“Why do you want to be twenty so badly?” Sullivan asked curiously. “You feeling unfulfilled? Wishing you could go back and redo shit?”
“Nah. I’m happy enough with where I am.” Liam pushed a low-hanging branch out of his way and moved deeper into the lush vegetation. “But sometimes I miss my younger, optimistic self. You know, the guy who saw the world as sunshine and rainbows and all that crap.” A twinge of embarrassment crept into his voice. “I always figured I’d be married by the time I was twenty-five. Have a couple of kids by the time I turned thirty. You know, normal life stuff.”
Sullivan sounded amused. “Is that what you want? Marriage, kids, normalcy?”
“One day, I guess.” Liam paused. “You?”
“Fucked if I know. I don’t think ahead, remember? I live for the moment. Besides, I’d make a terrible husband, and an even worse father.”
Liam stopped walking, shifting his head so he could meet Sullivan’s eyes. The moonlight danced over his friend’s face, emphasizing a strong jaw and vivid gray eyes.
He swallowed a groan. Now was not the time to be staring at his teammate’s pretty mug. The time for that was...never. He should never be checking out the man.
“Bullshit,” Liam said gruffly. “I think you’d be a great father.”
“Doubt it, mate. I’m just a shallow playboy who travels the world on his boat, remember? Besides, with my ADD? I’d be the dad who forgets his kid at the grocery store.”
Liam laughed. “Nah. You’d be the coolest dad on the block. Husband, though? I dunno. You’d have to learn to keep your pants zipped first.”
“Hey, if my pants stayed zipped, your sex life would plummet into obscurity, Boston.” His friend smirked. “I’ve gotten you more ass than you could ever get on your own.”
“Bull-fucking-shit. I don’t need your help getting laid. The ladies are all over me.”
Sullivan heaved out a sigh. “Yeah, of course they are. With your Black Irish good looks and million-dollar smile? Chicks don’t stand a chance.”
Discomfort rolled through him like tumbleweed, forming into a knot at the pit of Liam’s stomach. Sullivan was such a natural flirt that it was impossible to know when he was actually flirting, and when he was just fucking around.
“Let’s head back,” Liam said awkwardly. He took off walking again, not checking to see whether his friend was following.
High up in the trees, a monkey screeched, reminding him that they weren’t alone in the jungle. Nocturnal creatures scampered along the branches over their heads, and the hum of insects echoed in the humid night air. The low buzz was almost soothing, and Liam felt the tension draining out of him as he listened to the familiar sounds.
They were halfway to their destination when he abruptly stopped by the massive trunk of a tree whose roots started aboveground and were nearly as tall as he was.
“You really think you’re nothing but a shallow playboy?” He drew his brows together pensively. For some reason, it bugged him that Sullivan viewed himself that way.
The other man wrinkled his forehead. “What? No, of course not. I was just talking stupid.”
Liam’s lips twitched. “You tend to do that a lot.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
The tension returned in full force when he realized his friend was studying his face, almost like he was trying to burrow his way into Liam’s mind. Those gray eyes narrowed, lips parting slightly as their gazes locked.
Liam’s breath caught. “C’mon, let’s go back to—”
“Don’t move,” Sullivan murmured.
He froze, unease washing over him.
Ever so slowly, Sullivan took several silent steps closer, until their bodies were nearly touching.
When he lowered his hand to his waistband, Liam’s blue eyes widened.
“Sully...” One hoarse word, laced with confusion.
“Don’t. Move.”
With lightning-fast accuracy, Sullivan whipped out his KA-BAR and stabbed the blade five inches to the left of Liam’s head.
Right between the eyes of the reddish pink pit viper that had slithered out of the thick foliage.
“Fuckin’ hell!” Liam started to laugh as Sullivan grabbed the highly poisonous snake by the tail and held it up. “Thanks, man.”
“No prob.” Sullivan tossed the dead snake on the thick vines beneath their feet. “Happy to save your bacon, Boston. C’mon, let’s go.” Then, seemingly oblivious to Liam’s current state of emotional turmoil, he sauntered off.
Christ.
Liam watched the other man’s back for a moment, then let out a breath and trailed after him, all the while trying not to think about what had just happened. Right before his teammate had reached for that knife, Liam had thought...
Nothing. He’d thought nothing.
You thought something.
Fine. Okay. So maybe, just maybe, for one teeny moment, he’d thought his best friend was going to...
Well, kiss him.
But that was crazy. They were just friends, for fuck’s sake. Neither one of them was interested in...something more. It was stupid of him to think Sullivan had been making a pass at him. Or that the inexplicable gleam that for one brief second had crossed Sully’s eyes had actually been lust.
For him.
Gulping, Liam banished every crazy thought from his head and followed his teammate back home.
• • •
Early the next morning, Morgan dunked his head under the shower spray and let the cold water soak his body. It didn’t help. He was still hot and edgy and as primed for sex as he’d been last night.
He really had to stop kissing the woman. He’d done it twice in less than a year, and both times his mouth landed on hers, his brain screamed betrayal.
