by Amelia Autin
Niall had received confirmation before they’d left the riverboat that only the three couples they already knew had staterooms on Deck Five were also members of Michael’s Family, which was welcome news. Not that Davies’s cohorts had to be one of those three couples, but they were now the odds on favorites.
The tour company had reserved the last night of the tour for a special event in Shanghai, a performance by a troupe of incredibly talented acrobats. She didn’t know how many pictures she’d taken, nor how much video she’d shot. And she’d gasped and applauded along with the rest of the audience at the acrobats’ feats. But the entire evening had been bittersweet, despite the amazing show. All she could think of was, this was the last night with Niall...unless she could convince him they had a future.
Back in their Shanghai hotel room, Savannah cracked open a fresh bottle of water to brush her teeth, allowing herself to be distracted for a moment. She chuckled a little at the thought that she’d finally adapted to the necessity, so it would seem strange now to use tap water once she got home.
Niall appeared in the bathroom doorway. “Care to share the joke?”
“It’s not really funny.” She held up her toothbrush in one hand, the bottle of water in the other. “I’ll never take clean tap water for granted again.”
“Yeah. It takes not having something to really appreciate it.” Then his smile faded. A muscle in his jaw jumped involuntarily. And all at once Savannah knew they weren’t talking about tap water anymore.
Hope, never far from the surface, bubbled up like a clear mountain spring, and she carefully laid her toothbrush on the counter and set down the bottle of water. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Niall directly, so she gazed at him in the mirror, her heart in her eyes. She hadn’t realized she was going to say anything until the words escaped. “I thought I could do it, but I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Say goodbye.” Her heart was pounding so hard the blood was thrumming in her ears, and she saw rather than heard his next words.
She swung around to face him, the fervent desire to believe she hadn’t misunderstood making her voice shaky. “Say that again.”
“I can’t say goodbye, either.”
She didn’t know if she’d thrown herself into his arms or if he’d dragged her into his embrace, but somehow they were both holding on for dear life, peppering each other with frantic kisses and heartfelt whispers. Then he lifted her right off her feet, and she wrapped her thighs around his hips as he carried her toward the bed.
* * *
They lay together afterward in the jumble of bedding and clothes they’d practically torn from each other’s bodies and strewn carelessly aside. Savannah being Savannah, she had to ask, “When did you know?”
“The last night on the boat.”
She propped herself up on his chest and stared down at him in disbelief. “And you didn’t tell me?”
He smiled faintly. “You didn’t tell me, either.”
She scrunched her face, then admitted, “You’re right. I didn’t.”
“So when did you know?”
“The night you broke down and threw a declaration of love at me at practically the same moment you said we had no future.”
He seemed stunned. “Then?”
“Well, let’s just say I was determined to do my best to change your mind from that point on. I knew you thought you had valid reasons—reasons you couldn’t share—but I’ve bucked the odds all my life, and I wasn’t giving up. I wasn’t ever giving up.”
“But?”
“But I wasn’t going to tell you. I was just going to keep trying no matter what. Then I realized that was such a...a...woman’s response. Letting you have the final say when it’s my life, too.”
That made him laugh deep in his throat. “So you decided, ‘The hell with what he wants, I’m going for it.’”
“Well...yes.”
He rolled her over and settled between her thighs. “I like this new, assertive you. A woman after my own heart, who sees what she wants and doesn’t take no for an answer.”
“I was always that way where my profession was concerned,” she confided, squirming a little to fit him at just the right spot. “Only when a woman is assertive in business exactly the same way a man is, they call it aggressive. If I hadn’t been so valuable to them—I won’t say I was indispensable because no one is indispensable—but if I hadn’t been so valuable, I’m sure they’d have—” She faltered at the expression that fleetingly passed over Niall’s face. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.” The fierceness of her tone surprised them both. “It’s something. If you can’t tell me, okay. Just be honest and say that. But don’t lie and pretend everything’s fine when it’s not.”
“You’re right. It is something.” Frustration was evident in his face and voice when he added, “But I can’t discuss it. Not without auth—”
“Authorization,” she completed for him, her eyes widening with comprehension. And just like that she got her first inkling of Niall’s terrible secret, the one he’d been so sure would tear them apart. But then you knew he hadn’t been completely truthful with you all along, she reminded herself, remembering their conversation about the Defense Security Service. Niall had denied working for them, but there were other federal agencies. Lots of them.
“You work for the government,” she said softly, nodding to herself as everything started falling into place. “You were sent to...guard me? Because they were afraid something might happen to me here in China?”
The blank mask was back in place on Niall’s face, but Savannah was as sure as sure could be that she was close to the truth. “So...we didn’t ‘accidentally’ meet. You planned it.” She closed her eyes for a second, ravaged by devastating pain she didn’t want him to see, as other things started making a horrible kind of sense, including how he’d known she was a PhD. “That’s why it seemed as if you knew me,” she whispered. “Because you did. Because you’d learned everything there was to learn about me. Because I was your assignment.”
