Authors: Stephanie Tyler
“I don’t think I have the right clothes for this trip,” she said.
“I’ve got some things for you.” He pointed to a bag on the corner of the bed. “You’re going to have to contact your job.”
She nodded. “That won’t be a problem.”
“What about family—you’d better think of something to tell them so you don’t sound any alarms on their end,” he continued.
She longed to wrap her arms around herself, or better yet, to put herself into Nick’s arms and make him forget about weapons and Africa and everything else but her. Instead, she said bluntly, “No one will be worried. I don’t have any family.”
“There’s no one else those men can contact about you?”
“Other than my co-workers? No. No family,” she reiterated.
God, she hated this feeling, as if she was nine years old again, alone and scared because she’d admitted to the nice social worker at school that her mom had been gone for a week and showed no signs of coming back home. In return, that nice woman who’d promised her everything was going to be all right had called the police.
Kaylee had moved in with her grandmother that same evening, had hated that cramped apartment—the way it smelled like chicken soup especially, because that smell was supposed to bring comfort, but there was no comfort with her grandmother. There was only talk of sin and following rules so no one went to hell.
I’m already there, she’d
wanted to tell her grandmother. But she couldn’t bring herself to outright disrespect the woman who took her in and saved her from a life of foster homes. The woman who referred to Kaylee as the child of sin.
Red hair is a sign of the devil
, her grandmother always used to murmur with a disapproving look at Kaylee’s wild locks, which tumbled down past her shoulders.
You and your mother—there was no hope for either of you
.
Aaron had been her escape, her way out. He’d always been so self-assured and protective.
They were friends—best friends—probably should’ve stayed that way instead of trying to pretend it was something more. Things would’ve been better, although in the end, she still would’ve lost him completely.
Nick was watching her carefully. “You like being alone.”
“I got used to it,” she clarified. “There’s a big difference. I’ve been on my own for a long time. Even when I was with Aaron—although I kidded myself into thinking I’d be less lonely, that I’d have the family I wanted.”
He nodded, didn’t press her any further.
“What about you? I’m sure your brother will worry.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“It’s too late for that,” she shot back.
He stopped what he’d been doing with the knives. “My brothers are both military, both SEALs. They know I can take care of myself. Speaking of which, do you know how to shoot that gun you’ve got?”
She didn’t bother to ask how he knew about it. “It’s registered.”
“I know—that’s not what I asked you.”
She should’ve expected nothing less. “I can shoot. I go to the range once a month.”
“You didn’t have the gun on you when you met with me.”
She hadn’t. “I didn’t think I’d need it with you.”
“You always need it, especially with someone like me.”
“You don’t have to try to scare me. I know what you’re capable of.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the weapons still free on the bed, and knew that his hands were just as deadly. But they could also keep her safe. “What’s it like, having the ability to save someone?”
“It’s just something I do.”
“But it must be an incredible feeling to know that if you had to, you could save someone you cared about who was in trouble.”
He didn’t answer at first, instead closed the distance between them and put his hands on both sides of her face. “I’ve saved a lot of people. Doing it for someone you care about isn’t any different. Can’t be, or you risk fucking it up. So you do your job, revert to your training. And then you try not to think back on what you’ve done, because that can really fuck you up.”
He pulled his hands off her, but she grabbed his wrists, held them in her hands.
He stared at her for a long moment. “Who couldn’t you save, Kaylee?”
“I wasn’t speaking in the literal sense. When I was with Aaron, I’d thought love would be enough to save us both.”
“Love doesn’t save people.”
“For someone who doesn’t believe in love, you sure know a lot on the subject.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe in it. I just don’t expect it to happen for me. I’m not built for it.”
“Sounds more like you’re afraid of it,” she muttered.
“Smart, not scared.”
“I don’t know how you can say you’re not built for love. You can’t just say that, can’t stop it with your mind. When it happens, it happens.”
She released his hands but he caught her around the waist, pulled her in close and kissed her—hard and fast enough to curl her toes, even as the weapons he’d strapped onto himself dug into her.
He kissed her like he couldn’t stop himself. She attempted to wrap herself around him but he caught her wrists and held them behind her back with one hand, and still her body responded. His hand traveled to her breast, over her shirt first and then swiftly under the fabric, under her bra, fingers tweaking an already taut nipple until she gasped against his mouth.
That made him pull back, look at her like he’d taken things too far. She hung on, not willing to let it go that easily. “Don’t stop now, Nick.”
“I have to. Don’t you understand, to keep you safe, I have to keep my guard up. That’s necessary for both of our safety.”
“You meant what you said before … that you can’t stop thinking about me?”
“Yeah, I meant it.”
“I know you think you can’t trust me… but you can. Please, you have to believe me.” She thought about telling him everything, right then and there, spilling that she knew who he was. Proving herself.
But before she could say anything, he pressed his forehead to hers. “I don’t trust easily or well, Kaylee. And I’m someone you don’t want to fuck with.”
He had reason not to trust her. If he’d kept up with the media over the last years, he knew she’d written extensively on the Winfields. And dammit, she wanted him to tell her who he was—not for any other reason but because he loved her. She knew this was the man for her as surely as she’d known Carl wasn’t.
She knew it was far too soon for her to think about any of this—about love and Nick in the same sentence.
So no, now wasn’t the time to reveal what she knew about Nick. She’d figure out a way to help keep Nick’s identity under wraps for good, and then if he still didn’t trust her enough to tell her who he was, she’d tell him what she knew.
