The Risk-Taker

by Kira Sinclair

  Certainly nothing good.

  “Boy, did I get it. Our assignment was simply to visit a local village and to gather any intel our regular contacts had to report. Simple.”

  Hope rubbed her cheek against his back. “Famous last words.”

  And they almost were. They were so damn lucky no one had died. That was probably the only thing that let him sleep at night.

  “One of the kids was acting funny. A boy, twelve or thirteen, that I’d talked to before. He was jumpy. That should have been my first clue something was wrong, but I thought it was because he was scared about sharing the information he had in such a public place. When he beckoned us to follow him, I did.”

  He could see the men, the kid, the place so clearly he could have been standing there. A bitter scent greeted them when they crossed the low threshold into a house. Darkened hallways.

  “The house was sprawling, probably big enough to shelter a huge extended family. The inside rooms had no windows. It was so dark, even in the middle of the day.”

  And like the inside of a maze, one room opening up to a hallway with a handful more, and on and on.

  “Within a few turns we were lost. Each room looked exactly like the next. The team swept the house as we went, but it was so big and they’d been waiting for us....”

  “It was a trap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So how was that your fault?”

  Slowly, Gage turned his head and looked straight into her eyes. “Because we shouldn’t have gone in. That sixth sense you develop out on the battlefield, the one that keeps your ass safe, told me something was wrong, but I ignored it.”

  She stared back at him, steadily.

  “I ignored it and protocol. The house hadn’t been cleared, but I didn’t want to let the boy get away. I knew if we didn’t follow him whatever intel he had would be gone. I pushed, like I always do. But this time I wasn’t the only one to pay the price.”

  He dropped his gaze to Hope’s mouth. It would be so easy to drown himself in the taste of her. To use sex and her presence to push away everything he wanted to forget.

  But he’d never been a coward and he wasn’t starting today.

  So instead, he pulled his gaze back up to hers and waited for the recriminations he knew he deserved.

  “No one died, Gage.”

  “Maybe not, but they could have.”

  “Didn’t.”

  “My friend lost his leg.”

  “And you were tortured. I’m not saying there aren’t scars, I’m saying the wounds aren’t fatal. For anyone. You made a mistake. It happens. Despite what you’d like everyone to believe, you are human.”

  He laughed, the sound bedraggled and drowning in despair. What she said might be true, but it didn’t help. “I’m supposed to be more than human, Hope. A Ranger. The best of the best. The strongest of the strong.”

  Hope pressed a kiss to the back of his neck. The tiny hairs there stood at attention, immediately responding in an unnerving approximation of that warning itch he’d ignored.

  The last thing he’d expected was a kiss. It was the last thing he deserved.

  “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

  “What do you mean? What can I do about it? It’s over.”

  “Maybe. But I’m talking more about you. Are you going to take chunks out of your own hide every day for the rest of your life in penance? Are you going to wallow in self-disgust? Or are you going to figure out how to move past this? The way I see it you have two choices, let it destroy you or do something about it.”

  Ever the pragmatist, that was his Hope. He should have known she’d cut through all the bullshit and tell him the truth. At least she hadn’t tried to convince him he hadn’t done anything wrong as Tanner had done.

  She had a point. A good one. In this state he wasn’t good for anything or anyone. He definitely wouldn’t trust himself in a combat situation, and though he wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone else, he wasn’t sure he’d ever trust himself there again.

  He’d been trained to rely on his instincts to protect himself and the men around him. He no longer trusted those instincts. He was pretty screwed up at the moment, and this was one time he knew better than to push himself. It wouldn’t be fair to the other men in his unit that depended on him to have their back.

  One thing was for sure, he wouldn’t go back if he couldn’t completely trust himself to protect the brothers with whom he served.

  But that was a bridge he didn’t have to cross. At least not yet.

  What bothered him was that even if Hope made sense, her advice was easy to offer and damn hard to follow. Exactly how was he supposed to move past the guilt?

  Rather than ask her, and get an answer he wasn’t ready to deal with, he settled on the next best thing. Kissing, touching and holding her. When she was with him, at least some of the turmoil he’d been carting around inside him eased.

  Including the stuff that had always been there. Restless energy. That need for challenge and danger. When she was there, those needs weren’t.

  Bridging the gap between them, Gage pressed his mouth to hers. Her hands slipped up his chest. She leaned into the kiss and asked for more.

  Desire overwhelmed him. It was heady and delicious. So much more pleasurable than the things he was trying to forget.

  * * *

  DAMN. SHE’D FALLEN IN LOVE with him. What was she supposed to do with that? How had she let this happen?

  Hope stared down at him. His mouth, hands and body were more relaxed than she’d seen since he’d been home. The skin under his eyes only carried the faintest hint of the bruise he’d gotten at the fight.

  Man, he was a fast healer.

  How could she have given him her heart just as quickly?

  Or maybe she’d always been on the verge of doing that. If that was the case she’d picked a hell of a time to give in.

