Kell's green eyes were calm, his expression filled with satisfaction. "Looks like we got him." His lips kicked up in a grin.
"You got him." Clint glanced at the corpse now lying on the floor as he shook his head. "Damn, did you get him."
Morganna stood to the side, staring around her in shock as the elevators slid open. Drage, Jayne, Reno, Raven, and Joe rushed into the room, guns drawn, expressions filled with horror as they stared around at the destruction.
"Looks like we showed up a bit late." Drage winced at the blood staining the carpet.
"Morganna." Reno rushed to her side as Raven moved for her brother.
"You managed to drag me home from my honeymoon, Clint." Raven was chastising him, though her voice was filled with worry.
Voices raged around Morganna, hammered at her skull, and no matter how hard she tried to break free of her brother to get to Clint, Reno refused to let her go.
She could feel the tears washing down her face as reaction set in. She needed Clint, just for one more minute.
"Let me go!" She pushed against Reno, staring around her, looking for Clint.
"Morganna." She swung to the other side as she heard his voice, her eyes widening as Clint suddenly pulled her into his arms. There he was. Oh God, he was okay. Bloody, his eye was blackened, his lips swollen, but he was okay.
She ran her hands over his face, his bare shoulders, his chest, skirting the sharp, bloody line where Manuelo's knife had torn the skin.
"It's not too deep." Clint touched the bruise on her cheek, his eyes dark, swirling with shadows and, beneath them, the chill he always carried. "Are you okay, baby?"
CLINT RAN HIS HANDS OVER Morganna's arms, her back.
He ignored the disapproval in Reno's gaze, the concern in Raven's. God, Morganna had fought like a little wildcat. He had caught glimpses of her, hence the few times Manuelo had caught him with that damned knife, and she had kickedass. Literally.
"I'm fine." She was dazed, shaking, in shock. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine, baby. But the debriefing on this one is going to be a killer." Clint sighed. He didn't want to let her go. He didn't want to leave her. But it was better now than later. If he left her now and just didn't return, then her chances of getting over it, of getting over him, were better.
"Don't leave." She stared back at him knowingly.
God help him, he could drown in her eyes, even now. She was like a drug he couldn't get out of his system, one he had come to depend on as much as he depended on breathing. And he couldn't keep her. He knew he couldn't keep her. He loved her. Loved her until everything in his heart, his soul, his world, was consumed by Morganna. And it scared the shit out of him. What if he was like his father? How could he live with hurting her?
"I have to, baby-"
"If you leave me, don't come back." She stepped away from him as he stared back at her, surprised by the sudden core of steel he saw in her eyes.
"Morganna ..." He didn't know what to say. He hated the pain he saw blooming in the velvet-gray depths of her eyes, the betrayal that flashed across her expression.
"If you're not back in my bed soon, then you'll never
share it with me again, Clint McIntyre," she told him fiercely.
"You do your debriefing; you tie up your loose ends-" Her
breathing hitched, her eyes blinking furiously at her tears.
"If you leave me, don't come back."
He breathed in roughly, and damn her, he could feel his hands shaking. The look in her eyes wasn't much different from the look he'd seen just before she tore into Jenna.
"I know you," Morganna whispered, her hands digging into his forearms as she glared back at him. "If you think
you're going to run away, then come limping back when you can't stand it any longer, like you've done for years, then
you've lost your mind. I'll cut your heart out and feed it to my cat."
"You don't have a cat, Morganna," he told her softly.
"I'll buy one," she snapped. "Then I'll go to the biggest, baddest honky-tonk I can find and marry the biggest, meanest redneck so he can kick your ass." A single tear fell down her cheek. "Don't you do it, Clint."
What the hell was he going to do about her?
"McIntyre, we need you with us," the investigator called cut as he loaded Manuelo's dead body and Jenna's unconscious one.
"I'm coming." Clint nodded tightly before turning back to Morganna.
"I mean it, Clint," she snarled, her finger poking into his chest as her expression turned fierce. "I'm going home, and if you aren't there when this is all said and done, then don't bother ever coming into my life again."
"You're better off without me," he whispered. "You know you are, Morganna."
She breathed in deeply; the fight to hold back her tears was breaking his heart.
"You heard me," she repeated huskily as she stepped back from his arms. "If you don't love me, if you can't fight with me, for me, then by God, I don't need you and I sure as hell don't want you. Think about that one."
He let her go. His arms tightened at his sides as he fought the need to pull her back, fought every instinct inside him that had the vow to return hovering on his lips.
"I have to go," he finally growled as someone called his name again.
"Go," she whispered. "I'm going home. And I expect to see you there. Soon, Clint. Very soon."
He knew Morganna. He knew her moods and he knew her stubbornness, and he knew she was serious. If he didn't come back as soon as possible, then he could kiss his ass good-bye. And if he did return? The thought of ever hurting her, of turning on her as his father had turned on him, terrified him.
And the vasectomy wasn't the safety net he had thought it would be. He knew his woman, inside and out; it wouldn't be long before he would be trying to reverse it, before he would give in to the need she had for children, for a family. Hell, keeping her barefoot and pregnant would be the only way to keep her out of trouble and to send him to hell.
