by Cindy Gerard
“Oh. Right.” So it had meant something to her, too?
“But you’re right about the other, too. It didn’t mean anything. We… we’re both processing a lot of information right now. We’re both running on empty.”
He should have felt relieved. Instead, he felt unreasonably deflated.
“And you’re right on another count,” she said on a bracing breath. “I need sleep. I’m going to turn in.”
“Good night,” he said and waited for her to leave him so he could figure out what had just happened, and why it took everything in him to let her walk away.
When she stopped and turned back, his heart slammed into his ribs. And when she slowly walked back to him, and reached for his hand, his mouth went bone dry.
“I came out here to give you this.” She pressed a folded paper into his hand. “Call him.”
This time she left him there, closing the terrace door behind her.
For someone who prided himself on his reaction time, he stood like a freaking lump, in a lust-induced stupor, staring at the space she’d just occupied. And yeah, it was lust. No way in hell could he have feelings for that woman. Not this fast. Not… not Ramon’s widow.
He shook his head. Shook it off. And finally looked down and unfolded the paper.
It was a phone number he recognized. He’d committed it to memory long ago, but had never dialed.
“Call him.”
He stood there for a long time, staring blankly at the night.
Finally he walked over to a deck chair and sat down heavily. His heart beat like crazy. He could feel it in his throat… right there with the knot that damn near choked him.
His hand wasn’t exactly steady when he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It took a full minute to work up the nerve to dial. Took more nerve to keep from hanging up as he waited for the connection to Sydney, Australia.
Finally it started ringing.
He propped an elbow on his thigh, dropped his head into his hand, and pinched the bridge of his nose. And waited, a split second away from hanging on or hanging up.
Hanging up had about won out when he heard a pick-up on the other end of the line.
“Cooper. Leave a message.”
• • •
Jamie Cooper lay utterly still in bed, fingers clutched around his phone. The message light had been blinking when he woke up. He’d listened to it four times now. And he still felt dead inside.
Finally, he rolled to a sitting position; his feet hit the cold wood floor beside the bed and he shivered. It felt like a ghost had just drifted over his shadow.
Brown. Eight years ago, all he’d thought about was what he wanted to do to the man he had once called friend. Then he hadn’t thought of him at all—except when he thought of home and all the reasons he couldn’t go back there.
“Come back to bed, babe.”
Lonnie. He’d forgotten she was here. Why was she here? He dragged a weary hand through his hair. Oh, yeah. The party had run late, he’d drunk too much, and she’d convinced him it was a good night for a sleepover. Since it was pushing four in the morning by the time they hit the sheets, he’d been too wasted to argue. But he didn’t do sleepovers. Not with women who would read way too much into a “good night” followed directly by a “good morning.”
He squinted at the bedside clock. Two p.m. Okay. Not morning.
“Babe?” she repeated, raising up on an elbow behind him and touching a warm hand to his bare back.
“You probably need to get going,” he said, to keep from telling her to mind her own business. He was not her “babe” and this entire setup reeked of manipulation and expectation on her part. “Help yourself to a shower before you go,” he said, standing. “I’m going for a run. You want me to call you a cab before I head out?”
Yeah, it was cold but he’d been straight with her from day one. He had nothing to give a woman beyond a good time and a fast good-bye.
“No. I’m fine,” she said in a small voice and he knew he had hurt her.
He should be more sorry about that. His mother would not be proud. “Take care, then.” He pulled on a pair of running shorts and jerked a sweatshirt over his head. He grabbed a pair of socks and his running shoes before he left the room, closing the door behind him.
Then he headed out into the cold damp afternoon and ran as if he could outdistance his past.
A past that Primetime Brown had dusted off, shaken out, and aired like a bag full of dirty laundry and bad memories. Hard feelings. Big regrets.
None of which he was able to outrun in nine miles, so he pushed it to twelve. When he returned to his cottage he was soaked with sweat, breathing hard, muscles quivering. And Brown’s call was still on his mind.
“Please call,” he’d said just before ringing off and leaving two different numbers for him to call.
Fat fucking chance.
Thankfully, Lonnie was gone. All he felt was relief as he put on a pot of coffee, stripped, then hit the shower. Where he stood beneath the steaming spray and told himself to forget about the call. Forget about the lump that had lodged in his throat the moment he’d recognized Brown’s voice. Forget that they’d once been as close as brothers.
He wasn’t the one who had betrayed that bond. Brown was.
“Urgent, my ass,” he muttered under his breath.
Fuck him and his eight-years-too-late explanation and appeal for help in setting the record straight. What was the point?
There wasn’t any.
In a foul, crappy mood, he finally got dressed and poured himself some coffee. For a long time he stared broodingly out his kitchen window at the thick clouds rolling in from the west. Finally, he booted up his laptop and checked his e-mail. A note from his agent. A message from Lonnie—already? He didn’t bother to open either.
