Chapter Twenty-One
Leland
Back at Langley, Jena walked me to my car.
Clearly Wilcox had discerned I’d had enough of him for a while. My father had died shortly before morning, and I’d be on the next helicopter out of there, expected to start my new role as the NOC running Jensen Global Enterprises.
At the car, she handed me back my belongings. Wallet. Watch. Keys. And phone. Once Jena was gone, I’d read what she’d been texting to Richard while pretending to be me. Like hell I’d give her the satisfaction of doing it in front of her.
“I’ll pick you up first thing tomorrow, Lee. And remember you can’t tell anyone anything about where you’ve been or your role with the agency. Not even Richard.”
“Is that from you or Wilcox?”
She made an annoyed shake of her head. “From your vantage point it doesn’t matter. We’re one and the same. Wilcox is your primary contact at Langley and I’m your handler in the field. Other than the two of us, not a single person can ever know that you’re a NOC or what you’re doing for the agency. Violate that and you’re going to have a problem, Lee. A problem I can’t fix for you.”
I was so physically and emotionally numb I couldn’t rally to be annoyed by the lecture or the knowledge that I was Jena’s big promotion.
“Unlike my problem-free current existence,” I snapped, opening my door.
“You just inherited a billion dollars, Lee. And you get to go out into the world being you. Doesn’t sound like much of a problem to me.”
Being me?
That was the most insulting part of all, and damn her for saying it. The CIA expected me to remain exactly as I was before Langley and assume my position as the charismatic global face of a worldwide empire in bed with every terrorist, cartel, and crime organization across the globe, living a double life in a high-stakes game of espionage.
Only I wasn’t me anymore. I’d watched my father take his last breath from a horrible type of death, learned truths I hadn’t wanted to know, and hurt in a multitude of ways I’d never felt before.
All this in the span of twenty-four hours, and the CIA expected me to promptly get over it. Then go home, deal with Richard, and be off hard at work ferreting out intel to keep our country safe.
Christ, I’d lived through it and it didn’t sound believable in my head. If I hadn’t felt the reality in my body I’d have thought I was having a nightmare.
I sank down on the driver’s seat, one leg still on the pavement. “Richard’s not stupid. He’s going to know something’s not right.”
“Then cut him loose, move on, and find yourself a new boy toy.”
“Fuck you, Jena. He’s more than that to me and you know it. I’m in love with him.”
She gave me a slight pout in sympathy. “I know, Lee. But having a fed as a lover is dangerous to you. They’re suspicious. They like to root through things. If he discovers the illegal activities you’re going to continue doing for the agency, there’s no cover, Lee. The entire mission is a wash and you go down without a soft landing spot. Is he worth the risk?”
“I won’t have anyone order me who I can or can’t be with.”
“And I’m not and wouldn’t. But be smart. Richard Meyers isn’t right for you in any way. That was true before you became a NOC and it’s truer today.”
“I draw the line at my private relationships, Jena. Not you or anyone is going to tell me what to do.”
She sank down until we were at eye level, her angry face shoved into mine. “You have no private life anymore, Lee. And to be brutally honest, you didn’t really have much of a relationship with Richard before.”
Damn her a second time for saying that one.
“Have I ever told you before you’re a real bitch, Jena?”
“Probably. I can’t remember.”
She kissed me on the cheek, then stepped back, and I rolled my eyes. “That was stupid. We’re not even friends anymore.”
“Sure we are, Lee. And we always will be. That’ll never change.”
We both knew that wasn’t true.
The somberness of that hovered after I slammed shut my door and started the drive home. I was one block from the house before I remembered to pull over on the side of the road and read my message chain with Richard to be fully informed what had passed between us in my life while off the grid at The Farm in spook training.
I moved through the screen, and fuck, it sounded like me. Every answering text. Worse, Richard sounded like him. Angry. Suspicious. Bouts of dismissiveness, doses of controlling hurtfulness, and periods of emotion-wrought simmering.
