“I don’t hate you.”
The laugh that burst from the back of her tear-clogged throat was bitter. “Well, that’s something, I guess.”
For a long time, neither of them spoke. The only sounds were her sniffles and the soft lap-lap of the water beneath the dock. Then Dagan said, “You should have told me the minute Edens was out of the picture.”
She nodded. “I know I should have. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all that.”
He blew out a gusty breath. “I’m mad as hell at you for not trusting me enough to tell me sooner, for thinking that I wouldn’t understand the horrible position Edens put you in.”
“And you have every right to be mad as hell.”
“But you could have kept the secret forever. I would have never known. I would have gone on thinking that you…that we…”
“I couldn’t let you love me without knowing the real me. Warts and all.” She picked at the hem of her sweater. She couldn’t look at him. She knew what came next. She knew he would tell her that this was something he couldn’t get over. That she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.
“You took a big risk going to Director Russell with the truth. He could have blamed you as much as Edens for failing to take action. He could have fired you on the spot and made sure you never got another job in Intelligence.”
“It would have been worth it if it got you your job back. If it gave you the future you wanted.”
“You really do love me, don’t you?”
His image was blurred by her tears. “With all my heart. All my cowardly, weak, wide-open heart. I always have.”
He nodded. And when he didn’t say he loved her too, she thought she heard the sound of the first nail being hammered into the lid of a coffin. Inside that coffin was what remained of his feelings for her.
It hurt. It hurt so badly she almost wanted to die.
“You know,” he said after a bit, “someone wise once told me that the past is written. That what’s done is done. We can’t change it. But the future? Well, that’s unwritten. We can choose what happens.”
And he would choose to leave her. It was there in his voice. There in his eyes. It took everything she had not to dissolve into a wailing puddle at his feet and beg him to reconsider.
“Babe?” Her breath caught at the endearment. Who would have ever thought she would be the kind of woman who liked being called babe? “Come here.” He extended a hand to her.
The steadiness of his grip emphasized how badly her fingers shook. Pulling her to a stand, he gently cupped her face in his hands. As he searched her eyes, he got spooky-still. This was where he would tell her good-bye. This was where he would—
“Chelsea Lynn Duvall?”
“Yes?” she managed past the massive lump in her throat.
“I forgive you. I’m not going to let this come between us. I believe love really does conquer all.”
They were the words she had begged him to say back in Gautier’s sub. Words she had convinced herself she would never hear.
The sob that burst from her was loud enough to make the crane across the way take flight.
Dagan pulled her into his arms. He was so solid and hot and male against her. His leather jacket and his wind-kissed skin were the sweetest scents she’d ever smelled. And when she slipped her hands beneath his coat and wrapped her arms around him, the whole wonderful landscape of his back slid beneath her fingers.
“I love you,” he breathed against the crown of her head.
She choked on her own I love you and tilted her chin back to stare into his mesmerizing eyes. A deep sense of contentment, of a love strong enough to last a lifetime, wrapped around her as warmly as the big arms that held her close.
And then Dagan did one of the many, many things he did best. He got carnal with her mouth.
Oh. My!
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Kirkuk, Iraq…
“Who sent you? What do you want?”
The policeman’s accent made his words guttural and hard, but they were nothing compared to the granite fist that smashed into Christian Watson’s nose. A geyser of blood gushed over his lips and seeped into the cut on his chin that had come courtesy of the first round of questioning.
Which had been…what? Twenty minutes ago? Two hours?
Time slowed when you were getting the sodding shite beaten out of you.
“My name is Christian Watson. I am a corporal in Her Majesty’s Special Air Service.” He rattled off his serial number before clamping his jaws shut. That was all the information the Geneva Conventions required of him. He would give no more.
Another blow drove deep into his gut, precisely over the spot where the bullet had gone through. The accompanying pain was a living thing that chewed at his intestines with hungry, needlelike teeth.
Dizziness and nausea crashed over him in undulating waves. He might have retched had the chair he was tied to not toppled backward with the force of the blow. When it collided with the floor in the tiny interrogation room, the sound his skull made as it bounced off the tiles was sickening, even to his own ears.
Darkness closed in on him, a malevolent specter hovering at the edge of his vision.
For the first time since he’d opened fire at the roadblock, fear tried to take root in his heart. He could not lose consciousness. Loss of consciousness was a loss of control. Loss of control terrified him worse than any corrupt Iraqi police officer ever could.
He struggled against his restraints, trying not to gag at the iron-rich smell of his own blood. He narrowly opened his one good eye to glare up at the policeman. His assailant wore a nasty smile. The hateful expression reminded Christian of a man from long ago. A man who inflicted pain for the simple pleasure of it. A man who—
The space around Christian shimmered and changed, melting into a new, more terrifying whole. Suddenly he was six years old, inside his boyhood room. Gone were the scents of blood and sweat and dry wind heavy with dust. They were replaced by the smells coming from the hulking shadow that loomed over him: whiskey and smoke, with an underlying hint of rot.