Instead, he clicked on Create Mail. Let his fingers hover over the keys for a long moment before finally typing Bobby Taggart’s address. He debated even longer over the subject line, almost hit Delete a dozen times. In the end, he finally hammered it all out—everything Brown had said, what had supposedly happened, what he was planning, the name and phone number of some Jones person if he couldn’t reach Brown—and hit Send. It wasn’t as if he and Taggart were pen pals—he had Brown to thank for that split, too. He kept track of him was all. Last he knew—over nine months ago—Bobby was back in Afghanistan. Still in the thick of it, working for a private contractor, still taking fire. Still as pissed as Jamie was that Mike Brown had sold them down the river.
Only now he claimed he hadn’t.
He should go hit the weights. He had a big shoot scheduled in two weeks at Bondi Beach. Swimwear. Hot models. Big money.
Instead, he walked back to the bedroom, opened his bureau drawer, and dug until he found it. His one-eyed jack. The card—a jack of hearts—was timeworn, yellowed, and burned around the edges. He rubbed his thumb over the faded surface, thinking of what it had once meant to him. What it still meant to him.
Several long moments later, he tucked it back in the drawer where it belonged, packed a bag, and headed for the gym.
• • •
Bobby Taggart lay on his narrow cot, trying not to think about how fucking hot he was as the Afghan sun baked down on his tent like a blowtorch.
Outside, engines gunned and revved; the scent of diesel and gunpowder drifted inside on the ever-present dust that seeped into every nook, cranny, and crevice known to man and machine.
He’d returned to base after a sixteen-hour patrol. Exhausted, bone dry, and so hot he thought his head would explode, he’d stripped down to the bare essentials—boxers, T-shirt, and his AR-15—and collapsed. He was about to let sleep take him when Arnold poked his head inside.
“There’s a computer open,” his battle buddy said, standing in the open tent flap.
That snapped his eyes open. “Appreciate it.”
“No prob.” Then Arnold was gone.
Their civilian commo setup was primitive at be
st. Five computers shared by upwards of two hundred men did not make for easy access.
He forced himself up off the cot and walked barefoot across the thirty yards of dirt to the commo tent at the center of the base. The free computer had already been taken, but since there was only one other guy ahead of him in one of the lines, he decided he’d stick it out. Such was life on this all-expenses-paid getaway to beautiful bombed-out Afghanistan.
Twenty minutes later, he sat down in front of a screen and keyed in his ID and password. It had been two weeks since he’d checked his mail, and while the sad lack of people reaching out to touch him was no surprise, the fact that there was a message from Hondo Cooper was.
The subject line read: Primetime.
Bobby’s knee-jerk reaction was rage. A thick, bone-deep rage that he’d buried deep and only let out when he was drunk or certain he was going to die.
Why the hell was Cooper e-mailing him about that bastard? Maybe Brown was dead? Cause for celebration.
Or not.
Maybe he didn’t want to know.
He almost deleted the message unread, but curiosity got the best of him.
And by the time he finished reading, he didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, get drunk, or wish to hell he’d never opened the damn e-mail.
• • •
Eva headed straight for the guest bedroom after leaving Brown on the terrace. She needed some real distance from him, real fast. Unfortunately Gabe glanced up when she walked past his office door and swiveled around in his desk chair.
“I put a T-shirt and a pair of boxers—Jenna’s go-to sleepwear—on the bed. Help yourself to anything else you need.”
“Thanks.” She hung uneasily in the doorway, not wanting to appear unappreciative but hoping he’d realize she wanted to move on. “That was very thoughtful.”
He watched her with eyes that were far too perceptive. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, but everything was not okay. She’d let Mike Brown kiss her. And she’d liked it. There were more things wrong with that picture than she could begin to sort through. She forced a smile. “I’m just tired.”
“He’s a good guy, you know.” Jones was still watching her. “A smart-ass, but a good guy.”
She didn’t have a response for that. It rattled her that he was sensitive to the fact that Brown was on her mind. Was she that transparent?
• • •
She met Gabe’s eyes, hesitated, then walked into the office. She found a piece of paper and pen, wrote down a name, and handed it to him.
“A project for your spare time.”
“Brewster?” Gabe looked from the name to her. “Something you want to share with me?”
“It’s the name of Mike’s CO in Afghanistan.” She lifted a shoulder. “Might be worth checking out.”
“Checking out for what, exactly?”
She’d been thinking about this a lot, was now willing to give Mike’s CO the benefit of the doubt. “I have a feeling he might be my Deep Throat.”
“Seriously?”
“I don’t know. Word to the wise? Don’t mention this to Mike unless you’re up for a lecture.”
After shutting herself in the guest bedroom she stripped, pulled on the borrowed sleepwear, and crawled into bed. Exhaustion hit her like an anchor. She was dead on her feet. She should probably feel guilty that Mike was left with the sofa, but she couldn’t go there. Just like she couldn’t let herself think about that kiss.
As tired as she was, though, she did think about it. Couldn’t stop thinking about it. She closed her eyes and smelled him, felt the solid heat of him, the softness of his lips, the rapid beat of his heart pounding against her breasts.
This was not good.
Restless, she rolled to her back. Hot and achy, desperate to get the taste of him out of her head, she stared into the dark, a thousand other thoughts keeping her from sleep. Thoughts that started with Ramon and ended with how good it had felt to be kissed by Mike. She’d married the last man who had stirred her that way.
