by Cherry Adair
Picking up the plate of ignored food, she quietly exited the room, making a detour through the kitchen, then left via the front door so she could get a damned grip.
She’d had a vision in the hub. Of Gideon and his family at a barbeque in a pretty backyard in Seattle. His home, she knew. Warmth and love. Light and laughter. The vision was all things fluffy. Rainbows and puppies.
Dear God. She was carving out her own guts with a grapefruit spoon.
The door to the safe house shut quietly behind her. Allowing a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, she started walking. Long, purposeful strides that widened the space between Gideon and her real life.
Either she’d find a cab at this ungodly hour, or she’d damn well walk the sixteen miles to the Santa de Porres airport. She had plenty of time. A quarter moon hung in a starry sky, making it easy to navigate the black and white landscape of garbage cans, kids’ toys, and the occasional cat darting in front of her. A distant dog howled. She knew how it felt. She wanted to howl, too. Fortunately, she was a trained operative, a pragmatic and sensible woman, and a realist.
This feeling would pass. She was sure these kinds of too-powerful emotions burned themselves out. Eventually. Her hate of her stepfather had eventually cooled to indifference, her pain to a dull throb of memory. This would pass, too.
All she had to do was hop a plane to Montana, get back to work, and not read a newspaper for about a year. She figured it would take that long for the sensation of Gideon Stark’s return from the dead to die down.
Using her palm, Riva swiped at moisture on her face. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
The warm evening air smelled not unpleasantly of various dinners and the sharp scent of marijuana. She lengthened her stride. The moonlight provided enough illumination to see by. Good thing, since the streetlights had all been shot out at some point. Only a few lights were still on in the houses lining the street as she headed down the hill, staying in the deeper shadows. A few riffs on a piano started out promisingly, but abruptly stopped.
The population of Santa de Porres slept, unaware that a team of crack T-FLAC operatives and the amazing Stark brothers were securing their futures as they dreamed of keeping the roof over their heads, and how to put food on their tables.
As she walked, tears fell. Her first instinct was to make herself stop. But she couldn’t. What the hell. No one was there to see her weakness. The distant hum of light traffic almost masked a horrible, jarring raw cry. Riva stopped dead in her tracks, trying to drag in a breath because she felt as though she was suffocating. Then she realized the sound of an animal crying out in agony was herself and it scared the crap out of her.
Bending from the waist, she braced her hands on her knees like a long-distance runner, trying to suck in more oxygen. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.
Okay? Not even close.
This. This was her vision? Jagged red edged with black. Excruciating, unbearable pain.
Her pain? Her emotional death?
Damn it to hell. She still couldn’t get a handle on the dark vision.
Was it her future? Black. Bleak.
Her chest hurt. Riva pressed her fingers to her eyelids as if that would staunch the tears. It was as though she stood outside herself, watching as she disintegrated emotionally.
Internal detonation.
Helpless despair.
She hadn’t cried like this since she was a nine year old sitting on the closed toilet lid with a razor blade in her sticky red fingers.
This was worse. Paralyzed by the sharp shards of ripping emotions, Riva fell to her knees on the dirty sidewalk. Head to her knees, a raw keening wail ripped up through her chest. .
The intensity of her sobs tore her throat, shaking her entire body. After minutes, or hours, she whispered in a hoarse, broken voice, “Stop. Stop. Stop.” But the Genie had been released from the bottle, and there was no stopping the flood of grief pouring from her very soul.
She had no idea how long she crouched there, curled into herself. Heart pounding frantically, she fought to catch her breath. “You’re all right. You’re all right. You’re all right.” The self-soothing didn’t work anymore. “Please. Make it stop.” She rubbed her hands over her face, wiping away the tears.
“Snap the hell out of it, Rimaldi.” Her voice raw and shaky, she forced herself to straighten. Everything ached. Her muscles and sinews, her bones, her lungs, her heart. It all damn well fucking hurt as if she’d been beaten.
She had been beaten. Frequently. Had worse than beatings. Frequently. But this upped the level of her tolerance to pain a thousandfold.
Staggering to her feet, she resumed walking. Fast, long strides. “You know you’re being an overly dramatic idiot, right, Rimaldi?” Pragmatic, sensible, dependable, Riva Rimaldi? Dramatic? Riva didn’t know who she was anymore. She didn’t like this woman. Weak. Fearful. Resigned. Jealous of a relationship Gideon had with his brother. They were a unit.
As ever, she was outside in the cold.
Her therapist would be bitterly disappointed to see that she’d regressed. Riva released a harsh, wobbly laugh.
She’d give herself three more minutes at her pity party, then she’d get back her spine, and go back and find herself something useful and constructive to do until she could say a mature, casual good-bye to Gideon.
