“Please, Miss West, you can’t get out of bed. The doctor has—”
“I don’t care about the fucking doctor!” she roars. “I need to see Connor!”
When I say, “I’m here, princess,” the shouting stops.
The nurse looks over at me, straightens, and sighs. “Thank the Lord.” She leaves, chuckling softly on her way out.
Tabby’s eyes eat me up. Without a word, she holds out her arms. It takes me less than a heartbeat to be in them.
She buries her face in my neck and hugs me harder than someone who just woke up from surgery should have the strength to do. I cradle her, kiss her hair, her temple, rock her in my arms as I sit on the edge of the bed, trying to be as gentle as I can while still getting what I need. Namely, contact.
The heartbeat monitor attached to her finger is going crazy, beeping so fast I half expect another nurse to come bursting into the room to see what’s wrong.
I release a ragged breath. “Goddamn, sweetheart. Don’t ever scare me like that again. I don’t think my poor senior ticker could take it.”
Tabby keeps her face hidden, her arms tight around my back. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t take the bait of my weak-ass joke, just burrows in deeper.
“Doctor says Juanita’s gonna be fine,” I murmur, knowing she’ll be worried. “Her family is on their way now. Flying in on Uncle Sam’s dime, all seven of ’em. Should be here soon. So, that’s good.”
Tabby’s still silent, holding on to me for dear life. The beeping of the monitor hasn’t slowed.
“And me and Ryan are good too, we’re okay, none of the boys on the op got hurt. Well, you knew that already.”
She still isn’t saying anything, and I’m out of people to talk about. She already knows about Søren because I told her in the bird on the way to the hospital.
And speaking of that fucker…
I clear my throat, say softly, “And about Søren.”
She stiffens.
I make my voice as gentle as I can. “I know about you being related. And about your parents, what happened. I got filled in on everything while you were in surgery. And I just want to say…I need you to know that I gave him a choice. But he didn’t—”
She puts her finger to my lips to stop me.
Maybe she just needs me to shut up and hold her. Maybe she’s in pain. Oh shit—am I hurting her?
When I try to gently withdraw, Tabby makes a desperate noise and won’t let me go.
“Are you hurting, sweetheart?”
She nods.
Now my heartbeat is galloping as fast as hers. “Well, shit, lemme get the doctor! Get you some more pain meds—”
“No!” Her voice is muffled because she’s talking into my shirt. “It’s not my leg. I mean it is, it hurts like a bitch, but that’s not…that’s not…”
When she gulps in air and her shoulders start to shake, I realize she’s desperately trying to hold back tears. I gently peel her off me and cup her face in my hands. Her eyes are watering. She’s biting her lip.
“Talk to me.”
She swallows hard, blinking rapidly. Gripping my biceps, she hoarsely says, “I want you to promise you won’t call or come visit me. You need to forget about me and go on with your life.”
I stare at her, in total shock. “What?”
“I mean it. If you call, I won’t come to the phone. If you write, I’ll tear it up without reading it. I’ll refuse to see you—”
“You’re breaking up with me?” I say, astonished and so fucking hurt, it’s like my heart’s being cut out with a razor blade. “Now?”
A lone tear crests her lower lashes and tracks a slow path down her pale cheek. “Of course.”
It’s only a three letter word but I’m in so much agony, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it out. “Why?”
She looks at me like I’m the stupidest man on earth. “Because I’m not that selfish!”
We stare at each other in silence while the heart monitor goes fucking nuts. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “Tabitha. You just came out of a very long surgery. Your head isn’t working right—”
“My head is fine!”
My voice rises. “Then what the fuck are you talking about?”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then it all comes out in a blurted rush.
“I know the CIA is here, Connor, I heard the nurses talking! It was nice that they’re letting us say good-bye, I don’t know what you had to promise them to let them do that, but I know they’re going to walk in here any second and put handcuffs on me and take me away and I’ll never see you again so if you think I’m the kind of woman who would ask you to spend the next twenty years waiting for me while I rot in a federal prison somewhere then you don’t know me very well at all!”
