A Christmas Together (7 page)

The man ran serious risk of getting his teeth knocked out. The risk increased when she responded with a sheepish smile. “I apologize for the ruckus. Karl can be a bit melodramatic. I’ll go make myself a drink while you boys talk.”

As she sashayed off, Karl growled, “Stay out of this. It’s way out of your league.”

Dan’s toothpaste-commercial-worthy grin worsened his mood. “You have no idea what my league is. Either way, you can’t drag her kicking and screaming from the building. Safe Harbor happens to have a large number of trained security personnel in the vicinity, due in large part to yesterday’s attack and my conversation with our mutual friend Sam. Why don’t you drop the tough guy attitude and work with me.”

“If you talked to Sam, then you realize what she’s up against. Tell Bree—Brennan, to take me seriously. She needs to move her pretty little butt—”

“I’m right here, you know.”

His conversation partner rolled his eyes. “Really, dude, you’re not helping our case. I’m having a hard enough time getting her to cooperate as it is.”

“Umm…Guys…Not deaf.”

Ignoring her, Dan continued. “Under these circumstances, I’m more qualified to protect her than you. I’ve read your file jacket, the WikiLeaks version anyway. You’re trained to kill. Keeping people alive is not one of your skill sets. To make matters worse, the target is Brennan. You lack emotional distance.”

“From what I see, you’re not detached from her either.”

“But she’s not my wife. She trusts me, and the same can’t be said of you.”

He didn’t like it, but the man had a point. He’d broken too many promises, and she no longer believed anything he had to say. In her shoes, he wouldn’t either. During the four years they technically cohabited, he’d never spent more than a week with her in a single stretch. Hell, he’d somehow managed to miss every Christmas, anniversary, and birthday. They’d never fought, not once did she rage or raise her voice at him. But each time he came back, she asked less, expected less. And then she was gone.

“The threat is real,” he murmured to his wife’s back. “Ignoring me won’t make it go away.”

With slow, measured movements, she added a slice of lime to her glass and topped it off with sparkling water. Spinning around, she stared at him and sipped. “I talked to Sam too. I think both of you are reaching with this theory, but, whether or not your leaked mission painted a bulls-eye on my head, I won’t drop everything to traipse around the world while you figure things out. It’s a dumb plan.”

He drew in a deep breath and tried to reason with her. “DOD intelligence indicates Riad al-Hussein is in Dubai.”

She blinked. “The man who wants to kill your entire unit? You think he’s in the city, and you flew across the world so he could finish the job? Really, Karl—”

“You’re the target. We killed his brother. He doesn’t want us dead—he wants us to watch our families die.”

“I’m not really your family anymore.”

He met her gaze. “You are to me. You always will be.”

*

Concern clawed at her. Brennan tried to resist the pathetic impulse, given their estrangement, but Karl’s safety rocketed to the top of her priorities list. “All you’ve accomplished by showing up is endangering yourself. If some jackass wants to kill me, I’ll handle it—I
have
handled it.”

For the first time since his arrival, she stared at him straight in the face. Their marriage over in all but name, she shouldn’t give a whit about how exhausted he appeared. The past two years had aged him in countless ways. Gray hairs dotted his temples. Creases bracketed the corners of his eyes and mouth. The indomitable man she remembered had energy to burn in spades. Now his shoulders slumped, palpable weariness clouded his dark eyes, and she’d bet a well-executed punch could knock him off his feet. “In these situations, the best response isn’t to run, it’s to make sure I’m no longer a soft target. With the droves of security personnel Dan’s sicced on me, I’m practically bulletproof. You, on the other hand, might as well be waving a big American flag and yelling ‘catch me if you can.’ To top that off, right now you don’t look like you could fight them off. Go hide out on some tropical island and get some sleep.”

“I’m not leaving this office without you.”

She should have expected him to turn mulish. “You’re acting overprotective, stupid, and out of character.”

“So are you. You want to stay? Fine. I hope you have a guest room.”

As she considered calling security and having her husband carried out of the building, Dan interjected, “It might not be such bad idea for him to hang around for a few days.”

She scowled at the traitor in their midst. “Excuse me?”

