Her second didn’t proclaim love but showed her how much pain she could handle, to keep love away. She hadn’t known it then, but he would have killed her if he hadn’t been arrested. At that point, she was still shiny enough to want to live. There’d never been a third, because she learned that the longer you stayed with someone, the more they pushed the limits. So it came down to longevity with a man meant she’d fall in love and get hurt or she’d die.
Instead, she tried to learn how to get what she needed, that closeness with a man, without jeopardizing her heart. Eventually, the pain drove her to see how close she could come to death. It became a game, like baiting a bear or a tiger. And despite being a hard bitch with a death wish, she still craved that closeness, the kissing and skin contact, wanted it more than she desired the orgasm. Especially from Jake.
But something changed when he slid that ring on her finger, that huge circle of gold with a big blue stone, rimmed with the name of his high school. Stupid but true. So why did she feel differently now, after years of training to be the tough girl?
Maybe it was the way he’d looked at her as he said those vows earlier in the yard, so earnest and serious, meaning every word. Silly, goofy, beautiful words. Impulsive words.
Vows like those, spoken from the lips of a confirmed man whore were powerful. Heady. Enough to make her feel them and begin to believe she was worth them, even after all she had shared. She had told him she was a slut with a death wish, and he wanted to marry her for the weekend. He treated her with kindness and flattery, loved her cooking, praised her riding, enjoyed her company under that big tree of his. He looked at her as if she were someone special, beautiful and unique, not someone used and tarnished.
Life had taught her, though, that he would change. The true Jake would surface, and she would pay. She would still be second best.
She bit her lip and ran her fingers through the beads again. If she listened to her girly side, the one who liked weddings and pink, that side would tell her to take the chance. Let down the walls, remove the barbed wire maze so she could take the bondage tape off her heart and let it feel again. Let Jake continue to see the real her she’d given him a glimpse of when he slipped his ring on her finger.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts and checked the time, shocked to realize the horses would be looking for dinner. She went out and fed them, hay first, then grain as Jake had instructed, checking their water. The late spring evening filled with the scent of sweet hay mingling with the rhythmic chewing and rustling.
She read somewhere once that the heart of a man could be judged by how he treated his horse. Jake treated Jessa like she walked on water. Tonka, not so much, but the gelding was full of himself, Jake had said, and deserved a good ass kicking like any young male. But Jessa he coddled, feeding her carrots, petting and cooing to her in a way that might not be considered manly. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the way of a man in love with his first girl.
“You guys love Jake, don’t you?”
The mare’s head popped up, maybe because she was looking for her master, most likely because she wanted to drink.
“Would you be jealous if I tried to love him, too?”
Jessa finished her drink and snorted, blowing bits of hay everywhere. Tia laughed and decided her answer could be taken either way. The mare might share and she might not. Spoken like a true female.
It was also a female’s prerogative to change her mind. Tia decided then and there to abandon her fuck-him-or-die attitude. She wouldn’t hide any longer. She’d go to him tonight, as a true bride, and make love to him the way a woman should. With her heart as well as her body.
This was her deepest, darkest fantasy, to love a man, surrender to him fully. To take her bondage-taped heart out of the barbed wire maze she’d constructed around it and to offer it on a silver platter. She wouldn’t offer it in the spirit of love—she wasn’t ready for that, even if she had known him for months and months.
She’d offer it as she’d offered her pocketknife, a symbol that she’d allow this wedding role-play to continue and embrace it. At the end, on Monday, she’d decide if the heart needed to return to the maze. If so, nothing lost. Her heart already hurt. But if she took the chance and Jake realized he could put Tia before Kate…
It would be worth it. For both of them.
Her mind made up, Tia went into the house and twirled around in the kitchen, planning the seduction that would take place this evening. This time they’d dance, but it wouldn’t be that chaste rocking back and forth from yesterday. Today there would be dirty dancing, with grinding hips. She’d kiss him, he’d carry her up the stairs, and this time, when he made love to her, she would come because she sought the pain that stemmed from her heart instead of hiding from it.