Clint made himself turn away and move to where Kell waited for him. The other man's green eyes watched Morganna thoughtfully before turning back to Clint.
"Hey, we got the bad guys. That's all that matters. Right. The knowing glint in Kell's eyes had Clint tamping down the protest rising to his lips. No, that wasn't all that mattered. There was more to life than catching bad guys. There was getting the girl. Clint looked back to Morganna and met Reno's hard gaze instead.
It wasn't all that mattered, and Clint knew it, just as Kell did. But Clint left anyway. He turned, following Joe to the elevator, and moved inside with him and the rest of the team as Kell followed.
Clint's last sight of Morganna was her eyes meeting his as the elevator doors closed, and he felt the certainty that if he didn't return soon, then he would lose her forever. And if he did return ... ? He could lose her anyway.
Chapter 28
TWO DAYS LATER
HE MISSED MORGANNA. AS CLINT pulled his pickup truck out of the Federal Building parking lot, he finally admitted the truth to himself. He hadn't slept worth shit in his apartment the night before. The bed, normally the height of comfort, had developed lumps. He couldn't get comfortable, no matter how hard he tried.
And every time he'd drifted off he had awakened reaching for Morganna. Only Morganna wasn't there. And she wasn't answering her phone. Though the message on the phone was telling.
"If this is you, Clint, I'm checking out honky-tonks now." She was home. He knew she was home because Reno was answering his cell phone and he had been there twice when Clint had called to check up on Morganna.
"Between me and you, ole buddy," Reno had snorted the day before, "she came home with a cat today. That worries me."
Clint shook his head as he negotiated downtown Atlanta's traffic and headed for his mother's home, just outside the city limits. He hadn't seen her in years. He called, checked up on her, but bringing himself to actually walk into her home and pretend a bond that had never
been there wasn't something he had been able to bring himself to do since he had joined the SEALs. Now he had no other choice.
Admitting he was a coward wasn't something a man did easily, but as Clint negotiated the traffic through town, he admitted that was exactly what he was when it came to Morganna. He had held himself as far from her as possible until he had no choice but to keep her close to him. And just as he had always known, she had wormed her way so deep into his soul that he couldn't pull free.
He loved her. But until he faced his past, as well as himself, then he would never be the man he knew she needed. The man he needed to be.
He couldn't imagine being a part of Morganna's life and not having children with her. Not immediately maybe, but in the next few years. A little girl with Morganna's laughing smile and dove-gray eyes. A little minx determined to take on the world and drive all sane males crazy. Or a little boy ... Clint swallowed tightly at the thought of a son.
Reno's dad had taught Clint to play ball, to shoot, to be a man. Clint's father had taught him the wrong side of his fist and nothing else. What would Clint teach his son? The thought of it terrified him.
He pulled into his mother's driveway, turned off the truck, and stared at the small two-story home silently. It wasn't much different from the house he had been raised in, though the neighborhood was slightly better. She had lived in an apartment until recently, hoarding the money Clint sent her as she waited for her retirement and the small nest egg his father had begun when they first married.
Raven said Linda McIntyre was proud of the house. She talked often about grandkids and visits and holiday meals. That wasn't the mother he remembered. But then again, she had always been different with Raven, just as their father had been. And now that Clint was here, what the hell was he going to say? He hadn't seen Linda in five years and damn if he wasn't ready to turn around now and just leave. As his fingers tightened on the keys, the door opened and there she was. She was smaller than he remembered, older. Her hair was gray, her face lined, and her eyes, so like his own, were staring straight back at him. Clint pulled the keys slowly from the ignition before opening the door.
Damn, he should have just kept driving. He should gone straight to Morganna's. This was a mistake. But he forced himself from the truck, standing beside it silently, awkwardly.
As he stared back at Linda, he remembered the woman she had been twenty years before. Slender, beautiful, with long black hair, soft gray eyes. Clint had taken his facial features and his broad, muscular body from his father, but his coloring had come from his mother, as had Raven's.
"Raven just left." Linda's voice was the same as always- bitter, rough. "You may as well come in."
She turned, leaving the door open for him as she reentered the house. It was a hell of a welcome, but he hadn't come here for a welcome. He wasn't certain why he had come, but a welcoming might have been too shocking for him to survive.
Pocketing his keys, he breathed out roughly before heading up the flower-lined sidewalk to the small brick home. The door opened into a small entryway, then a classically pretty living room. His mother had always been a stickler for everything looking just right, color coordinated and prissy.
She was waiting for him in the middle of the room, standing stiff and silent as she stared back at him.
"How's Raven doing?" he finally asked as he closed the door and faced Linda with none of the anger he remembered feeling the last time they had been in the same room together.
"As forgetful as ever," she sighed. "She left the door cracked when she left. That girl never did understand how to close and lock doors. It's a wonder she hasn't been raped and murdered in her own home."
Linda was nervous. Clint heard the slight quiver in her voice, saw the wary look in her eyes. It was her habitual look whenever she saw him, as though she expected him to strike her at any time. He had never laid a hand on her, had never wanted to.
