Necessary Risk

by Sidney Bristol

  “Oh... Piers. Killam. I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “I went to live with my grandparents after that. My life got better, so don’t be sorry.”

  Ivy sat back and stared at the pool. A leaf fell from one of the trees into the crystal water, sending ripples out.

  One event could change everything, couldn’t it?

  Piers’ tone took on an unusual, cheerful beat. “So now that we have the sad backstories out of the way, Combat Engineer?”

  “I took a test and scored really well on it. No driving story behind it, just, here’s something I’d do well.”

  “That’s a lot of blowing stuff up, right?”

  “And taking stuff apart. We weren’t bomb squad or anything, but I learned a lot about it out of necessity.”

  Piers was quiet for a few seconds. “You mean to tell me, if we had gotten our hands on the air-delivery system the cousins were testing, you could have figured it out?”

  “Probably.”

  “How does a Combat Engineer go from that to this?” He gestured at the pool.

  “Not that complicated.” She chuckled. “They wanted to cut the military. I got the axe and took the best job that came my way.”

  “Undercover work?”

  “No. Aegis Group. I’ve worked for them for two years now.”

  “Doing what, exactly?”

  “What was I hired to do, or what did I end up doing?”

  He turned slightly to face her. “Both.”

  “I was hired to be private security for a wealthy family. Specifically, the wife and kids. It felt more like I was a nanny with a gun though.” She grimaced. “I spent more time enforcing punishments like grounding than protecting them from any real threat. Probably the worst thing I handled was a bad breakup with their fifteen-year-old daughter and her eighteen-year-old boyfriend.”

  “Why aren’t you still with them?”

  She blew out a breath. It had come to this at last. “Officially? I didn’t perform my job duties satisfactorily enough. Honestly? The kids made my life a living hell because their parents aren’t really parents and they resented me stepping in. Can’t say I blamed the kids. I felt for them a lot. The parents were a piece of work, though.”

  “What a load of shit,” Piers said.

  Ivy chuckled.

  He shook his head. “You basically gave up your life to follow these people around and take care of their kids?”

  “It seems like that’s most of what we do.”

  “We?”

  “There’s like eight of us women who work for Aegis Group in the field. We’re all contracted private security, and I swear most of us are just nannies.” Her mind went to Haley, the worst off in Ivy’s mind.

  “Combat Engineer to nanny. What’s next?”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said slowly. “I just got let go about two weeks before this job came up. I’d barely managed to move my stuff out and line up a temporary apartment in Seattle while I figure out what’s next before this came up.”

  “What do you want to do next?”

  Not this.

  “That’s what I’ve been asking myself.” And what she hadn’t been able to bring herself to discuss with the girls on their chat group.

  She loved her Aegis Group family. They’d caught her when she hadn’t known where to go and given her an opportunity to do something. No, it hadn’t worked out, but the people she’d met along the way were ones she wanted to have in her life forever. But Ivy didn’t want to be a nanny again, or ever.

  “How’d you end up here, Piers?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s a long story.”

  “I believe we have time.” And she did want to know, even if knowing made it harder on her heart when this ended.

  “For starters, I got kicked out of boot camp.”

  “What?” Ivy gaped at him. That was damn hard to do.

  “Yeah.” He laughed. Laughed.

  “How? This I have to hear.” As far as Ivy knew, apart from developing some medical condition, it was next to impossible to get kicked out of boot camp.

  “It’s not a good story.” His laugh faded and he laid back. “This one sergeant had it bad for this guy. The recruit appeared to be gay. It was don’t ask, don’t , so I never asked. For days this recruit is just getting hammered into the ground, so I said something in private. Next day we’re both getting it, and...I knocked the sergeant out.”

  Ivy stared wide-eyed at him. She wasn’t sure if she should be horrified or amazed. “You did not.”

  “Yeah. They jerked me around a bit before cutting both me and the other guy, Luke, loose. Two guys from the CIA approached us about another path. We didn’t meet the qualifications, so Luke and I both went to college. Luke decided to go the psychology route. I went law enforcement, graduated as fast as humanly possible and applied to be an Air Marshal.”

  “Did you and Luke stay in contact?”

  “No. We did in the beginning, but I thought it would be better for him if he wasn’t connected to me.”

  “What? Why?” She felt like she was asking those two questions a lot.

  “I have the worst luck possible.”

  She waited for him to go on.

  “This one flight I got bumped up from economy, where I normally sat, to first class. Technically, I wasn’t on the clock. I was just going home. Anyway, I got sat next to this guy. Someone the feds were watching. We struck up a conversation about the best strip club in town. Don’t judge. Anyway, he says something like hope to see you there or whatever when we get off. I don’t want to. I’d been in the air for days. In the parking lot some feds approach me and ask me to help them out, get close to the guy. And that is how I wound up being an accomplice to a bank heist.”

  “What? How did you just go from strip club to bank heist?” She sat up cross legged.

