Absolution

by Kaylea Cross

  He’d been her first lover and the love of her life, and no one had ever touched her heart since him. For all the pleasure they’d given, the other two men she’d slept with might as well have not touched her at all. Through no fault of their own. Her body wanted Luke, and would never be satisfied with anyone else’s touch.

  Staring up at him, she couldn’t help but wonder about all the other women he must have been with over the years. Luke was an intensely sexual man. He wouldn’t have gone too long between lovers. She pressed a hand to her middle to stem the violent roll of her stomach that thought caused.

  While the memories swirled between them in the suddenly heavy air, she couldn’t break his gaze. For a split second she caught the unguarded regret in his eyes before he masked it and came to sit on the corner of the desk exactly as Rayne had done. Even their mannerisms were alike.

  His dark stare was so penetrating she had trouble meeting his eyes. “How you feeling?” he asked in his low drawl that made her think of sweat-dampened sheets and tangled limbs.

  “Fine.” It was her standard answer, and all she could say at the moment.

  Luke folded his corded arms across his chest. “Rayne talk to you?”

  She frowned. “About what?”

  “I’ll take that as a no,” he muttered, regarding her in silence for a moment as though trying to figure out the best way to break bad news to her.

  “All right, then you tell me.” She braced herself.

  He hesitated a moment, assessing whether she was up to it. Then, “You know about the man I’ve been trying to capture?”

  “Tehrazzi.”

  “Yeah. Know what he looks like?”

  “Yes.” A handsome man in his mid-thirties with brown hair and green eyes. The farthest thing from what she imagined a fanatical terrorist would look like. She’d sought out everything she could find on the Internet. All part of a pathetic need to know what Luke was up to once she’d found out about the terrorist who had captured Bryn. She’d learned about that incident the same way she’d learned everything else about Luke’s work—from seeing it on the news.

  Watching her closely, Luke nodded. “You know he targeted Bryn and her father, then Neveah and another of my team members.”

  She put a hand to her throat. Samarra, Neveah’s cousin. “Yes.” All women, and all connected to Luke.

  “You see what I’m getting at?”

  Unfortunately, but she was still incredulous. “What, you think he’s going to target me next?”

  “It’s a logical conclusion, and even though it’s unlikely given all the security agencies looking for him across the globe, I can’t rule it out. Nobody knows where he is right now, and that’s got a lot of people in the business scared shitless. There’s a slim possibility he could even be stateside.”

  Emily stared. He was serious. “Why would he come after me? We’ve been divorced for almost twenty years.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  It didn’t? “If he’s trying to get to you, targeting me doesn’t make any sense. We didn’t even have contact until recently. I’m nothing to you anymore.” The words hung in the air between them, and something undecipherable flared in the depths of Luke’s eyes. Did he remember blurting out that he loved her when she’d called him in Basra? With the severe concussion he might not have realized he’d said it, but she’d hoped...

  “He knows me, Em. Knows me as well as you do, secrets and all.” He pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly, the gold chain around his neck glinting in the firelight. “Believe me, you’re at risk.”

  He still wore the medallion. The surge of hope the words elicited made her heart ache. Was he saying he did care?

  Stop it, just stop it. Are you insane? Don’t you dare go there.

  Because it hurt to look at him, she glanced away. “So what am I supposed to do? Get a better alarm system?”

  He gave a short laugh. “An alarm system, Em? You think that will keep you safe?”

  “You’re not seriously suggesting I hire someone to protect me.”

  “No. I want you to come to Beirut.”

  She whipped her head around to gape at him. “What?”

  “My team’s setting up there at Bryn’s father’s place. She’s going, too.”

  Was he serious? “I can’t go to Beirut,” she said with a humorless laugh.

  “Why not?”

  She made an incredulous sound. Wasn’t it obvious enough? “I’m sick and in treatment, for one.”

  “Neveah’s a doctor, and Ben was a Ranger medic. I’ve already arranged for all your medications and equipment you’ll need, and cleared it with your doctors. Ben and Nev were on the conference call with them and me. They’re all up to speed and ready to make sure you get the care you need.”