A car screech to a stop behind her. The headlights bathed the trash-littered road in front of her in an unflattering spotlight which she saw through a blur of tears. Great, now she was going to be frigging-well mugged.
Someone grabbed her upper arm, yanking her to a stop. Numb, she apathetically barely reached back for her weapon as she lifted her tear-streaked face.
“Dear God.” Gideon’s voice cracked as he wrapped his arms around her with bruising strength. “Riva. Sweetheart. What happened? What’s wrong? Where the fuck are you going alone in the middle of the night? If you wanted to come to the airport someone would’ve brought you here. You didn’t have to fucking walk!”
The lure of his hard chest made her neck feel too weak to support her head, but she kept it upright. What she couldn’t do was stop sobbing. Great, heaving, gut-wrenching sobs that ripped her apart.
“Riva. Fuck it. Talk to me.”
“Go back to the-the house. You guys have a bomb to defuse.”
“We did it. We’re done. Everyone’s on their way back. Zak just left with some of the guys to buy beer.”
They were done? The bomb defused? She gave him a blank look, trying to compute defusing a thermobaric bomb, beer, and the microexpressions on Gideon’s face through a watery veil “How’s it possible you did all that in such a short time?”
“You’ve been gone for hours, sweetheart. Look you’re almost at the airport.” He used his shoulder to indicate the fence, and beyond that the rows of white runway lights and several gleaming white jets.
Pushing her hair off her face, he gave her a look so tender, so filled with love, the tears threatened again. “Where were you going, honey?”
God, all these endearments were freaking killing her. She tried to muscle his arms away, but he didn’t budge. “Home.” Her voice sounded thick and pain-filled. “I’m going home to Montana.”
“I don’t get it. You told Darius you were staying until you left with your team.”
She shrugged, willing the tears to stop damn-well falling. This was humiliating. Later she’d be ashamed that she was behaving like a lovesick schoolgirl, but right now she didn’t give a shit. And even if she had, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. “I’m redundant h-here. Navarro has things covered out there. You and Zak are reunited. And I’m happy for you, Gideon, I really am. You guys will figure things out. He’ll help you fill in the blanks—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck right now about any of that.” His strong hands came up to bracket her face. “I love you.”
Her heart stopped beating. A moment. Two. Then started again fast and erratic. “We’ve barely
known each other five minutes. You can’t fall in love with someone in such a short time, you know you can’t.” She lied. She had.
“I have. I love you, Riva.”
Oh, God… “Don’t.” Ragged and broken, her voice was a mere whisper. “Don’t love me, I’ll just disappoint you.”
“How could you possibly disappoint me? You’re… Everything.”
“You want me? Sexually. Fine. We can figure out how to make that work.”
“No. That’s not enough. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you, Riva Rimaldi. Love you, like you, am turned on by you. I want it all.” He tilted her face so she had to look at him. “Don’t overthink this. Tell me how you feel, here.” He pressed his hand to her heart. Warm. Strong. Comforting.
“I’m sorry. I really am. It’s me, not you. I’m terrible at relationships. I know I am. I’ve been working on myself for years. And, trust me, I’m not good at these kind of conversations. I can’t be who you want, Gideon. Not who or what you want. That doesn’t mean I don’t have similar feelings.”
“What feelings?”
She wasn’t going to say it. Couldn’t. Instead, she said brokenly, “I h-hate love.” The tears had stopped, but she couldn’t stop shaking. In response, his arms tightened around her
“No. You hate to trust,” he said, hot breath warming the top of her head. “You hate to be disappointed. You deserve to have all the love in the world.” He pulled back, cupping her face in his hands so she was forced to gaze into his eyes. “I love you, Riva. I’ll love you forever.”
“Don’t.” She tried again to wrench herself out of his hold, but Gideon held firm. Not letting her go. He would soon enough. Riva met his gaze head-on. He didn’t get it. And as much as it killed her to reveal this part of herself, he deserved to know the truth.
“I’m good for a night or a weekend, maybe for a crazy dash through the jungle. But I don’t do permanent.”
“You won’t know until you try it, will you? Open yourself to the possibility that you’re lovable. Let me in.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been afraid to let anyone in, to risk losing myself, to be trusting. Protecting myself is a habit.”
He used his thumb to brush away a tear, and said with aching tenderness, “Maybe it’s time to change your habits.”
She couldn’t stand seeing the look of love on his face, and squeezed her eyes shut. “Habits protect me.”
He brushed a kiss to her lids. One, then the other. “Love is everything, and none of us can go on without it. I’ll protect you, body and soul and heart.”
“Who’ll protect me from you?” It came out in the barest whisper.
“You don’t need protection from me. Let go. Just let go of all those old habits and fears. Take a chance on me. Take a leap of faith.”
