Fuel for Fire

by Julie Ann Walker

  “I just think if he really cared about you the way you care about him, he’d understand why you did what you did and he’d be here by your side right now.”

  “Mom, I don’t blame Dagan for not being able to get past this. You shouldn’t blame him either. He’s a really good man who values—”

  She was interrupted by a familiar sound. It was a rumble like thunder, only constant and growing louder. She had worked with the Black Knights long enough to recognize the grumble of a good set of pipes. Turning toward the front of the property, she watched a sleek Harley chopper pull into the driveway.

  The bike was named Redemption, a moniker that spoke to so much in Dagan’s life. It was all silver and chrome, with an intricate dual exhaust system, a short stretch, and enough bling to blind the eye when it caught the sunlight dappling through the canopy of trees that bracketed the drive. But as beautiful as the motorcycle was, it didn’t hold a candle to the man who rode it.

  Chelsea’s heart leapt in her chest. Her knees wobbled as she pushed to a stand and walked to the porch’s top step to get a better look at Dagan as he motored toward the house, finally stopping the bike and cutting the engine.

  She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but in the five days since she’d last seen him, he’d grown more handsome. He wore faded and ripped jeans, a thick biker jacket, and steel-toed boots that looked impossibly heavy. After he toed out the kickstand and swung off Redemption, he turned to face them, taking off his helmet. The speckled sunlight shone in his dark, unruly hair and glinted in the sleek pelt of his beard. But his gray eyes, so stormy, so filled with hidden depths, were what held Chelsea’s gaze.

  Her body had gone numb the moment she saw him coming up the drive, so she barely felt her mother come up beside her and gently take her hand. She had no trouble hearing, however, when her mother gulped and murmured, “Oh my.”

  Chelsea smiled and shook her head. “You said it, Momma.”

  Chapter 52

  Beaufort, South Carolina, was quintessential small-town America. When Dagan rode through it, his first thought was Cue ol’ Johnny Mellencamp. However, the drive out to Chelsea’s childhood home reminded him less of modern Americana and more of a throwback to a bygone era.

  Large trees spread their branches over country roads. Big, gracious houses sat back from the lanes, their expansive lawns immaculately manicured, their white-columned facades congenial and imposing at the same time. It was beautiful country. And the moment he turned up the drive to Chelsea’s mother’s place, he began to understand…everything.

  Unlike its neighbors, the Duvall house wasn’t grand. It wasn’t boastful. Quite the contrary, it was a small two-story cottage painted a cheery buttercup yellow. A wraparound porch sported various pieces of furniture arranged more for comfort than for style. The flowerpots lining the steps leading to the porch were mismatched, no doubt garage-sale finds that had been collected over the years. But what the place lacked in majesty, it made up in charm. It was a house that had been lovingly built and lovingly tended. It was a…home.

  On the top step of that home stood the woman who had worked so hard to save it. One look at her, and Dagan’s stomach filled with butterflies. She was so damn beautiful. So damn—

  “Well, don’t just stand there staring like a slack-jawed dummy,” the woman beside Chelsea declared, her hands going to her hips in a familiar Wonder Woman gesture that made the corner of Dagan’s mouth twitch. “Come on up here and introduce yourself.”

  “Momma…” Chelsea scolded. But Dagan was quick to acquiesce. Grace Duvall didn’t strike him as the kind of woman to be crossed.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He quickly climbed the steps. Once he reached the top, he extended his hand. “Mrs. Duvall, I’m Dagan Zoelner. I promised you I would come meet you. And I’m a man who keeps his word.”

  Grace tilted her head, regarding him intently. She was a beautiful woman. The lavender dress she wore paid homage to her dusky skin. Her cheekbones were high. Her brown eyes were large and almond-shaped. And her handshake was firm. Maybe a touch too firm?

  “Are you, now?” She pursed her lips. “Well, that’s good to know.”

  “Momma,” Chelsea chastened again.