“You get a free bodyguard, he gets to ease his conscience. It’s a win-win” He gestured toward Karl with his head. “You know this one will go stalker on us if we try to chase him off, and he has enough skills to be a nuisance. No offense.”

Her husband snorted.

Unable to refute his logic, she searched for a compromise. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck in the same house with Karl. She’d figured out how to be happy again, and one wrong move could bring her back to square one. “He can’t stay with me. How about your place?” Addressing her husband, she added, “Dan lives in the same building, a floor down.”

“Any distance increases reaction time. I don’t want you home alone.”

“But—”

“How about until after Christmas? It’ll be the first holiday we’ve spent together.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. But—”

Reaching her in a single stride, he cupped her cheek. “Please, Bree. God knows you don’t owe me any favors, but I’m begging you. I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt because of something I did.”

He wasn’t pulling any punches. A lump formed in her throat. “What difference does a handful of days make?”

“It’s not how I wanted to play this, but it might be the best option.” He sighed. “If Riad knows I’m with you, he’ll make a move. When he does, I’ll kill him. You’re the perfect bait.”

Dan coughed. “Remind me to ask you one day how this ‘smooth talker,’” he drew quotes in the air with his fingers, “managed to score a date.”

Remembering the day they met, she couldn’t suppress a smile. Tugging down her husband’s wrist, she asked, “Why are you so sure he’s fixated on you? If what you say is true, the smart thing to do once he sees you is move on to someone else’s family.”

His answer held a warped logic she couldn’t refute. “I was the highest ranking officer on the mission. It doesn’t matter that we were all following orders from some guy on the other side of the ear pierce. As far as he’s concerned, I was the person in charge.”

“Christmas is in four days.” She made the statement as a reminder to them both.

“If things don’t change by then, you can reevaluate.”

She pondered her options. The fastest way to make him leave was to give him what he wanted. But if he was going to sleep under the same roof as her, she needed to make the boundaries clear. “Fine. But I have a condition.”

“Anything.”

Not breaking eye contact, she stuck out her hand. “You sign the divorce papers before you leave—no matter what happens. Deal?”

He hesitated for much longer than she expected before meeting her palm with his.

Karl woke to the smell of baking cookies. Groaning, he rolled to his side and glanced at his travel alarm clock. The electronic readout showed o-three-hundred. Wide awake and plagued by pangs of hunger, he cursed the existence of jet lag, a biological inconvenience not even the military could train out of him.

He lay on a king-sized bed, covered in satin sheets. A memory foam mattress molded to his shape. Pale moonlight poured through the glass panels to his left. A wall-mounted sixty-inch LED television faced him. Underneath it, a multimedia system sat on top of a built-in chest of drawers that reached the ends of the large room. Sliding wood doors to his right opened to a mosaic-tiled guest bath.

The massaging shower he’d taken before crashing had gone a long way toward alleviating the physical effects of a seventeen-hour flight, but it took a moment before his mind reconciled the plush surroundings with memory. He’d woken in one of the many guest rooms in his wife’s Dubai penthouse. Nothing about the location descriptor fit his preconceived notions about Brennan. While he’d always known she’d come from money, she’d never flaunted it. During the four years they’d lived together, their lifestyle had been quintessentially middle class. He now realized she’d gone out of her way to stay within his means rather than hers.

In his boxers, he padded along a hallway to a living room three times the square footage of the townhouse they once shared. Despite its size, he felt like a bull in a china shop. Decorated with his wife’s petite size in mind, the furnishings, wall hangings, and light switches were placed in an ideal position for someone a few inches over five feet. He stood a foot taller.

When they’d moved in together, his preference for clean lines and extreme minimalism had guided the decor, even though, all-totaled, he’d lived in their house for less than two months out of the year. Every space in their small abode had been sparse, functional, and neat. Her new home couldn’t be more different, prompting him to wonder if she’d made it that way on purpose. Souvenirs from all corners of the globe sat atop ornate wooden chests. A zoo of glass figurines filled an antique display cabinet. Porcelain lamps sporting hand-painted shades rested on delicate side-tables topped with inlaid wood and brass.