  “Guy was in town to meet with some people. The feds kept at me to stay close to him, so we got friendly. Drank. Took some time off so I could just be around. He then asks me if I could pick him up at this specific time and place. I figure, sure? Why not?” Piers sighed. “I was their get-away driver. I picked him and two other guys up and drove them to their meet without knowing they’d just robbed a bank and killed both the feds I was talking to. Since the whole deal wasn’t official, there was no record that I was working with the feds. It looked like I was working with them.”

  Ivy could only stare at Piers. The story was too crazy to be real. But it was.

  “By the time they revisited the case, I’d been tried and sentenced. They wanted someone to hang for the murders of two feds. It was Luke who got them to look into it again and get me off. I figured the best thing I could do for him was stay the hell away. The day I got out, the feds were there to pitch another idea at me. Use my now sullied record for them.”

  Ivy soaked it all in.

  Abandoned by his family. Kicked when he stood up for others. Kicked again when he tried to do the right thing. She understood his aversion to working with others now. And still, through all of that, he was a pretty damn good guy. Oh, she didn’t doubt he had his skeletons, but he was still good under all of that. She couldn’t even fault him for his constant drive to be in charge.

  Fuck it.

  She pushed up off the lounge chair.

  Piers glanced up at her.

  Ivy sat down on the edge of his lounge chair, wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed. She laid her head on his shoulder, not quite wanting to look at him.

  They were both strong people. The world had forced them to be the way they were. That didn’t mean they were without feelings.

  Piers’ arms wrapped around her with only the slightest hesitation. She hated to admit to herself how good this felt. A lot like waking up to being spooned by him in that bunk.

  She breathed in the scent of him. It was his body wash. Spicy and masculine.

  He shifted, and then she felt his lips press against her brow.

  Ivy held very still, but it didn’t m
ake a difference. She was tipping over a ledge. Falling for him wasn’t smart. It would be one of the stupidest things she’d done in her life, but it wasn’t like she could stop herself. For now, all she could do was enjoy what they had.

  THURSDAY. LUXE IBIZA, Hostel, Ibiza.

  Nasar studied his orders.

  No reply to his phone call or even a text. Then he gets this?

  He scanned the email directions again.

  This wasn’t fucking happening.

  Nasar picked up his phone. He wanted to call, but figured a voicemail was too easy to ignore. A text, if glimpsed, could have the desired reaction.

  Per your email, I’m not showing up if we don’t talk.

  Nasar hit send. He swallowed, fully aware that he’d just committed to this course of action, then sat back.

  He’d done more digging into Smith.

  There was no way the man could be responsible for killing Nasar’s family. The timelines were wrong. Smith had no reason to lie to Nasar over beers and casual conversation. He didn’t know the loss Nasar had suffered. They were just two guys who liked the same bar and had happened to meet up a few times.

  Which meant someone had lied to Nasar.

  Was it Zak and Miran? Or someone else?

  Nasar’s phone beeped with an incoming message. He picked it up and read, “See you in a few days.”

  Grimacing, he tossed the phone down.

  Zak would answer Nasar’s questions. He would.

  THURSDAY. LUXE IBIZA, Hostel, Ibiza.

  Ivy didn’t want to be awake. She closed her eyes a little tighter and snuggled down under the blanket.

  Somewhere in the building a door slammed. A few muted voices tickled her ears.

  Nor.

  London.

  Ivy’s eyes popped open and she glanced around the small room.

  It was not the opulent space she’d been given to share with the other girls. No, this was the staff quarters at the hostel.

  Her heart ached thinking about the two, wondering how they were, if they’d gotten in trouble because of her.

  Ivy slouched back against the arm and rubbed her head. She felt the toe-curling sensation of another one of her false eyelashes coming unglued.

  Good riddance to the damn things.

  A little light filtered into the room through the crack between the blackout curtains. Birds called to each other and the sound of waves hitting the shore created enough white noise for her to space out on. Just a little.

  She stretched out and wiggled her toes.

  Piers’ familiar scent teased her nose.

  She frowned and peeled the blanket up, looking down at herself... Wearing his T-shirt.

  They’d napped.

  Gone to the pool.

  Spent some time downstairs using the communal computer to do research, but hadn’t learned much.

  And then...

  They’d made dinner and spent the rest of the evening on the sofa watching movies. Bad movies, but it had been nice. And almost normal.

  She vaguely recalled Piers trying to tell her it was time to go to bed, but...

  Ivy rubbed her head and resisted the urge to groan.

  She hadn’t wanted to go to bed because she didn’t want to tackle the sleeping arrangement question. Would they sleep together? Or separate?

  In the end, she supposed she had made her choice by choosing the sofa.

  What was wrong with her?

  She itched to pull out her phone and text her girlfriends. They wouldn’t have good advice. Most of them would err on the side of throwing caution to the wind. Before Piers, Ivy hadn’t exactly been able to make time for men. Her last serious relationship was with a vibrator that had given up the ghost.

  And now she was in something with a man wholly unavailable.

  Ivy ran her fingers through her hair and stared up at the ceiling.

  She kept thinking in terms of when she got to go home. But what if she didn’t? What if Piers was right and she was at risk of being killed by the very people who had hired her? Where would she go?

