by Lori Ryan
“Eleanor,” she said.
“What?”
She lifted her head to meet his gaze. “Eleanor. No one calls me Nori anymore.”
His grin was slow and so damned sexy she almost forgot for a minute that fifteen years had passed since they’d seen each other. That she had no claim on this man anymore. No right to be thinking the things she was thinking about him. No right to feel the reaction her body was having to his touch.
“Eleanor, then,” he said softly.
His words were simple, but they snapped her back to reality and she stepped away from him. She wasn’t Nori and they weren’t in high school anymore.
She was Eleanor Bonham. She worked for the State Department and she was about to negotiate an agreement that could mean the difference between maintaining the strides they’d made in the fight on terror or losing it all.
It was probably silly, but the recitation of who and what she was, grounded her. She crossed to the bed but stared at the mattress instead of laying down. “I don’t think I can sleep.”
She sank to the floor in front of the bed, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. She heard more than felt him come and settle beside her. Even as he sat, he was still on duty, on guard. She could tell.
It was more than just the fact that he still had knives and guns strapped to him in more places than she could count. It was the way he was constantly scanning even the small space around them. It was the way she could tell he had an ear cocked to the outside even as he seemed to give her his attention.
“Don’t worry, Eleanor. We’re going to get you in and out of this summit with Demir and get you home to your family. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She didn’t reply but she felt the tightening in her gut at his words. She didn’t have a family to go home to. Not really, anyway. But that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have right now.
“So, what are the others out there doing? You said they need a plan. There’s no plan for how you’re going to get me across the border into Kazarus?” She stood again as she spoke, walking the few paces to the other side of the room before turning and walking back.
Shouldn’t elite forces like his have plans with backup plans, and then some?
If he was bothered by her questions, he didn’t show it. Then again, she had the feeling he didn’t let anyone see anything he didn’t want them to see.
The man before her was highly disciplined and clearly every bit the elite warrior special forces were said to be. Pride at who he’d become swelled through her. Not that she’d had anything to do with it, but still. He was clearly damned good at what he did.
“We know where we’re headed and how we’re going to get there. We need to set some things in motion on the ground to implement those plans.” He leveled her with a look. “And we’ll be setting up a few decoy plans as well, giving whoever is gunning for you something else to chase for a while.”
His phone buzzed and he looked at the screen before looking back to her. “Your assistant and the rest of your team are safe.”
Eleanor felt a rush of relief at the news. Not that they all didn’t go into this work knowing the risks, but still, she wouldn’t forgive herself if anything happened to them because someone was trying to kill her.
“Who has them? You said it was another Delta Team?”
He shook his head, tapping back something on the screen before turning his attention to her. “I said no such thing. Stop putting words into my mouth.” He grinned her way. “But, yeah, another team has them. We’ve worked with these guys before. One of them, Ris, was a buddy of mine when I was in Ranger school.”
“Ranger school? So you’re a Ranger?”
“Once a Ranger, always a Ranger.”
She had a feeling if she was any other person they were protecting, he’d be saying nothing, but he seemed to be playing with her and she had a feeling she’d get the information out of him soon. They would have gotten a dossier on her when they got the assignment. He knew she meant it when she said her clearance was higher than his.
Even so, he was being vague. It was in a special forces operative’s blood not to reveal who they were and what their assignments were.
Eleanor watched him carefully. He didn’t seem to hate his life. Didn’t seem miserable with his decision to enter the Army. Since she was the reason he’d had to make that decision, it mattered to her.
She sat on the floor next to him again and stretched her legs out in front of them. She wanted to lean into him, letting him put his arm around her like he had when they were young, but she didn’t. She still felt the constant hum of arousal when she was near him and that just irritated the hell out of her.
She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t the kind of woman who let attraction distract her from her job. Not to mention, it was stupid for her body to be even remotely aware of anyone of the opposite sex at a time like this. She needed to get her shit together.
She focused on what he’d just said. “Ris and you were Rangers together?”
She didn’t get to hear the answer to that question. Heath went tight and sat up, motioning her to be quiet.
In a heartbeat, he sprang into action, throwing himself over her and pushing her to the ground as what sounded like an explosion came from the front of the apartment.
Eleanor screamed and covered her ears, but she was too late to stop the ringing. Heath put an arm around her waist and hauled her up at the same time she saw his other arm come up with a gun trained on the door. He shoved her behind him as gunfire rang out.
When shards of wood exploded out of the window frame behind her she realized it wasn’t only Heath’s weapon she was hearing.
No, all that noise couldn’t come from one weapon. Eleanor watched in horror as four men flooded the small space between Heath and her. She was equally horrified when two of those men fell to Heath’s bullets.
Heath lifted the bed they’d been leaning on moments before with one arm and she realized it was little more than a cot with a mattress. He shoved it on its side in front of them, giving them the barest bit of cover.
