by Laura Taylor
"Anyone who does what I do is at risk. It’s part of the job description. When you can’t take it anymore, you get the hell out. Otherwise, you jeopardize yourself and the people you’re responsible for."
"Brett…"
He turned to find her standing beside him. Alarm bells went off in his head. Starved for her compassion, but also desperate to keep her safe, he slipped his arm around her with as much calm as he could muster.
"Have I touched a nerve?" she asked as he guided her away from the railing and back under the awning.
He gave her a tight smile as he steadily moved them to the entrance of their suite. "Perhaps, but it wasn’t intentional, so don’t worry about it."
She paused, still in the circle of his arm, and looked up at him. "Your work… I mean, you could… die." That last word she said in a whisper.
Unprepared for the anxiety he saw in her eyes and heard in her voice, Brett quelled his desire to drag her into his bed and submerge himself in the volatility of her passion. He needed her so much right now, his soul ached.
Despite her earlier assurances, he remained convinced that, once she regained her memory of him and what had happened between them, she would cast him aside without a moment’s hesitation. "Doubtful," he said.
"What you aren’t saying is feeding my imagination."
He heard large raindrops splatter across the awning above their heads. The sound reminded him of rounds being fired from an automatic weapon. "Let’s go inside now."
Leah didn’t protest. She simply went along with him, her expression still troubled. He kept his arm around her as he secured the door and closed the drapes.
Raindrops sparkled like diamonds on her cheeks and in her golden hair, the latter fashioned into a simple chignon at her nape. Brett used his fingertips to smooth away a droplet of water caught in the seam of her lips. He felt a warm gust of air wash across his fingers. He registered her surprise that he’d touched her so intimately in the widening of her beautiful eyes. Shaken by the play of emotions in her expressive features, he lowered his hand and willed himself not to touch her again.
"You don’t like your life very much anymore, and you aren’t happy, are you?"
Startled by her perceptiveness, he shrugged. "It has its moments."
"Don’t lie to me," she said, a combative note in her voice. "Your eyes and facial expression are bleak when you talk about your work."
"I’ve been chasing bad guys for a long time, Leah. You get used to it."
"Or you get burned out," she countered. "Is that what’s happened to you? Is that one of the reasons we decided to take a vacation together? Did you need some time out of the line of fire in order to decide what you wanted to do in the future?"
He attempted a smile, but all he managed was a grimace. "Been reading my mind again?" he tried to joke, but his voice lacked even a hint of humor.
She gripped his forearms. "I am so sorry."
"What the hell for?"
"I’ve become an unexpected burden when you needed my understanding and support. Maybe you should put me on a plane. I could fly up to Seattle, and my…"
He jerked her forward, his arms like bands of steel around her as he brought her against his solid body. Leah stared up at him, shock and something more in her expression.
Brett glared at her with eyes that burned with a combination of sexual fever and unadulterated fury. "You’re not a damned burden, so get that idiotic thought out of your head right now."
"How can I not be?" she demanded as she tried to twist free of him.
Brett tensed, his body exploding with hunger as she struggled against him. He felt every seductive inch of her, and he died a little more inside because he knew his future would be cursed without her.
She squirmed yet again. His restraint snapped like a twig crushed beneath a booted foot. He grabbed her hips. Shifting forward, he locked her against him, the slow grind of his sex against the cradle of her thighs making her moan and sag into him.
His answering groan sounded utterly raw as it emerged from his throat. Need blazed white–hot in his veins, drove his heart into a gallop, and challenged his ability to control a soul–deep hunger too long denied. Throwing back his head, he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. As he stood there, he fought for control. But he knew he’d already lost the battle.
Leah lifted her arms and looped them around his neck. Tugging his head down, she incinerated his senses when she swept the tip of her tongue back and forth across his lower lip. A near–violent tremor of raw need ripped through him, making him feel as though he’d been trapped in the molten epicenter of an earthquake.
Leah clasped his head with both hands and teased his lips apart. Dipping her tongue past his even teeth and into his mouth, she sighed with relief as she took her first taste of him.
His conscience abandoned, Brett responded to her. He felt her hands trail down the sides of his neck, across his shoulders, and then pause as she flattened her palms against his chest. His heart thudded with devastating force, his senses exploding in the wake of the tantalizing trail of flame induced by her tongue as she explored his mouth.
He gripped her hips more tightly, telling himself that he needed to put an end to her exquisite torture. But he couldn’t muster the strength or the will to draw back from Leah, who even now undulated against him in the most exquisitely carnal manner possible. Capturing her tongue, he sucked it deeper into his mouth and tenderly trapped it with his teeth. Brett inhaled her breathless sighs and reveled in the possessive feel of her hands when she frantically worked her fingertips beneath his black turtleneck sweater.
Sensation after sensation assaulted him. His hands shook, his heart raced like a locomotive, and the muscles in his thighs burned. He felt her fingers sink into and then comb through the dark pelt of hair that covered his chest.
Somehow, they wound up on the floor, kneeling thigh to thigh, hip to hip, and muscled chest to full, rounded breasts. Seemingly of one mind, they moved in concert as they stripped off their sweaters.
