“I sure as hell know you don’t know who I am, but I hope to hell you do know the woman you are trying to stick up for.” Ben looked over at her and smirked. “She isn’t the pristine little angel she pretends to be. She might as well be called Black Widow with as many men as she has killed when they walked out of her bed... It’s a wonder you and I are even still alive.”
Summer pulled a gun from behind her waistband and pointed it square at Ben’s center mass. “Get the hell out of here, Ben, or you will be the next one I kill.”
Chapter Six
Summer had not anticipated things going as they had, or she would have just kept on driving until they were back in Missoula. Now, she had a whole hell of a lot of explaining to do.
They watched as Ben got into his car and squealed his tires as he pulled out of the apartment complex’s parking lot.
She couldn’t blame him for being pissed off with her; she hadn’t wanted to get into a yelling match, either. That was always the last tool in her arsenal...well, that and her Glock. She slipped the subcompact back into the holster nestled into the crook of her stomach just over her appendix.
“Please tell me that was the one and only time you have ever pulled a gun on someone you didn’t intend on shooting.” Mike took Joe back from her, like her pulling a gun on the man who had threatened to do her harm in some way made her a delinquent parent.
“If he didn’t leave, who said I wasn’t going to shoot him? You don’t know what Ben is capable of.”
“No, but he seemed to know exactly what you are capable of...and me for that matter.” Mike hesitated, but she had already heard the hurt in his voice. “How does he know about me? About my past? Does he know who I work for? What I do?”
She stared at her feet. “I never told Ben what you did. He just sort of figured it out over time. He doesn’t know who you work for or what you do...at least not really. He just assumed.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell him not to assume certain things?” Mike countered. “You know that his knowing severely compromises me. Who in the hell else knows who I am and what I do?” As he spoke, his words came faster and faster as the rage burned through him. “And now he knows what I look like, he could pick me out of a lineup. Do you want him...do you want me...to end up dead?”
“You know I would never intentionally put you in danger, ever. Your secrets have always been and will always be safe with me. I didn’t tell him anything. He just wanted to get a rise out of you. Please. Mike, believe me.” Her chest clenched as she thought about the times she should have stopped Ben from ever even broaching the subject about her exes. Yet, Ben had always been adamant in comparing himself to all the others she had once had in her life.
Keeping him at arm’s length while she had been investigating him and his job at Rockwood had forced her to make far too many compromises when it came to her own well-being. Being a spy and infiltrating the Rockwood network to find out who had been stealing secrets had been more of a challenge than she could have ever expected. It was why she had broken things off with Ben and then requested more training before she was thrown too deeply back into the Rockwood—or any—clandestine investigation.
It was hard to believe her past, present and future were all colliding into this one epic mess.
She didn’t know what to say or to do to make things right; avoidance seemed like her only option. So she smiled, the action forced, but it was the only appeasement she knew would work in a moment like this. “You want to come in and see my place? It’s not much, but it is mine.” There was a touch of sultry familiarity in her voice.
Mike sighed, as though he knew exactly what she was doing to get him to ignore the awkwardness between them.
Without waiting for him to speak, she walked to her door and let them in. As he made his way into her box-filled den with its one leather recliner and a baby swing, she was overcome with embarrassment. This place was a far cry from her Barbie dream house, but after the breakup it was all she could find. Great Falls had some nice apartments, but mostly they had military families and officers from nearby Malmstrom Air Force Base as their long-term tenants.
Mike put Joe down and he sat upright for a moment, then he broke in to a mad-dash crawl toward a stuffed octopus near the swing.
“Dang. That kid is fast,” Mike said with a laugh.
He could pretend not to notice the stains on the carpet and the dog scratches at the corner of the entryway all he wanted, but she knew what he had to be thinking.
“I don’t plan on being here for long. I just need to figure things out at work and then we will get a real place. Ya know?”
“You don’t need to worry about what I think about your place. I told you, I get it.”
“Do you want something to drink?” she asked, pointing to the only chair in the place. “I’ll go get you something. I think I have some...” She did a quick inventory of what she could possibly have in her fridge. If she remembered correctly, there may have been a beer, but only one.
“Water is fine.” He looked toward her kitchen and had to have been noticing that the only thing on the counters was a bargain-basement toaster.
It was a harsh reality to see a person’s makeshift life through the eyes of another. “You can tell I’ve become a bit of a minimalist.” She laughed nervously as she walked to the kitchen, grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap.
“How long have you been living here?” Mike asked, sitting next to Joe on the floor and picking up the octopus. He tapped Joe’s nose with one of the octopus’s tentacles, making Joe gurgle and smile.
“Just a few months.” Well, if a few meant about six.
“How long did you and Ben date after we broke up?”