She cuts off abruptly, breathing hard, shaking, her face bright red.
And now I understand.
I start to weakly laugh. Relief washes over me in waves.
“This is funny to you?” she asks, outraged.
I pull her toward me and kiss her, very softly, on the lips. “Sweetheart. The CIA isn’t taking you anywhere. They want to talk to you as soon as you’re up to it, but you’re not going to prison.”
She blinks a few times, falling still in my arms. She whispers, “What?”
I shake my head, kiss her again. Her lips are cold. Need to fix that. “O’Doul. He wrote your letter before he went to Miami. Emailed it to his boss, the Director of the FBI, and sent another copy to the NSA. Said any website cracking you did on the job was at his direct request. He honored your agreement.”
“But—but—I went into the NSA’s servers after…”
“Doesn’t matter. He said you were an integral part of the investigation, detailed what you’d done to help, even went so far as to recommend they bring you on as a systems security consultant. Had four agents sign as witnesses so no one could claim it had been faked. Add to that all the intel the CIA got from debriefing everyone involved about what went down… You’re clear. Although I think the NSA really wants to know how you did it.”
Her lower lip trembles. She looks at me with this amazed, disbelieving expression like…well, like she just got sprung from jail.
I grin at her. “You still gonna break up with me? ’Cause I’ve just gotten used to having you around, busting my balls. Would be a damn shame to let all that hard work you did breakin’ me in go to waste.”
Tabby drops her face into her hands and leans into my chest, whimpering.
I gather her in my arms. “Deep breaths, princess. They’re gonna think you’re having a heart attack in here.”
She whispers, “I am. I really think I am.”
I rub slow circles on her back, inhaling the scent of her hair, her skin. She smells like antiseptic, but beneath that, the warm, sweet scent that’s all her.
“Well, before you do, I have a question. It’s something I’ve been dying to ask.”
Slowly she pulls away, gazing at me with enormous eyes. The heart monitor skips a few beeps, and then starts back up even more furiously. With a little hitch in her voice she asks, “What is it?”
“How did you signal your location?”
She blinks, looking confused. “My…what?”
“Your location. In Alaska. You know, how we knew where to look for you. Did you gain access to Søren’s computer, or—”
“Hello Kitty.”
The answer alone is enough to confuse me, but the flat, embarrassed tone of her voice does too. I’m missing something, and I think it might be important. My brows climb. I wait patiently for more of an explanation.
She shakes her head, lets out this wry little laugh, and looks away, her cheeks flaming. “My watch. I installed a GPS chip in it, made some mods to the Google Earth software installed on my machine so they’d talk.”
“Wow. I’m impressed.”
She shrugs, still avoiding my eyes.
I gently take her chin in my hand. “Tabitha. Why aren’t you looking at m
e?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She looks down at the thin blue blanket covering her legs and starts to pick at it.
Looks like I’m going on a fishing trip. “Did you think I was gonna ask a different question?”
When she bites her lower lip, it comes to me in a flash that takes my breath away. “Wait. Did you think I was gonna pop a question? Like, the question?”
When she says, “No!” all flustered and embarrassed, I know the real answer is yes.
I take her face in my hands and get so close our noses are touching. Looking into her eyes, I say gruffly, “Do you want me to ask the question?”
She sniffs. “I want you to want to ask the question.”
My heart is doing this gymnastic thing under my sternum, like cartwheels and backflips and all kinds of strenuous athletic shit. I can hardly catch my breath. “And I want you to want to say yes to the question. But…”
She stops breathing and blinks up at me. “But?”
I stroke her cheeks with my thumbs and lean in even closer so my lips brush hers when I speak. “But there’s this little forbidden four-letter word I’m wanting to hear you say first.”
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! screeches the heart monitor.
Her voice shaking, she says, “Glove?”
