He shrugged, trying to smile but making a dismal failure of it. “Yeah, well, I know it’s not a logical thing to feel, okay? No need to sic a shrink on me over it.”
“You don’t let go of those you love, do you?” she said softly. “She’s been gone seventeen years and she’s still always in your thoughts and dreams.”
“Yeah…along with some others I never forgot.” He tipped up her chin, looking deeply into her eyes.
In wonder, she whispered, “You, too?”
That made him smile. “We’re two of a kind, aren’t we? Nice to know I wasn’t forgotten…even if it was because you haven’t found anyone else you’re comfortable talking with since Gil died.” He turned her face up with a finger, making her look at him. “Come on, talk to me,” he said softly, his eyes so caring. “I’m here. I’m not just a doctor, I’m your friend…and right now those six babies you want are in danger of never being conceived.”
The deep worry in his chocolate eyes undid her. She trembled under his hands. No one else knew her as Tal did—no one could break through her barriers to find her long-buried yearnings and hidden wishes. And no man could hurt her more with just a few simple words…but then, he still didn’t know that the only man she wanted as her children’s father was planning to divorce her. “How about I book an appointment to see you another time—when there’s no one listening in would be good for me.”
“Somehow I doubt you’ll ever make that appointment.” His words were grim, his gaze fixed on hers with the unerring accuracy of his long-term knowledge of her.
Oh, God help me—I can’t cry now! “Look, I’ll rest more if it will make you happy, and I’ll be sensible about exercise. But this has been a pretty intense twenty-four hours. I need a shower.” She walked into the bathroom—the only place in the suite without any kind of surveillance beyond infrared detectors at the entry points—and closed the door before he could argue. She stripped fast, turned the shower on hard and stood under it before she let the tears fall.
Good work, O’Rierdan, he thought ironically, standing outside the bathroom. You finally start gaining her trust, then you pull this stunt when you know how tired she is.
But damn it, she had only slept until 0830—and she’d worked out enough for the entire Olympic team after eating less than an average six-year-old did for breakfast.
At first he’d joined her regime. He’d done special weights to strengthen his leg as she walked, and he’d been beside her on the upper body workout. He did two hundred cross-training crunches before he called it quits…and she’d hit two-thirty when he started to realize what she was doing to herself. Yeah, he’d been spot-on in his assessment of her to Ghost last night. When did she stop, rest, kick back and have a day or two off?
He should have taken her outside, away from the Nighthawk cameras and bugs installed to protect them at all times. He knew how she hated anyone but him knowing her vulnerability, her fears and hopes. Trouble was, he wasn’t used to this level of secrecy unless he was in his fatigues and paint. Being on guard 24/7 was new to him, if not to her.
He’d realized that when he’d seen her smile fade and her eyes blank out, haunting him with the hollowness locked inside the gorgeous green depths, just before she walked into the bathroom.
Moments later, beneath the sounds of the shower running hard, he could still hear the muffled yet unmistakable sounds he hadn’t heard in over ten years. Opening the door too quietly for her to hear, he saw a huddled-up ball of humanity in the corner of the shower, curled over herself, a clenched fist covering her mouth. Letting the hot rain fall on her as soft, hacking sobs wrenched out of her gut.
He’d never heard a sadder, lonelier sound in his life.
She’d come in here to cry—the only place she wouldn’t be followed or overheard. She didn’t want him here, that much was obvious—but he obeyed the gut-deep instinct that she needed him. Had she leaned on anyone since Gil West’s death? Whether she wanted him or not, he was here. He strode to the shower, walked right in wearing his sweats and T-shirt, and hauled her up in his arms, absorbing her startled gasp with his mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He kissed her swollen eyes, her nose, her mouth. “You’ve had a rough week, and I put that on you.”
She lay limp in his arms, like a rag doll. “It’s all right,” she said, so soft and sad he could barely hear her under the shower’s hot spray. “I’m fine. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I know you, and I still pushed. I was trying to help, but all I did was hurt you.”
