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Silence. They weren’t together. Weren’t touching. It made little sense, but lying the wrong way on the bed, as close as she could get without joining him on the floor, made her feel better. He’d hurt her. Humiliated her. Yet she still needed him.
Daire. Ares. Danny. Whoever he was, he was as lost as her.
“I miss him too,” Daire said, surprising her by saying more. “I miss the way you trusted him. Miss letting myself loose.”
“It was an easier time, for both of us.”
“We could still be there, in that RV park, nowhere to be, nothing to do.”
A forlorn sort of smile tugged at her lips. “Or in South America… on the coast. Weed, beer… rubbers, we wouldn’t need anything else.”
“Nothing but each other.” It was a nice dream. Shame it could never happen. “I miss you, Little Red… I miss your body against mine. Miss holding you while you sleep… It was a gift. The time with you… Time I should never have had with anyone.”
Tess shifted her head on the pillow. “You deserve love as much as anyone else. Deserve to care and be cared for… You’re not a robot either, even if that’s what they trained you to believe.”
“They trained me to believe I’m better at my job when I’m disciplined, when I don’t give in to weakness. I can’t say it’s not true.”
“Maybe it is. I don’t know much about being a secret super spy,” she said, rolling onto her chest to peek over the end of the bed again. “But I know you’re a human being with a heart and a soul. I know everyone is better when they have something to fight for. Your mom gave her life for Olympus. I’m willing to bet she wouldn’t want her boy to do the same. Not for nothing.”
Olympus didn’t exist. That’s what she’d been told. If Daire was only what Olympus gave him, he didn’t exist either. Ares might be okay with that. She wasn’t.
THIRTY-SIX
THE NEXT DAY, TESS was in the closet trying to figure out if there were any new clothes that she’d actually wear. The bedroom door opened. Huh. It was later in the afternoon and shouldn’t be time for dinner. Who would come to find her?
The closet door opened to reveal Daire. “Come on, we’re going out.”
He didn’t wait for a reply and disappeared back the way he’d come.
Ducking down to grab footwear, she dashed after him. “We are?” she asked, hopping into her shoes. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a cab waiting outside,” he said, descending the stairs faster than she could.
A cab? Hotfooting it after him, she got her first glimpse of the external water garden when Daire held the front door open. She didn’t have much time to admire it. He planted a hand on her lower back, and urged her quickly down the path, then opened the cab door.
“Where are we going?” Tess asked after he got in with her and the cab started moving.
The driver knew where they were headed, she was still in the dark.
“Gotta pick up the Beast.”
Yeah, he’d said that was on his agenda. Why was she going along? Not that it was a problem. With nothing to do, the day had dragged. The guys were training. She’d heard them out back and at lunch in the kitchen.
Daire kept his focus out front, maybe monitoring that the driver was taking them the right way. The life of a super-agent involved a lot of paranoia.
“Does Harry know I’m here?”
She had thought nothing of following Daire and was an adult who didn’t need her father’s permission to go anywhere. Daire did though. The hierarchy dictated his life.
“Only way I can guarantee your safety is to be with you…” he said, then seemed to rethink his wording. “Is to keep you in my eyeline.”
Put a lot of things into perspective for her. “That why he let you sleep on my floor last night?”
“Why he’ll keep letting me do that,” Daire said, glancing at her. “Your safety is my primary mission.”
“I thought your primary mission was to find your way home.”
He didn’t respond, but didn’t take his gaze from hers either. Edging her hand closer to his, she kept staring into him as her pinkie slipped beneath his on the middle seat. He didn’t pull away his hand or his focus.
