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“You can’t tell me you don’t want me,” she said. “Your body has never been able to lie as well as the rest of you.”
“I’ll always want you,” he said. “There’s never been any question of that. But I’m not going to be a substitute for what you’re running from. I want to know what happened back there. I thought you were dead.”
The color drained from her face. “My health isn’t any of your business.” She pulled the shirt back on, inside out.
“Has it happened before?” he asked. “Have you seen a doctor?”
Grace laughed bitterly and moved past him, with short, agitated strides. She grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and drank deep. “A doctor can’t fix me, Gabe. I’m messed up. Broken. And there’s nothing that can put me back together again.”
“Cut yourself a break, Grace. We lost a child. It’s going to take some time.” He tried to go to her. To comfort her. And himself. But she jerked out of his arms.
“Really, Gabe?Welost a child. There was barely awebefore she died, much less after. Did you even care?” she yelled. “I needed you. But your job was always more important than your family. You didn’t even come to her funeral!”
“I couldn’t, and you know it! Bennett put me in isolation so fast after my cover was blown that I didn’t even get a chance to see her. Do you think I didn’t want to hold her again? To touch her face one last time?” He rubbed his burning eyes and then ran his fingers through his hair roughly. “Do you think I didn’t try to fight my way through the agents who had me under lock and key?”
“How should I know, Gabe? All I know is that you weren’t there, and if you’d paid more attention to what was going on in your other life, then she’d still be alive. You’ve always been good at keeping your thoughts to yourself. This is the most emotion I’ve seen from you in all the years I’ve known you.”
Her words cut fast and deep, and his heart was bleeding. Gabe punched his fist through the door leading into the bedroom. “Is that enough emotion for you?” he asked.
He walked toward her, a predator stalking his prey, but she didn’t back away. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish that Tussad had killed me instead. I know she’s dead because of me. And I know you’ll never forgive me, but I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t there, Grace. I needed you too.”
She turned her head so she wouldn’t have to maintain eye contact, but he took her chin and forced her to look at him—to see the pain that raged deep inside of him and know that it wasn’t hers alone to bear.
“I needed you too,” he repeated. “But when things died down and they released me, you were already gone. The first thing I did was visit her grave. The second was to come find you. But you’d already left the country and sold yourself to the highest bidder like a…”
He welcomed the sting from her hand as she slapped him hard across the cheek, and he grabbed her wrist as she tried to follow through with a punch to the stomach.
“Enough,” he said as they struggled against each other.
“Nothing you can say or do will ever be enough,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re as dead to me as she is.”
All he wanted was for the pain to go away. At least for a little while.
Gabe pressed her back against the side wall of the plane, his body hard and hungry for hers. Her eyes went wide, but she didn’t push him away. Their racing breaths mingled, and his heart pounded desperately in his chest as his mouth crashed down on hers.
It wasn’t a kiss filled with tenderness or affection. It was a kiss full of pain and longing—a desperate attempt to fill the aching emptiness that consumed them both and to claim what had once been his.
Grace bit his lip, and the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. She ran her hands under his shirt and across the hard planes of muscle. Their breathing was harsh, and Gabe lifted her shirt over her head, ripping it in his haste.
“Look at me,” he said, taking her face in his hands. “No regrets.”
She nodded. “No regrets.”
And then they fell to the floor.
ChapterTwelve
London
The bartender’s name was Lucinda. Or maybe it was Lorraine. Jack couldn’t quite remember, but she’d been a welcome distraction for the last couple of nights. She’d also been creative as hell in bed, which he appreciated in a woman.
It was close to 4 a.m. when his cell rang.
“Just ignore it, baby,” she whispered sleepily, snuggling against him.
“This better be good,” Jack said as he answered the phone.
“Better than good,” Logan said. “I found out some very interesting things while visiting Mexico. Things that I can’t share over an open phone line.”
