by Christa Wick
Collin
I rolled. A body. A blast. Pleasure. Pain. Somewhere in there a woman I had to reach. Fingers grasping, thrusting, straining to hold on. Whimpers, moans, screams.
"Boss!"
Kane's voice somehow penetrated the chaos of screams and secondary blasts, his hands prying at my fingers before he yelled again. "Someone grab her from him."
The woman, the one I had reached through flames and twisted metal to pull out. They wanted me to let go after all I had done to secure her.
"She's safe!" Kane bellowed. "Let go so we can get her and you inside, damn it!"
Ringing then a jangly buzz came and went, pain accompanying the sounds to be replaced by a dull ache when they faded. My hands squeezed at flesh, a pair of shocked brown eyes watering as Kane's voice cut through the chaos of a makeshift emergency room.
"He's trying to help you, Collin." Kane's hands on my wrists, fresh pain as he found the pressure points and forced me to release the doctor.
A needle slid into my vein, forcing pitch black relief until I woke again, gray dancing at the edge of my vision, the cacophony of ringing and buzzing muted but still present. Not waiting for my vision to clear, I pushed up from the mattress, hands tearing at the IV tubing and vein catheter. Kane moved as if he would subdue me once again.
"Take me to her," I growled, my hand poised for a judo chop if he was arrogant enough to grab at me.
"She's fine," he barked back. "Sleeping in the next room."
I grabbed his shirt collar and jerked him to me. "One of these days, you'll learn how to lie."
"She's unconscious. You both were concussed, but that's the only mark on her." His eyes closed in an exercise of patience. "You, you obstinate bastard, left a pint of blood on the damn asphalt and need that fucking IV back in your arm."
He wrenched my hand from his collar, turning it over to reveal the bandage running up my forearm. "Forty-two stitches. Even for you, that's got to be a personal record."
Fresh pain shot through the limb. The room started to spin. My ass hit the bed with a whump and I stayed down. Reaching up, I touched another bandage, this one on my forehead.
"I need to see her. Help me."
The request for assistance would be as close as I came to an apology. He didn't expect or want more, just discreetly offered his shoulder for me to latch onto and haul my body up. We walked like that to the next room where Mia waited unconscious in an examination chair.
"Why isn't she in a bed?"
The man leaning over Mia answered. "We only have the one, which you should still be in, Mr. Stark."
I knew from the hotel security briefing that we were in the guts of the hotel and the speaker was Dr. Emad Ashamalla. He was also the man I had tried to choke.
Ignoring his presence and that of the nurse, I studied Mia's unconscious form. She was pale, far paler than she had been in the back of the limo when we started the return drive to the hotel. A concussion alone did not account for the bloodless look.
"Have you checked for internal bleeding?"
"There's no bruising or swelling." Dr. Ashamalla turned his gaze on Kane, no doubt wanting me out of the room before my hands were around his throat again.
Mia began to move on the exam chair. Her hands pulled up to her stomach. Her eyes fluttered open as she rotated her head a few degrees. I reached for her, the tension in my chest lessening for only a second before the last trace of color vanished from her face.
I pulled back and turned to the doctor. "Are you certain she's okay?"
Ashamalla stepped closer to Kane. "We'll run a scan to make sure, but I need the blood test back first."
Mia tried to push up. "Blood test?"
Her eyes started to roll upward then her arms went lax. I grabbed her shoulders to keep her from sliding off the chair. Her hands curled around her gut. Her lips parted in a wordless cry, but that didn't stop her from struggling against my hold.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Someone tried to kill Mr. Stark." Kane's tone dripped anger and sarcasm. He'd pay for it later -- after I was certain Mia would be okay.
She tried to stand again. The effort to keep her down spiked through my head, the area beneath the bandage hiding a jackhammer beneath it.
Something was wrong. She needed to stay still, stop fighting me and let them run the damn scan.
"Mia, sit down..."
