Off the Grid

by Monica McCarty

  Afterward, sated and weak from pleasure, they lay naked and entwined on the bed in a weird kind of post-euphoric silence. It wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable; it was more a sense of awe and humbleness. As if maybe something bigger than either of them realized was taking hold.

  What’s happening?

  She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until he answered. “I don’t know.”

  But it was clear to both of them that something was. And as she fell asleep with her cheek pressed to the steady beat of his heart—a heart that wasn’t running for the hills—she suspected the answer.

  She was falling for him all over again. He’d better not disappoint her. The landing would be much harder this time.

  Twenty-one

  Kate burst into tears the moment he opened the door. It was as if all the emotion of the past couple of weeks—ever since she’d received that horrible phone call from Colt telling her Scott was dead—which she’d been carefully keeping at bay, burst through the dam. All it took was one look into the navy blue eyes of the man whose face was nearly as familiar to her as her own—no matter how he attempted to disguise it.

  She threw herself into his arms and didn’t let go until the heavy, choking sobs slowed to a few sputtering sniffles.

  He’d closed the door behind her, but otherwise he hadn’t moved, content, it seemed, to just hold her until she got it all out.

  When she finally pulled back to look up at him through blurry, swollen eyes, he was grinning down at her. “I take it you’re glad to see me?”

  She swatted at him playfully and wiped her eyes. “Don’t joke about this. I was so scared that I’d lost you. When I heard . . .” She let her voice fall off. “It doesn’t matter. You’re safe, and that’s all that matters.”

  Scott pulled out a chair from the desk, indicating for her to sit.

  After dropping Colt off at his hotel, she’d driven straight to the address Scott had given her. It hadn’t taken long, as the hotel was also near Capitol Hill and only a few blocks away. Both men had picked large chain hotels favored by businessmen—she suspected it wasn’t a coincidence and was only glad they hadn’t picked the same one.

  She gave an involuntary shudder at the thought of them accidentally crossing paths. Scott’s subtle change in appearance wouldn’t fool Colt any more than it had her.

  Scott went into the bathroom and came out with a few tissues, which she made good use of.

  He sat on the desk and looked down at her. “Why do I think this isn’t just about me? Wesson’s been giving you a hard time, hasn’t he?”

  She looked away, avoiding his gaze. “He gives everyone a hard time. I’m nothing special.”

  “Kate . . .” He had that impatient-father tone in his voice.

  “I don’t want to talk about Colt. I want to talk about you.” She reached up and tugged on his short beard. “I’ve never seen you with a beard before. You look different.”

  It roughened the edges of his patrician features, making him look a little more rugged and not so clean-cut Nantucket.

  A wry smile turned his mouth. “That’s the point.”

  “And your hair is darker.”

  “A little help from Just For Men.”

  She took in the blue button-down shirt and gray slacks—neither of which were tailored and hid his well-honed SEAL physique behind bad pleats and extra fabric. She knew from her marriage to Colt that muscular, broad-shouldered guys needed to have their shirts tailored or they would blouse when they were tucked in, making them look a little Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

  The pleated dad-pants didn’t help, although she suspected that was the intention. Scott looked like all the other slightly paunchy, out-of-state businessmen in this hotel.

  Okay, well, maybe not quite like them. Even with the ill-fitting clothes, he was strikingly good-looking. Ken to her Barbie, Colt had once accused. “You look like fucking Ken and Barbie Country Club edition.”

  It hadn’t been a compliment—especially with the nasty way in which he’d said it. But Colt had been half-right. They did look alike, but there never had been anything romantic between them. Only love and friendship forged from a deep, unexpected connection.

  Scott grinned, obviously taking in her scrutiny. “You like the outfit? It’s not Savile Row.”

  She snorted. Like her, Scott was always impeccably dressed. She knew he had more than one bespoke suit from England. His wealth made hers look like pocket change. But most of the time he ignored it. It had brought him comfort, but not happiness. Only guilt. “Definitely not, but it does the job.” She paused. “Now, tell me what’s going on. Why are you here?”

  “We have a lead. I told you about the reporter being attacked in Norway. Well, it doesn’t look like a coincidence. Her place in DC was ransacked. We’re setting up a sting to see if we can lure whoever is responsible out.”

  Kate muttered a curse under her breath. “Brittany? I found out who was feeding her information.”

  “You did?”

  She nodded and filled him in. He swore a few times, but she wasn’t sure whether he was angry or pleased. She suspected a little of both. Her godfather’s interference had definitely made things harder on him, but he’d also been the only one willing to stick up for them and not let their sacrifice be swept under the rug.

  She also filled him in on the rear admiral’s suicide and what they’d learned from her godfather that made his involvement seem unlikely.

  When she mentioned the woman in Iowa, he looked 100 percent angry again. “That was Jim Bob’s high school girlfriend.” At her look of confusion, he said, “Travis Hart. One of the young guys who made it out with us. Apparently it wasn’t as over as he led everyone to believe. You think someone in the government paid her off to keep her quiet?”

