by Calista Fox
“Because you’re convinced I’ll like it there.”
“You have highly specialized training. A brilliant skill set. It’s fantastic for field work, I’m not going to lie about that or even dissuade you from that purpose, as part of your career. Much as I’d like to…”
“You feel as though I put myself in unnecessary danger.”
“I’m not going to call it unnecessary. What you do is crucial. It’s a vital function relative to search and rescue. It’s bold and it’s brave, and I fully admire and respect you—and your friends—for what you’re willing to do. But do I like it? No. Not in the least. Not when I happen to know you were in the stairwell of a hotel that was about to be blown to bits at any moment. With you inside.”
“We’ve discussed this,” she reminded him. “You can’t claim it’s not acceptable for me to be in hazardous situations when you willingly put yourself in them as well.”
“An impasse we can’t breach?” he quietly asked with a crooked brow.
Nikki drew in a deep breath. Let it out slowly. “You know I can help your mother and Mads. It’s not the reason you brought me here. I think I’m here because it’s currently the safest place for me while terrorists want my computer and also might consider I’m a part of yours and Garcia’s organization—the very reason I ended up with the information in the first place.”
“Are you hinting at fate playing a hand in us meeting?”
“Are you going to be quick to deny it?”
“I’m not that strong of a believer in the cosmos.”
“A day ago, I would have said the same. Otherwise, a love as strong as mine and Conner’s would not have been destroyed.”
“Ah, but, Nikki…” Damen’s fingers whisked through her hair as he continued to gaze at her. “It hasn’t been destroyed. It never could be. Separation by death does not end love.”
Her gaze narrowed. “If you truly affirm that, you wouldn’t be obsessed with whether or not I like the QTango med facilities. You wouldn’t be trying to get me to consider a safer approach to my work. Correct?”
His jaw clenched.
She clearly had him on this one.
But then he shifted away and swung his long, powerful legs over the side of the bed. He leapt to his feet and stalked out of the room. Only to return a minute later, wearing boxer-briefs.
She sighed. And frowned.
“I happen to prefer all the nakedness,” she commented.
He didn’t grin. Alarming her. Because even when they were locked in a heated discussion, one quip from her could turn it all around. Not this time.
As he returned to the bed, she noted he had her laptop in hand. He thrust it toward her.
Now, she was thoroughly confused.
“You need this in order to pass the intel onto an ops-approved drive, right?”
“Yes. Once that’s done, you can have your laptop back. However…” His expression turned grim and his eyes deepened in color. Deepened with torment.
“Damen…?” she tentatively asked. Instantly fearing the worst… Though she didn’t know, precisely, what that was.
He told her, “I’m certain I’m capable of offloading the information. What I’m not sure about, Nikki, is what it’ll do to your internal hard drive. As in… Whether or not it will wipe it out. As in… Whether or not it will corrupt or…erase…every piece of data on this machine.”
She stared up at him.
Her heart lurched into her throat.
Her breaths stopped as she gaped.
The torment reflected in his eyes and his suddenly bunched muscles was solely related to causing her excruciating pain.
He confessed, “I can’t guarantee every piece of Conner that you’ve preserved on this laptop will be intact when I’m done.”
Oh, my God.
“But, Nikki… That doesn’t wipe out what you had with Conner. Am I right?”
“I—” She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think.
Hell… She might not ever breathe again.
21
She stared at Damen as though he’d just spoken to her in Slovakian, which she’d already told him was one language she didn’t know. He could teach her. Though…that was neither here nor there at present.
He’d just delivered the ultimate blow to her—and the piece of this puzzle that had been eating at his soul like a piranha all this time.
He propped his hands on his hips as she held the laptop in her palms. And inevitably, mentally, ran through a litany of swear words or some other rant of epic proportions he was certain she was desperate to unleash on him.
He reminded her, “No one else lives in this wing. No one will hear you when you unload on me.”
Tears filled her eyes.
That shredded him even more.
“Nikki,” he quietly said. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“But you knew it was a risk,” she countered, not missing a beat. “All this time, you suspected it was…more likely than not that all of my files would be erased.”
“I can’t say for sure,” he asserted, and now raised his hands in the air, in surrender. “I didn’t know the tracking device would work in reverse, pinpointing your computer once the download was completed. I do believe that with the machine off, it’s effectively deactivated. The lack of an alarm continuing to wail is a good indication.”
“That’s one of the reasons you think we’re safe here? They aren’t tracking the device at the moment?”
“Not until I boot the computer back up. On the ops campus.”
Her eyes squeezed shut.
His gut wrenched.
