by Rachel Grant
She’d forgotten her mother had actually lived at the institute for a time. Undine had been so young when her father broke ground; her memories were vague at best. When Charlene left, Stefan had set off on a two-year research expedition, taking Undine with him. Those expeditions had been the reason Undine had to be homeschooled. By the time she was fourteen, she’d begged her father to stay home—probably much as Charlene had—so she could go to high school. Be normal. But then she’d taken tests that showed she’d mastered the high school curriculum, and the next thing she knew, instead of being a normal high school freshman, she’d been an abnormal college freshman.
Would she change it all now if she could? Insist on going to high school for the experience, if not the education?
Would Luke give up being a SEAL if he had a time machine and could go back to the moment that had irrevocably changed his future?
Her mother had wanted her father to give up his life aquatic, failing to recognize that Stephan Gray, without his travels and studies, would never be happy and wouldn’t be the man she’d fallen in love with.
And now, Undine couldn’t help but wonder if she’d glommed on to an excuse to end things with Luke because she was scared of what he would say if she told him she loved him enough to want to find a way to make a relationship work. Could she give up her career for him? Would she still be herself without the professional life she’d worked so hard to build?
What if he didn’t want her for the long term? After all, he’d been the one to insist their fling was temporary.
So she’d reverted to her old pattern of serial monogamy with a sixty-day expiration—but she hadn’t even given Luke the full two months. Which made sense, given that she’d spent her adult life rejecting men at the moment a relationship was on the cusp of getting serious.
Her dad had blamed her dating pattern on Luke, but she suspected it had a lot more to do with her mother. She’d asked Charlene, when all hell broke loose at the institute, if she could live with her until her eighteenth birthday. She’d even applied for a transfer to the University of Arizona. But her mother refused, saying Andre didn’t want her around. The rejection at a time when she desperately needed a mother had cut deep.
Undine’s head throbbed, and she closed her eyes against the pain. She might have screwed things up with Luke, but she had an opportunity here. All she had was the present, this exact moment with her mother in a rental car, sitting in a parking lot and arguing while waiting for a ferry to arrive so she could spend a lot of money she didn’t have on a dress she didn’t want or need.
There were no time machines. She couldn’t change the past. But maybe, just maybe, she could have a mother. “Mom, I already asked my friend Trina to overnight a gown for Saturday. I only agreed to today because I thought we might have fun, but the truth is I don’t want to go shopping. I hate shopping even more than I hate okra. But the aquarium in Seattle is one of my favorites. I know you don’t love looking at fish so maybe we can make a deal. If I show you the aquarium, you can show me something you love. Let’s spend the day doing things we each enjoy. Seattle has a great art museum.”
“I’m sick of art museums. Andre considered going to museums an acceptable activity. But I always wanted to do the Underground Tour. Whenever we visited Seattle on Andre’s business trips, he said the tour was too grimy. Philistine. I think he believed I didn’t know what philistine meant. He was such a pretentious ass.”
Undine smiled. “I can’t think of anything better than topping off the aquarium with the Underground Tour. Maybe after that we can go to a bar in Pioneer Square, and I can teach you how to flirt with philistines.”
“Your dad said you have something going with that handsome SEAL who saved you.”
She shrugged, unwilling to explain the situation to her mother. “I’m not going to flirt. I’ll be your wingwoman. You can even tell people I’m your little sister. Just like old times.”
Her mother laughed. “No. Let’s tell them you’re my daughter.” She winked at Undine. “No one will believe us anyway.”
Luke pulled on his running shoes and stretched, wishing Undine were with him for this morning run. It was five thirty a.m., one week before Thanksgiving, the sun wouldn’t rise for another two hours, and it was pouring rain. She’d gripe about the timing and conditions, but he wanted her by his side because she’d make the misery fun.
And afterward, he’d make love to her for hours.
Less than two minutes after she said good-bye and boarded Nereid, he’d begun to question why he’d insisted their fling end when they left Neah Bay, or why he’d ever called it a fling to begin with.
He knew he’d reached a pathetic low when he started trying to come up with excuses to call her. He hadn’t invented an excuse to call a girl since he was fifteen.
He was a former SEAL. He’d raided terrorist strongholds. He’d rescued hostages hours before they were slated to be executed. He’d swum into enemy territory in the middle of the night and helped remove a warlord from power. Surely he could call a woman on the phone and say… What?
I’m an idiot for letting you go. I want to find a way to make this work.
But what if she’d meant it—the peace between them gave her freedom to move on with her life? What if for her, their relationship was closure of sorts?
He hated the word closure. Especially if it meant Undine was done with him.
He crossed his apartment to the front door. A lonely run in the cold rain would be fitting for his mood. He grabbed his apartment key and yanked open the door.
Undine stood in the hall, her hand poised to knock.
He stared at her in shocked silence, wondering if this was a dream, if the alarm clock hadn’t gone off yet.