“Falling in love with you was never my assignment,” he rasped.
The statement helped, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Anger made her icily polite as suddenly their positions in bed became intolerable. “Get off me, please.”
“Savannah...”
“Please.”
He cursed beneath his breath but complied, standing to pull his clothes back on with more deliberateness than she’d used when tearing them off. She thought about doing the same, but knew she couldn’t stand naked before him. Not now. So she pulled the covers almost all the way to her chin, humiliation making her writhe internally. But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how badly he’d wounded her.
“I would appreciate it if you’d go back to your own hotel room now,” she said in that same polite voice.
“No.” The face he turned to her was implacable.
“I don’t want—”
“I don’t give a damn what you want. I’m not leaving you unprotected.”
She wanted to say she didn’t give a damn about what he wanted, either, but the reminder of the danger made her pause. And that’s when other memories came flooding back. Niall, so protective of her. His job? she couldn’t help but ask herself, pressing mercilessly on the wound she’d just received.
Maybe, her heart responded once the pain receded a little. But that wasn’t his job talking when he yelled at you for risking your life when the sniper opened fired at the school. That was pure, unadulterated terror...because he loves you and was afraid you’d be hurt or killed. The same way you were terrified for him.
She sat up abruptly, grabbed her blouse from the foot of the bed, and dragged it on without her bra, which she couldn’t see anywhere
. Niall stooped and retrieved her jeans from the floor, then handed them to her. She managed to wriggle them on beneath the covers without worrying about her panties. But at least she had the armor of clothing in which to face Niall, standing so she could finish zipping up.
Savannah considered, then discarded, a half dozen different things she wanted to say, but none seemed right somehow. She finally settled on the bald truth. “I still love you.” She drew a shaky breath, pressing her hand against her heart. “And I know you love me. I know it, Niall. I won’t say I understand, because I don’t. And I won’t say I forgive you, because I don’t know if I can. But what you did doesn’t erase what we feel.”
* * *
All Niall really heard was Savannah telling him she didn’t know if she could forgive him. No more than you expected, he reminded himself. And she doesn’t even know the worst yet. His tone flat and emotionless, he said, “I told you we had no future. You just didn’t want to believe it.”
She raised her chin. “You said earlier you’d changed your mind about that. Was it a lie?”
Anger flashed to life and he wanted to roar a denial at her, but he held on to his temper and answered curtly, “No.”
“Then you don’t get to decide if we have a future or not,” she insisted with intensity. “I do.”
A rare moment of despair overcame him because the truth was far worse than Savannah imagined. If she wasn’t sure she could forgive him now, how the hell could she forgive him when she learned his initial assignment hadn’t been to protect her?
Then his jaw tightened as a phrase from his Marine Corps days came back to him—never surrender. Wasn’t that what he’d be doing if he gave in to despair? Giving up? Surrendering?
Hell no! Not now. Not ever.
For a moment he thought he’d spoken those words aloud, until he realized from Savannah’s expression he hadn’t. But he couldn’t leave things at that. “No,” he said, as calmly as he could. “You don’t get to make that decision on your own.”
She nodded decisively after a minute. “Okay. But you don’t, either.”
“Agreed.”
She crossed her arms in a way that reminded him of...him. Stubborn. Determined. “So where does that leave us now?” she asked. “I take it you’re not going to tell me anything more tonight, not without authorization.”
“You take it correctly.”
“Then...?”
“We have a long flight home tomorrow, and you need your sleep. I’m not going back to my hotel room—that’s out. But I can sleep on the couch. At least I’m here if someone tries something.”
“That’s silly. I’m a lot smaller than you. You take the bed, I’ll take the sofa.”
“No.” He wasn’t going to argue, but he wasn’t giving in on this point, either.
Her eyes narrowed stubbornly, and at first he thought she was going to insist on having her way. But then she offered, “We can share the bed. It’s king-size, not like the doubles on board the riverboat. Plenty of room. We don’t have to—” She stopped abruptly, as if she didn’t want to remember all those nights they’d slept entwined. “You can stay on your side, I can stay on mine. It’s only one night.”
Share a bed with Savannah and not hold her? Not kiss her and caress her and make love with her? He was going to adamantly refuse when she effectively stymied him by saying in a deliberately insulting way, “Unless you don’t trust yourself to be adult about this.”
In his mind he heard the accusation his sister-in-law Carly had thrown at him before she’d married Shane. Yes, and you’re forty years old. Not a kid. Don’t guys ever grow up?
So he gritted his teeth. “I can be as adult as you.”
A thought that ironically flitted through his mind in the wee hours of the morning when he woke to find a soft, warm, sleeping woman snuggled up against his back, spoon fashion...on his side of the bed.
