by Elle Kennedy
“When are you going to realize I’m all grown up?” This time the blossom she plucked off the bush ended up in tiny massacred pieces that she ripped apart in frustration.
“You’re always going to be Jim Morgan’s little girl, sweetheart. He looked for you for seventeen years. He wants to keep you safe. Making Noelle and you happy are the two things that motivate him.”
“I know that. And I don’t mean to be ungrateful, it’s just . . .” She trailed off.
Ash knew she would’ve liked for him to jump in and ask exactly what she wanted, but he was afraid. He, a Marine who’d stared down armed insurgents, was more afraid of hearing exactly what Cate wanted than he was of any gun-toting maniac. Because he could fight the maniac. With this girl, he had almost zero defenses.
Lord, and if she said she wanted him? That she wanted him to take his callous hands and rub them all over her slender, golden body? He’d have a damn hard time saying no.
So he bit his tongue and swallowed down any and all encouragement.
Cate’s frustration dissolved into a defeated-sounding sigh. “Thanks for the camera.”
“It’s just a point and shoot.” He tried to downplay the significance of the gift.
Truthfully, it was the most expensive thing he’d ever bought, but the money seemed incidental when she’d opened the box. Her eyes had glowed like sapphires, sending a burst of unparalleled joy to Ash’s chest.
“It’s not just a point and shoot. It has a Leica lens and those are some of the best in the business. Plus it’s small so I can take it anywhere.” She rattled off a few more reasons, similar to the ones the guy at the camera shop had given when Ash went to find Cate’s birthday present.
He was too fascinated by her mouth to pay attention to her words. Her pink lips moved, making circles and half-moons. They reminded him of cotton candy and his taste buds tingled at the idea of tasting them.
She smelled like the honeysuckle and roses that rimmed his grandmother’s porch. Back in the day, he’d listen to his grandma chatter and drink whiskey-soaked sweet tea, getting mildly drunk one sugary sip at a time. That’s what it was like with Cate. He was getting drunk on her voice, her company. While she spoke in glowing terms about lenses and apertures, he imagined that when she straddled him, she’d be soaked underneath that skirt of hers. Her arousal would drip out of her and coat her thighs. She’d be sticky and delicious, like a syrup made of the tree of life.
Maybe he’d make her stand up and he’d eat her out right there at the party. Happy fucking birthday, baby girl. How’s this for a present?
God, he wanted to dirty her up. But if he did, if he gave in to his desire, Jim would kick him out on his ass. And Ash wouldn’t blame him. Cate was one of those delicate, beautiful items that belonged on a shelf way up high so that everyone could admire it. If grubby hands like his got on her, they’d ruin her.
“I’m going to be a photographer.”
Her abrupt announcement snapped him out of his booze-drenched fantasy. “What? I thought your major was English.”
“I changed it.”
“Does Jim know?”
She snorted. “What do you think has him in such a bad mood? I told him earlier today and he nearly had a coronary.” She peeked at Ash under her long pale eyelashes. “What he doesn’t know yet is . . . I’m quitting school.”
Ash’s eyebrows shot up. “What the fuck? Why?”
“Because it’s a prison. And I already spent seventeen years in a cage, Ash. It was a beautiful cage, but it was still a prison. Jim—I mean, Dad—he’s not much better.” Her blue eyes gleamed with intensity. “I want to live. I want to go out and see the world. Experience it for myself instead of reading about it in books. You’ve all done that. You, Noelle, Dad, Abby, every one of you. You’ve been out there.” She stroked a finger along the thin white scar that Ash had received in a knife fight when he was eighteen. “You’ve lived.”
“Scars don’t say you lived. They say you were stupid and allowed the other guy to get a drop on you.” He pulled his hand away before he did something real dumb.
Over Cate’s head, he saw a pair of blue eyes watching him. Shit. Could Morgan see the ache he felt for Cate? How he wanted to devour her? Carry her inside and take her violently? Lose himself in the hot sweetness of her innocence?
