“I would have done the same thing in your position.”
He meant it. It also made him realize just how desperate she’d been and how much she feared for her family if letting her sick father think she was dead was her best choice.
She attempted to smile, but it wobbled. “Thanks. That means a lot.”
She was standing too close. Their bodies were almost brushing. He could feel her warmth. Smell the faint feminine scent. And when she looked up at him, those big sad brown eyes cut off his breath. Everything in his chest seemed to come to a sudden halt. He had that itchy feeling. That feeling that he would do just about anything to make it better.
So much so that he found himself saying, “I could have Kate make a few inquiries. She’s good. She won’t leave a footprint if anyone is still watching. And it might help you put your mind at ease about your father until this is all, uh, sorted out.”
In other words, until he decided what the fuck to do.
She sucked in her breath. The erotic sound was bad enough, but it also made her lips part invitingly. Enticingly. He could almost taste the sweetness on his tongue.
She betrayed you. She lied. She put the job that meant everything to you—that you’ve dedicated the last fifteen years of your life to—in jeopardy.
But the reminders didn’t seem to be packing the same wallop. They barely penetrated the haze that was descending on him like a lead curtain.
“You would do that?” she asked sweetly, having no clue what she was doing to him.
He nodded, unable to breathe. The rein on his control was taking everything he had to handle it. The temptation to lower his mouth, to cover the lips of the woman who had haunted him for months . . .
“Oh, Scott! Thank you!” She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his in an innocent, grateful hug.
Almost instantly she pulled back in shock, realizing what she’d done, and realizing, no doubt, that every muscle in his body was pulled as tight as a bowstring. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to back away. “I didn’t mean to—”
She didn’t get the word out. With a sharp growl—or maybe it was a curse—he dragged her into his arms and did what he’d been wanting to do since the first moment he saw her on the town steps.
His mouth covered hers in a deep groan. The intensity of the sensation—of the relief—overwhelming. His heart slammed hard against his rib cage just as it had done the first time he’d felt the incredible softness . . . the warmth . . . the honey-sweet taste.
He felt her surprise and then her almost instant response. Her almost instant surrender as her body melted into his. Her arms went around his neck and the soft weight of her dragged him down a black hole of an indescribable need—of a craving that seemed to pull from his very soul.
His tongue was in her mouth, wrapped against hers, stroking deeper and deeper. His hands were in her hair, on her breasts, on that curvy ass that had been driving him crazy.
And her hands were on him. On his arms. His chest. His back. Pressing. Clenching. Digging. Trying to bring him closer.
The subtle press of her hips against his already throbbing erection was too much to take. He spun around, leaning back on the sink to wrap her leg around his hips and lifting her up on him so she was right where he wanted her. He circled, pressed, and slid up and down, mimicking a thrust as he let her feel the long thick length of him.
She responded with a gasp of pleasure that went right to the tip of his cock and a press of her own hips that increased the friction. The madness. The desperation.
It felt so damned good, and knowing that he was going to be inside her in the space of a couple of buttons and she would be riding him for real was pushing him over the edge. Fast.
They’d never been much on foreplay for the first time of the night. And almost four months of built-up pressure seemed to have only made it more explosive.
He was right there. And if the increasingly demanding sounds coming from her were any indication, so was she.
The kiss was out of control. They were devouring each other. Her moans mixed with his groans in a firestorm of passion. The frenzy egged him on. It was as if they both wanted to get there before something—
A buzz in his shorts jolted him. His phone was vibrating. For a moment, he kept kissing her. But it was too much reality to ignore. With a curse, he released her leg and broke the kiss. She was still plastered against him, but slowly he stood and let her find her feet as he fumbled around to dig his phone out of his shorts, the effort hampered by the size of his erection making them about two sizes too tight.
He glanced at the number before answering, seeing that it was Kate.
His heart was still hammering, his blood was still pounding, and other parts of him were still protesting as he bit out a terse “What’s up?”
“Thank God,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you. Didn’t you get my message?”
He could tell right away that something was wrong. “I hadn’t had a chance to listen to it yet.” He’d been too busy nearly having sex with the woman he was supposed to be bringing in to clear his name. “What is it?”
“Colt found Travis.” There was a pause where he could guess what she was going to say before the words were out. His stomach dropped. “He’s dead, Scott. Travis is dead!”
Twelve
Scott felt as if he’d taken another bullet—this one in the gut. He’d thought that Travis might have run into some kind of problem, but dead? The news Kate had just imparted cut his legs out from under him.
What the hell had happened?
Aware of Natalie’s gaze on him, Scott turned and walked out of the bathroom into the hall. The heat and the passion of a few minutes ago had turned numb and cold.
“Scott, are you there?” Kate asked.
“I’m here.” He paused, his voice tight. “How? When?”