Brett traced Leah’s delicate collarbone before gently placing his fingertip against the pulse that throbbed in the hollow of her throat. Fascinated by the flushed beauty of her ginger–scented skin, as well as the passion that filled her eyes, his gaze finally dipped lower to her breasts.
"You are so exquisite," he whispered as he freed the catch and peeled her white lace bra away from her body.
Tight, rose–colored nipples crowned her breasts and stabbed into the center of his palms as he fitted his hands over her flesh. He shuddered when he felt her satiny heat, his fingers trembling as he cupped her. "I’ve dreamed for so long about touching you this way."
In response Leah arched into his hands. Trailing her fingers down his hard, flat stomach, she slipped them past the waistband of his black trousers even as she opened her mouth to his intruding tongue.
His stomach muscles clenched under the glide of her fingertips. Leah sighed, thoroughly shaken. He drank in the sound even as he cursed his inability to keep his hands off of her.
She was fuller now, her nipples more defined but still the pale rose tint he recalled from their time together before her pregnancy. He caught her by the waist, lifted her until her chest was level with his lips, and then pressed a hot, open–mouthed kiss into the scented valley that separated her breasts. He felt her nails dig into his shoulders when he closed his mouth over the tip of one breast.
She whispered his name over and over again. Lost in the erotic sound of her voice, he fed his hunger for her as he sipped at her breasts and then lightly scored her nipples with gentle teeth. And all the while, he knew that the desire that had gnawed at his soul for six long years wouldn’t be even partially appeased until he’d buried himself in the welcoming depths of her body.
"I want you," Leah pleaded.
Brett slowly lowered her until her knees touched the carpet. Both breathless and shaking, they stared at each other. He loosened her hair, his fingers clumsy but determined
as he released the chignon and then drove his fingers into the dense golden silk mane that tumbled all the way to her waist.
Kneading her scalp with his fingertips, he claimed her mouth once more. Her response to him was electric, her hands frantic as she tried to touch him everywhere at once. He absorbed the hectic pace of her heartbeat as it branded his naked chest.
The feel of her fingers tugging at the zipper of his trousers finally penetrated his sensual greed. Brett seized Leah’s wrists, dragging her hands away from his body despite her protest.
He muttered an ugly word, damning himself for being such a fool. Tremors of desire and despair continued to war within him. His desire began to ease, the sensation akin to a reluctantly departing tide. His despair triumphed soon after, forcing him to face the predictable consequences of careless passion. He knew Leah would never forgive him if he took her now. And he would never forgive himself.
"Don’t stop," she whispered as she tried to wrench free of his grasp.
He shook his head, refusing to release her until he persuaded her to listen to him. "You’ll hate me forever if we do this now," he insisted.
"Don’t stop us, Brett."
The shattered look of disbelief etched into her features fueled the contempt he already felt for himself. "I have to," he said, his voice so ragged he didn’t even recognize it as his own.
"Damn you," she breathed, shaking as she jerked free of him and reached for her sweater. A solitary tear crept down her cheek. "Damn you to hell."
"I already am damned."
Leah held her sweater against her breasts as she got to her feet and made her way to the nearest chair. She sank down into it, closed her eyes, and breathed in and out in an obvious effort to regain control over herself.
Brett flinched, forcing his gaze away from her white–knuckled grip on her sweater. He pulled himself up from the floor and staggered to a chair on the opposite side of the room. His entire body burned.
"I’ve got to stop touching you," he remarked quietly a few minutes later.
Leah opened her eyes and stared at him for a long, intense moment. "If you do, I’ll never forgive you."
"Leah…"
She waved him into silence. The sweater dipped, revealing one of her hard–nippled breasts. Brett ground his jaws together and dug his fingers into the arms of his chair.
"Don’t tell me I don’t understand. I don’t want to hear that ever again."
"One of us has to think clearly."
"I trust my heart. Maybe you should try doing the same thing. I grant you, whatever this is between us is a bit like leaping off the side of a cliff, but you won’t be alone, Brett. I will be with you." She spoke in the rebellious tones of a woman ready to engage in full–scale combat for what she wanted. "I trust you in every possible way, except for this attraction we feel for each other. You’ve got the instincts of a rock where I’m concerned, because you aren’t wise enough to trust me to know what I need and want. I may not have a memory, but I understand my feelings. Why don’t you check out your own? If you don’t want me, say so. But if you do, then admit it and call off this damned game you insist on playing with our emotions. We’ll both be crippled for life if you don’t stop pushing me away."
"You can’t afford an attitude like that."
"I’ll afford anything I damn well please, Brett Upton. Anything!"
She stood abruptly, her sweater falling away from her breasts. She caught it and let it hang from her fingertips as she faced him. Making no effort to conceal her naked upper body from his burning gaze, she slowly crossed the room, her spine rigid, her breasts gently, enticingly swaying with every step she took, and her head held high.
