Cody Walker's Woman (12 page)

Their eyes met, and Cody was surprised to see not condemnation in Callahan’s face, but understanding. “It happens like that sometimes,” he said softly, nodding. “I knew the first minute I saw Mandy.”

Cody’s immediate response was to deny Callahan’s assertion, but then, unbidden, his thoughts flew to his first sight of Keira, and an intense pride in her rose in him.
She
wouldn’t beg for mercy.
She
wouldn’t give those animals the satisfaction of seeing her cry. No, his Keira would die fighting, the same way he would.

He stopped his thoughts in their tracks.
His
Keira? What the hell was he thinking?

“It’s not what you think,” he repeated, but he wasn’t sure if he was saying it to Callahan or to himself.

“Try that one on someone more gullible,” Callahan advised. “I saw the way you looked at her.” He waited for Cody to accept that brusque statement, then added, “You can fight it all you want. It won’t do you any good, but you can damn well try. I did.”

Cody thought of Mandy, remembering how he’d watched her fall in love with Reilly O’Neill, and remembering also—although he hadn’t acknowledged it at the time—how O’Neill had tried his best to resist her, for her own good. It hadn’t mattered. O’Neill had been just as helpless under Mandy’s spell then as Cody was under Keira’s now.

He remembered other things, as well. How he’d tried to comfort Mandy one terrible New Year’s Day when she was grieving over what she’d thought was the death of this man and the very real loss of the baby she’d been carrying back then. How she’d wept in his arms afterward as if her heart were breaking. How his heart had broken, too.

Then a startling realization swept through him—that memory no longer had the power to devastate him as it once had. Losing Mandy to Callahan was still a bruise on his heart, and always would be. But another emotion, one he recognized but wouldn’t name, surged up in him—and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with Mandy. “But—”

“Just don’t let it get in the way of the job,” Callahan interrupted him. “You can’t fight what you feel. But you
can
lock it away. I know.”

Cody accepted Callahan’s stricture in silence, knowing the other man was right.
Damn him!
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Keira since that first night. He’d tried...and failed to control his growing attraction to her.

But if Callahan, who loved Mandy with a singleness of mind and heart and soul, could walk away from her to protect her, Cody could do the same with Keira. He could lock away his desire, place it where it wouldn’t put her at risk. Because a man whose emotions governed him grew careless of his surroundings, as he’d already proven. And he couldn’t afford to be careless, not where the team—not where
Keira
—was concerned.

“You’re right,” he told Callahan eventually, although he had to drag the words out. “Thanks.”

The other man shrugged. “I owed you” was all he said.

Cody started to ask for what, and then he remembered. A long drive in the dead of night with this man at his side, and a promise extracted from him against his will. A promise that he’d take care of Mandy if Callahan didn’t survive that night’s deadly encounter with David Pennington. A promise that would have destroyed Cody because he’d known by then that Mandy would never love him,
could
never love him as she loved Ryan Callahan. But he had promised.

God had been kind—Callahan had survived, and Cody had been spared the cruelest fate a man could face. Even being shot by Mandy wasn’t as bad as what could have happened to him.

And now there was Keira. He realized with a start that he finally understood where Callahan had been coming from when he’d forced that promise from him. Because if anything happened to him, if Keira was in danger and he wasn’t there to rescue her as he had once before...Cody couldn’t even bear to think of it.

Keira thought she was tough, and maybe she was. She could take care of herself under normal circumstances, maybe even under fire—she’d been a marine after all, same as him. But the New World Militia wasn’t a normal circumstance—not by a long shot. And wanting to protect her had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not she could protect herself.

His right hand clenched as coldness descended on him. Anyone who touched Keira was a dead man.

Chapter 9

K
eira dumped the contents of three cans of beef stew and two cans of green beans into a large pot, placed it on a burner of the propane stove and watched it as it heated. Most likely the men wouldn’t care she’d combined the cans, and it was faster this way, less to clean up afterward.