  Her jaw started to fall open, but then she reminded herself who she was dealing with. Luke had more connections and authority than half the generals working in the Pentagon. But going to Beirut? No way. She threw the blanket off her and surged out of the chair, pacing in front of the fire while she attempted to fight the growing panic building inside her. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “No.” It came out much sharper than she’d intended, but she couldn’t seem to get control of her emotions. Too much was happening too fast. What the hell was she supposed to do in Beirut? Most days the chemo had her so tired and sick she slept as much as a cat, and she’d only had one treatment. The next was due in a few days, and the side-effects were bound to get worse. She couldn’t handle the thought of being away from the home she loved, staying in a strange place with a group of strangers, vomiting continually but too weak to run to the toilet so she had to crawl. All because the terrorist Luke was after might hypothetically try and target her.

  Considering what she was up against physically, she’d rather risk being on a terrorist’s hit list and stay home.

  Luke stood. “Emily—”

  “No!” She shook her head and backed away from him, growing frantic. He couldn’t make her. No way was she going anywhere. If she had to suffer through this disease, then she would do so in the home she took comfort from. God knew she had precious little to give her any sense of security anymore. She’d be damned if she would lose this as well.

  “Listen to me—”

  She cut him off with a curt shake of her head. “You forfeited the right to tell me what to do the day you walked out that door.” Luke stiffened as though she’d hit him, and indeed she had. Way below the belt.

  Anxiety clawed at her. This wasn’t her—she didn’t like confrontation and didn’t say hurtful things, but her world was spinning out of control and she couldn’t stop the words or the terrible pressure forcing them out of her heart. How dare he march in after all this time with the audacity to turn her life upside down yet again? She wouldn’t let him do it anymore.

  Luke was still as a bronze sculpture, but his eyes seared her like hot coals. He sat back down on the desk. “Maybe I did,” he said in a low voice, an undercurrent of anger simmering in his tone. “But you don’t know what Tehrazzi’s capable of.”

  “Yes, I do. I know what happened to Bryn.”

  Luke cocked his head. “Yeah? Did she also tell you we caught people armed with assault rifles and grenades about to kill everyone at Rayne and Christa’s reception?”

  Emily sucked in a breath. “You did?”

  “And that someone tried to kill Neveah that night? When that didn’t work, the head of the sleeper cell went after her himself. He was a world renowned neurosurgeon, I might add. Family man, soft spoken and well respected in his community. The last person on earth you’d expect to be caught up in a plot like that.”

  His eyes bored into hers. “Tehrazzi has a master’s degree in political science, from Harvard. He speaks perfect English, without any trace of an accent. He works with anyone who will help him get what he wants—al Qaeda, Taliban, Hezbollah, mujahedeen. He doesn’t give a shit about political allegiance or whether
they’re Sunni or Shi’a. He’s got more money and support than most members of the U.S. Senate. Do you get what I’m telling you? Do you understand what kind of a threat he poses? Tehrazzi can get to anyone, anywhere if he wants it bad enough. I want all of you—you, Bryn, Sam and Neveah—in a secure location where I can make sure he doesn’t get to any of you ever again.”

  And for how long was she supposed to stay in Beirut? Until he got Tehrazzi? He’d been chasing him for six years already. She didn’t have that kind of time left to wait. She couldn’t go. Wouldn’t. He didn’t understand. “No.”

  Luke leapt off the desk, face tight with anger. “Goddamn it, Em, you have to.”

  “Leave me alone!” She whirled to leave the room, but he shot out a hand and grabbed her upper arm, spinning her around. Facing him, her knees began to tremble. This was awful, so awful. It almost hurt to breathe. Part of her wanted to hit him, and it horrified her. She jerked her arm from his grasp and took a step back, panting, on the verge of losing control and scared to death she might.

  “I’m not leaving you alone here,” he snarled, jaw tensing. “Not this time.”

