A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire, #1)

by Tara Sivec

  Parker wrapped her arms around Garrett's neck and stared at his profile as he got them to the end of the dock in record time. She couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Garrett’s face as he’d pulled her from the water. His eyes had been watery, full of unshed tears. The blood had drained from his face like every single fear he’d ever known had come to fruition.

  "I'm sorry I scared you," Parker whispered as Garrett opened the passenger door of the car and gently placed her inside.

  He knelt down next to the open door and pulled the seatbelt across her chest and fastened it while she shivered from shock and cold.

  Parker knew now wasn't the time to break down, but she couldn't stop the tears from pooling in her eyes when she thought about how close she’d come to never being able to touch or kiss Garrett again.

  He wiped the tears from her cheeks and brushed the hair out of her face. Something cracked wide open inside of Garrett the moment he thought he might have lost Parker forever. He was done pretending, done keeping everything he felt buried deep inside. But he needed to get them out of the marina. The sirens were getting louder. It would only be a matter of minutes before the place was filled with the authorities.

  "I wasn't worried," Garrett said with a shrug and a smile. "You're too stubborn to let anything happen to you."

  Parker let out a laugh and rolled her eyes as Garrett stood up and shut the car door.

  <> ~ <>

  Garrett called Brady after they pulled out of the marina and explained what happened. Instead of making Parker sit in the car for over three hours with wet clothes, Garrett decided to get a hotel room so she could rest. They could get up first thing in the morning to head back to the resort.

  He checked them into the first hotel he came to, drew Parker a hot bath so she could get rid of the chill, and then walked to a corner store once she was situated in the tub. He picked up first aid supplies for the cut on her head and a change of clothes since hers wouldn't be dry any time soon.

  Forty minutes later he paced back and forth outside of the bathroom door waiting for Parker to emerge.

  The light splashes of water and soft sighs he heard on the other side of the door every so often were the only things preventing him from barging in to make sure she was okay.

  Garrett's phone rang and he momentarily stopped his pacing to answer it.

  "McCarthy."

  "Hey, man," Brady replied. "How's Parker?"

  Garrett sat down on the end of the bed and stared at the closed door.

  "She's alright. Relaxing in the tub. Did you find out anything?" Garrett asked.

  On Garrett's walk to the store, he had asked Brady to get a copy of the marina's phone records and find out what the blocked number was that always made the appointments for Milo's boat.

  "Yeah," Brady sighed. "The number is the same one for the extra cell phone Milo owned."

  Garrett suspected that would most likely be the case, but it was still frustrating to have it confirmed. He kept thinking back to the kid he'd grown up with, the one his parents had taken under their wings, encouraged, and supported in every way. Garrett had no idea how Milo had strayed so far from them and turned into someone like this.

  "There's something else," Brady said, the trepidation evident in his voice.

  Garrett waited for him to continue.

  "I tried to pull up flight records for Milo, but there was absolutely nothing listed on any of the public airline's itineraries for him," Brady explained. "I found the records of his trips for the military easy enough, and they all legitimately matched his missions. I find it hard to believe that Milo never took one personal flight his entire life though."

  Garrett's head spun as Brady added even more details to the mystery.

  "I looked through every private charter service’s flight plan, and he's not listed on a passenger log on of any of them. But, my computer has an anagram program that will take the letters of a name, mix them up, and tell you what other names can be made using those exact letters," Brady explained in a rush of growing excitement.

  “On August 29, 2004, there was a passenger by the name of Roberto Mils listed on the flight roster of a private jet that landed in Maryland from the Dominican at Saint John’s private airport. If you take that name and rearrange it, you get Milo Roberts.”

  Brady paused to let the information sink in with Garrett.

  “That flight was in the summer right before Parker started her senior year of college,” Garrett mused to himself out loud. “Milo flew to Florida around that time for a cousin’s funeral...or so he said. He never mentioned the guy in all the time I knew him but said something about how it was the only family member he kept in touch with, occasionally. I tried to go with him but he said he wanted to go alone,” Garrett told Brady.

  The door to the bathroom opened and Parker stepped out into the room, wrapped in a towel.

  “Good work, Marshall. Call me if you find anything new.”

  Garrett disconnected the call and tossed the phone down onto the bed as he stood up and crossed the room to Parker.

  He immediately wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. Parker hadn’t been able to get warm enough no matter how hot she made the water. She’d been in plenty of dangerous situations but none where she was two steps away from being blown to bits. The chill that burrowed deep down into her bones had more to do with nerves than it did with actually being cold. Garrett’s arms enveloped her and melted everything away from the past couple of hours.

  Parker slid her arms around Garrett’s waist and turned her head to the side so she could rest her cheek against his chest, right above his heart. The muffled thumps of each beat reverberated through her ear, and she counted each one.

  Garrett let out a sigh of relief at having Parker in his arms again and being able to feel that she was safe and alive. He rested his chin on top of her head and rubbed slow circles across the skin of her back above where the towel ended.

