Hard to Hold

by Stephanie Tyler

  He could keep her distracted for a while. But not forever.

  Forever had never been his to give. Not with the job he held now or any job he’d have in the future. Danger was born and bred into him—nature, not nurture—and shit, whoever his real father was, he must’ve been one hell of an adrenaline junkie.

  He hadn’t lied to Isabelle last night when she’d asked about his real father—he’d never tried to find him. Jake figured that the odds weren’t great that they’d have a warm, fuzzy reunion.

  Twenty-four hours. That’s all the time he’d ever allowed himself to think ahead. Twenty-four hours could get you through anything. That’s all he was going to worry about now.

  Nick’s ulcer was acting up again, evidenced by the blood he’d just spit into the sink. Shit. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” said Dr. Markham—Dr. Markham?—wearing just shorts and a T-shirt, started to back out of the bathroom and then stopped. “I’m apologizing for being in my own bathroom.”

  Nick turned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Your bathroom?” he mumbled, making a mental note to kill Jake.

  But she’d already moved forward, stared between the blood and Nick.

  “Does it hurt here?” she asked, placing a hand on his chest with a doctor’s touch. Nick had to will himself not to jump—his nerve endings were fucked, and even the slightest touch provoked a fight-or-flight response in him if he wasn’t prepared.

  “What the fuck?” Jake stood in the doorway, still sweating from a recent workout. “Why are you naked?” he asked, like it was a big revelation.

  “I’m always naked,” Nick reminded him. “Besides, someone took all my clean towels.”

  “Stop, Jake,” the doctor said, and shit, Jake actually obeyed. “Does it hurt here?”

  “Look, Dr. Markham, I know it’s an ulcer. A small one. It heals and then it comes back.”

  “Stress.”

  He shrugged. Jake sighed loudly. “He’s had it from the time he was nine. Because he refuses to take his medicine.”

  “Are we really going to compare refusals of medical treatment?” Nick asked.

  “What are you even doing up here?” Jake asked.

  “I come up here sometimes,” Nick muttered. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  Isabelle could’ve sworn she saw a flush on Nick’s cheeks and she felt Jake back off his brother instantly. “You can call me Isabelle,” she said to the naked man in her bathroom. She figured now might not be the best time to mention the pilfered sheets and towels.

  “I’m Nick,” he said.

  “I remember you.”

  His voice was rough, as though he’d had some kind of vocal cord damage, and her eyes shifted immediately to his throat. Sure enough, the raised white scar, the hallmark of a tracheotomy, was at the base of his throat, just below his Adam’s apple. It would be a hard scar to remove completely, due to the delicate skin around the neck and throat.

  Nick was big, powerful-looking and classically handsome—he looked like he should be modeling Armani, not throwing up blood in her sink with a dangerous-looking knife strapped to his biceps despite the fact that he was otherwise completely nude. As if he was expecting trouble at any moment. But his green eyes held an almost reverence in them as he looked at her, and she wondered just what, if anything, Jake had shared with him.

  She thought back to the scene at the bar and remembered that Nick had seemed to be good at finding trouble.

  “Whose room was this?” she asked.

  “Our mom’s,” a voice rang out from behind them. “It was her office. The place where she used to write songs. Where she used to come to get away from all the testosterone.”

  “Which never worked,” Nick said.

  The tall man with two different-colored eyes stared at her, and she knew that he’d also been there that day she’d been spirited out of Africa. Had seen her vulnerable. Hurt.

  She straightened her shoulders and his gaze softened slightly.

  “It’s all right. Mom would’ve liked you. I’m Chris,” he offered.

  Chris was good-looking too—but in a much different way than either Jake or Nick. For one thing, the man’s eyes made it impossible not to stare at him. His jaw was strong, his mouth wide and he towered over the other two, no mean feat in itself. He had to be over six-foot-five.

  “Your eyes—that’s very rare,” she said, because she couldn’t stop staring at them.

  He nodded, as though used to both the statement and the stares. “Yes.”