There was a firm knock on the front door. Chris unfolded himself from the couch where he’d been thinking about what the hell he was going to tell both Jake and Dad, plus calling in for emergency leave and practically selling his left ball to get it, to peer outside from one of the side windows. “Shit.”
Nick rounded the corner from his bedroom, bag in hand, dressed and ready to go. Earlier, Kaylee had emerged from Nick’s room and was now waiting in the kitchen, and although he didn’t think it was a good idea for her to be left alone with her cell phone, he didn’t push things. His brother was already on edge—no need to shove him over it.
Who’s there?
Nick motioned.
“FBI woman,” Chris mouthed.
“I thought you said you got rid of her for a while.”
“I thought I did.”
“Does she know she’s a mirage?”
Chris growled low under his breath. “Get the hell out of here. I’ll distract her.”
“Can you do a better job this time?”
Chris bared his teeth at his brother, who suddenly seemed oddly calm. “Go. Keep your damned phone on, Nick.”
They touched fists in the familiar way they always did before heading out on a mission and then Nick disappeared into the kitchen.
Chris cranked up the music in order to hide the sound of the garage door opening and Nick’s car blasting out along the back roads. With any luck, Nick would make it to the airport and take off before he had to give any intel to this agent. And then he opened the front door and put on his best
What the hell are you doing here
face.
“Surprised to see me, Chief?” she asked.
“You are keeping tabs on me, Agent Michaels. I guess you couldn’t wait until tonight to see me again?”
“Your guess would be wrong. And imagine my surprise on discovering that your address is the same as Ensign Devane’s.”
“That’s classified information.”
She didn’t deny that as she pushed past him into the house. “Can you turn down this music, please?”
Damn, she was pretty. She’d be prettier without the black suit crap, and the thought of helping her take it off made him smile. She was wearing a wedding ring, a simple platinum band, but it was on her right hand, not her left. He hadn’t noticed that before, had been distracted with Nick and by Jules.
He noticed now.
He’d been with Jules long before she became Juliana Sinclair, since he was fourteen and she was sixteen. Then they’d dated off and on from the time he’d enlisted and she’d moved, first to New York and then to L.A.
They’d always been a volatile couple—if they weren’t fighting, they were fucking. Jules was complicated, and although Jamie appeared completely straightforward, his instincts told him that wasn’t the case. She was guarded, closed off—it was in the way she kept her hands fisted at her sides or crossed across her chest even as she looked him in the eye.
There was something brewing under the surface, something she was trying her best to keep concealed, but she wouldn’t be able to hide it from him for too much longer—people were never able to. He wasn’t ever sure if it was his second sight that drew people to him like true confessions or something, but it was inevitable that she’d spill her secrets to him.
He rubbed the fingers on his left hand together, the ones that always itched when he knew something. He was sensitive—not like Dad or Momma was. No, his gift was more of a sixth sense, a freaky intuition that his teammates admired, counted on, even as they freely admitted to being slightly spooked by it. To his brothers, it was more of that
psychic Cajun bullshit
, as Jake so charmingly named it years earlier.
But there was a darker side to the crazy Cajun bullshit, one Chris hated, and so he’d refused that part of the gift—pushed it away and had so far been successful.
She was hiding more than one something. Like he’d thought—complicated as hell. “You don’t like loud music, Jamie?”
She frowned a little, scrunched up her nose, and she looked fucking
cute
. He fought the urge to just reach over and kiss her, and then he wondered where the hell this was all coming from. One brother losing his ever-loving mind was quite enough.
“When it’s appropriate.” Her voice was loud and clear over the driving beat.
In his world, loud was always appropriate, but Nick was long gone by this point so he complied and lowered the volume. “Better?”
“I don’t think you understand the seriousness of this situation,” she said.
“Why don’t you tell me, then?”
“It’s not your business.”
“It is when the feds come knocking on my door.”
“You don’t trust the FBI much, do you?”
The FBI—well, any kind of law enforcement—always made him uneasy. He’d had way too much contact with them growing up and enough in his time in the military to know that his mind-set and theirs just didn’t mesh.
He and Nick had gotten themselves in a damned good amount of trouble, had a lot of fun doing so in the years after Jake pulled out of their merry band of men and headed for the Navy at fifteen.
It had been one of the only times he’d seen Nick really pissed at Jake, had seen Jake’s move as a betrayal rather than a way for Jake to save himself. Something Nick hadn’t even admitted to himself until that memorable night when he and Chris got caught boosting cars and everything changed.
That particular evening, they’d been delivering the cars to a dock, driving them into a container where the vintage vehicles would be shipped overseas to waiting buyers. There had been a bust, and although the two of them were merely on the periphery of the operation, they were still arrested, hauled in and booked.
It had been Chris’s first arrest—the first time he’d been caught—but Nick was particularly vulnerable, having been brought home a night earlier by Federal Court Judge Kelly Cromwell, whose car Nick had taken for a joyride, and the judge’s husband, who was a recently retired four-star Navy admiral.
Obviously, she hadn’t expected Nick to go right back out and do it again while they were waiting for Kenny to fly in from California the following evening to discuss Nick’s options for punishment.
Chris and Nick managed to look appropriately chastised and solemn as the couple had spoken with them and with Kenny, who’d refused to post bail. The two boys would stay overnight in a cell before appearing in front of the judge the following morning.