  Helpless tears burned her eyes. Hope angrily pushed them away. They wouldn’t help.

  There were so many reasons why this wouldn’t work. The most important one being that he would hurt her. He might not mean to but...

  Her mom had been ripped from her. The way of it, so sudden, had hurt almost as much as the gaping hole in her life. A car accident on an icy winter road driving home from work in Charleston. There one minute and gone the next.

  Her dad had tried to fill the gap, but a girl needed her mother. Especially during those teenage years when she tried to figure out what kind of woman she was going to be. What kind of wife and mother. She’d lost the example just when she’d needed it most.

  She could lose Gage the same way. Boom! In one second he’d be gone and she’d be alone and devastated. Without him there to help her through the agony.

  He was a fighter and had been long before becoming a soldier. The same things that made him a great soldier—that damn reckless streak, honor, bravery, determination—made him a terrible bet to build your life on.

  Hope’s gaze was drawn to the uncovered wounds where his thumbnails should have been. One of these days he was going to end up dead.

  A bomb, a gun, a fight or faulty parachute.... One risk too many. It didn’t matter when or how. What mattered was that it would happen. Today, tomorrow, ten years from now.

  Even thinking about it had her chest tightening so much she couldn’t breathe.

  She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stay here.

  * * *

  GAGE WOKE ALONE. And wasn’t happy about it. What was worse was that the bed beside him was stone cold, telling him that Hope had left a long time ago.

  Why had she skulked out in the middle of the night like a common thief? They were going to have to discuss this.

  He tried not to let it bother him that he’d opened up to her, shared not only the worst experience of his life, but also his role in what had happened and the guilt that went right along with it, and she’d disappeared in the night.

  Dread and a sense of foreboding rolled thr
ough him. It was the same sixth sense that had kept him safe more times than he could count.

  This wasn’t good. Climbing out of bed, Gage headed for the shower.

  He’d been so caught up in everything that he hadn’t realized what day it was until he walked into the kitchen to find his parents standing in the center kissing. A vase full of roses—ten red and two white—sat in the middle of the table. It was the same predictably sweet bouquet his dad had gotten for his mom every Valentine’s Day for as long as he could remember. The red were for their love, the white for each of their children.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day.” His mama beamed at him over his dad’s shoulder. Her eyes glowed with happiness. He wanted that. To love and be loved thirty years later.

  He wanted that with Hope.

  The thought surprised him. But it shouldn’t have. He’d loved her for as long as he could remember. His mind was spinning as he stood silently and stared at his parents.

  His mom’s smile faltered. She glanced worriedly up at his dad and then back at him. “Is Hope coming down?”

  That jerked Gage out of his stupor.

  “Oh, don’t look so guilty, Gage. You’re an adult. Besides, we like Hope and always have. She’s welcome to stay anytime.”

  Well. Okay. It wasn’t that he’d expected to keep Hope’s visit a secret. Or that his parents would kick up a fuss. It was more that he’d expected all of them to just pretend it hadn’t happened. Sort of like don’t ask, don’t tell.

  His dad swung slowly around to face him, his arm still wrapped tightly around his mom’s waist.

  “I have to admit I was worried when Edith told me Hope had bought you for the week, what with your history. I never did understand what happened between you before you left, but I knew it wasn’t good. By the time I’d learned of it, though, there was nothing I could do. The couples had already been announced.”

  Hope had paid to be coupled with him? Why would she do that? Thinking back to that night, when the announcement had been made, he realized she hadn’t looked surprised. Nervous, yes. Wary, absolutely. Shocked, no.

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” His mom asked. “She had a change of heart and wanted the chance to fix what happened before you left.”

  Gage rolled that notion around inside his head, rejecting it almost as quickly as his mom had offered it. Hope had definitely not been repentant for rejecting him. In fact, not once had she mentioned it or even apologized for it, not that he needed or wanted her to.

  But if she’d bought time with him for that purpose wouldn’t that have been the logical place to start? And if Hope was anything, it was logical. Hell, she probably would have made a list.

  As far as he could see, there was no list.

  In fact, at first she’d been rather reluctant to even be next to him. He’d had to practically drag her out onto the dance floor at the cocktail party. And she hadn’t loosened up, not really, until the next afternoon in the rain outside the bowling alley.

  Sure she’d begrudgingly offered him comfort when he crashed her place in the middle of the night. And at the fight she’d asked about Afghani— His thought trailed off.

  She’d asked him about Afghanistan. Not once but at least twice. And she’d slept with him. Sure, she’d chased reporters off her front lawn with a shotgun, but that could just as easily have been a stunt to claim her territory rather than to defend him.

  With a groan, Gage sank into one of the kitchen chairs and dropped his head into his hands.

  “Honey, are you okay?” his mom asked, alarm turning her voice shrill.

  And he’d told Hope everything she’d wanted to know. And more. Last night.

  Rage blasted through him. His mama laid a hand on his bent back. With a roar, he surged to his feet, knocking it off.

  She’d slept with him and he’d spilled his guts.

