by Paula Graves
She was pure temptation. He had tried to pretend otherwise, tried to blame his lack of self-control around her on his recent romantic drought or the volatile emotions she’d unearthed by her mere presence, a part of his past with which he’d thought he’d finally made peace.
But the truth was, she’d always had this effect on him, long before al Adar had attacked the embassy. The day he met her, he’d felt as if something in his world had shifted, knocked his life off its steady, predictable axis.
Everything had changed for him in Kaziristan, long before the embassy siege.
“So, we got sort of distracted before,” she said a few minutes later, about halfway through the falafel wrap she was eating with gusto. Her obvious pleasure in the food, and the improvement of both her spirits and her physical strength, came as a huge relief to Darcy.
“Yes, we did.” And if he let himself focus on recalling the details of that distraction, he might end up throwing caution to the wind and going for another round.
“You didn’t tell me how your talk with Ava went.”
“Right.” Nothing quite like the memory of his frustrating trip to The Gates to pour cold water on his reawakening libido. “It went fine, I guess. Her assessment of Cade Landry seemed to fit what you told me about him. She also had some interesting thoughts about the head of the Johnson City RA, Pete Chang.” He told her what Ava had said about Chang’s brownnosing habits.
She grimaced. “The sort who’ll lick any boot on the ladder rungs above him?”
“Seems to be the case.”
“Federal agencies are just chock-full of Pete Changs.” She sat back in her chair, folding her hands over her stomach. “So if someone up the chain of command had asked him to sabotage my case—”
“He might have, especially if he’s not the sort to question orders.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But you don’t think it’s Chang.”
“I don’t think this feels like something that would come down the chain of command,” he said. “It feels more—”
“Local,” she finished for him.
He nodded. “I’d be looking at Knoxville or Johnson City if someone had put me in charge of this investigation.”
“Someone has put you in charge,” she said in a suddenly serious tone. “I have. I’m too close to the players to be objective.”
“Are you?” he asked before he could stop himself.
Her brow furrowed. “Am I too close to be objective?”
“Are you close, period? To anyone. On the job or—?”
Her lips curved. “Isn’t it a little late to be asking that question, Romeo?”
She had a point. They’d come bloody close to ripping off their clothes and having sex right there in the middle of the tiny kitchen. There was a part of him, fed by desire humming in his blood, that still wanted to give it a go.
“Are you involved with someone in Knoxville? Someone who might start looking for you?”
“No. I haven’t had much time to date. I work a lot.” She pushed her fingers through her unruly hair, once again managing to tame the wild curls, gentling them with her touch. A fresh surge of desire washed through him, and he struggled not to reach across the table for her.
“What about your family?”
“There’s just my mom. Dad died a couple of years ago.”
A stab of sympathy sliced his chest. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.”
“Cancer. Hit fast and, mercifully, he didn’t suffer long.” She released a long, slow breath. “Could have been a lot worse. There are so many worse ways to die.”
The last of his appetite fled. He and McKenna had seen a whole lot of death up close and very personal eight years earlier. And it wasn’t the last time he’d seen the fleeting nature of life or how cruel death could be.
“Do you think you were followed back here?” she asked after a few long moments of uncomfortable silence.
He covered the remainder of his falafel wrap with the foil and put it back in the bag. “I don’t think so. I think if I had been, someone would have already made a move on us.”
She wrapped up her own leftovers and added them to the bag. “I think I’ll save the baklava for later.”
He reached across the table and caught her hand as she reached for the sticky dessert. “I’m going to protect you. Whatever it takes. You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m an FBI agent. I don’t need you to protect me.” She lifted her chin. “But I know you’ll have my back. And that means a lot.”
“You’ll have mine, too.” He threaded his fingers through hers, giving them a light squeeze before letting go. “I need a shower. And we both could use some sleep.”
“You go ahead. I’ll clean up.” She put the baklava back in the bag and headed toward the refrigerator.
In the bathroom, he stripped off his shirt and stopped short, his gaze snagged by his own reflection in the mirror. He looked rough. There was really no other word for it. His hair needed a trim, he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and he’d lost weight since joining The Gates, his natural bulk carved down to an almost feral leanness.
But he was stronger than he’d ever been. In better shape. And until that weak moment earlier in the kitchen, he’d been as clearheaded as he could remember being.
He was a different man from the Nicholas Darcy who’d worked in a suit and tie, playing by the State Department rules and living the same familiar life of embassies and receptions and protocol that he’d known since he was old enough to have a lucid memory.
But which man did he want to be?
The one who gets to kiss McKenna Rigsby whenever he wants.
Closing his eyes against the treacherous thought, he finished undressing and turned on the shower tap, adjusting the water to cool.
Bracing himself, he stepped under the cold spray.
* * *
WHILE DARCY SHOWERED, McKenna wandered around the small cabin, familiarizing herself with the place. It was just the big front room, a single bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom, where Darcy was naked under a steamy shower, naked as the day he was born—
Focus, Rigsby.