“You didn’t mean to.” Slow, hesitant—so timidly it shocked him—she put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him, her face flushed, wet and so beautiful beneath the steaming water—as lovely as the body he was trying like hell not to look at right now.
“I want babies, Tal, but it’s not going to happen,” she said, her sweet voice strong and sad with loss. “After Gil died, I decided that I’d never have babies without a father who’s going to stay the distance—and that man has to love me. Me, not Verity West, not wanting to show the world he can melt the Iceberg. Me. But that hasn’t happened since Gil died—and I don’t think it’s going to now. All I have is my career and the Nighthawks.” She smiled bravely at him, but it wobbled. “I may not get babies, but at least I help the world, right?”
Seeing the shattered expression in her eyes she covered with that trembling smile of bravado, his heart and defenses shredded. He kissed her over and over, willing the pain to fade. “That’s not true. You have me. I’m here.”
If anything, the sadness grew worse, tearing at his very soul. “For how long after this week?” That wobbly little hiccup came from her throat, an unwilling witness to her distress.
He’d do anything right now to make it go away, say anything, give any promise. “For as long as you want me—as long as you can stand having me here. We’ll have those babies if you want.”
She gasped and buried her face in his neck. “Want you? Have your baby? Oh, Tal…”
The longing in her voice drove him over the edge. He lifted her face and kissed her, hot, deep, with the jagged-edged hunger he couldn’t hold in anymore—and she was with him all the way. She moaned, wrapping her arms tight around his neck, her tongue twining with his. He pulled her up against him, filling his hands with her bottom, pushing her against his hardness. “Good…that’s so good. Oh, yeah, do that,” he muttered in hoarse encouragement as she yanked his T-shirt up and over his head, and filled her hands with his skin.
“Don’t stop this time,” she whispered between nibbling kisses, her eyes alight with sensual discovery. “I’ve been going crazy, pretending to be glowing when I’m dying of the pain of being near you, having you near me day and night, touching you but not the way I want to—need to—or having it interrupted, like last night. I can’t do it anymore. Even if it’s just for this week, or whatever time we have, I’ve got to have you, Tal…”
She pushed down his track pants—and he stilled. He couldn’t help it. That ugly, mangled flesh, pink and puckered where the bone had burst through the flesh and remained infected for months, made him sick. And she was looking right at it…
And then she was touching it, touching the mess Burstall’s grenade had made of his leg. Deep, fevered, drugging kisses on every inch of his skin, including his thigh. Hot, needing kisses right on his mangled flesh, without the slightest change in her hungry desire.
He kicked the tracks away and leaned against the shower wall, feeling weak, dazed—burning alive. Oh, it was so damn good, so erotic, with her fingers and mouth trailing over the intensely sensitive nerves of his scars. “How can you want me like this? How can you touch me there?”
She smiled up at him, drenched and gorgeous. “I used to think that, when you kissed me,” she said softly. “I couldn’t believe you wanted to kiss me, either. But you did. You did…”
“You were chubby, not ugly.” His voice was dark with the disgust he felt whenever he looked at the mangled remains of his thigh.
“That looks like a living explosion.”
“It looks like what it is—a badge of honor for a brave and courageous man injured in the line of duty,” she retorted fiercely. “It’s just one part of you, Tal—the man I’m aching to make love with.” She trailed her fingers over the scars again, and the exquisite rush of sensation hit him all over—and when she kissed him again, it felt like a healing touch to his soul as much as his injured body. “The man you are is the man I want.”
The emotional impact of her words socked him in the solar plexus and rocked his world. “Just don’t write a song about it, okay?” he managed to say through his stark longing for her.
She kissed his scars once again, laughing softly. “Promise.”
Her eyes burned silver-bright with sudden urgency as he slid down the wall to her. “Will this hurt?”
“I don’t care.” He met her mouth in a tender kiss that soon turned hot, filled with need and connecting urgency and gratitude slamming each other for top place inside him. Urgency won. “I’ve waited so long for this. I don’t think I can hold on anymore.”