  Grace dropped his hand, squared her shoulders, and took a deep breath. Her tone was a little less sharp when she said, “Well, I thank you for bringin’ my Chelsea Lynn back in one piece.”

  “My pleasure.” He nodded. And my pain, he thought. Because that crazy twenty-four hours in England had brought him a heaping helping of both.

  Glancing at Chelsea, he noted the heightened color on her cheeks and the trepidation in her eyes. The way she looked at him, like he was seconds away from biting her head off, made his stomach ache. Maybe Becky had been right not to want to give him Chelsea’s location. Maybe he did look like the Big Bad Wolf waiting to swallow Little Red Riding Hood whole.

  He worked to soften his expression when he said, “Chelsea, you look like you’re recovering from all the excitement of this week.”

  Okay, and seriously? After all they had been through together, after all they had done to each other, after he’d ridden Redemption like a bat out of hell all this way, that was the best line he could come up with?

  “I am.” She nodded. “I hope you are too, Z.”

  If her husky sex-operator’s voice was like velvet to his ears, then the hated nickname was like an ice pick. For a couple of seconds, they simply stared at each other until the silence between them was broken by a man in blue coveralls who came around the corner of the house asking, “Do you have a preference which end of the side porch you want the swivel camera mounted on?”

  When Coveralls saw Dagan, he skidded to a stop. “Oh, hello.” He doffed a dirty baseball cap sporting the logo for the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. “Sorry to interrupt, missus. Didn’t know you had company.”

  “That’s fine, Charlie,” Grace said. Her brow puckered. “It was Charlie, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, missus.”

  “Good. I’m usually terrible with names, but yours rang a bell because my daddy’s great-uncle was a Charlie.”

  “It’s as good a name as any, I reckon,” Charlie said.

  “Sure enough,” Grace agreed.

  Dagan couldn’t hide his smile. Good ol’ Southern charm on full display and dripping with banality.

  “I’ll come ’round and take a look here in a bit,” Grace said. Charlie nodded, and after he disappeared back around the corner, Grace turned to pin Dagan with a keen-eyed stare. “Now, usually I’d cotton to the social niceties and make small talk with you before gettin’ down to the nitty-gritty. But as you can see, I got a lot on my hands at the moment. So I reckon I’ll just get to it.”

  “Momma—” Chelsea tried to cut in.

  “No.” Dagan stopped her. “That’s okay.” He nodded at Grace. “Go on and say whatever it is you have to say.”

  “Good.” Grace dipped her chin. “I like a man who isn’t afraid to let a woman speak her mind. So here it is. My Chelsea is a good woman. Not perfect, maybe. But none of us are. And you could do a lot worse than her, but I’m thinkin’ you couldn’t do much better.”

  Chelsea groaned. “Momma, please.”

  “No.” Grace raised her hand. “No need to call me off. I’ve said my piece, and now I’ll leave you two to talk.”

  With that, Grace turned and vanished around the corner of the porch. Dagan watched her go and considered the fact that she’d passed on more than her flashing smile and rhythmic, hip-swinging walk to her daughter. She’d passed on her smart, no-nonsense mouth too.

  “Sorry about that.” Chelsea shook her head. “Her rose-colored glasses are deeply tinted when it comes to me.”

  “As every mother’s should be,” Dagan said. It hurt to look at Chelsea. Looking at her made him want her. And wanting her made his love for her rise up so fast and so hard, it nearly c
hoked him. Fearing that what he was feeling was written all over his face, he latched on to the first subject he could think of. “So what are you having done to the house?”

  “Getting a security system installed.”

  Fear trickled down his spine. “What? Why? Has something happened? Have you heard something that leads you to believe you could still be a target?” He suddenly wanted to march around the corner and check Coverall Charlie’s work. He’d seen and overcome many a security system in his day. He could give Charlie some pointers to—

  “No.” Chelsea shook her head. “Nothing. This is something I should have done a long time ago.” He was surprised by the level of relief that rolled through him. “Z,” she said, “why are you—”

  “Will you please go back to calling me Dagan?” he interrupted.