The words died in my throat as blood blossomed against her blue skirt in some macabre, dark red Rorschach test.
No. Not again -- not with her. Not with Mia.
"Do something!" I shouted as she passed out.
The medical staff was already moving. The nurse pried my paralyzed fingers from Mia's shoulders as Kane wrapped an arm around my torso and pulled me from the room. More staff brushed against us. Still wrestling with me, Kane made a messy pirouette to keep us out of the path of the emergency cart and then one of the nurses closed the door on us.
Half an hour passed before the door opened again, another two hours before the lab confirmed Ashamalla's suspicions.
Mia had miscarried.
"Do not tell her about the baby."
Kane and the doctor stiffened simultaneously.
Ashamalla crossed his arms over his thin chest, his response made through tightly puckered lips that quivered with each word. "Mr. Stark, I cannot withhold--"
I placed my hand on the doctor's shoulder, my thumb playing against his Adam's apple as I tried to keep my touch an otherwise light reminder that he needed to obey me. "You understand how a man in my position might not reveal his marriage to the public?"
I let the implication sink in. Ashamalla might be practicing Western medicine in a very modern city, but there were other rules he had to abide by -- older rules. If the good doctor believed Mia was my wife, he would leave it to me to break the news to her.
If he believed...
He looked to Kane for confirmation. Trent offered a slow nod and earned a full measure of my forgiveness for the crappy tone he'd taken with Mia a few hours before.
"Very well." Turning from me, Ashamalla re-entered the exam room where Mia remained unconscious, an IV supplying her with fresh blood.
"What the fuck was that about?" Kane hissed. "You haven't actually married--"
I shook my head. I hadn't and I wouldn't. For her own safety, I had to send her away from me -- far away. Knowing about the miscarriage would make her exile that much harder on her. I'd seen her in the office during a baby shower for one of the senior analysts. That had been month three for Mia at Stark International. Everyone else in the room, me most of all, had forced a smile on their faces as the father-to-be passed around ultrasound pictures.
Not Mia. Her face had lit up like a damn Christmas tree -- or the Aurora Borealis. It had been the first time I stopped noticing her lush body only and started paying attention to the woman inside.
Checking the surveillance footage on her later, I had witnessed similar behavior as she made her rounds, delivering missives on my behalf. She noticed before anyone else if someone had a new picture of their children or grandchildren in their cube or office -- especially if the picture showed an infant.
Giving Mia a baby would have been worth more than anything and everything I could have bought her. Now that baby...
My gaze landed on the hamper of bloody sheets parked just outside the door to her room.
I grabbed Kane by the shirt and jerked him to me. "I need her stateside--"
"I said that weeks ago," he snorted.
I shook him. He still didn't understand. I wanted her. I wouldn't stop wanting her even if I had to send her away. "Full security team, kid gloves, anything she needs..."
The murmur of voices in the next room altered and I realized Mia was awake.
"What happened?"
Her voice came out as a squeak. I turned just as the nurse shattered my plan to lessen Mia's pain. Her hand on Mia's stomach, the woman shook her head.
"The baby--"
Too late, Ashamalla tried to shut the woman up.
Mia looked at me, her green eyes swimming behind an instant veil of tears as the news sank in. Next to her, the nurse with the big mouth stood like a deer caught in the headlights as Ashamalla pinched her arm.
I couldn't look at Mia, couldn't stop looking at the woman next to her. I wanted to wrap my hands around her neck and shake until those two words found their way back down her throat.
When I did look at Mia, she shook her head. I understood the meaning behind the shake -- she hadn't known. I expected as much. She had no access to any kind of test and I'd kept her on an emotional roller coaster all these weeks. She had misdiagnosed the morning sickness as stress and the result of all those tears she cried after I left.
So had I.
Seeing the tears and pain in her eyes, I turned to Kane. I couldn't look at her, couldn't begin to eliminate the threat to her future safety while she was anywhere near me. I couldn't fight the need to soothe her much longer. Once I had her in my arms again, I wouldn't be able to send her away.
