Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Nichole Severn

  She grew weak at the knees, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of his kiss or his body pressed against hers. It had been so long since she had been properly made love to.

  Ben had been great, but he was nowhere near as good or as attentive as Mike had been to her when it came to between-the-sheets time.

  She needed to feel Mike inside her, making love to her in the way only he could.

  If they just had tonight and then things went back to the way they were, then fine. Whatever. But at least tonight they could forget about the reality that surrounded them, pushing in from all sides, and they could both just concentrate on the pleasure they could bring to one another.

  For tonight, he could be hers and she could be his.

  She melted into his kiss, letting him consume her soul as he took her lips. That feeling...that feeling of deep carnal bliss, oh...how she had missed that.

  As he kissed her, it was easy to remember why and how easily she had first fallen in love with this man. There was nothing as good or as satisfying as what he was making her feel right now.

  She moaned and he opened his mouth slightly, letting her breath fill him as she hoped that he wanted to fill her.

  “I want you.” She slid her hands up, running her fingers through his thick hair and pulling his mouth hard against hers as he took in her words.

  She moved them toward her bed, pushing away a box that was in the center of the room with her foot but still not breaking their kiss.

  It had been so long since she had felt this way in his arms. And even in her wildest fantasies, she had never thought she would be back falling into bed with him.

  He broke away. “You know I want you. This.” He pressed himself against her. “You do things to my body...” He growled. “But I want to take care of you. And the last thing I want to do is screw up whatever is starting between us.”

  Logically, everything he was saying was sweet and thoughtful. She could even argue he was right, but it didn’t staunch the way she felt or the need she had to feel him.

  “Let’s just see where tonight takes us.” She tried to sound sultry, unconcerned, and far from the woman she really was—the mother who had a million worries on her mind.

  Right now, all she wanted to do was to run away from the truths of her reality with a man who had often taken center stage in her dreams.

  Mike looked up at the ceiling, like the answers he was looking for were posted there. He should have known by now that when it came to their relationship—or whatever it was they were trying for here—there were no easy answers. They were both only left with questions.

  He took her by the hand and led her to the bed. “Here, lie down.”

  Yes.

  She did as he instructed, letting go of his hand as she scooted over to the other side of the bed—the side that had always been hers when they had been together.

  He smiled as though he was thinking about the same things. He got into bed behind her and perched on his elbow as he looked at her. “Now, roll over.”

  She frowned at him, but he made a spinning motion with his hand.

  “For now, I’m only going to rub your back. You need to get some rest. If this...this step in our relationship is something that you seriously want, it can wait. I am not going anywhere.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He’d always had a special place in his heart for Summer, but damn if this woman wasn’t going to kill him—she could be hard on a man. All he had wanted to do was to throw her down on that bed and make love to her until the morning sun broke into their reality. But those kinds of decisions led to ramifications he wasn’t sure either of them was ready to face.

  She was confused right now, hurting. As was he. But he hadn’t been about to take advantage of her vulnerability, even if she had initiated the physical closeness, so he’d rubbed her back until she’d dozed off last night and then slept on the sofa. Or tried to. He’d spent most of the night tossing and turning, waiting for a call from the kidnappers. And he’d risen early to head out for breakfast, so she wouldn’t have to make it or fret about not having much to offer.

  Yes, he would have loved to have had a relationship with her, but if something went wrong—as things so often did in life, especially when she still had a chip on her shoulder about their past—he couldn’t risk losing what he was hoping to have.

  Wait. What was he hoping for, really?

  He had told her all he wanted was for a functional, even good, parenting arrangement between them. But was that all he wanted? If they could go back to where they were and things went toward marriage again, he wasn’t sure how he would react.

  After last night and him putting a pin in her advances, he couldn’t help but wonder if Summer would see his actions as just another rejection. He wouldn’t blame her if she did. But she had to know that when it came to matters of the heart, he was a man who had to take things slowly. Sex was easy. Love was incredibly hard. And he had an awful habit of having sex turn into love and a need for a relationship.

  They both couldn’t give a relationship the attention it needed. Joe had to come first. Finding him had to come first. And God forbid something worse actually happened to Joe—and things didn’t turn out like he wanted them to and he didn’t make it out of this alive—they would never get over it. She would hate him. No. Before anything happened between them, he needed to get Joe back into the safety of their care.

  Then they could worry about the rest of whatever was happening between them.

  He walked into her apartment, carrying two cups of coffee and croissants. Hopefully she was awake. If not, he didn’t want to rouse her. She needed some reprieve, but they also needed to be ready to hit the road. The kidnappers could call anytime now. And they needed to come up with something that would help stall them until they could be found and they could get Joe.

