True to You

by Jennifer Ryan

  “You’ve really suffered for nothing more than being born in the wrong family.”

  “Out of my hands, like much of what’s happened in my life.”

  “Why not go to the cops with the information you have on your father and get him arrested? It wouldn’t completely stop him, but it would put him away for the rest of his life and dampen his ability to hurt you or be a threat to you.”

  “Nothing I’ve given the cops so far has led them to Iceman.”

  “Why is that?”

  She didn’t like the suspicion in his eyes. Like she’d deliberately kept Iceman in the clear when that’s the last thing she’d done. “Because he’s smart and knows that if I found out anything specific enough to get him I’d use it, the way I used the information I had on the truck against him, even though I knew it wouldn’t put a dent in what he does.”

  Flash leaned in and pushed harder. “You’ve got to know something. Their base of operation? Where they store the drugs? When and how they’re coming in?”

  “I’m not a part of what he does. I try to stay out of it for my own safety. He looks the other way when I interfere, but if I did something to really harm him, he’d come after me.”

  Flash fell back in the chair and shook his head. “He’d never hurt you.”

  She cocked her head, wondering why he’d think that after all she’d told him. “You seem so sure. He has a wicked reputation that’s well deserved for the things he’s done to protect his business. Don’t think for a minute he wouldn’t make an example out of me to warn others who’d dare go against him.”

  Flash stared back at the fire. “Shit.”

  “My life in a word. I understand if you don’t want to stay here and serve out your parole. It’s a job and all, but it puts you in proximity to the one thing you’re trying to avoid. Or so you say,” she added, still holding on to her suspicions about his real reasons for being here.

  “I don’t want to work for your father.”

  The emphatic statement rang true. But . . .

  “You don’t really want to work for me either.”

  “I’m doing what I have to do.”

  She read something in his eyes. Something weighed on him and drove him. “Does my father have something to do with why you’re here?” She didn’t want to believe it, but her father had to have something to do with it.

  It took Flash a good ten seconds to answer her. “I was sent to you because I need your help.”

  She believed that, but didn’t think it all had to do with his parole. He held something back.

  Did she really want to know what?

  Flash held her gaze and added, “The last thing I want to do is hurt you, or cause you any more pain.”

  She believed that, too, but felt the undercurrent of something more underlying his words.

  “While I’m here, I’ll look out for you.”

  That “while I’m here” set off all kinds of warnings and alarms. Then again, hadn’t she gone to him today hoping to have something with him that was for right now and not forever?

  Was that what she really wanted?

  Maybe instead of a dream she could have right here, right now.

  Chapter Ten

  Flash tried to keep his roiling thoughts and emotions from showing. The last thing he wanted to do was make Cara even more suspicious. He’d said what he could about why he was here. He’d given her the truth, though his words didn’t explain anything to her satisfaction. He needed to earn her trust and find a way to make her want to go after her father. With her help, the DEA could take Iceman down once and for all. Although Iceman knew Cara chipped away at his business from time to time, he’d never suspect her of working with the DEA to chop off a major player in the cartel: him.

  Her relationship with Manny and the reasons her father kept Manny’s death a secret from her, so she’d always be on alert for a threat, weighed on him. But the explosion at Manny’s property after he was already dead didn’t make sense.

  Was it really a message to Cara? The DEA who seized the property?

  Something about it bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  How did it tie back to Cara?

  Sitting this close to her, he had a damn hard time hiding his growing attraction. He couldn’t sleep for thinking about her, his purpose here, and wondering how this would all end.

  Tonight he’d seen Cara’s light on again. He often left on his reconnaissance and returned hours later to find the light still on. He should keep his mind on work, do what he needed to do, but he found himself making her cocoa and walking up her porch steps. He didn’t want to analyze too closely why the simple gesture seemed so intimate.

  Like the cozy setting. Him sitting across from her, the fire burning in the hearth, a single lamp glowing in the quiet room. Her on the sofa wearing those skimpy, sexy shorts. Her gorgeous legs tucked under another of those soft blankets he knew she’d made herself.

  “What are you making?” He nodded toward the pair of knitting needles and the dark green, gold, black, and blue something she’d set aside to greet him at the door.

  With a gun.

  He hated that her father let her believe Manny was still out there. A threat. Allowing her to live in fear every day, unable to sleep or work or live free of the fear that she masked well but showed in her eyes tonight when she was too tired to pretend it didn’t weigh on her every second of the day.

  For all the looks she gave him, she never smiled. Not even tonight when he’d gone out of his way to do something nice for her. Yes, his coming had to do with getting closer to her, but also because he wanted to see her and hoped that his presence gave her some kind of comfort and maybe made her happy.

  As alone as he’d felt in his cell, he saw the same kind of loneliness in her, stuck here in the prison of her mind and circumstances. Held here by pride, devotion, principle, and sheer will. God, he liked her. A lot. But he wanted so much more for her. He wanted her to have the one thing she’d never had in her short life. Peace.