She didn’t know that exact date, either. Ever since the wedding had been called off and she had given birth to Joe, everything had been a whirl of well-baby checkups and trips to the store for baby supplies added into the jumble of trying to get her career moving in the right direction. Ben had been a stepping stone for her career, but she could hardly tell that to Mike.
“I don’t know how long we were together, to be honest. I mean we were friends, then stayed together a lot, and he was great with Joe for the most part...”
“Does he really work for a petroleum company?” Mike prodded, the question coming from out of nowhere.
She gave him a befuddled look as her body clenched. “Why do you ask?”
“Don’t you think it a bit odd that your boyfriend was working out of North Dakota, but living dozens of hours away in a nowhere town at the edge of a military base best known for nuclear weapons?”
She had contemplated Ben’s inane cover story more times than she had wanted to, but it was how he had always asked her to introduce him. “What about it? You know just as well as I do that most people can telecommute now.”
“I agree. But you can’t tell me that he moved to Great Falls because of the beauty of the place.”
Great Falls was as nasty as Medusa’s stare in the winter and hot, dry and unforgiving in the summer. It was flat and desolate, and the winds ripped through the plains all year ’round, but there was an austere, understated beauty to the place. It definitely wasn’t a tropical paradise that drew in nature lovers, though. Problem number two with Ben’s story. But it had been his story.
“You and I both know that, given the nature of our jobs, we tend to respect secrets.” She wanted to tell him the truth, tell him who Ben really was, but now wasn’t the time. It would only make this fight worse and threaten their safety.
“And yet you told him what I did.”
So, he wasn’t going to let it go. Odd that her palace didn’t make him so gobsmacked that he forgot about their fight. She chuckled, the sound admittedly out of place and wrong in the tense world that rested between them. “I already told you, I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Have you los
t your damned mind?”
Oh no, you don’t. Her hackles rose as his inflammatory accusation drifted down like a spent ember.
“Excuse me?” she challenged, letting his words flitter through his psyche so he could hear exactly how wrong they were before she chose to answer.
“I...” he started then said, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean, I am surprised that you would let a man like Ben, one whose story doesn’t quite fit, this close to Joe. You have always been the kind to ask too many questions, to make sure that everything lines up and is triple-checked. What happened?”
Again, did he really want to ask her that question? It seemed like he was asking her to rain fury down. And yet his words struck home. She had made a mistake, a huge mistake in letting Ben in their lives. But she had been doing her job, and sometimes the lines between personal and professional had to be blurred because of Joe’s age and his intense needs.
“First, things between Ben and me were never what I would call serious.” She took a quick breath, trying to check her anger before it flew from her lips. “You. Joe. Life. That is what happened to me. I don’t know if you can tell or not,” she said, motioning all around her apartment, “but I’m struggling a bit right now. I’m trying my hardest to do all the things and do them well, and when a man came into my life wanting virtually nothing but to be a source of love and kindness, I let down my guard and let him in. Can you blame me after all you put me through?”
The silence between them was broken only with the sounds of Joe talking gibberish to his toy.
“I think it’s ridiculous that you think you can come in here and start judging me for the way I’ve conducted my life,” she raged. “I had a plan. I had a man I loved in my life. I had my world figured out and I was preparing to run, to make this life everything I had ever dreamed of, and you pulled it all out from under my feet. You are the one who needs to answer for what life has become. Not me.”
She was pretty sure she could see a red welt rising on his face where she had just slapped him with her words.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Mike said, moving near enough that he could wipe a tear from the corner of her eye.
Damn it, why did she have to cry when she was angry?
She moved away from his touch, not letting him console her.
He had done this. He deserved to watch her fall apart in front of him. To bear witness to the ravaging effects of one decision...a decision she had not been able to make with him and yet that had had the power to strip her future away.
Screw him.
From the way he moved into her, she could tell that he wanted to pull her into his arms and console her. He’d always been so damned good at making her forget the pain, and yet she doubted his touch would work like it once had. After a person crushed a soul, they no longer held the power or tools to rebuild it.
She was the only one who could rebuild her life. And right now, that meant boxes where there should have been chairs and questions where there should have been answers. Mike was just going to have to deal with what she had done with her life, whether he liked it or not.
“I never thought—”
“Yeah, that’s one of the truest statements you’ve ever made,” she said, her words laced with venom.
His shoulders fell and he looked crestfallen. “You’re right. I didn’t think. I would have never asked you to marry me, I would have never dated you, if this is what I thought would happen. I have only ever wanted what was best for you.”
Though she was fuming with anger, she believed him. Mike wasn’t a bad man. There was no way that he could have ever wanted to hurt her as he had, but that didn’t make the pain any less real. It only meant that he was as clumsy and as ill suited to love as she was.
“You weren’t the only person in the relationship. I chose you and wanted the best too.”
