14
H
OPE
STARED
AT
THE
CURSOR
on the blank document she’d just opened. Great. The first piece she’d taken in weeks and she couldn’t write a damn thing. Her brain was empty. Empty of everything but what Gage had told her and the fear that came with it—for him and for herself.
No, she had no intention of using the information he’d given her. After the Brandon incident the last place she wanted to work was the
Courier.
But she was a writer, even if she didn’t get to use the skills as often as she liked, and part of her itched to put the details down so she could process them for herself.
How else was she supposed to deal with the horror and pain and guilt he’d shared with her? Just the thought of him being beaten and tortured...he was dealing with it a hell of a lot better than she would be.
If that had been her, she’d have been a quivering pile of fear.
Gage was so damn strong. Too strong for his own good.
With a sigh of frustration, Hope finally gave in, knowing she wouldn’t get any actual work done until she’d spit her emotions out onto the page.
Everything faded away as her world coalesced to nothing but the white rectangle on her screen and the black words racing across it. She set down details—some in his words and some in her own. But mostly Hope wrote about how much she admired him for protecting the men he was responsible for. The look in his eyes as he’d poured everything out to her. How strong and honorable and broken he was.
Pretty soon the ramblings turned into what she could do to help him. It was an agenda for herself that ended with two bold words—love him.
They scared her so she erased them.
And just in time because Gage stormed into her office, slamming her door closed behind him.
Fury blazed from his eyes. She’d expected him to be a little miffed when he woke and she was gone, but really, this was too much.
“Why did you leave?” he asked, his voice deep and dark.
She’d been prepared for the question, although she had to admit that his jarring entrance had set her off her game. Still, she trotted out the bluff she’d prepared, anyway. “Because I didn’t feel right sleeping beneath your parents’ roof.”
“Bullshit.”
Hope’s heart stuttered in her chest. His golden eyes narrowed, zeroing straight on her. She couldn’t help but feel open and vulnerable. Could he see just how much she cared about him? Would he use it against her?
How was she going to extricate her heart from this fix without losing pieces of herself?
“You got what you wanted last night and decided it wasn’t worth sticking around anymore.”
Hope opened her mouth to issue another argument, but had to shut it again when his words sank in and she realized she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Excuse me?”
“Last night. The minute I told you about Afghanistan you disappeared.”
She felt sick.
“My leaving had nothing to do with what you told me.”
Which technically wasn’t true. What he’d told her had everything to do with why she’d left, but not the way he obviously thought.
His jaw flexed. He took a menacing step toward her and growled, “Liar. There’s guilt all over your face. Trust me, I’m intimate with the emotion and recognize it when I see it.”
Hope’s first reaction was to crumble beneath the weight of his anger. It would have been easy to do. But that wasn’t who she was. She refused to let him have that kind of hold over her. It was exactly what she’d always been afraid of, that she would lose herself to him and then lose
him.
“You’re right. I do feel guilty, but not for the reason you seem to think. Everything you told me last night...” The helplessness she’d felt looking down at him, knowing that he could never change and if she really loved him she wouldn’t want him to, resurfaced. “It scared the crap out of me, Gage.”
Hope sent the chair at her knees rolling backward. The added space gave her room to walk away. Slipping around the desk, she placed it between them and felt stronger with the barrier there. Safer. Not from him, but from herself.
“Why do you think I never tried to take our friendship further when we were younger?”
“Because you weren’t interested.”
“Wrong. I was interested. Very interested. Did you never wonder why I didn’t date anyone else?”
His teeth clipped off a single word. “No.”
“I didn’t want to date anyone else. No guy could measure up to you. That damn sparkle in your eyes. The charming way your mouth curls higher on one side when you smile. Really smile. The relentless way you attack life. Your mischievousness. Or the way you stood up against your father and refused to do what he wanted. Strength and integrity, they went bone-deep with you even back then.”
Confusion crossed his face, crowding out the hard expression. Slowly, he sank into the chair she’d just abandoned. “Then why did you say no?”
“Because right along with that determination came a breakneck need for something more. You were searching—for acceptance, understanding, I have no idea what. The problem was you always pushed—yourself, your friends, your parents, me. You weren’t content to throw yourself into the abyss, you wanted company.
“I had plans, Gage. Dreams of my own, and I couldn’t take the risk that letting you in would mean I’d lose that for myself. Lose my own strength because it couldn’t compare to yours.”
He swallowed. The long column of his tanned throat worked tantalizingly, drawing her gaze and distracting her. That was exactly what she was talking about! Just being in the same room with him had the ability to make everything else unimportant.
If he touched her right now she’d be powerless to stop him from doing whatever he wanted—and damn the fact that she was in her office, in the middle of the day, behind schedule on a new story that needed to go to press.
“And then you joined the army. Probably the most perfect job for you. Every day pushing you physically, challenging you and filled with danger. And I knew eventually you’d push too far and end up dead.”
To protect herself, Hope dropped her gaze from his to the top of her immaculate desk. It didn’t help. She still knew he was there and wanted desperately to say, “The hell with everything else,” and just give in to what she wanted. Him.
But she couldn’t do that. Not when cold sweat popped out across her brow at the mere thought of throwing caution to the wind and telling him that she loved him and wanted him in her life.
Between the two of them, Gage was the caution-throwing one.
A strangled sound from deep in his throat had Hope jerking her gaze back to his.
He didn’t have to say a single word. She knew from the expression on his face and the direction of his eyes exactly what he was looking at. The document she’d been writing. About everything he’d told her last night.
She protested, “That isn’t what you think.” The words were guttural and jumbled up as she tried to push them out faster than her lips and tongue could move.