The shadow reached for him. Massive ham-hock hands curved into brutal, inescapable claws. Christian whimpered, scooting backward. But there was no place to go. Nowhere to run.
“Mummy!” he yelled, his voice hoarse with terror. “Mummy, please!”
But she would not come. It was too late. She was too far gone. He knew she would not come.
Orange light flickered in the darkness, licking flames into the brutal eyes of the shadowy man. Now he looked like what he was. Sadistic. Cruel. Evil incarnate.
Christian braced himself for what would come next. Even so, the first sizzle of fiery pain shocked him with its intensity.
Tossing back his head, he screamed…
“Wake up, damnit! Wake up!”
He bolted upright in bed. For a couple of confusing seconds, he didn’t know where he was. When he was. There was only darkness and the lingering memory of agony. There was only… Her. Emily Scott. The woman who had crawled under his skin and made a home for herself. What was she doing here?
Tunneling up his nose was the exotic smell of her shampoo. It caused him to snap back to the here and now as if he’d been fired from a slingshot.
Buggering hell, he thought at the same time Emily said, “Holy fucking shit!”
He might have smiled—the woman had a mouth on her and it never failed to delight him—had the words she’d spoken not been thick with recently disturbed sleep and something more. Something he thought might be fear.
No doubt he’d been screaming his fool head off. Which would scare the piss out of a seasoned o
perative, much less a pretty pipsqueak of an office manager who had somehow managed to embroil herself in a mission she had no business being part of.
Buggering hell, he thought again, as remnants of the dream—correction: dreams—shuddered through him.
Months. That’s how long it had been since he’d awoken in a pool of sweat, thrashing about as he tried to escape the ghosts of his past. He had hoped that perhaps he might finally have outdistanced them. Embarrassment and shame had him running a hand over his face. The growth of his day-old whiskers rasped against the calluses on his palm.
“Hey,” she shook his shoulder as if uncertain he was truly awake. “You were having a nightmare.” Her Chi-Town accent emphasized the a in all her words, making her sound tough. Which was funny, considering she looked about as dangerous as a baby bunny.
His words were harsher than he would’ve liked when he said, “No shite, Sherlock.”
She drew back, taking the smell of her shampoo with her. His heart immediately hurled itself against his rib cage, as if it was trying to lessen the distance she’d put between them.
She huffed with exasperation, and he knew he should apologize. But the words stuck in his throat. He couldn’t stomach the thought that she’d seen him like that.
So vulnerable.
So exposed.
So…out of control.
“You know,” she said, not attempting to disguise the irritation in her voice, “a normal person would say, ‘Thank you, Emily. Thank you for waking me up before I punched a hole through the bloody wall.’”
She’d donned an English accent. It was adorable. And total rubbish. She sounded more like a New Zealander than an Englishwoman.
“You’re right,” he admitted after taking a deep breath. “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. Thank you for waking me.”
His eyes had adjusted to the darkness so he could see she was wearing a familiar frayed pullover. Her brown hair was a rumpus of flyaway waves, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup. If he weren’t mistaken, she wasn’t wearing a bra. He was fairly certain he could make out the subtle jut of her nipples through the thick fabric of her shirt.
Oh, bloody hell, he realized he was staring at her boobs.
Stop staring at her boobs.
Right-oh. Problem was, not staring was a tall order since from the top of Emily’s head to the tips of her unpainted toes, she was beautiful. Not beautiful like all those Hollywood starlets with their fake hair, medically enhanced bodies, and gallons of cosmetics, but beautiful in a timeless, effortless way.
Emily’s slim figure was subtly curved. She had a pert nose, big dark eyes, and a lush mouth. If he had to put a label on it, he’d say she possessed an ingénue-esque air. It tended to cause a male stampede anytime she walked into a room.
Unfortunately, since the day he had met her, she’d made it clear she had no interest in him in that way. Certainly she enjoyed teasing him and taunting him. On a regular basis, she took strips out of his hide with the sharpness of her tongue. But when it came to nocturnal activities? Well, it was safe to say that she was the equivalent of a human stop sign. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred quid.
Masochist that he was, that just made him fancy her more. As if to prove the point, his flag had already hoisted itself to half-staff.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. Morning’s first tender light chose that moment to filter in through the crack in the curtains. It glowed over the smooth, unblemished skin of her face, highlighted the beauty mark high on her right cheek, and showed the sympathy in her warm eyes.
“Talk about what?”
“Your nightmare.”
He snorted. “About as much as I’d fancy having my bollocks shaved with a rusty razor blade.”
For a moment she was silent. Then her lips curved up at the corners. “Whatever floats your boat, right?”
A joke. She was trying to tease the tension out of him. Which might have worked had she been anyone else. Had she not had such a hypnotic smile. He was afraid if he stared at it too long, he’d fall under its spell and be helpless to do anything but its bidding.