  A bitter laugh escaped her. “Is that right? Well that’s ironic,” she sneered. “Just when I’m finally able to let you go, you decide to barge back into my life and stand by me.”

  He stared at her, a muscle flickering in his lean, bearded cheek. “You think I wanted it this way?”

  “Oh, believe me, this is the last thing I think you wanted. But I’m still not going.” She was being a complete bitch, but she couldn’t help it.

  “Don’t force my hand, Em,” he warned.

  She closed her eyes, her stomach so tight she thought she might throw up. She couldn’t go overseas. He didn’t understand the extent of it. Heartsick, she fought to keep her dignity. “Just go, Luke. Take the others and go to Beirut, but leave me alone and give me what little peace I still have.”

  “Jesus Christ, listen to yourself!” He threw his hands up in frustration. “Peace? You want to stay here and risk sacrificing yourself for a little comfort? For God’s sake, since when have you become a martyr?”

  Her eyes flew open. She stared at him, unable to stem the sheen of tears as the knot in her throat threatened to choke her. A tortured sob caught in her chest as she confronted him. “Since I found out I’m dying!”

  Chapter Four

  Her words echoed around the room like the report of a high-powered sniper rifle, and for a moment Luke couldn’t breathe. He felt like someone had kicked him in the gut with a steel-toed assault boot. He sucked in a painful breath. When he finally spoke, his throat was so tight his voice came out hoarse. “What?”

  Emily turned away from him, but not before he saw the tears gathered on her lower lashes. “You heard me! I’m dying.” She paced over to the fire and bent her head. As if defeated. “The chemo is going to buy me some time, but that’s all.”

  A vise clamped around his heart, crushing it. He had to remind himself to breathe. Jesus Christ. “The doctors told you that?”

  She shrugged. “More or less.”

  He was silent a moment. “Does Rayne know?”

  “No, and don’t you dare tell him.” Her voice was flat.

  So she was just giving up? No fucking way. Coming out of his paralysis, he stalked over and grabbed her shoulders to spin her around, ignoring her gasp of protest.

  Taking her face between his hands, he put all his resolve into his stare and forced her to meet his eyes. “Screw that, because I’m not letting you quit.” Her mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed, but he held her still when she tried to jerk away. “You’re going to fight this with everything you’ve got, every single day for as long as it takes. No matter what it takes, you’re going to keep fighting. Got me?”

  Raw anger and resentment swirled in her eyes, and they gave him hope. If she had enough spirit to fight with him, then she had enough strength to fight the disease.

  “You have no right,” she said between clenched teeth. “No right to talk to me like I’m a two-year-old.” This time when she yanked her head away he released her, but she nailed him with a look of pure murder. “Do you think I want to die?” she flung at him, crossing her arms over her breasts, her hands balled into fists. “Because I assure you I don’t. I’m doing everything I can to stay alive, but guess what, Luke? Sometimes medicine and will are not enough.”

  Unacceptable. He refused to even go there in the hypothetical. “Choice is yours, Em. Warrior or coward? Which is it gonna be?”

  She shook her head. “You bastard.” For a moment she regarded him with utter loathing. “Which one of us is the coward, Luke?”

  The words hit him like a knife in the heart, along with an avalanche of guilt. He deserved that, and maybe it was time they finally had this fight. If she needed to rip him to shreds, he was more than willing to be her punching bag as long as it helped her. So he pushed. “Meaning?”

  Her eyes, normally full of warmth and kindness, were like bottle-green shards of glass that cut him with a thousand slices. “Which one of us took the coward’s way out and took off when things got hard? Which one of us was too scared to stick around and work things out? Which one of us left his wife and eight-year-old son without a backward glance and never came back because he was too goddamn afraid of himself?” Her voice shredded on the last word.

  A searing pain hit Luke’s chest, deep inside his ribs like he’d been shot with a hollow point slug. She was dead on. A fucking bull’s eye.

  His stomach was so tight it hurt. The fact that she’d sworn twice within the last minute showed him merely a fragment of the unforgivable pain he’d inflicted on her. “And look what happened.”