“I’ll have IT specialists with me when I do. Some of the absolute best in the business. I’ll explain it’s mission-critical to preserve all of your files. They will do everything they can to ensure it. I will do everything in my power—”
“Why are you giving this back to me now?” she quietly insisted. “I can’t do anything with it. You’ve just ascertained that if I start it up in order to check my folders, I’ll trip the tracking device. Leading the bad guys here. To us. To this safe place where your mother and your niece reside. Where they sleep at night.”
He swallowed down a hard lump.
Her eyelids fluttered open and she continued. “You also still need the computer in order to transfer the data. So.” She stretched her arms toward him. “Handing this to me isn’t an olive branch, Damen. And there’s no sense in testing me. You already know I won’t do anything that puts our lives—and others’ lives—in grave danger.”
He took the computer from her and returned it to her laptop bag.
Then he stood alongside the bed again, genuinely shocked she hadn’t climbed out of it.
Raking a hand through his hair, he said, “I have no intention of—”
“This is what you meant when you indicated Conner might come between us. Not just by way of the memories in my head and in my heart, but… Because you knew the possibility existed that what would be given back to me at the end of this misadventure was a worthless piece of technology I might as well toss in the trash.”
“Again, I don’t know for sure—”
“But you can’t guarantee anything, either,” she countered.
“No. I can’t.”
She pulled in a long, quavering breath. The slight rasping sound nearly gutted him.
Damen wanted to blame Garcia for going to this extreme, for using Nikki and her computer to carry intel they needed.
But it wasn’t just Garcia’s fault.
Nikki had taken a fierce interest in Damen at the hospital, and vice versa, and that was why Garcia had planted the device in Dr. Nikki Kane’s computer.
All roads were supposed to lead them here.
And they had.
Only…the intent had been meant as a physical metaphor, not a romantically doomed one.
“Nikki, I’m not trying to hurt you in any way. This wasn’t my game plan, but it is my operation, so I have to take responsibility for a
ll the moving parts…and the end result.” He gave an agitated shake of his head as he added, “I can’t even rely on or hope for a desired result. I have to see this through to the benefit of the government and the people who can use this intel to stop terrorists.”
“That’s not fair,” she softly said.
He eyed her quizzically.
She told him, “You get diplomatic immunity of a different sort, because you can sincerely stand there and tell me that you’re shattering my life in order to save others’.”
“Yes.”
“And the really shitty thing about that, Damen,” she said as she pulled in another shaky breath and tears tumbled down her cheeks, “is that I have to forgive you. I have to be completely selfless here and accept that you’ve destroyed something that means so much to me…for the sake of the greater good.”
“Yes.”
His gaze did not waver.
What the hell else was he going to say or do? He could neither refute nor deny her truth.
It was an absolute.
They were both absolutely fucked.
He rubbed his set jaw with his finger and thumb, wishing more than anything he could come up with some rationale or some alternative or some simple fucking answer that would solve their problem. That would appease her and yet still allow him to get the job done.
He had nothing to even grasp at, though.
Other than to feebly say, “I promise, we will take great care with your computer.”
“I would have given it to you, to Garcia,” she told him. “I would have gotten involved if it meant helping people, because that’s what I do, Damen. In times of crises, no matter how dangerous. All you had to do was let me backup my files. Let me remove them. You could have had the fucking computer.”
She tossed off the blankets and stood, the bed between them. Another barrier.
“You never should have been involved in the first place, Nik.”
“Don’t call me that,” she retorted. “You do not have the right to call me that,” she suddenly averred, as more tears spilled.
“The fear I just shared with you does not change what’s happened between us.” His gaze narrowed on her, daring her to say otherwise.
When she only gaped, he continued.
“You knew the computer was in my possession and it was going to stay there until I was satisfied with the offloading of intel. And yet you willingly—”
“Do not stoop,” she warned between clenched teeth.
He did. “You willingly joined me in my bed.”
“You are such an asshole!” she yelled.
Piercing him straight through the heart.
But he’d known this was coming.
How could he not?
22
Nikki had been over a barrel a time or two before. Caught in a sticky situation, between a rock and hard place…all of that and more.
And yet…never like this.
She was used to high stakes. Of course, she was also accustomed to primarily knowing them upfront so that she could make educated guesses, smart moves, strategic plans.
But every twist and turn with Damen left her reeling. Left her helpless. Left her dangling by a thread.
Worse…it was more like that freefall feeling wrapped around sheer terror, which she’d experienced that day Conner’s helicopter had fallen from the sky.
She’d had no control over that.
She had no control over this.
And yet it was still so different.
Yes, she would attest and accept that Damen was doing what Damen had to do. As Conner had done. And Damen was acting to the best of his ability without knowing all the variables. Same with Conner. Wind shifts and downdrafts and engine failure were not something easily contended with when one was in the air. Nor was someone else operating secretively/duplicitously or people shooting up an SUV or…
Her eyes squeezed shut once more.
Her fists balled at her sides.
She’d never blamed Conner for what had happened to him.
