“You never slept with her?”
“Well, not until after we were married,” he replied dryly. “I kinda kept out of her way until the wedding, staying at college and studying for exams, but after that I couldn’t avoid her. I might not have liked her, sweetness, but I was a twenty-one-year-old with limited experience, and she was eager and available.”
“And beautiful,” she added softly.
He shrugged. “I never went for the dark-haired Barbie doll type—she always looked like one of those girls in those meaningless teen flicks. Too perfect, too much makeup and not enough inside. And after a so-called ‘miscarriage’ three weeks after the wedding, I got the picture. We had a massive fight, and I told her that liars turn me off. Our sexual encounters were pretty much hit-and-miss after that—I missed her whenever I could and she hit on any guy who’d have her.”
Taking the step that separated them she wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. “Why didn’t you leave her?”
“I tried, after I found her in bed with Brett, my old college roomie.” He turned in her arms and laid his chin on her hair. “Max came to me. He said he’d been the one who’d really paid my scholarship to medical school, and if I didn’t go back to his little girl pronto, he’d recall every cent of it. Mum and Dad would lose Eden. And with Kathy buried there—”
He didn’t have to say any more. If Tal had been the shining boy, his little sister had been the life, the heart and soul of the O’Rierdan family. Her diagnosis with leukemia had torn them to shreds…and had been the catalyst for Tal’s decision to become a doctor—to fix the unfixable, to heal those in desperate need. All the chemo had done was make Kathy even frailer. She’d lost weight, and the energy to play, but her sunny nature remained right up to the end. Aunt Sheila and Uncle Dal doted on Kathy. Her grave was almost a shrine to them—and to Tal.
And for all these years, she’d blamed him for getting Ginny pregnant! “How did you finally leave her?”
He chuckled. “I joined the Navy, and volunteered for any posting out of state. Even Max couldn’t argue with the Australian Defence Force—and I’d paid off Eden’s debt by then. He couldn’t make me come back…and within two months Ginny shacked up with some guy and sent me divorce papers. Max didn’t care by then, since she was pregnant, and the guy was willing to take Max’s name for his son. After two years in the Navy with not much to do, and fully trained, I joined the Nighthawks.”
Suddenly, Mary-Anne wanted to throw up. What a fool! She’d spent a decade believing he’d betrayed her—but she’d tried and condemned him on hearsay and humiliation. She’d run off without giving her best friend a single chance to defend himself.
“Oh, Tal,” she choked, and held him tight. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he murmured into her hair.
She shook her head against his chest. “I just ran away. I didn’t ask what happened, I just took Ginny’s word for it.”
“So did I. If I didn’t doubt her story, why should you?”
“I let you down, Tal,” she cried, hating herself. “I should have been there for you…should have stayed friends—”
“But that was the point of it—to get you out of my life.”
Arrested, she lifted her head. He nodded. “She saw us together. She knew. So she set out to make you want to run away from Cowinda and not come back, or ever want to see me again.”
A lump the size of the boulder behind them on the cliff edge filled her throat. Her voice came out scraped as raw as her emotions felt right now. “She said the thought of making love to me made you sick. And I believed her. I listened when she described what you were like in bed. And I did just what she wanted—I ran away. I am so sorry…so many years, wasted…”
“You believed that?” He held her against his thumping heart. “I called you every day from college, took you out when I could. We were together all the time when I was home. I even mucked out your animal hospital and painted the thing to make you happy.”
“We were best friends.” Lost in sadness, she sighed. “What Ginny said—the way she put it to me—made sense. You didn’t want to lose your best friend, but you knew I was head over heels in love with you. Well, everyone knew that,” she added wryly. “So you kissed me, did things to make me happy, then went to Ginny and did what you couldn’t make yourself do with me.”
The harsh condemnation that ripped from his throat was guttural, foul and completely deserved. “She knew where to hit. I could kill her for that. All those years, fighting to keep my hands off you—”
“And I never noticed. So blind!” With a gentle sigh, she laid her head on his shoulder. “But, Tal, you really need to work on your communication skills.”
