Have to? Yeah, he really had to stand here and watch. He couldn’t possibly have slipped deeper into the shadows and silently walked away. He couldn’t possibly have used another stairwell to get up to his room.
No, instead he had to stay and watch and freaking torture himself. Because the sad truth was that he wanted this woman for himself. He wanted to take advantage of her trust, of the way she looked to him for advice and help. Screw the fact that a guy like Mike would be good for her. Screw what she needed, because Stan burned for her.
That kiss Muldoon had given her—that was no real kind of kiss. Teri hadn’t leaned into it, hadn’t leaned into him. She hadn’t reached for him at all. She’d backed away, shaken Muldoon’s hand. And he’d just stood there when she walked away.
Christ.
Wasn’t the fact that Stan had gotten the two of them together enough? Did he have to teach Muldoon how to kiss the woman, too?
That kiss had been nothing like the way she’d kissed Stan just hours earlier.
God damn it, he should just give up. He should just go to her room. He should knock on her door on the pretense of making sure she was okay after all that she’d told him that afternoon.
It wouldn’t take much effort on his part to get her clothes off, to get her naked and eager beneath him. And that wasn’t ego talking—it was years of experience, of coming to conclusions after gathering evidence and facts.
All he had to do was stand up, walk the few extra flights of stairs up to her room instead of his.
That was all he had to do.
That, and throw away his belief of what was right, of what it meant to be a man of honor.
God damn, he still couldn’t believe what she’d told him, what had happened to her when she was only eight. It wasn’t as terrible as it might have been, thank God for that. But it was still awful. And it still made her vulnerable, that was for damn sure.
Knowing that made him more convinced than ever that someone like Mike Muldoon—sweet, funny, sensitive Mike—was exactly what Teri needed.
Stan put his head back and closed his eyes, trying to figure out the best way to approach Muldoon and offer him advice without offending him.
Helga couldn’t find her room.
She knew the number—it was written in her notepad: 808. She’d climbed all the way up to the eighth floor. She’d followed the numbers all the way down to 805, but then the hallway ended. There was a door, but it was locked. She couldn’t go any farther.
She’d almost sat down right there in the corridor and cried.
Instead she’d retraced her steps. She’d come back here.
All those stairs—both up and down—had been too much for her, and she sat now in a corner of the dimly lit lobby, disoriented, exhausted, and upset.
A group of military men, dressed for battle, went past her. She didn’t recognize any of them, but she knew she should. She should know their faces, know their names.
But she didn’t even know where she was. What city, what country even. What was wrong with her, that she didn’t know something so basic, so simple?
She shrank back into the shadows, her heart pounding, praying that the men didn’t see her. She was uncertain as to why she should hide her confusion, her disorientation. She only knew it was something that should be concealed from everyone.
She’d hidden in shadows from soldiers plenty of times before. She’d held her breath as she’d ducked behind the Gunvalds’henhouse, afraid he’d hear her gasping after she’d run all that way. She was careful to keep her eyes down as she listened for him—for Wilhelm Gruber—to march off down the street.
But he’d be back. The German soldier never patrolled far from Annebet’s house.
Helga scurried to the barn, where she knew she’d find Annebet and Marte, and maybe even Hershel, too. He’d left the house before she had, walking away from Poppi’s threats. But Helga had run as fast as she could, taking shortcuts through yards and muddy alleys that Hershel wouldn’t—not dressed the way he was in his good suit.
She burst into the barn. Just as she’d known, Marte was playing with the puppies, Annebet was . . . Helga didn’t know what Annebet was doing—she’d leapt up from her seat on a barrel and was concealing whatever she’d been holding behind her back.
“Helga, you scared me!” Annebet scolded. “What are you doing here at this time of evening?”
“Hershel,” she gasped, and Annebet dropped what she’d been holding. It fell with a thump onto the floor—a deadly looking gun. Helga stared at it, but Annebet knelt in front of her.
