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Scooping up the bag, I stopped in the kitchen to grab a bottle of water before returning to Nataliya and Elias in the guest room. She was sitting beside him, humming softly and petting his hair.
“Thank you,” she said as I handed her what I’d brought. “Can you help me sit him up?” I nodded, and together, we slowly got him moved into a seated position. Elias leaned back against me, a dead weight against my chest. Nataliya apologized as she dug through her bag for his medication.
“It’s fine,” I assured her. “I don’t mind.”
Her hazel eyes caught mine for just a second, and my stomach flipped over. She truly was a beauty, and the way she treated her son just made that beauty shine. It let me see the real her, under the wary defensiveness she usually showed me. Not that it mattered that I found her attractive or not. This was a mission. There was a goal…and getting caught up on a pretty face wasn’t a part of it.
Nataliya helped Elias to take two pills: one I knew had to be a pain pill because it had come from the same orange bottle from before. The other came from a red bottle. “What’s that?”
“A muscle relaxer,” she said. “It’s only meant for emergencies.” Once he’d swallowed the two pills, she and I laid him back down. “I’m going to stay with him,” she said. “Tell Drake for me? Have him keep an eye on our program?”
I nodded. “Sure. How long is he usually like this?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Sometimes it’s only a few hours, sometimes it’s a few days.”
“Well…when he’s okay to travel again, I’ll take you to meet Dr. Mayfield, okay? She’s shacked up with my buddy Owen in Alabama.”
“Okay. Thank you.” Her tone was flat, a little sad, and I watched her curl her body around her son, as if she could protect him from everything, even the disease wracking his muscles.
I left the room with a knot in my gut. Not being able to help, to truly help, always left me with a stomachache—a feeling of guilt that went all the way back to my childhood.
“Nataliya’s going to stay with Elias for a bit,” I said as I came back to the living room. “He’s not feeling well. She asked you to keep an eye on the program for her.”
Drake nodded. “It needs a couple of hours to run anyway.” Layla came into the room, and his face changed—his eyes lit up, and he automatically reached for her, for their children. She handed baby Spencer to him. “Hey, bub,” he murmured to the baby, who offered him a gummy smile.
The little scene was so…sweet. Domestic in a way I didn’t picture Drake ever being. “Is it weird?” I asked, not able to help myself. “Having a family?”
Both he and Layla laughed. “Beyond weird,” she said, and he agreed.
“But an amazing kind of weird,” Drake said, looking up at her.
She bent and left a smacking kiss on his lips. “Cheesy,” she said but kissed him again all the same. “By the way, Spence needs his diaper changed.”
“You—!”
She danced away with Shawn, giggling all the while, and I laughed. Drake turned on me. “You just wait, man. One day, this will be you.”
“Nah, I’m not built for family life.” I’d done my share of dating over the years, but it never got serious. Being a SEAL came first for me, and I never felt right about asking someone to commit to me when I knew I couldn’t commit fully in return. And in the time since leaving the Navy, getting justice for Cuddy and Roger had been driving me. Romance had dropped off my radar completely.
Drake shrugged. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“You think I didn’t notice the way you were looking at Nataliya? C’mon, man, I know how you look when you’re interested. And you’re definitely interested.”
“There’s nothing there,” I insisted. “This is a mission—nothing more.” Fraternizing didn’t belong in life-or-death situations.
Drake narrowed his eyes at me. “So, you don’t think she’s attractive? Like at all?”
“No!” At his look, I sighed. “I mean, yeah, objectively, she’s gorgeous, but she doesn’t trust me as far as she can throw me. There’s no chance of anything happening between us. It’s a mission, nothing more.”
Drake stared at me for a long moment. “Sure, man,” he finally said, not convinced at all.
SIX
NATALIYA
“The decryption program is nearly finished,” Drake announced over lunch. It had been running for more than twenty-four hours and going smoothly. I hadn’t been able to keep a close eye on it because Elias was still recovering, but it didn’t seem to have hit any snags.