He chuckled, his fingers brushing her neck in a gentle tickle. “I only hung out with you, kid. I only took you home to Mum and Dad. I only called you from college. I only kissed you.”
“I didn’t know,” she muttered, her throat scratchy.
“I don’t get it,” he said quietly. “I thought I’d shown you.”
She couldn’t speak for the shame washing through her. Tal was right. She’d known him like her own heart and soul back then, yet when Ginny told her that Tal had been her lover for months, and she was pregnant, she’d believed every word. “Tal—”
“Knock, knock.” With a rueful look on his cheerful, handsome face, Braveheart stepped closer to them. “Sorry to interrupt your deep and meaningful moment here, guys, but the boss says the yachts are available now. He’s getting itchy to get going so the mission can swing into gear.”
Embarrassed, she jumped out of Tal’s arms. “Oh. Sorry. We lost track of time.”
Braveheart grinned. “Understandable. Ghost may not believe it, but we can have lives outside of work.”
“Yeah,” Tal said, his voice mock sour. “We’re trying to.” He captured her hand in his, leading her away from her “bodyguards” again. “Let’s go pack our things.”
One peek at him confirmed it. He was thinking about it, too. Touching each other, exploring each other with soft, erotic kisses…slowly stripping off, falling onto that big, beautiful bed and coming together as one to find blinding release…
Can I handle a week’s affair and walk away? He obviously has no problems with it.
As they came near to the hotel, she drew a deep breath for courage. “Tal, I—”
A car careered off the road and onto the path, coming right toward them.
With a quick, hard shove, Tal sent her sprawling. She stumbled off the sidewalk, ripping her jeans, skinning knees and palms as she fell. His body cannoned into her legs, knocking her farther out of the car’s path. She landed facedown, half on the cement, half on a grassy verge, trying to remember how to breathe.
“Get up!” He lurched to his feet, dragging her with him, pushing her behind so the car would hit him first.
She rolled around and up, pulling the gun she carried at all times on a mission from her jeans pocket. Tal faced the car as it came toward him. He covered her, his own gun between his hands, refusing to shoot until the last possible second in case this was an unbelievable accident.
But the car kept coming. She locked her gun—
Two shots rang in the quiet of the empty street; a violent hiss following one bullet as it shattered the windscreen. The other bullet lodged in the engine. The car, shrieking a tinny protest, skidded off the sidewalk and out of sight down the road.
Tal dragged her into his arms and the smoke from his gun curled around them like an aura of acrid protection. “Thank God. He could have killed you, Mary-Anne.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist, feeling the same. If she lost Tal—but, thanks to his quick thinking and action, she wasn’t dead and neither was he. Thank God, oh, thank God…
“Are you all right, Miss West, Dr. O’Rierdan?” a growling voice yelled. Braveheart’s bearlike form bolted toward them, his bronzed skin, bright blue eyes and twitching dimples showed up to advantage even now, ev
en in stress.
“We’re fine, John,” she replied, using his Nighthawk cover name as she rubbed at the scrapes on her hands. “Thank you.”
He came right up to them. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t quicker,” he said quietly—unlike his usual teasing self. “I can’t believe that anyone would try this stunt on the main road.”
“It’s all right. We’re fine.” She kept the sigh of relief in as Nick, panting, motioned with a hand and three “onlookers”—operatives she hadn’t worked with—hopped into a car and chased the would-be assassin. The protective ring was around her, as always. She looked up at Tal. “Are you all right, darling?”
Tal stiffened with the endearment, used for the small pack of people gathering as onlookers. Even his attempt at relaxing his body was stiff and forced as he put the still-smoking gun in his jacket pocket. “A sore knee, that’s all.”
“You should have left it to us to stop the car, sir,” Braveheart said respectfully for the sake of the onlookers.
