Code Name: Fiancée

by Susan Vaughan

  “But the intel was wrong?” She fought back tears at the agony on his face.

  He slumped and came to sit on the bed beside her. With his rough hand, he smoothed back her hair, then clasped her hand. His eyes were stark with pain and longing.

  “Wrong or false or compromised, I never found out. We went into an ambush. The arms and explosives there were used against us. As the men deployed to attack, gunfire from rock outcroppings beyond us cut them down. Then the huts exploded. Blew what was left to blood and gore.”

  “You and one other survived.”

  “Cruiser was wounded. He lost a foot later. I had a few scratches.” She saw the survivor’s guilt, a clawed demon, riding on his shoulders. “After the firefight ended, I gathered up the others’ dog tags. We made it back to the pickup zone and got lifted out.”

  “The warlord and his men?”

  “Dead. We got ’em.” His lip twisted in self-disdain. “Mission accomplished.”

  “Those men…they were your friends. I can’t imagine—”

  “Friends, yes. I’d been SF for only a short time, but when you’re hunkered down in dangerous country, you become tight damned fast.”

  She felt he needed to keep talking. “Tell me about them.”

  He hesitated. Finally he began in a hoarse whisper. “Antowan Donaldson. He was called Badger because once he latched on to something, he never let go. He was our weapons specialist, for all the damned good it did him.” He paused as if gathering strength to relive the memories. “Joe Ramirez, known as Slick because of his way with women. And Gerry Saban. He— You sure you want to hear all this?”

  “Go on. I want to know about the others.” She listened, rubbing his arm with her free hand and wishing she could absorb his pain.

  With gentle prompting from her, he recounted personal memories about each man in the squad. Five brave and skilled men, the wounded and the dead, with buddy names like Donut and Cruiser and Shark. Toward the end, his voice was raw, as if each word was jagged shrapnel gouging flesh from his throat.

  She squeezed his big hand, damp with cold sweat. “You said the humint had been verified. You had reliable intel. You couldn’t have known you were going into an ambush.”

  Her chest clogged with sorrow, Vanessa reached out to pull him into her arms.

  Moisture glittering in his eyes, he wrenched away and stalked across the room. Every muscle in his sweat-sheened body bulged with tension.

  He fired out a string of obscenities, clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists. “When we returned to base, the local informants had disappeared. I should’ve seen through their lies. Checked more sources. Something.”

  “Maybe the translation from Somali to English was the problem. Or the interpreter.”

  He shook his head, slowly and with difficulty, as if his skull were too heavy to move. “No interpreter. We spoke in Italian. Odd, but that’s one of the local languages.”

  She remembered that one reason Special Forces had recruited him was his language fluency. There had to be more to the story. “How was their information verified?”

  “Flyover surveillance, other reports. The exec gave me the file.” He faced her, the low lamplight sketching harsh shadows on the angles and planes of his bold features. “Your investigation doesn’t mean squat. In the end, I’m still responsible. Those men died because of my screwup.”

  Her breath hitched at the grief in his words, at the emptiness of lost honor and pride in his voice. “Nick, your story hasn’t changed my mind about a cover-up. I’m convinced there’s more you don’t know. Missions fail. Mistakes happen. Look at all the roadblocks in this op. And ATSA’s supposed to be the elite force.”

  His gaze softened, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Vanessa, sweet Vanessa. Ms. Optimist. My only defender.”

  “Did you see anyone after? I mean like a counselor?”

  “The army shrink. I know all about PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. Counseling might’ve helped more if you’d been my shrink.”

  The tension in his body slowly transformed from fury to something else. He ambled toward the bed. Hunger darkened his eyes and set his shadowed jaw. He stared at her with such intensity that her pulse stuttered.

  The potency of his male beauty held her gaze. Naked, his rock-hard strength displayed in taut sinews and defined abs, he made her heart nearly leap from her chest. His phallus, quiescent during his ordeal, now thrust toward her, imposing and imperious. Heat rose in her and licked up her belly.

  Nick saw her eyes go wide at the realization of his intent. Afraid she’d refuse him, he hesitated at the bed’s edge. “I need you, Vanessa. Latrea mou.”