As she looked in his eyes, it came to her, a blinding flash of insight. That dark, jagged vision was Gideon’s life without her in it. It was his pain she’d felt. His loss of hope. Her heart leapt.
“Maybe you’re right, maybe it is time for new habits.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to be without you for the next twenty years, or fifty, or however many there are. And I don’t want to lie to you. I’m a kick-ass operative, but I’m a total screw-up emotionally. That’s why I’ve been in therapy for years. Trust me, you don’t know me, so you can’t love me. And even if you did, I’m bound to make you miserable.”
His microexpressions showed her his joy and his pain. Happiness and fear vying for supremacy in an ever-changing display of his deepest emotions. “Don’t waste our time trying to talk me out of what I feel. What I know. You’re brave, kick-ass, smart as hell, and I’d like to keep you naked in a room with just a bed, and room service.” The look in his eyes pierced her heart. “You aren’t the sum of your past. I’m sorry you had to endure what you did. But everything that happened to you, brought you to the here and now. To me. Don’t use your past to deny all the amazing possibilities of your future.”
Moonlight loved the angles and curves of his face. It tangled in the long dark strands of his hair, falling around the strong column of his throat, and limned his broad shoulders. “I love you. I love the way you tilt your head down and read through your lashes when you face-read. I love the way you bite your lip when you’re trying to figure out what to do next. I love the way your eyes go misty when we make love. I love that you get wet just thinking about having sex with me. I love the smell of your skin.” His tender smile filled her universe. “I know that you’re honest. You’re dogged. You’re an excellent shot. You’re fearless about everything but love.”
He brushed away another tear she hadn’t been aware of shedding. “I know that you’re scared that I’ll find you unlovable because of the lies told to you by people you should’ve been able to trust. I know all that. I don’t love you in spite of all those things. I love you because of them. I love the way you’ve overcome so much in your life, with such bravery. And I love that I can’t imagine spending the next fifty years of my life not waking up beside you every morning.”
His tender smile pierced her aching heart. “That chopper crash was the best thing that ever happened to me. I do know you, Riva. And what I don’t know, I’ll have the rest of my life to find out.”
It finally made sense. The muddled confusion of expressions crossing his face faster than lightning across a stormy sky in the jungle was love, in all its crazy, twisted glory. He loved her. Her heart pounded.
She thought of a million ways to argue with him, but he put a finger on her lips and shook his head. “Don’t even try to talk me out of it.”
She drew a deep breath. “It won’t be easy. I’m going to have to work at this love thing really hard. I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“The only thing that would disappoint me is you not loving me. The rest we’ll work on. Together. Forever, you and me, every day. Say it, Rimaldi.”
She rose on her toes to bring their mouths closer. At long last, she had a vision of her future, and he was right in front of her. “I love you, Gideon Stark.”
About Cherry Adair
Always an adventurer in life as well as writing, New York Times best-selling author Cherry Adair moved halfway across the globe from Cape Town, South Africa to the United States in her early years to become an interior designer. She started what eventually became a thriving interior design business. “I loved being a designer because it was varied and creative, and I enjoyed working with the public.” A voracious reader when she was able to carve out the time, Cherry found her brain crowded with characters and stories of her own.
“Eventually,” she says, “the stories demanded to be told.” Now a resident of the Pacific Northwest she shares the award- winning adventures of her fictional T-FLAC counter terrorism operatives with her readers. When asked why she chooses to write romantic action adventure, she says, “Who says you can’t have adventure and a great love life? Of course if you’re talking about an adventurous love life, that’s another thing altogether. I write romantic suspense coupled with heart-pounding adventure because I like to entertain, and nothing keeps readers happier than a rollercoaster read, followed by a happy ending.”
Popular on the workshop circuit, Cherry gives lively classes on writing and the writing life. Pulling no punches when asked how to become a published writer, Cherry insists, “Sit your butt in the chair and write. There’s no magic to it. Writing is hard work. It isn’t for sissies or whiners.”
Cherry loves to spend time at home. A corner desk keeps her focused on writing, but the windows behind her, with a panoramic view of the front gardens, are always calling her to come outside and play. Her office has nine-foot ceilings, a fireplace, a television and built-in bookcases that house approximately 3,500 books.
“What can I say? My keeper shelf has been breeding in the middle of the night, rather like drycleaners’ wire clothes hangers.”
Where can we find out more about you Cherry Adair?
On my website:
www.cherryadair.com, Twitter and my beloved Facebook. I love hearing from readers – wherever you may find me.
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Lodestone Series
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T-FLAC/PSI
Edge of Danger Enhanced
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In Too Deep Enhanced
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Copyright
GIDEON
Copyright © 2015 by Cherry Adair
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Adair Digital.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Adair Digital.