There was a soft knock on the door. Lucky stood on the other side, her expression soft and concerned. “You okay?”
Gina sucked back hot tears. “Not really.”
Lucky peered past her to where Jack lay on the bed. “He’ll be out for a while. I just wanted to let you know that Eli fell asleep on the floor. I made a pallet of blankets, and he’s tucked away in front of one of the couches.” Lucky gave her an encouraging smile. “If you want to talk about it, I’m a good listener.”
“Are we being followed by Stavros’s men?”
“Doesn’t seem like it, no.” She shrugged. “The compound exploded, Metaxas is MIA, and the orders have stopped flowing.”
“Is he dead?”
“It would be a miracle if he wasn’t. Identification of all the bodies will take some time though.”
Gina went into the hall and closed the door behind her. She wanted to stay with Jack, and yet it was probably better if she didn’t. She needed the space to think and prepare for when he woke up again. And she needed to be with her baby.
“Do you do this kind of thing often?”
Now that they were safe on the yacht and Jack was taken care of and sleeping, it was starting to sink in that she’d been shot at as she’d run across the compound. In the moment, she’d had no time to think about what was happening. Her entire focus had been on keeping Eli safe.
But now, when she could replay it all, she could see Stavros’s evil face, feel his hot breath on her skin and read the disgusting intention there. And then there’d been gunfire, bodies falling, and her and Jack creeping through the house until Garrett had burst in.
She couldn’t even recall the run across the compound, not really. She’d had Eli in her arms, the air had been thick with smoke, and all she could do was keep up with Jack while he fired his weapon and got her closer to the yacht.
When they’d jumped onboard, her heart had been pounding so hard she’d felt faint. She tried to remember when Jack had been shot, but the truth was she didn’t know. She didn’t recall it at all. Seeing the blood on his skin, watching Garrett clean it, had brought back to her forcefully that what they did was dangerous. And they hadn’t just been doing it for her.
It’s what they did on a regular basis. And this woman did it with them.
She was pretty, but not quite as soft as Evie, Georgie, and Olivia had been. Her eyes said she’d seen things. She was watching Gina carefully. “It’s the job,” she said. “We do what we have to.”
“You could be killed. Your husband…”
“I know.” She shrugged, though Gina didn’t think she felt in the least bit casual about that statement. “But that’s what makes it important. We help people. We stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves. And we try to rid the world of assholes like Metaxas who think it’s okay to get rich by selling guns to people who will use them to hurt others.”
“I didn’t know he was in that business at first. Athenasios, I mean. He was handsome, a bit thrilling in a way…” She felt like she was babbling, and she pulled in a breath to steady herself.
Lucky put a hand on her arm and squeezed. “We all make mistakes.”
Gina’s gaze landed on the fine scars on the other woman’s arm. She didn’t say anything, but Lucky withdrew her hand and turned her arms over, baring the network of scars to Gina’s sight.
“You never know what life is going to hand you. I got these, but they don’t define me. They did for a while, though. I was afraid of people. Afraid of being touched or touching. And then I got stronger and I stopped letting it rule my life.” She put her arms down again and looked plaintively at Gina. “Don’t apologize for your experiences. They brought you Jack, and they brought you Eli. That can’t be all bad, right?”
Gina blinked. She hadn’t thought of it like that at all. She’d just been embarrassed that she’d let a man like Athenasios fool her so completely. But yes, if she hadn’t come to St. Margarethe with him three years ago, she wouldn’t have met Jack. And she wouldn’t have Eli.
“Right,” she said, and the other woman smiled.
“Let’s get back up front. Jack will sleep it off for a while yet.”
Gina glanced over her shoulder. “He’ll be okay, right?”
“Iceman said the wound was clean and the bullet went through the outer fleshy part of his thigh. Basically, it winged him. But it’ll hurt like hell, and he’ll have to stay in bed for a while, but he’ll be okay. If it makes you feel better, he’s going to the hospital as soon as we get home. Standard procedure.”
“Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to like that.”
Lucky laughed. “Probably not.”
*
Jack’s head hurt when he woke. A side effect of the medication Iceman had given him. He sat up carefully, his head and leg pounding, and blinked at his surroundings. He wasn’t onboard the yacht anymore. The whine of the engines told him he was on a plane instead. Gina’s plane? He threw the covers back and swung his legs toward the floor.
Pain radiated through his body and he stopped moving, cursing instead. Shit. Not the first time he’d been shot, but he always hoped it was the last. It fucking pissed him off. He was the one who did the shooting, not the one who got shot. And he knew what a well-placed bullet could do to a body, so he was damn glad that whoever’d shot him wasn’t as good with a gun as he was.
He focused on the walls and recognized the door to the bathroom where he’d found Gina naked. His body responded to that memory, his dick hardening in spite of the pain throbbing through him.
Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair. He remembered her telling him she loved him on the yacht, but he wasn’t sure if he’d dreamed it or not. He tried to concentrate on the memory, tried to separate it out and determine if it was real or his imagination. But he couldn’t be sure.
He dragged himself to his feet. Someone had put a pair of his jeans on the small couch next to the bed. He grabbed them and tugged them on. He was no longer wearing a shirt, and he suddenly realized there was an IV bag hanging nearby, dripping drugs into his system. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but now he could feel the chill in his blood.
He pulled the needle and tubes free and blood ran down his arm. He swore and stumbled toward the bathroom, grabbing a towel and pressing it to the vein.
“Goddammit, Hawk,” someone said, and Jack turned and hobbled back into the bedroom. Iceman was standing there with a syringe in one hand and a fresh bag of fluid in the other.
“I don’t need that shit,” Jack said. “It gives me a headache.”
“Then I’ll give you something for the headache.”
Jack pointed. “If you make me sleep again, motherfucker, I’ll shoot you when I wake up. Got it?”
Iceman ranged toward him like a bear on the prowl. “Yeah, fine. Just let me look at that.”
Jack snatched the towel away. The blood flow was lessening. Ice grabbed his bag from the corner where Jack hadn’t seen it sitting and took out a first-aid kit. He cleaned and bandaged the puncture, took out a different bottle of medicine and a new syringe, then drew out some fluid and jabbed Jack in the arm none too gently.
“Ow, fucker.”
“You’ll live,” Iceman said. “It’s tramadol for your head. And Benadryl too, so if you get sleepy again, too bad.”
“Where are we?”
“Almost home.”
“Why are we on Gina’s plane?”
Iceman snorted. “Because she had one. And because she refused to leave you while we waited for our ride.”
Jack blinked. “The whole team here?”
“Yep.”
“Anything I need to know?” He didn’t have to spell it out because they both knew what he was talking about.
“Nothing at all.”
Jack shoved a hand through his hair. “Did Gina say that Stavros tried to force her to marry him?”
“Yeah—and that’s some fucked-up shit.”
Jack’s gut still roiled at the memo
ry of her standing there, Eli in her arms, saying “I do” in a too-quiet voice. He shook away the darkness flooding him. “He knew she was there three years ago.”
“It’s not a surprise, right? There were others there who knew. They would have told him.”
“I know… Jesus, I wish I’d put a fucking bullet between his eyes.”
“Richie called Mendez. He’s got Intel sifting the chatter for any mentions of Gina from any quarter. So far, there’s nothing.”
“Yeah.” Jack started toward the door, but his leg nearly gave out and he slapped a hand against the wall to steady himself. He cursed long and low.
“You need to lie down, dude.”
“I’ll be fine if I sit. Just help me out to the main cabin.”
“Nope, not happening. Lie down, and I’ll send whoever you want this way.”