With deliberation, he reached for the mouse on her desk and with his newly bandaged thumb rolled the little wheel in the center. She tried to snatch it from his grasp, but he just picked it up and moved it out of her reach. Damn wireless technology.
“That isn’t for the paper, Gage. I swear.”
His skin turned red before blanching white. “Funny. It’s on your work computer at the paper. It reads like a feature article.”
After several tense moments, Gage hung his head. His hands spread wide across the gleaming surface of her desk. Carefully, he stood. The wood groaned as he pushed against it.
Silence strangled her. The pressure of it was a living thing, squeezing the life right out of her. “Look at me,” she whispered, deeply afraid of what she might see.
And she had every right to be.
Gradually, Gage lifted his head and looked at her with eyes so blank they could have been dead. But they weren’t. They were so much worse.
Uncaring. Unfeeling. Indifferent.
How was that possible?
“You know what? Publish your article, Hope. You deserve it. You worked harder for it than anyone else. I was offered a heck of a lot of money from all sorts of news agencies and talk shows. But none of them offered to sleep with me. You had the perfect trump card, didn’t you? Something you always knew I wanted and no one else could give. That kind of commitment should be rewarded.”
His words were a punch straight to the gut. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs heaved. Her mouth worked, but nothing flowed into her body. The world went black and bright lights popped across the desolate space.
Somehow she made it over to one of the chairs in front of her desk. She had no idea how long she sat there, staring blankly into space. But when she finally blinked back to reality she was alone.
Outside the open door the familiar sounds of a working newspaper greeted her. A telephone. Someone typing on a keyboard. Murmured voices.
They weren’t enough.
When had they stopped being enough?
* * *
A
SOFT
RAIN
PATTERED
down onto the visor covering his face. He’d thrown on a helmet, the rain and Hope’s admonishing voice thick in his ear. He couldn’t even get away from her here.
In retaliation—and to show that she didn’t matter—Gage pushed the bike faster. He raced down Main and elicited evil glances from several of the people inside the shops.
Finally! Things were returning to normal. Maybe now everyone would stop walking on eggshells around him and treat him like regular Gage Harper, disappointing mayor’s son and boy who let the goats loose in the high school, instead of some exalted war hero.
He didn’t want the title. Didn’t deserve it.
The devil inside him urged him to just let go. To forget everything. Afghanistan. Tanner. Micah. Hope.
As he twisted the throttle, the bike roared beneath him. Gage drove faster. The pavement was slick and it required all of his attention to keep the growling Harley on the road, which was a good thing because then he didn’t have to think about what he’d left behind.
Although, the plan didn’t work very well. Images of Hope still managed to creep in. Her eyes spitting fire at him the night of the cocktail party. Wet and bedraggled outside the bowling alley. Staring up at him through hot, passion-filled eyes as he drove deep inside her. The way she laughed and argued and
knew
him.
Dammit! How was he supposed to just let her go? To believe that she’d faked everything—okay, not
everything—
to get what she wanted?
Even knowing what she’d done—manipulating him for her own ends—he didn’t want to let her go. She was the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time. Possibly ever.
He couldn’t believe that she’d done it just for the story. Maybe he was naive, but everything inside him said there was more. That she really cared about him and always had. The words that she’d said first, her reasons for rejecting him when they were younger, rang in his ears. And they rang true.
When he was with her the doubts he’d been having no longer mattered. The restlessness he’d always fought against disappeared. He was steadier. On firmer ground.
He saw the possibilities. His life was dangerous and transient. He went where he was needed for as long as necessary. And in the past twelve years he hadn’t worried about what he was leaving behind. Not once.
He did now. With her he wanted more than just a good time and a warm goodbye. And always had.
Gage was a fighter. That’s what he did. It’s what he was good at. So why was he willing to just turn tail and run away from this? From her?
He’d fought for his life. For the lives of the men he was responsible for. He’d looked dangerous, ruthless and sadistic men in the face and laughed at their attempts to break him.
The reality was they couldn’t because nothing they’d done to him had mattered. The physical pain he could survive.
The thought of losing Hope sent him into a mental tailspin. Now that his anger was spent, he had nothing to keep the throbbing ache of her betrayal at bay.
It rushed him, blinding him for several seconds.
The loss of concentration and winding, slippery roads made a terrible combination. One moment the bike was racing across open road. The next he was spinning out of control.
He and the Harley hurtled through the air, the tires squealing uselessly as they tried to grab on to asphalt. He headed off the road at an odd angle, bumping across grass and gravel and heading straight for a grove of trees thirty yards away.
Not good.
Metal and wood connected with a terrible crunching sound. Jagged pain tore through his leg, stealing his breath. His shoulder connected with something hard. He heard a bone snap. He was coherent enough to wonder why it didn’t hurt.
He and the bike came to rest between two trees. Through the starburst across his visor he could see the brighter color of wood where something—probably metal—had gouged into the bark. A wheel spun drunkenly.
He was still breathing, and conscious. Both good signs.
And then the pain hit. It radiated through him, worse than anything he’d ever felt in his life. It was everywhere.
He had just enough strength to pull the cell phone out of his jacket pocket. After saying a small prayer of thanks that it still worked, he dialed 911.
And then passed out.
* * *
H
OPE
HAD
FINALLY
DECIDED
to go home. It wasn’t as if she was in any frame of mind to work. One of the other writers would have to pick up the piece. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to reassign something because she didn’t have time to write it.
And yet, she still kept trying.
Finally, in the safety of her own home, she’d broken down, crying until she didn’t have any more to give.
She’d known he would hurt her.
The problem was, she couldn’t completely blame him, could she? Even if she hadn’t intended that piece for publication, she had manipulated him with the express intention of getting what she wanted—whether he liked it or not.