  She smiled and opened her arms. “Come to me, Nick.”

  Tumbling her back onto the cool silk, he covered her with his length. They gathered each other close, fitting softness to hardness, swells to hollows. Her heat surrounded him, seeped into his body, into the dark, aching places, a balm to his unseen wounds.

  She clung to him with the same fierce instinct that drummed in his blood. A vise of more than sexual need gripped him, a need greater than he’d ever known, greater than he’d thought possible, to possess this generous and gentle woman who fitted in his arms as though she belonged there.

  She was ready, wet and reaching for him. Passion surged in the heavy beat of his heart. He barely had enough control to sheath himself before he sank into her welcoming body.

  Pleasure erased boundaries, so he didn’t know where he ended and she began. She pulsed around him almost immediately, her climax wringing urgent whimpers from her and ecstatic groans from him. Then all he could do was piston into her and ride the shock wave to a shattering release that exploded from him like spasms of thunder.

  The next morning, Vanessa sat beside Nick at his half brother’s funeral service. A black-robed woman played the organ. The dolorous chords of Brahms’s Requiem echoed against the stone walls of the small chapel. Candles flickered beside an open bible at the altar.

  A wreath of flowers draped a bronze coffin. An empty coffin. Alexei Markos’s ashes lay in an urn ready for shipment to Greece, but Mr. Falstone had asserted that at a funeral people expected to see the coffin.

  Rain dripped from their shared umbrella, leaning against the pew in front of her, to form a small puddle on the slate floor. With each drop she felt her time with Nick slipping away. For now, she just wanted to make it through the service and return to the house safely.

  She shuddered, but not from the damp and cold.

  Last night’s lovemaking and his tormented confession had brought them closer. Gradually the tension and anger had seeped from Nick. He’d been romantic and tender and both gentle and demanding. The mere memory left her breathless and dizzy. He’d held her and loved her as if he’d never let her go. Reminding herself that this rush of elation was only temporary took every ounce of willpower she possessed.

  She’d awakened alone. When she found Nick at his desk, he’d said only that he needed to catch up on N.D.M. business before the funeral. Perhaps that was true. Or perhaps he was pulling back from a relationship that could go nowhere. The notion seared her heart like fire, but she refused to dwell on it.

  The housekeeper had arrived early and insisted on preparing them a hot breakfast. As usual, she’d clucked her tongue at Nick’s lack of a tie, but Vanessa had no complaints about his attire. The charcoal suit and slate-gray turtleneck conveyed perfectly the requisite somber attitude as well as the formidable bearing he wore like armor.

  A new driver, an African-American ATSA officer named J. T. McNair, had brought them to the funeral in the scarred Mercedes. Speedy Glass had replaced the windows, but the scrapes and bullet holes would have to wait.

  Janine balked, insisting she could take a bus or the Metro, but Nick ignored her protests and hustled her into the back seat with them. When he winked at her, she responded with a tiny smile and seemed to relax.

  Though Nick had begun the day with outer calm, Vanessa’d observed the tens
ion in his jaw as they approached the hearse and other cars parked on the circular drive to the chapel. Between the stress of his tortured memories and that of his half brother’s crimes, he found little respite.

  He sat beside her now, eyes forward and shoulders rigid. His woodsy scent floated to her with the less pleasant ones of wet wool and hot dust from a seldom-used furnace.

  As he had on the day they’d visited the funeral home, he kept a constant grip on her hand. Did that mean he wasn’t withdrawing from her? No, she wouldn’t go there. But if she could offer him this small lifeline, he could have her hand forever.

  At the unintended double entendre, a tremor shot through her. Nick thought he desired the real Vanessa, but desire was fleeting. The tomboy and the tycoon? Her love would find no forever with Nick. All she could expect was one day.

  One day at a time. To play her part.

  She needed no reminders to be Nick’s loving fiancée, but today she struggled to concentrate on who else she was.

  Vanessa Wade, Anti-Terrorism Security Agency officer. Specializing in undercover love and self-delusion.

  Clamping her lips together to keep them from trembling, she turned her head and caught Simon Byrne’s eye. The mission control officer nodded almost imperceptibly, then scanned the sparse gathering of mourners in the ten rows of pews.

