It was his fault. His parents were right to blame him.
Zola touched the side of his face. “You told me once that you knew nothing about me.”
“I did.”
“Do you still feel that way?”
He studied those perfect amber eyes, his heart aching with old memories and new feelings. “No.”
It was the truth. He still didn’t know the details of her life, but he felt like he knew her almost as well as he knew himself.
She leaned into him and kissed him, her lips warm and gentle against his. “Do you trust me?” she asked a second later.
“As much as I trust anyone.”
She pressed a finger to his bottom lip, maneuvering it into silly shapes and expressions. “That’s not a good answer.”
“What do you want to hear?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Things are about to get a little crazy,” she said softly.
“It’s the final week, and we have a big target on our backs. I already know that.”
She pulled her lip between her teeth, sucking on it with an audible sound for a second. He touched her chin, drawing it out again so that he could do the sucking for her. She sighed, pressing her tongue into his mouth, forcing him to kiss her with that deep passion that made everything below the belt tighten and stand to attention. He moved closer to her, pressing his hips against her thigh. He wanted her to know what her touch did to him. He wanted her to feel just how desperately he wished those damn cameras weren’t in the corners.
They kissed for a long time, and he allowed himself just a little touch, a sliver of skin under the tips of his fingers. He knew if he touched too much, if he allowed too much contact between his palms and the silky heat of her hips or her ribs, it would drive him over the edge, and he wouldn’t be responsible for what happened next. So just a sliver of skin, just the slightest touch. And then she slipped away, climbing off the bed with an apologetic smile.
“Where are you going?”
“I need a shower, babe. I know it wasn’t a comp day, but it’s damn humid today!”
He groaned, reaching for her even though he knew he couldn’t catch her. “Don’t leave me in here alone!”
“Go get something to eat. You must be starving!”
It was something of a joke between them, how he always had a peanut butter sandwich before bed. It was a habit he’d gotten into as a kid and found impossible to outgrow. Gretchen had been the same way until . . . Well, until the end.
That should have been his first clue.
He watched Zola walk away, tossing his arm over his face. He knew they were going to win, but the win had become a side note for him this past week. The moment she fell to her knees, and he saw the gash on her arm, the win had become secondary. They had it in the bag. Now he just wanted to get out of this thing intact with this woman he’d found quite by accident, this woman who was quickly becoming more than just a partner, more than just a pawn in a game he was determined to manipulate.
He waited until he felt safe stepping out of the room and made his way slowly down the hall to the kitchen, his ankle aching a little. He’d put it through much more than the doctor had recommended, and it was responding to that by taking longer to heal than it should. In the kitchen, he gathered the things he needed for his sandwich, grumbling to himself when he couldn’t find the peanut butter. It took a second before he remembered seeing Brian with the jar in the sitting room, no doubt leaving crumbs behind as he dipped crackers in it. He hobbled across the room, having spotted the jar on a coffee table, when he happened to look outside through the sliding glass doors. Darkened to limit the natural light that came into the house, he only just made out the shapes of two people standing off to one side of the house. Curious what Brian and Jess were doing out there, he stumbled to the door and slid it open a crack on its track. He was about to call out, a joke dying on the tip of his tongue when he realized it wasn’t Brian and Jess.
It was Zola and that production guy she was always talking to.
What the hell?
What was she doing? Was that guy just a production dude, or was he something else? Were they scheming together?
He’d once thought the guy was her boyfriend and he was the reason she was on the show. But she insisted he wasn’t, and he wanted to believe her. She was a beautiful girl. It was easy to believe that some guy would want to feed her information that he thought she needed. Everyone wanted to help the pretty girls.
But he wouldn’t sneak onto the seat late at night and stand with her in such an intimate gesture to give her information that was fully legit with the executive producers.
What was going on?
Her voice in the back of his head, asking him if he trusted her, rang through his mind. Is this why she asked?
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like being used, and he didn’t like being lied to.
She better have a damn good explanation.
Chapter 15
Chicago, Illinois
The Set of Stranger’s Retreat
“Did you get the lab results on the box cutter?” Zola demanded.
Durango handed her a thin piece of paper. Too thin, if you asked her.
No identifiable fingerprints, no blood beyond the known sample.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“It couldn’t be that easy. You know that.”
She nodded. “I know. But I was hoping.”
“Gracie and I have been studying the video footage of the competition. We haven’t seen anything suspicious yet, but we might, eventually.”
“If I don’t even know when I was cut, how are you going to spot it on film?” She shook her head. “I was just hoping there would be something obvious.”
“Just continue to keep your eyes open. Maybe the culprit will slip up over the next couple of days.”
“And when he or she does? What then?”
“Then we end this thing and send you home.”
She looked down at her feet, wondering if she wanted to go home now. Durango touched her chin, forcing her to look up. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he said. “Maybe the bad guy was one of the people who just went home.”
“Then we’ll never know for sure.”
