“Then keep me, Jordan.” She stayed, in the bed and refused to look directly at him. “But you can’t do that either, can you?”
She couldn’t be weak. She had felt something earlier when he had taken her. She had felt something from him that she didn’t understand, something she didn’t know how to describe.
She wouldn’t fight him, but that didn’t mean she was giving up. Sometimes, a person just had to give Jordan time to think, to find the truth himself.
Even if it meant letting him walk away to find it.
“Good night, Jordan,” she said softly when he said nothing more.
He stood in the doorway, still watching her, the shadowed contours of his face appearing more savage, his eyes bluer as they gleamed in the low light reflecting behind him.
Sometimes, there were some things that just weren’t meant to be, she told herself. She was prepared for that. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t hope, that she couldn’t pray that when this was over, when the past was finally defeated, buried, and destroyed once and for all, then just maybe, she would have a chance at holding his heart.
A Malone man, he loves, not just with his heart, but with his soul. She remembered Riordan Malone’s words years before when she had met him in Alpine, Texas, the small town the Malone family had lived in for decades. Remember that, Tehya. It’s not their hearts that lead them, it’s their souls. And such a love is never easy. Such a love is never truly won but by the faith of a woman’s very spirit, and her ability to understand the battle she faces.
At the time, she hadn’t understood why he had told her that. Now, though, she knew. Riordan had to have seen what she had already begun to feel. He had to have known exactly how stubborn, how completely bullheaded his son could be.
Just as she had known how dominant, how powerful, and how incredibly gentle Jordan could be as well.
Jordan was a man who had made his decisions and faced his understanding of the world years before. He’d created the defenses he needed and survived the only way he knew how. By not believing, by not loving. But the truth was, Jordan had loved far more than he would ever admit.
She didn’t understand the battle she faced in claiming what her soul ached for. And she had no idea how to fight it.
All she knew was that she was terribly afraid she couldn’t live without him.
CHAPTER 14
The bedroom door closed, stripping the light from the room and leaving Tehya to stare into the dark.
She listened as he undressed and checked his weapon before laying it on the bedside table, then slid into the bed, all without the aid of the light.
Once he settled in, a moment of tense silence filled the room before he spoke.
“I was sixteen, she and her family were visiting from England, with a neighbor. She was blond, delicate, and beautiful, and I fell like a ton of bricks for her.
“The affair lasted until the end of summer, when her parents found out. They had the neighbor’s ranch hands beat the hell out of me, and when that didn’t work, they locked her in her bedroom, refusing to let her out until arrangements could be made for her to return to England. And I thought I could rescue her.” The tone of his voice warned her that perhaps that young love hadn’t died, but had instead contributed to killing the belief in love Jordan had once possessed.
“I slipped into the house, picked the lock to her bedroom door, and slipped in.”
He paused and Tehya wondered what he was thinking, remembering. The silence wasn’t as heavy as before, but it still held the weight of the scars she knew he carried deep inside.
“She had been playing with us all,” he finally sighed. “It was a ploy to force her parents to return her to England rather than have her attend the private school they were considering in America. She wanted to be with her Irish lover.” Mockery filled his voice. “She considered me an acceptable stand-in for the summer, though.”
Sixteen. God, how that must have twisted his male pride, as well as his heart.
She felt him shift in the bed until he turned to face her, the gleam of his eyes in the dark pulling her, giving her a connection to him that she desperately needed.
“It was nearly ten years later before I saw her again. I was commanding a small team, working with the British in routing a terrorist cell in London. We managed to strike during a meeting being held by their Afghani commander. Their second in command was there as well, an Irish national who had led the cell for years. They were in interrogation when I had a visitor. At first, I couldn’t believe it was her. She didn’t just act older, she looked older, more coarse, less like the lady she had pretended to be when she was a teenager. And she needed a favor.” It wasn’t anger or pain in his voice, instead, there was a heavy vein of mockery overlying the amusement. “She thought she could give me a little fuck for old time’s sake and I would help her gain her lover’s release. The Irish second in command was the stable hand she’d played me and her parents to return to. I looked in her lying eyes as though they were windows into my own career. We knew there was a link from British Intelligence into the terrorist cell, and we hadn’t been able to find it. I was staring at it. She was the daughter of one of the highest ranking intelligence directors in MI-6 and she was the terrorists’ link. But I wanted proof. I wanted it, and I betrayed her to get it without a moment’s hesitation or guilt. At sixteen, I would have died for her. For years after that, I compared every woman I took to bed with her. But I betrayed her in less than a heartbeat and I didn’t feel a damned thing for her as they led her away in handcuffs two weeks later.”
“Jordan, she betrayed you,” she whispered. “It’s not the same when two people love each other. When they’re together, when they’re working toward a future together.”
“Isn’t it?” He reached up and touched her cheek again, as though that connection, as small as it was, was needed.