  No.

  No, she wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

  The house was quiet. So quiet she couldn’t help but be aware of the soft, barely there sound of footfalls coming closer.

  She peered at the door until two shadows broke the line of light. They grew, widening, then joining.

  For a long moment nothing happened, then a folded piece of paper skidded across the tile floor.

  The footsteps retreated faster than they’d approached.

  Curious, Ivy got up, but stayed close to the closet wall. She bent and picked up the paper.

  Nothing was written on either side of the folded paper.

  An arm reached out from the bottom bunk and wrapped around her waist. Ivy yelped, but didn’t fight it as Piers pulled her onto the mattress with him. In the dim light she could see that his eyes weren’t even open and his jaw was dark with a generous amount of stubble.

  She forgot the note as her insides did something strange. Something she had no idea how to deal with.

  He shifted a bit, settling her against his chest with his knee over her thigh. The blanket was down around their ankles, leaving very little barrier between them. All she wore was his shirt and her track shorts. He appeared to have slept in his boxers.

  “Morning,” she got out without sounding too breathy.

  “Hm.”

  Ivy shifted and crinkled the paper in the process, reminding her that she had something to be about besides her complicated feelings for this man.

  She lifted the paper and unfolded it, holding it so the light caught the hastily scrawled letters.

  “Passport pictures at three. Be ready,” she said.

  “Then there’s time.” Piers wrapped his hand around her wrist and pulled her hand to his waist.

  She chuckled. “What are you doing?”

  “I think it’s called snuggling. I’m not very good at it.”

  Ivy clamped her mouth shut. She wanted this. She wasn’t going to sabotage it because she didn’t understand this change in him.

  She slid her hand around his waist and let him pull her just a bit closer. He was warm and it felt good to just be with him, even if it wouldn’t last.

  “Sleep well?” he asked.

  “I suppose so.”

  “You looked too peaceful to move. Did I do the right thing?”

  For some reason that question warmed her. She could imagine he’d been waffling over the same dilemma she had. Not that it improved matters.

  “Sure. Yes,” she mumbled.

  His hand slid up her back, causing the shirt to bunch. As he made long, slow motions up and down her back, eventually his palm slid against her skin, soothing her to the blissful edge where she might just sleep.

  “What are we doing?” Piers whispered.

  She kept her eyes shut, not wanting reality to intrude. “Snuggling, I thought you said.”

  Piers shifted, and she thought he propped himself up. His fingers brushed her hair off her face.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “I guess I did.”

  She cracked one eye open and looked up at him. The shadows made his frown look more ominous.

  “What is it?” she asked, though she dreaded the answer.

  He dragged a finger down her cheek and across her jaw. “I missed you last night.”

  She swallowed.

  He missed her.

  She’d just been on the sofa.

  But he’d missed her.

  And damn it, she’d missed him.

  He was not a good match. He was a loner. He didn’t know how to share control or listen to her. And yet, it didn’t matter. In that moment, looking at him, she didn’t care.

  “Piers...”

  She wanted to strangle him and kiss him.

  Why did he have to say something like he missed her?

  He lowered his head a bit. His eyes no longer hand that sleepy quality to them. “I don’t want to say it,
but it’s the truth. And a team has to be honest, right?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered.

  Another woman might be offended at his words, but she understood him. They were on different paths. Wanting each other was contrary to what they would do, but it didn’t stop her heart from wanting him.

  She wasn’t sure who moved first, Piers or her. All she knew was that she felt the kiss down to her toes, with every bit of the intensity she’d felt from him each and every time. His fingers curled into her hair. She hiked her thigh up over his hip and just let go.

  He held her there tenderly, refusing to match her hungry pace. So, she slowed, relaxing into the gentle way he suckled her lower lip and the tender way he touched her.

  She breathed deep, enjoying the chance to simply revel in this.

  The last two times had been full of need. This? This was acknowledgement.

  Whatever happened was out of her control. But she got to choose who took a piece of her heart. If anyone deserved to be cared for despite the miles and time between them, it would be Piers.

  His hand slid up under her shirt, cupping her beast. She arched her back, pressing into his palm. She couldn’t help but groan as he toyed with her nipples.

  Ivy slid her hand between them and wrapped it around his cock.

  Piers’ whole body jolted at the touch. He growled something, grabbed her by both wrists and rolled her to her back. He settled over her, his weight caging her and pinning her to the bed. Her heart fluttered in her chest.

  How badly she wished she could have more of this. Months, maybe years of this.

  He buried his face against her neck and kissed. She shivered and closed her eyes, her body going limp.

  Piers reached down and pulled his shirt up and off her.

  The way he looked at her made her heart pulse in her throat. No man had both looked at her like she was the most desirable woman on the planet. Not like he did.

  He bent his head and licked one breast. She hissed and arched her back, tunneling her fingers into his hair.

  Piers kissed her stomach, then her hip. She shivered as he hooked his fingers in the waistband of her shorts and pushed them down. It was a two person effort with the confined space. Even with a few extra inches of height, Piers took up most of it.