She sent him a sidelong glance and fiddled with the Glock in her lap. “I already told you. I don’t want to owe you.”
That was amusing. What world did she live in where she thought this one act of reasonableness repaid him for all the crimes she’d accused him of, as well as abandoning him in the middle of the ocean? “And you think we’re even now?”
“To my way of thinking.”
He glanced over his shoulder to the backseat. At least his bag was there where he’d left it. Even still... “I believe we’ve proven that your way of thinking isn’t getting you very far.”
She rubbed her lips together and concentrated on the road, her brows furrowed as if she was contemplating the best retort. With a twitch of her head to get her hair out of her face, she looked at him again, frowning this time. “Touché.”
Wow. A concession without a fight? He stemmed the urge to point it out. “Turn right at the next intersection. Time to pay a visit to a friend of mine.” And see if his old buddy Eugene had any leads for John regarding Rory. He also figured that The Salty Parrot, Eugene’s bar, was a good place to part ways with Alicia because it was off the radar enough that he was reasonably sure she wouldn’t be ambushed by the Feds, the military or the police as soon as he left.
“Is that really the best idea? Shouldn’t we stay mobile?”
He wasn’t sure where the we came in, because Alicia had made it crystal clear that when she found Rory, she was going to kill him. Being that Rory getting killed was exactly the opposite of what John needed to have happen, any kind of we was out of the question.
“Did you have a lead on Rory before Logan caught up with you?” he asked.
Her gaze scanned the horizon, like talking about Rory might conjure him from the thick foliage carpeting the hills they drove through. “You expect me to trust you now? How do I know you weren’t trying to help Rory escape on St. Thomas?”
Really, after he risked his neck to rescue her from Logan, this is what she came back with? “On my honor, Phoenix. I’m not your enemy.”
“And here I thought you and Rory had proven your concept of honor was more about honor among thieves.”
He almost commanded her to stop the car and get out. This close. Because honor was all John had left and he didn’t take it lightly. He also wasn’t a huge fan of insinuations that he was a traitor and attempted murderer. He was sensitive like that. “If you’re still convinced I’m guilty of helping Rory try to kill you, then why are you in this car with me? Why did you come get me at the rum distillery? Why did you think you owed me in the first place if I’m such a villain?”
Her complexion went pink. “You saved me from McCaffrey. I saved you from McCaffrey. Now we’re even. End of story.”
End of story was right. As soon as they got to The Salty Parrot, it was time for them to go their separate ways again.
A tense silence settled in the car. Not just because she’d insulted his honor or the hard truth that they were now wanted criminals being pursued by the Feds, but because this was the first time he’d been in close confines with her since the night before Alicia was shot during the RioBank operation that Rory had sabotaged.
He aimed his face toward the open window and tried not to think about her. He tried not to think about that last night together, though he’d replayed it in his head almost daily ever since.
He directed her in a roundabout way past the airport that didn’t involve any major thoroughfares, and finally drew a full breath once they’d passed Christiansted and were only a mile or so away from Teague Bay—a favorite mooring location for live-aboard boaters who called the ocean their backyard and spent their lives island hopping as the mood suited them. It was a tight-knit community of which John wasn’t a member, but his time in the army had taught him that the number one rule of intel gathering was to make friends with the people who were the eyes and ears of a locale. Such as Eugene.
Knowing that his time alone with Alicia Troy was almost over, and against his better judgment, he turned his head ever so slightly and took a long, careful look at her from his periphery.
Her body was as strong and lithe as ever, her face and hair still the most beautiful he’d ever seen. What had she done with her life since her rehabilitation was complete? What had she given up to seek her revenge—a new boyfriend, a house, a job? All he knew from Logan’s updates was that she’d quit ICE when they’d put her on disability and that she was back in Phoenix, where she’d grown up, and living a quiet civilian life there.
Bitterness contorted his mouth. Of course, since all that information had come from Logan it was probably a lie. Suppressing the desire to ask her about her life, he directed her to cruise past the entrance to Eugene’s bar.
“The Salty Parrot?” She didn’t sound impressed.
“They have excellent rum.”
The Salty Parrot, in all its kitschy pirate-themed glory, sat toward the mouth of the bay and looked in the direction of Christiansted. Instead of a door, the bar boasted an automatic garage door exactly like those used in home garages. Eugene said it was the bar’s secret weapon to stay standing during hurricanes, which were an unenviable fact of life in the islands. It was fully retracted today, allowing a loud, merry ribbon of ragtime jazz that Eugene listened to when the bar was free of patrons to flow freely over the water.
“How do you know the bar owner won’t give us up to the police?”
“I told you, he’s a friend of mine. And even if he weren’t my friend, there’s an unspoken rule in the islands that says he won’t. Restaurant and shop owners don’t bring heat down on their establishments because it scares away the tourists. And tourists are what keep the flow of cash going in the Caribbean. So, no, Eugene wouldn’t tell.”