  “Sounds that way, but I’ll look into it when I get a chance.” She suspected Colt was ahead of her on that.

  Then she got to the difficult part. The part she wasn’t looking forward to. “My godfather said something else.”

  Scott gave her a sharp look, something in her voice obviously alerting him. “Yeah? What’s that?”

  She took a deep breath. “It was about Natalie.”

  A look of acute pain crossed his grim-set features. But suddenly his expression filled with alarm, and he swore. “Does he know about the text? Does he know she warned us?” His voice lowered. “Not that it really makes a difference now.”

  “No. At least I don’t think he knows about that. But with my godfather you never know. He worked in intelligence a long time before joining the Chiefs of Staff.” She paused, the biting of her lip betraying her anxiousness. “He said she was adopted when she was a child and that her real name was Natalya Petrova.”

  It didn’t take him long to process the significance, and when he did his face darkened with rage. “No fucking way. Whatever it is you are thinking, it’s way off base. Nat didn’t have anything to do with this. She warned me, for fuck’s sake. She saved my life and five other men’s lives. I don’t care what her name was. She was born somewhere else. So what? A lot of people were. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a coincidence.”

  “All right,” Kate said quietly, knowing he was too angry and too shocked to think rationally right now. He was right, but this was too big a coincidence to discount.

  “I mean it, Katie. Leave her out of this.”

  “All right,” she repeated, but they both knew she would follow up on it. She had to. He would understand that . . . eventually.

  “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  “What you are doing. Keep Wesson out of our way and off our tracks.”

  As if getting Colt to do anything was that easy. “I’ll do my best. But with the rear admiral not a suspect anymore, I don’t know how long I can keep him from getting on a plane to Russia.”

  “Well, then, let�
�s hope this fishing expedition Donovan is on catches something big.”

  Kate stayed for a little while longer, but eventually she had to say good-bye. Scott was getting things lined up for tomorrow, and Percy was waiting. They had some talking to do. Some talking that she might have put off for too long but that she couldn’t put off anymore.

  * * *

  • • •

  The shock was like a punch to the gut. A sucker punch, hitting Colt when he wasn’t expecting it.

  Though why the hell he hadn’t expected it, he didn’t know. She’d done it to him, hadn’t she? Lord Percy wasn’t even married to her yet and she was already cheating on him.

  Called back into work, my ass. Colt had seen her face after that phone call. He’d seen the elation. The eagerness. He’d known she was lying.

  She was meeting someone.

  So he’d followed her. She’d dropped him off, and he’d hopped in a cab and followed her. Even when she’d handed her keys to the valet and practically ran into the lobby to the elevator, he hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  He’d nearly missed the little lovers’ reunion. He’d had to wait to see what floor she stopped on, and then, at the last second, some asshole jumped in the elevator he was holding open, causing the closing doors to reopen. Colt had stopped him before he pushed a button on four—two floors lower than the sixth, where she’d gotten off.

  Colt walked out of the elevator just in time to look down the hall and see her launch herself into the arms of a man who’d obviously been waiting for her. Colt didn’t get a good look at him; he’d closed the door behind them too quickly, as if he couldn’t wait to . . .

  Anger seethed through Colt’s veins. Why the hell was he so upset? This had nothing to do with him. He knew she was a liar. Nothing new there.

  Almost five months old.

  She’d probably been lying about that, too. Hadn’t she?

  But what if she hadn’t? What if the baby she’d lost had been his, just as he’d thought that entire, hideous plane ride across the country after he’d learned that she’d been in a car accident. When he’d stupidly vowed to do anything to repair the wreck that their marriage had become. When he’d told himself he would give her the benefit of the doubt and ignore what every sign—the secret e-mails and meetings, the whispered calls, the unexplained absences, the flushed cheeks and heartfelt stares she thought he didn’t see, and then the final blow, discovering they’d both been in DC together—pointed to: that she was having an affair with Taylor.

  But all those signs were corroborated when he’d arrived at the hospital and was told that her husband, the father of her child, was already with her and talking to the doctor. Colt still wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen with his own two eyes the way Taylor was holding her in his arms. Lying next to her in that hospital bed as if he belonged there.

  Comforting her.

  Loving her.

  Would it make a difference if the baby had been Colt’s? Would it change anything?

  When she’d told him earlier, it had felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under his feet and he was looking around for something to stand on.

  He’d found it when the door opened to the hotel room.

  Whether the baby was his didn’t change the fact that she’d cheated on him. And now, apparently, on the ambassador.

  Colt shouldn’t have stayed. He should have gone back to his own hotel and drunk himself into oblivion there. Not sat there hunched over on a barstool in the lobby bar, drinking whiskey and waiting for the elevator door to open two hours later. Even then he could have let her go. Let her walk away oblivious to what he’d learned.

  But he’d never been very good at doing what he should where Kate was concerned.

  She’d taken only a few steps out of the elevator before he was in front of her.

  She gasped. “Colt!”