What she needed was a computer and an internet connection. She’d ditched her phone once she realized she was up against someone in the FBI. Too easy to locate her by GPS, so she’d tossed the phone in a creek several miles back, hoping the water would render the damned thing useless. And even if it didn’t, the FBI could track her only as far as the creek.
But she felt closed off from the world outside without her phone.
She smelled Darcy before she heard his footsteps, a clean, soapy scent mixed with something darker and more masculine. She turned and found him leaning against the bedroom door frame, his eyes narrowing slightly as her gaze met his.
“You’re supposed to be resting.” He softened his stern words with a faint smile.
“I’m not tired.”
He’d shaved, she noticed. The lack of facial hair didn’t temper the edginess she’d noticed right away when her fuzzy mind had cleared and she’d been able to take in the full impact of the man he’d become.
Age had made him leaner. Harder. But in a good way. He looked stronger. Fiercer.
He looked like a warrior.
“Then maybe we should sit down and go back over the details of your undercover assignment again. After I check your bandages.” He backed out of the bedroom doorway, gesturing down the hall with his hand.
She followed him to the front room and settled on the sofa, grimacing as he sat on the footlocker and reached for the first-aid kit still sitting there from earlier that day. “It’s not even really hurting.”
“Good. Maybe we’ve got the infection on the run. But that’s no reason to stop doing what’s working, is it?”
Sh
e could hardly argue with such logic, so she lifted the edge of her T-shirt and turned her body toward him. “How does it look?” she asked as he eased the gauze and tape away from her wounds.
“Better, actually.” He tore open a couple of antiseptic wipes and dabbed at the two holes in her side. “Sorry,” he added quickly when she sucked in a sharp breath at the sting.
“It’s okay. Doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it did this morning.”
“The inflammation appears to be receding.” Finished with the cleaning, he applied more antiseptic, then soothed the renewed sting with the cool relief of aloe vera gel. A quick application of gauze and tape later, he sat back. “All done.”
“Thanks.” She felt shivery all over, and she knew it wasn’t due to the pain of her injury. She needed to concentrate on figuring out what the BRI and their friend at the FBI were really up to and stop letting Darcy’s proximity get to her.
They had a lead, didn’t they? Cade Landry was as good a place to start as any.
“I want to look a little closer at Cade Landry,” Darcy said before she could speak.
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“When I spoke to Ava, she said the man was on the fast track up the career ladder at the bureau for the early part of his career. But a year or so ago, something changed, and he was on a downward spiral, careerwise. She didn’t know what that something was.”
A memory twitched in the back of her mind. Something about an operation gone wrong. “Did Ava know where he was working before he was transferred to Johnson City?”
“I think she said Richmond.”
The twitch got stronger. “There was a domestic terror investigation that went very wrong a little over a year ago. FBI agents had tracked a couple of bombing suspects to a warehouse. There were civilians inside and they were threatening to blow them all up.”
Darcy nodded. “I remember that.”
“According to FBI scuttlebutt, after SWAT arrived, the order came to hold position until the negotiation unit could get there.”
He nodded. “Standard protocol.”
“Right. But for some reason, one SWAT unit ignored the order and went in. Two members of the team and eight civilians were killed when one of the suspects detonated his bomb. Dozens of others were injured, including the rest of the SWAT unit that disobeyed orders.”
Darcy was looking at her with a frown. “Hmm.”
“What?”
He leaned closer. “When I was talking to Ava earlier, there was another agent in the office. And when I mentioned Cade Landry’s name, that agent dropped a stack of files.”
“And that’s significant because...?”
“She was an FBI agent before taking the job at The Gates a few months ago. I remember Quinn saying she’d felt the FBI was a dead end for her and she was looking for new opportunities.”
“I imagine for anyone who had been part of that unit that disobeyed orders, the FBI was probably a dead end,” she said, finally following what he was saying. “You think Landry was part of the unit that blew the call, right? And your friend at The Gates might have been on the same team, too?”
“It’s pure speculation at this point.”
“But speculation worth investigating.” She stood, driven by the need to do something besides hide in this cabin, living in fear of discovery.
Darcy rose with her, his brow furrowed. “You’re supposed to be resting while I do the investigating.”
“I’m fine. Most of my strength is back now.”
“Really? Clasp your hands behind your back.”
The mere thought made her wince.
“My point exactly.”
The hint of triumph in Darcy’s dark eyes annoyed her into action. “I don’t need to put my hands behind my back to investigate.” Dodging him, she grabbed her Glock from the coffee table and attached the holster to the front waistband of her jeans. The holster was meant to fit in the small of her back, but as Darcy had so annoyingly proved, reaching behind her back wasn’t a good idea if she wanted to be fast on the draw.
She sat on the footlocker and picked up the tennis shoes she’d kicked off earlier, ignoring the hot pain lancing through her side at the exertion.