Tal threw Braveheart a quick, sour glance, which could be the look of any new husband who resented the intrusion into his honeymoon—but Mary-Anne knew it wasn’t. “Yeah, sure. Come on, honey, let’s go inside and count the damage. Alone,” he added, giving her one of his old “signal” looks. He needed to say something and she was half afraid to find out what it was.
He limped toward the hotel, the depth of the limp indicating that his shoe insert had burst in the fall. He had to get inside fast, or blow their cover.
With a swift glance around and a click of his fingers, Nick sent four Nighthawks right behind him, covering his back.
A series of flashes followed him inside the hotel.
She sighed, held up her sore palms to indicate the attack—and after two minutes of photos and questions, she pleaded the excuse of needing to tend to her injuries and followed Tal inside, surrounded by the remaining four of her bodyguards. “We should call the police, or it’ll look suspicious,” she whispered to Nick. “Who do you think that was?”
“Not Falcone,” he murmured. “He doesn’t want you to die. Why would he risk your life to take out Irish? It was probably a Burstall trick, designed to see how you two would react.”
“And?” she asked quietly.
“If they didn’t suspect before, they definitely will now,” he said dryly. “You both reacted as operatives. Your training came to the fore without hesitation.”
She sighed. “Can I scotch it? What if we put out a story that makes it reasonable, like we’d gotten professional training because somebody had threatened our lives?”
“I’ll message that to Virginia. Sounds good to me. It won’t fool Burstall, but Falcone will want to believe the best with you.”
“The rest of the pack will arrive anytime now, after that interview,” she murmured. “The story, and photos of the attack, will go around the world. We should be prepared.”
“Some Fleet Street boys flew in this morning. Expect some fun,” Nick muttered. “Start playing the game. This will be the most dangerous one we’ll face. It’s going to be very public from now on. We should get it done, fast.”
She nodded. “Turn off the cameras and sound surveillance, Nick. Just switch on the infrareds on points of entry. I need to talk to Tal about what’s going on here and what we’ll need to do to keep things looking right.”
“Again?” he asked sourly. “Seems to me you two talk too much. Maybe it’d be better if you both accept you have a history and get over it.”
“We only met again a week ago and most of that time has been working. We’ve been complete professionals all the way.” Her slanted glance held all the hot anger she felt for the boss she’d never let down, not once in three years, even if it affected her career and left her with no private life. “You ordered us on this, knowing we have a history and baggage to work through. We have lives and needs apart from your mission. Live with it, or get over it. Take your pick.”
Nick’s eyes flared with brief surprise. Then, with obvious reluctance, he nodded. “How long do you need?”
She didn’t thank him. Braveheart was right, Nick needed to know that his operatives had lives outside the job. “Ten minutes should be enough.” She slipped into the elevator, fending off anxious questions by members of staff with a smile. Once on her floor, she ran into the honeymoon suite to find Tal.
Chapter 12
An arrangement of blood roses covered the coffee table. Tal sat sprawled in an armchair, his face dark, lost in the shadows inside his soul. “Looks like an admirer found you already.”
Why did the mission have to rev up right now? She glanced at the roses and shrugged. “Thank you for what you did just then.” She spoke softly, testing the waters. “You saved my life.”
He shrugged. “So I didn’t feel like becoming a widower two days into the marriage.”
“You’re so romantic,” she teased, knowing Tal wouldn’t talk about it; he hated attention and kudos of any sort—and he hated the reminder that for a whole of ten seconds he’d had a strong emotional reaction to the threat of losing her.
Just get on with it. “Nick’s turned off all the surveillance except the infrareds for ten minutes. We need to talk.”
He lost his smile, his eyes darkened. “What’s there to say?” His voice was flat, like the expression on his face. “We’re worlds apart. I can’t live your life, and there’s no way you could live mine. So why don’t we just focus on the mission?”
A hot shiver of pain sliced through her. “All right,” she said very quietly. She moved into the bedroom, her head clogged as if with soaked-wet cotton wool, heavy and clouded. She’d barely slept last night—or any of the nights since Nick had told her she’d be on this mission with Tal.