And though this was a low point, she couldn’t say she actually regretted falling in love with Mike. He had given her a beautiful baby boy and many hours of happy and blissful memories. And, oh, the way he had once been able to make her laugh.
“You were proof to me that I could really love,” Mike said, sending her a soft look that made all the anger still pulsing through her seep through the tips of her toes and disappear into the ground.
It was that look and his unexpected moments of sweetness that had made her fall in love with him in the first place. He had so many facets to him and, standing here, looking at him, she was reminded of what a great man he was...and how much she missed having him in her life. And yet she couldn’t let herself be swept up by him again. As sweet as Mike could be, he could become equally cold and hard.
He moved in closer to her, so close she could feel his breath against the skin of her face. Her heart thrashed in her chest, just as confused by all the emotions it was feeling as she was. The ancient Egyptians had believed the center of all thought was the heart; and in this moment, she could understand how an entire culture could believe such a thing. Her heart definitely had a mind of its own, one totally independent of the logical and rational thoughts that filled her brain.
He didn’t love her and she didn’t love him. At least, not like that, not like this moment, this closeness, seemed to indicate. Sure, she would love him as the father of her son and the man she had once promised her life to, but now it couldn’t be that way. They could only love one another for the people they had become, people who were strangers to one another. He only knew her before the pain.
And yet, when he leaned in close and his lips brushed against hers, she didn’t back away. The kiss started slow, gentle as a butterfly’s wings’ caress against her skin. Perhaps he was just as afraid of what was about to happen as she was, but yearning for her as she was for him.
Yearning. That was it. This wasn’t love. This wasn’t something so stupid. This was just her body needing his body. Nothing more. It was the familiar. He was the familiar.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through the back of his shaggy hair. It was odd how, in a moment like this, she was reminded of how much she had loved his soft hair and the way it felt in her fingers while his lips pressed against hers. It was the conglomeration of sensations—the soft and the firm, the hot and the cold, and the push and the pull—that had always made this man so... So right.
She moaned into his mouth as his hungry kiss grew more voracious. He felt so good pressed against her, his body telling hers that he had missed her just as much as she had missed him.
Maybe they weren’t really strangers, after all.
Maybe his leaving her had just been a stupid mistake.
She had made mistakes.
She could forgive him.
Yes.
Especially if he kept kissing her. His lips moved down her neck and his hand moved up beneath her shirt, finding its way under the cloth of her bra. He thumbed her nipple, making it harden and ache for the warm softness of his mouth.
And then Joe laughed, the sound bright and cheery.
The sound stopped the advance.
Mike pulled back and Summer readjusted her shirt, suddenly feeling like a teenager who had just been caught making out by a wayward parent.
Running her hand over her hair, it came to rest on her neck in the place where Mike had just been kissing her. Oh, and had he been kissing her.
Mike did a little sidestep and turned away from her to face Joe. He scooped him up in his arms and lifted him toward the ceiling, laughing as he moved. “You! You know how to ruin a moment, don’t you?” He laughed. “You are definitely my kiddo, Mr. Man.”
Joe giggled, arching his back like he was doing a baby version of Superman as Mike walked him around up in the air. “‘It’s a bird. It’s a plane...’”
“It’s mother nature’s best form of birth control,” she finished, laughing.
Mike lowered Joe onto his hip. H
e came over and gave her a long, soft kiss on the cheek. “Maybe we should have had a kid together a long time ago.”
His words came as a surprise. So much so, she didn’t know what to say.
Just yesterday she had thought that Mike was going to be furious with her, that he was never going to speak to her again after she told him about Joe. And now, here they were almost falling into the trap of being a happy family.
This...this was far too good to last. She had to tell him the truth before things went any further and she hurt him. If she told him now, he might still forgive her.
“Mike, I have to tell you something.”
The joy that filled his face drifted away as he must have recognized the reserve in her tone. “What?”
“Promise me that you won’t be angry with me if I tell you,” she countered.
He frowned. “That is like asking someone to forgive you for a mistake you know you are about to make, and yet you don’t stop.”
Oh, this was going to be a mistake, no doubt. But some things had to be said, some truths had to be known. Without them, there were only false starts and empty promises.
If he was going to come back into their lives, he needed to come back fully aware of what that would mean for them all.
“You know I worked for STRIKE...” She paused.
“Yeah.”
She hadn’t meant that as a question, but she was glad for the moment to collect her thoughts. “Well, things go a little deeper than that.” She looked down at her hands.
But did she really need to feel as sullen as she did? She’d not known this would be where things would head with them; if anything, she had just been looking for the right moment to really open up to him and tell him the truth. She needed to know, regardless of their past, that she could still trust him.
And though she wasn’t entirely sure she could, she had to try. She had to tell him the truth about Ben, and what he had come here for, and then let the chips fall.
Rescue Mission Page 5