  “More security than mourners. Alexei’s legacy,” Nick murmured.

  “So far all I see are the usual suspects.” Vanessa recognized everyone in the chapel. The five employees of Markos Imports, owners of neighboring shops, a couple of D.C. detectives and Alexei’s defense attorney. And, of course, Janine, who had come for them, not for her former employer.

  Quiet whispers brushed the chapel’s stone walls like wind gusting through desiccated leaves. The dour Mr. Falstone stepped to the podium. The susurrus ended.

  Nick squeezed her hand as the funeral director began to read a prayer. After a Bible reading and two hymns, the service mercifully concluded.

  “Now comes the hard part.” Nick stood and turned to face the curious and the concerned.

  Employees, business contacts and a few others regarded Nick as if expecting him to voice a tribute to his late brother. Vanessa knew there was no chance in hell of that.

  “Dwight Wickham and Abdul Nadim are sitting together.” A low rumble of displeasure emitted from Nick’s chest. “Look for blood in the water.”

  “Tsk, tsk. Nadim seems like a teddy bear, not a shark.”

  “Trust me. Abdul doesn’t get regular write-ups in the Post financial pages by being cuddly. If those two sharks team up, I’ll be lucky to have a bone of profit from any sale of Markos Imports.”

  They proceeded down the aisle and waited at the open doorway to accept greetings and condolences. Wickham and Nadim hesitated by the doorway. Even in suits and somber ties, the two entrepreneurs had the avaricious air of used-car salesmen.

  Maybe Nick was right about sharks, Vanessa speculated.

  Nick drew back as he recognized the hawkish features on a face behind the last guests to leave.

  “Prince Amir. Another shark. Why the hell is he here?” he hissed. Wariness deepened the cleft in his chin and narrowed his eyes to laser-blue slits.

  By now she was accustomed to Nick’s illogical dislike of the suave Yamari prince. She whispered back, “To pay his respects, I imagine. Behave.”

  “I always do, honey. Watch me.” A feral smile curved his mouth as the three men approached the doorway.

  Most of the others had trudged out into the steady downpour. Janine, clutching her purse to her breast, waited by the last pew. Two ATSA officers dressed in dark suits and darker expressions—undercover as funeral home employees—edged forward, ready to move if the need arose.

  Vanessa expected no trouble from these men other than sharp bargaining. ATSA reports said Abdul Nadim and Dwight Wickham were what they appeared to be, successful businessmen. Although the king’s abdication had trampled on his son’s future ascension to the throne, Amir had no apparent political leanings or ambitions.

  Hands were shaken all around as Wickham and Nadim shuffled between polite comments about the ceremony and oblique references to the sale of the business.

  “Gentlemen,” Nick said, “thank you. On behalf of my family, I appreciate your coming out in the rain today.”

  Prince Amir bowed over Vanessa’s hand. “Appropriate weather for such a sad occasion.”

  “I wasn’t aware you knew my brother.” Nick curved a proprietary arm around Vanessa’s shoulders. “I appreciate the gesture.”

  The Yamari prince waved a manicured hand in dismissal. “I knew Alexei but not well. We met a few years ago at an embassy gathering. He subsequently handled the sale of some family pieces. He had wide knowledge of such things.”

  “Yes,” Vanessa hastened to say, “in spite of…his other failings, he was an expert on Eastern antiquities.”

  Amid farewells, the party stepped out into the rain and mist. Vanessa noted that more ATSA officers covered the grounds. Good. If New Dawn was planning something, instincts told her that now would be the time. But no figurative red flag of danger popped up. Satisfied, she inhaled the raw air, less stifling than the musty confines of the chapel.

  Their companions splashed through puddles toward other cars farther down the drive. A liveried chauffeur at attention held a limousine door for the prince.

  Vanessa jerked a nod toward the fawning driver. “McNair could take lessons from him in proper chauffeur protocol.”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Janine cover a smile.

  Nick snorted his disdain as he took the women’s elbows. “I prefer security to sucking up.”

  The Mercedes was parked in a reserved space behind the hearse about a hundred feet away. Together they traipsed toward it across the wet grass.

