And Able

by Lucy Monroe

  “You aren’t a former gang member. You only ever did what you had to do to protect your country, or the people you were trying to save.”

  “But you were so upset once the reality of Lester’s life hit you.”

  “He was an assassin, not a soldier, and right, wrong, or indifferent…I don’t see those things the same way. Besides, you helped me come to terms with the other life he lived.”

  “Then why won’t you marry me, damn it?”

  “Because you don’t love me.” As she said the words, she knew they were true.

  It shouldn’t matter, but it did. More than anything else, and she couldn’t deny that truth any longer. She wanted to marry him, could not imagine anything more wonderful than spending the rest of her life with this man. Only she could not live that life weighted under the burden of loving a man who loved a dead woman.

  “And you still love Elena.”

  “Elena is gone.”

  “From life maybe, but not your heart.”

  “We’re good together, Claire.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “You could be carrying my baby.”

  “And I might not be.”

  “I’m not sure I care anymore. I’m tired of being alone, Claire. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes.” Too well.

  “You complement me in a way no one else does, and I need your body like hell on fire.”

  “Lust burns out.”

  “Who says?”

  “You can’t build a lifelong commitment on physical need,” she asserted doggedly.

  “Bull. We have a better chance of making our marriage survive than a couple who loves each other, but has no spark in the bedroom. Just ask Lise. Her first marriage was like that and when her husband found passion, he left her.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “But it’s life. We’re friends. We have a lot in common.”

  She laughed at that.

  “Okay…so we aren’t carbon copies of each other, but that would be boring.”

  “Heaven forbid you should ever get bored.”

  “There’s no chance of that with you in my life.”

  “You know…I met this man at Josette’s wedding.”

  Brett’s expression turned fierce. “Who? I don’t remember you meeting someone else.”

  “Yes. He was the classic ‘no commitment’ kind of guy. First he kissed me senseless and then told me he wasn’t in the market for a relationship.”

  Brett looked ready to spit nails by the time she was done talking, but slowly understanding dawned in his eyes. “You know why I said that.”

  “Yes. You loved Elena and will never love another woman like that, but for some reason you’ve decided that no longer matters where I’m concerned.”

  “Don’t make it sound like I’m shortchanging you. I’ll be a good husband.”

  “And a good father.”

  “So my family tells me.” There was such longing in his expression that her own heart contracted with the pain of it.

  She about suffocated on the swell of love for him that poured through her. Far from being a fairy tale, love was a force to be reckoned with, one that could hurt as much as it helped. She wanted so much to make his desires come true. He would be a terrific dad and an awesome husband…except for the fact that he didn’t love her.

  Claire needed Brett. She couldn’t deny it, but what would happen if one day he woke up and hated the choice he’d made? What if she was the mother of his children and he decided he wanted to walk away? The thought ripped a hole in her heart and it hurt so much she had to turn away.

  Her dad had walked…in the most permanent way possible, but Brett would never do that. He wasn’t weak. And she wasn’t her mother, but her love made her so much more vulnerable to him than she wanted to be. He could hurt her. Marrying him could hurt her. Badly.

  He wasn’t offering her a two-sided marriage of convenience. Heck, he wasn’t offering her a marriage of convenience at all. He said he needed her. This wasn’t just about the forgotten condom, or the lovemaking, except in that he wanted it to continue. He also liked her and cared about her…as a friend. He wanted to be with her.

  But her need for him was all wrapped up in her emotions and that made the prospect of marriage unequal, even if it wasn’t as dispassionate a proposal as she had first thought. She would be the lover, but never the beloved, and wouldn’t that make it easier for him to walk away?

  He was there immediately, his hands gentle but firm on her shoulders. “What’s the matter, sugar?”

  “Nothing new.”

  “So tell me what’s old.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would hurt too much,” she said honestly.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure it isn’t because I’m a soldier?”

  “No.” She bit her lip. “I admire you, Brett…more than I can say. I l-like pretty much everything about you.”

  “Then marry me.”

  She shook her head from side to side, her emotions running riot inside of her. “I can’t!”

  “Why can’t you?” He turned her to face him, his expression so tender it made her ache. “Explain it to me, sweetheart, please.”

  Tears spilled hotly down her cheeks. “I love you, Brett.”

  Something flared in the depths of his eyes. “That should make it easier for you to marry me, not harder.”

  “It would…if you loved me, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if we got married and I let my love grow and then you got tired of me, or found someone else to love and decided to walk away, it would hurt too much.”

  “So, you don’t want to take a chance at happiness because you’re afraid I’m going to leave you high and dry someday?”

  “What would be holding you?”

  “You,” he said fiercely. “And me. I’m a man who keeps a promise once he makes it, Claire. I won’t break the ones I make to you on our wedding day. I’m not like your father,” he said, showing he knew what scared her the most.

  Her heart wanted to hope, but the cynical part of her mind that had learned too indelible a lesson early on said that her dad had probably made the same promises to her mom.