With a smile filled with joyful sensuality at his words, Mary-Anne straddled him, her breasts sliding against his chest, slick with water, and he groaned aloud, filling his hands with the round, full firmness of her. “Now, honey, now…”
“Yes, oh yes!” No preliminaries, no sweet foreplay—this was need as hot and raw as the land they came from, gravel-edged and bodies hurting with long denial. She lowered herself on to him.
Her head fell back as he filled her, her mouth open, the hot water running in rivulets over her face and breasts. She arched back, wild and exotic, a lovely nymph riding him in a waterfall with a cascade of wet curls falling down her back. Her eyes closed. “Oh, Tal, now—please, now…”
What followed was the wildest, most intense ride of his life. In all his imaginings of them together, he’d never once thought their first time would be this. Precariously balanced in a slippery supersize shower stall, leaning back on his elbows while hot water rained over him and she, his shy girl, took total control of his body. It was more magnificent than he’d dreamed, hotter than the fires of hell, as infinitely beautiful and unforgettable as the gates of heaven. Loving that would burn in his memory until he drew his final breath.
In the end, he didn’t know if the cries of pleasure were hers or his. He was so focused on her, lost in feeling her delicious friction, making her moan and cry his name every time he filled her again and again. He groaned when the sweet wet gush all around him told him she’d reached climax, not once, but twice.
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think as he followed her final strangled cry of satisfaction with his own. A hoarse sound ripped from his throat. He pulled her down to him, kissing her mouth, loving the feel of her soft breasts against his wet skin.
“Are you okay?” she whispered, her eyes shining as she smiled down at him. Yeah, she was glowing now, her tension and sadness gone. She looked happier than he’d ever seen her. A one hundred percent satisfied woman…and like no iceberg he’d ever seen.
He chuckled and kissed her again. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line? Checking for regrets or something?”
Leaning into the kiss, she took it a level higher…and it grew hot and intense a hell of a lot faster than he’d have believed in all his sexual experience. “You know you don’t need to ask.” She reached up and turned off the shower. “Am I hurting you?”
“Honey, I’ve got no complaints at all.” He cupped the breast that moved in front of him as she twisted the taps. “How can your breasts be so full when the rest of you is so tiny?”
Purring with his touch, she murmured huskily, “You know my mother and grandmother, and you can’t figure that out?”
“Mmm. Thank heaven for Aunt Miranda and Grandma Rickard’s genetics.” He filled his mouth, gently suckling. “Coral-colored nipples. Freckles on your belly. Can I play connect-the-dots?”
She purred, “Using what to connect?”
“Chocolate sauce? My hands and mouth?”
“Any or all, welcome,” she whispered, smiling as she moved off his body, “and I wish we had time now…but Ghost and the team are due in at 1200.”
He checked his watch. “You’re right. Time to reapply the face goop, I guess. I’d better get up.” With a groan of regret, he started hauling himself to his feet.
Mary-Anne’s brow quirked, checking him out. “You’re already up. It seems Irish is always ready for action.”
Grateful that she’d diverted him instead of offering to help him with his precarious balance, staring at his arousal instead of his scars, he grinned at her. “When you’re around, I am.”
A strange expression flitted across her face. Then she smiled so sweetly he could almost believe he’d imagined it. “Good, because I’m ready to make the most of that state this week.”
This week—this week. The words kept pounding at him like a relentless prizefighter, reminding him that soon she’d be gone, back to her concert tours, jets and limos and all the luxury her star status lifestyle demanded, and he’d stay behind to whatever he made of his life after he took Burstall down. He was too damaged physically to handle the rigors of being married to a star, and it would kill him to be a husband to Mary-Anne in name only. He couldn’t live her life. If he ever got enough strength to go back to work, he’d want to be where he was needed somewhere, not following her around from place to place, being the “and husband.” No. He couldn’t do it. He’d just have to get his fill of her this week, and walk away after the mission a free man, then.
