It was so silent, as if the whole building inhaled in shock. The very center of Nikki’s being resonated with the tension. She released her breath slowly, trying to calm the erratic beat of her pulse. She hadn’t wanted it to be this way, but she hadn’t been able to stand it any longer. She might not have all her memory, but she had enough information to piece most of the truth together. And what the truth revealed was not how these men perceived Rick Harden to be.
She loved him. All these years without him, no man had been able to take down her defenses, but a part of her responded instinctively to Rick. She might not be able to remember, but her body did. Her heart did. It was just her mind that was a little damaged.
She felt his eyes. Burning. Willing her to turn and look back. But she dared not. She didn’t know whether she could
take the anger or rejection that might be there. Right now, the most important thing was to concentrate on this.
Grandmother, help me feed the hungry ghosts
. She sent out the silent prayer, knowing how the world around her was going to come crashing down.
She spoke up again. “Agent Harden, my husband, is bound by his oath in office not to reveal classified information. The operation that brought about his demotion is one of those cases that no one could dig up unless they knew where the bodies are buried.” She glared directly at the panel. “I happen to be one of those buried bodies. Since I’m officially dead, I guess I can break the code of secrecy and reveal as much classified information as I want.”
“How could you be alive and your own husband not know you?”
“Sir, if you look at my picture in that file, you will see that I don’t exactly look like Leah Harden. And ten years do change a woman’s youthful features, I’m sad to admit.” She took another breath. “After my capture, along with others, we were interrogated. I was tortured and raped repeatedly, and later, when it was obvious my government wasn’t acknowledging any of us or would come to save us, I was administered mind-altering drugs to try to make me talk.”
She closed her eyes for a second, then softly added, “They wiped out everything, including hope. It’s hard to hold on to memory when your body isn’t your own, and every day they dehumanize some part of your body.” Pain and fear. Darkness. Mindlessness. How could one convey to them what that was like? She opened her eyes again. She kept her voice as steady as she could. “I was in captivity for over a year before a special group of commandos broke in and saved the few of us who had survived. I was barely alive. Or sane. It took some time, but the people who saved me pieced together who I was through their own channels. I was told that my fellow operatives and I had been abandoned because it was no longer feasible to negotiate with my captors.
“I have brought a file about the operation I took part in ten years ago and would like to submit it to the committee to
read. You will find names, dates, and places of the operation, the agents involved and the top secret project we were working on at that time.
“But I also want to put a human side to the file. I, Leah Harden, am the only survivor of that mission. When I was rescued, my face and mind had been too injured to accept the facts my current agency gave me about who I was. It took a long time to heal.” Nikki breathed out. “A long time.”
Rick had read that when an explosive detonated at close range, the first thing one noticed was disorientation of the senses. Loss of hearing. Dizziness. Random thoughts that made no sense. Time slowed down and sped up.
At that last moment, when he had caught sight of Nikki’s neck, the oddest thought had crossed his mind, that if he kissed her there, he would find a small black mole just under the left earlobe. He wondered whether plastic surgery had taken that away too.
That was right before she started speaking. He had stared hard at her, looking for that mole. Then the world exploded inside his head.
There was a buzzing in the background as he tried to focus on the words being exchanged. He barely caught the questions, like a monsoon wind beating against a window. But he heard her. Every word.
He listened as she related how she was abused after being singled out as an agent. Sleep deprivation. Hunger. Then the inevitable.
A roar howled in him. The pain and anger built as he sat there, holding the glass in his hand like a lifeline. Her voice was soft, but it was concert decibel to him.
“I was raped. Repeatedly. Often. When I was still silent, they started scarring my face and body. The face you see now has undergone five different reconstructive surgeries. After my rescue, it took years for me to adjust to my new ‘reality,’ to build myself back into a civilized person. I hope you understand why I prefer to be known as Nikki.”
A loud crash and murmurs of concern brought Rick back.
He looked at his hand as if it wasn’t his. There was blood oozing out in slow motion. Vaguely he noted that he must have crushed the glass he was holding and cut himself.
Nikki rushed out of her chair. There were some shouts for medical help. People parted to let her through. Rick sat there, ignoring his men asking him whether he was all right.
The blood was bright red, a stark contrast to the gray and blue suits and the sober earth tones. She leaned over and swept away the glass shards on the table.