  Garrett wasn’t sure when it had happened, but he had accepted the fact that CIA Parker was independent, strong, and could take care of herself. He realized that watching her in action made him care about her even more than he thought possible. She excelled at what she did, and he was amazed at how easily his previous notions of her personality before he knew she was CIA fit so well with who she really was and who he had always known her to be.

  The only problem he had, the one realization that sucker punched him in the gut with the force of a freight train, was that he was powerless to keep her safe. Garrett would never forget the staggering pain he felt when he thought she’d been hurt.

  Or worse.

  There was one thought on his mind and one thought only – if she was gone, she’d never know how much he loved her.

  Garrett squeezed his eyes closed and kissed the top of Parker’s head. She pulled her cheek away from his chest and looked up at him, keeping the rest of her body as close to him as she could. He stared deep into her eyes, and she felt her heart speed up.

  Garrett brought his hand up to push some of her hair behind her ears so he could cup her cheek. His thumb moved lazily back and forth against her skin while the butterflies in his stomach fluttered rapidly.

  “I love you,” he told her softly, his gaze never wavering from her own.

  Parker heard him say the words, she saw his mouth move to form the sounds she waited a lifetime to hear, but it didn’t seem real. She was afraid if she closed her eyes, if she looked away, it would all be a dream. Nothing about this day made sense. It only seemed right that this shouldn’t either. Of course Garrett loved her. They’d been friends for years and now they were intimate. He was scared he'd almost lost her today, and it made him want to reaffirm the love he had for his friend. It was a natural response to a scary situation, a knee-jerk reaction to the adrenalin still coursing through him.

  “I know,” Parker replied softly, understanding evident on her face even though she wished things were different.

  “No, I d
on’t think you do,” Garrett said with a shake of his head. “And that’s completely my fault. I should have told you a long time ago. I shouldn’t have waited until I almost lost you. I know love isn’t something that comes easy for you or that you even believe in it. I know and I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re afraid to love me back, I don’t care if you never feel the same way that I do. I just need you to know, right here and right now, that I am in love with you, Annabelle Parker.”

  Parker bit her bottom lip in an effort to stop the flow of tears that were threatening to spill over onto her cheeks, but it was useless. His admission alone would have made her fall apart, but the way he said her name, like she was the most important person in the world to him, forced a sob past her lips.

  Garrett hadn’t given one thought to how Parker would react to his declaration. He just spit it out. She hadn’t said a word since he’d spoken; the tears just slowly leaked from her eyes as she stared at him in disbelief. Garrett felt like maybe he said something wrong. He should have planned it better, given her some kind of warning about how he felt before throwing it at her after the day she had. He was so busy kicking himself he almost missed Parker’s whispered response through the tears.

  “I’m scared.”

  Garrett knew because of her father and the way she was treated she refused to give all of her heart to someone. Garrett didn’t want her to feel guilty for one minute because she couldn’t return his feelings.

  He bent his knees so he was eye level with her.

  “I told you, it doesn’t matter to me if you can’t-”

  Parker quickly reached up and covered his mouth with her hand before he could finish.

  “I’m not scared because I can’t give you my love in return,” she told him softly. “I’m scared because I love you so much sometimes it’s hard to breathe.”

  Garrett groaned softly behind her hand.

  “I’m scared because I never ever wanted to lose myself in someone as deeply as my parents did. I’m scared because I was so stupid to realize I would have no control over that where you were concerned.”

  Garrett closed his eyes for a moment, letting Parker’s words sink in and letting himself believe in everything she was saying. He opened his eyes as another tear fell from her eyes and slipped down her cheek and over her lip.

  “Everything I have to give, it’s yours. It’s always been yours,” Parker told him with a sob.

  Garrett lifted Parker up into his arms, her hand quickly falling away from his mouth as he captured her lips and sighed once they were connected. The exchange of breaths, the slide of tongues, everything was more enhanced than it had been before. Garrett’s hand went to the back of Parker’s head, holding her in place against his mouth. He turned and walked with her to the bed, climbing onto it and laying her down in the middle, never breaking the kiss.

  The towel was pulled away from Parker’s body, and Garrett’s clothes were quickly shed. The words had finally been spoken and now the actions took their place. Garrett kissed his way down Parker’s body, savoring every inch of her, finally accepting she was his. He worshiped every spot that his mouth touched, repeating the words of love after each press of his lips against her. He brought her to release with his mouth and knew he’d never hear anything sweeter than the sound of Parker shouting his name.

  She pulled his body up the length of hers, needing him close and his skin touching her everywhere. She traced Garrett’s lips with her fingertips and sighed in contentment when he slowly pushed into her. They moved together, never once breaking eye contact. There was more meaning in the touches and greater significance in the way that they fit together. Everything was heightened and nothing was lost on either one of them. They both knew everything about this moment would change them forever. They both understood there was no going back.

  Garrett didn’t know how he ever survived without the knowledge of Parker’s love before. He was overwhelmed with emotion as he rocked against her and pulsed inside of her. He felt like he could finally breathe but at the same time, he felt a clawing tightness in his throat with the need to keep repeating his words of love so she’d never forget.