  He longed to go to his family’s ranch, surround himself with his family, and find the peace he always felt with them.

  “It’s a cap for a little boy.” Cara picked it up and held it over her fingers to show him the dragon on the side.

  “That’s awesome.”

  “I sell them and other items on an online storefront. Some, like this one, I donate to the children’s hospital for cancer patients going through chemo.”

  “Really?”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  It didn’t. Not really. “No. You give ex-cons jobs. It’s just . . . I see the connection there with your wanting to see bad men turn their lives around and do good.”

  “You’re not a bad man. You just made a bad choice.” She always tried to see the good in people. Which probably made it that much harder on her when they disappointed her. She’d suffered a lot of disappointments in her life.

  He was doomed to disappoint her, too.

  A band tightened around his chest just thinking about it. She didn’t deserve to be used this way, but she might be his only hope of taking down Iceman. She might be the only hope of freeing herself from the life she obviously didn’t want but was stuck in all the same.

  “I don’t know, it led me here to you.” He said it to draw her closer to him, but never expected the words to ring so true on a much deeper level. While he was supposed to draw her in to help him, she drew him in, in a much more personal and intimate way that made this even more dangerous.

  “I know a little boy who’d love a dragon cap. I’ll buy it from you.” He patted his pocket and realized he dragged on his jeans but didn’t grab his wallet off the nightstand next to the very comfortable bed she’d made up for him. So much more comfortable than his cell bunk where every night he’d wished for a woman. Now he lay awake at night wishing for one woman.

  The one he shouldn’t want, but couldn’t stop thinking about.

  The one he couldn’t have.r />
  “Is it a nephew?” Her genuine interest surprised him. She normally kept a safe and off-putting distance that made others back off.

  He saw past that defensive tactic to the woman who wanted to connect with others but feared getting used and hurt.

  He shook his head. “Son of a friend. He’s been through a lot, but he’s tough and resilient. He lost his mother. His father is in prison, but he found a new mom and dad who love him like he was their own, because he is theirs now.”

  “Sounds like a kid who got really lucky.”

  “You have no idea.” Flash thought about Adam living with Trigger and his superstar mom, Ashley. He’d never want for anything, especially the love and family every kid deserved. Exactly what Flash grew up with, but Cara never had.

  She picked up the cap and knitting needles, working to finish the hat. “Sounds like he’s special to you.”

  “Whenever I see him, I play with him just like he is my nephew.”

  Her gaze met his. “You like kids?”

  He never really thought about having his own. That had been a “one day” kind of thing. His brother and sister seemed happy with their kids, living their normal lives. His life with the DEA seemed anything but normal and brought a very real element of danger and retaliation.

  Case in point, Guzman going after Trigger, which had led Flash here.

  But seeing how Ashley and Adam had changed Trigger’s life and made it so much better and fulfilling . . . “Yeah, I want a family of my own.”

  One day.

  Right now, he needed to keep his mind on the job and not Cara’s sexy legs hidden under the blanket. “Ever think about getting married and having a family?”

  After what Manny put her through, he understood why she kept her distance from men. Especially any man tied to her father’s world. But he hated to think she’d sworn off men, stopped dreaming of the things she longed for, and thought that spending the rest of her life alone was better than taking a chance at having what she really wanted.

  “Truthfully, I think about impossible things all the time.”

  “It’s not impossible, you just have to . . .”

  One of her eyebrows went up in inquiry. “What? Put my heart on the line? Find a man who wants the same things I want and doesn’t lie about who and what he is?”

  Shit. His gut wrenched into a knot. He was that guy sitting in front of her right now. Lying.

  He really didn’t know how Trigger got through all those years undercover. He understood now why he’d been so messed up after his last assignment. The lies and deceptions got to you after a while. He’d barely started this assignment and already he regretted taking it. Mostly, he regretted that Cara could compare him to Manny and find too many similarities.

  “They are out there,” he heard himself say, knowing right now he wasn’t one of them and kicking himself for encouraging her to go after someone when he wanted her so damn bad he could practically taste her on his lips. He wanted to kiss her so bad he had to work to stay put in his chair.

  Warmed by the fire beside him, it didn’t compare to the heat she generated in him when she looked at him, thinking he meant the one out there was the man sitting in front of her.

  “The hat is yours if you want it.” She held the finished cap up and draped it over her hands so he could see the dragon design and wide rim.

  He leaned forward and held out his hand. Adam would love it. He’d give it to him the next time he went to Trigger’s place for another round of target practice that was nothing short of a competition to see who was the best shot. Him, as of their last contest.

  Cara placed the hat in his hand. Her fingertips brushed his wrist and sent a bolt of electricity up his arm. Before she pulled away, he clasped her hand in his, the cap dangling between their joined hands.

  She sucked in a surprised gasp that he’d trapped her hand in his, but she didn’t pull away. Her lips remained slightly parted, her breath held even as her pulse jackhammered at the base of her throat. “You’re too beautiful and compassionate to be this sad.”

