by Julia London
The tapping of the gun stilled. “Do not play games with me,” he warned. “I will kill your love first and let you watch her die.”
Leah’s brows dipped into a V at that. She clenched her jaw and very quietly let go of the rope, judging by the way it slackened around her body. Michael kept his eye on Juan Carlo, his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “You want the key?” he asked.
“Si,” Juan Carlo said with a bit of a bow as Leah managed to push the ropes down around her waist.
“Then I’ll tell you where it is.”
“Go on.”
“Maribel has it.”
Juan Carlo’s laugh was cold. “Even if you do not produce the key, I will still kill you, Michael Raney. I have my honor to protect.”
“Yeah, well, Maribel stomped all over your honor, amigo. She used that key like a red light,” he said as Leah quickly pushed the rope down to her knees. “It was her ticket to good sex. That was her problem with you, you know. No finesse in the bedroom.”
He would never know who moved first—Leah, or him, or even Juan Carlo. But as Juan Carlo lifted the gun to shoot him. Michael lunged at the same moment Leah rose up and clipped Juan Carlo in the back, just like Cooper had taught them in boot camp. When Juan Carlo doubled over on his side, Michael leaped to his feet and kicked him in the face, knocking him back.
The gun went flying out of Juan Carlo’s hand, and he was forced around by the blow to his head. He fell against the bureau, and as Leah kicked him, Michael launched himself at Juan Carlo, landing on his body and crashing with him to the floor.
He didn’t know how Leah fell, but when she scrambled to her feet, she was holding the gun by the finger loop, as far away from her body as she could.
“Leah!” Michael shouted. “Get the rope!”
She whirled around, saw that Michael had Juan Carlo’s hands behind his back, but that Juan Carlo was struggling and cursing them in Spanish. She instantly put the gun on the bed, grabbed the rope—grappling with the chair for a moment—and then fell on Juan Carlo’s legs, wrapping the rope around his feet.
In the meantime, Michael grabbed the other end of it and strove to get the rope around Juan Carlo’s hands, who was frantically struggling now, his face red with his cursing. Leah scrambled up the side of Juan Carlo and grabbed his head, which caused a burst of blue Spanish and venom directed at her. Leah cringed, but Michael encouraged her. “Hold on, you’re doing great.”
She held on while Michael trussed him up, not only to himself, but to the bed. He jumped up with Juan Carlo screaming at him, grabbed the gun, and then grabbed Leah, pushing her out the door. “Go!” he said to her. “Get out of here!”
Leah ran.
Michael turned back to Juan Carlo, pointed the gun at his head. “You fucking bastard,” he breathed.
Juan Carlo just laughed. “Kill me,” he said easily. “Without the key, I am a dead man already.”
As Leah reached the door, it flew open, and several men stormed in. She screamed; one of them grabbed her, clamped a hand over her mouth, and dragged her outside. “Jesus, lady, take a breath! We’re here to help.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled it free of her mouth and then dragged a breath into her lungs. Several deep breaths, actually, until her heart stopped racing and her hands stopped shaking. And then she looked at the guy in the suit with the shades. “Who in the hell are you?” she demanded.
He smiled. “Hey, it’s okay. Everything is okay.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
JUAN Carlo was, as Michael very well knew, a very passionate man—but he’d never thought him stupid. Maybe a few years in Spanish prison had dulled his sharp senses, because he’d let passion get in the way of common sense, and his desire to see Michael dead lead him to some very bad decisions. Like coming to the United States, for example. And then tracking Michael down. And using Leah to draw him in.
But Juan Carlo was one lucky bastard, the recipient of a little divine intervention, because when Rex arrived, Michael had the gun barrel pressed against Juan Carlo’s head and was debating whether or not he should kill him.
“Hey,” Rex said breezily as he gingerly took the gun from Michael’s hand. “I told you to let me kill him.”