“Don’t be an idiot, Cate. Get your degree and stop acting like a spoiled brat.”
Her eyes widened, but Ash wasn’t done.
“If you want to live, do it after you graduate. But don’t ever take a free education for granted.” He shuddered out a breath and got to his feet, painfully aware of Morgan’s piercing gaze on him.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“To mingle,” he said stiffly. “I suggest you do the same, sugar. And . . . yeah, we’ll just pretend we never had this conversation. Because you’re not dropping out of college.”
He stalked forward, and now there were two gazes boring into him. A wary Morgan in front of him, an angry Cate behind him. The former made him edgy, but the latter . . . it scared him. Cate was unpredictable when she got mad, and he’d definitely made her mad right now.
He should’ve kept his mouth shut, damn it. Instead, he’d poked a tiger.
And God help them all when that tiger decided to poke back.
Chapter 12
Present day
Ash stared at the back of Cate’s head as she flicked through photograph after photograph. Seeing her again after more than a year without contact was a punch in the gut. When he’d walked into that hospital room, he’d literally been without breath for a moment there.
“I’m not taking the blame for Jim’s injuries,” she muttered, almost to herself. “Rivera shouldn’t have even known I had his picture. I called Jim because I thought it was safe.”
Ash gripped the back of the chair so he wouldn’t make a fool of himself by reaching out and trying to comfort her. That was an easy way to get a junk punch.
“We haven’t done a lot of work for the DEA lately,” he told her. “It’s been mostly private corporations—tech firms and a couple of finance ones. DEA’s been quiet.”
“Maybe that should’ve been your first clue,” she shot back.
“Maybe. But Tripley’s been a good source for us. He seemed as surprised as anyone that Rivera was still breathing.”
“Sounds like he’s a good source for everyone,” she answered sarcastically.
She advanced to the next picture, one that looked nearly identical to the last five she’d taken. As he recalled, Cate liked taking photos in burst mode, which allowed twenty or thirty frames to be taken of one image. She’d used that technique here but nothing in the photos was jumping out at either of them.
“What do you think the plan will be?” Her tone lost some of its hostility. “How we’re going to attack Rivera, I mean.”
He wasn’t a fan of her use of we, but telling her to stay home would probably result in her sneaking off on her own, and they couldn’t have that. “The goal is to stabilize Morgan and fly back to Costa Rica. D’s going to arrange for Sofia to come and care for Jim—”
“Bullshit. Noelle just said that we’re going after the cartel. She’s not going to leave Guatana while Rivera’s still breathing. So, I’m asking you again, how do you think it’s going down?”
He shrugged. “We have to find him first,” he reminded her.
Cate angrily clicked the mouse. “Yeah, well, I’m looking. I thought you were supposed to call Luke back—you said he didn’t pick up, remember? And stop hovering like a bird. It’s irritating.”
“Right.” Ash suspected everything he did irritated her these days.
Then again, did he really expect Cate to welcome him with a smile even under the best of circumstances? After their last encounter, he should be happy that she wasn’t trying to cut his dick off. A guy didn
’t turn down a gift like the one Cate had presented and expect to be greeted with a banner and a brass band. Hell, even civility was a little too much to ask for. Intellectually, he knew he didn’t deserve anything from her, but since he hadn’t seen her in over a year, he’d take abuse over nothing.
Sighing, he moved toward the corner of the room to dial Luke Dubois, who answered on the second ring.
“Rook, what’s the sitrep?”
“I’m calling for yours. Are you en route yet?”
“Yup. Managed to get a charter to the compound and now I’m sitting on another plane with Trev and Izzy. Our ETA is two hours.”
“Try to land at a private airfield if possible. The situation at Guatana International is a clusterfuck,” Ash warned.
“Copy.” Luke paused. “How’s the boss man?”
“Still in surgery.”
“He’s been in there for a helluva long time. What’s taking so long?”
“He . . .” Ash paused when he noticed that Cate had abandoned her photos and was watching him closely.
