It was obvious, no doubt to everybody, that Gallagher wanted some alone time with her, maybe to clear up the tension they’d practically been choking on since leaving New Hampshire.
Dammit, she’d known sleeping with the man would affect her job and she should have kept her damn pants on. It was only one night, though—one night she couldn’t resist.
She hadn’t expected there to be repercussions so soon, but here they were, with Alex Rossi of all people all up in their business.
Screw that. It royally pissed her off he’d manipulated the situation to be alone with her. She was here to do a job and Gallagher could man up and deal with that or he could hang out and talk to himself.
But pissed or not, she was keenly aware of how close he was and how her body even now yearned for his touch. She ached just thinking about him pushing back from the computer and taking her in his arms again, holding her. Making her body feel things she’d stupidly thought she could live without.
Biting back a vicious curse, Carmen downed some bottled water and did some warm up stretches. It was time to remind her traitorous body what was important—work. While she might throw in some pleasure once in a very great while, there were only two things she demanded from her body. Strength and agility, the most basic tools for doing her job.
Something punishing, she decided. Something that would make her muscles long for rest rather than another Gallagher-induced orgasm. Since a good, hard run wasn’t going to happen, she did the next best thing.
After kicking off her sneakers, she rested her hands flat on the floor, kicked up into a handstand and turned until her sock-covered toes rested lightly against the wall.
“What are you doing?” Gallagher asked, and though she couldn’t see him from that angle, which was good, she could hear the amusement in his voice.
“One of the advantages men have over women is superior upper body strength. I try to keep the advantage to a minimum.”
She blocked him out then, as she started the grueling vertical push-ups. Breathing was vital, and the exercise intense enough her body was too busy to keep up with its yearning.
“How many of those are you going to do?” he asked after awhile, and he didn’t sound amused anymore.
The plan was to sweat him out of her system, but she reluctantly had to admit she couldn’t do it. The man was so deep under her skin it was going to take more than a little perspiration to get him out.
She turned, then lowered her feet to the ground and stood upright—did some upper body stretching so her shoulders wouldn’t tense up. “Don’t you have anything better to do than watch me work out?”
“Probably, but nothing I want to do more. And if you’re just looking to sweat we could…” He let the sentence die off, but the raised eyebrow filled in the blanks.
“I am not having sex with you here. We’re supposed to be working, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I can do both. I’m pretty talented that way.”
He was pretty talented in a lot of ways, but no way in hell was she saying that out loud. “It’s over, Gallagher. Give it a rest.”
Over? Not by a long shot. She could push him away as hard as she wanted—which would be pretty hard based on those push-ups she’d been doing—but he could push harder.
“When this is over, maybe we could take a couple of down days together. Hit the beach.” Maybe swing by San Diego and introduce her to his family. “Frolic in the sand and all that crap.”
“I’m not frolicking with you again. In the sand or anywhere else.”
“So we just forget what happened between us? That’s it?” She was really starting to tick him off. Her pulling away, he’d expected. Turning into a bitch, he hadn’t.
“Nothing else is going to happen between us because I’m not quitting the Group. It’s more than my job—it’s what I do.”
“Jesus, Carmen, I asked you for a date. I never asked you to give up your job.”
“But you won’t let me do it.”
“Didn’t I just assign you to go out in the jungle and get shot at? What the fuck more do you want from me?”
“If there was another agent here, you’d have sat me out.”
“If that agent was more qualified for the task, then yeah. Instead of making shit up, why don’t you clue me in on your real problem?”
She was pissed enough he’d have already ducked if she had something in her hand to throw. “I’m not making anything up. When the Group went after Anetakis, you benched me and sent in Charlotte, who had no field experience and—”
“I benched you because she had a connection to him and I wasn’t sure where your relationship with Ludka stood.”
“That’s bullshit! Nobody has ever doubted my loyalty to the Group. You threw my integrity under the bus so you wouldn’t have to admit to Charlotte you were afraid I’d get hurt. And then you tried to cut me out of this job.”
“Matunisia’s not place for a—”
“Screw you, Gallagher. You’ve been trying to babysit me for a long time. Which is not sexy, by the way. Can you imagine what you’d be like if we had a real relationship?”
The emphasis on real stung, but he didn’t wince.
“I won’t live my life in bubble wrap, no matter how much you try to wrap me up. And I’m so tired of trying to dodge your overprotectiveness. I may not be G.I. Jane, but I’m not Lois Lane, either.”
She paused, as if she expected him to say something, but what? Was he supposed to promise to stop worrying about her? To stop having nightmares about all the ways her jobs could go wrong? Not happening.
“I can’t stop caring whether you live or die, Carm.”
“Of course not, but you can stop letting your personal feelings affect your professional judgment.”
He’d have beat his head against the wall if it wouldn’t attract attention. “You need to get over thinking there are neat, airtight little boxes to keep everything separate. Professional relationships in this box. Personal feelings in that box. It’s not like that. Real life’s messy and all mixed up.”
