by Lora Leigh
“I was her albatross,” she whispered, the muted grief that haunted her reflected in her voice, despite her attempt to hold it back.
“She cherished you,” Jordan reminded her. “If you had been her albatross then she would have let Sorrel have you.”
“And she lived in hell to protect me.” She couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t fail. She couldn’t let the past destroy her, or her mother’s death would have been in vain.
“She made me swear I would never involve family in this.” She turned to him, praying she was making the right choice in allowing Jordan to draw them in, even to the small extent he was involving them.
And now she was pushing it by going to a party the entire family was attending. A party where everyone would be speculating about the landscaping company owner and what she was doing with one of D.C.’s favorite sons, Jordan Malone.
“You’re not calling your family begging for help,” he pointed out. “You’re meeting them as someone totally unrelated to the great-niece Stephen Taite has no idea how to locate.”
And rumor was that he had searched for her for several years after her grandparents’ and mother’s deaths. She’d never understood why though.
Turning back to the mirror, she fluffed the curls that fell nearly to her hips and checked the smoky shadow that accented her eyes. She needed to break away from the sapphire blue of his gaze, from the unspoken questions that seemed to lurk there.
“Do you expect Ira Arthur and Mark Tenneyson to be there?” she asked after several moments’ silence.
“They actually have invitations.”
Tehya turned back to him in shock. “How did they manage that one?”
“Through the French Embassy.” Jordan’s lips tightened. “We’re still trying to track down the particulars of that invitation. Until we do, stay close. See if anything is mentioned about the attack on your house.”
“They know about that? So much for a life of fucking anonymity, Jordan. What the hell is going on here?”
“We’ve managed to contain most of it,” he assured her. “But you know how rumors work, Tehya. Someone will have heard about it.”
“No doubt.” She breathed out roughly. “What’s the story then?”
“Your cousin, Denver Roberts, was staying at the house when someone tried to break in. Things got out of hand and shots were fired. That simple.”
“That simple,” she breathed out roughly.
She didn’t want to think about her home. She didn’t want to think about the damage, and she didn’t want to discuss it.
“Fine.” She lifted her hand in a denial of the conversation going further. “Maybe I’ll get really lucky and no one has heard about it.”
“Tey, you’re worrying too much,” he told her somberly. “The meeting will be short, an introduction, no more. Just enough to give the men watching the Taites, as well as you, something to report back to their employers. I want to know who is pulling the junkyard dogs’ chains; and how the hell they managed to get an official invitation to a Senator’s party.”
“It’s D.C.,” she reminded him. “Invitations are traded like baseball cards.”
His head inclined in agreement. “I guess we have to find the collectors then,” he told her.
“Do we have any idea who the dogs are working for yet?” She rather liked the analogy in regards to Arthur and Tenneyson.
Jordan’s lips quirked “Not even a clue. As I said, I’m hoping they’ll lead us to them after the party. If nothing else, put us a few steps closer.”
A few steps closer.
“Well-funded, well-hidden, and well-connected,” she murmured. “We won’t know who it is unless they manage to actually take me.”
He moved quickly behind her, his gaze meeting hers in the mirror.
“Let that happen, and once you’re safe, I promise you, I’ll make damned sure you regret it.”
She heard the anger in his tone and grimaced as Jordan dared her.
“I haven’t been running for all but the first five years of my life just to let them take me, Jordan.”
“Make damned sure of it,” he growled. “The last thing I need is to lose you, Tehya.”
His choice of words had her glancing in the mirror to catch his reflection. He turned away though before she could see anything, and she had the feeling it was deliberate.
“And those words coming from the man who allowed me to walk away nine months ago,” she said calmly. “Tell me, Jordan, did you even think about me before you learned my identity had been compromised?”
She couldn’t leave well enough alone, no matter how she tried.
“I didn’t lose you,” he stated coolly as he turned back to her. “I knew how to find you, Tehya.”
Her lips tightened. “Yes, all you had to do was contact Killian.”
Another thought had her turning around to face him.
“How convenient that my phone had been tampered with just before this happened,” she stated mockingly. “Perhaps we should launch our own investigation, Jordan. Into Killian Reece and whether or not he betrayed me.”
Killian hated her because Sorrel was her father. He would have no problem turning her over to Sorrel’s enemies. As far as he was concerned, blood would tell, and he had no compunction saying it to her face.
“It’s already begun,” he promised. “But that doesn’t change our present situation so stop attempting to change the subject. Are you ready for this party, Tehya? Will you be able to handle meeting the Taites?”
“No, Jordan. I’m not. But just as with anything else in the past, it doesn’t appear as though I have a fucking choice does it?” She fought to throttle her fury.
She swung away from him and stalked across the room, intending to pass him, to move into the living room, to get away from the reality of what she could never have, as well as the realization that she was moving closer to them with every second.
“I’ve never seen you like this.” He caught her arm as she would have passed him. “You’re not focused, nor are you trusting me as you used to, Tey. What happened?”