“Mom and Dad were working toward a future. They had three sons, they had a life together, and they were committed to that ideal of love that they professed was so strong.” Now, there was anger, pain. “Dad loved her until nothing mattered to him as much as his wife. When one of the young families that worked for us on the ranch was targeted by racists, she fought back for them. She didn’t tell Dad what she was doing, and she didn’t tell her sons, who were nearly grown. She didn’t tell anyone she was driving out to rescue them and take them to a friend’s house in the next county. When her vehicle went over a cliff and exploded, the sheriff ruled it an accident. There was no investigation, no questions asked, despite the fact that there were three adult bodies and a child’s in that vehicle as well. We had no idea what the hell happened until her friends slipped into the house late one night and told us what she had been doing.” A shard of bitter laughter filled the room for a second. “She loved so deeply that she didn’t care about risking her own life, the life her husband and children depended upon.”
What was she supposed to say? She stared back at him, her eyes burning with tears.
“The same as you and your men are forced to risk your lives protecting and saving the world,” she finally pointed out huskily. “How is it any different, Jordan? She wasn’t just helping that small family, she was imagining her own family in the same danger, and had no choice but to react.”
“You know, that’s the same bullshit excuse I gave Killian when his wife Catherine disobeyed orders and slipped into the warehouse where Sorrel’s men were holding a young girl they had kidnapped. We had to wait on orders to go in and they were getting ready to move the kid, but we still had time. I was on the line with my director and we were getting the order to go in. It was coming,” he snarled. “We told her it would get there in time. But she went in. She went in, she got the girl, and she was running out of the warehouse with her.
“They shot her before she made it to safety, before we could get to her. She protected that kid, covered her body with her own as she went down and kept her alive until we got there. But she died, Tehya, and she took Kil
lian’s unborn son with her. A child she hadn’t even told him about. And they gave him the same useless argument. A mother’s instinct. The need to protect.”
He came over her, pushed her back to the bed as she stared up at him, eyes wide, her breath catching.
“If you ever, ever fucking endanger yourself like that, then I will walk away,” he snarled. “I won’t watch helplessly, Tehya, while you destroy yourself. I will not let you kill me inside because of your damned stubbornness.”
“Then you’ll live by the same rules.” She was back in his face, teeth bared, furious, aching, hurting for him and yet drawn into the emotional vortex she could feel swirling out from him. “Wrap me in cotton, Jordan. See if I give a fuck. Because you’ll be right there with me or you can kiss my ass good-bye.”
Jordan stared down at her. He could barely see the outline of her face, but he could see her eyes. Wicked, witchy cat’s eyes that glared back at him, that demanded, that refused to back down.
She had an answer for everything.
She made him want to believe in love. Made him want to believe in that unspoken emotion he couldn’t seem to get a handle on inside himself. That illusion he had always disdained in the past.
She made him want to give her the world, and even when he’d been sixteen, when he’d been dick dumb, he hadn’t truly wanted to give any woman the world.
What did she do to him? He wanted to walk away, because he knew she was a weakness. He wanted to keep her at a distance, remain aloof, but it was damned impossible. She was tying his guts up in knots and at the same time, finding a way to keep his attention focused squarely on her.
And he couldn’t figure out how she managed it.
“While we’re together,” he stated. “When this is over.” He had to force himself to breathe through the words. “When it’s finished, Tehya, I don’t want to walk away. At least, not immediately.”
She was silent, still. He could feel her hurt, he knew she had expected more.
“Don’t walk away, Jordan.” Thick, heavy with unshed tears, her voice whispered through the darkness. “For as long as you can, don’t walk away.”
He lay back down beside her before pulling her into his arms, her head resting against his shoulder.
He held her, his chest heavy with words he had no idea how to say. Hell, he didn’t even know what the words were, just that they struggled to be free. That something inside him felt trapped.
As he stared into the darkness, he wondered, for the first time, if the illusion of love were cared for, if it were cherished, was there any way it could be preserved?
* * *
Sleep hadn’t come easy for Jordan. The soft weight of Tehya in his arms had felt too natural, much too right for him not to question it.
He’d slept with many women over the years, lovers, mistresses, and never had he slept well with them, let alone lain comfortably with them in his bed.
He realized as he held her, though, that each time he had fallen asleep with her in his arms, it had simply felt right.
She was changing him. He felt it, and he had to admit there was an edge of discomfort in the knowledge. There was the realization that the consequences of losing her would be far different than those of losing anyone else.
As sleep settled over him, he allowed himself to push aside the questions and the concerns. For now, there was nothing he could do but accept it. There was no other option when it came to keeping her close to him. So far, the men shadowing her were too damned good at staying just out of reach. He wasn’t about to risk having her taken from him.
There were safeguards built in just in case. Eyes were watching twenty-four-seven, always keeping Tehya in view on the off chance that Jordan hadn’t covered every angle.
Those eyes were his last defense against the loss of the one woman he knew he couldn’t bear to lose.
Because he could sense the danger coming.
He just didn’t expect it to come so soon.
He was nudged from sleep by the awareness that something just wasn’t right. A sound, a feeling, a shift in the air that wasn’t natural.