“Rick?” He looked pale, lines etched deeply around his mouth. His jaw flexed as he turned to her. His eyes seemed the only thing alive, a startling intense forest green against his pallor, and every emotion he was suppressing glowed back at her and imprinted her soul. She wasn’t sure whether he was aware he had injured himself. “You’re bleeding badly.”
He turned his bloody palm upward and studied it emotionlessly. “So I am,” he agreed. Somebody thrust a handkerchief onto the wound. He calmly wiped away at the gash. “So I am.”
Another person came with a first-aid kit and Nikki stepped aside to let him take care of the injury. All the while his wound was being cleaned up, Rick sat there looking up at her, his eyes traveling over her face, as if he was searching for something.
She stared back, wondering what he saw. The woman he loved was dead, long gone. She never doubted he loved that woman, but what were his feelings toward Nikki? She wasn’t Leah; she didn’t even know which part of her was Leah. Everything she knew about Leah’s life was gathered from files and Intel sources. Everything she was today was rebuilt, from the inside out. She wasn’t that woman in the files. She was Nikki. And just like that, her center shook with another flash of memory.
The Rick she had loved had been a cocky, passionate man, who never deliberated longer than ten minutes. He had laughed a lot back then, and ignored the bureaucrats who hindered his job, barely able to keep up with the paper
work and reports of his assignments, and had often stepped on a few toes to get things done his way. The man sitting there devouring her with his eyes was no longer the man she had married, either. He, too, had rebuilt himself, from the inside out.
Her head hurt from the sudden bursts of images. Rick and Leah holding hands. Rick and
her,
she amended. Both of them rolling down a bank of snow after tobogganing down. She had ended up under him, screaming from the joyride and the “accidental” rollout. He had snow in his hair, eyebrows, lashes. And the love in his eyes had taken her breath away. She remembered thinking that she would always love the color green because his eyes were so alive with joy and tenderness. He had leaned down, his lips a mere breath from hers.
“Kiss me, Lee, kiss me like you would never let me go.”
She had hooked her arm around his neck. Tugged. And had given in to the taste of him and snow and fresh air. And love.
The image fuzzed in slow motion, faded, and Nikki’s head pounded like a sledgehammer. She gave in to the pain, and everything went black.
Rick didn’t care whether he bled to death. The gash was nothing compared to what he was feeling inside. Nothing compared to what Leah had gone through. Nikki, he corrected mentally. She was Nikki now.
He recalled his first sight of her in the elevator, how he had felt that a ghost had just appeared, but his past had haunted him the last ten years, so his mind had readily dismissed it. His suspicion had grown but there was no way to explain the inexplicable—here was a woman who reminded him of his dead wife but everything about her was different. Her facial expressions. The way she talked. Her fear of being touched.
Yet he had tried to force the issue on her, over and over, hoping to uncover something. Exactly what, he had no idea—but he had known he couldn’t resist her, even if she had some agenda against him. Did she remember him at all? She was responsive but her fear was palpable. No won
der he had found that strangely erotic. Something in him had known it was Leah. And something in her had recognized him.
Nikki’s dark eyes were gleaming behind a sheen of tears. She looked fragile, as if she would break apart any second, but he knew that she had the inner strength of a dozen men. No one could have gone through what she did and turned out so serene, so beautiful inside and out.
Rick watched her eyes lose focus, and as she slumped forward he shoved aside the person taking care of his hand to keep her from falling onto the floor. There were more concerned voices—questions, suggestions, exclamations. He just wanted them to stop.
With Nikki in his arms, he turned around to face the panel. Some of them were just sitting there taking in the whole drama. Fucking bureaucrats. Couldn’t do a thing without a piece of paper to save their lives. His eyes caught Admiral Madison, who was on the way off the small podium.
“Move. Let her have some air,” he ordered.
“I’m going,” Rick stated quietly. “Indict me, replace me, fire me—I don’t give a damn.”
“No one’s getting indicted or replaced or fired,” the admiral retorted. Rick noted that he didn’t appear surprised by Nikki’s revelation. “The review board can’t go on. I’m sure there are many questions we need Nikki to answer. I’ll take a motion to suspend the meeting for the day and will have someone let you know when we’ll resume.”
“Agent Harden can’t just leave before the vote. He might be a security risk. He might be gone by tomorrow.”
Admiral Madison regarded the EYES representative for a moment. “Would it calm your fears if I personally vouch for Agent Harden and Miss Taylor?” he pleasantly asked. “I assure you, my word is considered quite good around this small town.”