Jack swore again. And then he shoved over to the bed and sank onto the mattress. He hated being weak. When he’d been sick as a kid, his mother still took him to daycare. These days you probably couldn’t get away with that, but back then the woman running the daycare had stuck him in a room by himself with a television and books and left him alone. He’d had to listen to the other kids play and scream with laughter, and he’d hated it. Even if he didn’t talk a whole helluva lot, he liked to be in the same room where the action was.
He wanted to see Gina. To lay eyes on her and Eli and know they were well. But he’d rather do it in a crowd because this ball of emotion that sat in his gut was a damned volatile thing. He had no idea when it would explode or what the fallout would be when it did. It scared him, and that wasn’t something he was used to.
He pulled in a breath. “Richie and Big Mac.”
Iceman shrugged. “Wouldn’t have been my first choice in your shoes, but whatever.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GINA TRIED TO BE patient while Matt and Kev went back to the plane’s bedroom to talk to Jack. Eli was asleep in the seat beside her, and she worried her lip between her teeth while keeping a hand on his back. When Iceman had said Jack was awake, she’d been halfway out of her seat when he’d told them that Jack wanted to see Matt and Kev. Her heart had fallen to her toes, but she told herself it was perfectly normal. They were the leaders of the team, and they would be able to tell him everything that had happened since he’d passed out.
She began to tap her fingers on the armrest and watch the GPS tracker on the screen in front of her. They’d be back in DC before too long. And then what? She knew that Jack had to go to the hospital for evaluation, but what was she supposed to do? Wait for him in a hotel somewhere? Go home and pretend none of this had happened?
She heard voices, and then Matt and Kev were coming back up the aisle. She bolted to her feet. Matt looked as if he might say something, but then he just stood aside and motioned with an arm for her to go. She hesitated as she glanced down at Eli. She wanted to take him to meet Jack, and yet she wasn’t sure yet what Jack wanted.
“I’ll watch the kid,” Nick said from his seat across from her. “You go.”
“Thank you.”
Gina went back and opened the door. Jack looked up from where he was sitting on the bed, his blue eyes hot as they met hers. Her heart thumped at the sight of all that bare, tattooed flesh, and then she walked in and let the door shut behind her. There was silence in the room, other than the smooth growl of the engines vibrating along the plane’s length.
“How are you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been better.”
She moved toward the bed, her belly churning as she thought about the last time she’d been in this room alone with him. He’d owned her body in this room, and then she’d realized that he owned her heart.
“I was worried,” she said, feeling the tightness in her throat that indicated tears.
“Nothing to worry about.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist. The last time they’d left St. Margarethe with his team, she’d hadn’t seen him again for three years.
“Thank you for everything,” she said softly, and his eyes narrowed. He looked… wary.
“Sounds like good-bye, babe.”
“No, of course not. I just meant that you saved me. Again.”
He patted the bed. “Come here, Gina.”
She thought, vaguely, that she shouldn’t be obeying commands—but she went and sat on the bed beside him anyway. He twirled his finger. She turned around, and then he dragged her back against him. On the side that said Hayley. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about that. She curled into him and put her hand across the taut flesh of his abdomen.
“Does it hurt?” She couldn’t see his skin since he was wearing jeans now, but she remembered the blood and the way his face had turned white while Garrett probed the wound.
“Like a bitch.” He ran his fingers up her arm, down again. “How’s Eli?”
She pushed away until she could look up into Jack’s face. “He’s fine. Maybe a little bit clingy.”
His expression clouded. “Understandable.”
“Yes, definitely.” She pulled in a breath. “When do you want to meet him? Really meet him, I mean?”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his hand across his forehead. “Later.”
She tried not to let that one word sting, but it did. “I thought you wanted to be a part of his life…”
“I do. But maybe it needs to wait until after the hospital, okay?”
“We could go with you.”
His brows drew down. “You can’t. It’s Walter Reed, and you aren’t family.”