He stared at her while he gave a brief description of Morgan’s current status. Cate’s mouth crumpled around the edges when Ash uttered the words “internal bleeding.” He lowered his voice and finished with, “Prognosis is unclear.”
“What’s that fucking mean?” Luke demanded.
Cate’s eyes were taking on a glossy sheen. “It’s bad,” Ash admitted. “Even if we didn’t need you guys to go after Rivera, it’s good you’re coming down here.”
“Damn.” Luke exhaled slowly. “All right. We’ll be there soon.”
Ash hung up and tucked his phone away, then swept his gaze over the cramped office that they’d commandeered for their war zone. They’d carted out the desk that’d been in here and replaced it with two long metal tables and half a dozen chairs. Maps had been rolled out and Kane had already been coordinating with Noelle’s tech girl, Paige, sticking red pins in the areas that housed all of Rivera’s known properties and safe houses.
Ash was doing everything to avoid Cate’s gaze, afraid of the pain and worry he’d see in it, but to his surprise, she spoke up in a steel-edged voice.
“He’s going to make it.”
“Course he is,” Ash agreed. He walked back to the table and planted a hand next to her laptop. “Morgan’s too stubborn to die.”
The D word set her off, causing her chin to drop to her chest. “Fuck,” she whispered. “Fuck, Ash! He never wanted me to do this. He wanted me home and safe and if I’d listened to him—”
“If you’d listened to him, you would have gone crazy,” he cut in. “You think Morgan would want you to beat yourself up over this?”
“If it meant I’d give up photojournalism, then yes, he would.”
“No. That’d be Noelle’s method. Jim’s more straightforward.”
She gave a soft, watery snort. “True. Noelle’s all about the head games.”
“Speaking of head games, you know she doesn’t really blame you for Morgan’s situation either, right?”
“I know. She just wanted to make sure I didn’t break down in front of you guys, so she made me angry.” Cate smiled wryly. “Don’t worry. I’ve had her number for a while.”
He curled his fingers against the metal to keep from touching her. “He’s going to be fine. You know Jim. He’s not leaving you and Noelle by yourselves. He searched for you for seventeen years. A few bullets aren’t going to keep him down.”
She didn’t move away. Her chest heaved, the side of her breast nearly brushing his arm as she exhaled heavily. “I hate that we’re even talking about this. It’s one thing to say you crave the danger, and another thing to come face-to-face with it. And it’s not my life that worries me. It’s other people around me getting hurt.” She swallowed hard. “Dying.”
Ash knew she was thinking of her journalist friend, and his heart ached for her loss. He hated the idea of Cate hurting in any way. From the moment he’d met her, he’d been overcome with a deep, relentless need to protect her.
“Riya . . .” She pressed her lips together. “Riya was a friend. She died because of me. Because of a stupid picture I took.”
Ash shook his head. “She was a seasoned journalist, Cate. She knew the risks when she decided to come to Guatana. It’s not a safe place.”
“I know. But . . . I keep running through all these what-if scenarios. What if I hadn’t taken that photo? What if I’d kept it to myself? What if I’d decided to go to Tunisia instead of here?”
“That kind of thinking is a one-way ticket to Crazytown.”
“I know.”
“How about what if Jim never found you? Wouldn’t you rather have had these four years with him than nothing at all?”
When tears leaked from the corner of her eyes, Ash couldn’t help himself. He slipped an arm around her and for one beautiful moment Cate forgot that she hated him and curled into him. Her hands clutched at his biceps and her face tucked into his neck. He could feel his collar getting wet as she cried silently in his arms.
He didn’t tell her it was going to be all right. He wasn’t that type of man. But he held her, soothed her in the only way he knew how.
“My dad died of a heart attack right after your nineteenth birthday,” Ash confessed. “He was only forty-eight. I was in the middle of an extraction in North Korea. A high-ranking business exec at some Silicon Valley tech firm wandered over the Chinese border and the North Koreans were holding him for ransom. Tech company didn’t want to pay. I didn’t hear about Dad until I got back. There were about a dozen messages on my phone.”