Glancing through the slit in the curtains, he eyed the sliver of view beyond. The rising sun cast the beach in a pearlescent glow. Golden rays turned the tops of the waves in the harbor pink and silver. It was a scene from his childhood. Back when his childhood had been…if not good, then at least bearable. Before it’d become a string of long, lonely days and terrifying nights.
“What time is it?” he asked, trying not to notice how his thigh touched her hip through the fabric of the quilt.
“Just past oh-six-hundred. You still have time to get more sleep.”
“Not possible.”
Her expression epitomized compassion. “Bad dreams do that to me too. I’ve found it helps if someone stays with me. You know, to sort of guard against the nightmare’s return. Do you want me to stay with you?” Her head tilted innocently.
Good God, was she serious? He wanted her to stay with him more than anything. But he couldn’t have her in his room, in his bed, without touching her. And since in the world of unwritten rules, not touching a woman unless she invited him to was underlined, bold, and in all caps, she needed to leave.
“No. I’m fine. But thank you. Thank you for coming to check on me. To wake me.” He risked looking into her eyes and immediately knew it for the mistake it was. He was used to seeing a mischievous glint in her warm brown irises, used to seeing derision or irritation or, hell, occasionally even grudging respect. But what he was not used to seeing was tenderness.
Not that Emily was unkind. Quite the contrary; beneath her tough outer shell she had an incredibly soft underbelly. Problem was, she rarely showed him her softer side, choosing instead to give him all the sharp edges she had honed while growing up in Chi-Town’s blue-collar Bridgeport neighborhood.
She placed a hand on his thigh and it immediately brought him out in a sweat. “If you’re sure you don’t—”
“I’m sure.” He was quick to cut her off.
“You’re good at playing the tough guy, aren’t you?”
He quirked a brow, made sure his expression was all arrogance. “I don’t have to play at it, darling.”
Tossing her head back, she laughed. The sight of her exposed throat combined with the low, husky roll of her amusement had his flag hoisting itself to full-staff. Bloody stupid appendage!
Emily lowered her chin to regard him, that hypnotic smile still on her lips. “Let no one ever accuse you of a lack of confidence, Christian.”
He considered pretending he hadn’t heard her, so she’d say his name again. The way she pronounced it always hit him like a shot of aged whiskey—warm, potent, and intoxicating. But instead he went with, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not. I like a confident man.”
“Careful.” He lifted a brow. “That sounded suspiciously like you just admitted to liking me.”
She shrugged. It was a delicate, unconsciously graceful gesture. “Well, I don’t dislike you.”
Warmth unfurled in his belly. To distract her from the heightened color in his cheeks and the predatory gleam that had no doubt entered his eyes, he donned an expression of annoyance. “Damned with faint praise.”
“Oh, it’s praise you want? Well, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong woman. I’m bad at compliments.”
“That’s the understatement of the century.” Although, truth be told, he’d heard her compliment their coworkers on many occasions. She was just beastly bad at flinging admiration his way.
Which was probably why his jaw slung open when she took a deep breath and blurted, “You have really pretty eyes.”
Scriiiiiitch. That sound was a needle scratching across his mental record player. Did Emily Scott just say he had pretty eyes? Backup. Reset. Not just pretty eyes
but really pretty eyes?
How odd she should think so. He’d always thought his eyes a bit…spooky. They were a strange color, somewhere between green and gold. Too light when paired with his tan skin and dark hair. Hadn’t he been told as much? Hadn’t his spooky eyes caused—
He crushed the memory and glanced around the room as if furtively searching for something. “Hang on a minute,” he said.
A frown tugged at her pretty mouth. “What is it? What are you looking for?”
“The white bunny. I seem to have fallen down the rabbit hole.”
She swatted his arm, not attempting to be gentle. “See? And that’s why I don’t compliment you. You don’t know how to take it.”
“I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. Let’s try this again, shall we? You think I have really pretty eyes?” He fluttered his eyelashes for effect.
She groaned and pushed up from the bed. He felt the loss of her weight, the loss of her hip against his thigh, the loss of her exotic-smelling shampoo, in a place he dare not name. “And besides,” she added, “your ego is big enough without me giving it the occasional stroke.”
His breath caught on the last word. It seemed to hang in the air, pounding like a heartbeat.
If she noticed his sudden tension, she gave no indication as she sauntered toward the door. Turning at the threshold, she said, “Since you’re not going to get any more sleep, how about you cook breakfast for the ravenous hoard, huh? I could use another hour of shut-eye.”
She stretched her arms over her head and let out a mighty yawn. Her older-than-the-hills pullover inched away from the waistband of her pajama bottoms. A flash of pale, silky skin turned his mouth into a desert.
“Speaking of the ravenous hoard,” he said, or rather rasped, “are they still asleep? Did I wake them?”
She glanced down the hall, her dark hair falling over her shoulder in a silky curtain he longed to touch. “The lights are off in their rooms. I think I was the only one who heard. You know, since we share a wall.”
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