Once again, Brett grappled with the changes that had taken place in Leah during their years apart. Assertive and independent, she obviously understood herself now, even without the benefit of knowing the actual facts of the previous thirty years of her life. And once again, he felt like an idiot for underestimating her.
"Leah?"
She paused in the open doorway of her bedroom, but she didn’t turn around.
His gaze snagged on the oddly patterned bruise that started beneath her armpit and disappeared from view into the waistband of her belted jeans. Brett swallowed the almost choking fury that made him want to deal personally with the men who’d harmed her.
"I’m waiting," she said with a subdued dignity that conveyed both strength and fragility.
"We’re leaving early in the morning. You’ll want to be packed and ready by six."
She did not reply. Instead, she released a sigh—the faint sound resembled a crack of thunder in the silent room.
Covering his face with his hands a few moments later, Brett kneaded his forehead with his fingertips while he registered the fact that she had not slammed her bedroom door.
The new Leah again, he realized. The woman she had become.
7
He spotted her reflection in the mirror as she appeared in the open doorway to his room just before dawn the next morning. He turned slowly to face her, his fingertips smoothing into place the tabs that secured his Dragonskin vest. Her puzzled expression registered a moment later, but he remained silent.
She took a step into his bedroom. "Body… armor," she whispered.
"That’s right."
Surprise flashed in her eyes. "And I know about body armor because…"
"You’ve seen it before. Many times, in fact."
"You and my brother?"
He nodded.
Her gaze shifted to a second, smaller version of the vest, this one folded neatly atop his open leather carry–on.
"You need two?"
"No."
"Then…"
"It’s yours, Leah. One of the hazards of traveling with me."
"Have I always known about body armor?"
He nodded. "For a long time. Micah’s work opened that door for you."
"And your work, too."
Not a question this time, he realized. A statement of fact. An undeniable fact about lethal adversaries and lives deemed valueless.
She took a shallow breath and studied his neutral facial expression. "What aren’t you telling me?"
"A few things."
"Like?" she pressed.
His dark eyes went flat. "If you’re with me, you’re a target, too."
"Who?"
He shrugged into his shoulder holster, collected his weapon, checked it, and tucked it into the leather sling suspended beneath his armpit. Then, he met her gaze. "Contract killers hired by a Middle East terrorist faction."
"They’re after you?"
"Possibly," he hedged, not wanting to frighten her and wondering how much longer he could delay telling her the truth. "It doesn’t pay to take chances or let down my guard."
"You sound so calm."
"Some things don’t change, Leah, especially not in my world."
"You and my brother…" Her voice trailed off.
"…work together," he finished for her. He’d just taken another step into his own barren future, and he felt it resonate deep inside. "I’ll keep you safe, Leah, but you’ll have to help me."
"Anything," she said. "Do I know how to use a gun?"
Brett sighed. "You know the basics."
"You taught me."
"Yeah, but…"
"I don’t like them… guns, I mean."
"No, you don’t."
"Then I guess I’d better get over it." With that, she turned away from him, but she paused after taking a single step and whirled back around to glare at him. "Is this why you didn’t want me wandering around on my own yesterday?"
"Yes."
She approached the bed and collected the smaller Dragonskin vest. "Under my jacket alright?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Next time, tell me the truth. I’m not brain dead; I’ve just temporarily misplaced most of the pertinent facts of my life." She didn’t wait for a response from him. She simply left his bedroom.
H
e stared after her, reminded yet again of the changes that had taken place in her personality during their years apart. This Leah was direct and unflinching. She was very much the woman he’d expected her to become, but he’d had his own expectations at the time, too—that he’d be around to watch her grow into her own skin as she matured. Instead, he’d been missing in action, and he could only blame himself for that grim bit of reality.
** ** **
As they traveled north on Route 101 that morning, Brett ended the silence between them when he asked, "Any special preferences for lunch, or would a cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake hit the spot?"
Leah shrugged, her thoughts centered on the photograph she was studying. "I trust your judgment. Whatever appeals to you is fine with me."
She lifted her gaze from the group photo taken following her sister’s wedding a few minutes later and looked at Brett. Sculpted by an unforgiving Creator, his hard–cheeked, strong–boned profile continued to fascinate her.
"You’re staring."
She teased, "It doesn’t pay to deny the obvious, so I’ll plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the court." He glanced in her direction, almost grudgingly, Leah thought. "I do think we need a formal truce if we’re going to eat a meal together, though." She caught a fleeting impression of his surprise before he returned his attention to the traffic ahead of them.
"Whatever you want, Leah," he finally said.
"What do you want?"
"More than I have any right to expect."
"We could start our truce by declaring an end to cryptic remarks like that one."
Brett flicked yet another glance at the rearview mirror. His dark, slashing brows shadowed eyes narrowed to slits as he inspected the pick–up truck traveling behind them on the road. Frowning, he shifted in his seat and ran his fingertips over the butt of the gun he’d tucked beneath his right thigh.
Observing his behavior, Leah turned in her seat and peered curiously at the late–model truck. "Those two guys have been with us since we left San Francisco. They must have stopped at the same gas stations and rest stops we used. I wonder where they’re headed."
