give you this information, you can take it, pass it off to your buddy Roman, and head right back to your bigwig CIA job.”
“I quit.” He’d sent his letter of resignation about fifteen minutes after they’d gotten home.
“What?” She blinked.
“I can’t be a good husband to you if I’m always on a different continent. I quit the Agency and I’ll either build my own business or fix up security at the White House. I have enough money saved up to support us. You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll take care of you.”
“I’m not going to marry you,” she said stubbornly and then ruined it by sniffling.
She was fighting, yes. Kiki and Tom had both betrayed her in different ways. Connor knew he’d deceived her terribly himself. All in one day, she’d learned that the people closest to her weren’t who she thought at all. Lara needed time. He needed patience. If he stayed calm and remembered the senator’s advice, he could get through to her. Vulnerable. He hated the word, but nothing was more important than her.
“Whether you marry me or not, I intend to protect you. I can’t do that if I’m an operative. Lara, I don’t want to be apart from you. I like the man I am when I’m with you.”
She sat back, her eyes not meeting his. “I hate you.”
That “I hate you” sounded stubborn and sullen and a little weepy. Still, it cut him to the quick. Normally, his reaction would be to lash out, to throw down some nasty shit that would slice her soul open. Except this was Lara and he refused to hurt her again.
For almost two decades, he’d thought he was nothing but a gun with a hair trigger waiting to mow down anyone who could hurt him. Not Lara. She was both his weakness and his strength. And, just maybe, she was his salvation.
“I can understand why you feel that way right now. But I promise I’ll make it up to you because I love you. I’ve never loved a woman before so I’m trying. But I need you to try, too.”
“Why? I was stupid to hope for loyalty or love from a man I didn’t know last week. Hell, the friends I’d known for years didn’t show me any.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Connor wanted to hold her in his arms so badly but keeping her talking was more important. “I’m not them, Lara. You can always expect loyalty and love from me. I want everything that’s good for you. Don’t shut me out, princess. Please. This cold act isn’t you.”
“Maybe it should be.”
“No. I said before that the world needs people like me, but it needs people like you, too. It needs people who believe in the good. It needs fairy princesses who see the bad yet still believe in the good.” He sighed. “You know what? Screw the world. I need you. I need you to be Lara, to find it in your heart to forgive a man who lied to you, who betrayed you, and who will spend the rest of his life loving you completely.”
A little sob left her mouth. He moved to her, gathering her in his arms and dragging her into his lap. He felt better than he had all day, and he knew he was a stinking bastard because he was glad she was really crying. In that moment, he realized he was happier and more alive when he was comforting her than his best day without her. “I was an asshole. Tom and Kiki were assholes, too.”
Yeah, he wasn’t good at the comforting thing. He stroked her head and petted her hair, happy when she leaned on him.
Finally, she wrapped her arms around him and clung. “I don’t want to cry. I want to be strong.”
He shook his head. “You are, princess. You have no idea how strong. Strength isn’t measured in how many people you kill or how hard it is to make you cry. It’s in how resolutely you cling to your goodness. I need you, Lara. I need you so fucking bad.”
“How? Why? I don’t understand because you’re the one with all the power.”
“That’s not true. I have the power to protect, but you can change things. Can’t you see how important that is? I called you naive at the beginning, but maybe I’m too cynical after spending so much time with traitors and killers. I need you to keep seeing the world as a good place. I can’t cry anymore.” He caressed her face. “I watched one of my closest friends go through hell yesterday and then I saw something worse, the woman I love get her heart broken—twice. The only power I want now is to help put you back together. The only way you’ll heal is if you cry. So cry. Cry for both of us. Cry for you and me and for Kiki and Tom, and god, please cry for Zack and his wife, for Roman and Elizabeth because everything is fucked up and it deserves healing tears. You’re the only one who can give them to us.”
Her arms tightened around him and she sobbed against his chest. He held her, his eyes watering, but it was in pure relief. She was finally crying in his arms.
“Let me take some of the burden, princess.” He wasn’t going to shy away from using the nickname he’d given her just because her best friend turned out to be a crazy bitch. She was his princess and he was working hard to go from troll to knight. His armor would likely always be tarnished, but he would change for her. “We don’t have to talk about us now. Tell me what happened with Kiki. Don’t keep it all in. It will be a poison in your veins.”
“She hated me. She hated me so much,” she whispered through her tears.
“She had issues and she hid them well. Deep down she didn’t hate you. She hated herself.”
“Her whole office was full of pictures of Tom.”
This might be a touchy subject. Lara had loved Tom at one point. He didn’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings but she should know what had been happening. “She’d had an affair with him. From the information I gathered, she started sleeping with him right after you broke off your engagement.”