It was an awareness, a warning that something threatened Tehya.
He had, before slipping into sleep, tucked his Glock beneath his pillow rather than leaving it on the bedside table.
Lying on his side, one arm around Tehya, he slid the other slowly beneath the pillow, his fingers curling over the butt of the gun as he felt Tehya shift by just the slightest degree, just enough to slide her arm over the side of the bed, the movement hidden by the blankets.
She was awake and ready to move. He had known that same awareness would awaken her as well. She had been on the run for too many years before she came to the Elite Ops. Those instincts didn’t die.
Senses open, Jordan listened, fighting to determine where the danger was coming from. He’d left the lights on in the front room; the glow beneath the door had given the room the faintest bit of light.
It wasn’t there now. The lights had been turned out, allowing the danger to slip into the room without alerting him by flooding the bedroom with light.
It must have been the click of the door that awakened them.
Rather than moving as he would have at any other time, Jordan paused. Listening closely he opened his eyes just enough to check his peripheal vision. And there they were. The faintest of shadows, not just one. Fuck, there were two.
He had to find a way to take both out at the same time, or to disable the first before drawing the fire of the second and praying he was fast enough to avoid the bullets.
The two shadows shifted, positioning themselves until their weapons were trained on him, not on Tehya.
He almost let his lips curl in satisfaction. They were trying to take him out, to separate Tehya from any hope of support or protection. That wouldn’t happen. No matter what happened to him, his men would never allow her to be taken.
But he had no intentions of allowing himself to be taken out so easily.
He could feel Tehya. She was ready to move, tense, and on the verge of panic. Where her back rested against his chest, he could feel her heart racing furiously, the danger of the moment speeding adrenaline through her body.
His hand tightened on her hip where it had rested as they slept.
It was coming. He felt it. The weapons were trained on him, the assailants were ready to take the shot. But now he also knew where the bastards were. Two. They had come in as a team, one to take him out, the other to go after Tehya. He doubted they had plans to kill her.
He was running out of time.
Jordan watched the shadows shift again from the corner of his eyes and knew his time was up.
He moved.
As though Tehya’s instincts were directly connected to his, she moved with him as the sound and red flares of silenced weapons discharging popped through the room.
He went for the first would-be assassin. Slamming the butt of his weapon into the head and feeling him fall, he turned and prayed the first was disabled long enough for him to deal with the second.
The pop-pop of bullets discharging from a silencer again echoed through the room again as Jordan rolled. They slammed into his pillow, where his head had been.
“Keep the lights out,” he snarled, just in case Tehya was going for the lamp. “Get behind something.”
Protection. Tehya had to be protected. That one instinct, that one imperative thought drove his every movement.
He needed the darkness now. The flare of light would blind his senses, leaving him defenseless for precious seconds. It would give the assailants an advantage, perhaps the chance to do as they intended. To kill him.
Eyes narrowed, his gaze pierced the darkness as he threw himself to the side again, drawing the gunfire his way, rather than Tehya’s.
He was trusting her to take care of the assailant on the floor while he disabled the other. Discarding his weapon, Jordan threw himself at the second assailant. Rage was a fever rushing through his syste
m, burning into mind and lighting a fuse to danger-induced adrenaline.
Stupid bastards, he thought. If he knew he were going into a darkened bedroom he would have worn night vision hardware. He would have never gone in as blind as his prey.
A shift in the shadows alerted him.
Jumping to the side, Jordan rolled as the blood-red streaks of light flared in the darkness. Catching the assailant as he jerked to the side to change direction, his fist slammed into the kidneys, drawing a hard cry from his throat as Jordan took him to the floor his hand going for the weapon coming around on him.
Gripping the hand holding the weapon, Jordan struggled to wrestle it from his assailant before he could fire again.
“Bastard!” A harsh cry from the knee Jordan drove into his attacker’s crotch as the gun went off, ripping along his side as Jordan snarled at the pain.
His fist slammed into a jaw as he jerked the weapon from the other man’s hand and tossed it across the floor. He was going in for another shot when the bedroom door slammed open, flooding the room with just enough light to momentarily blind him.
He jumped in the direction of the weapon he had just tossed to the side.
“Clear.” It was Micah’s voice, icy cold and dangerous, that assured him the intruders were friendly rather than enemy.
Without hesitation, Jordan jumped to his feet and went across the bed in a hard roll to come to a crouch where Tehya was supposed to be.
Instead of moving to a point of protection, she was finishing a quick knot to the belt from her robe around the hands of the first assailant.
She had jerked his shirt back on, two buttons secured just beneath her breasts. Red-gold curls flowed wildly around her shoulders, her cat’s eyes glittered with rage and fear.
“Where are the others?” Jordan snapped as he jerked his pants from the bottom of the bed and quickly pulled them on, his gaze going between the two disabled men as Micah secured the second.
“Front room,” Micah answered, his dark gaze piercing between the edges of the black mask he wore over his face. “We cleared the hall and the rest of the suite.”