It was irrational, but even the thought of getting involved with Brown seemed like a betrayal. Ramon had hated him. Based on what Ramon had told her, she’d believed that Brown was a misogynistic, arrogant prick. A user, a grandstander, a bad human being, and a worse teammate.
Because of that, she’d flown to Lima and laid her trap without any guilt. All that had changed, however, once he’d dropped the smart-ass act and she’d seen the anguish Mike lived with.
“You led those men to their deaths.” She got right in his face again. “You got those people caught in the crossfire. Because you were hotdogging. Because you were playing games with people’s lives.”
“The hell I was! The hell I did!”
That kind of passion and conviction couldn’t be faked. She’d realized right then that he was innocent. At least, intellectually, she’d realized it. Her emotions, however, were dragging their feet. She’d wanted to believe he was guilty. Because believing in Brown meant no longer believing in Ramon.
Her dead husband.
Brown was very much alive. And because of that kiss, she felt alive in a way she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Groaning, she rolled to her stomach and pulled the covers over her head. She’d become a cliché. A sex-deprived widow, looking for a little strange to get her through a rough spot.
Sad as that thought was, she almost wished she could chalk it up to that. It had been a long time since she’d been with a man, and she had a healthy libido. But she had never been ruled by her hormones. There had to be more than animal attraction for her to consider a physical relationship. There had to be respect. Affection. Trust. None of which she felt for Mike Brown.
As Gabe had glibly put it: That was her story and she was sticking to it.
What happened between them had been about fatigue. About their startling discovery that Joseph Lawson had been in Afghanistan on the night that had changed her and Brown’s lives forever. It was about what they’d both been through to get to this point. It was about raw emotions and anticipation. Her goal couldn’t change. Ramon deserved vindication and she was getting close to making it happen.
And Brown—well, he had to be as exhausted as she was. His emotions frayed beyond reweaving. Everything had changed for him tonight. His past. His future. It stood to reason he’d be responsive to and even intuitive about what she’d been feeling when she’d stepped out onto the terrace.
So that kiss, the lingering pangs of longing… it was simply about action and reaction, nothing more. This she could comprehend. It made sense.
If only it was even remotely true, because, damn it, she was thinking about him again.
Was he lying awake, too, thinking of her?
Or was he thinking about Cooper? Had he made the call?
It couldn’t have been easy for him.
The thought sobered her.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she sputtered and threw back the covers. She wasn’t going to get any sleep. Not until she knew.
On a deep sigh, she sat up, finger-combed her hair away from her face, and got out of bed. Because he probably could use someone to talk to, she told herself. He wouldn’t talk to Gabe because guys didn’t spill those kind of personal pains with each other. They trash-talked, joked, and skirted the tough issues. A slap on the back, a quick silent glance. Problem solved.
Not so much. She opened the bedroom door. She knew what it was like to be alone. To cope. To deal. To try to make sense of something that was senseless. Why she felt that it was up to her to make certain Brown was okay, she didn’t know.
Or maybe, she thought with disgust, she did.
19
Gabe’s office was dark, but there was a light on in the kitchen. She followed the smell of brewing coffee—and found Brown. Alone. Standing with his back to her at the counter, shirtless, barefoot, wearing the pants she’d bought him.
Tan chinos hung low on his hips, emphasizing taut, hard buttocks and a na
rrow waist, the whipcord leanness of his ribs. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He was all defined muscle and ropy sinew. Canned ceiling lights in front of the cabinets cast soft light and shadows on his broad shoulders, showcased a scar beneath his left shoulder blade. It was about three inches long, the skin puckered and raised.
She stared at it, wondering how he’d gotten it, suddenly knowing she’d made a major mistake. She needed to go back to the bedroom.
Then he turned around.
For a long moment neither of them said a word. The soft gurgle of the coffeepot, the ticking of the clock above the sink, and her uneven breathing were the only sounds.
She needed words to break the quiet. “Couldn’t sleep?”
He nodded. “Apparently you have the same problem.”
Oh, she had lots of problems. Most of them were wrapped up in six-plus feet of this ridiculously gorgeous, shirtless male.
She cleared her throat. “Did you call Cooper?”
Raw emotion put gravel in his voice and so much vulnerability in his eyes that it made her heart hurt. “Yeah. I called.”
She didn’t know why she was so sensitive to him, and yet she was. “Is he… is he coming?”
He leaned back against the counter, crossed his arms over his chest, and propped one bare foot on top of the other. One broad, bare shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know. Doubt it. I got his machine. Left a message.”
Her heart dropped. “I’m so sorry you didn’t make a connection.”
He compressed his lips, gave another shrug, but he wasn’t fooling her. He was hurting.
“Look, Eva. I’m a little raw around the edges. Lack of sleep. Ketamine. It’s probably not a good idea for you to be here right now.”
She agreed, this was not a good idea at all. And yet she stood there.
“Probably not,” she said finally, her gaze locked on his.
His eyes were so dark and so tortured as he watched her, trying to get a read on why she was still standing there.
God, why was she? She should definitely go.
But she didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to wrap him in her arms and hold him. To feel the press of his lips and be more to him than a warm body who understood this kind of pain.