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“Or something.” He gets up to clear away the empty plates. “Let’s just say that not everyone agrees with my chosen course of action.”
“What course of action?”
“I’m contemplating accepting another job offer—a particularly lucrative one.”
I frown and get up to help him stack the dishes in the dishwasher. “Is it dangerous?”
His smile lacks any hint of humor. “Our life is dangerous, ptichka. The work we do is just part of it.”
“So why are the guys objecting?” I put down the plate I was rinsing and face Peter, wiping my hands on a dish towel. “Is it somehow worse than your usual Mission Impossible gigs?”
His steely gaze warms at my worried tone. “It’s nothing you need to stress about, my love—at least not for a while. We won’t even meet with the potential client until mid-December, and that meeting will decide if we take this job or not.”
“Oh.” My worry abates slightly, edged out by growing curiosity. “Are you meeting this client in person?” At Peter’s nod, I ask, “Why? You don’t normally do that, do you?”
“No, but we’re going to make an exception this time.” He doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate, and I decide to leave it alone for now. Mid-December is weeks away, and he’ll tell me when he’s ready—probably when he hasn’t just argued with his teammates.
We finish the cleanup in companionable silence, and I marvel at how natural all this feels: having breakfast with Peter and his men, doing dishes, talking about his work. Never mind that we’re on an inaccessible mountain peak in Japan with a foot of snow already blanketing the ground, or that the work in question is gory assassinations. My time away from here—the days I spent in Cyprus with the Kents, followed by the two-week stay at the Swiss clinic—is already beginning to seem like a bad memory, a scary interlude in this new life of mine.
A life that’s becoming more comfortable and real with each day that passes here, in this foreign place that’s starting to feel like home.
I wait for the painful bite of self-hate and guilt, but all I feel is a kind of weary resignation. I’m tired of fighting myself and these confusing feelings, tired of resisting and pretending that the man watching me with those metallic eyes is nothing more than my captor—that I didn’t cling to him at the clinic like a baby koala to its mother. When I woke up this morning, alone in an empty bed, I wanted to cry—and it had nothing to do with the fact that I still haven’t gotten my period.
I shut the door on that thought before I can start freaking out again. Yes, I’m now several days late, but there are other potential explanations for the delay. Stress, for instance, both of the physical and emotional variety. Without a pregnancy test and in the absence of other symptoms, there’s no way to know at this early stage if I’m dealing with the effects of the accident or the consequences of unprotected sex. So for now, since I’m not ready to bring up this topic with Peter, I need to put it out of my mind and hope for the best.
If I’m pregnant, we’ll both know soon enough.
“Are you okay?” Peter asks, his dark eyebrows pulling into a concerned frown, and I realize I must’ve inadvertently grimaced, as if in pain.
“I’m just jet-lagged,” I say, and to further allay his worry, I paste on a bright smile. “You know, long flight and all.”
“Ah.” He lifts his big hand, gently touching the healing scar on my forehead. “You should take it easy for the next few days. You’re not yet fully recovered.” His frown deepens. “Maybe we should’ve stayed at the clinic longer.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Oh, no. We stayed about a week too long as is. I’m fine—just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Right.” He doesn’t look convinced, and impulsively, I rise on tiptoes and kiss the hard line of that sensuous mouth.
It’s just a brief, playful kiss, but we both reel from it as though from a blow. I don’t know why I did this, why it felt like the most natural thing in the world to soothe him like that. It wasn’t because I want sex, though I do—he hasn’t taken me since Cyprus and my body’s aching for his touch. No, it was just something I wanted to do, something that felt right.
He recovers first, a slow, seductive smile curving those sculpted lips as he reaches for me, one arm sliding around my waist to draw me closer while the other hand curves gently around my jaw, his callused thumb stroking my cheek. “Sara…” His voice is low and husky, as warm as the glow in his gaze. “My beautiful ptichka… I love you so, so much.”
