For all that Rhetta had wanted to see Wyoming, it wasn’t half what she’d hoped, clouded with equal measures of desire and fear. Clint wasn’t going to marry her because she’d lied. Part of her wanted to be angry about that, but she couldn’t. She hated lying, hiding, scheming.

“What do you do, what are you good at, what are your passions?” Clint quietly asked from his shadowed spot on the other side of the back seat. It felt like he was a mile away, but she’d felt the prickle of his stare since he’d moved over there.

“I’m an artist, but I’m also a financial planner. I have a business degree. Why?” She couldn’t see how it mattered what her background was, she’d given all that up when she’d left.

“We’ve been so busy dancing around the fact that you were lying about your past, that we never even bothered to warm up.” He cracked his knuckles, sending an unwanted shudder up her spine.

“What’s to know? You already told me you don’t like to be lied to, you prefer cars to horses, and you don’t dance sober. See, I was listening.” She reached down and opened the little fridge next to her seat, surprised that there was no alcohol in it. She’d refused a whiskey the day before, but it would feel good right about now. She’d have to settle for a soda.

“Yes, you were listening to the shortest bio I’ve ever given. But you didn’t know that I’m military.”

Her heart spasmed and then raced. Military was the one type she’d wanted to avoid. He cocked his head. “That information bothers you. Why?”

She held her breath and counted to ten, nice and slow. How could she get out of this? What could she tell him that was honest and yet not give away everything? “I had a brother in the military… He wasn’t kind.” There. She’d kept her promise to tell him the truth, yet really hadn’t told him anything.

“Was he part of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation?” Clint’s face didn’t change, he was just making conversation, but it was all she could do not to spout, Never!

“I don’t know exactly, I wasn’t privy to all he did.” True enough, though she knew he was never, and would never, submit to Russia.

“Ah. Well, I was an Officer in the Navy. Intelligence.”

That explained his build, he certainly made time to stay…healthy. “And why did you leave?” Since he didn’t wear a uniform, and frankly, she doubted servicemen would have as much money as he seemed to have, he couldn’t still be in the service.

“I didn’t. Not completely. My company, Sage Enterprises, builds destroyers and other things we don’t need to talk about for the Navy.”

She wrapped her arms around her roiling stomach. He was everything she was terrified of, yet everything she wanted in one delicious hard package. From where she sat, she could see some parts were still harder than others.

“Are you a spy or something? Is that why you won’t talk to me? You can trust me. Dammit, I’ve got to be able to trust you. This won’t work until you do, and I refuse to walk down that aisle with a woman I don’t trust.”

A spy? She could almost laugh. Her brother hadn’t told her anything, preferring that she just live in constant fear. If Clint didn’t marry her, she always would. If she were returned, she’d have to start over at the Diamond Agency, and have to find a way to somehow pay the fine. There was also a rumor that went around the apartment that women who were returned…went to the undesirables. The agency would assume she’d lied and they would do a manual check of her background. Then they would find out she wasn’t a citizen, and have her deported, or just ship her off to some loser who they couldn’t find a match for.

“I’m not a spy. I’m trying to escape a life that you don’t want to know about. I just want to be free. Is that too much to ask?” She felt her exterior slipping away. The hard façade she’d built up to keep everyone from knowing just how much the betrayal of her brother had hurt, the constant fear of retaliation.

“You want the truth? Fine.” She slid to her knees on the floor between them and turned her back to him. She slid her dress up over her head once again. Unlike last time, when she’d made certain he never saw her scars, she displayed them for him to see in the soft blue light of the LEDs. Burn marks, branded with a cigar, all over her back to make her pay for trying to get help.

She heard his intake of breath and felt him land heavily on the floor behind her. His fingertips gently glided from one to another. “My God. What happened?”

“I promised you I wouldn’t lie to you, but the promise of secrecy I made that day came first…and at a greater cost.” She slipped her dress back down over her head and he helped her as it slid down her waist and over the curve of her rear.

Without warning, he drew her onto his lap and folded her in his strong arms. “You’ve suffered some terrible abuse. I’m so sorry. I know it can be hard to open up when you’ve been hurt in the past.” He held her tight, like he was worried she’d fall apart on him. That had already happened months before.

“There are things I can never tell you, Clint. I’m sorry. It’s for your own safety, and mine. I need to get married and take your name.” It wouldn’t hurt to tell him her real name, he’d never be able to pronounce it, or even remember it, but if it helped him believe her, she’d give him that. “My real name is Marharyta Havryliuk, and Rhetta actually sounds much closer to my real name, than Margaret.”

He gently brushed her hair through his fingers and tenderly cupped her cheek. “I told you I would never hit a woman, and I wouldn’t. I would never do that to you.”

She rested her palm against his heart and its steady rhythm comforted and soothed her. She believed him. He might be military, but he was no brute. “I believe you.”

“I don’t know what to do. I know you need to be married to become a citizen and escape whatever it is you’re running from, but with connections to Russia…and military ones at that…” He sighed as he massaged the back of her neck and she nestled closer to him. His strong arms made her more comfortable than she’d felt in months, and certainly more relaxed than she ever thought she could be with a military man.

“Once I apply for my visa and gain citizenship, you don’t have to worry. There is no dual citizenship.” She almost said with Ukraine, but stopped herself.

“You would do that? You’d renounce your citizenship? There isn’t anyone back there who you’d ever want to see again?”

She was so tired of worrying whether he was looking for information or just curious about her. “No, no one who’s worth dying over.” Her words made him tighten his grip on her.

“Are you being serious, or melodramatic. I can’t see your eyes to tell.” He waited until she leaned back and could look him in the eyes.

“I’m serious. If I go back, he’ll kill me.”

The car screeched to a stop and he grabbed her, wrapping her in a protective hug as they were flung out of the seat and to the floor, the buzzing of a helicopter overhead filled her ears just before her scream.