“Please tell me he’s all right.” Her face was pale, her voice shaky.
“I’m all right.” Hershel closed the door tightly behind him as Annebet sprang up with a cry of relief.
“Thank God!” She ran to him, threw herself into his arms.
Helga’s brother closed his eyes as he held her tightly.
It seemed such a private moment, Helga looked away. And found herself staring, once again, at the gun Annebet had been cleaning. Marte inched back, her eyes on her sister and Hershel as she pushed the gun behind the barrel Annebet had been using as a seat, hiding it.
“I thought you don’t believe in God.” Hershel pulled back to look into Annebet’s eyes.
“I think I might now,” she told him. “I was sure Helga was coming to tell me you’d been taken. Or killed.”
He touched her cheek. “I’m not the one who’s started carrying a gun.” He pulled away from her, crossed to the barrel, and nudged the gun out from behind it with his foot.
“Maybe if you did, I’d worry about you less,” Annebet countered.
“What I worry about are all those kids in the resistance, walking around armed and dangerous. Someone’s going to get hurt—there’s going to be an accident. Bjorn Linden is fifteen years old. He carries a Luger wherever he goes—” Hershel broke off, shaking his head. “I didn’t come here to argue with you, Anna. I came here to . . .”
“He came here to marry you,” Helga said.
Annebet laughed, but then realized that Hershel didn’t deny it.
“You fought with your parents,” she guessed correctly. “They forbid you to see me.” She turned away from him in frustration. “I’m not going to marry you in some kind of reaction to their anger. I’m not going to marry you, period. We’ve been through this before.”
“No, we haven’t,” Hershel said. “We haven’t been through all of it. You forgot to mention the part where you love me more than your own happiness. You forgot to say that you’d marry me in a heartbeat if you weren’t convinced that doing so would cause a rift between my parents and me.”
As Helga watched wide-eyed, Annebet steeled herself. She turned to face Hershel, to meet his gaze.
“That’s right,” she said. “I would. As much as I would hate it, I could live with the talk, the whispers from strangers. I could even live with you never getting that position at the university. I could live in America, as long as you were with me. But I can’t live with knowing that I came between you and your parents. I can’t—”
“But you haven’t,” he told her, stepping toward her, holding her by the elbows and all but shaking her. “Don’t you see? You haven’t done anything but love me, too. God, I love you, and I will until the day I die! Whether you marry me or not, my heart is yours.”
Annebet had tears in her eyes, and Marte was flat out crying.
But Hershel wasn’t finished. “He told me if I left the house, he’d disown me. I don’t want his money—that part of his threat meant nothing to me. As for his love . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t want that either, if having it means I’ve got to let him control me. This isn’t about you. Not really. It’s about me not living my life the way my father wants me to.”
“It’s just that he wants what’s best for you.”
“He wants what’s best for himself,” Hershel countered. “Love should be unconditional. He should have said congratulations, not—” His voice shook
. “—you will be my son no more.”
“Oh, Hershel.” Annebet wept for him.
Hershel was crying, too. They all were. Helga could feel her own tears, wet on her cheeks.
“He’s at fault,” Hershel persisted. “Don’t you see? You didn’t cause this problem—my father did.”
“But if it weren’t for me—”
“I wouldn’t be the happiest man on earth,” he told her. “So marry me. You’ve got to marry me, because this isn’t your fault. Please, Anna. I won’t care so much about not being Eli Rosen’s son anymore if I can be Annebet Gunvald’s husband.”
Helga was watching Annebet’s face, and she saw the battle being fought within her, saw the moment Hershel—and her heart—won.
Annebet kissed him. “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll marry you.”
“Helga? My God, what happened? Are you all right?”
It was Des.
She wasn’t sitting in the Gunvalds’barn. She was in the run-down lobby of some hotel in . . . in . . .
It didn’t matter that she didn’t know, because Des she knew. His face was familiar.