He shouldn’t let her get to him, but she did.
He shouldn’t want to fuck her.
But he did.
The rush of water muffled his aggravated groan. He braced both hands on the white-tiled wall and tried to banish all thoughts of Noelle’s warm, pliant lips from his mind. Tried to ignore the raging hard-on that not even the cool water could get rid of.
Eventually he just gave up. The rock between his legs wasn’t going anywhere, not unless he gave it some relief.
Wrapping his fingers around his stiff shaft felt like an even bigger betrayal, but he couldn’t stop himself. Couldn’t stop the dirty images that swarmed his brain, all of which featured Noelle. Her naked golden skin, her red fingernails scraping his bare back, her pussy clutching his cock in a tight vise.
He’d never jerked off in a rage before, and yet here he was, pumping his cock as lust and anger warred inside him.
It took no time at all before he was coming all over his hand. The orgasm was quick, unsatisfying, and only made him angrier, and after he’d rinsed off the evidence and stepped out of the shower, he felt utterly exhausted.
Christ, he was so tired of keeping his guard up all the time, fighting the carnal need that hit him whenever he saw Noelle. He harbored so much hatred but, at the same time, held on to memories of a woman who no longer existed.
He toweled off wearily, wishing like hell that he could just hop on a plane and get far, far away from here. From her.
But until he figured out who wanted him dead, he wasn’t going anywhere.
When he entered the lavish guest bedroom he was currently calling home, he found Noelle sitting on the king-size bed. She wore black leggings and a tight red tank, and her blond hair was arranged in one long braid that hung over her shoulder.
The hairstyle threw him for a loop. It made her look younger and more approachable, reminding him of the girl he’d known almost twenty years ago.
But then her cold blue eyes locked with his, and the girl of yesterday vanished, replaced by the detached woman she’d become.
&nbs
p; “Paige got her hands on Girard’s client list,” Noelle told him, holding up a paper-thin Apple tablet as if to prove her claim. “I figured we could go through it and see if any of these names ring a bell for you.”
He nodded. “Sounds good. Let me just get dressed.”
Rather than give him some privacy, she set the tablet beside her, leaned back on her elbows, and smirked. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
Morgan battled another rush of fatigue. Fuck, he was so sick of these games.
With a sigh, he dropped his towel and strode naked toward his duffel. “I have a proposition for you,” he said as he grabbed some clothes.
Noelle’s intrigued voice wafted from the bed. “Yeah?”
He yanked on a pair of boxer-briefs and cargo pants, then turned to look at her as he zipped up. “I propose a cease-fire.”
“A cease-fire.”
“If we’re going to be working together to find out who hired Girard, we can’t afford to be distracted by all the baggage between us. The games. The constant battles.” He let out a breath. “Let’s just do this job without letting all our old crap get in the way.”
“You think that’s possible?” She sounded both curious and unconvinced.
“We can make it possible.” He put on a clean white T-shirt and met her eyes again. “And not just a temporary cease-fire. I’m talking permanent here. After we find Girard’s client and take care of him, we’ll go our separate ways. For good, this time. No more professional team-ups, no more death threats. We just...walk away.”
Noelle sat up, placing both hands on her thighs as she bit her bottom lip. “We walk away,” she echoed.
He nodded.
“Can we really do that?”
“I can, if you can.”
It took a lot out of him to say that. He’d spent years hating her, keeping tabs on her, dreaming of ways to inflict pain. Walking away now was...unimaginable.
But it was also cathartic in a way. Ending this war between them and finally being free of the destructive emotions she summoned from him? Sounded like music to his ears.
“Well...all right, then,” she said, her voice thoughtful.
His eyes narrowed. “Just like that?”
She looked like she was fighting a laugh. “Yes, just like that. What’s the problem?”
He honestly didn’t know. There shouldn’t be a problem. There wasn’t a problem.
Except...Shit, what was that strange pang tugging at his gut?
Was it disappointment?
Which was fuckin’ nuts, considering that severing their sick bond had been his idea. He should be thrilled that she’d acquiesced so easily.
“So are we going over this list or what?” Noelle asked impatiently.
Morgan snapped out of his messed-up thoughts and went to get his laptop. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
Her sweet, feminine scent ensnared his senses the second he joined her on the bed. It was as intoxicating as it’d always been, and just as difficult to label. She smelled like the ocean, vanilla, a garden in full bloom. Such a peculiar combination of fragrances, as complicated as the woman herself.
He forced himself not to breathe her in, instead focusing on the tablet she handed him.
“Recognize any of them?” she said briskly.
Morgan scrolled through the list of sixty or so names. “I recognize a lot of them,” he admitted, “but not through any personal connections. Girard represents some serious bigwigs.”
Media moguls, high-powered executives, descendants of long-ago French royalty. The list went on and on, and the sole element that tied most of the names together was that Morgan had never crossed paths with any of them. Nor could he think of a single reason why they’d want him dead.