She flashed a tentative smile. “I have the strangest urge to go for a run, but it’s too dark to go by myself. I was wondering if you’d join me?”
His heart pounded, but he managed to find a cocky smile. “I’m not sure. It’s a bit early, and you tend to slow me down.”
Her smile widened. “I was afraid you’d say that, so yesterday, when I was at the aquarium, I bought you a bribe.” She reached into a tote bag and pulled out a silk tie decorated with dozens of tiny blue tangs. “They didn’t have shawls, and I thought this would match your eyes.”
He couldn’t hold back his grin. “So, if I take that tie, I have to go running with you now?”
She nodded. “And tomorrow morning too.”
He slipped an arm around her waist, pulled her inside his apartment, and closed the door quietly, in deference to his sleeping neighbors. Then he scooped her up and pressed her back to the door. She dropped the tie and tote bag and wrapped her legs around his hips and arms around his neck.
His lips were a scant inch from hers, but he didn’t kiss her. “What if I don’t want to go running in the cold, dark rain? What if I want to make love to you instead?”
She threaded her fingers through his hair. “We can do that, if you prefer, but no tie until after you take me running.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “But what happens after we run? Will you go back to Nereid?”
“If you want me to. But I’d rather stay here with you.”
“That can be arranged.” He ran his lips over her jaw, then kissed her throat. “But you should know I don’t do flings.” The fingers in his hair tightened, and he smiled against her neck.
“You don’t?” she asked in a husky voice.
“Nope. Not anymore. Because I’ve fallen in love with you, and now that I have you back in my arms, I’m never letting you go.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Friday afternoon, Undine was plastered to Luke’s chest, enjoying a post-sex cuddle, when his landline rang. She rolled off him so he could answer it, but he made no move to grab the phone. “I prefer this moment just as it is.” He slid a hand over her hip and cupped her ass.
“No argument from me,” she said. “I’d be happy to pull the blinds and turn off the lights and pre
tend we aren’t home forever.” They’d deftly avoided talking about how they were going to make this relationship work. So far, they’d only acknowledged they both wanted to try, and she’d been content with that.
He nipped her earlobe. “At some point, we’d run out of food. And my landlord would demand rent. I suppose I’d have to go to work eventually.”
She ran a hand over his chest, then slid farther south to trace the indentations between his abs. “We’d also run out of condoms.”
“Which means you’d almost certainly get pregnant, and then we’d have a baby with brown-green eyes and a beautiful smile like Mom to take care of.”
He said it so casually, as if having a baby together wasn’t a scary prospect. As if he liked the idea. She touched his chin. “Or gorgeous blue-tang eyes and an adorable chin cleft like Dad.”
He slid down and kissed her belly, and she knew he was imagining her stretched out with his child. The weird part was, it didn’t freak him out, or her, for that matter. She’d figured she was years away from her biological clock going off, but all at once, she felt it tick.
He met her gaze, his eyes intent. The air in the room seemed to thicken as she drew in a heavy breath.
“I was thinking I would put in a request to transfer to the DC area,” he said softly. “There are always open billets in Silver Spring.”
Her heart thumped hard against her breast.
The phone started ringing again. Luke cast a glare over his shoulder at the offending item on the nightstand.
“You would do that?” she asked. The suggestion triggered more fear than the thought of having his baby, which was nutty.
“There’s no guarantee, and even if it did come through, it would take months. We’d be apart for a long time while the request is processed. But I’m willing if you want to stay in DC.”
The answering machine picked up. This time, the caller stayed on to leave a message. The male voice carried from the answering machine in the kitchen through to the bedroom. “If you’re home, Lieutenant, pick up. There’s been a development in the search for Yuri Kravchenko.”
He’d been dangerously close to telling her he wanted it all—her, marriage, a baby—but pulled back at the last second, remembering there was an interim step. And then the stupid phone had interfered before he could get her answer.
This wasn’t a fling for either of them, but they had yet to discuss how they were going to make it work. One of them would have to sacrifice, and now that he’d made the offer—and she hadn’t ecstatically accepted—he couldn’t help but wonder if she was having second thoughts. Was this just a final stop on her road to freedom?
And why the fuck was he focusing on that and not the fact that Yuri’s boat had been found?
He needed to get his head on straight. He pulled open the closet door and opened his gun safe. A SWAT team was, at this very minute, gathering to raid the boat. It was entirely possible there could be a nuclear standoff in the marina just a few miles from his apartment within the next thirty minutes.
His request to be included on the SWAT takedown team had been denied. It was the right call to make—he didn’t know the team and had never trained with them—but being left out after being the man on scene from day one still rankled. He’d been given the heads-up on the raid as a courtesy.
“Call your parents. Ask them to take you to Seattle.” He wanted her far away from what could become ground zero.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To the Coast Guard Air Station. I’m one of a handful of people who knows exactly what’s going on and who has the training to deal with the situation. I’m going to offer my services as backup on the water. Yuri won’t escape that way.”
