by Brynn Kelly
“And you haven’t talked to them in three years?”
He shook his head. “Nor the two before that. I send almost all my miserable pay packet home and get the occasional cranky one-line email from my sister, but...yeah.”
“Was it your choice to break off communication or theirs?”
He swirled the water in the glass like it was wine. “Mutual, I guess. They didn’t try to contact me, either.”
“It’s probably not too late.”
“My father died, three years ago. Heart failure. I came back for the funeral—the only time I’ve returned since I signed up. Before now.”
“I’m so sorry, Jamie.”
“I literally broke his heart.” His voice wavered. “Caused him so much stress. Not to mention, if I’d been there or was at least visiting regularly, I might have realized how bad his health was getting... He was a typical man of his generation—ignored the warning signs until it was too late.”
“And your mother...?”
“Dementia. She’s in a home. Another thing I should have been there to see, to help with, but it’s all too late. I fucked everything up and there’s no undo button.”
She laid her fork on the table. “That’s why it’s so hard for you to be here.”
A twitch in the muscles between his eyes. “I never said it was hard.”
“Sometimes I catch a glimpse of your thoughts, when you’re not looking, not hiding them.”
His tongue played with his bottom teeth. “Like I say, under all the joking around I’m a pretty dour guy.”
“The dourest,” she said, in an exaggerated Scottish accent.
“What language are you up to now? Is this the wild woman who speaks in four languages?” He reached over and topped up her glass. Back to his usual level of superficial flirting but that was okay. Small steps. “Well,” he said, lifting his water, “here’s to 1999.”
“To 1999.” She clinked, smiling. “You’re not drinking?”
“Wine isn’t my thing.”
“But we drank it in France.”
“I had a sip or two but I mostly bought it for you. You don’t want it?” he said, nodding at the bottle.
“A little late to ask, isn’t it? I don’t want all of it.”
He smiled, pain still heavy in his eyes, and pushed the bottle across the table. “I’ll let you fill your own glass.”
She’d hardly tasted the wine, hardly noticed herself drinking or Jamie refilling it, but she felt it warming and relaxing her—not that she could blame the alcohol for every part that was heating up. She pushed her glass away. Tempting as that path was, she had to stay sharp.
“Do you not drink at all?” she said.
“Never.”
“Because you might reveal something about yourself?”
His mouth twitched. “Because I like to be in control.”
“Me, too. But I like to escape, as well.”
He swirled his water again and watched it settle. “So when you say you can glimpse my thoughts...?”
Maybe it was the wine but she felt bold enough to answer truthfully. “Sometimes there’s this flicker of something in your expression but it’s gone so quickly that at first I wondered if I was imagining it. But I’ve seen it a lot now and I know I’m not.”
He tilted his head, his eyes glinting in the firelight. “And here’s me thinking I was the one being all clever and figuring you out.”
“You’ve been trying to figure me out?”
“I have.”
“And what have you figured out?”
“Ah.” He laughed, rubbed his chin with a scratching sound and leaned back in his chair, his eyes locked on hers. “That would be giving away my advantage.”
“What advantage?”
“Good question.”
“Go on,” she said, intrigue pulling at her. “I gave away my advantage.”
“Well... I know that smart humor makes you smile—or laugh, if I’m lucky—but it has to be sophisticated, not dirty or cruel.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
He righted his chair with a clatter and leaned in, as if he were reading her thoughts in her pupils. “Talk of faraway places makes your eyes sparkle. Injustice and bigotry make them narrow. The past makes them sad.” He spoke slowly, dropping his voice to a deep roll as mesmerizing as his narrowed eyes. “Even after the crap the world has dished you, you still passionately want to believe that it’s a good place, full of good people who can be trusted. When something happens to throw that perception, it unsettles you. And right now you’re feeling mightily unsettled. You want to be able to trust people but there are so few you’re certain of.”
She swallowed. All this time she’d been trying to dig under his facade, and he’d been tapping her mind like a brain scan. How much of it was the truth?
He didn’t move, his gaze and voice keeping her locked in place. “I also know there’s a battle constantly raging in you, like that permanent storm on Jupiter. You’re terrified and you want to hide from all this but you also desperately want to protect your friends, and see justice done for your fiancé and secure your own safety.”
“I...” Her throat dried. She broke eye contact and sipped the wine. She’d expected this to be one of his flippant exchanges.
“Your instinct is to hide from a world you don’t always understand—I’m guessing that started way before all this. That’s why you like to interact from behind a computer screen, why you claim to not have many friends, why you’ve survived a year alone in hiding when it’d drive other people mad. Fear has kept you alive this past year or two. But now you’ve got to push through that fear, come out of that protective shell—and you already have, to get this far—and that scares you even more. You’re feeling like you’ve waded in too deep, you’re unanchored.”
The flames flickered in her wineglass. And she’d thought a man like him could never understand a woman like her. Had anyone bothered to look that deep before?
Don’t bring Latif into this.
He pushed his plate away and linked his hands on the table. “Am I right, Samira?”
