A Weaver Holiday Homecoming

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  In Ryan’s arms.

  “Something’s poking me in the hip,” she said a long while later.

  The world had stopped spinning. Their hearts had stopped racing.

  But she knew she would never be the same.

  His soft laughter was rippling through her. “No kidding.”

  She weakly batted his shoulder. “I’m serious.” She wriggled around, trying to reach the small, hard ridge digging into her.

  “You’re going to give me a heart attack if you keep wiggling like that,” he complained, sounding so lazily satisfied that she couldn’t help but smile into the dark.

  Holding her against his chest, he rolled even more to the side—somehow managing not to land them both on the floor—and swept his hand between her and the back of the couch.

  He found the object and pulled it out. “Somebody’s been playing doctor.”

  She could see the shadowy outline of her stethoscope. “So it would seem.”

  He kept shifting until she found herself suddenly sprawled on top of him.

  “When I was a kid, my mother was very strict about letting me mess with her doctor stuff.”

  “Is that a technical term?” Mallory smiled faintly. “And being strict is sometimes what mothers do.”

  He put the earpieces to his ears and then placed the chest piece against her chest. His wrist brushed against her sensitized nipple.

  Deliberately, she suspected, and didn’t have a single protest to make.

  “Your heartbeat sounds very fast,” he observed with undue seriousness.

  “That’s what you do,” she said softly. It seemed fantastical that she could still want more of him when her body ached tenderly in places where it hadn’t for years; when she didn’t seem to have left a solid bone or muscle, but she did.

  She tugged the stethoscope away from him and started to slide off him, but his arms held her in place and, even though she knew they couldn’t remain there indefinitely, she willingly subsided.

  Her head found the curve between his strong neck and shoulder, and her hand settled on his wide, deep chest.

  She didn’t need her stethoscope to hear his rhythmic pulse. It was almost lulling enough to put her to sleep.

  Except that his fingers kept drifting slowly up and down her spine, and the shivers that danced through her were anything but lulling.

  “I think Nina had something going with Dr. Yarnell,” she murmured after a moment.

  He gave a faint laugh. “You’re officially a Weaver resident now, Doc. I think that was gossip.”

  “Maybe so.” The idea of being more than a temporary resident had never had more appeal than it did now. But she was also very aware that he’d never suggested that she consider making their stay in Weaver a permanent one.

  And her career was waiting for her back in New York.

  Which was something that she simply didn’t want to think about just then.

  So she rubbed her foot along his calf, instead.

  She touched the tip of her tongue to the curve of his neck. Salty. Addictive.

  “I’m not kidding about the heart attack,” he grumbled softly.

  “Oh?” Her voice was innocent, but the hand she slipped boldly between them to wrap around him was not.

  She felt him drag air into his lungs. “Doc—”

  Grumbling or not, he was hard.

  And she was so…not.

  She rose over him, taking the very tip of him into her tender body. She held still, letting the urgency to take more settle and calm until it was a low, insistent beating in her veins. “Is there a problem?” Her muscles intimately flexed and he gave a strangled sound.

  Ryan’s fingers tightened around her hips while he fought the urge to flip Mallory onto her back and bury himself in her as deeply as he’d just done. “What does it feel like to you?”

  She dipped her hips infinitesimally, but it was still enough to make his jaw go tight and his control slip dangerously near the edge of his grasp.

  “It feels…perfect.”

  He hoped to hell she was causing herself no small amount of torment.

  “You feel perfect,” she added, and did that little dip thing again. He swore he saw white behind his eyes.

  Not red as in passion. Not red as in hell.

  White.

  As in heaven, which was what it felt like inside of her.

  And it felt like all the rules were changing, sliding right out of his grasp. The tighter he tried to hold on, the slipperier they became.

  He’d realized it under the mistletoe. And during Chloe’s birthday party when they were surrounded by a half-dozen chattering little girls and he hadn’t wanted to escape, just because Mallory was in the room, her amber eyes warm and her beautiful mouth smiling. And then when it was just the three of them, hunting down dog gear in Braden.

  He hadn’t wanted to run.

  He hadn’t wanted to do anything but stay with them.

  And where would that get any of them?

  So he’d visited the bank and taken care of the trust. He’d called up his cousin-in-law, Brody Paine, who was an attorney. He’d told Ryan what needed to be said in the will. And then if that wasn’t enough, he had written that check.

  And then he’d slapped it all down in front of Mallory, knowing that she’d want an explanation, and once she had it, he wouldn’t have to run.

  Because she would do it for him.

  Only she hadn’t believed him.

  And she hadn’t run.

  And now, all he could do was hang on while she took him inside her body with such aching slowness that his eyes burned deep inside his head.

  She set her palm in the center of his chest, right above the spot where his rusty heart was chugging, and leaned over him until her mouth hovered above his. “Where are you going, Ryan?” Her voice was soft. Beckoning. She brushed her lips against his. “Come back to me.”

  The burning got worse. So he just tightened his hands around the perfect flare of her hips and thrust into her.

  He heard her inhale. Felt her fingertips flex, pressing hard into his chest.