But she wasn’t thinking about the food, even as she stirred the pot. She was thinking about Cody. About his kiss.
Kisses,
she amended. The one outside that had roused her physically so that she hadn’t cared about anything but having him touch her. And the one in here that had roused such powerful emotions it had wreaked havoc on her heart.

Her body still ached with unrequited desire from both kisses. She hadn’t realized a woman could
hurt
that way, the way a man could. That her body could
need
fulfillment and release. And she hadn’t realized how deep the well of her own passion was. Cody had done that to her, had awakened desires that didn’t fit with the accusations thrown at her by back-to-back high-school boyfriends—that she was frigid, sexless. Accusations she’d come to believe and accept about herself. Until now.

Cody’s first kiss had awakened her body. His second kiss had awakened her heart. And while the first kiss had taught her what it meant to want a man, strong and virile, to hold her in his arms and ignite the fire, it was the second kiss she would remember forever.

At first she had tasted his contrition, but that hadn’t lasted long. Then she’d tasted his desire, and it was a potent aphrodisiac, taking her places she’d never dreamed of going. When Cody had kissed her, she’d had a vision of the two of them in the middle of nowhere, nothing but the blue sky above them. Then his golden head blotting out the sun, his vivid blue eyes alight with passion.

When he’d pulled her hips into his and she’d felt him against her softness, she had suddenly wanted to lie down with him looming over her, his lean, muscled body taut against hers. She had wanted to slide her hands across those muscles and make him tremble as he made her tremble. And she had wanted—
needed
—him inside her, driving for release, both his and hers.

Not sex. Any man could have given her that. She wanted Cody—his smile that melted her heart, as well as his passion that melted the ice. She wanted him to fill the emptiness inside, a place she hadn’t even known existed until he showed her what need was. She’d been
that
close to completely losing control, not caring where they were or who else was around. Then Ryan Callahan’s yawn had impinged on her consciousness, and she’d been shocked...and dismayed at herself.

Cody hadn’t wanted to let her go. She hugged that knowledge to herself with a secret smile. He’d resisted her first attempt to free herself, not realizing why she was trying to put distance between them. And then...when she was finally free, his face had momentarily told her all the things she wanted him to say before he shut himself down the same way she’d done. But she still wanted him. Even though she’d regained control over her treacherous body’s actions, the need Cody had engendered in her was still achingly alive.

The stew was hot; Keira turned off the flame and checked the cabinet for dishes. She found a couple of mismatched plates, three chipped bowls and a half dozen coffee mugs. She smiled.
Someone must love coffee.
It was a little thing, but she added it to her store of knowledge of Cody, which was growing hourly.

She already knew a lot about him, for a man she’d only met for the first time a week ago. Some of what she knew she owed to Trace. She’d tried to word her questions as they’d driven together in the wee hours of this morning so he would think she was only interested in learning what she could about the New World Militia, but she hadn’t fooled him. Her partner knew her too well, and he had been unexpectedly forthcoming.

Trace hadn’t asked, and she hadn’t volunteered, why she also wanted to know whatever he could tell her about Cody from a personal perspective. Now she listed the things she knew about him in her head.

He was thirty-seven. Trace had given her that little tidbit along with the information that Cody had gone to work for the DEA after leaving Black Rock. That was a thankless job, she knew. Like trying to empty an ocean with a thimble. A couple of her friends from the Marine Corps had gone to work for the DEA when they got out. Neither man had lasted a year. She wondered how long Cody had lasted there. Trace hadn’t known and couldn’t tell her.

He’d been in the Marine Corps, too, like her brothers, like her partner. And like her.
Semper Fidelis.
People who hadn’t been in the Corps didn’t realize the bond it created—“Corps and Country”
wasn’t
a meaningless phrase. Not to a marine. Dedication and loyalty
meant
something.

He carried a knife in addition to his service weapon. She’d seen him use it that first night to pry open the warped window.
He didn’t get that from the Corps.
As she had the first night, after she’d realized he was an agent, she wondered if he wore the knife everywhere or just when he was on assignment.