“I don’t do messy. And…I’m never having kids.”
“Ever?”
“Ever. I love my job and I intend to do it as long as I can and then I’m going to travel.”
“What the hell does that have to do with this?” He knew he was getting loud but this woman drove him batshit crazy. Then he narrowed his eyes. “You’re using my concern for you in the field as an excuse to keep me at arm’s length without telling me the real reason.”
She stood there glaring at him, her jaw clenched while she inhaled slowly. “There’s no future for us and if we try and fail, it’ll affect the job. It’s already affecting it. Rossi took O’Brien instead of you because of me.”
He would have laughed if he couldn’t see how hard it was for her to talk about this. “I’m not asking you to marry me tomorrow. I just want to see each other. See where it goes. It could actually work out, you know.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. You’re the All-American boy next door.”
“Only if it’s a pretty freakin’ interesting neighborhood.”
“I mean it. You bleed red, white and blue. When I look at you, I can practically hear “The Star-Spangled Banner” and smell the apple pie. You’re picket fences and minivans and a baked ham every Sunday.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not. It’s just not my thing.” He watched her school her features in an expression of cool disinterest. “Look, it happened. The crash, the woods—most people have sex after a near-death experience. Let it go.”
She was lying. He knew it as surely as he knew her eyes were the exact brown of hot fudge topping. But he was freakin’ tired of fighting her for a chance, and he’d be damned if he’d beg.
Maybe the time had come to put any feelings he had for Carmen to rest. When they got back to the States he was going to find a cheap bar, a cheaper date, and sweat her out of his system.
Some
times, between one tick of the second hand and the next, a man realizes he’s made a fatal error.
The realization could be painful—finding out you should have zigged instead of zagged in a gunfight. It could be explosive, a rush of adrenaline that carried you through it.
For Jack Donovan, that realization was silent, a slight tightening of the skin that might have shown on his face were Le Roux not greedily flipping through the book for more to add to the tentative list of weapons they’d drawn up.
Isabelle Arceneau was no longer afraid.
It was a subtle vibe. Something in the way she carried herself, maybe. Something that said she felt a little safer than she had the day before.
And safe was last thing a young woman being held hostage by a bloodthirsty terrorist and loaned out as a sex toy to an arms dealer should feel.
“I could get twice as many M-16s,” Le Roux grumbled.
“And they jam twice as often,” he said easily while scanning the room. “If I provide you with substandard equipment—even at your request—you’ll be less inclined to do business with me in the future.”
While Mr. Sensitivity over there probably wasn’t tuned in to the emotional states of his captives, the other women might pick up on the difference in Isabelle. And women who spent every second of every day in fear just might try to curry favor by throwing a fellow captive under the bus.
He had to get her out of the compound. Soon. And, though Le Roux was enjoying showing off his operation and haggling, Donovan could only linger so long without raising suspicion.
If he had to, he’d leave and pretend to return with the weapons. It would buy some time to come up with a more solid plan. He was afraid walking away from Isabelle—leaving her behind, knowing she wouldn’t believe he was coming back—would kill him, though.
More importantly, he was afraid it would kill her.
But he’d have to hurt her to save her. Before he could talk himself out of it, he beckoned to her. “Get me some coffee.”
His stomach turning, he slid the papers on which he was making long lists of Le Roux’s demands closer to the edge of the table and waited. It took her a few minutes, but she approached with the metal mug while—thankfully—Le Roux still had his head bent over the catalogue.
Praying nobody saw, he slid his foot out and nudged her ankle, not enough to trip her, but enough to make her stumble. Coffee splashed over the pages.
Jack exploded out of his chair, shoving her hard onto the floor. “You stupid, clumsy bitch!”
She scrambled away, her eyes on the floor and tiny sobs catching with each ragged breath. Le Roux watched with unabashed interest.
“Get your ass back over here,” Jack hissed, grabbing the soaked papers in one hand. “Look what you did.”
Isabelle didn’t look up. “I…I’m sorry.”
Her voice was just a whisper and, though it killed him to do it, he grasped her short hair as best he could in his hand and hauled her to her feet. She whimpered, trying to cower from him.
“You should punish her, my friend,” Le Roux goaded, his grin making Jack sick.
“Oh, I’m going to punish her. We’re going to my room and once she’s done proving to me just how goddamn sorry she is, she’s going to stay down there on her knees and recopy every one of these fucking papers.”
While Le Roux roared his approval, Jack dragged Isabelle, sobbing and trying to keep up, out of the great room.
Alex Rossi was pissed. As if it wasn’t bad enough his team was in freakin’ Matunisia—that he’d sent one of his guys blind into a guerilla warlord’s compound—now he had some soap opera shit going on with the guy whose game was pretty goddamn important to this job.
Whatever had happened between them while he and O’Brien were off making contact with a guy who wanted to sell very few explosives for very many American dollars, it wasn’t good. Carmen was emitting so much tension, Rossi was surprised she didn’t fry the electronics.
