Foster home number one had lasted two years, and he’d hardly spoken to anyone in that house.
Foster home number two had lasted three years, during which time he’d forced himself to join life and started to come out of his shell. He’d realized early on that if he was going to get out of the cycle of poverty and drugs, he had to do it himself.
That family had done the best they could for him, but eventually the father had gotten a job in New York, and he didn’t think it was reasonable to take Mike with them. The pain of that separation had been intense. Mike was nine years old and felt so unwanted he could hardly lift his gaze.
And then the Andersons came on the scene. He owed them his life.
Shaking the sad memories from his mind, he focused on the water running in the shower. He closed his eyes, visualizing Zola in that shower, naked, wet. He could tell even without seeing her naked that she had filled out significantly since high school.
He swallowed over the lump in his throat and lowered his arms to adjust his stiffening cock trapped under the zipper of his jeans. Any added weight to the tits he remembered would make them glorious. They’d been fantastic to behold at eighteen. Now… Shit.
The water shut off, and Mike jumped up to take his mug to the sink. He rushed down the hallway to his own room and shut the door to hurry toward the shower himself. He didn’t think he could face her again just yet. He needed some time alone.
He needed a plan. What the hell was happening between them? She was a job. Nothing else. He needed to protect her life. Toying with her emotions or getting involved with her wasn’t an option.
Was it?
He hoped he could take the edge off his lust in the shower, and it didn’t help any when his mind wandered to images of her doing the same thing. Would she? The girl he’d known twelve years ago would never have masturbated in the shower. He smiled again at the image. Contrary to his own little pep talk, he’d give anything to see that show.
Thirty minutes later, he found her sitting at the kitchen table opposite where he was set up, her face tipped down, studying a thick file in front of her. The empty wrapper from a granola bar sat on the table next to her. Good. She’d found something to eat.
As he slid into his seat across from her, she lifted her gaze. “You really think this is all necessary?”
“All what?”
“Me. Hiding here in Norfolk. Over some random threats that probably won’t amount to anything.”
“You tired of me already?” he teased.
She rolled her eyes. “Can you be serious for a minute?”
“Come here.” He motioned with one hand for her to round the table.
She pushed her chair out and came to his side as he moved his mouse around and opened a file. When she finally stood close enough for him to touch but keeping an obviously intentional distance, he reached for the chair around the side of the table and scooted it next to his. “Sit.”
“Bossy,” she muttered as she lowered herself onto the seat, dragging it back a few inches.
He smirked. “And stop trying to avoid me. I don’t bite. Touching me won’t kill you. It’s insulting. Have I ever laid a hand on you in anger?”
She gasped.
Good. He needed to make that point. Her avoidance was growing old fast. She’d flinched like he’d burnt her when he handed her a mug of coffee earlier. And yesterday in the airport and on the plane, she had shrunk away from him several times. She acted like he might hit her.
“Of course not. I wasn’t thinking that,” she muttered.
He turned his torso to face her more fully. “Has someone else hit you? Another man?” That idea hadn’t occurred to him before. It was possible, but if it was true, he would kill the guy with his bare hands.
She scrunched up her face. “Do I seem like the kind of woman who would stay in a relationship with an abuser?”
“No. Not at all. But some asshole could have hurt you once before you were aware of his nature and left.”
She shook her head. “No. Never. Don’t be silly.”
“Then you won’t mind me touching you.” He reached out and grabbed her hand, wrapping his fingers around it from the back.
She jerked her arm back, dislodging him with another more audible gasp.
This wasn’t what he was meant to be doing right now. He should be enlightening her on the level of danger she was in because obviously she wasn’t as informed as he was. But as soon as she came to his side of the table with her weird need to keep space between them, he’d lost his cool on that topic.
He wasn’t a leper. And he’d never given her any reason to cringe away from him—not then, and not now. “What the hell, Zola?”
She lowered her face, tucking her hands between her legs.
He let his gaze follow her hands to the spot where she crushed her fingers between thighs that were now covered with the last material he wanted to see her in—denim. “Talk to me.” He softened his voice. “We have to work together. We’re stuck together like glue for the foreseeable future. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”
“Well, it’s not abuse. So let that go.”
“Okaaay. No one has mistreated you. Then what?”
When she jerked her face up to meet his gaze, her expression was pained. “Just don’t…”
“Don’t what, babe?” Now his chest hurt.
“Don’t…touch me.”
The pain grew more intense. Don’t touch her? “Zola, I don’t understand.”
“It’s too much, okay?” Her voice rose. She shoved the chair back and stood. “It brings back memories. And what makes it worse is that you obviously don’t feel the same thing. So just stop. When your skin touches mine, my heart races, and I can’t think of anything except the last time we were together.”
Holy fuck. He couldn’t breathe, let alone speak.
She turned around and fled the two feet to the sliding glass doors, and then she raced outside and ran down the steps to the beach.
