by Paula Graves
“Grief sex?”
“Partially, yeah.” He tipped her chin up, making her look at him. “You know that was part of it.”
She nodded. “But not all of it.”
He laid his head back on the pillow. “No, not all of it.”
“You were playing with fire, assigning yourself to play my lover.” She hadn’t understood at first what drove him all those years ago. She’d been shocked when he’d told her his plans, confused and worried that he didn’t think she was capable of doing the job without his direct supervision.
But that night in snowy West Virginia, when he’d seduced her with masterful skill and determination, she’d begun to understand that he was anything but indifferent to her. That his reserve, those moments when he’d seemed determined to keep his distance, had been more about preserving his own control than any lack of attraction to her.
“I spent so much time trying to make you react to me. I almost couldn’t believe it when you did.”
“I worked damned hard not to react to you.” He brushed a lock of her hair back, giving him a better look at her face in the dim morning light. “I didn’t want you to keep getting away with your femme-fatale act.”
She blushed at the memory. “I did lay it on a little thick.”
Propping his head on his hand, he used the other hand to draw maddening circles along the ridge of her collarbone. “You knew you were attractive, and you used it as a bludgeon.”
“Bludgeon?” She shot him a look. “Rapier, maybe.”
“Felt like a bludgeon,” he said with a slight smile. “Right between my eyes. You had most of the agents in our section salivating to be near you.”
“I couldn’t be the smartest or the strongest or the most experienced,” she murmured. “But I could be the sexiest.”
“That you were.” His fingertips lingered along the tendon in the side of her neck. “But you were stronger and smarter than you believed.”
“I was so attracted to you,” she confessed. “And you didn’t give me anything to work with.”
“I wasn’t going to be handled by a green agent, no matter how sexy she was.” He caught her hand, drawing her knuckles to his lips. “And I wanted you to be careful. People in bureaucracies talk. And a few exaggerated stories could ruin an agent’s chances of reaching the top.”
“You were protecting my virtue?” She shot him another look.
“Your reputation, maybe.” He sounded unapologetic. “I knew you didn’t sleep your way onto the task force, because I know the good work you did to get there. But there were plenty of jealous agents who’d have been happy to spread rumors that could knock you back down the ladder where they thought you belonged.”
“And then you slept with me, and all that concern went out the window?” she teased.
“No. Not out the window. It seemed more important than ever to protect your professional reputation.”
“Is that why you cut me off completely?”
He rolled over onto his back again, gazing up at the ceiling. “No.”
She rolled on her back as well, closing her eyes. “I didn’t think so.”
“A relationship with you couldn’t happen. Not with both of us on the task force. One of us would have had to leave, and I didn’t want that to happen. I valued your work too much to send you to another section, and I had no intention of asking for a transfer for myself.”
“And then I resigned from the FBI and ruined all your plans.”
“Yeah. I really didn’t anticipate that happening.”
“Because you thought you had it all under control.” She turned to look at him again. Rosy dawn light seeped through the narrow gap in the curtains, falling across his profile. He was really a beautiful man, she thought, admiring the straight line of his nose, the firm curve of his mouth, the shadowy contours of his lean cheeks and cleft chin beneath the beard’s shadow. A beautiful, frustrating man. “You can’t control everything in your life. Especially other people.”
“As I’ve learned the hard way.” His voice was a low grumble.
“Would you have done things differently if you’d known how it would turn out?”
He turned his head, meeting her gaze. “Back then? No. I wouldn’t have. I wasn’t going to leave my position with the task force, and I wouldn’t have tried to have a secret relationship with you. It would have been too dangerous and you’d have been the one who got hurt the most, not me.”
“Altruistic of you.”
“No. I was thinking of my own career as well.”
“What about now?”
“I don’t know,” he answered after a brief pause. “My life is out of control, and I don’t know if or when I’ll ever get back all the things I’ve lost in the past few months.”
“You will. We’re going to find the truth, and you’ll be cleared.”
“Maybe. Probably, now that you’re on my side.” He touched her face briefly, then dropped his hand back to his side. “But I have no idea what happens after that.”
“I don’t know, either.” She smiled a little sheepishly. “Considering how much I used to hate even thinking about Smoky Ridge, I can barely believe I’ve returned to the mountains voluntarily. But I did, and I intend to stay. My brother’s there, and he’s finally made the changes to his life that I’ve been wanting for so long. My mom’s trying, God bless her, to stop drinking and make a little something of her life, too. She’s still young enough to have some good years left if she can make it this time. I can’t walk away from that, not to go back to D.C. and that life. It’s not what I want anymore. I’m not sure now it ever really was.”
“So we’re at an impasse, then, aren’t we?”
“I guess we are.” She looked away, afraid the tears suddenly stinging the backs of her eyes might spill. She’d already cried in front of Brand once. She didn’t want to do it again.