The man swallowed, blinked, then shrugged. “Sure. Adjourn the meeting.” Then he added defiantly, “but we will be questioning Agent Harden tomorrow concerning certain unauthorized files pulled with his access code. One of my
agents will be testifying, and what I’ve seen so far is incriminating enough for me to give fair warning that you, Admiral, should be wary of your trust in Agent Harden. He’d better bring legal counsel.”
Admiral Madison’s smile was not much warmer than the glacier blue of his eyes. Rick admired the ease with which he could intimidate a man with a mere look. “I’m sure Agent Harden will do what he thinks is best,” he said. He turned to Rick. “Go, and expect my call.”
Rick nodded, holding Nikki close. The admiral had already returned his attention to the panel, addressing the members quickly. Cam opened the door for Rick.
“Where are you going, Agent Harden? We need this information,” the clerk taking notes called out.
He paused, then answered. “I’m taking my wife home.”
S
he was going to die in this darkness. She was hungry, hungry all the time. She tried to remember all her favorite foods. Butter pound cake marbled with chocolate. Something with chicken and almonds—she could not recall the name of the dish. She panicked. She had to remember the name of the dish.
Nothing. She spent a long time trying to remember. What was that dish? Chicken with almonds…She knew she loved it because she could recite the recipe like a favorite song. A pinch of basil. Two teaspoons of honey. Ground white pepper. Yet the name of the recipe eluded her.
And strawberries. She loved strawberries—she could almost smell the delicious sweetness of the fruit. She wondered whether it was the season for strawberries right now, whether they were fat and juicy this year, or…when was the last time she had a taste of it?
She frowned. Someone had fed them to her. She stared into the darkness, hugging her shoulders as she tried to catch some missing picture in her mind. It was a man. She was quite sure it was a man, and he smelled like strawberries. He fed her strawberries with his mouth.
She shuddered, and scurried back against the wall behind her. No. No. She was mixing things up. Furiously, she scrubbed her mouth with her hand, squeezing her eyes tightly. They were touching her all over. Oh God, stop. Don’t scream. Don’t.
Food. Her breathing was raspy, coming out in animal grunts. The echoes beat at her, a reminder that she was there alone in the darkness. She was going to die here. No food, she thought. The hunger pangs gnawed at her insides.
Strawberry shortcake. Strawberry milkshake. Strawberry daiquiri. Her fear was winning as she heard herself hyperventilating. She mustn’t make a sound. They wanted her to scream in this quiet darkness.
Please, please, please let it be soon. Please, please, please. It had to be right now.
Then she heard it. The chime out there somewhere. The most beautiful sound in the world, coming in through the walls, caressing her soul, calming everything. She zeroed in on it, hearing its familiar tones as the chime called to her.
Grandmother, she whispered.
A long time later, she was pulled outside, pushed, prodded, pinched. She was calm. Nothing was going to break through.
“So, what is on my menu today?” she asked.
“Do you have anything to tell us?”
“Yes, I love strawberry daiquiris.”
“Cut off her hair.”
Nikki opened her eyes. She screamed. And screamed. An opening with daylight. Oh God. She rolled out of the bed and started crawling toward it. Someone pulled her to her feet. His arms felt strong as they held her prisoner. She struggled, screaming, kicking.
“No! Don’t! Don’t!”
“Nikki!” Rick held her tightly, sitting down on the bed as he tried to calm her down. He had just come out of the bathroom when he heard her screams and had run back up to the room. She was incoherent, gasping out garbled sentences. He frowned, trying to understand her from the few words he could make out—“food,” “recipe,” “my hair.”
“Your hair?” he asked. Going by instinct, he pulled her braid over her shoulder. “Baby, your hair?”
She was sobbing into his shoulder. “Don’t cut my hair.”
He sat there, thunderstruck. He had thought his heart was
already broken when he became a widower, but pain pierced through him as he realized the cause of Nikki’s nightmare. “It’s all right,” he soothed. “I’m not going to cut your hair. It’s beautiful. No one will cut it, I promise. Nikki, wake up, baby. It’s a nightmare. You’re safe.”
His scent reassured her. It wasn’t the sickly sweaty smell of…She fought against those demons, desperately clawing her way back into sanity. It was Rick’s arms around her. His scent. His voice. Those nightmares often came back when her defenses were down. From practice, she willed her heartbeat to slow down, burying her face in Rick’s shoulder, inhaling him as she breathed, needing him inside her as his arms held her securely. He crooned against the top of her head, running his hand down the length of her braid. She shuddered again, pushing away the memory of tufts of shredded hair.
