by Shayla Black
protect her? She’d rather shoot him. Unless . . . “Hey, can you get Zack on the line for me? I need him to do me a small favor.”
* * *
Holland sniffled and wished she’d thought of stopping for a bottle of wine. Or whiskey. Maybe that would be better. Which one went with mourning and ice cream? Unfortunately, she didn’t know of a website that gave recommendations on the best way to drown one’s sorrows when the one who got away returned to town.
Dax wasn’t a fish. Nope. He was a nasty shark and he’d taken a chunk out of her hide. She’d let him off the hook, and if she was smart, she’d keep it that way.
Why couldn’t she get him out of her head? Why did she now feel like shit that she’d given him that damn file of information? She also hadn’t deleted her copy. Oh, no. She was sitting at her kitchen table studying it. She’d been ready to hit the delete key. For some reason, she simply couldn’t.
This information was her last tie to him. Well, to the him he used to be. She had to view it that way. That Dax Spencer was gone. Maybe he’d always been an illusion since he’d turned on her the minute he could.
She slammed the stupid laptop lid shut because now she was lying to herself. He hadn’t. He’d seen that money trail and he’d believed her. If she’d given him a hint that she hadn’t been guilty, he would have trusted her word over all the proof in the world. She couldn’t fault him for that.
But then he’d gone right out and married her best friend. He’d had a ring for her, his grandmother’s. He’d been planning that trip for them and he’d replaced her as if she’d meant nothing, as if she were interchangeable.
Now Courtney was married again, from what she’d heard. She was also pregnant and happy. Dax had bought her a house to celebrate their divorce. She’d cheated on him while he’d been away at war and Dax had all but rewarded her.
He hadn’t even called tonight. Somehow she’d thought he would call. She’d expected it all afternoon. She’d sat and watched the phone, waiting for the moment when he realized he’d been terribly wrong about her.
But nothing.
He’d grown cold. Had she done that to him? Or had other forces combined to change him? Had losing Mad been the thing to push him over the edge from happy boy to bitter man?
He hadn’t seen her at Crawford’s funeral. She’d slipped into New York and attended with the thousand or so mourners because Mad had meant something to her, too. Even if all the Perfect Gentlemen hated her now, at one point, she’d been friends with them.
It was hard to believe that Mad was dead and Gabe Bond was getting married. Zack had settled well into his presidency, while Roman still ate their opponents for breakfast. And Connor . . . his activities were probably top secret. But they’d all moved on while she was stuck here.
Those tears she’d been so good about not shedding now rolled from her eyes, making the world a watery mess and scalding her cheeks. So much time wasted. All gone and all for nothing. Dax was back on the case. She should have known she couldn’t derail him forever. She’d merely bought him a few more years.
Damn it, she’d cut her heart out and forfeited her future so he could have a good life.
A loud knock on her door jerked Holland from her thoughts. She swiped at her tears and glanced at the clock. Seven thirty. It seemed later. She had to wonder which of her coworkers had come by to check on her. She’d gotten a call from Gemma earlier. It looked as if everyone knew Dax was back in town. The receptionist hadn’t been able to keep it under wraps. The minute they’d gotten out of their meeting, she’d told everyone she could about Captain Awesome’s return, followed quickly by Holland hightailing it out the door.
She thought seriously about not answering the knock, but if she didn’t it was entirely possible that Gemma would simply break in. Her partner wasn’t good at letting things slide.
Holland opened the door and then wished she’d cleaned up.
Dax stood there with a bottle of wine in one hand and a pizza in the other. What looked to be a bouquet of flowers was clutched under his right arm. Lilies. His face softened as he looked at her. “Hey.”
She slammed the door and locked it. Damn him. He’d caught her crying. At the office, she’d managed to keep her dignity and leave before he’d seen her tears. Now he’d messed it all up.
He knocked again, the sound softer this time. She stared at the door like it was a snake ready to bite her. She hated this feeling. She wasn’t a teenage girl, but she was crying like one.
“Holland, sweetheart? I’m going to leave the flowers and the wine and pizza here, all right? I’m going to go, but I wanted you to know how sorry I am for what happened. I know you can’t forgive me, but I just wanted . . .” He sighed. “Damn it, I wanted to give you something even if it’s nothing more than dinner and flowers.”
He sounded like the old Dax. Kinder. His voice again held that hint of Southern accent no amount of prep school had been able to completely destroy. It was the way he’d talked to her when he’d loved her.
Said he’d loved her. No man who loved a woman could possibly marry her best friend the very next day.
She wasn’t going to engage him. She would ignore him and move on with her life.
His boots thudded as he went down the stairs. She felt like an idiot, but she stared through the peephole and watched as he retreated, the door that led out to the street opening and closing.
She had to change the code on that door. She hadn’t thought to before since Dax had been gone. Besides him, only Gemma and a few coworkers had the digits that would get them up the stairs to her front door. Over the years she’d had some coworkers get her mail and water her plants while she was away. The security company forced her to change her door code once a year, but no one cared that she was lazy with the building code.