Mike stared after her for several seconds before shaking his ass in gear and following. She still didn’t understand the seriousness of her situation. And if he didn’t get control of his lust, he wouldn’t be able to protect her.
She headed straight for the edge of the water to stand in the same spot she’d occupied last night. It was chilly outside this morning, and she wrapped her arms around her middle to ward off the wind.
Her gorgeous strawberry-blond hair blew around her back and neck, making him long to thread his fingers in it and tug her head back the way he used to do in high school.
When he reached her, he set his hands tentatively on her shoulders and then smoothed them down her biceps until he wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her back against his chest. He set his chin on the top of her head, relieved that she didn’t jerk away from him.
For long minutes, he stared out at the waves with her while she slowly relaxed in his embrace, and then he eased his mouth down to her ear. He used to set his lips on that sensitive spot every day multiple times. It felt like home. “I’m sorry. I should’ve read you better. I thought…”
What did he think? He assumed she’d moved on. He assumed she probably had a boyfriend. Why on earth wasn’t she married? So sexy. So full of life.
When she didn’t respond, he continued, “I didn’t think you would still have feelings for me.” Not like the ones I have for you. He’d never forgotten her. Not for a day. Not in all these years. She had been it for him. He’d known it then, and he still knew it now.
What if she felt the same way? But that was crazy. He knew she had moved on. Found another man. Made a life for herself. After months of wallowing in self-pity over her when he should have been enjoying his freshman year at Berkeley, he’d finally forced himself to let her go.
But this? What was this?
“Why wouldn’t I? Seeing you drags it all back.” She kept her gaze to the water as she nearly whispered, “Touching you…” She sighed. “It sets my blood on f
ire, Mike.”
He was shocked by her bluntness. And half of him was elated to hear he affected her as much as she did him. Now what should he do? That information was heady.
She squirmed in his embrace. “Let me go. Please.”
He held her tighter. “No. I like holding you. And we need to discuss this.”
Her chest heaved against his forearms as she stopped struggling. “Can we discuss it without you touching me?”
“No.” Suddenly it seemed important that he keep his arms around her. Obviously she had an issue, and he intended to put it to rest. He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent, setting his nose against the skin behind her ear.
She shuddered. “Mike…”
“Babe. It’s the same for me. When you touch me, it’s like an electric current runs between us. So we need to work it out.”
“We can do that without you holding me.” Her voice held no conviction.
“We can do it with me holding you.” He squeezed tighter.
She set her hands on his forearms and returned the firm grip. Blessed angels.
He wasn’t sure where to begin. And it turned out he didn’t have to.
“You left me.” Her voice deflated. “You said we would make it work, and then you left me, and I never heard from you again.” The pain in her voice stabbed him through the chest.
She wasn’t wrong. But he had spent the last twelve years thinking she’d moved on and basically left him. “You wrote to me that you’d found someone else.”
She jerked free while he had a moment of weakness. And then she turned around to face him. Her eyes were heated and wide. “That was a matter of self-preservation, Mike.” She stomped back toward the house.
Again, she’d left him staring at her back in shocked confusion. Finally, he took off after her, catching up as she slid the back door open and stepped inside. She kept going, but he grabbed her arm and spun her around. “Stop running from me.”
She glanced down at the spot where his hand was wrapped around her biceps. “Stop touching me.”
He released her, but only because he wasn’t an asshole.
Luckily she didn’t leave the room. She cocked a hip out and crossed her arms. Her face told him she was fighting tears. Again. Why did he always seem to make her cry? Was it possible she was still emotional enough about their breakup to shed tears over him? That was ludicrous.
Or maybe it wasn’t. If he was perfectly honest, he could almost do the same. He shook his head. “Are you telling me you lied? You never met another man and had a new boyfriend?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, big guy.”
He took a step back, afraid he might actually fall. Her words shook his very foundation. He’d never once considered that possibility. “Why?”
“I told you. Self-preservation. You cut me off. You never responded to a single email I sent. I needed to do something. My father—”
“Whoa, wait,” he cut her off to say, “your father? What did he have to do with this?”
She lowered her shoulders, blowing out a long breath. “He advised me to do it. He thought it would help me find closure, put an end to that chapter of my life.”
“He advised you to lie to me?”
She narrowed her gaze. “What the hell did you care? You hadn’t made contact with me since…since…” She didn’t finish.
He knew exactly when the last time he’d spoken to her was. The night he’d taken her virginity and given her his. He lifted a hand to run it through his hair. Holy shit. Her dad told her to make up a boyfriend? Who did that?
Silence filled the room. Nothing except their collective labored breathing. He had no idea how to respond. There was no way in hell he could tell her why he hadn’t contacted her. Ever. She would hate him.
Suddenly he wondered how her dad had reacted to the news that it was Mike who would be picking her up and keeping her safe. Or shit. Maybe he didn’t know…
Mike grabbed a kitchen chair and lowered onto it. He set his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his palms. What a shitstorm.
Zola didn’t move. “That’s it? You don’t have anything else to say?”
