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Cap got up from the table then and gestured for her to follow him.
She hesitated but eventually followed him outside.
He sat on a porch swing and patted the space beside him.
“I’ll stand,” she informed him.
“You ran before I could talk to you,” he began.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and glared at him. “I heard you talking to your superior. He wanted you to bring me in because he thought I had information about Dad. After what happened to Olivia, did you expect me to hang around for that?”
“I expected you to trust me,” he stated solemnly.
“You first,” she responded.
“Did you think I would just hand you over to them?”
She nodded at that. “Yeah, I did. You had already lied to me to get close to find out whatever you could about Dad. Our whole relationship was built on a house of cards, and they weren’t exactly a winning hand.”
“I had already resigned my commission by the time your dad was murdered in Moscow.”
She really looked at him then, shock locking the words in her throat. “You resigned? Then what were you doing still plugging forward in your mission?”
“Oh, I had to finish what I started, but no way would I have handed you over to them. I wouldn’t then. I won’t now. I don’t know who is ultimately in control. Holland and I have spent the last two years trying to ferret out the truth. No way would I put you in danger like that.”
“You put me in danger the moment you stepped into my life,” she told him plainly.
He shook his head. “Your dad had already taken care of that. You and Olivia were pawns used against him—it’s why he gave the Russians the information he did.”
She put her hands over her ears. It was petulant and she knew it but she did it anyway.
He stood then and grabbed her wrists, pulling her hands down.
“You have to listen to me,” he pleaded. “Holland and I had already made plans to hide you and Olivia. Then she was killed, and we had to play the game, but never did I plan to turn you over to our superior. We were prepared to run with you.”
“You would betray your own government?” she asked, disbelief rife in her tone.
“Not my government, but my superiors, yes. This thing goes deep, Ava. Deeper than Holland or I ever suspected.”
“You mean my dad betraying his country isn’t the deepest it goes? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Look, someone is going to great lengths to find you and either kill you or bring you in for interrogation. And I can guarantee you it wouldn’t be a gentle interrogation. They think you know something. Hell, I think you know something that you might not even know you know. Fuck, it’s twisted.”
“And none of it explains how I was supposed to know you weren’t going to just hand me over.”
He grabbed her face then, cupping her cheeks and staring deep into her eyes. “Because I love you, that’s how you were supposed to know.”
She shook her head and pulled away from his hold on her.
“You entered my life intending to betray me and I’m supposed to believe that you loved me? Now that’s twisted,” she told him.
“I loved you then and I love you now,” he stated firmly. “Yes, I came into your life amidst subterfuge, but I quickly fell under your spell.”
“I didn’t cast a spell, Cap. You fell into lust, and so did I. I was just naïve, and I called it love.”
Captain’s face went hard at that, lips thinning and nose flaring. He was angry and she hated that, she really did, but she was speaking the truth. So what that he still made her heart pound and butterflies take flight in her stomach? So what she went soft in all the right places when he touched her? Lust was what they had between them and the sooner he realized that the sooner she could get gone.
“What are you going to do, Ava? Run your whole life?” he taunted.
