EIGHTEEN
Natches and Dawg had the house secured when Rowdy pulled into the drive and brought the truck to a stop at the back door.
Mark jumped from the passenger-side door, while Alex eased back, pulling Janey with him as that damned cat cried out pitifully.
“Here, Mark.” With his good hand, he lifted the surprisingly docile feline to the other man. “There’s cat supplies in the cupboard in the kitchen. Never did get rid of the shit after Crista’s cat ran off.”
So long ago. Hell, he could feel every damned year of his life weighing on his shoulders right now.
“Hold on to me,” he ordered Janey, lifting one of her arms around his neck as he gripped her waist with his good arm. His left arm was practically useless at this point. He suspected a nail was lodged inside it, though Mark hadn’t said anything either way. Alex could feel the shrapnel that was going to have to be dug out.
Bastard. It could have been Janey’s tender flesh riddled with the sharp projectiles. If he hadn’t been there, that first homemade bomb would have landed in her bed, taking her out immediately.
He had to fight back the fury at the thought of what they would have found. There would have been nothing left of the woman he held in his arms now.
“You can’t carry me, Alex.” Janey tried to pull back, tried to keep him from exerting the hard muscles of his back and shoulders as he lifted her.
He did it anyway. His arm tightened around her hips, holding her to him as he nodded to Mark. Rowdy moved in front of them; Mark, carrying the cat, took up the rear as another man moved from the vehicle following them.
The back door opened quickly and Alex rushed her inside. He ignored Natches and Dawg’s expectant looks. “Mark, I need you and Tyrell with us in the bedroom. Now.”
“Fuck that.” Natches moved behind them. “You’re not keeping me out, Alex.”
Alex kept going. He didn’t give a damn if Natches was there for now. Janey needed something, someone to hold on to, but God help Natches if he suggested taking her out of the house.
“Do you need your team, Major?” Tyrell asked, his voice chilly as they filed into the bedroom.
Alex shook his head as he set Janey on her feet and glanced at the other man. “They’re on assignment.”
He’d let the team go when he’d taken that last hit to his leg in Iraq. The missions were getting longer, the danger becoming less adrenaline- and more ennui-infused. He was losing the drive and he knew it. As he looked at Janey, thought of the baby she could be carrying, he knew he wasn’t going back.
“Sit!” Mark Lessing, medic’s bag in hand, pushed Alex to the heavy kitchen chair Tyrell had dragged in.
“Janey, fix us some coffee,” Alex ordered her as he straddled the chair, knowing what was coming.
“Come on, sis.” Natches wasn’t mocking or his normally overbearing self. His arm went around her shoulders.
She shrugged it off and glared back at all of them.
“Natches can make the coffee.”
Alex closed his eyes as he propped his good arm on the back of the chair and watched her. “You don’t want to be here for this,” he told her, knowing what was coming, knowing that when Mark began detailing exactly what was buried in his shoulder she wasn’t going to be strong enough to handle it.
She was a woman. Tender. Sweet. She had no business here. He looked at Natches. “Get her out of here.”
“Try it and find out just how well those self-defense classes I took work,” she warned her brother.
She wasn’t going anywhere. Janey moved slowly to her lover, staring at him, aching, hurting. She could feel the pain and the fear for him cutting through her like a dull, jagged knife.
“Don’t make me leave,” she whispered as she stood in front of him. “I should be here.”
His gaze was flat. His soldier gaze. Hard. His jaw like granite. His gaze sliced to Natches.
“I’ll stay,” Natches said quietly behind her. “If she wants to leave, then I’ll get her out of here.”
Silence filled the bedroom as Mark moved behind Alex. “Here’s what we have.” The medic sighed. “You got whiskey, Major? You’re going to need it.”
“Kitchen cabinet.” He nodded to Natches.
The other man moved quickly back to the other room.
“We have two six-inch nails buried in, almost to the bone, I’m guessing. They have to come out. Looks like a metal shard protruding from the fleshy part of your shoulder, deep, but thin. We have puncture wounds, no slicing. We have some shredding flesh, a few burns. We have to get the projectiles out first and we’ll go from there.”
Alex stared up at Janey. A tear slipped from her eye. A single tear as she touched his face with trembling fingers and Natches moved back into the room, the fifth of whiskey in hand.
Alex grabbed it, tipped it to his lips, and took as much as possible in one gulp. Damn, he needed to be drunk. He pushed the boundary with the liquor, consuming quite a bit of the liquid before handing it back to Mark.