  “Most people born with different-colored eyes have a pigment mixture in at least one eye.” She moved closer to him so she could get an even better look. He obliged by ducking down.

  No pigmentation in either eye, one a perfectly clear crystal blue and the other a bright green. “It’s really amazing,” she said.

  “I tend to amaze people all the time,” he said, a small smile tugging the corner of his wide mouth. His drawl wasn’t pronounced, but it was the type that would come out heavier when he was tired, or having sex.

  That thought made her turn toward Jake, who stood, arms crossed, a small frown on his face. “That’s enough,” he said, pulled Chris back. “What are you doing up here?”

  “Looking for you. Your phone’s going crazy.” Chris handed Jake his cell, which Jake tucked into his pocket without even looking at it.

  “Thanks. Look, Isabelle needed a place to stay,” Jake said, and she noticed that he didn’t ask permission or offer any apology for renting the room without asking them first.

  “If it’s a problem, I’m sure I can find another place,” she said quickly. “This is just temporary.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Chris said easily. “Why don’t we all leave and let Isabelle get dressed in peace?”

  The three men walked out of her bathroom, and she heard their conversation as they went down the stairs.

  “And you’re not going to walk around naked?” Jake was asking Nick.

  “Look, I’ll try, but I can’t make any promises. Sometimes, it just happens,” Nick said. “What the fuck happened to your wrists anyway?”

  She gave a small laugh and shut the bathroom door.

  The urgent string of text messages was from Clutch.

  Jake didn’t think Chris had checked them, but the message didn’t give much away, not if you weren’t suspicious to begin with.

  It did, however, make Jake sick to his stomach when he’d cut into his room to shower and let Chris and Nick head downstairs. They’d give him enough shit about this, but he wasn’t prepared to deal with it until he’d called Clutch and heard about Rafe’s escape.

  We’ll try to catch him at the airport.

  If Rafe was headed to the airport, he was headed to the States, and that was not good.

  You’re going to have to tell them. And he would tell Chris and Nick—right after he spoke with Cal. He owed his mentor that much.

  “Does Cal know she’s moved in here—with you?” Chris asked when Jake walked into the kitchen, still half in a daze.

  “She’s moved in here with us. And yeah, Cal knows.” Jake drank the last of the orange juice directly from the bottle and forced himself to act as normal as possible. Because when you lived with two human radars like his brothers, you pretty much couldn’t get away with having any secrets.

  “I like her,” Chris stated emphatically, then glanced at Jake. “Not like that.”

  “Good,” Jake muttered.

  “Good because you like her?”

  “Because she’s Cal’s goddaughter.”

  “Yeah, all right. We’ll go with that explanation for now,” Chris drawled. Jake looked for something to throw at Chris’s head while the man continued, “Still doesn’t really explain why she’s here, though.”

  “She needed a place to stay.”

  “You don’t usually move in women you like after one date.”

  “We didn’t have a date.”

  “I can’t think of a woman he’s liked enough to sp
end more than a few hours with in recent months. Years, even,” Nick said. He’d come into the kitchen and poured and drank a glass of milk with his ulcer medication as Jake and Chris stared. “What?”

  “You’re drinking milk instead of coffee,” Chris said.

  “You’re actually taking your ulcer medication,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, your girlfriend’s bossy,” Nick mumbled.

  “She’s not—Forget it.” Jake knew it was stupid to argue and give them any more fodder, a fact he remembered applied both in real life and in military situations, and one that got blown away when he was around his brothers.

  “The admiral gave us the whole Be nice to Isabelle speech yesterday,” Nick said. “I guess that’s the one he gave to you too.”

  Jake nodded.

  “I don’t think he meant you had to move her in,” Nick continued.

  Jake played with the empty orange juice bottle.

  “Are we going to talk about this?” Nick asked.

  “No,” Jake said, and usually, that would end it. A maybe was code for, I’ll let you pull it out of me, but a no meant Nick would shut his mouth until—if ever—Jake decided to talk.