He had a good sense of humor and could laugh at himself. That was always a good sign. And he refused to take credit for someone else’s accomplishments, even minimizing his own contributions. Hadn’t D’Arcy said Cody was involved in bringing down the New World Militia, along with Callahan? And hadn’t Cody dismissed his part as relatively unimportant? But Trace had told her enough this morning to know Callahan couldn’t have done the job on his own—Cody had played a crucial role.

He also had a very strict moral code and held himself to a higher standard than most men. Despite everything she said, he still blamed himself for hurting her the night he’d rescued her. And at the same time he’d sacrificed his covert op—who knew how many hours had been invested in it—to save her, a stranger. That was part of his moral code, too, special rule seven notwithstanding.

And he had almost died six years ago. He made light of it, even joked about it with Mandy. But Trace had been there that night, after the fact, and in the truck he’d told her it had been a very near thing for the onetime sheriff.

Yes,
Keira told herself with a smile she couldn’t repress,
I know a lot about Cody already.

Cody and Callahan walked in the back door just then, and Keira quickly heaped the two plates with the combination stew and filled one of the bowls for herself.

“You’ve got to be starving,” she said, laying a spoon on each plate.

Callahan took a plate. “Yeah,” he said. “Looks good. Thanks.”

Cody took the other plate and told Keira, “There are only two chairs. You and Callahan can sit at the table. I’ll stand.”

“I don’t mind,” she said quickly.

“My cabin, my rules.” He smiled to take away the sting.

Keira sat across from Ryan Callahan and watched him covertly as they ate in silence. From time to time she glanced from him to Cody, standing by the kitchen sink, and back again. She thought it was just habit, at first; always wanting to know what made people tick. But then it came to her.
You’re trying to see what Mandy sees in him,
she told herself with a shock of revelation.
To figure out why Mandy would choose him—or any man—over Cody.

She couldn’t see it.

Oh, Ryan Callahan was physically intimidating, she’d give him that. But no more so than Cody, whose strength she’d experienced firsthand. And Callahan had impressed her earlier with his ability to move as quietly as a jungle cat. But Cody had great stealth, too. He’d slipped silently across the bedroom of the shack that first night, with her kidnappers in the next room, to pry open the window for their escape.

And whereas Callahan was saturnine and displayed a cynic’s view of the world, Cody was golden-haired with an unexpected grin that lit up his face and made you want to smile, too. Somehow you just
knew
the world was a better place when Cody smiled.
No,
she thought,
Mandy must see her husband differently than I do.
She had to, if she was willing to kill her best friend—to kill
Cody
—to protect him.

Callahan stood abruptly, the chair rasping across the floor, breaking Keira’s train of thought. He went to the stove to refill his plate. He offered the pot to Keira first, but she shook her head. She was nearly full and still had some left in her bowl. Cody allowed Callahan to add half of what remained in the pot to his plate. Then Callahan scraped out the last of the stew, placed the pot in the sink and ran water in it.

He didn’t come back to the table, but stood next to Cody and asked as he ate, “What time do you think McKinnon will get back?”

Cody looked at his watch. “It’s just over two hours to the agency’s safe house in Casper—say two and a quarter. Figure another hour to get your family settled in and squared away, and a couple of hours back. Five and a half hours at the least. My guess is somewhere between three and four.” He looked at Callahan. “About the same time the backup team will be done at your house.”

“You’re sure the safe house is safe?”

“There are no guarantees in this world,” Cody said with a level stare. “You know that. But I know the agents who run that safe house. Even stayed there once on an op. You’re going to
have
to trust some people unless you decide to hole up in a cave somewhere.”

“Fair enough.”

Cody resumed eating and said, “I told Keira while you were sleeping we need to head to where we at least have internet access. We can’t do much of anything here.”

“I won’t be much help in that investigation,” Callahan said. “Steve was my only link to the new militia, and he’s dead. Unless we can figure out what his last words mean or what that key opens...”