Juan Carlo snorted disdainfully, but Michael stepped back, put his hand to the back of his head where Juan Carlo had clocked him, and smiled maniacally at his foe, at the blood splattered on his expensive blue silk shirt, at his hands, now cuffed with steel. “Your ass is dead, Juan Carlo,” he said, and Rex quickly put his hands to Michael’s chest and pushed him back. “I’ll see you dead before you lay another hand on anyone close to me.”
“Michael,” Rex said sternly, shoving him backward. “It’s over. Shake it off.”
Michael laughed and added in Spanish, “Keep an eye on your back, my friend, because I will never let this die.”
Juan Carlo chuckled. “I would offer you the same advice.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Rex said, and shoved Michael hard into the kitchen, as another agent squatted down before Juan Carlo and began to ask him questions in Spanish. Predictably, Juan Carlo responded with colorful curses.
Michael shook Rex off and strode outside, pushing on the kitchen door with such force that it almost came off its hinges. He stalked off the porch and stood in the bright sunlight, his hands on his hips, taking deep breaths to calm himself down. On the other side of an overgrown yard, Leah was leaning against the trunk of a nondescript rental car, her arms folded tightly around her. There were dark circles under her eyes, her hair was a tangle of blond, and her dress . . . well, that dress just made his blood boil.
She was holding her arms tightly around her, staring at the ground as she answered the questions of agents, listened to them tell her not to speak of this to anyone until they said she could, which, of course, they would never do.
Michael turned away, his guilt at seeing her so exhausted and disheveled overwhelming. Rex had walked outside. “Let her go, get her out of here,” Michael said.
“Sure,” Rex said, and left Michael alone to collect his thoughts.
But a moment later, Michael heard an exclamation of frustration from Leah and turned around in time to see her striding toward him, her arms swinging, her eyes blazing. “You aren’t going to pat my head and send me away after that,” she said as she came to a halt in front of Michael, her chin tilted up defiantly, her hands on her hips. “Isn’t there something you want to say?”
“Say?” he echoed dumbly. There were a million things he wanted to say. So many, he didn’t know where to start.
Leah’s eyes narrowed, and she rose up on her toes and leaned forward, so that they were almost nose-to-nose and said, “Say. For example, sorry this happened, Leah? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you there was a crazy murderer lurking around and that you might possibly be in danger?” she added heatedly as they brought Juan Carlo out of the cabin. “Or how about, gee, it really sucks that you were poisoned and a gun was put to your head and you could have died!”
“It was not poison,” Juan Carlo shouted as two agents led him by.
“Oh, really?” Leah shouted after him. “Well, thanks to you I’ll never drink orange juice again!”
Michael caught her arm, drawing her attention back to him. “I’m sorry, Leah,” he said, assuming that was what she wanted. “I am so sorry this happened.”
Dammit if tears didn’t fill her blue eyes. It was one of those moments that every guy knows, a moment of total cluelessness as to what he’d said or didn’t say to cause the tears. Inside, he groped in the dark, searching vainly for a lesson learned somewhere along the way that might fill him in.
And as he floundered, Leah choked on a sob as she hauled off and hit him in the arm as hard as she could. “Sorry isn’t good enough!” she cried through her sobs. “You have used me and hurt me and humiliated me, and now you almost got me killed. Sorry. Is. Not. Good. Enough!” she said, hitting him with each word.
Michael stood there, sto
ic and unmoving, uncertain if she intended to hit him again, uncertain if he should just take it or make her stop. Leah raised her arm again, but then dropped it. Her shoulders sagged; she dropped her chin to her chest. “I want to go home.”
“Okay, baby,” he said low, and put his hand on her arm, but Leah instantly shrugged it off and would not look up.
He looked at Rex, who put a hand on Leah’s shoulder. “Let us take you back to camp,” he said soothingly, and led a strangely dejected Leah away.
If Michael could have any moment of the day back, it would have been that one. He wished he’d never seen her expression—the weariness, the bewilderment. Part of him wished he’d never even run into her again so that he would have spared her all this turmoil. He’d been so intent on his own wants he had obviously failed to consider Leah’s fully. He’d just been so certain they’d both want back what they’d lost years ago. It never occurred to him that the intervening years would rise up to stop him.
