by Paula Graves
Her smile faded. “You don’t have to make it sound like a fate worse than Tuffy’s litter box.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just—why? There had to be a dozen teenage guys beating down your door back then. Why would you want to take your sister’s boyfriend?”
She looked down at their entwined hands. “Because I saw you first.”
He waited for her to continue. She looked up at him, finally, her cheeks flushed and her eyes dark with humiliation.
“I met you first, remember? I was with my father on his first tour of the new base, and you were assigned to give him a quick tour before he met with the rest of the base command at the officer’s mess.”
“I remember.” She’d been all arms, legs and thick, dark braids. Her curves hadn’t developed at that age, and her shy smile had reminded him of his youngest sister, Shannon, who was only a year younger than Evie. “You were quiet.”
“I was smitten,” she said quietly. “I could barely breathe around you.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t. I worked hard to make sure you never did.”
“You were so young then.”
“Just three years younger than Rita.”
“But there’s a big difference between seventeen and twenty. And I was twenty-six. Some of my fellow Marines accused me of cradle robbing when I asked Rita out the first time.”
She pulled her hand away from him. “I know.”
“How long did the crush last?” It wasn’t the question he’d intended to ask, but he found himself curious to hear her
answer.
She lifted her gaze slowly to meet his. Her blue eyes smoldered, igniting a wildfire in his own veins. “I don’t think it’s ever ended.”
He pulled his chair closer, taking both of her hands in his own. “Are you sure about that?”
“You’ve kissed me twice and you have to ask?”
He smiled a little at her tone of voice. “Desire is physical. What you’re talking about is emotional.”
“For me, they go hand in hand.”
He wasn’t surprised by her words. Evie Marsh had always struck him as the kind of woman who took things like sex and love seriously. She wouldn’t be able to separate those two things as lightly as some people did.
He’d never been very good at separating sex and love either. Oh, he’d indulged his physical desires quite a few times over the years without feeling much of an emotional connection to his partner. But bad sex with someone he loved was better than the best sex he had with someone he didn’t really care about.
“It would be easier if they didn’t,” he said quietly, feeling as if he owed her the bare truth.
“Why?”
He brushed his knuckles over her cheek, feeling a surge of raw masculine pleasure as she leaned into his touch like a purring cat. “Because we could get naked and go at it right now without any fear or regret. And I’ve got to tell you, Evie Marsh, I’d really like to get you naked right now.”
Her eyes darkened. “What’s stopping you?”
He couldn’t come up with a good answer. His mind was too busy taking off her clothes and exploring every silken curve of her body. He wanted to kiss his way across her body, down the satiny curve of her thighs and along the well-toned length of her slender arms. He could almost feel her beneath him, hot and slick and welcoming, her legs wrapping around his back to pull him deeper inside her.
She put her hand in the center of his chest, flattening her palm over his heart. “I don’t need to be protected from you. I’m not seventeen anymore.”
He covered her hand with his, trapping it against his racing heart. “Feel what you do to me?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
He lowered his head, brushing his mouth against hers. Her lips parted, inviting him to deepen the kiss. Their tongues clashed, then found a seductive rhythm of give-and-take, reminding him how much he wanted—needed—to be inside her.
He told himself to go slow, to give her pleasure first before seeking his own, but Evie’s small, talented hands were driving him beyond reason, moving over his hips to tease his buttocks until he was harder than he could ever remember being.
“Evie,” he growled as she slid her hand between their bodies to cup him firmly through his jeans.
“Shh,” she breathed against the side of his neck, nipping the tendon until he bucked helplessly against her hand.
He wasn’t a teenager, damn it. He was good at seduction. He wasn’t supposed to be the one trembling and weak, but here he was, shaking like a virgin, both terrified and enthralled by her power over him.
He slid his thumb over her tight nipple, caressing through the thin layers of cotton T-shirt and silk bra. She moaned against his collarbone, and he felt his own power surge to life.
He unzipped her jeans in one movement, slipping his hand beneath the denim and silk barrier between his fingers and her soft sex. She gasped as he touched her, clutching his arms as she arched her back in response. A low, guttural profanity escaped her lips, making him laugh.
He withdrew his hand, earning another hissing curse, and grabbed the hem of her T-shirt, drawing it up over her head. She reached for the front hook of her bra but he stopped her, closing his hand over hers.
“Leave it,” he whispered, bending his head to kiss the curve of her breast just above the silk of her bra. “For now.”
She curled her fingers through his hair, drawing his mouth lower. He slid his tongue over her pebbled nipple, laved it through the silk until she was panting softly, her back arching in a half circle.
He kissed his way to the other breast, gently tugging the nipple with his teeth. Then he moved lower, over the shadowy contours of her rib cage, down the narrow furrow of muscle until his tongue ran lightly over the rim of her belly button.
She let go of his hair and clutched handfuls of the bedspread in her white-knuckled fists. Her hips writhed against him. “Jesse—please—”
The trill of a cell phone filtered through the haze after a couple of rings. His body screamed at him to ignore it, but his inner Marine ordered him to do his duty. He’d made protecting Evie Marsh his mission. He meant to see it through, at any cost.
