by Cindy Gerard
She’d insisted it wasn’t, but on some level it was. She knew it and so did he.
When the bathroom door finally opened and she stepped out wrapped tightly in a towel, and her gaze lasered in on that eight-inch stretch of flesh before shifting to his face, it pretty much cinched it.
He was eventually going to have to tell her the details. He’d seen that same look in other women’s eyes when their heads got messed up by his “warrior scars” and they got to thinking they might be falling in love with him.
He had to make sure she understood that a woman like her didn’t ever want to attach herself to a man like him. A man who was no longer certain if he had what it took to walk into the next fire, no questions asked, and lay it all on the line for God, country, and the men by his side.
Case in point, he should be focusing on the bad guys and getting her out of here, not trying to figure out a way to wangle a little more sheet time and still make sure she knew better than to hitch her wagon to his fizzling star.
“Come ’ere,” he said, patting the mattress.
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
“Trust me, this is officially a testosterone-free zone. I’m gonna need at least a couple of hours to replenish the supply. With any luck, we’ll be long gone from here by then. Now come over here.”
When she hesitated, he grabbed a corner of the sheet and covered his lower body.
She pressed her lips together, wavered another short second, then slowly walked toward the bed.
“Down,” he ordered in a no-nonsense tone and lifted an arm in invitation.
Careful to keep her mummy wrap in place, she eased down on a hip, then fell the rest of the way against him when he tugged her arm and pulled her close.
“Do you manhandle all your women this way?” she groused, but there was a smile in her voice.
“Only the ones who hide in the bathroom and make me feel like the big bad boogeyman.”
“You’re not the boogeyman,” she said, finally relaxing a little and nestling her cheek against his chest.
“And I wasn’t hiding.”
“No?” he challenged.
Silence.
“Just so you know . . . there aren’t any women. Or even another woman. Hasn’t been for a while,” he confessed quietly.
She stiffened and he sensed she was about ready to bolt again.
Jesus, they were a pair. Both of them ready to run if they thought the other one might start thinking the wrong thing and get too attached and yet both of them wobbling on the brink of . . . what?
On a weary breath, he said, “Just chill, okay? I’m not professing love everlasting and I know you aren’t, either. I just wanted you to know that I don’t do the revolving bed thing, okay?”
“Okay,” she said after a long moment. “And thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
He didn’t know if that little exchange had accomplished a damn thing . . . didn’t even know what he’d been trying to accomplish.
Honesty, he supposed. She’d been honest with him, so he wanted her to know that he wasn’t a player, either.
To what end, Colter? The devil was back on his shoulder.
Because I care about her, he admitted to both the devil and himself.
She was vulnerable yet strong, resilient in the face of danger. She was so much more than an image on a billboard.
He admired her. He liked her. But he wasn’t a forever kind of man. Not that one fine roll in the sack conjured notions of forever. Or of making promises. Or of wondering if there was any way in hell they might be able to make things work.
Christ, he felt like a pocketful of change banging around in a washing machine. Completely scattered, in over his head, and somewhere he totally did not need to be.
Disgusted, he glanced at the wall clock. Another twenty minutes before he could go out and make contact with Nate again.
Now what, hotshot? The devil asked lasciviously.
He didn’t have any answer to that question. Just like he didn’t have an answer when she softly whispered, “How do you see this ending?”
Oh, Christ. How the hell did he answer that? The same way he always answered that kind of question when a woman asked.
You don’t want to be saddled with the likes of me, darlin’. I’m not the marrying kind.
“Do you think they’re looking for me even now?”
It took a couple of clicks of his brain synapses to realize the ending she was asking about had to do with bad guys, not emotional entanglements.
“Um . . . yeah,” he said, not knowing if he was relieved or disappointed. Since relief was what he should be feeling, he went with it.
“Like I said, whoever is behind this went to a lot of trouble to hunt you down. They’ll keep hunting.”
She lifted a hand, exasperated. “It still makes no sense to me.”
It was past time that he played devil’s advocate. “Other than the fact that your ex had to be the stupidest man on the face of the earth to let you go, what can you tell me about what he’s into?”
She wedged herself up on an elbow and met his eyes.
“Marcus? Why do you insist on asking about Marcus?”
He worked hard at not getting lost in the deep, dark brown of her eyes. “It’s pretty common knowledge, Angelface, that in major crimes, it’s almost always the husband or the ex who ‘done’ it.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Marcus is not behind this. He’s a U.S. senator, for God’s sake.”
He grunted. “Right. And we all know the words shyster, illegal, and unethical have never been uttered in the same breath with politician.”
A deeply pained look flashed across her face before she hid it behind a determined frown. “Marcus would never hurt me,” she insisted.
He was more than a little peeved that she was so quick to defend him. “Like the divorce didn’t hurt you?”
She looked away.
“The bastard cheated on you, didn’t he?” The tabloids had hinted as much.
“That’s none of your business.”
Yeah, the stupid fuck had cheated on her, all right.