“I’m not afraid of the dark,” she said aloud. Her voice was hoarse.
Rick fought against hugging her tightly. She just had a nightmare, and he was having one right now imagining what it was that had frightened her so much. He could deal with the anger growing like an avalanche inside him. He could handle the chaos that was his career right now. But he was unprepared for the pain slicing him in tiny pieces as he put the truth together. The truth was far, far more intolerable. He had thought himself punished enough. He now knew he was irredeemable. Unforgivable.
“Rick?”
“Yes?”
“I’m okay.”
He almost laughed out loud as bitterness swelled up his throat. Even now, she was trying to reassure him. He wanted to shake her. Wanted to yell at her. He didn’t say anything.
“It’s just one of those nightmares. They don’t come often anymore, and this one just caught me by surprise.”
“Nightmares tend to do that,” he agreed bitterly. “Tell me about it.”
“No.”
“Tell me, Nikki,” he said. “I have to know.”
Nikki shook her head, burrowing deeper into his chest. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to tell him the details. There was a catch in his voice, and without looking at him, she knew he wasn’t ready to hear everything. The truth had to be told but it must be done when they were both in control of their emotions, in daylight when she was comfortable, in a time when they could trust each other fully.
Right now, she felt dirty, off-kilter. She needed to climb back into her skin. She wished her wind chime were close by. “Are we at your apartment?”
“Yes. What do you need, baby?”
“I want a bath.”
There was a short pause. “I’ll get one ready for you. Will you be all right now?”
She wanted him to kiss her but he settled her back into the bed before getting up slowly. The loss of his body warmth made her wish she hadn’t asked for a bath. “Yes,” she said.
“I’ll be back soon,” he told her. His hand touched her cheek and caressed her braid, his knuckles brushing her body tenderly. He left the bedroom door open and she was grateful for the light illuminating his strong lean body as he left. The light caught part of his face and body as he gave a backward glance. He looked detached, unfathomable. Nikki looked at the empty doorway, feeling alone and needing him back with her.
Rick turned on the water in his big spa tub. He had never felt so drained. He sat down on the commode and looked around. He had put in the best state-of-the-art luxuries in this bathroom. Leah had wanted one of those fancy bathrooms featured in expensive magazines and he hadn’t cared how much it cost; he would create it. He didn’t care that she wasn’t around to enjoy it. This was for her. At that time, he needed to do it.
He had spent hours on the project, paying more money to get the plumbing done his way and renovating the whole place. There was a whirlpool. A detachable showerhead was put in at easy reaching distance. The shower-steam room had
strategically placed fixtures that could be used individually or all together. He had put in everything he could think of, from marble tub to heated towel racks to special imported tiles that he had installed himself.
Rick sat there listening to the running water, the sound reverberating in the bathroom that he had dedicated to his dead wife. He had kept his whole life stark and simple ever since his loss, and anyone who had seen this place was shocked by the luxury. They hadn’t understood, of course. This was his shrine for his wife.
He ran a weary hand through his hair. Except for one thing. His wife was alive. And this…bathroom…would mean nothing to her at all. It held the deepest significance to him but what good was that now? He had expended all his love in here, tucked it away under the tile and grout, commemorating it every time he came in here, and all along, the person to whom he had dedicated it had been suffering somewhere. He had given up on her being alive too easily and she had suffered for it. Guilt gnawed ravenously at his conscience.
Rick bowed his head, the deafening roar in his head shutting out the water splashing into the tub. Nikki had observed that her hero had been running and going nowhere. She was right. He had been a fucking coward.
“Rick?” Nikki called out softly from the doorway.
She couldn’t stand being alone, so after a few minutes, had followed him. Emotion squeezed at her heart when she saw him so wretched, sitting there amid the beautiful bathroom, repeatedly raking a hand through his thick hair.
His head came up and she caught her breath at the anguish in his eyes. “Rick?” she repeated uncertainly.
“I have nothing to give you.” His voice was a strangled echo over the running water. “I failed you. All I did was—this.”
He disgustedly gestured around him. Nikki frowned, unsure of what he meant. The bathroom was something out of a magazine, hinting at the hidden passion underneath the cool gaze of the man who owned it. It was a big contrast to the rest
of the apartment. She paused, really paying attention to the surroundings.