Leah didn’t look back, just let Rex lead her away.
Michael felt about as low as he’d ever felt in his life.
After one of the agents took Leah back to camp, Michael spent the rest of the day with Rex ensuring that what had happened on Sunlight Canyon Road would not be discovered by local authorities or by the media—or whoever owned the rundown old cabin, for that matter. As far as the world outside the U.S. government was concerned, Juan Carlo Sanchez had never come to the United States, and government agents would make sure that his tracks were completely erased.
A nondescript white car pulled away from the cabin, whisking Juan Carlo away to some clandestine holding cell. As they watched it barrel down the gravel road, Rex asked, “So what’s the deal with the key? Your boy won’t stop talking about it.”
“It fits a safe deposit box that was full of money and gold and a lot of blow at one time,” Michael said with a snort.
“That explains some of it,” Rex said. “We know he owes a lot of money to some really scary people.”
“He won’t find it in that box,” Michael said. “And all this time, he thought I was the one to have cleaned it out, the stupid fool.”
“Who did?” Rex asked.
Michael smiled wryly. “His wife. Who else?”
IT was late when Michael got back to camp, and the women were in rare form. As usual, they were divided into two main groups. The Starlets, as Leah called them, were sitting around a roaring campfire, obviously a little drunk, laughing and singing and calling out some surprisingly lewd suggestions to the camera guys milling around.
The cameramen, however, were not as interested in those suggestions—at least not professionally—because there was another group of women who were arguing over something that had happened on the rafting trip, and it looked as if it might come to blows.
“The girls are tired,” Cooper said with a slight shake of his head. “They need a nap.”
“What’s going on?” Michael asked.
“A paddle accident,” Eli said as he squinted in the direction of the squabbling women.
“A lost paddle?”
“Nope. One of them managed to hit another one in the back of the head through a chute, and wouldn’t you know it, that opened up a whole other can of worms.”
“About?” Jack asked.
Eli sighed, swiped the baseball hat off his head, scratched his scalp, and put the baseball cap back on before responding. “I’m not certain, but I think about shoes.”
“Shoes?”
“Shoes,” Eli said emphatically. “Those two women and their friends almost killed each other over a pair of shoes.”
“Now be fair, Eli,” Cooper said. “It was a pair of Stuart Wiseass, or something like that.”
“What does that mean?” Jack asked.
“Hell if I know,” Cooper admitted.
The four men peered at the women, who were quite animated in their heated discussion about who had done what to whom, baffled by such strong feelings about shoes.
But when a petite brunette carelessly tossed a plastic tumbler at a buxom blonde and hit her in the knee, a screech went up that had Eli and Cooper moving quickly to break up what all of them feared could turn into a brawl.
“So how was your day?” Jack asked as he and Michael watched Cooper try to reason with women who were alternately pouting and arguing, while the rest of the women snickered about it.
“Not so great,” Michael said truthfully.
“Where’d you find her?”
“You were right. She hooked up with someone.” The lie rolled easily off Michael’s tongue, just like the old days when everything he said had been a lie. It made him feel old.
Jack winced a little. “Sorry, bro. I know you’ve got a thing for her.”
“Yep,” Michael said. “But shit happens.” And with that, he walked away, unwilling and unable to speak of it any further.
He walked along the edge of camp, far enough out where he wasn’t easily noticed in the night, and therefore wasn’t forced to talk to anyone, but close enough that he could see everyone in camp. He had a destination, of course.
Leah was sitting out around a small fire with Trudy, Jamie, and Michele. Leah was doing the talking for once—the others looked spellbound by whatever tale she was telling, her hands flying and punctuating the air with the sketches of her words. Michael wondered what she’d told them about her absence today, if she’d used the same lie he’d used. Rex had impressed upon Leah the need to stay silent about Juan Carlo’s true motives until they had charged him. If ever.