  “Oh-kay…” She licked her lips, and his eyes pinged down to catch the movement. A longing unlike anything he had ever known gripped him. Chelsea had a mouth that was something out of a wet dream. And now that he knew what she could do with it…

  For the love of all that’s holy!

  “Why are you—” She tried again, but a drill whirred to life, which set off the dog next door. The big, rangy mutt ran to the row of bushes separating the two properties and started barking its head off. Which had Grace running out to shoo it away, yelling, “Git! Go on! Stop your fool barkin’, you mangy mongrel!”

  Once again, Dagan felt the corner of his mouth twitch.

  “Let’s walk down to the dock!” Chelsea yelled over the racket. “It’ll be quieter down there!”

  She lifted a hand as if to place it on his arm, and his breath hitched. If she touched him, he… Well, he didn’t know what would happen. All he knew was that he had missed her touch like he would miss his own beating heart. But then she stopped, swallowed, and dropped her hand to her side.

  Disappointment hit him over the head at the same time she waved him down the steps. She guided him around the side of the house where a little walkway had been created out of large, flat pieces of sandstone.

  Once they reached the back of the property, he saw with his own eyes what before he had only seen on a map. Chelsea’s childhood home backed up to a body of water called Chowan Creek. But more than that, it had an expansive view of Port Royal Sound.

  To say the place was beautiful would be a disservice. The only word Dagan could come up with that came close to describing the view was stunning.

  The wind smelled of wet earth and slowly moving water. The afternoon sky was a deep robin’s-egg blue. And the sight of Chelsea, walking ahead of him in a soft purple sweater and painted-on jeans, was the only thing in the world he could think of that could compete with the sheer, natural splendor surrounding him.

  The boards of the dock were weathered but whole, and the whir of the drill was soon eclipsed by the sound of water lapping around the base of the pilings and the tweedle-do-tweedle-do-tweet of a wren in a nearby tree.

  They took a seat on the built-in bench at the end of the dock. For a while, they said nothing, simply watched the sunlight dapple the water and the wind push at the creek. The space between them seemed filled with possibility. And, finally, he turned to ask the question that had plagued him since his call with Director Russell. But to his surprise, what came out of his mouth was something else entirely.

  Chapter 53

  “How’s your arm?”

  Chelsea released a pent-up breath. Whatever she had been expecting Dagan to say, that wasn’t it. The odd look on his face told her he was as surprised as she was by the question.

  She lifted her arm and gave it a wiggle. “Almost as good as new.”

  “Good.” He nodded without looking at her. Instead, he kept his focus on the undulating, sun-dappled surface of the creek and the crane fishing in the reeds along the far bank. “And all the press? Losing your anonymity? How are you dealing with that?”

  She studied his profile, his straight nose, his high cheekbones, and his ridiculously thick eyelashes. Why had she never noticed before how long and sooty they were? Oh, right. Because usually when she looked into his eyes, she was too mesmerized by the swirl of his stormy irises to pay attention to anything else.

  “I mean, it’s not ideal, right?” she told him. “But it is what it is. Qué será, será. The fact that Morrison’s depravities have been brought to light and the fact that BKI is a step closer to nailing Spider makes it worth it.”

  He nodded again. “And your mother? How is she handling all this?”

  “Like she handles pretty much everything. With grace and aplomb and a few homespun anecdotes.”

  He laughed. The rumbling sound was as clear as moonshine and packed a wallop to match. Her heart, already thudding wildly in her chest, beat faster. “And how long are you planning to stay with—”

  “Dagan, please stop.” The shock of his arrival had worn off, and now the ache of his radio silence over the last five days was back in full force. Every day, every hour, every minute she had waited to hear from him. There had even been times when she had wondered if any of it had been real, or if she’d simply imagined the desperate way he had made love to her, the certainty in his eyes when he told that she held the key to his heart. Then she would look at her naked body in the mirror, and the proof of the former at least was there for her to see.