She didn’t even know why she felt like crying. She’d known, eight years ago, that things would never work out between her and Brand. Relationships were difficult in the best of circumstances, and Delilah knew her own past had scarred her to the point that having a long-term, healthy relationship was probably never going to happen for her. She’d grown up in the heart of dysfunction, in the poverty and desperation of life on Smoky Ridge. People from Smoky Ridge didn’t get happily ever afters. Another manifestation of the Smoky Ridge curse.
Of course, she’d thought her brother was an even worse prospect for happily ever after, but he and Rachel were showing all the signs of two people who fully intended to give wedding bells and gold bands a chance.
And her old pal Sutton Calhoun, the most confirmed bachelor she knew, had recently asked Bitterwood police detective Ivy Hawkins to marry him. Of course, Ivy had said yes—the scrappy little hillbilly had been in love with Sutton since they were all kids.
So, okay, maybe the Smoky Ridge curse wasn’t as all-encompassing as she’d thought. But it didn’t mean she was going to be one of the lucky few who evaded its effects. So far her track record was pretty bad.
“Hammond?”
She blinked back the last sting of tears and answered. “Yeah?”
“How sure are you that Nolan Cavanaugh can be trusted?”
“Evie trusts him, and she’s pretty levelheaded.”
“I didn’t ask how sure Evie Cooper was. I asked how sure you are.”
She rolled to her side again to look at him. He still lay relaxed on his back, but his face was turned toward her, and his gaze was serious. “I don’t know him well enough to be certain of anything.”
He gave a slow nod. “Let’s get dressed and get out of here.”
She frowned as he sat up and reached for the clothes he’d discarded earlier. “You think he’s got a way to locate us? How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe
there’s some way to pinpoint an IP address through that chat room. I’m not technologically savvy enough to know for sure. But if we’re wrong, and he’s working with the hacktivists and not against them, it won’t be hard to pinpoint this motel’s IP address and figure out where we are.”
She forced herself up from the bed. “I’m not leaving here without a shower.”
“Agreed.” He dropped the clothes on the bed without putting them on and headed for the bathroom. He stopped in the door. “You coming?”
She stared back at him. “You want us to shower together?”
“Faster that way.” His eyebrows notched up. “Can’t handle it, Hammond?”
Jutting her chin, she strode across the room, trying to forget that she was stark naked and about eight years older than the last time she’d bared her body to him. “We’ll see who can’t handle it, big guy.”
His eyes gleamed with masculine appreciation as she joined him in the shower, making her glad she’d stuck to a regular workout routine in the Cooper Security gym.
Though it was a struggle, she managed to keep her mind on the need for speed rather than how bloody amazing Brand’s slick, naked body looked for a man in his forties. She checked his wound while they showered, pleased and relieved to see that it was healing at a fast clip. He’d managed to avoid a major infection, which was a minor miracle, and when she helped him bandage it later while they were dressing, he admitted it barely hurt at all anymore.
“You must keep yourself in good shape,” she murmured as she patted down the last piece of tape.
He gave her a warm, appreciative look. “So do you.”
She gave him a warning look. “If you want me to stay focused on the danger we’re in, stop trying to distract me.”
“I’ll drive. I’ve had more sleep than you have.” He pulled on his shirt and topped it with a thick leather jacket he’d stashed in the backpack they’d dug up from the woods near Hungry Mother State Park.
“Where are we off to next?”
“There’s a cabin south of Abingdon, about halfway between there and Travisville. It belonged to Liz, but it’s registered under her grandmother’s name. It’s not likely anyone outside her immediate family would know about it, and Liz was the only one who ever used it.”
Delilah felt a flutter of jealousy. “You and she went there together?”
“Only once. And it was after we broke things off. We just stopped there to pick up some things she wanted to take back to her apartment.”
“Oh.”
He touched her face. “A little jealous?”
“No.” At his skeptical look, she grimaced. “Okay, yes. A little. But I’ll get over it.”
He gave her cheek one more stroke, then turned to finish packing. She already had her duffel bag packed and ready to go, so they took a final look around the room to make sure they’d forgotten nothing and headed out to the Camaro. While she stashed their things in the back, he went to the motel’s front office and settled up the bill with the night clerk.
“What did you tell him about why we’re leaving early?” she asked when he slid behind the wheel of the Camaro.
“Family emergency.” He slanted a look at her that made her toes curl. Of course, she had a feeling he could have made a silly face at her and her toes would have curled. She’d completely lost control of her emotions where Brand was concerned.
There was no way any of this could end well, even if they managed to catch Cortland red-handed with his finger in every cookie jar in the Appalachian Mountains.
“I’ve been thinking about what to do next,” she said a few minutes later, after they’d headed west on I-81, toward Abingdon.
Brand glanced away from the road. “Yeah?”
“I think I need to approach him directly.”
“No.”
“Hear me out.”