Over a dozen holly wreaths adorned the interior walls. A large artificial Christmas tree stood in front of a low boxy sofa set that could seat a small army, the wiry metal base obscured by clear bowls filled with red and green pinecones. The city’s bright lights twinkled through thick panes of glass and reflected off ornaments hanging from the tree’s branches.

Following his nose, he navigated through the dark room to the kitchen. Brennan leaned against a granite-topped island, her fluffy white bathrobe stretching from her neck to the floor. Her hair was twisted up and clipped with what looked like a cylindrical silver comb. She held a pink silicone spatula in one hand and a large mixing bowl in the other. In front of her lay half a dozen small containers. “Did I wake you?”

Rubbing his eyes, he deposited himself on a swiveling stool across from her. “My stomach woke me. Those don’t smell like sugar cookies.”

She placed the items in her hand on the wax-paper-lined counter. “I’m trying a new recipe—strawberry tea-infused shortbread.”

His nose scrunched up. “It doesn’t sound appetizing.”

“So you don’t want any?”

“Even you aren’t so heartless.” He toyed with one of the small colorful pieces of ceramic. “What are these for?”

She pointed to an array of dark-tinted bottles with food-coloring labels. “I need green, red, white, and pink icing.”

He returned the bowl to its original spot. “Since when is pink a Christmas color?”

“It is when I’m baking.”

Blood had pooled to his groin since his arrival, and his cock jutted high enough he shifted in his seat. After a two-year hiatus, his libido had returned with a vengeance. Needing a distraction, he remarked, “You’re not wearing glasses.”

“I don’t need them. I had LASIK surgery a year ago.”

One of the countless changes he’d catalogued. The dark circles under her eyes caught his attention. “Do you still have trouble sleeping?”

“Not since I left D.C.”

He squirmed. The woman had a gift for inciting guilt without ever issuing a direct accusation. “Why aren’t you pissed off at me?”

She filled a kettle and placed it on the stove. From one of the cabinets, she pulled out a teapot and two Japanese-style handle-less cups. “For what?”

“For being a shit husband. For breaking our marriage. For getting my cover blown and pinning a target on your head.”

She shrugged. “Anger is counterproductive. And our marriage didn’t break, it just never really existed.”

Leaning back in his seat, he cocked a brow. “That’s one pretty-sounding load of bull. Did you practice the line in front of a mirror?”

Her face froze. Then she laughed. “I chanted it, actually, in front of an ocean while balancing on one leg. Clearly, I need more practice.”

He’d forgotten how much he loved her sense of humor. “Or you could stick with the facts. Our marriage existed. You left. I never chased after you. You have every right to throw things at me.” He’d rather she did. It would make him feel better.

She tilted her head to one side. “Why didn’t you…chase after me?”

“Part of it was pride. I came back from a cluster fuck of a mission to an empty house and divorce papers. Once I’d calmed down, I realized I couldn’t make you happy without quitting my job, which I hadn’t been willing to do. Since I’d promised to leave the service before I got down on one knee, the blame’s all mine.”

“If I remember correctly, you never got down on one knee. You raged about your death benefits going to waste and dragged me to the courthouse on Christmas Eve. I was surprised you’d remembered to buy a ring. An hour after we signed the papers, you dropped off the face of the earth.” The oven timer went off. She grabbed purple silicone oven mitts before spinning and bending down. His gaze became glued to her terry-cloth-covered bottom. Perhaps because he didn’t know if she wore anything underneath, her current attire seemed sexier than the dress she’d worn in her office.

While he understood things could never be the way they once were, his cock didn’t give a damn. Every instinct recognized her as his. Shear willpower prevented him from lifting her onto the kitchen counter and settling his hips between her thighs.

He leapt to his feet. “Let me help you.”

She unearthed a large baking sheet laden with angel-shaped cookies. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

With a loud clang, she dumped the metal tray on the counter and kicked the oven door shut. “You asked me to be honest, so it’s what I’ll do. I was married to you for four years, so I sure as hell can tell when you’re horny. Since I don’t trust you to behave, I suggest you keep your distance. I’ve let our chemistry cloud my judgment once before. It won’t happen again. If you don’t mind, please plant your butt back down and eat these cookies.”