  The love bite he had left on her inner thigh had faded from deep purple to soft pink. She was dreading the day it disappeared completely. Then the only evidence she would have of what they had shared would be the Dagan-shaped hole in her heart.

  “I know you didn’t come all this way to blow smoke up my ass,” she continued. “So why don’t you say whatever it is you need to say, or ask me whatever it is you need to ask me. Because right now the suspense”—and the uncertainty—“is killing me.”

  A crooked smile tilted his mouth. He tried to hide it by running a hand over the Beard. “Patience has never been one of your virtues, has it?”

  “That, and I have a serious aversion to small talk and bullshit.”

  “Seems to run in your family.” That crooked smile lingered for a second longer, then faded. “You told Director Russell what happened.”

  She swallowed. “Better late than never.”

  “And you told him that he should give me my old job back. And that if I couldn’t work with you, given our history, then you would quit. You told him that I was far more valuable to the Company than you are.”

  “All true.”

  He searched her eyes. “Why, Chels? Why would you do that?”

  She was tempted to drop his gaze and look out over the water. He’d always been able to see too much. But she owed him honesty. Not just the honesty of her words but the honesty of her eyes. So she held his penetrating stare without wavering. “Because I know you’ve been worried about your future, about what you’ll do after Spider is apprehended and BKI shuts its doors. I put myself and the responsibility I feel for my mother ahead of you once. I refuse to do that again. You deserve your old job back, Dagan. You deserve…everything. Anything you want.”

  She desperately wanted him to tell her that what he wanted was her. But that’s not what he said. What he said was, “And what will you do? Go to work for the DOD? They pay worse than the CIA.”

  “So I’ll work a second job. I’m not too proud to bag groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. Besides, you’re not the only one who thinks you need a little redemption. Right about now, I could use some too.”

  “You shoulder too much of the burden for what happened back then. I should have seen the red flags Waleed waved in my direction. Seen that the Intel he gave me wasn’t actionable or important.”

  That sounded an awful lot like there was reason to…hope. Her breath stuttered in her lungs. “Waleed’s success at becoming a double agent was a failure on the parts of many people. That doesn’t change the fact that once I knew what w
as happening, I should have done something about it.”

  “You did. You told your direct superior just like you’d been trained to do.”

  “But afterward I should have done more. I should’ve gone over Edens’s head. I should have told—”

  “If you had told, your reputation and any chance of a career in the Intelligence Community would have been obliterated. Edens would have made certain of that.” Okay, and that really sounded like a reason to hope. Tears she refused to let fall backed up behind her eyes. “I understand why you did what you did back then, Chels.” Her chest was caught in a vise grip. “Hell, put in the same position with the same familial responsibilities and pressures, I would have done the same thing. But what I can’t wrap my head around, what I can’t seem to get past, is that you kept the secret even after Edens was gone. Why? Why didn’t you tell me once your job was safe? Why the hell were you so…so…”

  “Cowardly?”

  “Yes!” he thundered, pushing to a stand and glaring down at her. His chest worked like bellows. His nostrils flared. She wanted so much to reach out and grab his hand that she had to curl her fingers around the edge of the bench and hold on tight. “The Chelsea I know and love isn’t a coward. The Chelsea I know and love doesn’t back down from confrontation. The Chelsea I know—”

  “I was so ashamed,” she cut him off. Now there was nothing she could do to hold back the tears. They flowed freely down her cheeks and plopped onto her sweater. “I had kept that secret for so long, and I was… I am so racked with guilt. I’ve always respected you so much, Dagan. I’ve always loved you so much that I couldn’t bring myself to admit to something that I knew would make you look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.” A muscle twitched beneath his eye. “And I understand if you hate me for that weakness. I hate myself.”