Operation Homecoming

by Justine Davis

  She complied. She could do nothing else. And then he began to move, long, deep strokes, driving her breath from her on another cry, this time of his name. Her hands slid down his back, marveling at the sleekness of his skin. She cupped the taut, flexing muscles of his backside, urging him on.

  He drove deeper, harder, faster. Again and again she cried out, unable to stop it, and not caring.

  “Yes,” he said, again and again, with every sound she made.

  And then he lowered his head to her other breast, caught the nipple and drew it into his mouth, tugging, suckling, sending darts of hot, rolling sensation to the flesh that now surrounded him. She cried out his name as she felt it begin, the deep clenching, and wave after wave of nearly unbearable pleasure rolled through her.

  She heard her name, groaned out in a voice taut with an echo of the same wonder she was feeling. Felt his body go rigid as one last time he drove deep and home.

  For once, reality had far surpassed the fantasy.

  Chapter 34

  All the miles, all the places, all the years...he’d finally found home.

  Walker stirred, still more asleep than awake, the remnants of the dream still wrapped around him. It was an amazing feeling, in that dream, being filled with the knowledge that he’d finally found the place he never wanted to leave, and the certainty that he never would. He’d never expected to feel that way, yet on some level he knew it was what he’d been looking for, what would make all the wandering not just unnecessary, but unwanted.

  He felt as if he were swimming up from warm, cozy depths, and the instant he came fully awake he wanted to go back.

  And the instant he came fully awake, he knew there was no going back.

  It wasn’t the dream wrapped around him. It was Amy.

  Memories of last night flooded him, stealing his breath and hardening his body. Time after time they’d come together, and every time it was better, as they learned, tested and learned more. And he realized that he truly had found the place he never wanted to leave. Only it wasn’t a place, it was a person.

  It was Amy.

  He was afraid to move. He’d had a few morning-afters, some pleasant, some awkward. But he’d never had one he dreaded.

  What if she had second thoughts? What if despite her words she regretted it? Although how anyone could regret what they’d found together last night was beyond him. But then again, knowing how angry she’d been at him, he was still amazed she’d wanted him at all.

  “Hey.”

  Her sleepy voice whispered in his ear, and her deliciously naked body shifted closer, until she was spooned up against his back so closely he could feel every inch of her silken skin. Her arm slipped around him, and he drew in a deep breath in reaction. It suddenly became an ache as strong as the fierce hardness of a body ready for her again, this want, this need to just stay like this. But he knew the moment the inevitable morning-after started, it could all be shattered.

  “I can tell you’re awake,” she murmured. “How...”

  “Please, don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Whatever you want to say, please, not yet.”

  She went silent, but he thought he felt a slight tension from her, a lessening of the relaxed, easy warmth of her body.

  It was no use. It was already gone, that sweet, easy warmth. He let out a breath he hadn’t really been aware of holding. He moved, rolling over to look at her. She shifted herself, to give him room. But she didn’t go far, and when he settled on his back she came back to him. That was good, wasn’t it?

  “Never mind,” he muttered. “Let’s have at it.”

  “Have at what?”

  “The morning-after.”

  She propped herself up on one elbow, looking at him. She was so beautiful like this, her hair a glorious tangle, her makeup a bit smudged around her eyes, those gorgeous blue eyes now sans the glasses he was so used to.

  “What is it you think I want to say? That I expect a declaration now? That I expect a future? That I expect you to—gasp—stay?”

  Now it was he who was tense. She said it almost mockingly, as if all of those expectations were ridiculous.

  And yet he’d been ready to give her all of them. Something he’d never, ever done. And for the first time he wondered why. Why she’d wanted this, allowed this.

  “I used to dream about this,” she said quietly.

  His breath caught in his throat. Maybe he’d been right to dread this. Maybe she hadn’t really wanted him last night—at least, who he was now. Maybe this had been more in the nature of getting him—the old him, the boy she’d had the crush on—out of her system. Did women do that, try to rid themselves of past infatuations so they could move on?

  He was not used to this, this need for understanding a woman’s motives, for trying, and no doubt failing, to understand the way her brain worked.

  “Don’t you just love the female mind?”

  Her words, tossed off so lightly, echoed in his head. Well, he was afraid he loved this one. But this was throwing him. Wasn’t it women who always analyzed things to death in a relationship?

  But then apparently this wasn’t a relationship in her eyes.

  “Is that what this was about?” he asked, not wanting the answer but knowing he had to hear it.

  “Is that what you think?”

  “What I think is that if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have answered a question with a question. And now that I am thinking, unlike last night, I realize you didn’t want me—you hate me. You wanted that guy I was a long time ago.”

  She sat up sharply before he even finished. “Walker Cole, if you think I would go to bed with a man I hate, no matter what I used to feel for him, then you don’t know me at all.”

  He felt suddenly tired. He’d managed to move her from sleepily relaxed and warm to tense and angry in a matter of minutes. But then something hit him.

  “You don’t...hate me?”

