CROSSFIRE (30 page)

Hawk didn't care. He strode across the hillside, trampling neatly trimmed grass so sickeningly green it looked more suited to a golf course than a cemetery.

The tombstone sat beneath an ancient magnolia at the end of the row, a weathered monument to a life ended too soon. "Hi, Mom," he greeted as he always did, and went down to his knees. Opening his hand, he let the zinnias fall to the grave, a scatter of ridiculously vibrant pink and yellow and orange. Her favorites, from her garden, a patch of earth she'd tilled years before, that continued to spit out flowers year after year, thicker and more abundant, never knowing their audience had long since gone.

After all this time it shouldn't still hurt. He'd grown up thinking his mother invincible, even during the lean years when she could barely put food on the table. No matter how bad things seemed, she always had a smile for him, a laugh. She'd tried to hide her loneliness, her pain, from him, right up to the end, when cancer had eaten away at her small body.

Memory flooded his eyes with a moisture he didn't bother wiping away.

There's no shame in tears,
his mother had always said.
Tears only mean you're alive.

He was alive, all right, even though something inside of him had shriveled up and died the second
Elizabeth
turned and looked at him with those horrified green eyes and asked him to deny Nicholas's allegations. Only a few hours before, she'd crawled on top of him and sheathed him with her body, curled her fingers with his and told him she never wanted the night to end.

The truth twisted through him. He'd told her it had been her life that flashed before his eyes, not his own, and yet when it came down to it, that hadn't been enough for her. She'd automatically chosen to accept Nicholas's version of the truth.

Part of him wanted to go to
Elizabeth
and tell her, yes, he'd accepted employment with her father because he knew being in charge of security for the family Nicholas coveted would grate on his former nemesis. But that was only at first. Over time he'd come to know and respect
Elizabeth
in her own right. To want her for the woman she was, not because of her relationship with Nicholas. He knew he should have told her the truth back in the mountains, but he'd been unable to spit out the words.

He who espoused fearlessness had been a coward.

But today he'd stood in her pristine little town home, gripped by incredulity. She'd spent the night making love with him, only to ask if he'd been using her? She might as well have stabbed him in the heart. If she bothered to look at the soul he'd laid bare for her, she would have known the answer to that. She would have known.

Life had taught him not to beg; no good came from it, only humiliation. Good came from taking action, from never letting anyone get too close, never letting them near creases in body armor, never giving them an angle to play.

Now he had to wonder.

Quietly he looked at his mother's tombstone, the scatter of zinnias, and knew what he had to do. "I love you, Mom."

He wasn't ready to surrender like a whipped dog.

* * *

"
Elizabeth
!"

The sound of her name jolted through her like a shot of live electricity. She looked through the peephole and saw him dominating her small front porch, tall and rough around the edges, poised like a fighter ready to attack. Dark blond hair fell against his face, but didn't hide those hot burning eyes, the ones that warned this time he was not going to turn and walk away.

"Open the door,
Elizabeth
. You know you want to."

Her heart pounded hard. He was wrong. She did not want to open that door. She didn't want to see him, hear what he had to say, feel what he wanted her to feel, what he
could
make her feel, knowing all the while that it would be the last time.

"One word, one warning, and
Monroe
will have to watch what I have in store for you."

She also knew she had no choice.

On a deep breath she turned the locks he'd installed, unfastened the chain, and pulled open the door. "Hawk," she said through her dry throat. No way could she utter his given name, the one she'd cried out over and over the night before. "You shouldn't be here."

"Where's Aaron?" he demanded, and tried to push past her.

She kept the door between them, said a silent prayer. "He ran over to Ukrop's for me. I thought we could grill steaks."

The stream of curse words made her blink. "His orders were clear. He's not to leave you—"

"It's broad daylight." Seeing him hurt her. Seeing him made her think of all those impossible dreams she'd never been able to kill. "You yourself installed the security system. I've got the phone in my hand." She lifted it to prove her point. "See? A few minutes won't hurt anything."

His face hardened. "Zhukov needs only a second."

The words, uttered in that dead-quiet voice he almost never used, chilled her. Because he was right. A second was all it took. One second, to change everything.

Deep inside, something started to tear. Just last night she'd given herself to this man, accepted him, loved him.

Now, though. God, now she had to make him leave. Very carefully, very deliberately, she closed the door to all those sharp, jagged emotions and nailed it shut.

"Hawk," she said, "please. Just go."
Stay,
her heart screamed.
Stay.
"Aaron will be back any minute."

His eyes, hard and furious moments before, softened. And his voice, God, it softened too, pitching low and drifting deep.

"I'm not going anywhere, Ellie, not until Aaron's back, not until you hear me out."

Chapter 15

«
^
»

H
e'd rehearsed it on the way over, every word, every breath, but then he'd noticed Aaron's car gone, and his heart had flat-out stopped. Aaron had assured him they weren't going out this afternoon. He'd reported in just forty-five minutes before. He was scheduled to check in again in fifteen measly minutes.

Hawk had practically broken down the door to get to her, make sure she was okay, but instead she'd slowly pulled it open and greeted him with a cool, indifferent smile. Then she'd all but slammed the door in his face.

His bed, he reminded himself. He'd made it. He'd destroyed it.

It was up to him to repair it.

He looked at her now, standing with the door between them like he was some kind of unwanted salesman. Her hair was loose and flowing softly around her face, her clothes not tidy the way they usually were, but a pair of cutoff shorts and an old T-shirt. Her eyes didn't gleam as they had when she'd arched beneath him, when she'd twisted to watch the shadows of their joined bodies making love on the wall. They were flat now, as though someone had smeared all the life and vitality into a dull haze.