She nodded and he breathed a sigh of relief. “He told me. He’d been using her for a long time. I think he’d decided it was time to use me again. He wanted to change jobs and thought my dad could help him.”
Connor gritted his teeth. “He’s not a strong man. You were right to break it off with him. As it happens, I found out he had nearly twenty outstanding parking tickets. He might have been arrested this morning.”
That sounded nice and factual. What he really wanted to say was Tom was a fuckwit who deserved to have his balls shoved down his throat.
Lara froze. “You didn’t.”
He shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t kill him.”
A hopeless little grin tugged at her lips before she fell quiet again. “I never knew them at all. I think that might be my fault.”
He cupped her chin and forced her to look up at him. “They used you. It’s not your fault. You saw the good in them and they weren’t smart enough to know what a gift that is.”
She laid her head against his shoulder. “I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
He had no right to ask for her trust. “Give me time. Let me prove I can be what you need me to be.”
“I don’t think I can be near you and not sleep with you.”
His gut clenched. Was she asking to stay with Gabe, who also had great security and could surround her with guards? Gabe wasn’t a constant reminder that she’d been lied to. Connor didn’t know how to talk her out of leaving. “I won’t push you. I promise. I’ll give you all the time you need.”
She cuddled closer and cupped his cheek. “Time won’t work. Time doesn’t make me want you less. While we finish this case, I want to have sex with you. I might need it.”
It, not him. “You want to use me.”
She kept her gaze steady on him. “Maybe. I need to be out of my head for a while. I need something good, Connor. Are you going to demand payment for it?”
So Lara did need him. She could call it whatever she wanted, but she needed to be made love to and he was the only man in the world who would do it.
He lowered his mouth to hers, their lips brushing. He would never deny her this. “No. I’ll take whatever you give me.”
She sniffled again then slid off his lap. “All right. Then we’ll have that to look forward to.”
He watched as she moved back to her chair and foc
used on the screen again. He sat back and studied her as she started typing. Her face was red but her shoulders weren’t as tight as they’d been before.
Connor had always been good at reading people but he was too tangled up in this woman to see beyond his own yearning and fear of losing her. Because despite the fact that she’d asked him for sex, he wasn’t sure if she intended to use it to bring them back together or work him out of her system for good.
Maybe she really just wanted to fuck. He’d taught her what her body could do. He’d shown her that she was sensual and sexy. Lara wanted more of that from him, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who could be satisfied with temporary forever. Eventually she would want more than a lover. She would want a husband, a family.
Could she use him simply for sexual pleasure but not see him as a potential mate?
“You should go to the store, though,” she murmured. “I won’t sleep with you without a condom.”
“I have some,” he managed to say, his head reeling.
He’d thought if he managed to help her have a breakthrough, if she decompressed about the previous day’s events, that she would fall back into his arms and be the Lara he’d come to love. So far, he’d been wrong.
Connor thought seriously about putting his fist through a wall. How long would it be before Lara decided sex wasn’t enough for her? How long before he was sitting here alone without even a job to keep him occupied?
She picked up the paper the CI had given her. “So this list is Natalia Kuilikov’s aliases. She came to the States on an education visa. It had a nine-month limit. She disappeared after roughly three months in Brooklyn.”
“I already have a whole file on this. After what happened in New York, I talked to some Agency contacts and compiled all the information I could find. I’ll e-mail it to you. Natalia was living with a known member of the Krylov syndicate.”
“What happened to her husband? I can find records of her marriage but not of a divorce.”
“We don’t know. She left him to come to the States, but they didn’t divorce. Apparently the marriage fell apart when their only child died roughly three months after he was born. She threw herself into her nanny job in Moscow and they drifted apart. Years later, she came to America and we lost track of her.”
She grabbed a banana off the counter and peeled it as she sat again, her eyes on him. “I suppose I can understand why she got into her job. Her son died of SIDS?”
“That’s what the death certificate said.” Whether she would admit it or not, she’d needed to cry. Now her head was clearer and she could talk about the case. “The police incident report said she woke up that morning, went to get the baby ready to go to child care, and she found him dead.”
Lara sat back with a sigh. “I read the translation. The coroner’s report stated that the baby died hours before. He was only three months old.”
She took a bite and then ran her hands over the keys. “What was the baby’s name?”
Connor opened his own laptop and pulled up the file. “Sava Kuilikov.”
Lara’s head came up, a light in her eyes. “That’s what she’s doing.” She turned the list around, handing it to Connor. There were five handwritten names on the list. “Natalia originally had four siblings. Two sisters and two brothers. Anja and Dessa were the sisters. Maxim and Konstantin, the brothers.”