After confirming that the place was quiet, with no authorities lurking nearby, they parked the car in a crowded apartment carport several long blocks away, then crept in alert silence to The Salty Parrot’s rear entrance.
Before Alicia could open the bar’s back door, John put himself in her path. “Had you met Logan McCaffrey before today?”
A nasty-looking bruise on her left arm in the shape of a handprint caught his eye. Anger boiling inside him all over again at Logan’s betrayal and mistreatment of Alicia, he curled his hand into a fist before he could indulge in the urge to touch her.
“No. Never heard of him,” she said.
John wasn’t surprised. She’d been recruited for the CIA straight out of high school and from there had been recruited to join the ICE black ops unit John and Rory had joined several years later, which had been formed by the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 to look out for U.S. interests in the global theater. They wanted a black ops team to handle the finesse, under-the-radar jobs. It was a worthy line of work, and John had been honored to be a part of it.
He was a true patriot—he wouldn’t have risked his life over and over again for it otherwise—but for him, the military and ICE had been more about brotherhood with his fellow soldiers, with Rory in particular, and then with Ryan, Diego and Alicia. It was why their lack of faith in him had hurt so much.
Alicia was the one and only woman he’d ever worked with who he’d had an intimate relationship with. He wasn’t the kind of douchey guy who checked out his female coworkers as if they were sex objects or something low like that. But the first time he and Rory were introduced to Diego, Ryan and Alicia in a tactical planning room at the ICE attaché office in Panama, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He remembered thinking, “Me being on this black ops crew isn’t going to work.” Because how could he ever concentrate while working with the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen?
It hadn’t taken long for him to figure out she was so much more than that. She was a genius. Smarts-wise and tactically, she was one of the most well-rounded operatives he’d ever worked with. She’d made him look forward to g
etting out of bed each morning. Watching her work, fighting alongside her, making love with her every chance they got had been the two best years of his life.
“You said McCaffrey recruited you?” she asked.
He took a deep breath, swapping the memory of her and how they used to be together for a different set of bitter memories, those of him and Rory as blood brothers. “Yes, Rory and me. We’d just come out of a tough deployment in Afghanistan looking like heroes, setting records with number of kills and towns reclaimed for U.S. control, so we were in the spotlight, which I guess is how we caught Logan’s eye.
“Rory and I had to unlearn a lot of army thinking that differed from black ops, and there were a lot of laws and regulations we hadn’t needed to know before. After Logan showed us the ropes, we were assigned a black ops handler and were placed with you, Ryan and Diego.”
The story he’d been told at the time was that their crew’s last solo sniper had burned out fast and returned to his old job with the FBI, so the idea of a sniper team had appealed to the team’s leader, Diego.
“How did you find me with Logan’s crew?”
“I saw Rory’s boat in the bay. Then I saw you get in the van with Logan.” Shaking his head, he brushed the handprint bruise on her arm with his fingertip. “I’d assumed you were working with him. But he hurt you.”
She moved her arm away from his touch. “I was the one who engaged him in hand-to-hand combat, and I got plenty of hits in on him. It was an even matchup.”
Testy, testy. Whenever she got like that, as if she had to prove her strength and skills were equal to or better than others’, his imagination always brought forth an image of what she must have looked like as a blond-pigtailed child, asserting her stubborn independence, determined even back then to do everything on her own.
“Then how did you end up cuffed and at gunpoint?”
“I had the upper hand until the rest of his crew showed up.”
He rubbed his chin. “His crew. That was news to me. Logan had never mentioned he was running his own black ops unit.”
“We’re being hunted by our replacements, of all the warped ironies.”
He huffed. “The universe has a wicked sense of humor.”
“Tell me about it. Here we are, together—and you’re the last person I ever wanted to see again.”
“Don’t be shy. Tell me how you really feel.”
“You should’ve walked away when Logan gave you the chance. No, let me start over—you should have never interfered in my business in the first place. Now Rory’s on the loose and you and I are both wanted criminals.”
He turned and faced her. “Is that your way of saying thanks for saving you? Because you suck at it.”
“You’re such a fool.”
Without thinking about it beyond how ticked off she made him when she belittled him like that, he stepped her back up against the wall, caging her between his arms. “Any more names you want to call me today? Why don’t you go ahead and get it out of your system.”
She met his glare, not breathing, her chin held high like she was a princess and his stable-boy touch defiled her purity. What kind of freak was he that something like that would turn him on? But, oh, man, was he feeling it with her something fierce, just like he always did.
This time, though, his lust and longing for her swirled with angry frustration for what they’d had and lost, for his own out-of-control feelings for her that just wouldn’t fade away no matter how hard he’d tried, and for the terrible mess she’d gotten herself into—and him now, too, it seemed.
Damn it, he was pissed off at her and at himself and how they’d let everything they’d had fall apart. If they could only step outside the bounds of time for a moment so he could concentrate on how she felt pressed against him, how beautiful she was and how much he loved holding her in his arms. His gaze dropped to her lips.