“But you and Gunner will win the competition. Half a million dollars can change your life, Zola.”
“Can I even take the money?”
“I don’t see why not. You will have won it fair and square.”
“It’s not about the money,” she said, unintentionally repeating what Gunner had said to her earlier. “I like these people. I don’t want to watch one of them go to jail.”
“Even Brian?”
She laughed. “Maybe not Brian.”
He touched her arm with that fatherly gesture he had. “Go inside. Try to keep your eyes open, but take hope in the fact that this thing is all over by this time next week no matter what happens.”
“Okay.”
Durango thought she was unhappy here, that she was still caught up in the reasons she’d originally given for not wanting to take the case. But that wasn’t it. She didn’t want this to end because she didn’t want to have to tell Gunner she’d been lying to him about everything. She knew he wouldn’t take it well and they’d likely never see each other again when it was all said and done. And that idea made her feel sick to her stomach, the same sort of sick she felt every time she came home to a quiet apartment and knew that her mother was sinking into one of her dark depressions.
The house was quiet when she stepped back inside. She slipped through the sitting room as quietly as she could in case Gunner was in the kitchen having his peanut butter sandwich. She’d told him she was going to take a shower, so she went into the closest bathroom and did just that, taking her time in scrubbing her hair, loving the feel of her fingernails on her scalp. There were few things she had always found pleasure in. This was one of them.
Her thoughts wandered as she stood there, moving from Gunner to the past, to the men in he
r mother’s life to the men in her unit while she was in the Marines. She thought about Mitchell, thought about him with something like affection for the first time in nearly a year. She’d loved him, loved him like he was the only thing that had ever mattered. It took time for her to get to that point. She’d hated him on sight, that cocky smile, and the way he had about him that drew everyone to him, men and women alike. But he pulled her in, convinced her he wasn’t such a bad guy. She shouldn’t have believed him.
Zola had her life planned from the moment she attended her first career day in middle school. She was going to join the military, let them put her through college and then send her wherever they needed her for the requisite amount of time. Then she would join a medium-sized police department somewhere, work her way up the ranks for a few years, then go to Quantico. She wanted to be an FBI agent. No, not just an agent. She wanted to be the agent who arrested the next Unabomber or the next Ted Bundy.
But all that ended with Mitchell. She was six months from leaving the service, her dreams expanding to include him. They were going to move to Miami, and she was going to take a job with a department in one of those quiet little towns near there. They were going to lay out in the sun when they weren’t working damn hard to build themselves a good life. That was their dream. At least, she thought it was their dream.
And then she was called in front of the captain and informed that she’d been implicated in a drug ring they’d been investigating for nearly a year. Her. She was a fucking MP for Christ’s sake!
It turned out Mitchell was a drug dealer, and he’d been selling on the base for longer than she’d known him. She was eventually able to prove she had no knowledge of what he was doing, but just her association with him ended her career. She was given an honorable discharge as long as she didn’t fight the decision to ask her to leave. But it didn’t end there. When she applied to civilian law enforcement organizations, his name would come up in her background search, and they’d turn her down. They couldn’t hire a woman who was stupid enough not to notice that her boyfriend dealt drugs.
He ruined her life! She would never forgive him for that.
Trust was a weak thing. She’d believed in it once before and had been burned. Now she was asking Gunner to trust her. It was ironic, really. She should have known better.
She got out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel wrap Felicity had given her. She paused in front of the mirrors long enough to comb her hair out and brush her teeth, worried that Gunner might decide she’d been gone too long and come looking for her. She was kind of hoping he’d fallen asleep waiting for her, and she’d find him all warm and soft in bed.
She wasn’t that lucky.
Gunner was leaning against the low dresser across from the door when she walked into their bedroom. He didn’t look up when she came in but kept his eyes on his hands. He was picking at his cuticles the way he did when he was upset or thinking hard about something.
It wasn’t a good sign.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, just continued to stand there. She moved around the room, putting her dirty clothes in her hamper, digging a pair of panties out of her half-packed bag. She could feel his eyes on her and found him watching her when she turned.
“Who is that guy?” he finally asked.
“What guy?”
“The production assistant you’re always talking to.”
She tilted her head slightly, a sense of foreboding crawling around in her chest. “We already talked about this, didn’t we?” She gestured to the uneven line of stitches on her arm that were uncovered for her shower. “I told you that night.”
“You lied to me.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because you said that he was feeding you legitimate information on the game and the other contestants. But if it were all on the up and up, you wouldn’t need to meet him in the middle of the fucking night out in the yard!”
Zola nervously reached back and began braiding her hair, needing a moment to think. What did he think she was doing out there? Had he seen Durango touch her? Was he thinking they were lovers?
“I didn’t lie to you. He does give me information.”
“Bullshit!”