Would a week be enough?
But deep down, beneath all the old betrayals and the disgust for his face and body, the hate of an empty life that he couldn’t change, he knew he was kidding himself.
If the Verity West juggernaut didn’t exist around her, if he could stand and walk and run beside her as a full-bodied Nighthawk operative and doctor—or if by some miracle she could be Mary-Anne Poole again, just an ordinary woman he could keep as his wife, the question would be—
Would a lifetime with her be enough?
Chapter 9
The invitation came an hour later.
Under the guise of bodyguards, the team of Nighthawks finished the latest sweep of the room and checked out security and all points of entrance and exit of the entire hotel.
Looking as though he was itching to open the envelope himself, Anson handed it to her. Mary-Anne opened the envelope marked “Miss Verity West.” “Falcone. An invitation to a party, plus an offer for accommodation for the length of our honeymoon, should we need or desire the added privacy he can provide for us.”
Tal took the note from her outstretched hand. “It’s for tonight, and you’re the guest of honor? He didn’t waste time.”
“All the better for the mission, isn’t it? The quicker we get in, the quicker we get Joel St. Bremer out of there and safe.”
But Tal continued to frown. “How did he find out we were here and organize a party in your honor this quickly? Even with all his money and connections, it seems wrong.”
Startled by Tal’s spot-on assessment, she blinked. “The reporter this morning talked to him?”
“Why would the reporter tell him before the morning edition is out? He doesn’t own the paper here.”
Anson looked at Tal with sudden, intense attention. “You got a hunch, Irish?”
Tal frowned. “None of it’s sitting right with me, Boss. It’s too quick, like he knew we were coming here—like he keeps tabs on Songbird’s life and whereabouts beyond her press releases. I think he had this all set up and ready for her arrival. I don’t like it. This could be a test—and if we jump to accept too fast, it puts us all in danger, but especially Songbird.”
After a moment Nick nodded. “Excellent reasoning. What’s your take, then?”
Mary-Anne almost tripped over her jaw. Had the world started spinning backward, or was their control-freak Area 4 Head of Security deferring to Tal—Tal, w
ho might be an SAR expert but had never been part of an op like this?
It didn’t appear to faze Tal. “Let’s wait a few days before we go in. If we go to the Embassy tonight or even tomorrow, it’ll look pretty suspicious. We’re on our honeymoon after what the world knows was a whirlwind courtship. A bona fide couple would want a few days alone.”
“You’re not a honeymoon couple,” Nick barked, “And the orders are to get that boy out and take Burstall down, ASAP!”
“And how can we do that if we arouse suspicion? You said it yourself—the Embassy has tighter security than the White House. If we go now, we put the whole team at risk, all of whom know a lot more about our operations than a kid like Joel St. Bremer.”
Anson nodded with obvious reluctance. “Okay, you have a point—but what do we do with ourselves in the interim?”
Tal only grinned at the impatient question. “Well, I don’t know what you feel like doing, Boss, but I’m all for having a honeymoon with my wife…without electronic surveillance.” He turned to smile at her, the look in his eyes warm and relaxed—like a man who’d just been thoroughly loved…and she felt herself blushing under the amused, interested glances of Braveheart and Wildman. “A couple of days on a yacht, just the two of us.”
Anson sighed. “How bona fide would Verity West and her husband look going out on a boat alone, without protection?” he demanded irritably. “You’ll have the paparazzi after you within hours. Can you think without your gonads on this, Irish, and act like the operative I trained you to be?”
“That’s the point,” Tal shot back. “You want bona fide? If I’d married Songbird without the assignment, I would be thinking like a horny kid. I would take her on the yacht for peace and quiet, because she hasn’t had any form of rest in over a year. Let the hounds fly over, take shots—it only helps the mission, plus it strengthens our reasons for accepting the full invite to the Embassy. After a couple of days, we get sick of the intrusions and accept Falcone’s offer of accommodation. Anything for peace and quiet before her next tour in America.”
Can You Forget? Page 11