  How stupid could one man get?

  14

  HOPE STARED AT THE CURSOR on the blank document she’d just opened. Great. The first piece she’d taken in weeks and she couldn’t write a damn thing. Her brain was empty. Empty of everything but what Gage had told her and the fear that came with it—for him and for herself.

  No, she had no intention of using the information he’d given her. After the Brandon incident the last place she wanted to work was the Courier. But she was a writer, even if she didn’t get to use the skills as often as she liked, and part of her itched to put the details down so she could process them for herself.

  How else was she supposed to deal with the horror and pain and guilt he’d shared with her? Just the thought of him being beaten and tortured...he was dealing with it a hell of a lot better than she would be.

  If that had been her, she’d have been a quivering pile of fear.

  Gage was so damn strong. Too strong for his own good.

  With a sigh of frustration, Hope finally gave in, knowing she wouldn’t get any actual work done until she’d spit her emotions out onto the page.

  Everything faded away as her world coalesced to nothing but the white rectangle on her screen and the black words racing across it. She set down details—some in his words and some in her own. But mostly Hope wrote about how much she admired him for protecting the men he was responsible for. The look in his eyes as he’d poured everything out to her. How strong and honorable and broken he was.

  Pretty soon the ramblings turned into what she could do to help him. It was an agenda for herself that ended with two bold words—love him.

  They scared her so she erased them.

  And just in time because Gage stormed into her office, slamming her door closed behind him.

  Fury blazed from his eyes. She’d expected him to be a little miffed when he woke and she was gone, but really, this was too much.

  “Why did you leave?” he asked, his voice deep and dark.

  She’d been prepared for the question, although she had to admit that his jarring entrance had set her off her game. Still, she trotted out the bluff she’d prepared, anyway. “Because I didn’t feel right sleeping beneath your parents’ roof.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Hope’s heart stuttered in her chest. His golden eyes narrowed, zeroing straight on her. She couldn’t help but feel open and vulnerable. Could he see just how much she cared about him? Would he use it against her?

  How was she going to extricate her heart from this fix without losing pieces of herself?

  “You got what you wanted last night and decided it wasn’t worth sticking around anymore.”

  Hope opened her mouth to issue another argument, but had to shut it again when his words sank in and she realized she had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Last night. The minute I told you about Afghanistan you disappeared.”

  She felt sick.

  “My leaving had nothing to do with what you told me.”

  Which technically wasn’t true. What he’d told her had everything to do with why she’d left, but not the way he obviously thought.

  His jaw flexed. He took a menacing step toward her and growled, “Liar. There’s guilt all over your face. Trust me, I’m intimate with the emotion and recognize it when I see it.”

  Hope’s first reaction was to crumble beneath the weight of his anger. It would have been easy to do. But that wasn’t who she was. She refused to let him have that kind of hold over her. It was exactly what she’d always been afraid of, that she would lose herself to him and then lose him.

  “You’re right. I do feel guilty, but not for the reason you seem to think. Everything you told me last night...” The helplessness she’d felt looking down at him, knowing that he could never change and if she really loved him she wouldn’t want him to, resurfaced. “It scared the crap out of me, Gage.”

  Hope sent the chair at her knees rolling backward. The added space gave her room to walk away. Slipping around the desk, she placed it between them and felt stronger with the barri
er there. Safer. Not from him, but from herself.

  “Why do you think I never tried to take our friendship further when we were younger?”

  “Because you weren’t interested.”

  “Wrong. I was interested. Very interested. Did you never wonder why I didn’t date anyone else?”

  His teeth clipped off a single word. “No.”

  “I didn’t want to date anyone else. No guy could measure up to you. That damn sparkle in your eyes. The charming way your mouth curls higher on one side when you smile. Really smile. The relentless way you attack life. Your mischievousness. Or the way you stood up against your father and refused to do what he wanted. Strength and integrity, they went bone-deep with you even back then.”

  Confusion crossed his face, crowding out the hard expression. Slowly, he sank into the chair she’d just abandoned. “Then why did you say no?”

  “Because right along with that determination came a breakneck need for something more. You were searching—for acceptance, understanding, I have no idea what. The problem was you always pushed—yourself, your friends, your parents, me. You weren’t content to throw yourself into the abyss, you wanted company.

  “I had plans, Gage. Dreams of my own, and I couldn’t take the risk that letting you in would mean I’d lose that for myself. Lose my own strength because it couldn’t compare to yours.”

  He swallowed. The long column of his tanned throat worked tantalizingly, drawing her gaze and distracting her. That was exactly what she was talking about! Just being in the same room with him had the ability to make everything else unimportant.

  If he touched her right now she’d be powerless to stop him from doing whatever he wanted—and damn the fact that she was in her office, in the middle of the day, behind schedule on a new story that needed to go to press.

  “And then you joined the army. Probably the most perfect job for you. Every day pushing you physically, challenging you and filled with danger. And I knew eventually you’d push too far and end up dead.”