A candle flared. Ghoulish shadows fluttered around the walls. “On almost everything, though some of these things I didn’t know about myself. I’ll have to have a think about them.”
“Of course. That’s another thing—you think very deeply but you like to take your time over it.” As his voice quietened and lowered, it developed a velvety warmth, like the wine and the fire. “You said ‘almost everything.’ Did I get something wrong?”
“Only one thing.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. “I don’t feel unanchored.”
A bemused half smile, half frown settled on his face.
“I hadn’t realized it until you said it,” she said. “But I don’t, not now, not for the first time in more than a year. You make a very good anchor.”
“Because I’m dull and stubborn and a dead weight?”
She laughed. “Because you make me laugh when it’s the last thing I feel like doing but probably the very thing I need. And you take the time to understand me. And you make me feel confident and safe. I don’t remember the last time I felt that—well, I do, but...” But I’m not going to think about that, not with the situation re-created in another borrowed cottage, in another country.
Too late.
His smile won out over the frown but it wasn’t the cheeky grin he usually brushed her off with. It was wide and gentle and thoughtful and it made her chest ache. “Good. I’m glad. We’ll get through this, Samira—but first you need to eat. I froze my arse off catching that trout.”
Yes. She’d hardly touched her meal. They finished eating in silence but not the suffocating kind she’d become accustomed to. A silence interrupted by the presence of another person—a warm body but a buoyant presence, too, despite his
self-proclaimed dourness—his clothes rubbing as he shifted in his seat, the clatter of more than one set of cutlery, and, if she held her own breath and listened carefully, his breath, calm and steady.
When she’d finished, she pushed out her chair and stood. She waited half a minute for him to chase his last mouthful around before collecting both plates. As she passed, she caught her foot on the rug and wobbled, juggling her armload.
“Whoa,” he said, leaping up. He reached around from behind, scooped the plates from her arms and dumped them on the kitchen counter. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have refilled your glass without you noticing. I wasn’t thinking.”
She turned. Her nose was inches from his collarbone. A soapy scent drifted from his neck. “Oh, it wasn’t...” The wine? Then how was she supposed to explain her unsteadiness? This fluttery sensation in her chest, her belly—it was the same feeling she’d dismissed a year ago as a reaction to the stress. Was it still that?
“You know, Samira, your speech doesn’t give much away but your eyes do.” He touched her cheek with two fingers. Her mouth opened. “So does your skin.” His fingers glided down her jaw, her neck, following her tiny gold cross to where it rested between her collarbones. “Your breath.”
He stepped closer. With the counter behind her she couldn’t retreat. And she didn’t want to. He traced his fingers back up her throat to her chin, coaxing her to meet his eyes. Crinkled and intent, like she knew they’d be.
“There’s this thing between us,” he croaked, “and it’s not going away.”
“There is,” she said, the words forceful with relief. “But you say that like you want it to go away.”
“Only because I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you having regrets afterward, like in France. God, I felt like such a jerk.”
“No, I was the jerk. I handled it badly. Sometimes...I’m not good at expressing myself. That day...” She winced. “I may have been a little forthright.”
He chuckled. “Aye, you were certainly that.”
“Regret upon regret.”
“Me, too.”
She tilted her head, in a question.
“I regret leading you where you weren’t ready to go,” he said. “But I also hate myself for walking away. I should have gone AWOL and—”
“Thrown away your life for someone you’d just met?”
“Well, when you say it like that... But you didn’t feel like just anyone. You still don’t. And that’s half the problem.”
“I know what you mean.”
The crinkles deepened. “Samira, you sound scared. You know I wouldn’t deliberately do anything to hurt you. Which is why I can’t—”
“I’m not scared of you. I’m scared of a lot of things but not you. I’m kind of scared of...”
He waited, smiling, like he had all night. The firelight picked up yellow flecks in his eyes. He’d given her the invitation. She just needed to lean forward a fraction, tiptoe and...
“I’m scared of the way I feel right now,” she said hurriedly, clinging with both hands to the top of the counter behind her back. “I’m scared that it’s not real. But worse than that, I’m scared it is real.” She puffed out a breath. “That all sounded a lot more logical in my head. I’ve spent so much time alone... Is this crazy?”
“The whole situation’s crazy but that’s not your doing. There’s one thing in all of this that makes complete sense to me. Possibly the only thing. And that’s you and me. I know we’re very different but if you’re feeling even half what I’m feeling for you...”
“Awo. Possibly even double what you’re feeling because...this...”
“But, Samira, it can only be temporary. I’ll be returning to the Legion once all this is over, and...” He paused, swallowed. “I probably won’t see you again.”
“I understand. I’m not in a place to commit to anything either.” As much as I might want to.
“This is not the wine talking?”
“It may be the wine that’s allowing me to do the talking but, believe me, this is all my words, my feelings. You’re right—I just want to run away and hide from all this and I can’t and that’s making me so... But maybe just for a little while, just for tonight, I can forget. It seems like a good idea, yes?”
He laughed. “It seems like a good idea... I love your thought process—the little I can understand of it.”