Not someone. Him.

He had to make her understand. Had to tell her his truth, the real truth, not the twisted spin Nicholas had manufactured.

"You and me," he said, "we were never about Nicholas." Never. "Your father and me, that's where Nicholas came into play, a fact he's known for a while now."

Her eyes widened. "He knows?"

"In the hospital in
Portugal
, when he came to check on me." The memory washed over him, the searing pain, the drug-induced grogginess. At first he'd thought the ambassador's voice a product of his imagination, a father figure conjured straight out of childhood fantasies, but then he'd forced his eyes open and found the man seated beside the narrow hospital bed.

"He called me son." God, how that had burned. "And I couldn't let him do it. Couldn't let him paint me to be some hero, when the reason I'd approached him for a job was some stupid little game of one-upmanship Nicholas and I had been playing since we were seven years old."

The color drained from
Elizabeth
's face. "You told him?"

Hawk shoved the hair from his face. "He laughed,
Elizabeth
, said he already knew. That he'd had a background check run on me from the beginning."

Elizabeth
just stared at him. Very slowly she lifted a hand to her throat, where the black pearls dipped beneath the ribbed collar of her T-shirt. She fingered them, one by one, the way he'd done the night before, when she'd arched beneath him.

The image blindsided him. He shoved it aside, focused on what needed to be said, what should have been said all along.

"The first time," he said, "the first time we were together I didn't even know you and Nick were more than friends." As long as he lived, he'd never forget that cold rainy morning, when he'd picked up the morning paper and found
Elizabeth
's picture smiling up at him from the society section, next to Nicholas's. "Until you left my bed and agreed to marry him."

She winced. "Wesley—"

"This time…
"
He swore softly. "I wanted you to know me…" Love me. "…for the man I am, and I knew that wouldn't happen if you knew where I came from."

Her eyes went dark. "You thought that would matter to me?"

 
She almost sounded stricken. "The truth, Ellie. That's all I wanted."

A sad smile twisted her mouth, that beautiful mouth he'd loved the night before. "Then you should have given me the same."

"Why do you think I backed off?" The question tore out of him. "Why do you think I tried to stop the train wreck before it happened? Because I could see it coming, but God help me, when you stood there in moonlight and told me nothing mattered but the moment, the fact that I'd grown up with Nick was the last thing on my mind."

She kept fiddling with the pearls. "Wesley, don't. None of that matters now. It's too late."

He didn't stop to think. He reached for her hand, drew it to his chest, pressed her palm to his heart. "Feel that?" All that emotion he'd tried to control, that he'd begged himself to control, simmered over the edges. "That's real, Ellie. As real as it gets."

She whipped her hand from his body, as though the touch had hurt her somehow. "Don't make this harder than it already is." Her jaw tightened. "Just go."

He should. He knew that. But couldn't, not when he hadn't said what he'd come to say. When he hadn't given her the most important truth of all. The only one that mattered.

"Once, I accused you of being a coward, of walking away because you were too scared to see where the wave would carry us."

She winced. "The wave broke, Wesley. It's over."

"The
hell it is," he ground out. He couldn't do it. He couldn't just stand there and let her look at him through those cool, remote eyes, not when he knew he owed her an apology. "I walked away," he said. Hadn't bothered to defend himself, had been too angry, too certain history was repeating itself all over again. "I pushed you away, before you could do the same."

Her eyes flared, but before she could speak, he rolled right on. "I never meant to hurt you. I should have told you the truth in the mountains. I should have told you how I feel about you, not hidden it behind a shield of bravado. I lo—"

"Don't." She bit the word out with a horrified finality that burned to the bone. "Don't say it. Don't say anything we'll both regret. I've had all the true confessions I can stomach."

At one time that would have been enough to send him away. He would have turned and walked down her geranium-lined walkway, gotten on his bike and ridden away. At one time he reminded himself, he'd thought defenses made a man strong.

He'd been a fool.

Slowly he lifted a hand to her face, found her flesh alarmingly cool. "I thought you knew," he said, and his voice became low. "Last night, when I told you it was your life that flashed before my eyes, your life I wanted to save, I thought you knew what I was really saying."

"Wesley—"

"I love you."

She recoiled from his touch, shoved the door farther between them. "It's too late," she whispered, and her eyes were huge, dark, devastated. Almost mechanically she lifted her hand to her neck, clasped the pearls. "Go," she said. "Please."

Her frostiness lashed at him. Galvanized. Sickened. He'd been so sure, damn it. So sure he knew how to fix this, how to erase the lies. Now the truth lit through him.

"You're right," he muttered. And he was a goddamn idiot, to think for one stupid second, the writing on the wall, the writing that had always, always been on the wall, could suddenly and miraculously vanish. "You can think I used you, but I suggest you look in the mirror and ask yourself who used whom."

He started to turn away, but spun back and pulled her close, put his mouth to hers one last time. He slid his hands into the hair at the side of her face and cradled her head, moved his lips against hers, waited for her to respond.

She didn't.

"I used to think you were just scared," he said, ripping away from her. Reality churned like acid in his gut. "I used to think if I could just ease you from the shadow of your sister's death, you'd see there was a whole world waiting to be explored, a life waiting to be lived." He swore softly. He'd been wrong. He couldn't change what was inside of her. He couldn't make her give him something she didn't have to give. He couldn't make her love. He never should have come back.