Tia went up to the bedroom to see what she needed to prepare for their special evening of wedding sex, take two. It was odd to see the room now, with both of their things mingled. A pair of his boots on the floor next to her sneakers, a spare bra over his sweats on the rocking chair. His bedside table held his gun and a watch. Hers held her smaller gun and a pair of earrings. She smiled at that—such was the life of spies. At least they felt comfortable enough to leave the weapons in the bedroom. She often carried her gun with her at home. She’d bet a quarter he had another gun in the truck.
His second bag was open on the bed, the one she hadn’t searched yet. Tempting. So tempting to know what he had. And, if she got really technical, he had searched her bags earlier and used her nipple clamps on her, the sneak. Yes, it was wrong to peek, but she was a spy, damn it, and training told her if she didn’t go in that bag, she could die. Training also told her if he had something to hide, he would have taken the bag with him. So no, don’t peek in the bag. But Jake’s leaving it there meant it was free game in the spy world.
“Fuck it.” Training won. She sat down on the bed next to his bag and delved in. A sweatshirt was on top, and it smelled so good, fresh, that she wondered what laundry detergent he used. A bit lower, under a clean pair of jeans, was a notebook. She leafed through it.
The first page was filled with notes. Most of it was some sort of code, probably notes from his last mission, which would make sense. Paris was on one line and Kate’s name underlined three times, surrounded by a code of numbers and letters.
Along the edge, he’d doodled crazy shapes, a stick figure with a smoking gun, a dead stick figure bleeding out over the page, and at the very bottom, away from everything, was Kate’s name again. In neat block letters with a little frame around it.
Tia shut the notebook, a bit disturbed. It shouldn’t bother her that he had written
her
name—she’d been his partner then. But it did. Especially the name at the bottom, alone, in neat block letters. A little frame around it.
Kate
. Beautiful, perfect Kate, with blonde hair and bombs, roses and ponies.
The pain that had been absent all day surfaced, stabbed, and ached. Unable to stop snooping, she carefully pulled out a few more items of clothing, stacking everything very neatly so she could put it all back the way she had found it. Spies were good at that. His cell phone charger, a second knife, a box of ammo, and then there was nothing left except a scrap of blue cloth in the corner.
She pulled it out, held it up in her hands, and dropped it as if it were on fire. A garter—lacy, light blue with a small pink rose on one side. Kate’s.
She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’d used this bag when Kate and Chase had married. Maybe it was forgotten. But maybe, just maybe, he left it there, because it was special to him.
Tia glared. This was what she got for snooping. She put his items back in the bag, careful to layer it all in the original sequence, with every wrinkle in place. She kept the garter, though. For now. Temptation beckoned to her insecurities so she rose and began to inspect the rest of the room, the woman in her a little scorned.
The dresser held more clothes—jeans, T-shirts, underwear. Nothing special. The bottom drawer, though, held paperwork. She pulled it out and found a jackpot of photos—scenery, planes, Jake much younger with another man who resembled him enough to be a twin—Aaron probably. She closed that album, and then at the very bottom, she found her proof.
Inside the last book was basically a photo shrine to Kate. A year’s worth of photos, all in one place. Kate in a bikini, Kate in a deep blue gown, Kate in combat boots and special ops gear, holding an assault rifle. A few of Kate and Chase together. Some of the beautiful redhead she’d seen him with in that Parisian bar. And finally, she found one of Kate in Jake’s arms as they danced, Kate looking at him with adoration, Jake with the same look on his face. Kate looked about to speak, her pink lips amused. Tia slammed the book shut before she could hear what Blondie had to say.
One photo slid to the floor and Tia picked it up. Kate sat on the tire swing out front, where they had said their wedding vows. The elements of autumn sparkled around her, the biggest smile on her beautiful face. Jake had lied about never bringing women home. He had brought her here.
“That, right there, is why this fake wedding was a bad idea,” Tia said aloud, because the part of her that dreamed of weddings and pink needed to hear it, loud and clear. An unguarded heart meant pain—lots of it. And Jake was a very good liar. You had to be if you wanted to survive as a spy.