  The feelings warred inside of her until she felt like she was being torn apart. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “Fine. We won’t talk,” he growled and then his lips locked over hers.

  He kissed her until she was like a pliant doll in his arms.

  When he broke his mouth away to kiss along her jawline, it took her a few seconds to gain enough breath to talk. “Brett, this isn’t a good idea.”

  He cupped her face with hands that spoke of more than passion, but without the words, her mind refused to allow the message a path to her heart. “We’re done talking for right now, sugar. Now, use your mouth in a more productive way.”

  The need in his blue gaze obliterated her reticence and she kissed him with all the passion his touch invoked, allowing the pleasure to numb her mind and give her temporary peace. Her last coherent thought was that being in Georgia had not put a halt to their intimacy at all.

  They were on time for dinner…just. Brett wore a suit and she wore the skirt outfit he’d bought her in Lincoln City. She was glad she had when she saw the chic dresses his mother and sister wore to the table. She felt that for a woman who had spent most of her life oblivious to fashion, she had become inordinately interested in clothes.

  Strangely, it didn’t bother her.

  It was a surprisingly enjoyable evening. And despite her assertion to the contrary, Claire found herself promising Brett’s mother and sister she would join them on a shopping trip to Savannah the day after the party.

  Brett spent the evening treating her like she really was someone special to him, not just a woman he had the hots for and had convinced himself he had to marry. She tried not to get
caught up in the fantasy, but by the time he came to her room late that night, she was lost to the feeling of being someone unique and important in another person’s life.

  Her mom had needed her, but no one had ever made her feel central to their happiness like Brett did when they made love.

  He held her afterward, their heated bodies close together, and brushed at tears she was getting used to dealing with. “What is it, sugar?”

  “It’s just so beautiful when we make love.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But it’s not real. It’s an illusion,” she said to remind herself as much as him.

  He rolled on top of her and slid into her body with an erection that should not have been possible yet. Then he leaned up on his arms. “What the hell isn’t real about this?”

  “It’s just sex. It’s not love.”

  “You love me.”

  “But you don’t love me.”

  “And you think that makes the passion between us something less than what it is?”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t kid yourself. This is real. What we feel together is real. This…” He thrust into her. “This is no illusion.”

  “But…”

  “Damn it!” He thrust powerfully, sending shards of pleasure piercing through her. “Elena said she loved me, but she refused to leave her country even though she knew she was in grave danger. She died for a lost cause, but she refused to live for me. What we have is better than that kind of love. Can’t you see that? It’s honest and it’s reciprocal.”

  As he increased the pace of his lovemaking, driving her to a passion-filled place that had little room for rational thinking, her mind latched on to one last thought. If he believed this was better than love, maybe that was because he did love her but didn’t want to use the word to describe what he felt.

  Maybe he couldn’t stand the thought of breaking the promise he had made to his dead fiancée. Or maybe saying the words made him feel too vulnerable because the one woman he had admitted to loving had chosen duty over him, not the other way around.

  Claire’s thoughts splintered as her pleasure spiraled, but this time when she climaxed, words spilled from her mouth, unplanned but not unwelcome. “I love you, Brett. I love you so much!”

  “You are so beautiful. So perfect for me,” he husked, awe in his voice, and then he came, too. Afterward, he said nothing more, but he held her close until she slept.

  When she woke, he was gone, but she couldn’t forget what he had said. Was it possible that Hamilton Brett Adams could love Claire Sharpe?

  The prospect made her jittery with joy, but fear that she was setting herself up for an emotional calamity stopped her from dwelling too closely on the possibility.

  She arrived downstairs for breakfast only to discover an unexpected group of visitors. Wolf, Lise, Nitro, and Josette were eating with the rest of Brett’s family when Claire entered the dining room.

  Josette jumped up from the table to hug her. “Claire! It’s so good to see you. I heard you’ve had a very eventful couple of weeks.”

  “That’s one way of putting it, but what are you two doing back? And here? I thought you were going to be gone for at least a few more days.”

  “We couldn’t miss Ms. Adams’s birthday party,” Nitro said, and incredibly, Felicia nodded as if she had expected nothing less.

  Over breakfast, Claire saw that she and Loren treated both Wolf and Nitro like members of the family and, by extension, their wives. No one seemed to find it odd to embrace two ex-mercenaries in the family bosom, but then Brett was ex-merc, too.

  Still, Claire liked his family all the more for accepting his friends and by doing so, tacitly that aspect of his lifestyle as well. She couldn’t help wondering if Brett realized the significance of it, though.

  After breakfast, he gathered his guests together in a room in the back of the house to discuss the case.

  “Have you come up with any connections between the list in the kill book and the people who saw Lester that last month?” Nitro asked.

  “Yes, but only superficial connections. Some visitors share last names with people in Arwan’s notes, both the kills and the ones who hired the jobs done, but it will take longer to find out if any of those superficial connections go deep enough for suspicion to be attached to them. We’re also looking to see if there are connections that are not so obvious, and, of course, that’s going to take longer, but we’ve got help.”