  But yeah, what the fuck was he doing? This bodyguard-hero-all-encompassing-savior bullshit was grating on every last nerve he had. A lot of people saw him like that, sure. He didn’t want Isabelle to.

  He’d voiced his concerns to Cal again last night about how his brothers were going to get suspicious quickly, which was why the admiral had casually mentioned to Chris and Nick that they’d be doing him a big favor if they’d keep an eye out for Isabelle.

  Jake had been voicing his concerns to himself ever since he’d encouraged her to take off her clothes.

  Out of control.

  Time to bob and weave. “You in today?” he asked Nick, the more likely of the two to let things go.

  “Yeah. I’ve got that ongoing language clinic,” he said, motioned to Jake’s side. “Did they mention when they’d clear you?”

  “Couple of weeks, maybe.”

  “I wonder if Isabelle’s going to be the new doctor for the teams too,” Chris mused. “I’ll have to ask her when she gets back.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She came downstairs in running clothes and went out the door. So I’d assume … running?”

  “And you let her go?” Jake demanded before he could stop himself.

  Chris raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize she was under house arrest.”

  “She’s not,” Jake said. And fuck, this was a total mess, made that much worse when he found himself surrounded by a wall of brothers.

  Isabelle hadn’t gone running, and he’d fallen for Chris’s trick. Much too easily.

  Nick didn’t waste any time. “What the fuck have you gotten yourself into?”

  “You mean, what the fuck has he gotten us into,” Chris said.

  “‘She just doesn’t have any other place to stay,’” Nick repeated Jake’s words back to him. “Which we knew was complete bullshit, but if you couldn’t come up with a better lie than that, we figured you’d let us in on it eventually.”

  “Cal asked me to watch out for her, same as he asked you guys,” Jake said through clenched teeth. “I told you that. Where is this coming from?”

  “You’ve been trying that glare with me since we were eight—it didn’t work then and it sure as hell isn’t working now.”

  “She’s in trouble,” Jake said finally, because he was surprised he’d been able to keep it from his brothers for this long. “Cal asked me to throw some protection her way. That guy—that Rafe guy—he’s … Cal’s looking for him. He’s worried that Rafe’s coming back for Isabelle.”

  Chris got up and propped the kitchen door open so they’d immediately see if Isabelle was headed down the stairs.

  “Last time I looked, you weren’t a bodyguard. You were a fucking full-time active duty Navy SEAL,” Nick said with a growl. “What the hell aren’t you telling us?”

  Chris continued to stare at Jake. “She doesn’t know.”

  “What doesn’t she know?” Nick demanded.

  “She doesn’t know any of it. She thinks Rafe’s been caught,” Jake admitted.

  “How could Isabelle not know she’s being protected? Do you know how fucked-up that is?” Nick asked.

  Jake pushed past Nick and pulled out a chair. He sat, propped his elbows on the table and lowered his head into his hands. “I know.”

  The tone of the room immediately softened. He heard the quiet scrape of chairs pull next to him. For a few minutes, Nick and Chris just let him be.

  “You’ve got no distance,” Chris said quietly, when Jake lifted his head. “Cal never should’ve asked you to do this.”

  “I’m too far in to stop,” Jake admitted. “Clutch said the guy’s whereabouts couldn’t be confirmed, but rumor has it he’s headed here.”

  “You know as well as anyone that the guy could be on U.S. soil within twenty-four hours. We need a plan.” Nick ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

  “I can’t keep her on lockdown.”

  “You could if you told her.”

  “I can’t do that to Cal,” Jake said. “Or to her. Christ, don’t you understand, she’s barely holding herself together as it is. If she knew, fuck …”

  Chris put a hand on his shoulder. “If she’s barely holding it together under false pretenses, what’s she going to do when she finds out the truth?”

  “What good will telling her do?” Jake demanded. “From where I’m standing, she’s got nothing to gain from knowing it.”

  “It’s not what she has to gain, it’s what you’ve got to lose,” Chris said.

