by Tara Janzen
So what did that leave her to think about?
Her fiancé.
Which made her wince.
Actually, “almost fiancé” was a more honest way to put it, she decided. Maybe even ex-fiancé—she didn’t know what label to put on Rocky anymore, not since the word “friend” had no longer been enough for him, which was one reason she’d come to Panama City.
The other reason was Paris, and what going there meant—but that was too hard to think about when she was lying next to Kid.
So sure. She could think about Rocky Solano. That ought to be enough to clear her head. Yeah, that should cut through the thick sexual haze she’d fallen into the instant she’d seen Peter “Kid Chaos” Chronopolous.
Stifling a groan, she rolled onto her side—and immediately changed her mind. She wasn’t going to think about Rocky, dear sweet Rocky, no way in hell, not when Kid was stretched out naked next to her, looking like a god—and that led straight back to the insanity plea, because she hadn’t just made love to him once. Oh, no, after the garden incident, they’d headed for the bedroom and started all over again—hot, sweet, and slow, until she’d nearly lost her mind.
She was crazy, which wasn’t exactly the news flash of the century.
“Damn,” she swore again. Wildly abandoned sex hadn’t been part of her plan. So what was she doing in bed with Kid Chaos?
Exactly what she wanted, she admitted, and that was the truth, and when he woke up, she’d probably do it again, her plans be damned. She wasn’t to be trusted, not around him—and that was a helluva cold, hard fact to be faced with in the middle of the night.
“Nikki?” he murmured, his voice sleepy, not quite awake. He reached for her hand and brought it to his chest, their fingers entwined. “I love you, Nik.”
She let out a heavy sigh, then took a deep breath, maintaining control. She wasn’t going to lose it, not here, not now, not with him, but his declaration wasn’t exactly a news flash either. He’d told her how much he loved her at least a dozen times since they’d made it to the bedroom, maybe two dozen. Love hadn’t been their problem. Their problem had been death, the death of his brother. There’d been no way to get around how J.T. had died, or what Kid had been compelled to do because of it. He couldn’t have left the job of tracking down his brother’s killers to someone else, not when he was the best the United States government had to offer. It had been a sacred duty, and Nikki understood sacred duties. She’d known he had to go, but she hadn’t known he wouldn’t need to come back for her—ever.
Seven months without a word.
Not. One. Word.
She went back to watching the ceiling fan slowly slap the hot, humid air.
She wasn’t going to fool herself. Despite what had happened, she still had a plane to catch in the morning. Four days ago, Skeeter had told her he’d be here, in Panama City, at his brother’s house, but Skeeter had been wrong, and now she’d run out of time. She had to be back in Denver by tomorrow night, and as of yet, absolutely nothing had changed between her and Kid. If anything, they had more loose ends than ever. They hadn’t talked. They’d had incredible, mind-blowing sex—again. This whole thing tonight had been an accident, like a train wreck, unplanned, unexpected, highly combustible, dangerously out of control—and completely predictable. They always had train wrecks. Their whole relationship had been a train wreck, the same train wreck over and over: Lay eyes on each other, make love all night long, Kid Chaos disappears. Either he was with her, or he was off the planet.
“Nikki,” he murmured again, rolling onto his side, his breath leaving him on a sleep-filled sigh and warming her shoulder.
She turned toward him. God, he was so beautiful—and he’d been hurt, worse and more recently than she’d allowed herself to realize. Her gaze narrowed.
She untwined her hand from his and reached up to touch his chest. She’d noticed his bandages. It would have been impossible not to notice them, the white gauze so stark against his sun-warmed skin, but the gauze had come unwound in places and there was fresh blood on the lower layers, small smudges of it on his arm wrap and the bandage around his leg, a darker smear on the bandage around his torso. Plus he had two stitches on his face, right along the curve of his jaw.