“A bar fight in Alaska two weeks ago. Colt said there was a verbal argument over a pool game—some guy accused Travis of pool-sharking—that spilled out into the parking lot later. Colt got someone to pull the security tapes for him, and they showed two guys jumping Travis just after one in the morning when he was heading back to his car. One of the guys hit Travis over the head with a bottle, breaking it, and then the jagged glass ended up in his jugular when the second guy struck him and he fell back.”
Scott wished he could believe that it was a coincidence, but there were two things wrong with the story: Travis sucked at pool, and he was a SEAL. A tier-one, best-of-the-best SEAL. Two guys—two normal guys—wouldn’t have been able to get the jump on him or do that kind of damage. He didn’t need to see the tape to know that they had to have been trained.
Scott could tell from Kate’s voice that she didn’t believe it, either. “Let me guess,” he said. “The two guys weren’t local, no one had ever seen them before, they’ve disappeared, and the police have nothing.”
“Yep, they checked into a hotel two days before and seem to have left that night. They didn’t check out.”
“Fake ID and cash to rent the room?”
“How did you guess?”
“Photos?”
“Nothing clear on any of the bar security cameras. Colt is having someone pull the street, ATM, and nearby building cameras.”
“Descriptions?”
“A couple. Travis was with one of the guys he worked with, and the guy was pretty shaken up, but he got a good look at one of the guys. He had some pretty elaborate neck tattoos that might give us a lead.”
But Scott already knew where it would lead: back to the Russians. Mick must have been able to pass on the information about other survivors before he was killed—the timing was right—and the Russians were hunting them down, picking them off one by one.
It wasn’t over.
A wall of conflicting emotions hit him at the same time: denial, r
age, sadness, frustration, and guilt. Travis’s death was on him. Keeping the survivors safe was his responsibility. If they’d come out earlier maybe . . . don’t go there.
It wasn’t often that Scott lost his cool, but he was struggling with it now.
“How the hell did they find him?” he asked. They’d taken precautions, and his guys knew how to disappear.
“I’ve been looking into that,” Kate said. “Remember the payoff to the young woman who claimed to be pregnant with Travis’s child that we thought was from the government?”
“The five thousand dollars Colt told you about?”
“Yes. I’ve done a little digging, and I don’t think it came from the government. I think it might have come from Travis.”
Scott cursed, not wanting to believe it. “Travis wouldn’t be that stupid. He knows better.”
He’d been trained better, damn it. And Travis knew the stakes; the eight teammates who’d never left the gulag were proof enough of what could happen.
“If the baby really was his, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Kate said. “I’ve seen a lot of smart people do stupid things when a child is involved.”
Kate had no idea how well her point had been aimed. She could have been talking to him.
“Have you talked to this woman to see what she knows?” he asked.
“I tried to call her a little while ago, but she hung up on me as soon as I mentioned Travis’s name. She’s in Vicksburg now so I’m catching a flight to Jackson”—Vicksburg, Mississippi was Travis’s hometown—“this afternoon to track her down in person.”
“Not by yourself.” Scott spoke without thinking. He would have put it more delicately—less like an order—if his brotherly protective instincts hadn’t been kicking in hard. Before she could get mad at him, he added, “It could be dangerous. Take Colt with you.”
“You do realize I work for the CIA, right, little brother?”
In other words, I don’t take orders from you. He got it. But Travis’s death had rocked him, and if anything happened to her, he would never forgive himself. Fourteen months younger or not. “I don’t want you anywhere near this, Kate. I never should have brought you into it, although God knows what we would have done without you. But you’re an analyst, remember—not a field agent. I’ll have Colt go and talk to her.”
She made a sharp sound. “You’re kidding, right? Have you seen my ex-husband lately? He looks like an ax murderer. She’ll probably take one look at him and run away screaming. And unless he’s prepared to lean on a pregnant woman—which I suspect may be too low even for Colt—his less-than-charming bedside manner isn’t likely to get us any information.” She took a deep breath, probably realizing that Scott’s poorly chosen words had come from a place of concern and love. “Look, I know you are worried, but I’ll be careful. I know how to take care of myself. I may not be a field agent, but I have had training. And I was married to Colt for almost five years.”
He sighed. “I know you can take care of yourself, but Travis had training, too—a hell of a lot more than you.”
There was silence on the other end so he knew he’d made his point.
“Call Colt,” he urged. Another long silence. He could almost hear her resistance and anger. Both of which he understood. He had plenty of reasons not to want any contact with his old teammate and former friend, either. But no matter what had happened between the three of them, Scott could trust Colt to keep her safe. “I’d go with you myself, but I’m a little tied up.”
Understatement.
“Does this have something to do with Jennifer? Is she why you are in Kensington, Vermont?”
He swore again. “How the hell did you . . . ?” His voice dropped off. “You’re tracking me? God damn it, Kate—”
She didn’t let him finish and clearly didn’t have any intention of apologizing. “The general wanted an update, and I was worried when I got your message and said you were turning off your phone. That isn’t like you.”
He swore again, knowing she was right. He just hadn’t been ready to face the music, so to speak.