She didn’t know what showed on her face then, but whatever it was, it was enough to make him swear.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he told her. “It’s just military bullshit that has to be taken care of first since we’ve been on a mission.”
She dropped her gaze. “All right.”
He tipped her chin up until she was forced to look at him. “I’d give you the keys to my apartment, but I somehow think it’s a little plain for your taste.”
“I’ve lived on the street, Jack. I doubt your apartment is that bad.”
His eyes searched hers. “No, but you aren’t the same woman you were then. All it takes is one person to recognize you and there’ll be a mob outside the door.”
“Then I’ll stay at a hotel.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably best.”
“Will you call me when you’re discharged?”
“I’ll call.”
She leaned against him again, pressing her cheek to his bare skin. He was warm and firm, and he made her feel safe. He twisted a lock of her hair around his finger and her throat tightened. She felt like they should be talking, but she didn’t know what to say.
Hayley’s name burned into her subconscious. It was against her body, but she could picture it running along his side, the loops and curved lines, the blackness of the ink against his tanned skin. A permanent reminder that he loved another woman—and always would.
*
It had been three days and Gina hadn’t heard a word. She’d taken a suite at the Ritz and she was getting tired of living in a hotel with a rambunctious little boy. Cassie had offered to come to DC, but Gina had told her it was fine. She’d wanted to be alone with Eli for a while, though it would be nice if they could both get out of this room for an afternoon at least.
She sighed as she looked out the window at the city. She wanted to take Eli to the National Mall, walk among the monuments, and just be a tourist for a change.
But that wasn’t possible. Even if she could manage it without being recognized, she couldn’t get over the fear that someone would step out of the shadows, point a gun at her, and demand that she go with them. Or, worse, that someone would take her baby and leave her standing there on the street alone and frantic. Stavros was dead, but that didn’t stop the fear.
Her security firm had sent a man over, but the truth was she only trusted Jack right now. Darren was as big as a house, quiet,
and definitely intimidating—but he wasn’t Jack. She hadn’t wanted anyone in her space right now, but she couldn’t send him away. He was in the lobby, waiting for her to call him if she wanted to go out.
Barry had called and tried to set up interviews, but she’d refused them all. It wasn’t unusual of her to withdraw from the public eye, but it hadn’t been the plan with her new album dropping soon. Barry just sighed and told her to let him know when she was ready. He hadn’t said a word about the new contract.
She didn’t know if she would ever be ready. The hotel phone buzzed and she jumped a mile out of her skin. Eli was on the floor, watching cartoons and playing with his toys. She swallowed her racing heart as she picked up the phone. The only call she wanted was Jack’s, but he wouldn’t call the hotel when he had her cell phone.
She’d started to call him a dozen times but told herself to be patient. Chasing him wouldn’t do any good. And it would only make her seem desperate. She wasn’t used to being the one waiting, so she’d done nothing.
“Miss Domenico, there’s a man here to see you,” the front desk clerk said.
“I’m not expecting anyone.” Not since she’d sent Darren the bodyguard downstairs.
The sound was muffled while the clerk spoke to the man. Then she came back on the line. “His name is Jack Hunter, ma’am.”
Her heart kicked up and butterflies swirled to life in her belly. “Can I speak with him?”
A second later, Jack’s gravelly voice was in her ear. “Hey, Gina.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Calling you now.”
“Not really.”
“Do you want me to come up or what?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell this woman it’s a yes.”
“Miss Domenico?” He hadn’t even given her a chance to reply before he handed the phone back to the clerk.
“Yes, please send Mr. Hunter up.”
She hung up the phone and stood there for a second, uncertain what to do. Then she hurried over to the mirror and released her hair from the banana clip she’d put it in. She shoved her fingers into the messy strands and shook it out, then wished she was wearing something besides jeans and a T-shirt. She’d gone for comfort instead of style; that much was obvious.
Hot Shot (A Hostile Operations Team Novel)(#5) Page 16