She must have noticed his change of focus, because she wrenched her face away. “I have to find Rory.” Her voice was distant.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“I can’t let him get away with what he did to me.”
John’s heart sank at the hint of vulnerability in her tone. He hated Rory for what he’d done to her, for the physical and mental pain that must have come from being shot point-blank in the chest by someone you trusted. He had no idea what miracle had spared her life, but the miracle was wasted if she couldn’t find a way to truly live again. “He didn’t get away with it. He was going to rot in an ultramax prison for the rest of his life. To me, that’s worse than death.”
“It’s not the same.”
He wasn’t buying it. Revenge was too pat an answer for someone as complicated as she was. “This is about more than getting even for you. I’m now a part of this mess you’ve created, and I deserve the truth.”
She didn’t answer, and he knew that silence was all he was going to get for the time being. But he wasn’t ready to release her yet.
“Okay, new question. Are you the least bit curious how I got to St. Croix after you left me stranded in the Caribbean? Weren’t you even a little worried for my safety, out there in the open ocean without even a piece of driftwood to hang on to?”
She rolled her big green eyes over to look at him. They were the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, so sophisticated, so cool and collected that he struggled against the desire to kiss the composure right off of her face.
“You’re a big boy. You can take care of yourself.”
That he could, even if he was getting damn tired of her minimizing him. A boy, a fool, a sidekick, never the alpha. She talked a tough game, but branded on his soul was the sound of her whimpering his name—whimpering, damn it—begging for the pleasure that only he could give her, murmuring praise about just how much of a man he was.
He curled his hand around her hip.
“Don’t touch me.” Her eyes were pure ice as she stared vacantly over his shoulder, her tone flat and clinical in a way that made his jaw tight with aggravation. But he was a no means no kind of man and let go of her immediately.
He pressed his knuckles against the wall next to her arm. “There was a time you couldn’t get enough of me touching you.”
She flicked a glance at him. So impertinent. “Right up until you helped Rory try to kill me.”
It took every ounce of his self-control not to cup her chin and urge her to look him in the eye. “No. Never.”
“How do I know? Rory said—”
“I know what Rory said. I read it in the deposition transcripts. You would believe him—” he screwed up his mouth, hating that she had the power to make him so infuriated “—over me. After everything we were together.”
“What were we really to each other besides a little stress relief?”
He threw his head back and chuckled. “Right. Stress relief. Of course. Because our relationship has been so stress-reducing. That’s why I fell in love with you. Because it helped me reduce the stress of the job. Sure, let’s go with that.”
She drew a ragged breath. Then he saw it—passion in her eyes. It was a look of the same torment that was tearing him up inside, but anything was better than the chilly distance she fell back on to keep people at arm’s length. Along with the heat in her gaze, life had returned to her skin in the form of pinked cheeks and a slight sheen of perspiration. No longer the refined femme fatale with flawless looks and nary a hair out of place, but a real woman. His woman.
He touched her cheek, fully expecting her to demand he remove his hand.
But she didn’t. Instead, her eyes drifted closed on another tremulous breath. “I hate you.”
“I know.”
He cradled her cheek in his palm. Pulse pounding, he ignored all the reasons he shouldn’t be doing what he was about to, then leaned down and pressed a kiss to
her closed mouth.
She didn’t open her mouth or kiss him back, but she didn’t protest it, either. Stepping another foot over the line in the sand she’d drawn, he touched her hip again. This time, in response, she settled a hand on his neck. Keeping his eyes closed and his lips pressed lightly against hers, he pulled her up against his body and let his hands explore her, coaxing her stiff joints and muscles to relax, to give up the fight and let him into her soul.
This was how it always started, with the feeling that he was standing naked and vulnerable before a locked, heavy door, banging on it with his fist, demanding entrance. And her with the power to either grant or deny him. Such a princess...
When knocking on the door to her soul wasn’t enough, he decided to kick it in—destroy the whole damn door to get to her, his Phoenix. He slipped his fingers under her shirt and splayed his open hands over her sides and ribs, the power and strength of her swathed in soft, feminine skin. With a sharp inhale that parted her lips, she finally gave up her defenses and yielded to him.
He took her mouth with the hunger of a man who had something to prove—to himself, to her. Hunger for what they’d lost, the love, the endless wicked nights that would forever live on as the best of his life. Her hands plunged into his hair, holding him close, kissing him back, letting him take as much as he wanted.
When the fire in his veins threatened to consume the last of his dignity, he pulled away, breathing hard. “The next time you want to make a dig about me being a boy or a sidekick or whatever name you’re tempted to lob at me, you remember this—there isn’t another man in the world who knows you like I do, who makes you feel the way I do. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“As if I could,” she whispered.
Wiping a hand over his mouth, he took a few swift steps back. It wouldn’t do, being that close to her, even if it got him the confession he wanted. The bitter hurt was too much to bear.
She stayed rooted against the wall, but followed him with her gaze. “What are we going to do now?”
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