“He’s the reason you’re down here,” he concluded.
“You’re hiding out from the fallout, from the tabloids . . . from the embarrassment.”
“I don’t want to talk about Marcus, okay?”
No, he didn’t suppose she did. “I’m sorry if I was out of line.”
He drew her into his arms and surprisingly, she didn’t resist. She snuggled against him, draping her arm over his waist when he hooked a leg over her hips.
So he kissed her. Nothing sexual. Just kissed her because she looked like she needed to be kissed. And yeah, because he needed it, too.
A few moments passed before her hand slid to his hip, then ever so slowly, her fingers worried their way along the length of his scar. “Were you protecting someone when you got this?”
He had known she would come back to this.
“San Salvador,” he said. “Last year about this time. And yes, I was working protection detail.”
“For a woman?”
“Yeah. I was protecting a woman. A friend.”
He replayed that night in short frames that clicked through his mind’s eye like gunshots.
His handgun in pieces on Sophie Baylor’s coffee table.
The scent of the gun oil he’d been using to clean it.
The pop pop pop of AK-47s as Vincente Bonilla’s Mara Salvatrucha hit squad sprayed the glass patio doors with round after lethal round.
Grabbing his own rifle.
Shoving Sophie ahead of him behind the cover of the kitchen counter.
The sickening realization that he’d been hit.
The blood oozing out of him in a sticky, hot pool.
The darkness that overtook him like black death.
“And is she . . . did she survive?”
Her soft voice snapped him back. “Yeah.” He shook his head
to clear it. “Yeah, she’s fine.”
“But you almost died.”
He stared across the room. “As my boss always says, I’m too ornery to die.”
At what point is enough, enough?
Christ. Join the party, Mom. He already had so many frickin’ voices in his head, he was starting to think he was schizophrenic.
“But you almost died,” she repeated, pain in her eyes.
He swallowed. “Yeah.”
A part of him had died that day. The part that allowed him to walk tall and know without a doubt that he was the same man he’d been before that AK-47 had ripped his guts apart.
He didn’t want to think about it anymore, and he sure as hell didn’t want to talk about it.
“You get a little rest, okay?” He sat up abruptly, then reached down and grabbed his pants off the floor. “It’s about time I made contact with my boss.”
He stood, pulling up his pants and zipping in one move.
“Don’t open the door to anyone but me,” he added, tugging a shirt over his head, then digging into his pack for dry socks.
He sank down on the sofa and tugged them on, then shoved his feet into his boots. “I’ll be back in less than thirty and we’ll have a plan of action.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
She had rolled to her side, facing him. One hand held the towel together, the other fussed absently with the bedding.
He rose slowly. He should walk to the door. Should not look at that white towel against white sheets, at those long cover-girl legs and that mouth.
“I’m very glad you didn’t die,” she said, her eyes brimming with emotion.
And he lost yet another battle.
He took one step toward her, then another, feeling an unfamiliar warmth spread through his chest.
Jesus, why did she have to look at him like that? Like it scared her to think about how badly he’d been injured. About how he could have died. About how much she was going to miss him when he was gone.
Well, hell. He wasn’t gone yet. To make certain she understood that, he strode straight to the bed, leaned down, cupped her nape in his palm, and pulled her up to him. Then he kissed her like tomorrow might not come and he wanted to experience every nuance, every sigh, every sweet wanton response from the mouth that he wasn’t sure he could ever get enough of.
When he finally broke the kiss, her hands were clutching his thigh, and the towel had come undone. The sight of her bare breasts almost brought him to his knees. Her fractured breath and swollen lips damn near had him crawling back in that bed.
“I’ve got to go,” he said hoarsely and, with more willpower than he’d thought he was capable of, he backed away.
His hands were shaking when he dug back in his pack for a black baseball cap and a pair of shades. Without turning around he walked straight to the door, opened it, and closed it hard behind him.
And stood there in the empty hall. Hand still on the knob, he pressed his forehead against the wood. Drew a bracing breath. “Throw the dead bolt this time,” he said through the closed door.
A few moments later, he heard the bolt rattle. Several moments after that, he finally mustered the will to move.
He settled the cap backward on his head and shoved on the glasses. Once he was in the lobby, he snagged a couple of city maps out of the rack by the door and, playing the part of a tourist, hightailed it out of the hotel. Away from a woman who could scramble his brain like a short-order cook scrambled eggs.
He was so fucked.
15
Val was fully dressed and as tense as kite string when Luke rapped on the hotel room door almost an hour later.
A very long hour later.
She’d had too much time to think, too much time to panic, too much time to sit there and do nothing.
So she’d done something he wasn’t going to like. Something she’d had to do, just like she had to believe it was right.
She walked to the door, unlocked the dead bolt, and let him in.
“Sorry it took me so long.” He breezed inside and locked the door behind him. “Had a little trouble making the connection.”
“It’s okay.” She walked back to the small studio sofa and sat down before her knees folded. Second thoughts fruitlessly battled with self-preservation instincts. What was done was done; she had to trust that she’d made the right decision.
