Page 28 of Exacting Vengeance

“If you need me, hit the panic button on the phone. Or just scream at the top of your lungs, and I’ll come running. Brad will come running. We’ll all come running.” Reluctantly, she turned and began closing the door, shooting one last venomous look at Kyle’s back.

With a heavy sigh, Victoria indicated a small armchair opposite her desk, and he sat.

“It’s been a long time,” he said, his expression unreadable. “But I had no choice.”

Kyle. Part of her still couldn’t believe that was his name. It was, quite possibly, the only real thing she knew about him.

“I was told you’d left town,” he continued. “Chicago, that is. And gotten a divorce. A wise move.”

“The wisest I ever made,” she whispered. The tension between them crackled like a loose power cable. Sure enough, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled like a barbed wire necklace. “Why are you here?”

“To see how you are.” The creases on his forehead deepened.

“To see how I am?” She held her arms wide. “You left me in that hospital.” From an intellectual aspect, now she understood his reasons for doing that. But as a woman, she’d felt completely abandoned by the one person she’d needed most. The one person she’d wanted most.

“I really am sorry.” He shook his head and sighed. “I couldn’t have stayed.”

Unwillingly, her gaze lowered to his lips, kindling the remnant of desire she’d thought long gone. The way he’d looked at her that one night…the way he’d kissed her. It had made her dream of what she yearned to be. What she had once wanted to be. To him. It shamed her that all it took was one look, and he still had that effect on her.

“As for how I am, I guess I’m better than the last time you saw me.” She clasped her hands in her lap, squeezing them together. “Thank you for not saying anything about me at the meeting.” She hated to beg, but there were others to think about. “Please don’t tell anyone. My boss could lose all his government contracts. He’d probably have to fire me.”

Kyle’s golden, predatory eyes narrowed on her. “My boss, Mike Morrison, knows.”

She grabbed the armrests. “You told him?”

“It’s not as bad as you think.” He shook his head subtly. “Before transferring to New York, Mike was my supervisor in Chicago. He always knew who you were. He’d just never met you in person.”

She dug her fingers deeper into the armrests. Her predicament was worsening by the minute. If Kyle’s boss knew who she was, he would certainly talk to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and have her removed from the case. Word would spread quickly. Getting any more recommendations for her or Brad Evans Psychology would become difficult.

Guilt threatened to smother her to the point she couldn’t breathe. She tilted her head and stared at the ceiling. There had to be something she could do to avoid this catastrophe.

“Listen to me.” Kyle’s voice filtered through her misery. “No one is going to fire you, and no one will say a word. Brad Evans’s contracts are safe. Aside from my boss, no one else knows about us or how and why we know each other.” He paused. “I don’t want you to hate me for what I did.”

“I don’t hate you. Not really,” she whispered, more to herself. He must have heard her last comment because he raised an eyebrow. “You saved my life,” she added hastily, dismayed with herself for being mean yet barely able to contain all the emotions whizzing in her head. “I could never hate you. This is all just too much to take in at once.”

“I know,” Kyle said, rubbing his forehead.

“You know?” He had to be kidding, right? “How could you know? For you, this is just another day at the office, another day at the F-B-I. For me, this is my whole disgraceful life coming back to hit me in the face all over again.”

“You made a mistake marrying that bastard, that’s all. Don’t keep kicking yourself for it.” There was anger in his eyes, but she knew it wasn’t directed at her. “Look at all you’ve accomplished since then. You’ve probably helped more people than I have, and that’s something to be proud of.” A good thirty seconds went by before he spoke again. “If you ever need me, for any reason, I’ll be there. I promise.”

Victoria stood, feeling her skin grow hotter by the second. “You promise?” She pointed a shaking finger at him. “I don’t need you or anyone promising me anything. It’s taken me years to stand on my own two feet again, and I’ll never take anything from anyone. Certainly not from someone who spent more than a year deceiving me about…everything!”

She hadn’t remembered moving but found herself standing directly in front of his chair. Her chest heaved and her pulse beat so rapidly she could hear it in her ears, drowning out everything except the humiliation burning her insides.

Unexpectedly, he looked up at her with that disarmingly charming grin she knew oh-so-well made women yearn for his touch. Just as she had once yearned for it. “Why are you laughing at me?”

“I’m not laughing at you.” His eyes softened as he leaned forward. “Maybe you don’t see the changes, but I do. You’re a strong woman now, one who would never fall prey to men like Yuri Petrov again. You’re the only one who doesn’t see that, and until you do, you’ll never be free of him.”

She wanted to slap his smug face. Her world was being upturned and he sat there calmly, doling out patronizing advice. What bothered her most was that his words were too frighteningly close to the truth. She’d been granted the easy way out and never had to face Yuri again after he’d been arrested. The divorce proceedings and all the paperwork had been handled independently by lawyers.

A cold chill darted up her spine, followed by the sudden, nauseating feeling that her past and present were colliding because she’d failed to achieve closure with Yuri.

“Talk to me.” Kyle’s brow furrowed. “We have to find a way to work this out between the two of us.”

Her jaw dropped. “Work what out? I was doing fine without you. I didn’t ask for you to come back into my life, and I wish to God you hadn’t.”

He leaned back. Golden-brown eyes flickered briefly with what she could only describe as pain. All in all, he looked as if her words had physically struck him. She hadn’t meant to cause him any grief, but again, there were others to think about. “You said Brad’s contracts are safe, but I lied on the FBI background form. I said my name was Victoria Kelly.”