  Parker’s legs wrapped tightly around Garrett’s hips, and her arms held him firmly against her as she flew over the edge of another release, arching her back with the force of pleasure that coursed through her body. Garrett never wanted the moment to end, but she was slick and throbbed around him as he pushed deeper. She craned her neck forward and pressed her mouth against his, pulling away just enough to tell him she loved him again. Her soft words ghosted against his lips, and he came fast and hard, her name echoing into the room as he shouted his pleasure and spilled inside of her.

  Parker fell asleep wrapped in Garrett’s arms, exhaustion from the day’s events and admissions finally taking its toll on her. Garrett wanted to know what exactly happened out on the dock. He wanted to know how it was possible she hadn’t been on board when it exploded.

  Now more than ever Garrett knew the timing of Parker’s job offer for the CIA, her friend Lacie Butler’s death, Milo’s trip to the Dominican, and the formation of The Target Agency all happening at the same time hadn’t just been a coincidence. There was something more than a little suspicious about all of those facts lining up, and he knew that he and Parker needed to talk about those things immediately.

  For now, he pulled her in close and let the woman he loved sleep. He closed his eyes and prayed that nothing would ever ruin the perfection of this night.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I did board the boat. I looked around for a few minutes before I realized I left my camera in the car and needed to have it in case I came across something,” Parker explained to Garrett as he drove them back to the resort, early the following morning.

  Now that everything was on the table between them, so to speak, Parker had no problem resting her hand on Garrett’s thigh while he drove, and Garrett had no problem lifting her hand to his lips so he could kiss the back of it every time they came to a stop.

  After the horror of yesterday, it seemed frivolous to both of them that they had wasted so much time denying their hearts what they really wanted. It took a near-death experience for them to finally realize they needed to take hold of every moment together and cherish it. Professing their love for each other had been so easy. They’d both been so stupid and blind, wasted so much time not talking; all they wanted to do now was tell each other everything.

  “I was so jealous when I came back to the resort and saw you with Cole the other night,” Garrett told Parker with a sheepish smile, glancing over at her nervously to gauge her reaction.

  He’d been doing that ever since they left the hotel that morning, throwing in little tidbits of his feelings while she explained what happened the previous day. It felt good to finally say those things out loud, but at the same time, it helped ease the ache in his chest while Parker replayed the events for him. Garrett had barely slept the night before. He was afraid if he closed his eyes, he would wake up and realize he lost everything, that he'd open his eyes and find out he never pulled Parker from the water, never heard her tell him that she loved him. Garrett had held her body close and watched her sleep, felt her low, even breaths until the sun shone through the window.

  Parker let her head fall back on the head rest and stared at Garrett’s profile as he navigated the streets, taking in his strong jaw line, the slope of his nose, and the way the sunlight streaming in through the front windshield of the car highlighted the dimples in his cheeks.

  “You had nothing to be jealous of. Cole is like a big brother to me,” Parker told him softly.

  Garrett brought her hand up to his lips once again, this time kissing the inside of her palm. She knew he was trying to keep her calm as she went through the events from the day before, and it made her love him even more. Parker knew he had been scared. When he pulled her from the water his eyes roamed frantically over her checking for injuries and he refused to leave her side or stop to
uching her in some way the entire night and this morning, as if to reassure himself that she was really okay. She knew it had affected him and forced him to think about losing another person in his life and that had been the catalyst to him pouring his heart out to her, but he would put all of that in the back of his mind to make sure she was okay first. Parker was finally realizing that it was all about her when it came to Garrett; that it always had been. For all these years, he always put her feelings first, always made sure she was taken care of that she was okay. That’s why he never acted on his feelings for her, because he only wanted her to be happy. He saw her happy with Milo and vowed to never do anything to ruin it for her. Parker wanted to crawl across the car and climb onto Garrett’s lap to be as close to him as possible. She wanted to roll down the window and shout her happiness to the world. But all that would have to wait. Right now they needed to concentrate on what happened at the marina.

  “I noticed a stack of papers on the table in the lower cabin. They were lists of names. I flipped through them quickly but none of the names were ones I recognized. They were definitely all female though. I knew Brady would have better luck with them and I didn’t want to risk moving them, so I made my way up to the deck and got off of the boat so I could jog back to the car and get my camera, but I never made it there,” Parker explained.

  “Did you see any clothing laying around that you recognized? Anything that would implicate that Milo had definitely been on the boat at some point? Just because he owned it doesn’t mean he was the one using it.”

  Even though Garrett had come to terms with his best friend hiding a huge secret, it still didn’t mean he was guilty of anything―yet. There was a maid who saw him in a hotel and paperwork showing he owned a boat. Neither proved, without a shadow of a doubt, he was the one responsible for the disappearances and deaths of those girls. The whole purpose of this mission was to find out why he was killed and so far, all they’d done was uncover more questions. They could wager a guess that Milo’s death had something to do with his involvement, innocent or not, with the missing girls, but they still didn’t know for sure.