“I’m angry at mine too—more often than I’d like to admit,” she whispered, more to herself than to him as she stared down at her half-eaten dinner. “Sometimes I hate my father because of his job.”
He heard her soft confession—it made him want to comfort her, and he hated that he knew how she really felt, wanting to love her father, thinking he was the greatest.
Cam wanted her to be just like Gabriel, so he could hate her too.
S
ky pushed her plate away and felt the tears well. She wiped her cheeks hastily with the palm of her hand, embarrassed and angry.
“I didn’t mean to dredge up things about your family,” Cam said quietly.
“It’s not that. I’ve come to terms with it—as much as I can anyway. It’s just … At first I thought maybe it was simply worry about my dad, that I haven’t heard from him. But I don’t think that’s it. I was hoping I could get away from it all.” She put her head in her hands for a second to collect herself. When she looked back up, Cam’s gaze nearly leveled her. “Obviously, it’s not working.”
“Coming here all alone might not have been the smartest thing,” he said, but there wasn’t any judgment in his tone.
“I know that, but I had to. You don’t understand, I needed to try.” She sighed. “It’s about work.”
“You’re an author.”
“I guess. I don’t feel like one. Authors are supposed to write. And I’m not writing.”
Cam was looking at her, waiting patiently.
“Sorry—you’re not here to be my shrink, just my bodyguard.”
Still, nothing.
Don’t trust, Skylar
. She pictured her father’s face, his eyes hard, his words harsh whenever he told her that. Since the death of her mother, he spoke that phrase often.
And still, Cam had told her something about his life she was pretty sure he didn’t share often. And what she had to get off her chest had nothing to do with life or death—not the way he thought of it anyway. “I’ve lost it. When I was sick, the words came so fast, like I knew I was on some sort of twisted race against time. It wasn’t hard at all. I loved what I was doing. And now … now I fight for every single goddamned word.”
“You’ll get it back,” he told her.
But she shook her head. “I don’t know, maybe it was only meant to get me through a tough time, and now I don’t need it anymore.”
But she did need it, so much, wanted to put words to paper to the depths of her soul. Roughly, she pushed tears away and stared at Cam’s ice blue eyes. “This must sound so ridiculous to you, based on what you do for a living. You deal with life and death.”
“This is important to you. It means something.” His voice was tight—she’d obviously hit on a sore subject for him. She knew that most military men didn’t like talking about their service, good or bad, never mind life or death. For them, like with her father, it just
was
.
As though attaching itself to her quiet fury, the storm picked up then, and the radio had a severe storm warning even as the power flickered around them.
There were portable lamps in the closet, and flashlights and candles, and gathering those cut the conversation short as both Skylar and Cam abandoned their dinners to get the supplies ready, her confession echoing inside her mind.
She was rummaging in the closet when the lights blinked and then went out. She’d had her hand on one of the lamps but started at the sudden darkness. Started more when Cam’s hand touched her shoulder and he said, “Let me,” and his touch went through her as hotly as it had earlier. Maybe even more so.
It was only then she understood why she was having such trouble writing her current book. Her publisher had wanted a thriller with a prominent love story—the twists and turns of the murders in the book would be easy enough, but wrapping her mind around the romance seemed an insurmountable task.
Cam’s hand remained on her shoulder, probably because she hadn’t moved. She shifted to let him search the closet himself with the flashlight he’d found.
How could she write about love, about a man’s touch on a woman’s body when she couldn’t remember it, couldn’t imagine it even when she closed her eyes or touched herself?
It had been over a year since she’d gotten really sick. Before that, she counted less than a handful of times spent with men, men who, as it turned out, she didn’t want to—or couldn’t—get close to.
But when she looked at Cam, everything warmed. Instant spring thaw.
She stood abruptly and waited near him, nibbling her bottom lip.