Well, that changed tomorrow. She would make sure no one could get in. And then what? She would never leave the city again? Or get rid of the plants? Maybe. It wasn’t like they loved her back.
But she couldn’t exactly leave the stuff Dax had brought with him out there. It wasn’t sanitary.
She opened the door and quickly gathered his blood offering, her stomach rumbling and reminding her she’d had nothing to eat since a very dry piece of toast and some eggs this morning. The pizza smelled heavenly, but the wine was what she really wanted.
She locked the door and tried to put a good face on the situation. He was gone and she wouldn’t have to see him again. It was over.
He would go back to wherever he’d come from with his new data. It didn’t matter if he understood what she’d done now. It was over.
And somewhere down the line she’d find out he’d been murdered by the Russian mob.
The idea made her stomach turn. She slammed the pizza down and thought seriously about tossing the flowers, but they hadn’t done anything wrong to her. Neither had the pizza. Or the wine. Definitely not the wine. It would be wrong to waste it. All right. Being honest, she needed a damn drink.
Why had he come back to New Orleans? Why couldn’t he leave well enough alone? Nothing he uncovered would bring his father back.
She found the corkscrew and had just uncorked the wine when the door to the balcony came open. She went for her gun but stopped short when she realized who stood there.
Dax ran a hand over his slightly shaggy hair. He’d let the military cut grow out an inch or two, and it just made him all the sexier. “Sorry. I think I broke the lock on your balcony door, but then you really need to upgrade your security system. I think you need an entire new rig and I want to rethink these windows. They’re pretty but anyone from the other side of the street can see in.”
Her stomach knotted. “What the hell are you doing here? You said you’d go away.”
He shook his head. “No, I said I would leave. I left the front door and climbed up your balcony trellis, but only after I got the voodoo shop owner to promise she wouldn’t call the police. Or stick pins into
a little doll of me. Luckily, she’s a romantic.”
She was going to have a long talk with her downstairs neighbor in the morning. And she might look into a little voodoo herself. “You can leave the same way you came in.”
“I understand that you’re angry with me, Holland. You have every right to be, but we have to talk, so pour me a glass of that wine. Let’s sit and be rational. I haven’t been rational in three years, so it should be an interesting new experience for me.”
She hated how calm he sounded when everything inside her felt so chaotic. “We don’t have anything to talk about. I gave you the information you requested. I’m no longer involved. And you gave me the wine. I’m not giving it back.”
His lips curled up a little, reminding her of how sexy he could be when he smiled. “You won’t even share a tiny bit with me?”
“No.”
He reached into the messenger bag that crossed his chest and came out with a small bottle. “Good thing I brought the whiskey. I remember how greedy you can be with the wine. You should remember, though, that if you don’t feed me, I get a little testy. So let’s pop that pizza open and see if I can brush the mushrooms off my half.”
He hated mushrooms, but she loved them, so he always ordered them and then he would carefully pull his off and double them up on her slices. It was a silly, but at the time it made her feel cared for.
Chad didn’t eat pizza. No carbs of any kind after noon. So when she ate pasta for dinner, he shook his head as though he could see her fattening up right in front of him.
Dax pulled his bag over his head and set it down. “If you’re still hungry afterward, I’ll run out and find us some bread pudding. Lots of caramel, the way you like it.”
The deep timbre of his voice went straight to her girl parts, bringing them flaring back to life. She might have hardened her soul against this man, but all her reproductive organs were traitors willing to lay down arms the minute the hot guy with the really talented penis walked in the room again. She wasn’t falling for it. “Why don’t you go get some now?”
“So you can find a way to lock me out?”
“Yes.” She had zero reason to lie to him.
He sobered, his smile fading. “Thank you for trying to protect me. I should have followed my first instinct. I knew you weren’t capable of that kind of betrayal. Even after I’d gone, I kept thinking that you’d always been the kind of woman to refuse me to my face, not stab me in the back. You’re a very good actress, Holland. But then the stakes were pretty high for you. You were protecting the man you loved.”
Her stomach rolled and she knew she wouldn’t be touching that pizza. “That’s enough, Dax.”
She turned away, but she could feel him moving behind her.
“I don’t think so. You sacrificed yourself to save me and I acted like a complete idiot. Holland, after you convinced me you had sold out my family, I went crazy.”
She wasn’t listening to this. She turned on him. “I don’t care. What happened between you and Courtney is your business. She was your wife. You made the decision to marry her.”
“Bourbon with a tequila chaser kind of made the decision for me, but I was the one who drowned in booze. Please, sweetheart. Let me explain what happened, how I felt.”
He’d felt horny and his plans for the weekend had disappeared. She knew the story. Captain Awesome didn’t go without for long. “No. Leave now or I’ll call the police and have them remove you.”