Unfortunately, the spy was never far from the man. And though he treated his horses well, they probably didn’t care that he loved Kate first. If Kate had carrots, the horses were fine with it. So Tia put the book back and layered the other items on top with spy expertise, all the while wanting to shred those photos. Burn them in the driveway with the garter. Launch grenades at them from the far end of the pasture.
She sighed and, instead, did what any sane, smart woman would do—guarded the heart. She proverbially put it back into the maze, behind the barbed wire and the mines, back inside the shreds of insecurity, bad memories, and doubt that made up the high walls. The bondage tape came out and, with two wraps, it was secure. Jake was nothing but lies. Smoke and mirrors. Deception with a handgun, knives, and a mouth that lied for a living.
Jake had talked the talk during their wedding vows. He’d walked the walk as he had led her to the backyard to say those vows. But when it came down to Monday, Jake would still be in love with another woman, plain and simple.
How could she compete? Kate was a genius bomb maker, beautiful, well-trained, and unfortunately, Jake had sampled her charms in bed—probably better than anything Tia had to offer if he was smitten and he was their third. A man’s heart didn’t heal up and move on after being branded by a woman like that. It just didn’t. Not in a weekend. And frankly, she was tired of the fantasy.
Tia sighed, put Jake’s bag on the floor and curled up on the bed. The tears that threatened finally came, spilling out slowly, the sadness a dull ache that grew and sliced at her heart. It hurt more this time, probably because Jake’s charm had taken the numbness away.
She suddenly understood Jake’s perverse need for the rules, because a world where your heart was out in the open, unguarded was not a healthy reality. Come tomorrow, the fuck-him-or-die scenario had to be played full force, as if her life depended on it. He was too powerful, too charming, too… Tia closed her eyes. He was too perfect for her.
And Kate was too perfect for Jake.
****
Jake pulled into the driveway long after dark, cursing Chase for this fucking errand that had taken him from Tia’s arms. What should have been an hour of torture had turned into two. An accident shutting down the rain-soaked road turned it into three, then four. He’d called Tia, but there’d been no answer. She must have left her phone as she went out to offer the horses their dinner, so he sent her a text, promising to make this up to her until the wee hours of the morning.
The crib had been beautiful, and he remembered it fondly as he parked in front of the barn. Perfection in handcrafted wood, exactly what the heir to the spydom deserved. He’d called the Lord of the Spies, and together they had mulled over the different options until he finally asked to speak to Kate. Why didn’t she, the spydom’s queen, care about what they picked for her baby?
“Honestly, Jake. I don’t care. Just pick something out.” She had sounded tired. Defeated. Beaten down, and so unlike his Kate that he wanted to shake her.
“You should care. Damn it, grow a set of balls and give the man an opinion.”
“He didn’t ask my opinion when he created this zygote. Why should he ask now?”
He heard Chase in the background, grumbling something, and she told him to fuck off. But her foul language didn’t hold the heat it usually did when she was pissed, and Jake had been alarmed. His Kate lacked fire, and it bothered him to the point that he had ended the call quickly with a promise to put a deposit on the crib. He’d paid for the entire thing because the gift would be perfect, but it still bothered him, Kate’s fireless curse.
Suddenly, it hit him why Kate’s lack of opinion and fire bothered him so much. He realized she had given up, and it hurt him. Kate was a fighter. She didn’t give up, not when she’d fought so hard and long to love Chase. Jake blinked, and thought a minute more.
The tone she had used to curse at her husband sounded suspiciously like Tia when she said, “Whatever you want” to Jake, in and out of the bedroom. Whatever role you want, however I can please you, Husband. It sounded submissive. It had felt submissive, but he realized with growing dread that this was exactly what had bothered him when they first met.
Tia had always felt aloof to him, a little cold. Well, maybe it was hard to be warm when you were leaving the reins to your body hanging over a fence post so anyone could take them. She’d never truly given in and handed them to him.
There’d been no true power exchange. The words and actions said submissive, but you could call a cow whatever you wanted. It was still a cow if you slapped a saddle on it and tried to ride it like a horse. She wasn’t truly submissive.