His eyes were filled with concern as he gave her his handkerchief, and she realized she had been crying.
“I was remembering the night Annebet told Hershel she would marry him,” she explained as she dried her face.
“You know better than to sit in the lobby,” he told her. “Particularly after that incident by the pool this afternoon. Security’s been increased, but it’s by no means safe down here.”
“I was just resting my feet for a minute. This place is so big—”
“You got lost,” Des interpreted.
She pretended to laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“We’ve got to talk about this. We will talk about this. Just not right now. If we don’t get moving, I’m going to be late for a meeting.”
A meeting. At this hour? Helga realized that Des was dressed all in black.
“Come on,” he said, helping her up. “I have just enough time—I’ll walk you to your room.”
Sam Starrett wasn’t sleeping when the phone rang. He was wide awake and staring at the ceiling even though he damn well should have been completely unconscious and refueling for the 0230 practice session that was approaching far too soon.
When the phone rang, he knew it wasn’t Lieutenant Paoletti calling to bring the team in early. The phones in the hotel were way too unreliable.
That meant it was WildCard, calling in to report that Alyssa Locke had made it safely back to her room after partying with that asshole Rob Pierce and the SAS observers. Sam would’ve gone prowling through the hotel himself, looking for her, but WildCard had advised against it. Unless he wanted Locke to know that he was . . . Jesus, he couldn’t even think it without cringing. But it was true. Seeing her again—kissing her again—had clarified it for him.
He was in love with her.
The phone rang a second time, and Sam was tempted not to pick it up. WildCard’s news might not be so good. He might be calling to tell him that Alyssa had gone back to Pierce’s room, that she was there right now.
With him.
That was not news Sam wanted to hear on a night when drowning his sorrows in a bottle of Jack Daniel’s wasn’t an option.
He rolled onto his stomach and picked up the phone, bracing himself for the worst. “Where the fuck is she?”
There was the sound of distant laughter and talking, glass and silverware clinking on the open line. And then a soft laugh that wasn’t WildCard’s. “So you did send Karmody down to check on me. I thought so.”
Holy Jesus, it was Alyssa herself.
“We’re having a discussion about nicknames down here,” she told him, “and yours came up.”
She’d been drinking. He could hear the alcohol in her voice, relaxing her consonants, messing with her vowels.
“Rob wanted to know the story behind you being called Sam, and I remembered that Sam came from Houston, but that you weren’t nicknamed Houston because you were from Texas, because you weren’t from Houston, but I couldn’t remember what . . .” She laughed. Covered the mouthpiece of the phone badly as she spoke to someone else. “No, no. Really, I don’t want—” It was muffled, but he heard her. Heard her laugh, too. “No, I want to talk to him. Wait—”
“Lieutenant, I’m extremely sorry. I hope we didn’t wake you.” It was that British fuck, Rob Pierce.
Sam was grinding his teeth so hard, he could almost feel little pieces breaking off. “No,” he said, somehow managing not to sound as if he wanted to kill the bastard. “I was still awake.”
“We’re dreadfully confused about the origin of your nickname. Would you mind running it past me? Just quickly. I don’t want to take up too much of your time. And I’m a little more coherent than, well, than just about everyone else, so once I’ve got it figured out, I’m sure I can explain it to the lot of them. Right?”
Right ho, you stupid fuck. “My given name is Roger Starrett,” Sam explained tightly. “I got the nickname Houston because of Roger. Like NASA. Mission Control? Roger, Houston, got it?”
“Ah.”
“Then, after months of being called Houston, someone who thought it was my real name started calling me Sam. Because of Sam Houston.”
“Because of . . . ?”
“A famous Texan. American historical figure.” You stupid fuck.
“Right then. I’ve got it. I’ll let you get back to—”
“Put Alyssa back on the phone,” Sam ordered.
Pierce made some British-sounding noise that Sam ignored.