"I admit I bought the house with the money you gave me." she spoke up with a spark of anger. "You didn't say how I was to use it. So if you're here because I'm not in that dinky little apartment-"
"The house is nice, Mother."
"I was tired of the apartment-"
"I didn't come to argue with you. I don't care what you do with the money," he finally told her softly. "I just..."
He just what? He dipped his head, sighing wearily. This was a hell of a mistake.
"You haven't been around in more than five years." She clasped her hands in front of her as she lifted her chin in challenge. "Why now?"
He shifted, wondering what the hell to say, to do. Jeez, he was a glutton for punishment, wasn't he? In the years since his father's death, Clint had rarely visited and whenever he did, it was never for more than a few minutes. He saw her and the past swirled in his mind like a furious cloud. The beatings, his pleas each time his mother went out, how he would cry and beg her not let his father catch her. She would pat Clint's head and tell him to be a big boy. God, she had been as fucking crazy as his father had been.
"I'm thinking about getting married." Fuck. Okay, yeah, he had been thinking about it, but he hadn't been thinking about telling her about it.
She blinked back at him. "Anyone I know?"
"Yeah...." He nodded slightly. "Look, I don't know why the hell I'm even here." He pushed his hands over his head wearily before dropping his arms to his sides once again. "I'm sorry I bothered you." He turned to leave, to get the hell away from her and the memories that rose like a black cloud in his mind every time he saw her.
"He didn't believe you belonged to him." The words stopped Clint as he headed for the door. He froze in his tracks for a long second before turning back to her. "What did you say?" He shook his head in confusion. She squared her shoulders and for the first time that he could remember, she looked him in the eye. Not that the look was in any way comforting. There was no regret there, no warmth. Just the same cool gray gaze he had always known.
"He didn't believe you belonged to him." There was a curious light in her eyes, almost one of interest, as though she wondered how he would react.
He didn't react at all. He didn't give a shit one way or the other what the bastard thought of him, but he was curious as to whether or not he shared blood with the man he had known as his biological father.
"Did I?"
"Of course you did. I may have been a whore, Clinton, but I was a careful one. You were his."
The mocking quirk at the corner of her lips no longer had the power to hurt him or to make him angry. It served instead to emphasize the fact that she really didn't give a damn.
"So why did he believe otherwise?"
She sighed as though tired, turning away from him and pacing to a tall shelf on the other side of the room. There, numerous picture frames graced the shelves. There were a few family pictures, but most of them were of Raven, Raven and their father, Raven and their mother. There were very few of Clint.
"I never claimed to be a good mother." Her lips flattened as she stared back at him. "But lately, as I've realized how quickly age is creeping up on me, I've regretted many things. I let him believe it, because it hurt him. It hurt him the way it hurt me each time he went to another woman. Each time he came home and spent his nights away from the house. So I let him believe it."
"You let him beat the hell out of me."
"You survived."
He had the impression she would have rolled her eyes if she weren't too scared to.
"I survived?" he snapped. "I could barely move for days, damn you. He took that fucking belt of his and beat the shit out of me and you didn't even care enough to keep him from catching you whenever you screwed around. I was a child."
"And you're a man now," she shot back, as cold and unfeeling as she had ever been. "Your father was raised to believe the strap was the only answer to anything. He never broke your bones; he didn't leave scars. It wasn't my fault he blamed my infidelities on you."
"It was your place to protect your children." H
is fists clenched at his sides, not because he wanted to strike her, but because in that moment he realized how much of his life he had wasted caring one way or the other why his parents had done anything.
"He was a hard man, but he provided for you." She finally shrugged. "You and I, we were never close. Even when you were a baby, you didn't care much for me." Her lips twisted bitterly, accusingly. "You didn't want to be held and cuddled like Raven did. You were always content to be alone, unless you needed to be fed or changed. You didn't want a mother; you wanted a caretaker."
He blinked back at her in surprise.
"You're as crazy as he was," he finally said softly, not really surprised or shocked.
"I'm not crazy, Clinton." Her smile was mocking. "I didn't want children; your father did. He forced me to conceive you, and then he convinced himself you didn't belong to him. I didn't claim I was right or wrong, but I knew he would never kill you, nor maim you. You grew up fine."
He grew up to hate his parents; he grew up with a cynicism and distrust that had shadowed his every move, his every relationship.
"You're more like him than you know." She crossed her arms over her breasts and watched him with calculated interest. "A Navy SEAL. He lived for the service, for his men. You even look like him now. He would have been proud of you had he lived."
Joy-joy. The distaste Clint felt as he watched her filled his mouth with a sour taste. This woman had borne him, nothing more. She hadn't been a mother then, and she wasn't a mother now.
"So, are you marrying the Chavez girl?" she asked curiously. "She's been flipping her tail around you for years. Did you know she came to see me the other day?"
He watched Linda closely. "No, 1 didn't know that." "Yes." She smiled coolly. "She was upset. She tore into me quite furiously, actually. I'm surprised you told her about the beatings. You were always very aware of family loyalty, even as a child. You've changed over the years."
"Family loyalty," he murmured mockingly. "There would have to be a family first, Mother."