  And then she was moving again and those soft, breathy sounds were rising in her throat. He closed his eyes and let the world…go…white.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get you called earlier, Gram. I’ve been at the office.” Mallory’s gaze met his across Nina’s desk where she was using the phone. “I had a…a late appointment come in.”

  Even across the room, he could see the flush that hit her cheeks at that and, as if she knew it, she turned her head, until she wasn’t looking at him at all. It just gave him a good view of her slender back, perfectly illuminated by the light that she’d turned on before making her call.

  “You and Chloe have already eaten dinner, right?” She tucked the phone in the crook of her neck and pulled her slacks up over her long, lovely legs.

  The vision of her dressing would be branded in his brain forever. He finally looked away to finish pulling on his own clothes. With each layer he put on, the peace he’d found in the past few hours seemed less and less real.

  He realized she’d finished her call when she padded over to him and plucked her bra off the corner of the coffee table littered with out-of-date magazines. She turned away while she quickly fastened the bra as if she’d been struck by a bolt of shyness. “Chloe had a good day and is already getting ready for bed,” she reported.

  But he caught the falseness beneath the chipper tone and that peace slipped a little more toward unreality.

  He picked up the rest of the clothes—his shirt, her sweater. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” She slipped her arms into the sweater only to stop and catch his hand. “Look at your knuckles!”

  He flexed them. “Nothing’s broken.” They were red. Some were split but the thin bloody lines were dried.

  She huffed anyway. “Small wonder when you go around punching mahogany shelves.” She pulled him with her down the hallwa
y and into the first examining room. “Sit.”

  Her voice brooked no argument, and he sat. But he eyed the metal stirrups that were folded out of the way at the end of the padded table. “Could have been interesting in here,” he murmured, mostly to get a reaction.

  “Only if you’re the one in them,” she returned with such aplomb that he was damned if his own neck didn’t get hot.

  He caught her faint smile as, much to his regret, she finished buttoning her sweater before rummaging through the drawers under the counter. She dropped a few packets on the table beside him and tore one open, swabbing over the cut.

  “Jesus, Doc.” He yanked his hand away at the fierce sting. “Pour some acid on it while you’re at it.”

  She gave him a straight look that did nothing whatsoever to hide her amusement and held out her hand, waiting for him to put his paw back.

  Which he did, feeling about as manly as a mouse.

  She dabbed again and, though it stung like a mother, he managed not to squeal again. And in quick order, she’d wrapped and taped up his knuckles. “Would you like a sucker?” Her voice was angelic, the smile tugging at the corners of her lips exactly the opposite.

  “Kissing it works better.”

  She lifted his hand, her eyes never leaving his, and pressed her mouth softly to the gauze. “What about this one?” She trailed her other hand down the scar beneath his arm and he went still. “Who kissed that one better?”

  He should have known she’d see it. It wasn’t hard to miss the distinct scar among his ribs when the lights were on and his shirt was off.

  He could have lied. Told her any story more palatable than the truth. But the truth was what it would take to make her realize that some things just didn’t get better. “The hooker who found me in an alley in Kuala Lumpur.”

  “Pretty messy stitchery.” She didn’t look anywhere near as shocked as he figured she should.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t have great pickings.” The girl who’d found him had taken him to a friend of hers who’d stitched the gash with rudimentary and not exactly sterile skill. None of them had wanted to draw attention to themselves. Not from the law or from Krager’s people.

  Her palm covered the ugly scar and her light touch felt as if it might well burn right through his rib cage. “How did it happen?”

  “I got knifed.”

  She just watched him with those soft, earnest eyes. And her voice was even softer. “What really happened with those girls, Ryan? What were you really doing? Who were they?”

  “People’s daughters. Sisters.” The only times he didn’t see their terrified faces when he closed his eyes was when he was seeing Mallory there, instead.

  Heaven. Or hell.

  “Snatched from wherever, whenever. Taken to one of the houses where we guarded them until the devil himself set up his next auction.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. Krager just kept getting richer and cagier, and those poor girls had kept rolling in. Runaways. Kidnappings. Didn’t matter as long as they’d fit the product description. And no matter how often Ryan had managed to leak the location of a house, the time and place of an auction, Krager had always slipped through. The most they’d ever netted were flunkies. Guys, just like he’d started out being, hoping to work their way up Krager’s system to where the real power was.

  “I wasted three years trying to earn the trust of the top lieutenants so I could get close enough to the guy in charge—Krager—and bring the whole network down, but it was never enough. Not even Krager’s closest people knew the entire picture, so nobody could ever pin anything directly on him, because nobody ever could put together the entire puzzle. His network’s unbelievable. Operates out of at least eight different countries. And those were just the ones we knew about.”

  “We?” Her voice was faint. She looked appalled.

  “Hollins-Winword. HW Industries,” he elaborated, feeling indescribably tired. “It’s a private agency concerned with security. Domestic. International. You name it, they’ve had their fingers in it.” And he’d been up to his neck. “They’ll work with the government when they can, but a lot of what we did was off the map.”