She knew what it all meant. He’d been in a fight, and the only kind of fight Kid Chaos Chronopolous was ever in was a firefight—bullets flying, life or death, no quarter asked, none given, everybody out for blood. She’d once heard Skeeter refer to him as SDF’s gunslinger. According to the kick-ass Goth princess, Kid was the best they had, and within that highly skilled group, that was saying a lot.
Skilled at what, other than “gunslinging,” Nikki didn’t exactly know. Everything about SDF was hush-hush. Kid had once told her he was a bodyguard, but she knew his job went beyond that. She just didn’t know how far beyond, or in what direction. Nobody told her anything—especially Kid. So she’d stopped asking, and he’d left, and there it all had been, until tonight.
Crazy, crazy, crazy. She’d probably set herself back four months by sleeping with him, which would really suck big-time. The “three months without a word” mark last Christmas had been the absolute lowest point of her life. She’d barely survived.
No, she wasn’t going there again, not even for Kid Chaos. She’d closed those doors for good.
A soft snore escaped him and brought a smile to her lips. As gently as possible, she tucked the end of his arm bandage back under itself, and then slipped her fingers underneath a pair of gold rings he was wearing on a chain around his neck. She’d seen the rings earlier and had been curious as hell about what he was doing with two gold wedding bands, but at the time she’d been too busy to ask—too busy trying to get enough of him.
Letting out a sigh, she turned the rings over in her hand, then let them slide back to their resting place against his chest. They were terribly scratched up, and engraved inside and out, but with just the moonlight to read by, she couldn’t see what was written on them.
Damn, what a mess. She was wearing a ring, too, white gold and multijeweled, and he hadn’t asked her about it either, thank God. She wasn’t sure she had an answer.
Her ring didn’t look like a traditional engagement ring, and given the state of her engagement, that was probably for the best. So there they were, lying naked in each other’s arms, two people, three rings, no confessions.
Reaching up, she gently ran her fingers back through his hair, sliding a few loose strands off a face of high cheekbones and lean angles, and an incongruously cute nose. It was what made him look so young. Carefully, softly, she touched her mouth to his, then pushed herself away.
She didn’t get far.
In an instant, he was awake, his hand coming up and holding her in the bed, his eyes wide open—every muscle and tendon in his body tight and radiating one single message: Ready.
Ready for what? she wondered, startled by his sudden transition into utter and complete wakefulness. Good lord, he’d been sound asleep, snoring.
“Don’t go,” he said, holding her gaze, his voice soft, a sleepy contrast to the alertness pulsing through him like a heartbeat.
“I . . . I wasn’t going.” At least not very far. She’d thought she’d get some space between them, get some air, give herself at least half a chance to think straight, something it was impossible to do when she was close enough to breathe him in—and they were close. One of his legs was half over one of hers, his right arm beneath her left shoulder. Every breath he took, she felt his stomach rise against her.
“Good.” His gaze slid past her to the door leading to the patio and then to the door leading to the hall. His face was stark, his expression deadly serious as he quickly and methodically checked the room.
It gave her pause. It unnerved her. She knew what he was doing—searching for a threat. She’d seen him lay a pistol on the bedside table when he’d taken his clothes off. Didn’t he feel safe in his own house? she’d wondered at the time.
Obviously not,
was the answer, and the realization sent a small shiver through her.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his attention immediately coming back to her.
“No.” She shook her head.
He looked at her for a second, an unreadable expression on his face, before his gaze slid away again.
“Nikki, I . . .” he started to say something but then didn’t, and suddenly, she felt a little tongue-tied herself.
Oh, yeah, she thought, they were getting off to a great start. The silence drew out between them, then it drew out a little more, until she couldn’t quite bear it.
“Your hair is longer,” she said, reaching up and smoothing the dark strands lying across the back of his neck.
Longer than it had been seven months ago, before he’d disappeared out of her life.