  “Did you plan this one at all?” Nick asked, his voice quiet.

  “Yeah, I did. But I don’t have a lot of options if I can’t tell her anything,” he answered, his jaw and fists clenched. “Even if I could tell her, I figured I’m safer keeping her here, where I’ve got backup.”

  “What are you going to do when she realizes she can’t make a move without you there? Are you going to follow her when she goes shopping? To the drugstore?”

  “Yes,” Jake said simply. “I don’t have much of a choice. Cal said it shouldn’t take that long. I’ve got no reason not to trust him. He doesn’t want her in danger any more than I do.”

  “This isn’t the time to argue. What’s done is done. We’ll help,” Chris assured him, and Nick nodded in agreement. “But Rafe left her alive for a reason, Jake.”

  He was going to be sick. Maybe he did have a fever or an infection—or maybe, maybe, he was too far in to see any way out.

  Right now, he didn’t want a way out. He looked over at Nick. “Clutch said you did some work for him recently.”

  Chris swore under his breath.

  “This isn’t about me,” Nick said.

  “Not yet,” Chris shot back.

  “It wasn’t a big job—I worked pretty closely with Clutch when I was there,” Nick explained. “Since I’m still somewhat traceable through the military system, Clutch couldn’t chance giving me a bigger job.”

  “What kind of job did you do for him, exactly?” Jake asked.

  “Like I said, this isn’t about me now. This is about you taking on something you can’t handle on your own.”

  Jake lunged for his brother, but Chris stepped between them.

  “Did you run across this Rafe guy?” Jake demanded.

  “No.”

  “Don’t fucking lie to me—not now.”

  “I never saw him, but I heard plenty about him.” Nick kept his voice low, as if he didn’t actually want to repeat what he’d heard. “The Africans called him kivuli—shadow. They believe in that superstitious bullshit. But if you talked with Clutch, you know all of this already.”

  “Enough,” Chris was still holding Jake by the shoulder. “Jake, you’re going to have to back away as much as you can. Let Nick and me deal with her. You work on the periphery.”

  “I ca
n’t do that … she’ll suspect something.”

  “Like she doesn’t now?” Nick challenged.

  “She’s jammed up at work—they’ve got her on fourteen-hour shifts. By the time she suspects anything …”

  “She doesn’t think it’s weird that you asked her to move in here after you’ve known her for, like, a day?”

  “He’s known her longer than that,” Chris drawled quietly.

  Nick swore under his breath and stared at the ceiling. “This woman’s got you all jammed up, man.”

  “Yeah, she does,” Jake admitted, staring Nick down as if daring his brother to say anything. Chris got things like this, while Nick acted as if getting close to a woman—any woman—was the most inconceivable thing he’d ever heard.

  “I’ll call in some favors and see what kind of records I can pull,” Nick offered finally, but he didn’t look, or sound, happy.

  “I tried that,” Jake said. “They’re locked down tight.”

  “Neither of us has much leave,” Chris said, kept a hand on Jake’s shoulder to calm him. “We’ll do the best we can to keep an eye on her, but we need to figure out our next move.”

  “What, then—are you going to sleep in her room with her to make sure she’s not taken?” Nick asked.

  “No, that’s not going to work,” Jake muttered. “But windows and perimeters are alarmed. And even if she opens them, the screens are wired.”

  “If this guy wants in, he’s coming in.”

  “This isn’t the same as Africa. She didn’t have us there.”

  “If we knew how he took her out of the clinic, it would help,” Chris said. “Did she say anything about that?”

  “No. What’s to know? He dragged her out of there. Had to be in the middle of the night, since it would’ve been too noticeable during the day.”

  “Sometimes daylight makes more sense.”

  “She’s in danger when she’s on the base too. It’s not like it’s hard to get on there, especially if you’re in uniform. Especially if Rafe was originally stationed around here. Do we know that?” Nick asked.

  Jake shook his head. “I couldn’t even get that far.”

  “Are you up to all of this? You’re still recovering,” Nick said.