  “Good thing. You won’t get sucking up from McNair,” Vanessa observed wryly. “Instead of holding the door, he seems to have dozed off. I see his cap against the headrest.”

  Silent up to that point, Janine said, “Me, I do like a man in uniform. Something about that cap…” She sighed and lifted her shoulder in a very French shrug.

  Cap?

  Ye gods, no!

  Vanessa slipped from Nick’s grasp. She grabbed his and Janine’s arms. She tugged and gestured to the ATSA officers.

  “Quick, get back to the chapel! Now!”

  A scowl darkened Nick’s face, but he let her drag him backward. “What the hell!”

  His gaze sharpened as if recognizing the alarm on her face. He curved his arms around the women and began to run.

  Behind them, the Mercedes blew apart in a fiery blast of metal and glass.

  Chapter 14

  The blast threw them to the ground. Pressure cartwheeled their umbrellas across the muddy lawn. In an eerie echo of Nick’s nightmare, sizzling debris, steaming in the rain, poured around them and on them.

  Seconds later ATSA officers helped them to their feet.

  Nick spat out mud and grass. Heart pounding, he gripped Vanessa’s shoulders. He searched her pale face for blood or signs of pain. “Are you all right?”

  Mud smeared her wool coat and the knees of her navy slacks. Rust-colored strands of hair plastered the shoulders of her coat, but her eyes were clear. “Fine. Just wet.”

  He followed her avid gaze to the ATSA control officer—Byrne was his name. Even in a suit, no one looked less like a funeral parlor employee.

  Vanessa quivered in Nick’s grip like a thoroughbred straining at the gate, but she didn’t attempt to break free and join her colleagues. “Danielle” stayed by her lover’s side.

  “Big blow,” Janine said. “But not so bad like the hurricane that blew away my house.” The unflappable Haitian housekeeper began brushing at her muddy clothing with a snowy handkerchief.

  He’d long ago informed Janine of New Dawn’s threats, so he wouldn’t have to explain now. She thought the driver was hired protection and knew nothing of ATSA’s involve
ment.

  “These enemies of Monsieur Markos, ils sont méchants.”

  Nick stared at the smoldering ruin of his Mercedes and its grisly passenger. “Wicked. Yes, Janine, very wicked.”

  If not for Vanessa’s sudden alarm, they would’ve died in the same inferno as the driver. He could’ve lost her. All that warmth and passion could’ve been snuffed out in an instant. A steel band vised his chest, and his hands shook.

  He’d never cared this much before. He didn’t want to hover between such depths of fear and pain and peaks of pleasure and joy. She was a woman meant to have a home and family, a woman with more strings than the London Symphony Orchestra. And he was a man bound to his demons.

  He wrapped her in his arms and buried his nose in her hair. Her familiar fragrance blocked out the confusing thoughts and the smells of burning metal, fabric and flesh.

  He couldn’t yet grasp what he felt, so instead, he said, “I’m sorry about McNair.”

  She shook her head, her face rubbing against his damp suit. “That’s not McNair. It’s not J.T. in the car.” She lifted her gaze to his.

  “You saw something at the last minute. What was it?”

  She smiled at the housekeeper, who was gaping at her statement. “Janine, you said something about his cap. We all saw the chauffeur’s cap against the headrest. But McNair wasn’t wearing a cap.”

  “Mon Dieu! Then where is that man?” Janine exclaimed.

  “He can’t be far. The…security people will find him.” She stepped back from Nick and stared at her hands. Blood smeared the palms and fingers. “Nick, you’re bleeding!”

  Up to now he hadn’t noticed, but suddenly he felt stinging sensations as if a spray of buckshot had peppered his back. He must’ve taken the brunt when he’d covered the two women from the blast.

  Face pale as parchment, Vanessa turned him around. “Your raincoat’s in shreds. Burned and sliced by falling shrapnel. You’ll need stitches.”

  Shrapnel. Staccato bursts of Kalashnikov rounds. RPGs. The sting of cordite and smoke…and burning flesh.

  The attack in the Karkaar village tattooed his brain. Nick squeezed his eyes shut and fisted his hands to keep them from shaking.