  As he rounded the corner, he found her sitting at the kitchen island bent over her phone and scribbling on a notepad. “Hey. Where were you? I didn’t think you were coming back,” she said, her words coming out in a flurry of syllables surprisingly devoid of anger.

  And there he had been, worried about his rebuff and her feeling rejected.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I borrowed your car. I just wanted to get us some food and you are woefully lacking in the pantry department.” He set the bag on the counter in front of her and she dug in, taking a sip of coffee and opening the wrapper without even looking up at him. She started to scribble again, but he couldn’t read what she was writing. “What are you working on?”

  “Huh?” she asked, taking a bite.

  “What happened to light this fire?” he asked, motioning toward the notes.

  “Oh,” she said, swallowing her bite. “I woke up and I had this idea and I did a little digging.” As she spoke there was a strange inflection, like she was hiding something, but he didn’t press.

  “About?”

  “Well, last night we told the kidnappers the best formula was the one with the yellow lid from Costco. What if these guys actually listened and went there to get it?”

  That seemed like a reach, but he didn’t dare say that to her when she was feeling empowered in their hunt.

  “I’ve been pulling security camera video—I got access from some contacts I have. I figure they have to have stayed in the area and there is only one Costco. The way I see it, even if they didn’t get the formula there, at least it’s a place to start. They’re going to have to get baby food and diapers somewhere. Basically, everything. And we know we are looking for a man named Rico, could be short for Richard or Ricardo or Enrico. Or not.” She shrugged and waved the thought off like it was of no matter. “If we can nab a photo of these guys, we could get to them in a matter of hours. If we get lucky.”

  If was the keyword in that statement. There were millions of things that could go wrong with her plan.

&nbs
p; “Did you find anything on the video?” he asked, motioning to her computer as he took a long drink from his coffee.

  “I have seen a few potential suspects. I’ve cleared about thirty individuals so far. We have three we are going to have to look into a little deeper.” She stuffed the rest of her pastry into her mouth and stood. She stuck out her hand like she wanted the keys to the car.

  He handed them over and, finishing off his croissant, followed her out. He chewed fast, swallowing the last bite as he got into the car and buckled in. He had a feeling today was going to be a wild-goose chase, but it was a hell of a lot better than sitting around and playing the waiting game.

  Summer headed south, well over the speed limit and barely slowing at the stop signs. “The first one on my list is a man named Cody. I found his picture and info in a search of public records—he was picked up for a DUI a year or so ago. He is in his midfifties and isn’t married. He lives alone and works for the power company. So far as I can tell, there is no reason that he would need formula and baby wipes.”

  He could think of quite a few reasons the man would need something like that, but if this made her feel better, so be it.

  “Did you hear anything from the kidnappers?” he asked, holding on to the “oh shit” handle above the passenger-side window as she nearly flew around a corner.

  “No.” She shook her head. “But I did call the number they contacted us from. Of course, it came back as busy and didn’t go through. That was where I started when I couldn’t find you.” She glanced over at him and there was a strange guilty look in her eyes.

  She was hiding something, but he had no idea what it could have been. Maybe she wasn’t hiding anything and he was just seeing things that weren’t really there. Maybe it was simply his own guilt for not being the man she needed that was leading him to read far too much into things with her. Or maybe he had lost some of his ability to look at her and know what she was thinking. It had been over a year since they had been this close.

  “Anyhow, this Cody guy...” she continued, “he seems like the most promising of the leads I have so far. If we come up empty-handed, maybe our suspects just haven’t hit the stores yet. But these guys will and, when they do, I’ll be ready.”

  That was, unless they had actually been prepared to kidnap the baby and had gotten all their supplies in advance of taking any action. Any good team would have had everything planned out long before they’d taken any real action, and they’d have been overly prepared. But then again, the man they had spoken to last night had seemed at a loss when it came to babies.

  “What are we going to do about the coding? What if we just hand it over?”

  She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “First of all, I don’t have the code. Sure, I had it, but I don’t keep that kind of information once I achieve my objective. I just pass it along to my team leader.”

  “Given the circumstances, don’t you think they could work with us on this? Maybe give us some of the code and bury their own somewhere in it? We could use it to track them.”

  Summer nodded. “There isn’t a chance. Besides, these guys are probably not the ones who want the code. In cases like these, when government secrets are involved, these kinds of ransom teams are normally only getting the information to sell it off to foreign governments or other bad guys. It would be stupid of them to use the codes for themselves.”

  He knew it was likely she was right, but they still needed some sort of leverage when it came to negotiations. If they didn’t manage to get the drop on the men who held Joe, they needed to be ready to have something to trade. “What if we prepared some dummy code? Worst case, we don’t use it.”

  She slowed the car, but only slightly. “Maybe I can get my team leader to help, but my crew would probably be starting from scratch. Who knows how long it would take.” She sounded dejected, as if she already knew the idea wouldn’t work.