“The window!” Heath kept himself between Eleanor and the men firing as he pushed her back to the window. “Open it and go out on the fire escape!”
“What about you?”
She thought she almost heard a smirk in his voice when he answered her with a “Right behind you, babe.”
Her hands fumbled and she flinched again and again as she shoved open the windowpane. Then she was climbing through it and he was moving behind her.
She heard Heath grunt in pain and she was pushed to the metal floor of the fire escape as he fell on top of her. She heard the sickening thud of his head hitting the metal railing.
“Oh God, Heath!”
There was blood. A lot of it. His forehead was bleeding and his left arm was drenched in blood where he’d been shot.
He’d been shot and she was alone here with at least one or maybe two men with guns coming for her.
She shifted her body so she was out from under the weight of him and reached for his gun. She hadn’t had more than training at the range, though she’d put in enough hours there to know how to handle the weapon.
But she’d sure as hell never fired a gun at another human being. Still she’d be damned if she was going to sit and wait to die.
Or watch them kill this man who’d saved her, who had put his life on the line for her security. The man she’d once loved with all her heart.
She lifted the weapon and trained her aim on the window while she tried shaking Heath awake with her other hand. She needed him. They were in a seedy part of town in a city she’d only ever driven through as a passenger before. She didn’t have a clue where to go from here. She had no idea how to reach his team. She didn’t know where to go if she got them off this fire escape.
And that was a huge if. How the hell did she think she was going to be able to lift this man? She couldn’t. And she sure as hell couldn’t climb down a ladder
with him.
Sirens sounded in the distance and she was reminded of the sirens she’d heard at the airport. They were too far away to help her now, just as they had been then.
And something told her this time, there would be no shouts from a Delta team coming in the nick of time to save her. She took a steadying breath, resisting the urge to try to wake up Heath. She needed to be ready when their attackers came through that window.
The window filled with the dark shape of a man and time seemed to slow as she saw the weapon in his hand. Saw him raise it and point it at her and she was frozen in fear for the briefest second. She only hoped that wasn’t enough to cost her. To cost Heath.
She squeezed the trigger, aiming for center body mass as she’d been taught during all those sessions her stepdad had paid for when she joined the foreign service.
The gun was a lot bigger than she was used to so it was no surprise when it sent her body jerking back. She didn’t stop firing, though. Two, three, four times. Until the man slumped over the window.
Her heart beat a wild rhythm in her chest and she didn’t let herself think about the fact she probably just killed this man. She couldn’t face that right now. Not on top of everything else.
Heath groaned and shifted and she shook him again.
“Heath! Open your eyes, Heath! Please!”
He groaned once more and then he was sitting, taking in the scene around them and assessing things as though he wasn’t bleeding from the head and arm. That’s apparently what special forces training would do for you.
He pulled another gun from somewhere on his body and crouched in front of her, waiting. His response when the next man came to the window was so fast, she didn’t see him move. He fired off two shots and the man fell, disappearing beneath the window.
“Let’s go,” Heath said, taking both guns and pushing her in front of him again, toward the ladder that led to the ground.
And then they were moving through alleys and in and out of buildings. Eleanor thought he was being overly cautious. She’d seen four men come into the apartment and all of those men were dead now. There were sirens telling her the police were coming in response to the gunfire. Surely, no one else would come after them now.
She was wrong. She heard the shouts of two men behind them and looked back to see them at the end of the busy street. They were clearly looking for someone and she had a feeling it was Heath and her.
Heath took them through a market and into a small internet café where no one even bothered to look up from their screens when they entered. No one seemed to care when they slipped out the back door either. He kept them moving, not looking back.
By the time he pulled her into a dark bar, Eleanor’s head was spinning. It took her a minute to realize they were in some kind of strip club. The women weren’t as scantily clad as they might be in a US club but there were two women dancing in the center of the room and she saw women seated in men’s laps here and there, grinding in the darkened corners.
He led her to a table in a corner near the back of the space. She realized then that he’d been talking for the last few minutes and could only guess he was talking to his team on some kind of comm system.
Heath sank into a seat at the table and Eleanor got her first good look at him. He was struggling. His eyes were glassy and he was breathing heavy. He looked up at her and pressed one of his guns into her hand under the table.
“Eleanor. My guys are going to come get you.” He tipped his head toward a hallway. “You go down this hall and wait just inside the back door. They’ll come down the alley and grab you.”
She shook her head.
His eyes went hard and dark and she guessed she was supposed to be afraid. “I’m staying here to cover you if these guys come in here. Now, go!”
Eleanor shook her head. No way in hell was he leaving him here.
“I’ll be right behind you Eleanor, I promise. I’ll cover you from here and then I’m right behind you.”
It was bullshit and she knew it. Hell, they both knew it. His left arm was hanging by his side and he looked like he might pass out again at any minute.