  “Oh, please,” she said, shoving her hair back where it had slipped forward, masking one eye. It immediately fell forward again, which almost made him smile, since he liked both the look and the fact that it had been his hands that had tangled the burnished mass. But somehow he didn’t think smiling was wise at this moment.

  “You don’t want a declaration, a future or for me to stay. So what do you want?”

  She stared at him. “I never said I didn’t want all those things. I just said I didn’t expect them.”

  He was more confused now than ever. And had no idea what to say to avoid making this worse. He should have taken the coward’s way out and left before she’d awakened.

  “Do you want to know what I was going to ask?”

  “Do I?” he asked warily.

  She ignored that. “I was simply going to ask how you slept. If you had more nightmares.”

  “Oh.” Well, that sounded completely stupid, he thought. “No.” He remembered the dream he had had. And smiled, closing his eyes for a moment as that warm certainty flooded him again. “Not at all.”

  “Good,” she said softly. “About time.”

  The tone of her voice seemed to make that warmth stay. He told himself he was a fool to risk destroying the mood, but he had to know. “What made you decide you don’t hate me?”

  To his surprise—and gratification—her tone didn’t change. As if she understood why he wanted, had to know. “Simple,” she said. “I believe you.”

  “Believe me?”

  “You don’t lie. That means you really did have a very good reason. And that you can’t share it.”

  The simple acceptance would have brought him to his knees if he’d been standing. He’d never expected, never dared hope for it.

  “Besides,” she said, “you’re also smart. I meant what I told Hayley
. If you were going to lie, you would have made up a better one.”

  “I thought about it,” he admitted. “Amnesia, maybe. Decided it was too much.”

  “And when it came down to it, you couldn’t lie to your sister.”

  “Or you.”

  She smiled. “And therefore, you didn’t.”

  He should have known. It was true; she never would have gone to bed with him if she’d still hated him or thought him a liar. So she had to be sure he wasn’t. She knew him better than perhaps she even realized.

  In fact, she probably knew him better than he would ever know her. And he realized with a jolt that if he was going to learn everything he wanted to about her, it would take forever.

  A buzzing alert yanked him out of his reverie. He shook his head sharply, then rolled out of the bed to grab the phone from his hastily discarded and tangled clothes.

  He listened to Quinn.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell her.”

  He dropped the phone on the bed. Amy was clutching the sheet to her, as if he hadn’t already seen every delectable inch of her. He hated having to say it, having to confirm their suspicions, but there was no way around it.

  “The account on the video got an email. He bit.”

  * * *

  It was so quiet it made Amy even more nervous. They’d picked this place, an underground parking garage for a now-vacant office building, outside the city limits into county territory—there were, Hayley had explained, limits to how far Quinn was willing to push Brett’s contact with LAPD—in a light industrial area that was mostly deserted at this hour.

  Amy knew Quinn was here, and prepared. He’d scouted the location in advance, checking from all angles, looking for what she wasn’t sure. Until Walker had told her.

  “High ground and clear line of fire,” he’d said when she asked what he was doing.

  She’d looked at him, startled, but he’d been watching Quinn and hadn’t noticed. She didn’t think he was picking this stuff up from just being around Quinn. There was more to it; she was more convinced than ever. She had nothing to go on but her heart and tangled emotions, but she believed in him. Maybe she was a fool, maybe she didn’t dare let herself not believe, given that she’d fallen into bed with him within three weeks of him reappearing in her life. Or maybe she was letting the fact that sex with him was the most amazing thing she’d ever experienced cloud her judgment.

  But she couldn’t make herself believe either one.

  And of course she was dwelling on all this now to distract her from the fact that it was Walker who’d be confronting her boss in this ignoble meeting. She smothered the recurring regret that she had turned out to be right, that he had actually taken the bait they’d dangled, that he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was.

  The irony of it all, that the man she’d have sworn was honest and true was scum, and the man she had for years thought scum she now believed was honest and true, didn’t escape her. She only hoped this would be the end of this introduction of chaos into the life she had so carefully built as antidote to the chaos of her childhood.

  Then again, if Walker was the prize, it was well worth a little chaos, wasn’t it? she thought.

  They waited. The brief exchange of anonymous emails had been short and clear. Fifty thousand dollars, here, tonight, at 11:00 p.m. It was now 11:03. She and Hayley and Cutter were in a far corner beside the Foxworth SUV, staying reluctantly back and out of sight. She wasn’t supposed to know about this meeting, so she could hardly go with Walker, although that was her first instinct.

  “Quinn will handle it,” Hayley reassured her, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “But things happen,” Amy said at the same level.

  “Yes. But Quinn’s a good shot. I’m even decent myself.”

  Amy blinked. “You’re armed?”

  “I am.” She gave Amy a crooked grin. “And so are you.”

  “Me?”

  “Cutter?” The dog looked up. Hayley pointed at Amy. “Protect.”

  Cutter spun around and placed himself in front of her, turning to face toward the darkness of the parking structure.

