented bike and pointed its nose back down the mountain, headed back to the Vault.
Alone.
WHEN ETHAN reached the main entrance to the Vault, he found that Clive’s people had used some serious firepower to blast their way into the parking bay. One steel door hung askew, while the other lay crumpled off to the side. Chunks of cement were scattered everywhere he looked, and all that was left of the structure were the spiked remains of broken steel reinforcements.
The bad news was that the place was trashed. The good news was that it appeared deserted, with crime scene tape strung at regular intervals, indicating that Detective Riske or her local equivalent had come and gone.
Ethan felt a faint pinch of guilt for contaminating the crime scene as he ducked under the tape, but contented himself with the thought that they had Clive and his confession, and the cops had photos.
When he reached the parking garage, he cursed upon seeing that the half-dozen vehicles nearest the inner door were wrecked, their panels marred with bullet holes and scorch marks. He saw, though, that farther away from the blast site, his Jeep was relatively untouched. It was covered in a thick layer of gray dust and one tire looked as though it could use some air, but the vehicle should be able to make it out.
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