He drew away from her, sitting up on the side of the bed.
“No!” Evie moaned. “Let it ring.”
“I can’t.” He willed his body under control and grabbed the phone from his duffel bag. “Yeah?”
It was his sister Shannon. “Lydia’s awake.”
Evie sat up beside him, gathering her T-shirt in front of her in an endearing display of belated modesty. He wanted to kiss away the frustrated furrow creasing her brow. “How is she?” he asked his sister.
“Better than we hoped. She remembers what happened.”
He looked at Evie. “Lydia remembers what happened,” he told her. Into the phone, he asked, “Did she recognize her attackers?”
“No, but she remembered they were after her jewelry.”
Her answer surprised him. “Just petty thieves, then?”
“No,” Shannon answered. “They told her they knew her husband had put the code in her locket. They demanded she give it to them.”
“Her locket?”
“She has a locket the general gave her not long before he died. She wears it all the time.”
His heart dropped. “Did they get it?”
“That’s the lucky break.” Shannon sounded pleased. “A couple of days before the home invasion, Lydia broke the clasp and took it to a jeweler to be fixed. It’s safe and sound—Gideon and I got it from the jeweler an hour ago and took it to the vault at the office for safekeeping.”
“What about the code?”
“We think it’s in a hidden compartment beneath the photo. We thought you should be here when we try to open it. How soon can you be here?”
He looked at his watch. “We can be there by midnight.”
Evie looked up at him as he hung u
p the phone, clutching her T-shirt more tightly against her chest. She looked soft and seductive without even trying, and his body tightened with hunger. “What’s going on?” she asked.
He made himself move away from her, crossing to the window table to unplug his laptop. “We think we’ve found General Ross’s part of the code.” He turned to look at her, hoping she saw the regret and lingering desire in his eyes. “We have to go home tonight.”
Chapter Fourteen
The four-hour drive to Chickasaw County turned into almost five hours, as the threatened autumn thunderstorms unleashed their fury on them all the way into Alabama. Evie had been happy to let Jesse drive in the rain, but she hadn’t reckoned on Jesse’s lingering silence. Visibility was wretched, giving him a very good reason to concentrate on the road ahead without speaking, but no radio and no conversation made for an interminable ride and gave Evie plenty of time to worry about the consequences of letting Jesse Cooper seduce her.
Was he regretting it now? She found his still, focused expression impossible to read. He gave every appearance of concentrating on nothing but the road ahead, but she knew from experience that he had one hell of a poker face. His mysterious eyes and the tempting allure of secret intentions lurking beneath his expressionless face had always been one of the most attractive things about him.
She could try to engage him, but dread kept her silent. Jesse had told her already how impossible it would be for the two of them to have any kind of romantic relationship.
You’re Rita’s sister.
The inevitable roadblock, she thought with a hint of bitterness, not at her sister or even at Jesse but at her own dogged determination to ignore all the warning signs that should have sent her running away from Jesse Cooper years ago.
Jesse was the one who finally broke the silence as they crossed the Chickasaw County line. “Home, sweet home.”
“Where do we go next?” she asked quietly.
He looked at her for the first time in hours. “Shannon said she and Gideon would meet us at Cooper Security so we could take a crack at the locket right away.”
She looked at her watch. It was nearing midnight, but she was too wound up to sleep anyway. “What about security at the office?”
She’d been working late at Cooper Security just last month when a group of SSU commandos had stormed the place, looking for both the coded journal and Annie Harlowe. Annie had escaped their captivity a few days earlier and was helping Cooper Security try to find her missing parents.
Evie, Annie and Jesse’s brother Wade had barely escaped the building through the roof exit before the gun-wielding intruders had burst onto the roof behind him. Fortunately for the three of them, Jesse had already gone for help, bringing his cousin J.D., a former Navy chopper pilot, and Cooper Security’s shiny Bell 407 helicopter to the rescue.
“I’ve called in extra security,” he told her. “I also asked Rick to ask your father to come. I’d like him to be there tonight if we find the other part of the code.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure he’ll come.”
“Maybe if he realizes we already have the other two codes, he’ll see it’s safer to share what he knows than to stay silent.”
“What if the code isn’t in the locket?”
“It’s got to be.”
“But what if it’s not?” He’d explained to her what Shannon had told him about Lydia Ross’s locket. “How did the SSU even know to look for the locket? Even Lydia Ross had no idea the code might be in the locket.”
“I don’t know,” Jesse admitted. “Maybe they’ve been doing the same thing we’ve been doing, trying to figure out who he’d have trusted with the code. I’ve always wondered why General Ross didn’t tell Gideon about the code, because he trusted him enough to share his suspicions about what happened to Ford.”
Just over two years ago, the Rosses’ son, Ford, had died in a grenade attack in Kaziristan, where he and Gideon Stone had been part of a Marine Corps unit supporting NATO peacekeepers. But this was the first Evie had heard of the general’s suspicions. “What kind of suspicions?” she asked.
“Oh, I forgot you wouldn’t know.” He shot her a look of apology. “General Ross believed the SSU, rather than al Adar rebels, launched the grenade that killed Ford.”