“You should have gone to the hospital, Major,” Tyrell snapped.
“Too many reports,” Alex replied. “We can’t let the attacker know I’m weak. Get to it, Mark. Let’s get it over with.”
“Alex.” Janey whispered his name as Natches pushed a chair to her.
She sat down in front of Alex, leaned her head against his good arm, and touched him, held on to him. God, he should push her away. He needed her out of here.
Agony streaked through him as Mark doused the area with the liquor and went to work. He was quick, efficient. The nails and shrapnel were pulled out within minutes. The longest fucking minutes of his life.
He kept his head on his arm, snarled in fury at the pain, cursed the bastard responsible, and swore he was going to fry him and feed him to the dogs at the local humane shelter.
“All out,” Mark announced. “Shouldn’t need stitches. We have straight punctures. I’m going to clean them, bandage your shoulder up, and inject an antibiotic. You’re going to have to sleep soon, Major. You’re going to fall on your ass if you don’t.”
“Soon.” Alex knew sleep wouldn’t hold off much longer. The wound as well as the adrenaline crash would get him. Before it did, he’d make certain everything was secure to protect Janey and himself while they slept.
Janey held back more tears as he rose to his feet as though nothing was wrong, no pain, no wounds. As though he hadn’t shielded her body with his, as though it didn’t matter.
“There’s coffee in the kitchen if someone wants to make it.”
Janey turned to Natches, meeting his brooding gaze, the worry she saw there.
“Let me get Janey some clothes and we’ll be right out,” Alex announced. “Close the door behind you.”
Natches stared back at her for long seconds before he moved out of the room, followed by Mark and Tyrell.
“Here.”
She caught the T-shirt he tossed her as she turned around. “Crista left some sweats in here, too.” He moved to a dresser, rummaging through it until he came up with a pair. “Get those on and we’ll figure this out.”
He moved to the closet and pulled out a shirt. As Janey dressed, she watched him ease into the shirt, button it, then sit down in the chair to tie leather athletic shoes on his feet.
“When we walk back out there, you’re going to play real nice,” he finally announced as he rose to his feet.
“What do you mean?” Janey watched him warily now.
“There were cameras in your bedroom. That’s how Natches knew to call. I’m guessing he got some real pretty snapshots of us earlier.” Anger filled his tone as Janey stared back at him in shock.
“Of us? You mean . . .” Her face flamed in shock. “Earlier.”
“No doubt,” he bit out, his expression tightening in anger. “He’s going to drag you out of here. And I’m telling you, Janey, you try to leave with him, and there will be hell to pay.”
She shook her head before glaring at him. “You think I’d take this danger to Chaya or Crista and their babies?” she asked him incredulously. “You think Natches is that insane, Alex? Or that I am?”
“I think Natches is terrified for you.” He ran his hand around the back of his neck in frustration. “And I think you’re starting that whole internal argument where you can’t let someone be hurt because of you. I’m letting you know right now, Janey. Leave this house and when I find you, I’ll paddle your ass.”
Her eyes widened. “What is this, another of those male things?” she argued. “You’re in pain, therefore you can start ordering me around like one of your soldiers?”
“Pretty much.” He grimaced as he moved to her, jerking her against him, holding her to him as he stared down at her.
And he was hard. Janey noticed that fact first. The second was that his eyes glittered now with almost fevered intensity.
“You’re mine, Janey.”
Before she could argue, his lips were on hers, his kiss hard, heavy, his tongue filling her mouth, pumping inside it as her fingernails rasped against the heavy cotton fabric of his shirt where it covered his rippling abs.
“Now, don’t argue with me in there,” he breathed out roughly. “Where you’re concerned, I’m not nearly as in control as I act, and I’m sure as hell not rational.”
“Yeah. Try insane,” she accused him. “Evidently nails buried in your shoulder isn’t enough for you to figure out how much trouble I am.”
His eyes darkened, flared with anger. “Six months ago I carried you out of Dayle Mackay’s house, and I made myself a promise.”
“That you could save me?” she sneered. “Like a child.”
“Is that what you think?” The tight curve of his lips was in no way one of amusement. “Oh no, baby, that wasn’t it. I promised myself you were going to belong to me. One way or the other. No matter what it took. I didn’t come back this time with pure intentions, Janey. Not by a long shot. When I came home this time, it was with every intention of getting you into my bed and keeping you there. Forever.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re lying, Alex.”