She couldn’t reasonably blame Damen for all that had transpired between them. Not just the hazardous situation or the confiscation of her computer, but also the fact that, as he’d stated, yes…she willingly had joined him in his bed.
Hell, she’d done so much more than that.
“Nikki.”
That one word was spoken softly; however, it echoed around her and reverberated deep within her.
He was remorseful. Full of regret.
She not only heard it in his voice, but she felt it, deep in her soul.
That didn’t keep the fury from ripping through her.
And it sure as hell didn’t keep her from wanting to cry a river over all she’d potentially lost. Again.
“I can handle whatever is going through your mind right now,” he very carefully prompted her. “You don’t have to keep it all contained, keep it inside. You can scream at me. You can throw things, break things, tear through this room from one corner to the other. You won’t disturb anyone.”
Her stomach coiled.
He was too perfect, even when she was furious with him.
Damen was just as mired in this bleak reality as she was and yet his biggest concern was how she responded to it. He was willing to shoulder the blame, take the brunt of her angst and pain, despite how it wrecked him.
And Nikki had no doubt all of this wrecked him.
Because he’d been incredibly forthcoming from the onset about his attraction to her, his growing feelings, everything.
She wasn’t just here with him, at his estate, because it was the safest place for her. She had no doubt there was a sanctuary on the ops campus or some other location that would ensure no one got to her. She wasn’t just in his bedroom because there were no others available.
And he wasn’t going through hell right along with her because she was a mere pawn in this game.
She was so much more than that.
To him.
“Goddamn it,” she murmured.
He was equally tormented.
And that broke her heart further.
As her eyelids drifted open, she pinned him with a solemn, misty-eyed look, and said, “I don’t know how to be locked in hell with you, Damen.” She drew in a deep breath. Let it out slowly. “Nor do I know how to escape it.”
He understood her words. And the tension gripping her.
It radiated through him as well.
Damen dragged a hand down his face. Shifted it around to his nape and rubbed the knot there.
This was all kinds of bad and wrong.
But it wasn’t a new scenario for him. He’d been contemplating how to handle this situation from the moment it’d struck him that the device could compromise her computer.
He returned her intent look, saying, “We can’t do anything at the moment, Nikki. Not for a few hours, at any rate. The best we can do is get some rest.”
“You really think I can sleep?” she challenged. “My mind is whirling, I need to pace and… I think I fucking need a Xanax. Which I have not taken since Conner’s death.”
His teeth clenched.
Fuck, he was twisting the knife so deeply into her—and it plunged deeper into him as well.
He offered, “How about some brandy, instead?”
“That’s much too civilized.” And the hard glint in her eyes backed up her statement. She was pissed beyond all belief, in addition to being shredded.
“Tequila? Jack Daniels?”
“Definitely whisky.”
With a sharp nod, he spun around and headed to the wet bar. He splashed the amber liquid into two tumblers, then returned to the bed, where she still stood.
He took advantage of his long reach to hand over her glass without having to get too close to her. Necessary for two reasons. One, he wouldn’t put it past her to slug him in the gut. And he’d deserve it. Two, he wouldn’t put it past himself to grab her around the waist and pull her to him.
He wanted t
o hold her. More than he wanted his next breath.
He’d have to settle for the burn of alcohol down his throat, instead.
She took a sip, then murmured, “How did this get so damn complicated?”
“We took an unexpected liking to each other.” Even as he spoke the words, he grimaced. That statement hardly covered what was really going on between them. Rather… “It’s so much more than that. So much more than a surface attraction or sexual chemistry. We’re wrapped up in each other, Nikki. Admit it.”
“What good will that do?” she countered. “Please, Damen… Tell me.”
23
Damen drained his glass. Waited for her to do the same. Then he gave them each a beverage refresh, taking his time, buying them some time.
She was agitated and confused, and he was wise enough—compassionate enough—to give her wide berth. To not crowd her, not press her.
And to very particularly not state some obvious notions that lingered on the tip of his tongue.
Such as the fact that she had to have known all along, the way he had, that the hijacking of her computer could lead to the corruption of her personal data.
He didn’t believe the suspicion, the regret, he’d expressed was a newsflash to her.
Chances were good, however, she’d been in denial this whole time. Wishing and hoping for the best. Resistant to contemplating any other outcome.
She’d confessed to working with desired results in her profession, so it was entirely possible she’d mentally contended what her desired result was when it came to her laptop—that it’d remain fully intact. And she’d not allowed any other alternate ending to enter her mind.
The power of suggestion.
This concept aggravated him further, because if it was one she truly was operating under, then he’d just shot to hell her positive affirmation.
Planted doubt in her mind.
Tainted her optimistic view.
“Goddamn it,” he murmured as he twisted the cap back on the whisky bottle.