“My God.” She lifted her hand to her suddenly aching throat. “Why would they do that?”
“I think they already knew the generals were looking into what they were up to in Kaziristan. They’d already broken a hell of a lot of laws, international and otherwise, to put the Espera Group’s preferred leaders into power. The general thought they killed Ford as a warning to him.”
“To keep him from looking any further into their activities?”
“Exactly.”
“I wonder if they threatened Lydia’s life, too. Might explain why the general never entrusted her with the code. He’d have wanted to protect her.”
“I’m sure he kept her out of the loop precisely to protect her,” Jesse said firmly. “He loved her. He wouldn’t have wanted to put her neck on the line. Not even to stop the Espera Group conspiracy.”
They turned down the long, wooded road to the Cooper Security office complex, a sprawling four-story building nestled in the middle of dense woodlands on the edge of Maybridge, the Chickasaw County seat. Evie’s apartment was only a mile away in the small town’s center, but most of the Coopers still lived in and around Gossamer Ridge, the lakeside town where they’d grown up.
When Cooper Security came into view, the whole complex was lit up like a Christmas tree, dozens of vehicles lining the parking lot. “You’re going to have a lot of overtime to pay this month,” Evie murmured.
“Most of these folks are salaried,” he replied with a slight smile. He headed for his reserved parking spot near the side entrance. Before he’d even cut the engine, four suit-clad Cooper Security guards flanked the car, their watchful eyes scanning the parking lot and the woods beyond for trouble.
The show of force should have made Evie feel more secure, but it only served to raise her anxiety level. If Jesse had ordered this kind of security, they must be in grave danger indeed.
Jesse’s sister Shannon and Gideon Stone met them at the door. Shannon threw her arms around her brother, her brown eyes shining with relief. “Rick told us about what happened yesterday in D.C. It must have been a nightmare.”
Gideon shook Jesse’s hand. “Glad to have you back, boss.”
Shannon turned to Evie. “We thought you might want to shower and change after the long drive. We’ve put some things for the two of you in a couple of the dorm rooms. On the second floor,” she added to her brother, handing him a couple of keys. “Rooms 218 and 220. Rick’s waiting for you in 218 for a debriefing.”
“Any luck getting my father here?” Evie asked, not expecting an affirmative answer.
“Actually, he’s already here. So’s your mom. They’re with their security detail up in the conference room,” Shannon answered.
“Come on, let’s get cleaned up and changed.” Jesse guided her toward the glassed-in bridge connecting the main office building with the dormitory, a four-story block of sleeping rooms designed to offer Cooper Security personnel and their families shelter in case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. Agents also used the rooms when they were working long shifts, saving time and fuel by bunking down on the Cooper Security grounds.
Jesse unlocked the door to Evie’s assigned room and took a quick look around inside before he turned back to Evie. “I’ll be right next door.”
She almost caught his hand and asked him not to go, resisting only by clenching her fists so hard that her fingernails dented the flesh of her palms. “Don’t head back over there without me.”
His smile faded, and the look he gave her was intense and deadly serious. “I won’t.” He caught one of her hands, gently opened her clenched fist and put her room key on her palm.
Then he was gone, the door closing with a soft click behind him.<
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Evie took a quick shower and dressed in the fresh jeans and clean gray blouse Shannon had laid out for her on the dormitory bed. Leaving her thrift-store weekender bag and its stash of secondhand clothes on the bed, she ventured into the hallway to see if Jesse was done with his own cleanup.
She found him in the corridor outside her room, his head bent in quiet conversation with his brother Rick. At the sound of her door opening, he turned to look at her, his expression troubled.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her stomach knotting.
“We haven’t heard from the agents we sent to Spain to keep an eye on your sister and her new husband since yesterday morning, so we’ve sent out an alert to some of our contacts in Europe. We’re waiting for word.”
“What about Rita and Andrew?”
“We can’t confirm their whereabouts either.”
Evie covered her mouth. “Oh, God.”
“Your parents just tried calling the number she gave them when they arrived in Barcelona. It’s seven-thirty in the morning in Spain, but they’re not answering.” Jesse looked grim.
She tried to look for a more positive spin. “They’re newlyweds. Maybe they’re otherwise occupied.”
“Maybe,” Jesse agreed, his gaze smoldering as he lifted his eyes to lock with hers. An answering heat licked at her belly, notching her heart rate higher as the image of his strong, talented hands moving over her flesh drove out, momentarily, even her growing alarm about her sister’s safety.
Rick interrupted her thoughts with a much-needed reality check. “We need to get to the war room and see what we can sort out.”
He led the way, Jesse sticking close to Evie. Her skin prickled as they hurried down the long connecting corridor between the dorms and the offices. She knew the glass itself was bullet resistant, and that Jesse and his family had tightened perimeter security after the SSU invasion last month, but she couldn’t help walking more quickly than normal, feeling exposed. It was a relief to reach the safety of the other side, where interior walls provided extra protection from sniper fire.
In the conference room, several people had already gathered, including Evie’s parents. Her father spotted her first, his eyes widening with delight. He hurried over to her, wrapping her in a tight hug.