  “Who?” Josette asked.

  “Lester’s nephew. He came to the funeral and we met him,” Claire said.

  “Can he be trusted?” Wolf asked.

  “I ran a background check on him and he’s clean.” Brett handed a manila file folder to Wolf. “Whatever job he holds for the government is deep, but there are no red flags anywhere.”

  “What does your gut say?”

  Brett didn’t hesitate. “Never trust someone until they’ve proven themselves.”

  “Exactly,” Nitro said with a firm nod which Josette emulated.

  Claire gasped. “Then none of you can trust me because I’ve never proven myself.”

  “On the contrary,” Brett said, “you could have sold Josie out to the media after the mercenary school was bombed, but you protected her instead. You were in enough trouble without watching out for Queenie, too, but as soon as you realized she was in danger, you insisted on helping her. You don’t have a lot of friends, but the ones you do have can count on you. You’re as loyal as they come, Claire.”

  He seemed very satisfied by that knowledge.

  Lise smiled, rubbing her pregnant tummy. “I usually reserve my research skills for my books, but if you point me the direction to look in, I can help search for connections between the two lists.”

  Claire knew Lise was due in just a few weeks. She couldn’t believe the pregnant woman had come with Wolf to help in the investigation. “You people are amazing.”

  And they proved just how amazing over the next few hours while they each did what they could to help with the investigation. They worked through lunch, although Wolf made Lise take a nap in the early afternoon.

  She grumbled, but she looked tired and left with a smile after he gently rubbed her tummy and told her he thought Junior was sleepy.

  When it came time to get ready for the party, they had established three possible connections that looked like real leads.

  Josette offered to come to Claire’s room so they could get ready together. They had each showered and put on their dresses when there was a knock on the door. It was Eleanor, already perfectly put together, but with a large basket full of beauty paraphernalia dangling from one arm.

  She smiled, her eyes dancing with anticipation. “I had an idea for Claire’s hair and thought I’d see if y’all were ready to go yet.”

  The hair in question was still damp and Claire grimaced. “As you can see, not even close.”

  “I love your natural curl, but it needs a little taming. I think if you put a little product in it and then let it dry naturally, you’d really like the results.”

  “Product?”

  “Curl enhancer, lightweight hair gel, and when it’s dry something that will make it shine without making it stiff.”

  “You think my curl needs to be enhanced.” She didn’t mean to use a tone of voice that implied Brett’s sister was unhinged, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Claire’s hair was curlier than Shirley Temple’s would have been after sticking her finger in a light socket.

  “You want to enhance the actual curl, as opposed to the kinks and twists.”

  “Oh.”

  Eleanor lifted the basket. “Are you game?”

  “Definitely.” Claire sat down on the edge of the bed and let the other woman apply whatever goop she wanted to her hair.

  “Now we’ll let it dry while we’re doing makeup.”

  Josette’s eyes lit up at that pronouncement and what followed was forty-five minutes of hysterical fun. Eleano
r happily showed Josette three different ways to apply eye shadow. They settled on one that gave Josette’s eyes a slightly tilted, exotic look that both Eleanor and Claire pronounced perfect.

  The former mercenary asked scads of questions about all the girlie-type products in Eleanor’s basket and insisted on trying a few of them out. After she was done, her usually straight, unstyled hair was swept up with a few curling wisps framing her face and she had finished her makeup with a dark lip gloss that complemented her strikingly made-up eyes.

  When it came to doing Claire’s makeup, Eleanor said she wanted to go with the natural look. Claire wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it sounded good to her. She was willing to believe she’d like it more than the extensive grooming she’d received for the wedding. And she was right.

  When she went to look in the mirror, she was shocked at how feminine the halo of ringlet curls around her head looked. It was totally natural and yet not. Her curls were tamed, or at least looked like an actual hairstyle, and her brown eyes looked dark and intriguing, highlighted by the subtle shadows and liner on her lids.

  “Wow,” she whispered.

  Eleanor stepped behind her and grinned at her in the mirror. “My brother is going to drool so much, you’ll need to carry an extra handkerchief for him.”

  Josette laughed. “I think you’re right.”

  Eleanor turned to face her, still grinning. “Your husband will probably just pick you up and carry you back to your bedroom. I’ve seen how that man operates.”

  Josette twirled in front of the mirror, her skirt floating around her highly toned legs. “He’ll have to catch me first and that’s not as easy as he likes to think it is.”

  Chapter 21

  H otwire’s breath seized in his chest as Claire walked into the ballroom. Josette was on one side of her and Eleanor the other, but both women faded to the outer edges of his vision as his entire being centered on the only woman he craved like an addiction. Man alive, she was beautiful.

  He liked her hair…it looked more natural than at the wedding, and if she was wearing makeup, he couldn’t tell. He liked that. Claire didn’t need enhancement.