Confusion swept over her as she glared back at him.
“What do you want from me, Jordan? How else do you expect me to be? For the first time in my life, I thought I was safe, only to learn I wasn’t. My home was invaded. I’m being thrown into a situation where my entire life once again is out of my control. Should I simply be calm and collected and expect you to take care of it all?” The anger that burned inside her filled her voice now.
She couldn’t help it. She was moving too quickly into unfamiliar territory and was unable to get her bearings fast enough. It had been three days since she had lost the small measure of peace she had found, since the security she had unknowingly craved so desperately had been taken away from her.
“You’ve always trusted me to protect you.”
She was confused by the darkness in his tone now, by the glint of anger in his blue eyes.
“This has nothing to do with protection, Jordan,” she argued, desperate now to escape this conversation.
“What does it have to do with?” He questioned her rather than releasing her as she tried to jerk her arm from his grip. “Tell me, Tehya, since when do you believe I would allow anyone to dare to harm you.”
Jordan couldn’t explain why her belief in him was so damned important. Why he had been watching her for three days, probing at her trust, pushing her limits.
The night before he had broken through the reserve she had held against him where her body was concerned. That step had been imperative. Though he had no idea why. He couldn’t explain it to himself and prayed she didn’t demand explanations. It had forced her to probe those emotions. It had forced her out of that shell and placed him in a position to help her rebuild it.
She had lost too much, he couldn’t allow her to lose faith in him as well. When this was over, when the time came to rebuild her life, yet again, he didn’t want her shying away from her dreams.
That ultimate trust, from a woman to her lover, was the same trust that came with the illusion of love. And with love, there always came heartbreak. God knew he didn’t want to break her heart, but that pain was preferable, he thought, to losing the dreams of her home.
“I’ve always believed in you,” she finally answered, her eyes flashing with a vulnerability that surprised him, and a glimmer of emotion he hadn’t expected to see. Not yet. A part of him went icy cold, denial snaking through his brain.
She believed she loved him, and the ache in his chest at the knowledge of the pain that belief had brought her, that it would bring her, tightened through him. Even now he could see the grief she felt, and her fear that emotion would never be returned.
It hurt more than he had thought it would.
“I’ll protect you, Tehya,” he whispered, his free hand cupping her cheek, his thumb brushing over her lips. “In all the years we’ve worked together, I’ve never lost an agent, have I?”
“Never,” she answered, staring back at him painfully, her gaze haunted with so many hopes and fears, and the realization that dreams were just never meant to be.
He wanted nothing more than to erase the pain in her eyes. To see a smile in her gaze, to see just the smallest glimmer of happiness. In that moment, Jordan realized he would do whatever it took to give her a chance at that happiness. Even if it meant destroying the illusion of emotion she thought she felt for him.
Her lips parted against the pressure of his thumb as those incredible green eyes flashed with exactly what he wanted to see. Mixed with the vulnerability, the emotion she believed was love, he saw that moment when her heart, her brain, her senses locked into the emotion and her trust in him cemented.
For a moment, he let himself bask in that emotional heat, a response he was certain, absolutely positive, she was even fully unaware of.
And it had been achieved with an ease that indicated the depth of emotion she had felt for him before ever leaving the base in Texas.
That knowledge tightened his guts. In a split second he was hard, and filled with such remorse that it shocked him.
Just because he knew the love she thought she felt was no more than an illusion, a cruel, vicious, emotional prank, didn’t mean she would ever accept that fact. It didn’t mean she believed in it any less.
From the moment she had arrived at her home and found him there, he had pushed her toward one end. Toward the complete and total trust he needed her to feel. And now that she was there, he felt nothing but disgust for himself.
“Protect my family, too, Jordan.” A hint of steel flashed in her gaze then. The trust was there. That belief he had needed so desperately to ensure she would work with him rather than against him. But with it was also a warning. Tehya could make a formidable enemy, and if her family was harmed, that was exactly where this course would lead.
He let his lips quirk into a small smile as he forced the lie of amusement into his gaze. A lie because amusement was the last thing he felt.
Unlike his precious Tehya, he knew exactly how to lie with every cell of his body.
“Your family is completely protected,” he assured her. “I promise, I even have plans B, C, and D where their safety and protection is concerned.”
He was all about his plans. For a moment, just a moment, he wished he could be more about believing in love than about believing in reality.
To keep that regret harnessed, his head lowered and his lips brushed against hers, gently, but with a restraint that made his body tighten and ache with renewed hunger.
As her lips parted, as the fiery heat and infusion of emotion filled her kiss, Jordan wished, for the first time in too many years to count, that he too believed in love.
Tehya’s lashes drifted open as the kiss slowly eased away, her senses immersed in the pleasure of a contact that shouldn’t have had such an effect on her.
She loved him, though. The emotion she had never been able to restrain welled inside her as she stared up at him, wishing she could hold the heart of the man that held hers so easily. A man who refused to believe love could be more than an illusion.