The front door opened. Eleanor didn’t look to see if it was their pursuers. She grabbed a scarf someone had left sitting over the back of a chair and put it over her head. Then she straddled Heath in the chair and bent her head to kiss him, keeping her hands twined in the scarf as she wrapped her arms around him, so that anyone looking at them in the darkened corner would only see two people who should be renting a room instead of two people running from hired killers.
Heath groaned and gripped her hips and she thought for a minute he would push her off of him and force her to go out the back without her.
Fat chance in hell of that happening. He was only there because of her—in more ways than one. If she got him killed, she’d never forgive herself.
Then he was kissing her back and it was her turn to groan as need and hunger flooded her. God, this man had made her melt and forget all reason when they were in high school. He’d always been able to have her aroused and losing her mind with nothing more than his hands and mouth.
Now, though—now was a whole other story. His hands gripped her tight and pulled her hips to his. She felt all the strength of his hard body heating her own to the core. His mouth slanted over hers and he took control of the kiss, delving into her mouth and feasting on her with a passion that stole her breath.
She pressed her breasts to his chest as a slow sweet ache spread through her. She shouldn’t be doing this. They shouldn’t be doing this. It was all sorts of wrong, but damn if it didn’t feel right.
She moaned against his lips, wanting nothing more than to stay in his arms.
Heath broke the kiss and she felt his glare on her for a second before he looked over her shoulder.
“They’re gone.”
Eleanor’s cheeks heated as she realized he hadn’t been affected by the kiss at all. He was still on, still working, making sure they were safe.
While she’d been acting like they were teenagers again in the back of his dad’s BMW.
“You have to listen to me if I’m going to keep you safe, Eleanor.”
She scrambled off his lap and stood. “I’m not going out the back without you so you need to find a way to stand up and move.”
He grunted and pushed himself up, leaning heavily with his good arm on the table. His eyes seemed a little clearer, and she hoped the blow to the head was wearing off some. Eleanor put herself under his other arm and tried to support him, though she honestly didn’t know if she was doing any good. Together, though, they moved down the hall he’d gestured to before. She could see the door he’d said to go through. Heath stumbled and pulled them off balance into the wall.
Eleanor pulled at him, getting him back to his feet again. Ten more feet and they’d be there, ready to go when his team came through for them.
Eight feet.
He stumbled again. Eleanor felt warm liquid running down her shoulder and it dawned on her that he was bleeding a lot more than she’d thought. Between that and the head wound, she didn’t know how he was moving.
Six feet.
She put her all into getting him down that hall to the door. She had no idea if his team would come in to find them if they drove by and they didn’t come out. Or maybe this was like the movies and if they didn’t make this pickup point, they’d have to get to another one.
She couldn’t get him to another one.
Heath slumped again and she let him go to the floor this time, leaning him against the wall and praying no one came back here and found them.
She ran the last few feet to the door and slammed it open before realizing that was stupid. He’d said to watch from the inside until his team came. She could just as easily stumble upon the men coming after her back there.
The alley was empty, though, and she looked back to Heath.
Damn.
She went back and grabbed him under the shoulders and tried to p
ull. That wasn’t going to happen. The man was all muscle and she was not.
She ran back to the door and looked out. An SUV turned into the small space and headed for her. She shaded her eyes against the glare of the headlights and prayed it was his team and not the killers.
“Please, please, please.” She looked back at Heath. He was pushing to his feet again, shaking his head. He took a stumbling step her way.
“Go Eleanor. It’s them. Go!”
There was nothing in his tone that gave her room to argue or hesitate. It was an order plain and simple. She opened the door wide and stepped outside praying to God he was right and it was his team.
And then the car doors opened and Jangles and Zip spilled out.
“Heath is hurt. He needs help,” she said, pulling back when Zip reached for her.
“Jangles has him. We need to get you out of here.”
Still, she resisted until she saw Jangles coming out of the back door with Heath leaning heavily on him.
The idiot was grinning at her. Grinning like he’d just had the time of his life. And as Zip pulled her into the car, Heath winked at her like he used to when they were younger. And her stupid heart did a flip just like it did back then. More than it did back then, if she was honest.
As they tore out of the alley, she let herself sink into the back seat of the car and closed her eyes.
And thought about that kiss.
Chapter 5
Heath cursed as Zip put the last of the stitches into his head. He’d hit his head harder than he wanted to admit to his guys.
“Want to tell us how the hell you know our principal, Woof? And why the fuck you didn’t think to mention this before the op?” Merlin was pissed and wasn’t bothering to hide it.
Heath didn’t blame him. He should have told them who Eleanor was the minute he’d recognized her picture. He wouldn’t apologize, though. They might have pulled him from the mission and he wasn’t going to trust Eleanor’s safety to anyone but himself. Hell no on that score. He owed her that much.