  “Protect?” she asked.

  “Different than guard,” Hayley explained. “Guard would mean you don’t move from this spot. Protect means he sticks with you and does what he has to to keep you safe.”

  “And he gets that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Amy smiled, even as she thought the dog might prove to be in some ways even more protection than a firearm. She had no doubt he could be menacing if he chose to be, and there was something in human nature that made most people very wary of a fairly large, menacing dog.

  “You all right?” Hayley asked.

  “As much as I can be.”

  After a moment Hayley spoke again.

  “You and Walker.” That was all she said, but Amy realized that was all that was necessary.

  “Yes,” she answered simply.

  “You were awfully angry.” Hayley’s voice was carefully neutral.

  “I was. But...now I believe he’s telling the truth. That he had a very good reason for what he did—or didn’t do—and he can’t tell us what it was.”

  Her friend let out a long, barely audible breath. “So do I.”

  Amy turned to look at her. “You do?”

  “I do. He’s still Walker. He’s not a liar. He must have had that reason.”

  Amy hesitated. “You’re okay? With us, I mean?”

  “My brother and my best friend? As long as you’re both sure, I couldn’t be happier.”

  “Cutter seems to approve. In fact, there were a couple of times when he seemed almost...impatient with us. Like we weren’t moving fast enough.”

  Hayley laughed, still quietly, just in case. “That’s Cutter. And if he’s put his seal of approval on it, it’s done.”

  “I thought you were joking about the matchmaker bit, but you weren’t, were you?”

  “Afraid not. He...”

  Hayley stopped abruptly and put a hand to her ear. Amy had seen the small earpiece she’d slipped in once Quinn had headed for his position on the next level up, and Walker had gone into the dark alcove, hidden from immediate view.

  “Car pulling up outside,” she said, taking out the small camera she’d brought, with settings especially for low-light situations.

  Amy swallowed. Here we go...

  A few seconds of silence before she heard the car approaching. The sound came nearer. And then it turned the corner, its headlights coming into view. It kept coming. Slowed. Then stopped. The powerful headlights, with a blue tinge and on high beams, shoved the dark back almost to where Walker was hidden in an alcove. Amy’s breath caught. She was almost afraid to take another, afraid somehow her boss would hear her, even from inside the car.

  The headlights flashed twice, a second’s delay, then again. The signal.

  Hayley moved, tapping at her left ear twice. She glanced at Amy. Nodded.

  Walker was coming out. Amy felt a series of odd sensations going through her. She realized they were tremors. Had to face just how afraid she was. How had she gone from hating Walker to being terrified for him in the space of not quite three weeks?

  From where they were they couldn’t see anything except that long swath of illumination from the headlights. The car was still running. The driver’s door of the car opened. Oddly, no interior light came on. Amy could only see a figure in dark clothing getting out.

  Her brow furrowed as she tried to make out more. It wasn’t Mr. Rockwell’s car, at least not the one he drove regularly. And he had a hat on. He never wore a hat, except at the charity baseball game they participated in every year. Disguise?

  The car door stayed open. Visions of her boss leaping back
into the still-running car and leaving at high speed went through her mind. Too many movies, she thought. Because so far this had gone off with little drama and a lot of quiet.

  Amy held her breath as Walker called out. They’d planned it all, but the reality was much, much different. How could he sound so cool, so calm? And then he walked out of the dark into the blast of light, casually, hands in his pockets as if he were merely out for a leisurely stroll. She knew he had a handgun holstered at the small of his back, but the way his thumbs were outside the front pockets of his jeans she didn’t know how he would get to it. Even though she understood it was part of the act to show he wasn’t armed, she didn’t like it.

  He stopped a good fifteen feet from the vehicle. She knew the plan was to force the meeting there, in the light, so Hayley’s camera could get it all.

  It also put Walker on full view. And her stomach knotted painfully. This part of the plan was based on her judgment, her assessment that her boss didn’t keep a gun handy. He had, back in his criminal defense days, she knew, but he’d once mentioned after the switch to the civil side he was glad when he hadn’t needed it anymore. He’d transferred it to someone else on the criminal side, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t borrow it back. Not like anyone would refuse one of the two founders of the firm.

  Or he could own a different weapon, and what if he’d brought it tonight? Walker was lit up like a doomed duck in a shooting gallery. She thought that even she, who’d never fired a weapon in her life, could probably hit him. Little waves of cold rippled through her, and if she’d had any doubts about her feelings for Walker, they were vanquished now.

  “Come on into the light,” Walker called out. “I don’t deal with shadows.”

  God, he sounded as cool and calm as he was acting, Amy thought. She was the one who was a nervous wreck.

  The driver didn’t move.

  “All right, then,” Walker said with a shrug, and turned as if to walk back the way he’d come.

  “Wait.”

  Amy sucked in a harsh, shocked breath. Walker turned back. Smoothly, as if he hadn’t heard what she’d heard. But she knew he had.