“Now, Double-oh-seven,” Sam said over him. “Put her on the fucking phone now. Unless you’re afraid she’s going to hang up the phone and ditch you for me. Is that what it is, you dumb fuck?”
Pierce laughed. “You Americans are so ill-mannered.” But then he heard, “He’d like to talk to you, darling.”
Then Alyssa’s voice. “Yes?”
You gonna fuck him, darling? The words were on the tip of his tongue. Instead he closed his mouth, took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, “Lys, what are you doing?”
He could almost hear her surprise.
“This guy doesn’t give a shit about you,” he continued. “Come tomorrow, he won’t even remember your name.”
She pretended to laugh, but it was fake. “Great advice, coming from a guy who—”
“Remembers your name. Real well. Alyssa.”
Silence. Sam tried to count to ten but only made it to seven. “Look, is WildCard still down there?”
“Glowering at me from the other side of the room,” she said. “Yes. My hostile little guardian angel.”
The idea of WildCard Karmody as anyone’s guardian angel would’ve made him laugh if this hadn’t been so fucking important to him.
“Let him walk you to your room,” Sam said, still in that reasonable, almost gentle voice, praying that she’d listen to him. “Get out of there right now, okay, Lys? If you don’t want to do it for me, then do it for yourself. Please. This guy Pierce is one of the biggest assholes in the world, and you’re going to hate yourself tomorrow. And I don’t want you to have to go through that again. Once was enough, don’t you think?”
There was another long pause, then, “Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“How come you’re only nice to me when I’m drunk?”
Sam laughed tiredly. “That’s just an alcohol-induced illusion. I’m still the same son of a bitch I always am. You interpret me differently when you drink, that’s all.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, well, you’re skunked. What the fuck do you know?”
“I know that I miss you.”
Jesus. Her soft words all but knocked the very breath out of him. “Yeah,” he managed to say, “well, that makes two of us.”
“May I . . .” She cleared her throat. “Would you mind if I . . .” A cough this time. “I’d really like to continue this conversation someplace mo
re private.” A deep breath. “Can I come up? To talk,” she added quickly.
“812,” he said.
“Right,” she said, and hung up the phone.
Teri had a bottle of nonaspirin painkillers in her toilet kit and a headache that needed at least three of the caplets. But nothing to wash them down with.
She ran the water in the bathroom sink, remembering Stan’s warning. Drink only bottled water.
She needed those pills, but she needed whatever lousy, stomach-turning, intestine-infesting bacteria that was in that water even less.
Resigned to her fate, she put her boots and her flack jacket back on then headed back down to the restaurant. There was bottled water there, free for the taking. Her fault completely for not thinking to bring a bottle up with her after her dinner with Mike Muldoon.
Mike Muldoon, who had kissed her good night.
She grabbed several bottles of water, then headed up the stairs and back across the lobby, trying not to think of Muldoon or Stan.
Except there he was. Right in front of her. Stan Wolchonok. Her personal hero.
He was sleeping on a beat-up couch in the hotel lobby, his hands tucked up in his armpits because the night air had a sudden sharp coolness to it.
Teri stood and watched him, afraid to leave him there to catch a chill, afraid to wake him. If she woke him, he’d just find something else urgent that had to be done before they all met at the heliport at 0230. No, it was far better to let him sleep.
She went to the front desk. But the drowsy clerk didn’t speak much English, and she didn’t know how to say blanket in Kazbekistani. So she just went up to her room and took the blanket off her bed.
When she got back to the lobby, Stan hadn’t moved an inch. She covered him carefully, silently, resisting the temptation to lean down and kiss his forehead or touch the softness of his hair.
She stood there for a moment, allowing herself a small fantasy. He would open his eyes and smile at her. She’d need to do no more than hold out her hand for him, and he’d follow her upstairs, to her room. . . .
But he didn’t wake up, and she went back to her room alone and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, her headache forgotten.
Over the Edge Page 26