As her lips parted to speak, a heavy knock at the bedroom door echoed through the room.
“Hey lovebirds, we have a delivery out here.” Nik chuckled in amusement.
Tehya almost swore Jordan was ready to roll his eyes.
Staring down at her, Jordan backed away slowly. “I’ll go out and talk to him.” His lips quirked in amusement. “For some reason, it bothers me that Nik would see you half-dressed, in our bedroom.”
Shocking. And Jordan didn’t often shock her.
There was the faintest hint of male possession in his tone, as though he had already laid his claim to her. As though he intended to keep her.
Tehya gave her head a hard shake as he left the room to talk to Nik, the sound of the possessiveness in his voice still rocking through her senses. How she had needed to hear that, because Jordan never felt possessive. She had never known or heard of him to be jealous of any woman.
She was checking her appearance at the mirror when Jordan stepped back inside minutes later. “Mikayla delivered the dress.” Entering the room fully he laid the ball gown over the bottom of the bed before turning back to her
His gaze was darker, less a sapphire blue, perhaps closer to a navy. As though in the moments they had been apart, some dark memory had filled his senses.
The soft, shimmering folds of the dark violet material looked like a splash of vivid excitement against the white comforter. It was just as she had envisioned it when she and Mikayla had discussed the design. Strapless, with an empire waist and yards of violet silk falling to her feet over the white silk underskirt, it was both romantic and sensual.
The bodice cupped and loved her breasts, while the rest of her curves were hinted at and teased the senses. An illusion of height was added, then given a boost by five-inch matching heels that had been delivered with the dress.
A soft, matching cape with a white silk lining, and a white clutch purse for essentials, and Tehya knew she would be drawing gazes. Thankfully, the flesh-colored bandage Jordan had somehow procured, normally used for wounded operatives on covert assignments, hid the wound on her arm.
That had been one of Jordan’s requirements for the dress, that it be eye catching. That it please his senses and arouse him. When he had seen the drawn design, his lashes had lowered, and Tehya herself had become aroused by the look of latent lust in his expression.
“We’ll be arriving a little late,” he informed her as she ran her fingers over the shimmering silk. “I prefer an hour. Tonight, entrance means everything. The invitation list went out to all the guests and we’ve already begun receiving other invitations from those my family and I are acquainted with as well as associates of the Taites. We’re here only to support Senator Stanton and his son-in-law though.”
She nodded slowly. “I understand.” His friends would wonder about her, and ask questions later, when she was no longer a part of his life.
Of course, he would be uncomfortable with that. Jordan rarely chose a lover in the position of associating with his family. She let her fingers run over the material of the dress once again. She wasn’t going to allow his reluctance to take her around his friends affect the memories she was making.
It was the thought of the Taites though that had her chest tightening.
“Tehya?”
It was her silence that had him moving closer to her, watching her expression as she lifted her gaze to meet his.
“Would they have liked me, Jordan?” she asked, her voice almost too soft to hear, her expression so vulnerable, so filled with a hunger to belong that he wanted to kill Sorrel himself. She was so damned beautiful, kind, compassionate. Any family would be proud of her
.
“Tehya, they wouldn’t be able to help themselves.” It was in that moment that he knew he was in serious trouble where those unnamed emotions for her were involved. They rose like a tidal wave inside him and threatened to swamp his normal good sense.
His arms went around her, drawing her close to him as he suddenly realized all the emotions she had hidden through the years. She had kept to herself, staying in her suite as he had done when there was no work to bury himself in.
She had fought for the same distance he had, and for similar reasons. Because the pain was too intense when the illusions were ripped away. Or, in her case, when she lost those she loved.
He should have never allowed her to hide in such a way, Jordan admitted.
“It’s too late,” she whispered against his chest, her fingers curling against his shirt to hold on to him. “It’s just too late.”
It was too late to go home. Too late to be a part of a family that would never understand the woman reality had shaped. And in a way, Jordan agreed with her. Unless they had an idea of the world that had created her, then they would never be comfortable around her.
“Perhaps you can never go home,” he whispered. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t forge your own place, as Teylor Johnson.” Easing back, he stared down at her once again. “You don’t have to admit to your familial ties, Tehya, to be a part of a family. All you have to do is be willing to be a friend.”
She would be an asset to any friend or family she chose, he thought. The honesty and compassion that was so much a part of her would always draw others to her, like a moth to a flame.
As she drew him. There were days he wondered if he would ever escaped the tangled web of emotion he knew she would wrap around him if she could.
Love. Hell, that illusion was stronger, was more than he was and he knew it.
Finally she gave a short, sharp nod before turning and heading to the bed where her dress was laid out.
Letting her go was the hardest thing he had ever done. He wanted nothing more than to hold her. And to give her the one thing he swore he’d never give anyone. The illusion he suddenly wished he could convince himself of.