I chuckle, shake my head. “You know very well that’s five letters. And to make it official you also need the word ‘I’ before and the word ‘you’ after. Proceed.”
“Um…I slove you?”
“Also five letters. And weird.”
“This is all weird.”
I’m trying to keep a straight face. “You’re telling me. Go on, I’m waiting. I haven’t got a lot of time you know. I’m elderly. Could kick the bucket any minute.”
She searches my face, stares deep into my eyes, inhales a slow, deep breath. Then she places her hands on both of my cheeks, and very solemnly says, “Connor Hughes, I loathe your sense of humor almost as much as I loathe your face. In fact, I loathe everything about you.”
My heart soars. “God, I love it when you talk in code,” I say gruffly, and crush my lips to hers.
In a few seconds, a nurse bursts into the room to find out what all the beeping is about.
Epilogue
A few months later
“You’re smashing me.”
“You’re complaining?”
“If you didn’t weigh three hundred pounds, I wouldn’t be.”
Lying naked on top of me in his bed on a gloriously sunny Saturday morning, Connor pulls his brows together and sticks out his lower lip, pretending to be hurt. “I am not three hundred pounds. Are you saying you think I’m overweight?”
I kiss his chin. “Excuse me, but I’m a delicate flower. You said so yourself, remember?”
He frowns and shakes his head. “No. I can’t believe I’d ever describe you as ‘delicate.’”
“Well, you did. Although it was right after we’d had sex, so you were probably just being abnormally kind.”
He chuckles. “‘Abnormally’ kind? So now I’m obese and cruel?”
I kiss his chin again, adding a nip because I know he loves it when I use my teeth on him. “Oh, definitely,” I tease. “You’re just a big fat meanie. Everybody knows that.”
His grin comes on slow and sultry. His hair falls into his eyes, his face is flushed with afterglow, and the man is so damn gorgeous it almost hurts to look at him.
“There you go talking in code again, woman. You’re lucky I like you, or I’d be forced to take countermeasures.”
My smile is huge. “Like me? Now who’s talking in code?”
Very softly, he replies, “Well, I suppose since you’re living with me now, I have to like you. Even though it’s hard because you’re such an ugly, unpleasant shrew.”
He presses a gentle kiss to my lips and gets the look he always gets when he’s feeling especially mushy, all misty-eyed and bashful. It’s absolutely fucking adorable.
“Speaking of hard.” I roll my hips, pressing my pelvis against his erection. “Are you taking Viagra? Because you’re pretty spry for an old man. Three times in an hour, and you’re still erect? This thing doesn’t quit. It’s like the Energizer Bunny.”
He adopts a superior tone and looks at me down his nose. “Thing? I’ll have you know Zeus isn’t a thing. He’s a cherished body part and a dedicated servant to your pleasure. In fact, I think you should show him some respect for all the joy he’s brought you and give him a kiss.”
I start laughing. “Zeus? Seriously?”
With total innocence, Connor says, “Of course. King of the gods and ruler of the world. What else would I call him?”
“You’re right. Zeus it is. Now get off me, jarhead, I’ve got stuff to do, and I can’t spend the entire day in bed with you.” I push at his shoulders, but it’s like trying to move a mountain. He doesn’t budge.
Inhaling, his eyes closed, he rubs his cheek against mine. He murmurs, “What stuff could be more important than spending the day in bed with me?”
“Oh, only meeting with the head of the NSA to discuss the future of this country’s cyber defense programs.”
Once I was debriefed by the CIA at the hospital, the NSA came in. And once I was debriefed by them, I not only had a migraine but also a job offer.
It’s funny how life works. One minute you’re steeling yourself for a nice long stint in federal prison, the next you’re being asked to consult with Big Brother on secret government spy programs. It’s a good thing I have a robust sense of humor.
Connor’s eyes blink open. “That’s today? It’s the weekend.”
“It’s not like they keep regular office hours, honey.”