He stood in the shadows, watching her for a long while, but all he could really see was her hitting him this afternoon, telling him sorry wasn’t good enough. After all he’d put her through, Michael believed he now understood—he couldn’t just pick up where they’d ended things. It just wasn’t good enough anymore. He’d come around to his feelings far too late—the damage had been done, exacerbated by an absolutely surreal experience with Juan Carlo.
After a while, he turned and walked back into the shadows, away from that end of the camp, knowing that he really wasn’t good enough for her—hell, he didn’t even know how to talk about what had happened. He had no idea how to pick up the pieces. And frankly, he had his own shit to work through. At the moment, his relationship with the one woman he had ever really loved seemed like an insurmountable mountain.
THE next day, the group packed up and headed to Bellingham to get settled in before filming began on Tuesday. T.A.’s plan to unite the women and reward them with the rafting trip seemed to have worked—they were in good spirits, a tight group. For the first time since they’d begun training the women, the guys felt optimistic that they could and would pull off a war.
For two days since the incident at the cabin, Michael had not spoken to Leah. She hadn’t spoken to him, either. It was as if some huge wall had suddenly been erected between them that neither of them could scale. On those few occasions their gazes locked, she glared at him. She was, he assumed, furious for what had happened to her, and he couldn’t blame her.
As sorry as Michael was about it, he had reached a conclusion. He couldn’t possibly apologize enough for who he was or what he’d done, and frankly, he didn’t know if he should even try. Yes, he’d made mistakes with Leah, huge, colossal mistakes. But he wasn’t sorry for his service to the United States. He couldn’t have possibly predicted Juan Carlo would reappear, either. But that was the crux of the problem—he would never be able to erase the things Leah wanted erased. Maybe what he had always believed of himself was true. Maybe he was such a good spy because he never had been able to form deep, committed relationships. Maybe he was truly meant to be an extreme bachelor.
It was sobering, disappointing, and even a little heartbreaking for a man who’d had such high hopes.
But it was real.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
IN Bellingham, the soccer moms were put up in a cheap hotel, two to a room. Of course Trudy and Leah took a room, and managed t
o finagle an adjoining room with Michele and Jamie. They thought it was funny that they had Starlets on one side, and Serious Actresses on the other side, who actually lived up to their moniker by posting times that everyone could run through their lines each night.
The first call sheet listed all the soccer moms, and when they arrived on set, the director explained that they wanted to do all the ensemble filming up front and as quickly as possible so they could send most of them back to L.A. and keep down costs. The schedule called for them to wrap up the big battle scenes in a week or so.
Michael, Leah noticed, was nowhere to be seen as they began to stage the first battle scene. And it wasn’t until they started filming that she did catch a glimpse of him, standing behind the director, his hands shoved in his pockets as he watched the run-through.
Everyone was very excited about the start of filming. Charlene Ribisi handed out little gold soccer ball key chains to commemorate the event. The crew had swelled to dozens, and they surrounded the women and their battlefield. It was a moment Leah had looked forward to all her life, a moment she should have been absorbing through her pores.
But instead, Leah could hardly concentrate, because she kept looking at Michael across the way standing with the other T.A. guys, or laughing and smiling at some women, wondering why he hadn’t tried to talk to her or at least try and apologize since they had come down off the mountain, as she had begun to think of it.
He should have at least had the courtesy to explain it all to her. She had spent a harrowing night and day in the company of an international terrorist—perhaps not a very good one, but a terrorist nonetheless—and she deserved an explanation. If the roles had been reversed, and she had been in Michael’s shoes, she would have at least apologized to him for his having suffered through it. And she definitely would have owned up to the issues between them, but nooo, Michael did nothing like that. Quite the contrary—he seemed to be avoiding her. Avoiding her! As if she was the problem. It infuriated her—she’d been through the greatest trauma of her life, no thanks to him, and he was treating her like she had the plague.