The fact that he’d known her father’s favorite saying had given her some small comfort—it had been the tipping point. But she felt most comforted by the fact that Cam was as bothered by his father’s work as she was by hers. That was certainly something that bonded them together—until you’d lived the life of the child of an undercover agent, you couldn’t understand.
Cam got it.
He also knew more about the threats against her that had gotten him sent to her than he’d told her, but he wasn’t budging. And her choices were truly limited.
So yes, Cameron Moore was already here, in her house, with his big hands and, no doubt, bigger weapons, and she wanted to hate how he made her body come alive when he brushed past her, but she couldn’t.
“We’ve got everything—go finish your dinner while I start a fire.” He emerged from the closet with three portable lamps and another flashlight, which he handed to her.
“I’m not really hungry.”
“If you’re recovering from surgery, you need to keep your strength up.”
She sighed, because yes, that had been a constant complaint from the doctors—that she needed to eat, to put on weight or her immune system could get compromised more easily. And so she sat at the island and Cam joined her once he got a big fire crackling in the stone fireplace. She finished her food in silence with the soft light of the lamps shining between them and the warmth from the fire at her back.
He spoke first, after he’d eaten two plates of pasta. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you have enough medication to get you through the next couple of days with the storm?”
“I’ve got a ten-day supply left—I was planning on refilling them up here,” she said, and the realization of having to refill them hit her hard. Because when she did so, she could be tracked.
As if he read her mind, Cam said, “We’ll take care of it. I’ll make sure you’ve got whatever it is you need. That’s my job.”
“What exactly is our plan? I mean, you’re here with me, so I’m assuming my father is looking for whoever’s threatening me, right?”
“How far out from surgery are you?” Cam asked instead of answering her question, and she sighed.
“Five months.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She didn’t, hated discussing it, but found herself telling him the story. Maybe he’d have some sympathy toward her and tell her his plan.
Doubtful, of course.
She didn’t sense danger from him but he was surely as dangerous as whoever was after her—as dangerous as he needed to be.
And yet she ignored the niggle in the pit of her stomach, wondered if her instincts were skewed—for the past ten years, she’d stayed inside her own world, her own head, and ignored everything else. “I was seventeen when I got sick. It happened right before I went away to college.”
She’d been diagnosed with adult polycystic kidney disease that subsequently turned chronic. “I lost my first kidney when I was eighteen.”
“That’s tough, Sky … you were just a kid. The whole world ahead of you,” he murmured.
For the next six years, she remained closely monitored in hopes her remaining kidney would not fail. And for a while, it looked very promising. But when she was twenty-four, things took a turn for the worse and she found herself in end-stage renal disease within a month’s period of time and totally dependant on dialysis.
When she’d lost the first kidney, she’d only been in the third month of her freshman year, and after the operation, she never went back. That was when the writing started in earnest.
Looking back, she knew she was incredibly lucky. She had talent, yes, but in the publishing business, that didn’t always equate with success. She’d had both, in short order, had been nineteen and pretty and the media liked her.
In interviews, she’d said she was an orphan. Most of the time, she felt like one.
She wasn’t being fair to her father, or to the memory of her mother; she knew that. Spoiled-brat moments were few and far between, but with this hulking man here, ready to turn her life upside down just when she’d gotten it right side up, they were breaking through.
“I’m a tough blood type to match,” she said. “For a while, I didn’t think I was going to make it. Neither did anyone else.”
“But a donor came through.”
“Yes, a donor came through,” she echoed, thought about telling him who the donor actually was but held back.
He was a good listener. Typically that meant he wasn’t much of a talker. Normally, she wasn’t either, but nerves and lust mixed to make a combination far more potent than alcohol.
She wanted to know what he looked like without the beard. He’d already pulled his heavy sweatshirt off, revealing a T-shirt that stretched across a broad chest and well-muscled arms.
She shrugged her sweater off, didn’t care that it fell to the floor.
He was watching her with an odd look on his face, and no, he wasn’t the typical bodyguard. She pulled her gaze away and stood.