“I don’t lie, Janey.” His expression was savage, his eyes thunderous. “And this, I sure as hell aint lyin’ about. Get it in your head, baby. You’re not going anywhere. Once this is over, I’ll go back to trying to convince you that this is where you want to be; until then, it’s where you’re staying. Period.”
“Whether I want to or not?” she cried out. “Do you ever listen to yourself, Alex? You don’t believe in love, but by God, I belong to you.” She mocked him furiously. “You don’t care that I want more than a man who’s settled for me, or decided he wants to own me. No, that’s just supposed to be enough for me.”
“You love me,” he stated.
Janey stared back at him. That statement destroyed her. She felt the pain lance though her heart, through her mind. It dug into a part of her that she always fought to protect and ripped a jagged wound across her soul.
Yes, she loved him. Loved him until she wondered if she would survive what he was doing to her.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t need your love, Alex,” she whispered. “That I don’t need a man who knows how to love. You like the sex. You like having a woman you think you can control with sex. And you like the thought of being a daddy.” She continued to mock him. “But you don’t love me. And I need love.”
“Janey.” His voice was warning.
“I’ve lived without love all my life,” she stated roughly. “My entire life, Alex. I’m not willing to live the rest of my life wondering what it would have been like to be loved.”
She felt her lips trembling, her fists clenching. “Damn you! Damn you to hell for making me care. For touching me. For showing me everything I can’t have!” She was screaming at him, enraged now. “You play the big, tough soldier who gets nails pulled out of his shoulder without a whimper. But you’re a fucking coward.”
“That’s enough, Janey.”
“The hell it is.” The tears were running down her face again; sobs were tearing at her chest. “You won’t love me. You can’t love me. You can’t even let anyone know you’re fucking me!”
Janey swung away from him as those words tore from her lips. She capped her hand over her mouth, fought back a sob. Fought back the pain.
“What did you just say to me, Janey?” His voice was dangerously soft.
Turning back to him, she realized the bitter smile that shaped her lips was rife with mockery.
“You hide through the day.” Her breathing hitched. “When I have to go out, my brother or cousins follow me; you can’t. You pace my fucking apartment. Wouldn’t do for the future chief of police to be caught screwing a traitor’s daughter, would it?” She had to fight to breathe past the tears now. The hurt. “Look at you.” She yelled back at him. “You nearly bled to death in front of me, and now you’re stating ownership like you bought me on an auction block. You don’t own me.”
She was shaking. Shaking so hard she felt as though she was going to come apart. She could feel her heart shattering, all the pain, all the years that she had been alone, too afraid to care, too afraid to love, slicing through her.
“I didn’t let anyone know we were lovers because I didn’t want your stalker to know someone was plotting to catch him,” he said softly.
His expression was frightening. It was hard, flat. His eyes were brutal, spearing into her.
“Good excuse.” She wiped the tears from her face. “Really worked, too. You almost died!” Her voice rose again.
His finger stabbed at her. “We’re going to fight this out later,” he promised her, his voice furious. “When your brother isn’t standing in the kitchen listening to us argue like idiots.”
“There’s no fight.” She caught her breath on another sob. “There’s no fight, Alex, because in the end, it’s not going to matter either way. You won’t love me. That leaves us at a dead fucking end.”
“Janey, dammit, do you think I don’t care for you?” His voice rose now, his eyes dilated, the color darkened. “Do you think you don’t mean more to me than any woman in the world outside my sister?”
“That’s not love!”
“I wouldn’t fucking breathe if anything happened to you,” he yelled back furiously, crossing to her and jerking her against him. “What the fuck more can I give you, Janey? Damn you, I couldn’t live in a world without you in it.”
She buried her head against his chest, sobbing. Breaking down. Feeling the anguish of so many years rising inside her. All the aching loneliness, the nights she stared into the darkness and wouldn’t let herself cry.
“It’s not love,” she cried desperately, holding on to him, wanting to sink into the floor and curl into herself as the rage and the pain raked through her with angry talons. “Oh God, Alex. I can’t walk away from you. I can’t tear myself away from you. And you’re going to destroy what’s left of my soul.”
Because she needed to be loved. Just once. To hear the words I love you. Words she hadn’t even heard from her brother since he was a boy. Words she had never heard since then from anyone, male or female. She needed, no, she hungered to be loved, and unfortunately, Janey knew, no other man’s love but Alex’s would do now. And Alex didn’t believe in love.
“Janey.” His arms were around her, both arms. He held her against his chest, one hand covering the back of her head to press her against him. “Baby. You have everything I am,” he whispered against her hair. “Everything, Janey. I’d never cheat on you. I’ll never hurt you. Nothing matters past you. If I could give you more, I’d give you more.”