“Hmm.” The mushy look creeps back into Connor’s eyes. “I’ll let you up on one condition.”
I raise my eyebrows, waiting.
In a husky voice, he says, “Call me honey again.”
I adore it that he’s this big, badass, swaggering military dude who walks around with a gun strapped to his waist most of the time, but me calling him a pet name makes him all gooey.
God, he melts my heart.
I frame his face in my hands and whisper, “You’re my honey.”
He swallows, exhales a slow breath, says in a husky voice, “And you’re my princess.”
I nod. “And now that we’ve established that, please let me up.” Just to sweeten it, I bat my lashes and add, “Honey.”
Connor kisses me tenderly on the lips and then rolls off me. Standing naked at the side of the bed, he holds out a hand. I take it, allowing him to help me up because my injured leg still isn’t one hundred percent solid.
I was in a wheelchair for the first week after surgery, and then on crutches for a few more weeks. I should still be using the crutches but refuse to, even though it hurts to put my weight on my bad leg. I was lucky that the bullet didn’t shatter any bones or tear a major artery, but I have a slight limp, which may or may not be permanent. Only time will tell. Aside from the limp and a dull ache in my thigh in the morning and when the weather is cold, the only evidence of what happened is a shiny pink scar on my thigh about the size of a quarter.
I’ve got a few more invisible scars, but nothing that time won’t heal. Under Connor’s love and protective care, some of the nastiest have healed already.
Trying not to show worry on his face because he knows it makes me crazy when he worries, Connor steadies me when I wobble.
“You good?”
I bite back a gasp when pain spikes through my leg, and then meet his anxious eyes and smile. “Yep. All good.”
I can tell he knows I’m full of shit, but he only nods. We’re both proud and stubborn in the exact same way, which makes some things worse, and other things a lot better. Either way, it’s good to have someone who gets me, warts and all.
It’s even better to have someone who always has my back. To my deep surprise, I love being a team of more than one.
I release Connor’s big hand and make
my way to the bathroom, feeling his gaze on me as I go.
He calls after me, “I’ll make some breakfast, yeah?”
“Sounds great. But be sure you make enough. Zeus and I worked up a big appetite!”
His chuckle is drowned out under the sound of cascading water as I turn the knob in the shower and the water comes on.
After my shower, I dry off and head to the walk-in closet. I had no idea when I moved into Connor’s enormous loft in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan that a man whose wardrobe consists almost entirely of T-shirts and cargo pants would have so much storage for clothes. His closet is even bigger than the one in my townhouse in Greenwich Village.
“Breakfast is ready, princess!” Connor shouts.
It’s faint because his loft is approximately the length of a football field, but I hear it and smile. “Coming!”
I throw on a short silk robe, drag a comb through my wet hair, and then make my way from the bedroom across the vast living area, admiring the view of the glistening Hudson River from the floor-to-ceiling windows. I find him in the kitchen, flipping eggs in a frying pan.
I slide onto one of the leather stools at the big oak island in the center of the kitchen. Now I busy myself admiring another view, this one of a big, muscular male wearing black boxer briefs and nothing else, making me breakfast at his ridiculous gourmet eight-burner stove.
I call it ridiculous because as far as I’m concerned, as long as takeout exists, there’s no need for a stove, especially one with eight burners. But as I’ve come to know, Connor Hughes is a man who does nothing by halves.
He turns and looks at me with one eyebrow lifted, a smirk on his handsome face. “I’d ask how you like your eggs, but I already know.”
“Oh? And how’s that?”
He suggestively looks me up and down, waggles his eyebrows, and then drawls, “Fertilized.”
I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, that was awful. You’ve been hanging around Ryan too much.”
He slides the fried eggs onto a plate, adds two slices of wheat toast that have popped up in the toaster, and a few slices of bacon from a plate covered in a paper towel next to the stove, and then presents it to me with a short bow.
Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games Series Book 2) Page 31