Her lips throbbed. She didn’t know lips could throb. Just one tiptoe, Samira. He’s waiting for you. He wants you and you want him and that’s okay.
He slid one hand to her hip. Oh God, just that touch. She was turning to jelly. She forced herself to release the counter. Had she ever wanted anything more, wanted anyone more?
Latif. Had she ever wanted Latif this much? She froze, her arms stuck by her sides. Maybe she just couldn’t remember the early days of their relationship or she’d been too young to recognize the feelings beyond the pure physical reaction. Maybe it was normal to have such a strong attraction at the beginning of a relationship—the anticipation, the buildup. Maybe her body remembered Jamie, knew what was coming. And maybe it was normal that the attraction would one day wear off, that sex would settle into enjoyable but no longer mind-blowing, the connection would settle into comfort but no longer spark. No longer this. Was that why people cheated in relationships, to get this feeling—the breathlessness, the delicious bubbling in her belly, the aching heat between her legs?
It’s not cheating when he’s dead, Samira. You’re not betraying him. You’re moving on. Well, not even moving on because this thing with Jamie is going nowhere beyond this cottage.
“Shite, Samira, stop thinking.”
“Sorry, I’m—”
A thump, outside. He clamped his hands on her upper arms, listening. Scuffling, footsteps. Oh God. He pulled away. His hand went for his hip—he was wearing his holster, in here? He snatched the fish knife from the kitchen counter, the blade glinting.
“Hide, Samira,” he hissed. He strode to the backpack and pulled something out. He pressed his back against the stone wall beside the nearest window, pushed the curtain aside and peered out through the gap between window and blind.
Hide? Where? As he went window to window, she crept into the bedroom. The bed went almost wall to wall. There was no closet but the stone walls were thick. She squeezed in behind the bed.
In the living room, a click, a scrape, a swish. Jamie was climbing out a window? Outside, multiple footfalls clomped on damp earth. Had her camera trap failed? Was it Hyland’s goons? The police? What if they killed Jamie? Should she try to sneak out, too?
Her chest pinched. She pressed her hand to it. A few minutes ago she hadn’t thought it possible for her heart to beat any faster.
Jamie, be okay.
Come back to me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE COLD FOLDED around Jamie. His breath puffed out in front of him. The noise had come from the northeast, near their car. He stole across the wet grass of the front yard and crouched beside an unruly line of shrubs that’d once been a hedge. All was still, as if the fog were clamping everything in place.
He laid the fishing knife on the grass and opened the first-aid box, wincing at the click. He quickly loaded a sedative into a syringe. The quieter the weapon, the more chance of taking down any goons one by one, without gunshots to give him away or attract police—assuming they weren’t already here. The fog was perfect cover for a silent ambush.
Something stirred on the loch. Water swished and lapped at the stony beach. A bird? His shoulder hurt like fuck.
He began a creeping perimeter check. As he rounded the backyard, he caught movement and ducked into moon shadow beneath a tree canopy. Beside the car, a deer raised its head and froze. Its ears flicked.
A fucking deer. Merde.
He’d been a soldier too long, on edge too long. Hell, when had he
not been on edge? The cold seeped from the grass into the bones of his feet. A duck called as it flew overhead, like a hyena’s squawking laugh. Eventually, the doe ambled off.
Jamie stayed hidden, though the deer would have bolted if there were people out here. He itched to reassure Samira. He forced himself to wait. A panic attack was recoverable. Failing to detect a threat was not.
Ah, Samira. The longer he spent with her the more he liked her, the more he wanted her, the harder it was to pull back. So much going on behind those deep brown eyes. Not a person you could know on first sight—or even after years—but the kind who revealed herself slowly, each layer more alluring than the last, until you were buried deep.
There was indeed a thing between them but he remembered all too well where acting on it had got them. If he hadn’t kissed her by the river, maybe he wouldn’t have scared her off, maybe he could have been there for her in the past year. And if he hadn’t been so eager to run when she’d pushed him away...?
Wait—if you had two one-night stands with the same woman, did they still count as one-night stands?
Just the kind of real-life dilemma he’d been merrily avoiding. He hadn’t allowed himself to miss normal life. He’d kept his body busy with work or training, his mind full of tactics and strategies and medicine. But Samira—she reminded him of that other dimension, of the magic of exploring a deeper connection with a woman who lit you up. She reminded him that you could truly bond with somebody only if you took the risk of laying your soul bare.
And no way was he doing that. Which only made him feel like he was deceiving her, all over again.
Far away a stag roared, a pained bleat that echoed around the bald hills above the tree line. The loch and cottage had changed so little he could be on a trip back in time. Any minute his mother would throw open the door and bellow for him and Nicole, her voice echoing like the stag’s. No dinner bell needed in the Armstrong family. They’d hear it wherever they were—launching themselves into the loch from the frayed rope swing, fighting epic battles in the ruins of the castle on the hill (or suffering through Regency balls, if it was Nicole’s turn to choose the game), spying on the posh holidaymakers around the loch at the country house.