Janey shook her head, pulling back from him. “Let me go.”
“I can’t let you go.” He cupped the side of her face and lifted it, touched his lips to hers. “Janey, you might walk away from me, but I’ll never let you go.” His eyes stared into hers, and inside, she felt that secret, hungry part of herself open again, gasping, grasping for any part of him she could get.
“And I have no choice but to accept that,” she said hollowly. “Because you’re right, Alex. I do love you. I love you so much I can’t bear what I’m doing to both of us now. If I could walk away and take all the danger with me, I’d do that. Because I hate myself for this. I hate myself for being here. And I hate knowing you’re in danger because of me.” She jerked away from him, forcing him to release her. “But you’d follow.”
“I’d follow,” he said quietly. “To the ends of the earth, Janey, I’d follow you.”
She glanced over at him, drying her face. She hated crying. She hated the sense of helplessness, of hopelessness, that it filled her with.
“Do you know how to love babies, Alex?” she whispered then. “Am I supposed to accept that you can’t love at all? Or just that you can’t love me?”
She touched her stomach, wondering. Hating herself because she loved him too much, and she knew it. She loved him with everything inside her soul. And he didn’t know how to love.
“Watch you touch your stomach, Janey,” he said gently, “as though already imagining our child there. Do you think for a moment that you and that baby won’t fill my world?”
“Babies need to hear I love you.” Her chin shook as she tried not to cry anymore. “Even from their fathers.”
What the hell was he supposed to say? Alex stared back at her, suddenly feeling an edge of helplessness. He couldn’t explain to her what he felt for her, what he felt at the thought of having children with her. Holding their child. Seeing both of them in a new life they had created.
His throat locked up at the thought of trying to explain it, tightened with emotion he didn’t know how to describe. This wasn’t what he had heard love described as. This wasn’t what he had seen love to be. He wanted to protect her, yet he wanted to watch her be herself. He wanted to surround her in security, and at the same time, he thrived on the flashes of independence he saw within her.
“Teach me how to love, Janey.”
He watched the surprise that filled her face, the shock.
“Alex, you don’t just teach someone how to love,” she said miserably.
She didn’t know how much her pain struck at him, how it destroyed him. Seeing her eyes so filled with shadows and hurt enraged him.
“Why not?” he asked her then. “You have a man willing to give you his life if it will protect you from a single scratch, a single tear. If you’re that important, why can’t you teach me how to love?”
Her expression clenched, a flash of bemusement filling her gaze. “You’re crazy,” she finally accused him, but she didn’t fight him when he pulled her back into his arms, and she didn’t cry.
God, her tears destroyed him. Seeing her sob, feeling her refusal to let him comfort her—she had no idea what it did to his insides. He felt as though his chest and his throat were shredded with emotion, with fury. He wanted to kill at the sight of her tears, the sound of her sobs. Because Janey just didn’t cry. She was stronger than that. She’d held her tears back when he was certain she should have been sobbing over the past weeks.
But she cried now, because he didn’t know how to love. Because he didn’t believe the love she was looking for existed anywhere. Except in a woman’s soul.
Maybe that was it. Hell if he knew. Right now he just wanted to hold her. He just wanted to curl up in his bed and go to sleep with Janey in his arms and forget the past few hours and the terror that had filled him at the thought that Janey could be taken from him.
“Zeke and the investigator will be here soon.” He lifted her head, kissed her lips, felt the little shudder that raced through her and rested his forehead against hers. “It’s going to be over soon. I promise. You’ll be safe, and we’ll get this all worked out.”
She nodded slowly, her lashes fluttering closed as she let her head rest against his chest for just a second. Just a second.
Then he felt her backbone stiffen and she was moving away from him, straightening her shoulders and breathing in deeply. Damned stubborn Mackay pride. He almost smiled as he watched her.
Damn, she kept him off balance. Right when he expected one thing from her, she showed a reservoir of strength that astounded him and gave him something else.
“You know, Janey,” he told her softly, waiting till she turned to him, “if the love you’re talking about exists, then there’s nothing less that I feel for you. You own me. For now, can we let that be enough?”
She tipped her head again, and for a second he saw the way her eyes flashed with knowledge, more like her brother’s than was comfortable for Alex. Then a small smile, one that made his dick pound, edged her lips.
“Yeah,” she finally said, a breath of sound that wrapped around him and eased something that had been tightening inside him. “Yeah, Alex, we can let that be enough for now.”