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Her brow crinkled, her mind racing to catch up. “Military intelligence personnel dealing with surveillance equipment?” Her eyes widened with dawning horror. She shook her head. “Not Crusty. It isn’t him.”
“No. He was on the plane with you yesterday and could have died, too.” He jammed his arms through his shirt and whipped it over his head. “Not Crusty. Kat.”
“Kat? I’m not following here. I’m still stuck back on the idea that someone read my sealed records to torment me with my worst fears.”
“The caterer.”
She wrapped the sheet around herself and stood. “That sounds like a stretch to me.”
Max grabbed his wallet and keys. “Lieutenant Colonel Kat Lowry, Army CID, posing as mother to Vinnie the civilian agent.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “How many of you are there on the island?”
“More than I wanted.” Of course having Kat Lowry off the op wouldn’t have stopped her. If his suspicions were on target, she’d been at this for years.
Darcy’s hands knotted in the sheet as if trying to anchor her to the bed, when she no doubt wanted to leap into the middle of the action.
No,his gut insisted. He burned to tell her to go back to sleep. He wouldhandle everything.
Except if he voiced that gut reaction, she would clam up. Walk away. And rightly so. He would feel the same. “We could use your help piecing this together.”
Shock sent her eyes open even wider. He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d done little to earn her trust. Even now he fought the urge to recall the words and plop her gorgeous butt onto the first plane off the island.
“I’ll get dressed and follow you over soon.”
His hand hesitated on the knob. “I’ll wait for you.”
She waved him away, the sheet still shielding her. “Get going. There’s no time for you to wait. I won’t be long. I can use a few minutes to get my head together before talking through all this again.”
Vulnerability flickered in eyes already ringed with dark circles and shadows. He charged back over to the bed, kissing her hard and fast, branding her as his before he left. Darcy needed her space? Fine. He’d give her space. But that didn’t mean he was walking away.
* * *
Darcy stepped out of the shower for the second time in a few short hours. Not as satisfying a cleansing as the first one, but enlightening. Every drop of water that rolled down her skin reminded her of sharing the same stall with Max. Soaked into her with reminders of how much she wanted him in her life.
She reached to swipe steam off the mirror, her hand slowing. As if guided against its will, her finger traced through the fog until a diver-down symbol appeared.
Her arm dropped. Geez, she was like some schoolkid scribbling “Mrs. Max Keagan” on the back of her notebook—.
Where had marriage thoughts come from? She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
I’m the guy who loves you.
The walls crowded in on her as if she was in that bunker again. She wanted to trust everything would work between them. Yet emotions were different and far more fragile than the body.
She wanted to trust Max would always be there for her, but she couldn’t erase the sense that one day she might be left waiting. Hurting. She knew intellectually her father had found her in record time. She would have sworn she didn’t blame him. But had she subconsciously been blaming him all these years?
Irrational. Stupid. And flat-out wrong, except who said emotions were logical? Hers definitely weren’t these days.
Intimacy issues.
If she never let anyone get too close, no one could ever let her down. What an unrealistic expectation to set for herself and for any man— perfection with never a misstep. Of course she’d been the one to misstep.
He’d told her he loved her. And she’d hid in that mental bunker like a scared kid rather than take his face in her hands and thank him for the beautiful gift of his heart.
Even if she couldn’t pull her own messed-up head and heart together enough to be the woman he deserved, she should have kissed him. At least been brave enough to tell him the truth, that, yeah, she was halfway there to being in love with him, too. She should have given reassurance that with his patience she could kick down her own walls and join him.
After twelve years of closing herself off, maybe it was finally time to let someone inside. Let Max inside. Starting now.