  Her lips pressed together in a grim line. “You’re too smart to have done something so stupid and ended up in jail. What really happened?”

  His breath hitched and fear burst in his heart.

  She didn’t believe his story. Others took it at face value. The guys in jail. His parole officer. Her father and his crew. But not her. She didn’t take anyone at face value. She looked deeper.

  She saw too much.

  He needed her to believe him, so he told her something he’d never told anyone. Not the whole story anyway.

  “I wasn’t in a good place.”

  She used her free hand to pull the hat from between their hands and placed it on the coffee table that separated them. Then she took his hand in both of hers. “Why?”

  “Erin.” Her name stuck in his throat and flooded his mind with memories of a sweet woman who loved him with her whole heart and lost her life before she ever really got to live it.

  “Who is Erin?”

  “My girlfriend.” From a lifetime ago it seemed now, but she’d had a profound effect on his life.

  Cara didn’t say anything. Her patience showed him how well she read people. She passed off his hesitancy to talk about Erin to the fact that he needed a minute to settle the hurt that was always there, but it pulsed to full life inside him like it had just happened.

  “A mutual friend set us up. A double date I accepted because I needed a break from work.” He’d been studying his ass off his last year of college. He’d turned down too many good times for an A and wanted a night out with his buddy and a pretty girl. “Three months in and I was thinking this was the first real relationship I’d ever had that meant more than just a good time.”

  “You loved her.”

  The simple statement came with a wealth of understanding that love didn’t always end well. In his case, it ended before it ever really had a chance to become all he’d hoped for with Erin.

  “I had never thought about a home, a steady paycheck, a future, the way I did with her. Other people had those things. Older people. Settled people. Not me. But all of a sudden, those things seemed possible, even desirable, because it meant she’d always be there. And then one day, she was gone.” Her piercing scream echoed in his mind a split second before the deafening silence that came after.

  Cara squeezed his hand, anchored him in the present, not the heartbreaking past.

  “We were on our way home from dinner with friends. We’d had a great night. Food. Good company. Music. I even danced with her. I hate to dance, but it was a slow song and I wanted to hold her in my arms and see her smile up at me.” The echo of her body pressed to his made his nerves come to life and lit up his mind with her sweet smile. “We drove down the dark road still talking and laughing together. We’d been flirting with each other all night, knowing when we got home we’d tear up the sheets if we even got that far in the door.”

  After too long a silence, him lost in his sweet memories, Cara broke the silence. “It sounds like you were great together.”

  “We were. Our friends said so all the time. I’m the cautious type. She loved a good joke and a good time. We balanced each other out in some ways. And that night, when my mind wanted to do nothing but analyze my job options and what they meant to our future, she dragged me out of my head and reminded me that we needed to live our lives in the moment. So she slid across the seat and put her hand on my face so I’d turn to her for a kiss. I hesitated because I spotted headlights in the distance and didn’t want to veer into the other lane by accident. She practically crawled in my lap and kissed me. The second I lost myself in her, I forgot that I couldn’t see the road. And then I lost her.”

  He raked his free hand over his head. “It was my fault. I should have pushed her back onto the seat. I should have told her to quit fooling around while I was driving. I should have, but I didn’t want to ruin the mood or hurt her feelings. In that moment, I wanted her an
d that future, whatever it was going to be, so long as she was beside me, always willing to get me out of my head with a sexy kiss.”

  Sometimes he dreamed of that moment and the kiss went on forever. He woke up still tasting her, the accident never happened, and she was still here.

  But she wasn’t.

  He sat across from Cara telling her about a woman from his past who meant a lot to him. Erin changed his life for the better. He missed her. She’d shown him he was capable of feeling deeply for someone. And those same kinds of feelings came back to life and amplified the moment Cara came into his life. The attraction. The need. And damn it, the caring about her.

  He was supposed to stay focused on the job. But all he thought about was her.

  He shook off thoughts of how he felt about Erin then, and the new and different way he felt about Cara now. He didn’t want to analyze it too closely because he knew the result and inevitable outcome: she’d never be his.

  And thinking he could find a workaround and make it come out right only led to hurting Cara in the end. He didn’t want to do that to her.

  He wouldn’t do that to her.

  “What happened to Erin, Flash?”

  He hated hearing his fake name come out of her mouth. He wanted to hear her say his name, for her to know the real him.

  “The oncoming car hit us head-on.”

  Cara covered her gasp with her free hand before she reached for him again and held his hand in both of hers. “Oh God.”

  “I had nothing to do with it. The fuck driving the other car fell asleep at the wheel.”

  “So it wasn’t your fault. Accidents happen. He didn’t mean to hit you.”

  “He fell asleep because he was baked out of his mind. They found a half ounce of pot and a pipe in his car. He came out of the crash with a few scrapes and bruises. Erin flew through the windshield, bounced off his car, and landed twenty feet away.”