Without saying anything, he closed his eyes and lifted her hand to his mouth, kissing the backs of her fingers—but he’d heard her. She could tell by the tension furrowing his brow.
“I think you’re bleeding,” she added, wondering how in the world sex could be so easy between them and everything else, like simple conversation, could be so damn hard. “Do you want me to check your bandages?”
He shook his head. “No.” Then he kissed her fingers again and relaxed back on the bed. After a long moment, he opened his eyes and met her gaze. “What are you doing here, Nikki? Here in Panama?”
There it was, the perfect opening, the right question, but somehow, the answer was lodged in her throat. Somehow, it was too patently absurd, after what they’d been doing, to tell him she’d come to find out how she felt about him, or even stupider, to tell him she’d come to close the books on their relationship so she could move halfway around the world with a clear conscience.
Close the books. Right, when she smelled like him everywhere, when she still had the taste of him in her mouth and could still feel where he’d been inside her.
“I won a contest,” she said, because honestly, what other reason in the world could she possibly have had for hauling her butt over two thousand miles south to the land of palm trees and baja panties than to see him?
“A contest?” he repeated, not sounding at all convinced, of course, because he wasn’t a complete idiot—except when it came to her. He should never, ever have left her alone for so long, not when he still loved her.
“Yeah. The Skeeter Bang Bake-Off. First prize was a round-trip ticket to Panama City and the key to your house.”
He grinned at that, a fleeting half-smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You and Skeeter couldn’t bake your way out of a paper bag.”
True. She was bona fide Take-Out Queen, a fact she’d proven to him numerous times during their brief but intense time together last fall.
“When she gave me the key, she said you’d be here.”
“When was this?”
“Four days ago.”
He seemed to think that over for a moment or two, before he spoke. “I was still in Colombia four days ago.”
“You were in Colombia a long time,” she said, then paused. To her surprise, the words had come out with just the barest bit of an edge on them, which was the last thing she’d expected. Honestly, she had not come all the way to Panama to lay blame on anyone. She was willing to listen to any explanation he wanted to offer—any explanation. He loved her. He’d said it over and over. He’d missed her like crazy, dreamed about her, dreamed about being with her the way they’d just been. So why hadn’t he come home? Christian Hawkins had come home. Creed Rivera had come home.
But not Kid.
“Yeah, a long time,” he said, not seeming to notice her bare little bit of edge—except he picked up her left hand. “Too long, I guess.”
O-kay. Suddenly there were two small, bare little bits of edge lying between them, and she was beginning to see why maybe they’d instinctively made love first, because even the simplest conversation was going to hell in a handbasket at light speed.
He turned her hand over, and the faint light of the tropical night slid over white gold and diamonds, over an original Rocky Solano design of emeralds, sapphires, and rubies. The ring wasn’t garish. It was stunning, art of the highest order, like everything Rocky did, its nature suffused with his genius. He’d had it made for her as a testament of his love and admiration—and up until tonight, she hadn’t worn it since she’d gotten on the plane in Denver.
Bling. That’s what she’d thought earlier this evening. She would put on a little bling to go with her sequins and tiara. She’d been in Panama for three nights, and for three nights running, she’d been hanging out with the Sandoval twins, waiting for Kid. It had been one party after another to keep from going crazy worrying about him, about why he wasn’t home like Skeeter had expected, and about how she was going to feel if he didn’t make it back before she had to leave—because she wasn’t looking back. She had a life to lead, and she couldn’t move forward if she was always looking back.
“What are you doing here, Nikki?” he asked again, lifting her hand between them, his meaning disturbingly clear.
“So Skeeter told you?” Dammit. She’d wanted to do it herself, in her own time, to explain her engagement in her own way, whatever in the hell that might have turned out to be.
“Yes.” The word came out flat.
Hell. If she’d come and there’d been no connection left between them, if there’d been no chemistry, no heat, no love, she would have already told him everything, cleared the air, closed those damn books that were giving her fits, and be ready to catch her flight and move on in the morning.