His disappointment tugged at her. “I understand why you feel that way, but there’s more at stake than simply the two of us. Mad’s death had something to do with my father’s.”
She stopped, his words hitting her like a bucket of ice water. “What do you mean? I thought it was ruled an accident.”
“We’re keeping the truth quiet for now, but we have conclusive proof that Mad was killed because he got involved in some sort of plot by the Bratva that goes back years. He was searching for a woman named Natalia Kuilikov. She was Zack’s nanny in Moscow when he was a young boy. She wrote a diary that people have died and killed for. Her writings aren’t specific but we know the group that sent her to work for the Hayes family had big plans of some kind. She immigrated to the U.S. later and disappeared. Connor and his new wife tracked her down a few weeks ago. As they were talking to her, she was murdered in front of them.”
That rattled Holland. Another murder? The string of them was getting long. “Wow.”
Dax nodded. “It gets worse. They managed to find what Natalia had been trying to hide. A list of people targeted for assassination by the Bratva.”
She shivered but took a step back as she really thought about everything he was saying to her. “No. It can’t be connected. You read my report. What happened with your father was a blackmail scheme gone wrong.”
“That’s how it was made to look so there would be a simple, clean explanation for his death. But my father knew something that could stop whatever the group is planning. I don’t know what that was yet. I’m still digging. But all roads in this case lead to Zack.” His voice softened. “My father’s name was on that dead pool, Holland. So was Joy’s. Her death wasn’t an accident. We believe it was meant to move the polls in Zack’s favor, to ensure that he won the presidency.”
She had to hold on to the bar or she would have fallen. “No. I was sure. I was stopping this thing in its tracks, Dax. I was doing something good.”
“Yes, I know.” He moved in as though ready to catch her. “You thought you were saving me and my mother and Gus. You thought you were doing the right thing. I’m humbled by everything you did for us.”
But she couldn’t escape. She’d kept quiet. She’d kept the secret she’d been given. To no avail. It had all been a setup. And she’d been stupid enough to believe it. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been the only one to pay the price. “Mad’s dead because of me.”
Instantly, Dax shook his head and wound his arms around her. Suddenly she didn’t have the will to fight him.
“It wasn’t your fault, sweetheart. I’ve been through this endlessly. Connor and I talked. Even if you had told me everything at the time, there’s no way we would have figured out the scope of this plot. We still don’t understand it completely. At the time, I would have come to the same conclusion you did. I could have decided to protect my mom and sister and given it up.”
No. She knew Dax. He would have found another way. “I was so stupid.”
He tucked her close to his body, and Holland closed her eyes, not wanting to think about how good it felt to be in his arms. But she couldn’t ignore the profoundly right feeling.
“No,” he assured. “You didn’t have all the facts. I looked at those photos today. They made me sick. If I didn’t know there was a massive conspiracy involved, I would likely see what they want me to see. They wanted you to believe my father didn’t deserve justice, that a monster had died and should be forgotten, because that’s how these conspirators stay in the shadows.”
“I’m a fucking cop, Dax.”
“Yes, and you’ve seen enough to know that most men in this situation are guilty as sin. You made the call to protect the innocent. I don’t put the blame on you, sweetheart. None of us does. We do need your help, though. This is growing and getting bigger every day.”
She wasn’t sure she would ever forgive herself, but she sank into his embrace and reveled in being this close to him again. So perfect and right. It was like she’d been in the cold shadows for so long and was finally seeing sunlight again, illuminating her path home.
His kindness and coaxing were an illusion like everything else. He needed her for now. Maybe he was even thinking that since she wasn’t guilty, she would make a good sexual companion. Dax didn’t go for long without getting some. If he was going to be in New Orleans, he would want someone in his bed. They’d been good together. She would do.
And that’s bad, why?
Holland slammed the lid on that line of
thinking. He’d seen her cry enough. He wasn’t going to see her beg.
She forced herself to step out of the comfort of his arms. “I’m so sorry about Maddox. No matter what you say, I’ll always blame myself. But I’m off this case now. I’m not involved and that’s for the best. I wish you all the luck in the world, Dax, but I’m not going to work with you on this. It’s best if we go our separate ways.”
His jaw hardened and for a moment she thought he was going to grab her and haul her into his arms again. He took a careful step back. “I’m afraid that’s not an option, Special Agent Kirk. You’ve got a new assignment. You’ll be working with a Naval officer on a special case.”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve received no notification of that. That lie won’t work, Dax.”
Her cell phone started to vibrate on the bar, the sound jarring.
Dax strolled into her kitchen, helping himself to a glass and pouring a couple of fingers of whiskey. “You should get that. It’s important and he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
She looked down at the number. UNKNOWN.
With trembling fingers, she pressed the button to answer the phone. What had Dax done to her now? “This is Special Agent Kirk.”
“Please hold for the president of the United States,” a