"I want her out. As soon as she can fly." I shook him, wanted to throw him against the wall because he was the only one in the room tough enough to unleash on and have him survive. "You'll accompany her and a physician from AH or Welcare and a full security team."
"I'm not leaving with someone trying to kill--"
I jerked on Kane's jacket until our faces were a hair's width from touching.
"You will." I would fire him if he didn't. His job wasn't to protect me. It was to do whatever the hell I told him to. I needed her out, needed her safe.
An urgent shout from Mia's room drew my attention. I looked to find her unconscious again. Someone strapped a breathing mask around her face. I looked at the monitor and noticed that her pulse rate was elevated but in a the safe zone.
"Let me know if she worsens, until then, work on getting her out." I released Kane then walked to the elevators to return to the suite.
I couldn't be at the hotel when she woke again. I had to find the person or group that had tried to kill me. To protect Mia, I would return the favor, succeeding where they had failed. It didn't matter whether it was some political sect or if some sheikh's son or billionaire's company had gone rogue. Everyone would quickly learn -- don't touch me, don't touch mine.
More than anyone, Mia was mine. Even after she moved on to another lover, she would still be mine. She just wouldn't know it. Wouldn't know how closely I watched or how badly I wanted to be selfish and return her to my side.
It was for the best I hadn't told Mia that I loved her. The words had danced at the edge of my lips often enough the last week. A ring even waited in the suite's safe. I had planned to give it to her before we left Dubai, ensuring she knew nothing would change between us when we returned stateside. The bomb erased that intent, leaving me glad I had waited. Ignorant of my feelings, she would heal. Her sorrow would give way to anger, anger would lead her to another lover. In time, she would have the baby she wanted -- just not mine.
An hour later, with the ring in my pocket and a duffel full of tactical gear slung over my shoulder, I took the elevator down to the garage where my special operations team had assembled. Trent texted me an estimated departure time for Mia that was seven hours out.
I would wait until her plane reached international airspace before acting, then God have mercy on the sorry-assed bastards that had planted the street bomb.
I was fresh out.
Chapter Seven
Mia
Merritt Island - Four Months Later
Flipping switches.
Were I asked to characterize my "relationship" with Collin Stark, those two words would succinctly wrap it up. From the interrogation in his office, to the hotel suite in Dubai, to the medical suite deep in the hotel's bowels, Collin had flipped switches inside me that I either didn't know I had or thought I had long ago shut off.
Naturally, other words came to mind: complicated, heart breaking, sublime...
One-sided.
"Deep in thought?"
I looked up from my computer monitor to find Reed Henley, my manager, staring at me over the top of my cubicle wall. Only nominally my manager, Reed could have found me playing Minesweeper or shopping on eBay and it wouldn't have made a difference. I had no real duties at the South Florida data farm Trent Kane had dumped me at after my return from Dubai.
Sure, I tried to create my own duties. Every day I looked for something to analyze of interest to Stark International. I was, after all, now a data analytics specialist -- the type of job I had studied for in my master's program.
I dumped one unsolicited report after another on Reed's desk, each study more voluminous than its predecessor. As far as I knew, they all went unread. I wasn't here to work, after all. I was here to collect twice my prior salary and drive a company car between work and my trendy, rent-free townhouse.
Truth was, Reed wasn't my manager, he was my handler -- a fact evident by all the pictures in his office of him as a much younger man with Collin Stark and Trent Kane, the three of them in Army combat gear.
I acknowledged Reed with a side glance and a short answer as I returned to the report I had been typing up. "No more than usual."
His fingers strummed along the top of the cubicle wall. "You weren't at the barbecue Saturday."
"No." One of the many switches flipped since meeting Collin, I had lost the ability to be pleasant to Reed. I could muster smiles for Kelly, the intern who delivered mail, and Max, who worked security at the front desk. I could speak in full sentences to almost anyone in the office who bothered talking to me, but not Reed.