Oblivious to her tension, Luke sat beside her, grabbed a banana off the table, and started to peel it.
“Nate’s arranged for a cargo plane to pick us up. Our ride’s flying in from Buenos Aires at 1500 hours—about three hours from now. It’ll take a couple of hours to off-load their cargo and take on more, and by the time they’re done we’ll already be on board, stowed away in a shipping container, no one the wiser that we were ever here. We’ll be in Buenos Aires by nightfall.”
She swallowed hard. “I’m not going with you.”
The banana froze halfway to his mouth. Then he looked at her like he hadn’t heard her correctly.
She looked down at her hands. “I . . . I can’t keep relying on you to take care of me. So I called Marcus and made arrangements to get out of here.”
Silence filled the hotel room like a heavy fog. She could feel his gaze boring into the side of her face.
“You did what?”
She licked dry lips and forced herself to look at him. His face was hard as stone. “I called Marcus to—”
“I heard you.” He glared at her. “I just can’t frickin’ believe it. You called Marcus, your asshole ex?”
“He’s got business connections in Lima,” she continued, forcing herself to regroup. “A friend with a corporate jet. It should be in the air by now.”
A look of utter incredulity darkened his face. “To come here?”
She nodded. “To take me back to the States. They’ve arranged temporary ID with the U.S. embassy to get me out of the country and through immigration.”
For a long moment he just stared at her. Then he started to say something but stopped himself, stood abruptly, and jammed his fists on his hips.
Luke would never be able to understand the bond she and Marcus had so Val didn’t try to explain. Yes, Marcus had betrayed her. Yes, he had almost destroyed her. But the divorce had nearly destroyed him, too. She had no doubt that he still loved her and would do anything for her. Anything but be faithful.
“Jesus,” Luke finally said. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you’d trust that bastard over—” He whirled back around to glare at her. “Wait. You left the room? You left the room to call him?”
“I was careful,” she said defensively.
He gave a disgusted snarl. “Define careful.”
She refused to let his anger sway her. “I was just careful, that’s all. No one saw me.”
“And you used a phone where?”
“I convinced the manager to let me use the office phone. And I apologize, but I . . . I went into your backpack. I needed money for the call and I knew you had some cash.”
He dragged a hand roughly though his hair. “Do you not get it? Do you not get that you’re ass-deep in trouble? Jesus, Val. I can’t believe you called him.”
Defense turned to anger in a heartbeat. “Okay, look. I don’t need your recriminations or your opinions of my intelligence. And I don’t need you directing my every move. Yes, I know I’m in trouble. But I’m a big girl. I can make my own decisions. And I can manage just fine on my own.”
“Right. Like you would have managed on your own on that train.”
She got that he was angry. She also got that he was a little hurt. So she reined in her own temper. “I didn’t say that I don’t owe you. You saved my life—more than once. I won’t forget that. I won’t forget . . . anything . . . about what’s happened since I met you.”
His eyes burned into hers and she knew exactly what he was thinking. But she couldn’t let the intimacy of their lovemaking keep her from taking back control of her life.
She needed to take it from here. Luke had managed to both build and shred her hard-earned self-confidence. He made her feel things she wasn’t ready to feel. Made her want things she wasn’t capable of having. At least not yet. Maybe not ever.
Making that phone call to Marcus had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but staying with Luke would be harder. She was already too attracted to him. He had a way of making her feel like there was a whole lot more than sex going on in that bed.
This trip to Peru had been all about finding herself again, about becoming whole. She was on her way, but her attraction to Luke Colter could send her right back into a dependent relationship.
Even now, she wanted to let him take care of her.
Disgusted with herself, she went to the window, and looked blindly out.
“Valentina. Listen to me.” He turned her around to face him. His brown eyes were earnest and entreating as they met hers. “It’s a mistake to trust anyone at this point. No, hear me out,” he said when she tried to pull away.
“For the sake of argument, let’s factor Chamberlin out of the equation for now. Say he has nothing to do with these bad guys, okay?
“That still doesn’t rule out the possibility that whoever is behind this might be using him to get to you. His house or office could be bugged. His phones could be tapped.”
She shook her head. “Marcus is a stickler about security. His lines are secure.”
“And you know this how?”
“We had just had a state-of-the-art security firm update everything in the D.C. house before the divorce. Marcus is meticulous to the point of paranoid, especially about his phone lines. It goes with the territory, I guess. I wouldn’t have made that call if I hadn’t known that Marcus’s phone line was secure.”
He didn’t look convinced. “And this business associate in Lima? This is someone you know and trust?”
This time when she pulled away, he let his hands drop. “No, I don’t know him. He’s Marcus’s acquaintance.”
Luke’s posture was as stiff as a steel post, his muscles rigid.
“Look, Marcus understands the gravity of the situation,” she insisted. “I trust him to ensure my safety. I know you can’t understand this, but I know I can count on him to take care of getting me home.”