“Where exactly are you going to go?” Darcy asked, his tone dark with irritation. “You’re in the middle of nowhere and you don’t even know how to get out of here.”
“You said hike north to get to Quinn’s place, right?”
“You’re going to Quinn?”
“You said he wants you to keep me safe. What’s he going to do, turn me in to the FBI?” She grimaced as the pain in her side seemed to translate to fumble fingers. She couldn’t seem to get the shoestrings to cooperate.
Darcy crouched at her feet, gently moving her hands aside and making quick work of the laces. He looked up at her, his expression a curious blend of annoyance and admiration. “It’s at least two miles. Uphill most of the way. If you’re determined to go see Quinn, I can take you in the Land Rover, but I think you need to seriously consider the consequences if you’re wrong about what he’ll do.”
“What am I supposed to do? Sit here and wait for someone to finally track me down?” To her dismay, she felt tears burning her eyes. She blinked them away fiercely, determined not to show weakness. “Someone set me up, made me look like a traitor. Someone shot me, for God’s sake. I don’t think they were shooting to miss.”
“I don’t, either,” he agreed, his voice rough. Remaining crouched before her, he took her hands in his. “But they haven’t gone away. They’re still out there looking for you, and you don’t know which ones wish merely to bring you in for interrogation and which ones want you dead.”
She looked down at their entwined hands. “I know.”
“I really thought I’d never see you again.” His voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “I’d run into people who’d seen you, and if I was brave, I’d even ask about you. But I never let myself go beyond the basics. I never asked if you’d met someone, if you’d married, if you were a mother now—” She heard an odd timbre to his voice, a hint of regret.
She couldn’t stop herself from touching his face. “I didn’t. I haven’t. I’m not.”
He curved his cheek into her touch, his eyes closing. “I shouldn’t be glad about that.”
Her heart pounding beneath her breastbone, she cradled his face between her hands, drawing him closer. “I shouldn’t be, either. But I am.”
Closing the distance between them, she kissed him.
Chapter Eleven
One hot summer night in Tablis, Darcy had gone for a swim in the embassy pool. Technically, anyone employed by the embassy could swim in the Olympic-size pool behind the embassy’s fortified walls, but by custom, the daylight hours were left to the diplomats and their families, while the support staff, including the FBI’s legat staff and the security personnel, waited until evening hours, if they were lucky enough to be off duty.
After ten in the evening was the best time if a person preferred to swim alone, Darcy had discovered. Most of the staff had gone to bed by then, leaving him alone to get in his laps and work off the day’s stresses before bedtime.
But that hot summer night, he had not been alone. A young woman with a lithe, muscular shape had been cutting waves through the pool’s clear water, powering her way from end to end as if racing a clock. He’d recognized her—barely—as the new legat agent.
She’d pulled up short as she reached the end where Darcy stood, water streaming from her chaos of curls and sliding with sensuous leisure over the curves of her breasts, so chastely but inadequately hidden beneath the modest one-piece bathing suit. Moonlight brought out deep auburn glimmers in her damp hair and cast her fair skin with a pearly glow that reminded Darcy of a Waterhouse painting he’d seen once at an art gallery i
n England, depicting young Hylas enchanted by naiads.
Brushing the water away from her eyes, his late-night intruder had offered a sweet smile worthy of those otherworldly water nymphs and apologized. “I thought I’d be alone at this hour.”
It had been McKenna Rigsby’s first day at the embassy, and Darcy had been utterly enchanted.
Getting involved with her romantically had been out of the question, of course. Tensions in Kaziristan kept all embassy personnel on alert, leaving them little time for anything but the most cursory of friendships. And they’d both worked high-stress, dangerous jobs that allowed no room for distractions.
Like kissing each other until they were utterly breathless.
She tugged him closer, her arms wrapping around his neck until she pulled his chest flush against hers. Her pulse raced in tandem with his as she parted her lips, inviting him to deepen the kiss.
Maybe she really was a naiad, he thought as her hair tangled around his hands, ensnaring him until he felt as though he was becoming part of her, helpless to resist her spell.
But he had to resist. This day, eight years later, was no less dangerous than that night at the US Embassy in Tablis. The enemy had changed, but terror was still afoot. People’s lives were still in grave peril.
And as before, McKenna and Darcy stood in the breach, trying to keep death at bay.
He dragged his mouth away from hers, trying to catch his breath again. “We can’t do this.”
“I know,” she murmured, reaching for him again.
Catching her hands, he held them together between his own to keep them still. “We can’t do this, McKenna. Not now. For the same reasons as before. You know that.”
She closed her eyes and leaned back. “Damn it.”
“We need to keep our minds clear. We have to be able to function as a professional team. We’ve already lost precious time while you’ve been recuperating. It’s not your fault,” he added quickly at her stricken look, “but it’s just the way things are. We’re behind and we don’t even know what the Blue Ridge Infantry might be planning. Do we?”