  Emily swallowed and glanced away, hurt and sadness replacing some of the anger in her expression.

  “You don’t think I’ve regretted what I did to you every single day of my life?” he said tightly.

  She met his eyes, and the emptiness in hers scared the hell out of him. “Just proves my point that it doesn’t matter how much we want something. Some things are out of our control, no matter how much we wish they weren’t.”

  Because she’d wanted him back, always.

  He’d known that since the day he left, and that’s why he’d been careful to stay away. And he’d still known it when she’d stubbornly stayed the night in his hospital room in Vancouver, but he hadn’t dared take the comfort she so obviously wanted to give him.

  Unfortunately, nothing had changed. He couldn’t reach out to her now, not after everything else. Tehrazzi was out there, and he wasn’t going away. Luke was the only one that could make that happen, and until he did... It didn’t matter that he wanted to be with Emily, or that he’d dreamed of it since the day he’d walked out. It didn’t matter that his last sight of her had been in his rear view mirror, collapsed in a sobbing heap in the driveway, hands in her hair as she screamed his name. Begging him not to go.

  But he’d still gone. Driven by the knowledge that not only was he a threat to her and their son, but that he wasn’t good enough for her. She was the fairy-tale princess and he was a lowly soldier, destined to dream about her sitting by the warmth of the fire burning in the castle grate while he shivered outside in the cold, staying out of sight yet remaining close enough to protect her. For more than twenty years he’d done that. But now he wasn’t sure he could stay away from her anymore, and that meant he had to go.

  He knew he should leave, yet she was so vulnerable standing there with that deep-seated fear in her big green eyes. It killed him not to touch her, not to be able to do anything to ease her. His resolve weakened.

  He shouldn't touch her; he knew better. Touching her was both heaven and hell, but tonight even the bittersweet pain it always brought wasn’t enough to deter him. Nor was the memory of the last time he’d reached for her in this very room, a few seconds after which they’d both been naked and all over each other. None of that mattered in light of the fear and need he read in her eyes. Right now, no power
on earth could keep him away from her any longer.

  Luke stepped closer, close enough to catch the warmth from her body and for her light vanilla scent to torment him with a thousand bittersweet memories. She knew what was coming; he could see it in her guarded expression. But she didn’t turn away when he lifted a hand to skim his thumb across her cheekbone, light as a sigh. The brief contact sizzled over his skin, and instantly he got hard. She’d always had that effect on him.

  His eyes went to the faint scar beneath her left ear. Her pulse beat hard and fast below the delicate skin where he could easily have severed her jugular vein. A few more ounces of pressure or a wrong move on her part and he would have. The knowledge sickened and shamed him. He’d rather have slit his own throat than ever harm her in any way, but it had happened nonetheless. First that accidental nick when she’d snuck up on him in the kitchen.

  Right from the start he’d warned her not to startle him, but she’d come up behind him with the intention of being playful. When she’d gone to wrap her arms around his waist, he’d whirled and pinned her up against the fridge with the knife below her jaw before he’d even realized it was her. He still had nightmares about the stricken look in her eyes as she’d stared up at him, like an animal caught in the jaws of a trap. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  The whole time he’d pressed his shirt against the wound to stop the bleeding afterward, he’d already made the decision to leave. He’d run from her and the damning knowledge he was a trip wire waiting to be triggered, and broken her heart. The ironic thing was, she didn’t seem to realize he’d left his behind with her.

  Luke trailed a hand over the velvet softness of her cheek until his fingertips caressed the pale line of the scar. A thousand words of apology crowded his throat but he didn’t want to break the spell between them by speaking. His other hand touched her shoulder and crept up to the nape of her neck where the hair lay in silky whorls, and squeezed his fingers around it gently. Her swift intake of breath made him glance up into her face, and the stark desire that made her pupils expand hit him like a body blow. A fine shiver passed through her as he drew her closer to him with the grip on her neck. Her elegant hands fluttered up to rest on his shoulders, making the muscles tense beneath her slim fingers.