  Taking advantage of her surprise—and the fact that she was trying to back away from him—he maneuvered her back into the elevator.

  Blocking her exit with his body, he pushed a button as the doors closed.

  “Wait. What are you doing?”

  He waited for the elevator to climb a few floors before stopping it and disabling the alarm so that it couldn’t sound. His job had its benefits.

  “Stop!” She realized what he was doing, but it was too late. Not that she could have stopped him. “What is this about? Why are you keeping me here like this?”

  “I wanted a little privacy, but if you’d rather, we can talk about this in your room—unless you rented it by the hour. What was it, 6307?”

  He remembered too well she liked to meet in hotel rooms. They’d done it themselves when they’d first started dating. He’d teased her that she liked the illicitness of it. The tawdriness. She’d said it was to protect their privacy—a believable explanation with their respective jobs—but the blush on her cheeks had made him wonder.

  She blanched at the recitation of the room number but recovered quickly. “I don’t know what you thought you saw, but this has nothing to do with you.”

  “You’re right. Does the ambassador know you’re screwing around on him?”

  He’d closed the distance between them without realizing it, until her chest started to heave against his and he realized everything in a hot pull of lust fueled by anger. Anger that felt as fresh as it had three years ago.

  “I’m not screwing around on him,” she said through gritted teeth.

  She was angry. Maybe just as angry as he was.

  But Colt wasn’t listening. “I almost feel sorry for him,” he said, backing her up against the handrail. “Although I’m not surprised he couldn’t satisfy you. Does he know what a naughty girl you are yet, or does he still think you are as prim and proper as you look?”

  She tried to push him back, but his arms were pinning her on either side of the brass handrail that circled the elevator. If looks could kill, he’d be lying in a pool of blood. “You’re a bastard, Colt. You’ve always been a bastard. A vile, crude, cruel-hearted bastard.”

  “And you’ve always been hot for it. Even now I can see it on your face. You’re turned on. You like it a little rough. A little dirty. That’s why you wanted me.”

  Years ago she would have denied it. She would have said she wanted him because she loved him. She didn’t say that now. She stood there, eyes blazing, cheeks hot, heartbeat pounding, not saying a damned thing. Angry, turned on, but yet oddly detached in all the ways that mattered.

  He didn’t like that at all. He wanted to get to her. To prick beneath that haughty facade the way he’d always done.

  He bent his mouth closer, grazing the soft strands of her hair as his lips swept over the even softer velvet of her flushed skin. “Does he know how you like to be sucked?” he whispered, his lips hovering close to her ear. The shiver that racked her body only egged him on. “Does he know how to make you cry out with the flick of a tongue between your legs?”

  She sucked in her breath in a gasp that was more of pleasure than of shock, and Colt found his body responding.

  Fuck that. His body had been responding since that elevator door had closed behind them and he’d caught the scent of that damned perfume.

  He hated peonies.

  But they fucking smelled like heaven. They smelled like sex. With her.

  He wasn’t supposed to be getting turned on. He was supposed to be pissing her off. Outraging her. Angering her the way she’d done him.

  But he’d miscalculated. His lips made full contact with the silky skin of her neck as her hands circled his head and brought their bodies together in a sizzle of raw heat. Like water hitting a pan of oil with a hard snap and a burning splatter. It almost hurt.

  His hand skimmed down over the familiar slender hip and the firm, tight ass. “Does he know how much you like it from behind? How you like to be on you
r hands and knees when I ram into you?”

  He could almost feel her opening for him. Feel her dampness as his rigid cock rubbed against her. It felt so fucking good. He wanted to groan at the contact.

  Maybe he did. He didn’t know because his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her. Devouring her like a man who’d been starving for three years.

  Longer than that. It had been a long time since they’d kissed with this kind of intensity.

  His tongue was in her mouth, fighting with hers for dominance. For depth. For how much they could take of each other.

  He was on fire. The elevator was on fire. It had become a sauna. A sensual den of erotic pleasure.

  He was out of control, and she was meeting him stroke for stroke, thrust for thrust. But it wouldn’t be enough until he was inside her. Until he was pounding and she was grabbing and lifting and demanding more.

  Demanding everything.

  But as quickly as the spark had ignited, it was snuffed out.

  “Stop!” she said, pushing him away. “Damn you, stop! I can’t do this.”

  He might have protested otherwise if he hadn’t seen the glint in her eye. The glint of tears.

  He stepped back. Where his body had been hot only seconds earlier, it was now ice.

  What was he doing?

  She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t do this. But she’d gotten to him. She’d gotten to him after everything she’d done.

  He was every bit as disgusted with himself as she was. Except she didn’t look disgusted; she looked shaken. Fragile. As if the kiss had destroyed something inside her.

  He knew the feeling.

  He didn’t want to look at her, but he forced himself to meet her gaze. The tightening in his chest was even worse than he had braced himself for. “I’m sorry.”

  She held his stare until he thought he would die from lack of oxygen in his frozen lungs. “I—I . . .” She stumbled. “I just want to go home.”