The five names were the known aliases of Natalia Kuilikov. Anja Maximillian, Natalia Konstantin, Dessa Konn, Anja Sava.
“So she’s taking the names of her closest family members and using those?”
Lara shrugged. “I suppose it would be easy to remember them. It also forms a pattern if someone wants to find her. Maybe she wants to be found. Maybe deep down she wants to tell her story.”
It was definitely a theory he could work with. “We need to compile a list of possible names. Add in her parents’ names as well. We’ll work through and try to match them up to people who would be roughly Natalia’s age, somewhere in her midfifties. Give me an hour or two and we’ll have something to work with.”
“All right, but let me help.” She moved her chair over as he started to type.
He began the process of matching up names and wondered if, once this case was over, they would ever be together again.
* * *
Lara looked over the parking lot of the Serenity Assisted Living Center just outside of Baltimore. It was on a quiet street, but Lara had so recently learned that quiet didn’t mean safe. Just because she was with two men who knew how to defend themselves didn’t mean people couldn’t be hurt. She looked between Connor and his big friend Dax, whom Connor had called in as backup.
“If you’re nervous, I can go speak to her myself.” Connor put his big, gas-guzzling SUV into park in front of the main building.
Dax leaned in from where he took up most of the backseat with his muscular body. “I’ll stay out here and watch over you. Connor can get this done without us.”
“I’m not nervous.” She hadn’t come this far, risked so much, just so she could sit in the car with her massive babysitter.
She looked around. The parking lot was half full. In an hour or so the sun would set. It had already been a long day, but things had sped up considerably once Connor had gotten someone at the CIA involved. Their pool of names had been run and they’d come up with one. Maxine Sava of Baltimore. She was the right age. Her driver’s license had lapsed but they’d found a copy with the DMV, and the picture matched 95 percent with the facial recognition software despite the years between the photos. Her cheekbones were still strong, her eyes wide and exotic. Though her skin had lost its perfection, Maxine Sava was still a lovely woman.
He cut the engine and turned slightly. “Fear is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something to be embraced, as long as it doesn’t hold you back. Fear proves that you’re smart.”
“I’m sure you’re afraid of so many things,” she said, tamping down the way her heart pounded every time she looked at him.
“I didn’t use to be. But then fear is mostly about loss, and I didn’t have anything to lose until you so I wasn’t afraid.”
“And now you are?”
“Princess, now I’m terrified.” He pulled his SIG Sauer out of its shoulder holster and checked the clip. “Are you ready?”
“How do we know we weren’t followed?”
“We don’t. I didn’t pick up anyone on our tail, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there,” Connor said in that matter-of-fact way of his. He’d been so calm with her. So patient. His gentleness was wearing her down and warming her heart. She didn’t want to risk opening her heart to him again but he seemed determined to pry it open.
What had she been thinking, suggesting they continue sleeping together? Like she could really have sex with him a couple of times and not want him anymore. What a joke. Despite the way he’d set her up and the lies he’d told, she still wanted him. She wanted him today more than yesterday. More than the day before.
Where this man was concerned, Lara feared her heart was doomed.
“Let’s get this over with.” Dax opened his door. “I’m more concerned with them following us at night or ambushing us back at the house.”
“Hopefully we talk to Natalia and end this thing. If she tells us who Sergei is, we’ll take him down and be done.” Connor stepped out and walked around the car. As she unfastened her seat belt, he opened the door and helped her down. She slipped her hand into his, and then he curled his free hand on her waist, easing her to the pavement. “I don’t want you to fall.”
Everywhere he touched her she felt heat flare. Sometimes all he had to do was look at her and she could feel his hands, stroking her, loving her.
Yeah, she was totally going to be able to sleep with him and walk away. Not.
She eased aside, hoping her feet were steady. “Well, if your car wasn’t as big as a tank, I wouldn’t need help.”
“I’ll go and buy a smart car tomorrow,” he promised.
“Dude, you weigh more than a smart car.” Dax shook his head. “I don’t think you’ll fit.”
“How about I look into a hybrid SUV.” He started up the path to the door. “I’m sure Lara knows the best ones. We can use a new car.”
This was why staying with him was so damn dangerous. She melted when he said things like that. She just wished she could figure out why he was saying them. Guilt? Had he decided that he owed her?
Or did he really, truly care?
She was quiet as they walked inside. The front room was cheery but there was an oppressiveness that came with any place like this. No matter how many cutesy signs for bingo they hung, this was a place where people waited to die.
“We’re here to see Maxine Sava,” Connor said to the front desk clerk.