But they’d gone nuclear.
And she’d just gotten busted for bling. She should never have put the ring back on, not after she’d taken it off. Given where she’d ended up tonight, she never should have put the ring on in the first place. That hadn’t been a news flash four weeks ago when she’d done it, and it sure as hell wasn’t a news flash when she was lying naked in bed with Kid Chaos.
“I needed to see you,” she said. “When you said you’d be back, I thought you meant before I hit menopause.”
Another grin touched the corners of his mouth, but just barely.
“You did say you’d be back, Kid.”
YEAH, he had, Kid thought, and he’d meant every word when he’d said them, but things had gotten complicated.
“The mission took longer than we’d planned,” he said. “Adjustments had to be made.” And that was about all he could say about what he had done. Everything else was either classified or nothing he wanted her to know. She hated what he did, and she didn’t know the half of it. Hell, she didn’t know a tenth of it, a hundredth, and if it was up to him, that’s exactly the way he was going to keep it.
“Even Creed made it home for Christmas.”
“Yeah.” It was true. By Christmas, Pablo Castano and Manuel Garcia had been dead; his and Creed’s job had been finished. But Creed wasn’t a black-ops sniper. “I was . . . uh, tasked with another mission.” The assassinations of Juan Conseco’s lieutenants had taken weeks of planning, recon, and rehearsal, but the results had been exactly what they were supposed to be: two shots, two kills, the perfect ratio. From there, he’d been tagged for the Putumayo mission, and almost before he’d realized it, he’d been gone for seven months—six of them spent thinking she was still there, somehow part of his life.
He’d been wrong. The proof was staring him in the face, the damn thing he’d been trying so hard not to think about for the last four weeks. The thing he’d completely forgotten the instant he’d seen her, and remembered the instant he’d seen her ring.
“So you’re engaged,” he said as casually as possible.
Fuck. It sounded so much worse out loud than it did knocking around inside his brain, painfully worse.
“No,” she said. “Not really.”
Oh, sure. Right.
He could see how she could have a few doubts at this point, but the ring looked damned real to him, and it made him feel goddamned awful, a
ctually sick, and really fucking angry. A ring on her left hand said only one thing: She’d been sleeping with another man.
Sex. Like they’d just had. With another man.
Another man inside her.
Fuck. He rolled onto his back and stared at the goddamned ceiling fan.
He couldn’t do this, this whole hash-it-out scene, not without saying things he knew he would regret, probably not without breaking something—and that was the wrong goddamn impulse to give in to right now. He was way too primed for violence, and no matter what she’d done, she didn’t deserve that from him.
With one move, he pushed himself out of the bed, and grimacing, headed for the bathroom. He didn’t look back. Sure she had doubts, or she wouldn’t have come to Panama, but before she’d had doubts, she’d fucked another guy—and he was in no shape to deal with it.
In the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face, and then stood in front of the sink, forcing himself to keep his hands relaxed. He couldn’t get back in the bed with her. He knew that much.
After another minute of just standing there, watching the water drip off his face, he realized that was the only goddamn plan he was going to come up with—not sleeping with her the rest of the night.
Fine. Great. He’d go with it.
But when he got back to the bedroom, it was a done deal. She and her little purple robe were gone.
He heard her banging around in the kitchen, and figured it was good enough. She could bang around all night long, what was left of it. He was going back to bed—alone.
CHAPTER
3
THE MISSION TOOK LONGER.
We had to make adjustments.
Nikki banged a pot on the stove. Damn him.
He was angry. Well, there was plenty of anger to go around. Seven months and all he could say was “the mission took longer than we’d planned”?
She banged another pot on the stove just for the hell of it.
I was tasked with another mission.
She’d show him “tasked.”
Another pot came down, and then she had to stop. He only had three pans. She started water for tea in one and slammed the others around a bit getting them back in the cupboard.