“Oh shit, look. He represents Jacques Moreau,” Noelle spoke up, her blue eyes dancing with amusement. “That’s the cabinet member who was outed last year for using government funds to pay for his butt implants.”
Grinning, she swiped Morgan’s computer from his lap and quickly typed Moreau’s name into the search engine. A second later, she leaned closer to show him the image on the screen.
“Check out that ass. Can you imagine the pancake butt he must have had before? I mean, to resort to implants?”
A laugh flew out of Morgan’s mouth, startling him into abrupt silence.
Shit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d genuinely laughed in this woman’s company.
Noelle looked as surprised as he felt, but she didn’t comment on the aberration. She simply shot him a puzzled look before clearing her throat and refocusing her attention on the screen.
Shifting awkwardly, Morgan reached for the tablet and spoke in a gruff voice. “Let’s go through these names again and see if anything jumps out.”
Chapter 9
Nineteen years ago
“How come you never talk about your parents?”
Morgan shifted on the wrought-iron park bench so he could see Noelle better. She looked genuinely curious as she sat there tracing the rim of her foam coffee cup with the tip of her finger.
“How come you never talk about yours?” he countered.
“I do it all the time,” she protested. “You know everything about my mom.” Her expression darkened. “And about René.”
“Yeah, but you never mention your father...”
He let the remark hang, then held his breath as he awaited her reply. Although they’d been seeing each other for more than a month, she still hadn’t opened up about her father, and Morgan’s supervisors were growing impatient. When he’d checked in earlier, Commander Jeremy Thomas had even hinted that they were considering pulling him out if he didn’t produce some information soon.
He refused to let that happen, and not just because he’d never failed to meet an objective before. If they called him in, his CO would send another intelligence officer to take his place, and then Morgan wouldn’t be there to protect Noelle from getting caught in the cross fire.
Just thinking about her being hurt unleashed a flurry of panic, causing his fingers to tighten around his coffee cup.
“You’re right. I don’t,” she said. “But that’s because it hurts to talk about him. God, I miss him so much. I try not to think about him when he’s gone. Otherwise I miss him even more.”
He spoke in a careful tone. “Does he ever come to visit you?”
“Usually a few times a year, but I haven’t seen him in a while. He’s been away on business.”
Morgan’s body tensed. “What does he do?”
Noelle wagged a finger at him. “Nope, you’re not getting any more details from me. Not until you answer my questions. Tell me about your parents.”
A thread of discomfort wrapped around him. “There’s not much to tell. My folks weren’t around much.”
“Why not?”
“My father was busy running his business, and my mother was busy running their charity foundation. Which means I saw them every morning for about five minutes, and then again at dinner, if I was lucky. Usually they didn’t leave their respective offices before nine or ten at night.”
“What about the weekends?”
“I spent those with my nanny. And when I got older, I hung out with friends.”
“Weren’t you upset that your parents didn’t have time for you?”
He shrugged. “I had a lot of freedom growing up. Can’t complain about that.”
“You don’t have to do that with me.”
“Do what?”
Noelle’s voice softened. “Pretend that nothing hurts you.”
She reached out and took his hand, lightly stroking his knuckles.
Morgan stared at her fingers, his gaze zeroing in on the two she’d broken the day they’d met. They were no longer splinted, but still looked stiff, with a hint of bruising on her creamy sk
in. He knew they bothered her—he saw her wince whenever she moved them—but she never commented on the lingering pain. She continued to floor him with her strength.
“It’s okay to admit that your parents not being there was hard on you,” she said quietly.
He wanted to dismiss the claim, but as usual, Noelle summoned an emotional response from him.
“I guess it was,” he said hoarsely. “Just a little bit.”
Still gripping his hand, she leaned close and brushed her lips over his. The addictive scent of her filled his nostrils, made it difficult to think clearly.
Her lips left his far too soon, and he was tempted to yank her back for another kiss. Not a peck this time, but a deep, passionate one. They’d been sharing a lot of those since that first explosive kiss at the hotel. He couldn’t help himself, couldn’t seem to break the spell he’d fallen under.
His CO had accused him of dragging his feet and losing focus on the objective, but even though Morgan had denied the accusation, he was beginning to suspect his commander might be right. Every second he spent with Noelle was...God, he couldn’t even describe it. All he knew was that the girl had gotten under his skin. Big-time.
“What about you?” he asked her. “How do you feel about your father not being there for you?”
“He is there for me.”
Her reply was so swift and so ferocious that it caught him off guard.
“My father loves me.” Her expression grew even more determined, almost like she was trying to convince herself. “I know he feels bad about not being here, but it was my mother’s decision to move back to Paris. He didn’t have a say in the matter. She got custody in the divorce.”
Morgan quickly jotted down a mental note—never say a negative word about Douglas Phillips to his daughter. Clearly she was protective of the man, if even the slightest indictment against him could set her off.
He decided to change course. “So your dad stayed in the States after you and your mother came to Paris?”
Noelle’s expression lost some of its ferocity. “Yeah, but he travels a lot, so he’s not home very often.”