“No,” Brand said more vehemently. “I wouldn’t have sent you for a face-to-face if we were still in the FBI, and I sure as hell won’t do it without any backup at all.”
“Listen, Brand—he wants to get his hands on you. Either to turn you in to the FBI or, more likely, to get rid of you himself so you’ll stop being such a damned nuisance. I can give him what he wants. I can give him you.”
Brand shot another look her way. “How?”
“Well, I won’t really give him you, obviously, but Cortland doesn’t have to know that. I have a history with you—a troubled one—and you know what they say about hell’s fury and women scorned.”
He was silent for a moment before he murmured, “Go on.”
“I contact Cortland. Set up a meeting—I know where you are and I’m ready to turn you in.”
“Why would you turn me in after you’ve been helping me?”
“Because once again, you slept with me and then dumped me after you had your way. I was foolish enough to think that this time you’d changed. That you were sincere about wanting to be with me.”
Brand grimaced.
“Now I want revenge.”
He slanted a quick look at her. “Do you?”
“What?”
“Want revenge?”
He was serious, she realized. She turned in the seat to face him. “Brand, I know things are complicated, and I went into this situation with both eyes open. If I live to regret it, it won’t be your fault. It’ll be mine.”
“I don’t want you to regret it.”
“Maybe I won’t.” She didn’t sound confident, even to her own ears, but Brand didn’t comment.
A few moments later, he said, “You can’t trust Cortland. There’s no way to be certain he won’t kill you on sight.”
“But I’ll be offering him something he wants a lot worse than killing me,” she argued. “He’ll hear me out.”
“And then what?”
“I’ll be wired.”
“No.” He shook his head. “That’ll be the first thing he looks for.”
“We can set up something really high-tech. We know the stuff to get. Maybe a button mike with a remote receiver. He’d never spot it.”
“This is my mess, Delilah, not yours.”
She stared at him, frustrated. “You called me Delilah.”
“It’s your name.”
“You only call me Delilah when you’re putting your foot down.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m a trained agent. I’m way more trained than I was eight years ago when I was working with you.” She leaned toward him, catching a whiff of the shower gel they’d used just an hour earlier. It reminded her of how they’d spent the evening, how it had felt to be in his arms again, after all this time. The feel of him surging inside her, as relentless as the tide, and how much harder it was going to be to let him go again after allowing herself a taste of what she’d lost before.
What she was suggesting would bring an end to their time together, one way or another. While part of her wondered why she was in a hurry to bring that end about, the other part knew, with grim certainty, that there’d be pain no matter when things ended. Better, perhaps, to end their ill-fated reunion quickly and get on with the bleeding.
Time was running out. Brand couldn’t stay on the run forever, and she had a new job waiting for her in Bitterwood. Her mother was in the middle of another attempt to dry out and change her life, and Delilah should be there for her instead of chasing around the countryside with Brand.
“I’m going to do it, with or without you,” she said bluntly, her tone designed to allow no further argument. “I’d rather have you at my back, but that’s up to you.”
Brand’s mouth flattened to a thin line, and she could see in the tense set of his muscles that he was furious with her ultimatum. But she knew he’d never leave her to handle the confrontation alone. If there wa
s one thing she could depend on, it was that Adam Brand would never leave a man—or woman—in the field to fend for herself.
“I’m in,” he said.
She smiled. “Never doubted it for a moment.”
Chapter Fourteen
Perspiration glistened on Delilah’s bare skin, giving her an ethereal glow in the warm light of breaking dawn. She had always been a beautiful creature, but age had given her beauty depth. She looked like a goddess, Brand thought, watching her breasts rise and fall as she struggled to regain her breath. A glowing, glorious goddess.
He felt boneless himself, utterly sated by their lovemaking. It had been a long time since he’d been willing—or able—to set aside pressing worries in favor of slaking his desire, but Delilah had always brought out that need in him. He’d thought it dangerous to be so vulnerable to someone with the power to derail his focus, but in this moment, his body still trembling with pleasure, he realized her effect on him was a treasure.
Being with her had given him a sense of peace, a feeling of hope at a moment when he’d begun to fear there was no way out of the mess he was in. Just as their one night together eight years ago had given him hope after the loss of one of his best agents had made him doubt his ability to continue sending men and women into danger when there was no way to be certain they’d come back alive.
How was he supposed to let her go again when all this was over?
Delilah rolled over and propped her head on her hand, smiling at him like a kitten that had just discovered a jug of cream. “That was worth delaying sleep for.”
“You may not think so later today when we’re trying to stay awake long enough to set up our sting.”
She ran her hand down his chest, her fingers tangling in his hair. “I don’t think so.”
He caught her hand, entwining his fingers with hers. “You know, we could just forget all about that and keep doing this all day.”
“Wicked man.” She bent and kissed him, a slow, deep, wet kiss that sparked a fire low in his belly. She pulled away, breathless. “We agreed about this plan.”