“There’s more pasta here if you want,” she offered, picked up the bowl from near the stove and began to walk toward him.
Army. Ranger maybe, but she’d bet on Delta. He’d seen things, done things that would haunt him for the rest of his life, if he had a conscience.
If he didn’t …
“I don’t,” he said and the bowl slid out of her hands to crash on the floor.
“Shit.”
He was up in a second, stopping her from moving. “You’ll cut your feet. Let me.” He lifted her by her hips and set her down on the other side of the island.
And as she turned to watch, he bent to clean up the shards of broken ceramic dish off the hard tile floor with his own hands, obviously not worried about cutting himself.
Maybe this guy’s for real
.
CHAPTER
3
Five months earlier
H
e’d broken into her floor safe, the unbreakable, unbeatable secure piece of crap created to keep Riley’s secure files out of the way of prying eyes.
Those eyes included some of the best spies and thieves, although in this business, the two could be interchangeable. And Dylan Scott, of course, who seemed to be on both no one’s and everyone’s side at the same time, depending on which way the bankroll rolled.
It had to be him. He’d made no attempt to hide what he’d done, arrogantly left the safe door wide open and the files he’d been looking through askew and out of order. At the top of the messy pile was the folder on Gabriel Creighton.
What did Dylan want with Gabriel Creighton? And what else had he seen?
She refused to let her plan be compromised now. Even if it meant she’d have to eliminate a man she could possibly love.
But there was no room for emotion in the spy game, where nothing was fair in love and everything was done in the name of war.
There was so much at stake here—she’d put everything into this plan, her job and her life on the line, in order to clear her father.
She remembered the day so clearly—her mother being told her husband, Riley’s father, was never coming home. That he’d been a CIA agent who’d turned traitor to his country. And just like that, everything changed. No more checks, no insurance; it was as if her father hadn’t existed.
They’d never even been given a grave site to visit.
Up until that point, Riley had thought her father was an executive at a major corporation. She’d been fifteen when he’d died, too young to know the truth about such a sensitive situation, and yet her mom told her who her father really was.
Riley wanted her innocence—and her ignorance—back.
She’d been sitting at the kitchen table with her mother, going over the details for her sweet sixteen party that was to happen in three months. Truth be told, she’d been planning that party since she’d turned thirteen. Because it was the thing to do, because her family had plenty of money and clout, and beyond getting grades that could see her into an Ivy League school, there wasn’t really anything at all Riley had to worry about.
Until that day. Men in suits. Her mother screaming
No!
A doctor coming, telling Riley he’d given her mother something for the pain.
At the time, Riley had misunderstood, thought there was a shot that could actually ease heartache.
God, she wished that were true. Wished she could go back to those moments when she was so innocent, until she reminded herself she’d been horribly vulnerable. Easy prey for the CIA to fake her father’s suicide—a fact she only discovered later, thanks to information her mother had withheld and a coroner’s report that had been tampered with.
Even now the pain of that loss hit her hard, made her chest ache and her eyes water. She and her mom hadn’t been given any time to mourn. His death and subsequent disgrace made the papers the next day.
“It wasn’t a suicide,” her mother kept repeating in her haze. “He would never.”
Years later, Riley would unravel the complicated mission that had been her father’s last for the CIA—and the fact that he had been killed by another agent for being a traitor, a double agent. Which prompted the loss of all family assets.
Everything was taken from them within forty-eight hours. They’d each packed a couple of suitcases and whatever else they could fit into the car, which they owned outright in her mother’s name.
So she’d gone from planning a sweet sixteen party to sleeping in the backseat of the car and then a homeless shelter, on a lumpy cot with a threadbare blanket. Riley would’ve cried herself to sleep every night, except her mom cried in her sleep enough for both of them.
But slowly, her mom had come out of her stupor of pain … and then she was angry. And she was resourceful, did the best she could.