Making love with him had been the fulfillment of a dream, but it resolved nothing. They wanted each other like hell, but their love was too many years ago and too far away. As he’d said, their lives were too different now. How she yearned to turn back time to ten years before and have her choices over again…
But she couldn’t. All she could do was what he’d said: take this week together and pray she could store up enough memories to last the rest of her life—because forgetting Tal was never going to be an option.
Tal’s voice came to her from the bedroom door. “We might have a problem here.”
She spun around, wearing only a bra and panties. He stood in the doorway, stripped to the waist, exposing the golden-brown skin of his chest. He was holding out a note to her. “This fell out when I was throwing out the flowers. Somebody’s threatening my life if I don’t leave you now. Probably just an obsessed fan, but we need to take it into account—”
Then his gaze locked on her half-dressed body.
Oh, help—she was gone. Tall and golden-fair with deep, dark eyes blazing with need, lithe and brown and muscular, but it wasn’t the sight of him alone that started the pounding tom-toms in her treacherous body. He was Tal, and she couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t remember the reasons why this was a bad idea, or why he’d wanted or needed to back away last night, or even five minutes ago. Still and always, Tal unlocked her volcanic sexuality without a word—and, oh, he made her forget all that hurt so much to remember. One look at him, and she was hot and wet and needing, craving his touch—
“I can’t play games anymore.” His voice was hot and as rough as the land they loved, harsh and gravel-edged with sex. “I’m already hard and I’m too tired to dance around the fact and pretend I’m not. So if you think it’s a bad idea to do this again—if you don’t want this, you’d better stop looking at me like that. You got three seconds.”
With a tiny sound she barely recognized coming from her own throat, she took three steps, in time to the unheard count, and filled her fingers and palms with the rock-hard, sweaty skin of his chest and shoulders.
The note fell to the floor unheeded as Tal picked her up and tossed her onto the bed.
She unhooked her bra and threw it to the ground.
Wanting, needing, so badly to celebrate being alive after what happened outside. “Come here. I can’t wait…”
He shucked his track pants and briefs and fell beside her on the bed, his eyes smoldering. “You drive me crazy, woman.”
Beyond words, she kissed him hard and fast, caressing his body with jolting movements. He rolled her on top of him, taking her breast in his mouth, suckling so deep it sent fiery shots of pleasure through her. “Now, Tal! I need you…”
Something crossed his face. “Um, Mary-Anne?”
Dazed, she stared down at him. “Huh…? What?”
“Sorry, honey.” With a wry grin he helped her to her feet, and handed her the fallen bra. “The official peep show will be reinstated in—” he checked his watch “—three minutes and twelve seconds.” He slanted a half smile at her, hot with promise. “We still have those two days in the yacht.”
The yank of pain in her heart made it hard to breathe—and whether it was the physical pain of not making love now, or the anguish of knowing how soon they’d be over, she wasn’t sure. She might not know exactly what she wanted, but losing him this time would make last time look like a picnic, a kids’ tiff at a party. Now that she knew how it felt to make love with him…
Once she had her bra on again, she gathered her courage to speak—but the door to the suite burst open and a short, dark-haired man staggered in. “I’ve been shot,” he said hoarsely in a harsh German accent.
In seconds she had her T-shirt and sweats on and bolted to the man. “Stomach wound, Tal!” she cried, seeing the blood all over the center of his shirt.
Tal swore beneath his breath. This was complete crap. How the hell did he pass through the infrareds—unless Anson let him through? It felt scripted, and whether he was a spy or a journo, they had to allow the play to run its course.
He dragged on his track pants and crossed the room to the man, carrying the black bag he still took everywhere with him. After a ten-second examination he knew by the smell, or lack of it, that this guy’s only problem was a moral one. “Call the hospital. I won’t be able to hold this for long if it’s hit the celiac artery. Go, honey!”
Can You Forget? Page 14