Bathing and the bath area had always been very private to her. It was part of civilization, a reminder of humanity. Once taken away, a person—a woman—was easily reduced to an animal. She had seen it with her own eyes, when some of her friends had exchanged their bodies for the small comfort of clean water.
This bathroom, with its lavishness, quieted her ravaged soul. Her nightmare receded into the background as she took it all in. The water to clean. The beauty to take away the bad dreams. The luxury to chase away the memories. And some instinct within her told her that this place meant something to the man she loved.
She walked tentatively toward him as he got up to turn off the water. The noise became a soft lazy slapping of currents.
“The bath is ready,” Rick announced woodenly, as he methodically pulled out some bottles from a rack nearby. She recognized them as the ones she had brought the night before. “Take your time. I’ll be outside if you need me.”
He was standing only a few feet away but the day’s events had put a gulf between them. He was treating her very carefully, so unlike the Rick Harden who had sensed something familiar about, and had gone after, her. Now, she realized, he was going to keep that distance.
Her chin came up a fraction. He was afraid to touch her because he didn’t know who she was. She was Leah and Nikki. Maybe he didn’t know which of the two he wanted. Maybe he still didn’t believe. It couldn’t be easy to reconcile all his past feelings with how he felt now, especially when she was nothing like he remembered.
But she knew one thing. She wanted him. And she wanted him to desire her for what she had become. There was only one way to convince him to find out and that was to go to him, to show him that she was real.
She took the few steps. He didn’t move away. So untouchable. So unrelentingly hard. She laid one hand on his chest and felt the muscle jump.
“I…” She licked her lips, trying not to rush the words. “I need you now, Rick. In here. Inside me.”
Heat flared, deepening the green of his eyes, and receded. “You’re afraid of me.”
“I’m afraid of men,” she told him, “and I’m getting tired of repeating myself. I’m not afraid of you.”
Rick gritted his teeth. It would be so easy to give in and just take. These past ten years, he had taken whenever he felt the need to bury the growing darkness inside him. He understood his own sexuality too well. For him, it was a weapon as well as a way to hide. He wasn’t going to do that to Nikki, even though every molecule in him was screaming for her.
Both her hands came up, and she started to unbutton his shirt. His jaw clamped together as he resisted the urge to gather her in his arms and take her back into the bedroom. Her dark brown eyes were large, filled with fear and determination, as she finished her task. He understood how tough this was. She must hate the sight of a man’s body. He was about to stop her torment when she touched his bare chest. He went very still.
Her hands glided downward, cool and trembling slightly, exploring his nipples, his ribs, his stomach. Softly. Gently. Her fingers trailed up the furrow in the middle of his torso, and he almost groaned as she took that final step, replacing her hands with her lips. His head snapped back and he closed his eyes at the first wet touch of her tongue. She placed kisses across his chest. Her mouth closed around one nipple.
He grasped the back of her head, fighting the urge to haul her closer. “Nikki,” he rasped, opening his eyes to look down at her. Her teeth grazed the sensitive skin and he couldn’t help it. He pulled her closer. “Nikki, you have to stop, or I won’t be able to help myself.”
She released his nipple, nuzzling her nose in his chest hair for a few seconds. “That’s what I want,” she murmured.
Stepping back, she reached back to unzip her dress and pulled it down her shoulders. Rick sucked in his breath as she unhooked her bra. Her breasts spilled out. He quickly glanced
up, and she met his eyes steadily. Fear still lurked back there but she continued anyway.
“You’d better decide soon. The water is going to be cold,” she whispered.
“It stays heated,” he whispered back.
“Oh.”
She was down to her panties now, and his body reacted fiercely to her nudity. Her hands hesitated on the waistband. He waited for her to retreat, as she would have done the last few times they were together, if he had let her. He waited, not even aware he was holding his breath, as she hooked her thumbs inside the small article of clothing and slowly revealed herself to him, inch by torturous inch.
This wasn’t any planned striptease. Her skin had a rosy flush and her breathing had quickened. She kept her eyes averted, bending forward to finish her task.
Rick stopped her, crouching down before her. “Let me,” he said.
Nikki held on to his broad shoulders as his hands went around her hips. Fever engulfed her whole body, and the feel of his sure hands against her thighs made her knees weak. She was naked. She was really standing naked in front of a man.