The strumming turned to tapping. "Max brought his wife."
Saying nothing, I pushed at the right edge of my monitor, turning it a little so that my head would be forced to follow and he couldn't see the well of tears building. Mentioning Max and, more so, his wife who had just completed her last cycle of chemotherapy, was low, even for one of Stark's oldest buddies.
"You know there's a Thursday happy hour--"
Grabbing my coffee mug, I stood and walked from the cubicle. I couldn't understand Reed's recent attempts to integrate me into the office social scene. Someone at Stark International had deemed me unfit to do real work, whether for security reasons or perceived competency, yet Reed suddenly expected me to mill with the herd, a drink or hot dog in hand, and act like I was one of them.
Entering the coffee station, I rinsed my mug and asked myself yet again why I still worked at Stark International. Not Collin's reason why, but my own. The only thing clear in my mind was Collin's complete rejection of me. The doubled salary and excessive fringe benefits were merely the coin of his guilt.
Why had I stayed? He had exiled me to a friendless location to mourn the miscarriage alone--
Don't go there, Mia.
I swallowed down a hot gulp of fresh coffee, letting the pain in my mouth and throat replace the one burning through my heart. The medical staff and Kane had tried to convince me after I awoke to find Stark gone for good that the nurse had misspoken, that her English was bad. She tried to convince me herself, but her eyes told the truth.
I swung, sometimes by the day, more often by the hour, between believing the lie and knowing the truth. I wanted to believe the lie, not because it cast Collin in a better light, but because the truth was too painful.
I had lost something more important to me than a lover.
I had lost a baby.
When I wallowed in that fact, I tried to tell myself the loss was for the better. Why would Stark accept the child any more than he accepted me? And if he did, he had all the power in the world to keep the baby from me. It would have been heartbreak stacked on heartbreak.
As ineffective as the argument was, I couldn't shake it, couldn't find anything better to replace it. I walked the idea round and round inside my skull until the pendulum swung back to it all being a lie. There had been no baby.
Swallowing down more coffee, I stepped i
nto the hall that ran from reception to the open floor of cubicles. My desk was down the main aisle and I could see that Reed hadn't moved far. Likely, he wasn't waiting for my return, but I would have to pass him anyway.
Catching a building wave of voices from reception, I followed my ear to waste a few more minutes in the hope Reed would finally go back to his office, or at least another row on the floor.
Seven bodies, plus the receptionist, filled the waiting area. All of them wore employee badges and had gathered in front of the big screen television that ran a news channel throughout the work day.
"Damn, I wish I could have a secretary like that."
The comment originated with a red-haired young man who had made the striking choice of a chartreuse dress shirt and a red tie for the day. His name escaped me but I vaguely remembered that he was a spreadsheet jockey of some sort. He didn't analyze data, just helped arranged it for those of us who did. Or, in my case, those of us who pretended we did.
Dismissing him, I looked to the screen and the woman who had provoked his remark. Blonde, statuesque although sitting down, she looked like she belonged on a runway. I read the news tape at the bottom of the screen to learn that the station was covering a Miami security conference. When I looked up, the woman had leaned forward, her manicured nails lightly indenting a dress jacket as her fingers wrapped around a masculine shoulder. Her red lips whispered into a well-shaped ear surrounded by short black curls.
Collin Stark...
Another male spreadsheet jockey elbowed the redhead. "I hear his last one was ancient."
Mentally correcting the man, I shook my head as I spun on one heel. Collin Stark's last secretary was fat and stupid beyond measure. Stupid to place her heart in his hands, stupid to accept his blood money, stupid to think he might yet show up.
Returning to the coffee station, I absently rinsed the mug and placed it in the dishwasher. From there, I returned to my desk, logged back into my computer with numb fingers, input my hours for the day then logged out and powered down. I didn't glance around my desk or look in the drawers. Four months into working at the office, I hadn't brought in a single picture or plant. Nothing personal occupied my cube.