The last text was two days ago. “Why the fuck won’t you take a call from me? Even if that WERE true that you’re with your dad and he’s ill, it doesn’t mean you can’t use the phone. It’s not like you’re with him 24/7. Call me NOW or I won’t be here when you return.”
That last message Jena never replied to.
Great. Thanks to the CIA I probably didn’t have a partner anymore.
I tossed the phone aside and put the car in gear. It was daylight, and when I parked in the driveway there was nothing, no lights, to let me know if Richard was there.
As I climbed from the car, my heart ached. The angry texts didn’t change one ounce of my feelings for Richard. It was him. Brash and arrogant on the surface, but underneath he was so much more, even if Jena couldn’t see that.
It was just his way.
The outward persona he’d created to protect himself.
How he made up for the shortcomings he believed he had. That chip on his shoulder that he would never be everything he wanted to be, no matter how hard he scratched, clawed, and worked. That it had been made impossible by who he’d been born; that he could never attain what I’d been given free and squandered recklessly.
But he admired, aspired to be, and wanted me even more than he resented me, and he was the first person in my life to need me. He’d filled a cavernous hole inside me, but I’d done so for him as well.
That was part of us Jena couldn’t see or understand, and never would. Men understood the weaknesses and needs of other men because they were men.
We fought. We fucked. We loved.
It just didn’t look the way a woman thought it should.
Fuck, no more stalling.
Get out of the car, Lee.
I sprinted up the steps, unlocked the door, and went into the house as though I hadn’t a care in the world, but I was nervous as hell. I wasn’t sure I could face losing Richard on the heels of my father’s death.
The main living area of the house was empty. I tossed the contents of my pockets on the entry table. No sounds from the house and no Richard, though I’d made enough noise he’d know I was home if he’d been there.
The house had that stillness of being vacant, and it made every step toward the bedroom agony. The door was ajar and I pushed it open enough to see in.
No Richard.
Fuck.
I debated going back into the kitchen for the hard liquor and getting loaded. If Richard had left me, fixing things would be insurmountable. There was so much more to do in the coming days. I had to bury my father, move into his house, and claim my inheritance.
As much as I wanted to get bombed, I didn’t have the energy or the luxury to. My own bed did look good after the hard bunk-like accommodations at The Farm. Yep, a long stretch of sleep and then tomorrow I’d work on the nightmare I’d been dropped into.
I made a move into the bedroom, and in a dizzying spin I was flattened against the wall with my arms pinned above me, held in a single hand by Richard.
My eyes flared wide as his face came into focus. “God damn you, Lee,” he moaned like a wounded animal.
“Richard, I can explain.”
His body pressed full length into mine, pinning me against the plaster. “You don’t have to. I saw it in the papers this morning. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me your dad was dying? I care. You know that. I would have been there for you.”
My thoughts went in one direction as emotion strangled my throat. Papers? Unbeknownst to me, the CIA had taken care of my father’s death announcement. Thorough and five steps ahead of me as always since I’d met Wilcox.
I met his eyes and tucked what I was feeling behind a mask of surprise. But his reaction shot through my veins like a tonic. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Fuck, I’d have been there,” he repeated more forcefully. His face fell, his hand dropping my arms before his palms flattened against the wall as if he needed support to keep standing. “I lost my father, Lee. I know what you’re going through.”
For a moment, I was unsure for the first time in our life together where this was heading. I’d mentally prepared for an empty house or breakup wars, not this. Then his breathing changed, and that crackling current jumped from his straining body to mine.
My cells were vibrating, and he was ragged with need.
But this would be different.
I sensed that.
My thirty days MIA had changed Richard in some way I had yet to learn. But, oh, I was ready to.
Richard ran a hand through his hair and I could tell he was struggling with whatever this new us was just as I was. “I love you, Lee. There. I’ve said it. Don’t ever shut me out that way, not ever again.”
“Never again.” But, of course, that was a lie. It didn’t matter, and, fuck, I didn’t feel guilty.
Two minutes later we were naked, fucking like us in the bed. And the next morning I climbed from the sheets and moved to California.