“Next time tell me what’s going on.” She paused. “What is going on?”
He got ready to drop his bombshell, knowing there was going to be blowback. Lots of blowback. “It wasn’t Natalie in the car crash. It was her friend Jennifer.”
Shocked silence followed. “Natalie is alive?”
“And pretending not to be. Yep.”
It didn’t take long for Kate to process the ramifications and pummel him with the questions he’d been trying to avoid thinking about, let alone answer. “But why haven’t you brought her in? She could have all the information we need to clean up this mess.”
“I promise to explain everything, Kate, but it’s more complicated than I realized.”
He could sense her skepticism through the phone. “What do you mean, ‘complicated,’ Scott? She’s a spy! She betrayed you and leaked information that got your guys killed.”
Scott felt his anger rise and couldn’t hold it back even though he knew it was grounded in defensiveness. “I know exactly what she did, Kate. You don’t need to tell me.” Remind me. “But it isn’t that straightforward.”
“She was a spy or she wasn’t.”
He gritted his teeth, trying not to take his anger out on her for saying what he’d thought himself. “She had her reasons, okay? I’ll explain everything when I get back.”
“When will that be?”
“I’m not sure. I, uh, need a few days.” She didn’t say anything. But he knew what she was thinking. Idiot. The thought had crossed his mind more than once.
“Are you sure you are looking at this objectively, Scott? I know you cared about her. But she could destroy your career.”
If she hadn’t already done so. He knew that well enough. And his objectivity had definitely taken a beating—he couldn’t believe he’d lost control like that and kissed her.
But objective or not, he didn’t have a choice. He dropped the second bombshell, knowing this one would be far more painful for Kate. He alone knew how desperately she’d mourned the loss of her unborn child. “She’s pregnant, okay? Natalie is pregnant and I’m waiting for the blood test to confirm the baby is mine.”
* * *
• • •
The hope that Natalie felt after the explosive kiss in the bathroom died a quick death when Scott hung up the phone and turned around and saw her watching him.
Whatever softening there might have been in his attitude was gone. His face was a cold mask of rage, his gaze every bit as fierce and accusing as it had been that first day he’d showed up at the farm. “Did you get everything you need?”
She flushed at the unspoken accusation. “I wasn’t listening.” At least that hadn’t been the reason she’d been waiting in the hall. “I was worried. I could tell something was wrong, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
She took a few cautious steps toward him as if approaching a lion on a chain of unknown length. She didn’t want to be in range if—when—he decided to pounce.
His eyes narrowed. “How exactly do you plan to do that?”
Her flush deepened at the suggestiveness in his voice. It was obvious what he meant. “I didn’t kiss you, Scott. You kissed me.”
A look of self-disgust penetrated the anger. “Yeah, well, that was a mistake that won’t happen again.”
The steel in his voice made her heart pinch. It sounded like the jaw of a bear trap snapping shut. It was clear he meant it. Whatever that phone call had been about, it had brought them back to square one. Or maybe she should say square negative a million and one. The divide between them had grown so wide she’d need a rocket launcher to span it.
“Was it your sister?” she asked.
Something about her question set him off. His expression turned even more furious and he closed
the distance between them in a few long strides. He took her arm to haul her up to meet his gaze. “Did you tell them about Kate?” He shook her. “Did you fucking tell Mick she was my sister?”
“What?” She blinked off the shock of his rage. “No. Of course not.”
“There is no ‘of course’ about it. You lied to me about everything else, why should I believe you about this?”
Natalie felt the tears in her throat, knowing that he was right. Trust wasn’t something that could be given out piecemeal. You either had it or you didn’t, and she’d lost his the moment she allowed Mick to force her into spying on him.
If only Scott could look into her heart and see the truth. She loved him and had done everything in her power to minimize her deception. But it hadn’t been enough. “I don’t know, but I swear I’m telling you the truth. I would never have betrayed your confidence like that. I never gave any personal information. . . .”
She stopped, biting her lip guiltily.
“What?” He shook her again. “What did you tell him?”
“Only what I had to. Mick wanted to take advantage of your wealth and connections, but I told him that you’d cut yourself off from your family.” Before he could ask, she added, “I didn’t tell him why. I didn’t tell him anything about your mom and Kate’s father. Or about Kate.” His gaze penetrated hers as if probing the depths of her conscience for the truth. “I swear to you, Scott, on the life of the child that I am carrying, that I did not tell Mick anything about Kate. If he knew about her, it was not from me.”
The anger and tension radiating from him was burning her up. He was scaring her, and that was something she’d never thought she’d say. He never lost his cool—or he never used to lose his cool. Where was that well-bred facade when she needed it?
But after a moment, he released her. “If anything happens to her, and I find out you lied to me . . .”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
Natalie knew it was silly and that she had no right, but Scott’s fierce protectiveness for his sister made her sad and maybe even a little jealous. She wanted that for herself.
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