  He hated when she sounded like that, resigned to failing. “You never told me what the code was actually for.”

  “Does it matter?” she countered.

  He pursed his lips. “Yeah. It could. I have a team we can turn to, as well. You know Zoey is amazing with tech. My teams at STEALTH, if given the information, can set to work. That way we have all of our bases covered. Consider it our contingency plan.”

  She nibbled at her bottom lip.

  “You need to tell me the truth. If you want, it never has to leave this car, but I need to know why this is all so important to these people. If I don’t know what is motivating them, then I can’t know what they are willing to lose in order to get what they want. And the last thing I want is for them to get to a point in which they are so desperate that they are willing to hurt Joe. I would never be able to get over something like that.”

  She sighed. “How much do you know about ConFlux?”

  “All I know is what Zoey and my team at STEALTH have told me.”

  Summer scowled as she looked at him. “You can trust me, Mike. I hope you know that.”

  He hated the way she was making him feel right now. They both knew secrets weren’t something that could be shared between them, not really. If he gave her sensitive information, it could end up with both of them being killed—possibly even by their own teams. If they told secrets, they were a liability. Whatever they said to one another, no one could ever know. It would be the greatest exercise in trust that either of them could ever participate in with one another—was he willing to take the leap of faith?

  If he opened up to Summer, he would not only be putting himself at risk, but also his team—a team that contained his siblings. As much as he loved Summer, he could never put one of his siblings in that kind of position.

  “You know I can’t—”

  She stopped him with a sideways glance. “I get it. But what I’m about to tell you could get me into a whole lot of trouble. I need you to be on the same page as me...and we need to get Joe back. No one outside of this car has to know what we say to one another. But you need to know some truths, and so do I. This is all about Joe.”

  He squirmed in his seat. If she told him something, anything that put him in danger with his team... “I don’t think—”

  “Stop. I know what you are going to say,” she said, her words coming out at a mile a minute. “But here’s the deal. If I don’t tell you who you are working for, and you continue on, you may find your guys get in deeper than you ever thought possible.” She nibbled at her lip, like she was pausing to weigh the ramifications of what she wanted to tell him.

  “What in hell are you talking about, Summer?”

  She slowed her speed a little more. “ConFlux and its late CEO were working for the DOD.”

  He had known that the company had been taking military contracts, so her information wasn’t much of a surprise. Yet her opening up to him made him clench. Something felt off. “Summer, stop.”

  “Don’t worry, I already scanned my car for bugs. My phone is in a Faraday bag. Put yours in, too.” She motioned toward the desert khaki bag between them. He did as she instructed. “Now, stop worrying. Just listen. You need to have an idea of what we are up against.”

  He set the Faraday bag back on the console between them. Of course, she would think about their safety. She’d likely had this conversation all planned out long before he had even gotten back with their coffees.

  “Okay, but I don’t want whatever it is you are going to tell me to—”

  “Get you in trouble?” She finished his sentence, her words coming fast.

  “That’s one way to put it,” he said.

  “I’m trusting that whatever I tell you remains between us.” She locked eyes with him. “Can I trust you?”

  He paused, thinking about all the implications that making such a promise would mean. If he agreed, he would be putting her before his family and before his team. “You know I care about yo
u, that I want to know what you have to tell me, but you can’t ask this of me.”

  “I am not asking you to compromise yourself, just to listen.”

  He wasn’t sure she could have one without the other, but he didn’t bother to argue. When Summer had her mind set on something, there was nothing that was going to stop her. The last thing he wanted to do was to be the one who would delay them from getting their son back. If she needed him to be on this team for the good of their spontaneous family, then he needed to get on board. Joe first, consequences second.

  Mike gave a slight nod, motioning for her to continue.

  “ConFlux doesn’t just machine parts for the government. They also work in tech that is unknown by most of the public. In the early 2000s, they started working for the DOD, machining parts for fighter jets and then UAVs. But since then, those technology systems have started to take a back seat to other, more dynamic technologies.”

  Working overseas, he’d witnessed more than his fair share of dynamic technologies. When he’d been on patrol, he had seen everything from old car batteries used as bombs to tech that could sense vibrations on house windows and tell him what the people inside were saying. What, exactly, Summer was talking about could have a million different definitions, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know specifics. At least, he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask and be drawn further into the web she was weaving.

  He held his tongue.

  She checked him, and her expression soured slightly as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. “The code that was taken was for some of these dynamic technologies.”

  “What would the kidnappers within Rockwood want to do with it if they got their hands on the information?”

  She looked away from him. “Well, that is where I’m a little foggy. I’m not sure whether or not this code would be kept by them or sold. And if it was to be sold, which I think is more likely, I don’t know if it would be to foreign governments or traded domestically.”