And Gallagher… He’d gone cold, and Rossi didn’t like that at all. Gallagher had shut parts of himself down and the team needed him at one hundred percent every second they were in this country.
Maybe he should lock them in the bedroom. Order them to have sex and not come out until the personal shit was laid to rest and they could concentrate fully on the job.
Probably not. But he had to do something. Even O’Brien was getting antsy and awkward around them, and that guy was hard to shake up. Having Gallagher take O’Brien’s head off his shoulders for not being able to read Donovan’s mind and explain why he’d gone off on the girl probably didn’t help. Which one to talk to, though?
It wouldn’t do any good to talk to Gallagher. Rossi knew where he stood. He’d been hung up on the woman for a long time and, after their jaunt through the woods during which he and Grace suspected a little extra R&R had gone on, she seemed to be shutting him down.
That left Carmen, so instead of going himself, he sent Gallagher with O’Brien to go over the helo to make sure nobody’d messed with it and figure out how to stow all the weapons they’d need.
Carmen had taken O’Brien’s seat in front of the computers. “The audio seems to be down. I can’t really make it out.”
“That happens. There are a couple of places in the compound where something interferes with the signal.”
She nodded, and he sat in the closest chair, not having the slightest clue what to say. He’d call Grace, but one look at his watch changed his mind. Damn time difference.
“So, this thing between you and Gallagher—”
“Has not affected my work.”
Rossi hadn’t gotten to his position by backing away from a sharp tone. “Yet.”
She swiveled her chair to face him. “I told him nothing’s going to happen here. If he can’t handle that and it effects his job, that’s his problem. And his lecture, not mine.”
Since the stern schoolteacher routine wasn’t going to get him squat, he changed tactics. “You know Grace and I were partners—and lovers—before.”
“Of course.”
“It wasn’t always easy, but it’s doable.”
“But your relationship ended when…you know.” Yeah, when he’d shot her and she’d disappeared, leaving him and the Group far behind her. “What if you’d ended your relationship and still tried to work together?”
Now he was getting somewhere. “I trust Gallagher to keep his professional and his personal crap separate.”
“I guess if he was any good at that, you wouldn’t be having this talk with me right now, would you? And if we did get together? He doesn’t respect me enough to let me do my job without trying to protect me.”
“One, if Gallagher didn’t respect you, you wouldn’t work for me. Period. Second, he’s going to try to protect you whether he gets in your pants or not. We’re men and, call me a sexist asshole, but we have this primitive urge to protect our women.”
“Sexist asshole. But look how this is affecting things right now. Imagine if we’re together for months or even years, and then we break it off. How much worse would it be?”
“I don’t think you’d break it off. I think you guys would be good for each other.” She wanted to believe that, he could see it in her face. “And if you did break up, you’d work separate assignments until you got over it.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Yeah but nothing. We could sit here for an hour and you’ll just keep coming up with bullshit excuses for not taking a chance on the guy.”
Crimson burned up her neck into her cheeks, and Rossi wondered if she’d swing at him. Probably not, but he was ready to duck. “They’re not bullshit. I don’t want to have to choose between him and my job.”
“I’m the boss, and I won’t let you choose between him and your job. You’re one of the Devlin Group’s most valuable assets and I’m not letting you go. But where you guys are right now, it’s not working. For anybody. Talk to him.”
“I don’t think there’s anything left to say.”
“You’ll think of something. Talking’s like breathing to women.”
She laughed and, much to his relief, some of the tension was broken. “Sexist asshole.”
Chapter Eleven
Jack closed the door to his quarters behind them and slid down to the floor, taking Isabelle with him. She didn’t try to pull away, but she was curled up, trying not to touch him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “So, so sorry, honey.”
Her tears splashed on his arms, and his throat tightened. He’d had to do it, he reminded himself. He was the one who’d fucked up and told her who he was. Now he’d bear the guilt.
He tried to stroke her hair and she flinched. He’d known that would break her down more than anything else—had known what the painstaking process of singing her hair off had meant to her—and that was why he’d done it.
“I had to do that, Isabelle. I didn’t want to, but…you looked more confident. Too safe.” She didn’t move, so he kept talking. “I shouldn’t have told you who I was. It was a risk, but I wasn’t going to…I couldn’t rape you and that’s what I was expected to do.
“I thought you’d react better if things get crazy, too, if you trusted me. But you didn’t look afraid anymore and if somebody wondered why and told Le Roux, he’d kill us both.”
Her chest was no longer hitching with smothered sobs, but he could feel the fear in her body. “Honey, hurting you is the last thing I would ever want to do.”
He shut up then, afraid he’d make it worse, and just held her. Slowly, very slowly, she relaxed against him. He stroked her hair lazily, trying to be as gentle as possible.
“You tripped me,” she finally said. Her voice was still on the faint side, but the accusation felt good. She still had some fight in her.
“I know. But if I’d just explained what you were doing, I don’t know if you’d have understood. I needed to…you’ve been conditioned and I needed to trigger that.”
No Surrender: The Devlin Group, Book 3 Page 9