“I’m so sorry.” She peered up at him with sympathetic eyes, trying to pull away.
Ash’s grip only tightened, pushing her head back into the crook of his neck where it belonged. He was going to pay for all this touching, but he’d worry about it later.
“He wasn’t much of a dad. He spent most of his nights with his head in a bottle and most of his days sleeping off the booze, but I still felt guilty. Hard not to, so I get where you’re coming from. But you can’t let it control you. Can’t let it make you do foolish shit.”
He knew immediately he’d said the wrong thing, because Cate pushed away from him and glared with narrowed eyes.
“Just because I’m grieving doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” she snapped. “I’m not foolish, but I’m also not going to sit on my ass while Jim’s dying in there. I’m going to do something about it. So you can either help me or follow my trail.”
She bolted off the chair and stomped out of the room, leaving Ash to stare after her in frustration. He always seemed to say the wrong thing with this girl.
Woman, an internal voice corrected.
Yeah. She wasn’t a girl anymore, and it wasn’t because she was twenty-one now, which officially made her legal. Cate had traveled the world since she’d left school. She’d gained experience. Confidence. That sweet innocence that had drawn him to her all those years ago was slowly fading with each assignment she accepted. She was still a fighter. Still had nerves of steel and fire to spare. But she was more hardened now, her hopes and dreams and emotions less accessible to him.
And knowing that she’d lost bits and pieces of her optimism in the time they’d spent apart only chipped away a huge piece of himself.
* * *
“I’m sorry, Father.”
Mateo Rivera stared into his youngest son’s unblinking eyes. He stared and stared and stared . . . until the flicker of emotion he was waiting to see slowly crept into Benicio’s brown irises.
Guilt.
“Where were you?” Rivera finally asked.
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t sneer or spit or grab the pistol on the table and shoot every single man in the room, including his son. His wife teased him that he was scary when he yelled but downright terrifying when he remained calm. Camil
a knew him so well. So did Benicio, whose face paled as his father’s quiet question hung in the air.
“I—I was across town speaking to the distributor in El Dalsa.”
Rivera folded his hands in his lap. “Why?”
“W-why?”
“Yes, why. I could be wrong—I’m an old man, after all. My mind is starting to go—but I believe it’s not your responsibility to speak to our distributors. That task falls to your brother.” He ignored the twisting in his gut at the thought of his beloved son. “You, on the other hand, were asked to eliminate one nosy photographer, which you failed to do yesterday.”
“Adrián wanted to handle it,” Benicio mumbled, his gaze fixed firmly on his dusty boots. “You saw him last night, Father—he was so furious about the girl getting away. He ordered me to attend the meeting with Ortiz in his place so he could take care of the photographer himself.”
“Look at me,” Rivera commanded.
His son had been raised to be obedient and so his head flew up. Uneasy, shame-filled eyes locked with Rivera’s.
“You’re blaming your brother for this? You’re blaming your brother for getting shot?”
“No,” Benicio said quickly. “No, Father, I’m not. I’m just saying . . . he told me he could handle it. Like you said, it was one girl.”
“But it wasn’t one girl, was it?” He turned his attention to the lone man who’d managed to escape the scene of his son’s murder. “How many?”
Pablo Perez shifted his feet under Rivera’s unwavering scrutiny. He was one of the newer recruits to the organization. Adrián had taken Perez under his wing, insisting the young man would make a good lieutenant.
Rivera had yet to see Perez’s potential.
“At least six of them,” Perez stammered. “Four men, I think. Plus the photographer, and I think another woman.”
When Rivera remained silent, Perez hurried on. “They were military, or maybe private contractors, but military at some point. The way they moved . . . They didn’t expect the ambush but they reacted to it like soldiers would. I wasn’t there when they”—his Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped deeply”—when they killed Adrián, but—”