“I have lots of things to say,” he told the floor. “But none of them are going to make you feel better. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You’re sorry.” Her voice was sarcastic as hell. She tapped a foot to go with her stance.
“Yeah.”
“Me too.” She turned around and left the room.
And he let her go because he had no idea what else to do at that point.
Chapter Six
Zola was staring out the bedroom window at the skyline when a knock sounded on the door and then opened. “Can I come in?”
She didn’t respond. In fact, she continued to stare out the window.
When he got close enough to touch her, she stiffened and pointed to the window sill. “Your friend is really into safety.” There were glass sensors all through the house.
“Yeah. He is. But then again, he does some seriously scary shit for the military and sometimes the government, so he has earned a certain level of paranoia. That’s partly why I chose to bring you here instead of someplace else. We might not stay forever, but it was the safest place I knew where we could regroup and make another plan.”
She turned around and leaned against the window sill. “We better do that then. Unless you want to back out and get someone else to play bodyguard.”
“Not a chance, babe.” He tucked his hands in his pockets and nodded toward the door. “Come bump heads with me. I need to show you a few things.”
She passed him and made her way back to the kitchen where they’d been seated at his computer before the subject changed to how damn hot he made her when his skin touched hers. As an olive branch, she even intentionally pulled her chair right up to his before he sat.
She had no idea why he had ghosted her all those years ago, but obviously he had no intention of telling her, so she needed to make the best of this situation.
Mike slid into the seat next to her and grabbed the mouse. He clicked on several things and then opened a document that said it was six pages long.
“What’s this?”
“A list of the threats to your life. If you want, I can show you the list of threats to your father’s life also.” He lifted a brow, glancing her direction.
Her jaw fell. “Where did you get that?”
“The CIA. They didn’t hire me and then leave me hanging with no info.”
“But I’ve never seen this list.” She reached across him, knocked his hand out of the way, and took over his mouse to scan down the pages.
He leaned back enough to give her space, but his breath landed on her cheek. She had to ignore that detail. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Why wasn’t I informed?” She twisted to look at him, a mistake at such a short distance.
He shrugged. “No idea. Maybe your father was trying to protect you?”
She rolled her eyes. “He would do that.”
“You’re a grown adult. I can’t believe he still manipulates you like that.”
She pursed her lips and returned to face the screen. So many incidences of letters, emails, even attempted break-ins.
When she sat back, she addressed his statement. “He still sees me as a child.”
“Apparently. Is that why you aren’t married? Has no one ever been good enough for you in his eyes?”
She should have taken offense. If any other person had said those words to her, she would have flipped out. But Mike had a special pass. He knew her father. And he wasn’t poking at her to be mean. He was seriously curious.
“I don’t share my dating life with my father anymore, if that’s what you’re asking. The reason I’m not married is because no one has ever been good enough for me in my eyes.” Maybe that was saying too much, but she didn’t want him to think her father was still meddling in her life. At least not in that area.
He
searched her gaze, apparently satisfied with her response.
“What about you? Why aren’t you married?”
“The only woman who ever made me consider marriage left me for another man.” He didn’t hesitate to tell her that.
“Oh. Shit. That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
He stared at her hard.
She jerked backward. “You’re not talking about me.”
“I am.”
She shoved the chair back again and stood, spinning away from him exactly how she’d done earlier that morning. “Mike. That’s crazy.”
“Is it? Crazier than you making up a fake boyfriend to get me to leave you alone?”
Her face heated. “That is not what happened. You started it by ignoring my emails.” Her voice rose completely out of her control. “I sent you that email to light a fire under you. It was my last-ditch effort to get you to come after me. You failed.” Why the hell did she tell him that?
He stood as quickly as she had and took a step toward her.
She backed up as he approached until her butt hit the glass door.
He kept coming, stopping inches from her, his hands landing on the glass on both sides of her head. His gaze darted back and forth between her eyes, searching.
She couldn’t breathe. Every inhale filled her with his scent. If she thought she could get away with it, she would close her eyes to block out at least the sight of him.
“We both miscalculated.”
She shook her head. She wouldn’t allow him to put equal blame on her. “No. Because I sent you five emails. Five.” She held up one hand, all fingers extended. “You sent me nothing. Not. One. Word.”
He nodded sharply. “Fine. My bad. You’re right. I should’ve written back.”
Was it that easy? Did he seriously just take the blame? “Why?” A tear slid down her face, though she really wished it hadn’t. Damn emotions.
“I thought it was better for you. Tidier. I thought I needed to let you go.”
She grabbed his shirt, unable to stop herself. She fisted the material of his tight tee in her hands, her voice increasing as she spoke again. “Bullshit. You coward. I loved you.” Her voice quivered. Dammit. She shook him. Except he didn’t budge. But she shook his shirt. “I loved you, you idiot. And you walked away from me without a word.”
Saving Zola (Sleeper SEALs Book 4) Page 5