  “Cassie was involved with this agency?” Her brows knitted. “She said she did business translating.”

  “She did. She wasn’t in the field. Even companies like HW need admin and tech support. Cassie wasn’t lying.”

  “But how did she ever get involved with them?”

  He grimaced. “HW recruits specific people for specific skills from all over.” His own family had turned into prime pickings. He supposed there were others, too.

  “What was your skill?” she asked warily.

  “Numbers. Patterns. The fact that I came from Naval Intelligence. Had a better than average proficiency with weapons.” That was an understatement. And if he never held another gun he’d be happy.

  “And this?” Her fingertip traced the jagged scar.

  He looked down at his hands. “There was a girl, snatched from a school group. She could have been Courtney’s twin,” he said gruffly. “Tall. Stacked. Innocent as hell. I’d heard Krager was planning something special for her.” Maybe it was the accumulation of years or the fact that she’d been a ringer for his kid sister or just the fact that he was losing his mind. But he’d snapped. “I didn’t even know her real name. The guards called her Nadia. I tried to get her out. Same way I managed to get others out—smuggling them in piles of dirty laundry or whatever else was handy.

  “But she didn’t trust me any more than she trusted the other bastards guarding her and instead of saving her, I got myself stabbed and her drugged and dragged off all over again.”

  “Oh, Ryan.” She had tears on cheeks.

  “Don’t cry for me.” The words seemed to dredge up from somewhere deep in the earth. “Cry for the girls. Cry for Nadia. Because, after a few days, while I was lying in a cheap room on a cheap mattress stitched up but alive and no closer to shutting that bastard down, she threw herself off the side of a yacht owned by the twisted SOB who’d bought her. Her body was found by a local fisherman, otherwise it probably would’ve never even made the news. Nobody ever came forward to identify the body. I failed,” he said roughly. In so many ways for too many years. “The things I’ve seen. Done. None of it’s good, Mallory.”

  “You didn’t always fail,” she whispered. She took his face in her hands and rubbed her thumbs over his cheeks that he didn’t even realize were as wet as hers. “What about the girls you helped get away?”

  “I didn’t help Nadia. I might as well have pushed her off that boat, myself. I blew cover, blew the entire op, and I didn’t stick around to clean up the mess. I landed in Bangkok and tried to forget everything, including the people I’d left behind here.”

  “Another inch and you might not have lived long enough for that knife wound to even become a scar. You didn’t push that poor girl. And you’re back with your family now.” She kept her gaze locked on his even when he wanted to look away. “Could you have done anything other than what you did? Was there some cavalry for you to call to the rescue?” She didn’t flinch. “I can tell just by your face that there wasn’t. You were the only cavalry they had, weren’t you.”

  “Don’t try to make it heroic, Doc. Krager’s still out there doing exactly what he’s always done. And if not him, then someone else will take his place. And there will still be parents not knowing where to turn, brothers and sisters searching for someone they love and never finding them.”

  “All the more reason for you to connect with the family who is searching for you, right here! God, Ryan. You have people who love you all around you.”

  “They won’t when they know what I’ve done.”

  “I know,” she returned swiftly, “and I…” Her voice cut off but it was already too late.

  The words floated in the air between them, spoken or not. Love you.

  Fresh pain ripped down his chest. Hadn’t he known better? “Don’t confuse love with sex,” he mana
ged.

  “I’m a doctor,” she returned gently. “I’m quite certain I know the difference.”

  “You barely know me.” Arguments, reason. They all started to gather steam.

  “Do you know me?”

  The steam evaporated. “What?”

  “Who am I, Ryan? Other than Chloe’s mom or the doctor who’s filling in for Dan Yarnell for a few months. Do you know me?”

  He wanted to say that he didn’t. Or claim that he didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.

  But he couldn’t look into those eyes and do it.

  “You know what’s in my head.” She took his hand and pressed it to her breast. “You’ve seen what’s in my heart.”

  What was in her heart was the kind of woman to raise a little girl who’d give a dollar to a complete stranger just because she thought he needed it more than she did. She was unselfish and compassionate. “Feeling sorry for me isn’t love, either.”

  “Believe me,” she said, her voice turning tart, “I don’t pity you. You’re stubborn and opinionated—”

  “Like you are?”

  “—and you never do what I expect—”

  “Like you gave in on Abercrombie?”

  “—and you helped me realize that it’s okay to let Cassie go.” She hesitated, probably waiting for him to counter that.

  But he had nothing.

  And the understanding in her eyes plainly told him that she’d known he wouldn’t.

  She ran her hands down his bare shoulders. Caught his hands between hers. “If you can help me finally start letting go of feeling responsible for Cassie’s death, then how can you not do the same for yourself? Ryan, you were out there trying to make the world a better—a safer—place. For girls like your sister. Like your daughter. You said yourself, you helped some get away. Not every situation turned out like Nadia.”

  “Krager’s still out there.”

  “Do you want to go out again to stop him, then?”

  He’d already told Cole that he didn’t. He shook his head.

  “Maybe finding him isn’t what you’re meant to do.”