Gunner exploded away from the dresser, his eyes ice blue flames. He came toward her, and she thought that he was going to grab her arm, drag her around the room like Brian might have done. But he didn’t. He grabbed a pillow from the bed and headed toward the door.
“Gunner, please!”
“I can’t trust you if you don’t tell me the truth, Zola.”
“I want to tell you the truth, I really do.”
“What’s stopping you?”
He turned to look at her again; a little hope sparked behind those flames. But she couldn’t tell him anything. She couldn’t give him the truth, and she couldn’t tell him why she couldn’t tell him the truth. All she could do was stand there and beg him to understand with her eyes.
“You’ve been lying to me from the beginning.” He shook his head, his anger growing again. “You told everyone you’re a high school teacher, but I know you’re not. You’re a soldier!”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because I saw you. I saw the way you turned on Lesley in the kitchen that night, saw the way you held your hand, recognized the combat move you were about to make. You’re a Marine! You’ve got the damn motto tattooed on your hip!”
She inclined her head. “And you’re not a corporate office worker.”
He tilted his head slightly. “I’m not.”
“We both lied to play the game. That’s all it is, Gunner. A fucking game!”
“We lie to the people out there,” he said, gesturing toward the door. “Not to each other.”
“Then tell me the truth. Who are you, Gunner?” He hesitated, giving her the opening she’d needed. “I’m not the only one keeping secrets.” She walked toward him, her hands outstretched. “It’s this damn game. It’s toxic! But if you’ll just trust me, the truth will come out soon enough.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Please,” she whispered, touching his face. He bent toward her, lowered his face so that she could touch him without having to stretch. “Please, trust me.”
His eyes moved over her face. “You keep saying that. But what if I trust you and it all blows up?”
“Then you’ll learn the same lesson that nearly everyone who’s ever fallen in love and gotten their heart broken has learned.” She raised herself up on her tip toes and kissed him gently. “But I promise, you won’t regret it.”
His hands came down over her hips, and he pulled her roughly toward him. He kissed her, nothing gentle about this touch. “Prove it,” he whispered in a harsh voice that only she could hear.
She knew what he was asking, knew where he wanted her to take him. A part of her wanted to refuse, wanted to put an end to this right now. Either he trusted her, or he didn’t. What could he do if he didn’t? He could tell the others what he’d seen. He could make it appear like she was cheating. He might even try to go to the executive producers. But what would that do? They were already winning the game. If he complained, it might change everything, and he’d lose his advantage in the final week of play. There was nothing he could do without hurting himself.
But she was pretty sure this wasn’t about the game. She knew it was about her, it was about him, and it was about this thing that had been happening between them from the moment they first set eyes on each other. He needed her to prove that it wasn’t all in his head, that she hadn’t been playing him just for the game, or for whatever was happening with her and Durango. And that other part of her, the bigger part of her, was desperate to prove herself to him.
That was the part she chose to listen to.
She took his hand and led him out of the room. He dropped his pillow and followed, his eyes moving to the cameras as they adjusted focus to follow
them. They could hear Jessica and Brian arguing in their room down the hall, their voices rising and falling as they exchanged words. She wondered what they were fighting over if it had any comparisons to what was happening between her and Gunner. She suspected it was less substantive, a fight over pillows or Brian’s penchant toward disorder.
They stepped into the same bathroom she’d just used, the scent of her soap and shampoo still clinging to the air. It was a large room with two roomy shower stalls, a set of chaise lounges, a long counter with four sinks, and two water closets, one on each side of the room. Zola led the way to the closest closet, tugging on his hand as she squeezed between the wall and toilet to allow him room to enter behind her. He pulled the door closed, flipping the thumb lock with his index finger.
They faced each other for a long moment, neither sure what to say. Making it simple, Zola lifted the towel wrap and pulled it over her head, exposing her nudity fully and in one easy move. He grunted, but he refused to touch her with anything more than his eyes. But his eyes, they moved over her slowly, drinking in everything she had on display, from the slender curve of her throat to the swell of her breasts, the dark tattoo that filled the space above her navel to the carefully trimmed hair that marked the triangle between her legs. She shifted nervously as he took it all in, pressing her thighs together as heat began to grow moist in all the right, and wrong, places.
When he appeared to be done, his eyes coming back up to start all over, she pressed her hands against the sides of his face and drew him to her. She kissed him the way she’d done a dozen times before, her mouth soft, but eager. He groaned against her mouth, but he still wouldn’t touch her. But he did follow her when she arched back, his lips never leaving hers.
Their kiss lingered, but she wanted more. She wanted to taste his skin, wanted to feel his heat against her. She let her lips create a wet trail over his chin, the rough stubble of a new beard chaffing against her tender skin. She kissed his throat, nibbled at the place just below his Adam’s apple. Her hands moved over his arms, wanting to draw him to her, but wanting him to want to touch her more. She reached under his shirt and touched his ribs, felt him suck in a breath as she touched him at the same time her tongue swirled against his throat.
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