“I can probably convince my dad to take Mom to Seattle again.” Her mother was completely unaware of the situation, and they were all determined to keep it that way. “But I won’t go with them. Not without you.”
“You can’t come with me to the Station.”
“Why not?”
“You aren’t and have never been active duty.”
“But I know Yuri. No one else there does.”
“No, Undine.” He paused. “The thought of you anywhere near Yuri, anywhere near the bomb, scares the hell out of me. If you’re in potential danger, I’ll be distracted, and I need to be focused on the full scope of the mission, not just your safety.”
“I’m just as scared for you. You don’t have to go to the Coast Guard Station at all.”
“Don’t ask that of me. I may work for NOAA, but it’s still uniform service. I took an oath to defend the constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. I need to honor that oath and do everything in my power to get that bomb back and protect my country.”
“I took the same oath as a federal employee.”
“But you aren’t trained like I am. I know what I’m doing. I can help. And I intend to be on a Coast Guard boat, making sure Yuri doesn’t escape.”
Her chest rose with a deep breath. “I’ll stay here, then. I’ll make dinner. And wait for news.” She wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “While you’re gone, I’m going to turn up the heat to the equatorial range. I don’t know how you live in this chill.”
He smiled. “The thermostat is programmed. I’m not usually home this time of day during the week.”
“Promise you’ll call as soon as you know anything.”
He stepped forward and put his arms around her. “I will. We were having a conversation earlier that I very much want to finish.” He reached down and stroked her belly, holding on to the insane notion that someday, she’d carry his child.
“Me too.”
He released her and donned a holster. “Dare I hope for something more exciting than corn flakes for dinner?”
She smiled. “I was thinking of wrapping sticks of butter in bacon and deep-frying them.”
He laughed. “That’ll go great with the Brussels sprouts in the crisper.”
“You would ruin bacon with Brussels sprouts.”
He slipped an extra magazine into his pocket, then pulled her against him again. “I have a recipe that will. Blow. Your. Mind. I’ll make it when I get back.”
“For Brussels sprouts?”
“No.”
“I’m afraid to ask what you think is mind-blowing. Kale-wrapped yams?”
“No. But that sounds awesome.”
She groaned. “What torture do you have planned?”
He flashed a grin. “Bacon-wrapped tater tots. With cheese.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh my God. I think I just came.”
“And you will again as soon as I get home. And then you’ll have bacon-wrapped tater tots.”
Yuri’s boat was empty. He’d been there—recently, if the food waste on the counter was any indication—but not in the last several hours.
The Geiger counter indicated the bomb had been on the boat too.
Luke turned to Parker—who’d been assigned to Port Angeles along with the other Neah Bay personnel who’d been actively involved with the investigation from the start. Once the boat had been cleared by SWAT, Parker had finagled permission for Luke to explore Yuri’s fishing boat. From the look of things, the twins had lived on the boat as well, sharing the v-berths in the front, while Yuri lived in the small captain’s cabin.
“No hint as to where he went?” Luke asked the FBI agent managing the scene.
The man’s gaze swept Luke from head to toe. “Who are you, and why are you here?”
“Lt. Luke Sevick.”
“Sevick. The former SEAL?”
“Yes, sir.”
The man offered his hand. “Thank you for your service, before, and in the past weeks. I’ve been briefed on the sequence of events.”
Luke gave a sharp nod, glad he wasn’t about to be booted from the vessel.
“We haven’t been able to process enough data to determine where Kravchenko went, but everything indicates he knew we were coming.” The man swept his hand w
ide. “He’s only left behind what he wanted us to find.”
And that didn’t include a Cold War-era Soviet nuclear bomb.
This was where it could all go wrong. Or it would be the moment when five years of searching paid off. Yuri used the stolen key fob to raise the gate to the parking garage and parked in the designated space. The government would have realized he’d abandoned the boat by now. It was a shame to give up the vessel, but there was no other way. It had served its purpose. As Yuri would serve his.
He or his nephews might die today. Death wasn’t his intention. Not yet. He wasn’t the suicidal sort. He wanted to see the results of his labor. But even so, he’d taken the necessary precautions. The plan would continue in his absence.
He glanced at his watch and nodded to Alexei. It was time. They didn’t have long. The SEAL would return home after the search was complete.
And then the game would begin.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Undine’s heart hammered as she tucked herself in the closet, next to Luke’s locked gun case. She should have asked for a gun. But then, she’d never fired one. Luke would have refused on safety grounds. And he’d have been right.
But then, they’d never expected Yuri’s nephew, Alexei Lutsenko, to show up here. Had never imagined she was still in danger, but she’d seen him through the peephole in the door. He’d looked straight into the circle—much the same as she had nearly three weeks ago—and demanded she open the door. He’d brandished a gun, and she’d bolted backward, tripping on the shoes piled by the front door, including the high heels his mother had left behind on her last visit, which he’d placed next to the door as a reminder to mail them to her.
She’d made a noise when she tripped. Alexei knew she was here.