* * *
All passengers on inbound international flights had to deplane at their first stop in the US, claim their luggage and go through Customs, then recheck their luggage and pass through airport security before proceeding to their ultimate US destinations. Niall and Savannah were no exception. She was surprised, however, when Niall didn’t say goodbye at the check point, but instead followed her to the gate for her flight from Los Angeles to Tucson.
“What are you—?”
She never got to finish her sentence, because a man in the uniform of a US Marshal approached them, flashing an official badge and addressing her. “Dr. Whitman?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been assigned to accompany you to Tucson, ma’am.”
She didn’t answer, just turned to Niall, who said, “I have to report in.” He glanced at his watch. “My flight to DC leaves in thirty minutes, but I wanted to make sure you get home safely, so I had my boss arrange security for you.”
She ignored the Marshal and asked Niall in a low voice, “When are we going to have that conversation?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll be back as soon as I can, as soon as—”
“As soon as you receive authorization to talk about...whatever it is you need to tell me?”
He didn’t smile. “Yeah.”
“And in the meantime, what?”
“You’ll have US Marshals protecting you.”
“You really think that’s necessary? Here in the US?”
“Yes.”
She sighed heavily. “Okay. But what happens if I don’t hear from you in, say, a week? I have a couple of short trips planned for mid-November.”
“More bucket list places?”
She smiled, willing him to smile back. “Yes.”
Still unsmiling, he repeated, “You’ll have marshals protecting you around the clock. Wherever you go.” For a moment, he looked as if he would touch her, but he didn’t. “You’ll be as safe as I can make you, Savannah.”
She blinked back sudden, unexpected tears, longing to say, Not as safe as I’ve been with you. Knowing in that instant she’d already forgiven him for the deception that had brought him into her life. Knowing that for a man like Niall, to whom words like honor and duty and loyalty to one’s country were everything, he couldn’t have turned down the assignment, no matter what he’d been called on to do.
But she couldn’t tell him these things. Not now. Not in front of a witness. So she merely said, “Thank you. For everything.” Hoping Niall would understand. His faint answering smile reassured her.
Then, without another word, he resettled his backpack on one shoulder, hefted his carry-on suitcase in one hand, turned and walked away.
* * *
Thank you. For everything.
Savannah’s words echoed in Niall’s head the entire flight back to DC. He dozed off and on, dreaming of her. On the Great Wall. In the Forbidden City. On the tiny boat in the middle of the Goddess Stream. Standing with her arms outstretched on the prow of the riverboat, unselfconsciously reenacting the Titanic moment.
And, of course, in bed with him. Numerous times.
He hadn’t known until he met her what was missing in his life. But now he knew. And now he would do whatever it took to keep her, even if it meant giving up his job.
More than that, however, he would also do whatever it took to keep her safe. No one was going to be allowed to hurt Savannah, not while a drop of blood remained in his body. Even if it meant taking the law into his own hands.
Chapter 23
If there was one thing Niall hated above all else, it was traitors. But bureaucracy ran a close second. He was kept kicking his heels in DC for almost a week while the powers that be debated endlessly over what could and should be revealed to Savannah. Over what could and should be done about Spencer Davies and his plan to kidnap and then murder her.
Thi
s last was the most difficult, because there was very little proof. It was nothing but speculation on Niall’s part unless the people Davies had hired to kidnap Savannah could be caught in the act and were willing to testify against him in exchange for a plea deal. And providing round-the-clock surveillance on Davies and the three couples high on their suspect list—not to mention the 24/7 protection on Savannah—was expensive.
Niall argued until he was blue in the face about not withdrawing Savannah’s protection, even threatening to resign and protect her himself. Only one thing made this unnecessary—unexpected allies within the Department of Defense. Now that Dr. Whitman’s loyalty to her country had been reestablished, her brilliance made her too valuable to the US government, even if she wasn’t currently working for a defense contractor. As Savannah had stated, no one was indispensable where his or her work was concerned. But she came close.
It was a totally different story when it came to his personal life. Savannah was indispensable...to him. Which was why at first he positively, absolutely refused to have anything to do with the plan to catch Davies in the act using Savannah as bait, hatched by the same people who’d originally dispatched Niall to neutralize her.
The idea was presented in a high-level staff meeting attended by senior presidential advisors, the heads of the FBI, the Defense Security Service and the agency, as well as Niall and his boss, neither of whom knew why they’d been invited...until the discussion was well underway.
Niall stared at the president’s National Security Advisor and, though it wasn’t his place to speak, demanded abruptly, “Are you insane?”
Niall’s boss cleared his throat, a warning that the question probably wasn’t the most politic response. But Niall wasn’t backing down. “You want to risk Dr. Whitman’s life to set a trap to catch the man who intends to kill her?” He didn’t say the words again, but his tone definitely questioned the sanity of the man who’d suggested this plan. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Sir?” he tacked on at the end for form’s sake.