Chapter 53

“How’s your arm?”

Chelsea released a pent-up breath. Whatever she had been expecting Dagan to say, that wasn’t it. The odd look on his face told her he was as surprised as she was by the question.

She lifted her arm and gave it a wiggle. “Almost as good as new.”

“Good.” He nodded without looking at her. Instead, he kept his focus on the undulating, sun-dappled surface of the creek and the crane fishing in the reeds along the far bank. “And all the press? Losing your anonymity? How are you dealing with that?”

She studied his profile, his straight nose, his high cheekbones, and his ridiculously thick eyelashes. Why had she never noticed before how long and sooty they were? Oh, right. Because usually when she looked into his eyes, she was too mesmerized by the swirl of his stormy irises to pay attention to anything else.

“I mean, it’s not ideal, right?” she told him. “But it is what it is. Qué será, será. The fact that Morrison’s depravities have been brought to light and the fact that BKI is a step closer to nailing Spider makes it worth it.”

He nodded again. “And your mother? How is she handling all this?”

“Like she handles pretty much everything. With grace and aplomb and a few homespun anecdotes.”

He laughed. The rumbling sound was as clear as moonshine and packed a wallop to match. Her heart, already thudding wildly in her chest, beat faster. “And how long are you planning to stay with—”

“Dagan, please stop.” The shock of his arrival had worn off, and now the ache of his radio silence over the last five days was back in full force. Every day, every hour, every minute she had waited to hear from him. There had even been times when she had wondered if any of it had been real, or if she’d simply imagined the desperate way he had made love to her, the certainty in his eyes when he told that she held the key to his heart. Then she would look at her naked body in the mirror, and the proof of the former at least was there for her to see.

The love bite he had left on her inner thigh had faded from deep purple to soft pink. She was dreading the day it disappeared completely. Then the only evidence she would have of what they had shared would be the Dagan-shaped hole in her heart.

“I know you didn’t come all this way to blow smoke up my ass,” she continued. “So why don’t you say whatever it is you need to say, or ask me whatever it is you need to ask me. Because right now the suspense”—and the uncertainty—“is killing me.”

A crooked smile tilted his mouth. He tried to hide it by running a hand over the Beard. “Patience has never been one of your virtues, has it?”

“That, and I have a serious aversion to small talk and bullshit.”

“Seems to run in your family.” That crooked smile lingered for a second longer, then faded. “You told Director Russell what happened.”

She swallowed. “Better late than never.”

“And you told him that he should give me my old job back. And that if I couldn’t work with you, given our history, then you would quit. You told him that I was far more valuable to the Company than you are.”

“All true.”

He searched her eyes. “Why, Chels? Why would you do that?”

She was tempted to drop his gaze and look out over the water. He’d always been able to see too much. But she owed him honesty. Not just the honesty of her words but the honesty of her eyes. So she held his penetrating stare without wavering. “Because I know you’ve been worried about your future, about what you’ll do after Spider is apprehended and BKI shuts its doors. I put myself and the responsibility I feel for my mother ahead of you once. I refuse to do that again. You deserve your old job back, Dagan. You deserve…everything. Anything you want.”

She desperately wanted him to tell her that what he wanted was her. But that’s not what he said. What he said was, “And what will you do? Go to work for the DOD? They pay worse than the CIA.”

“So I’ll work a second job. I’m not too proud to bag groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. Besides, you’re not the only one who thinks you need a little redemption. Right about now, I could use some too.”

“You shoulder too much of the burden for what happened back then. I should have seen the red flags Waleed waved in my direction. Seen that the Intel he gave me wasn’t actionable or important.”

That sounded an awful lot like there was reason to…hope. Her breath stuttered in her lungs. “Waleed’s success at becoming a double agent was a failure on the parts of many people. That doesn’t change the fact that once I knew what was happening, I should have done something about it.”

“You did. You told your direct superior just like you’d been trained to do.”

“But afterward I should have done more. I should’ve gone over Edens’s head. I should have told—”

“If you had told, your reputation and any chance of a career in the Intelligence Community would have been obliterated. Edens would have made certain of that.” Okay, and that really sounded like a reason to hope. Tears she refused to let fall backed up behind her eyes. “I understand why you did what you did back then, Chels.” Her chest was caught in a vise grip. “Hell, put in the same position with the same familial responsibilities and pressures, I would have done the same thing. But what I can’t wrap my head around, what I can’t seem to get past, is that you kept the secret even after Edens was gone. Why? Why didn’t you tell me once your job was safe? Why the hell were you so…so…”

“Cowardly?”

“Yes!” he thundered, pushing to a stand and glaring down at her. His chest worked like bellows. His nostrils flared. She wanted so much to reach out and grab his hand that she had to curl her fingers around the edge of the bench and hold on tight. “The Chelsea I know and love isn’t a coward. The Chelsea I know and love doesn’t back down from confrontation. The Chelsea I know—”

“I was so ashamed,” she cut him off. Now there was nothing she could do to hold back the tears. They flowed freely down her cheeks and plopped onto her sweater. “I had kept that secret for so long, and I was… I am so racked with guilt. I’ve always respected you so much, Dagan. I’ve always loved you so much that I couldn’t bring myself to admit to something that I knew would make you look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.” A muscle twitched beneath his eye. “And I understand if you hate me for that weakness. I hate myself.”

“I don’t hate you.”

The laugh that burst from the back of her tear-clogged throat was bitter. “Well, that’s something, I guess.”

For a long time, neither of them spoke. The only sounds were her sniffles and the soft lap-lap of the water beneath the dock. Then Dagan said, “You should have told me the minute Edens was out of the picture.”

She nodded. “I know I should have. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all that.”

He blew out a gusty breath. “I’m mad as hell at you for not trusting me enough to tell me sooner, for thinking that I wouldn’t understand the horrible position Edens put you in.”

“And you have every right to be mad as hell.”

“But you could have kept the secret forever. I would have never known. I would have gone on thinking that you…that we…”

“I couldn’t let you love me without knowing the real me. Warts and all.” She picked at the hem of her sweater. She couldn’t look at him. She knew what came next. She knew he would tell her that this was something he couldn’t get over. That she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.

“You took a big risk going to Director Russell with the truth. He could have blamed you as much as Edens for failing to take action. He could have fired you on the spot and made sure you never got another job in Intelligence.”

“It would have been worth it if it got you your job back. If it gave you the future you wanted.”

“You really do love me, don’t you?”

His image was blurred by her tears. “With all my heart. All my cowardly, weak, wide-open heart. I always have.”

He nodded. And when he didn’t say he loved her too, she thought she heard the sound of the first nail being hammered into the lid of a coffin. Inside that coffin was what remained of his feelings for her.

It hurt. It hurt so badly she almost wanted to die.

“You know,” he said after a bit, “someone wise once told me that the past is written. That what’s done is done. We can’t change it. But the future? Well, that’s unwritten. We can choose what happens.”

And he would choose to leave her. It was there in his voice. There in his eyes. It took everything she had not to dissolve into a wailing puddle at his feet and beg him to reconsider.

“Babe?” Her breath caught at the endearment. Who would have ever thought she would be the kind of woman who liked being called babe? “Come here.” He extended a hand to her.

The steadiness of his grip emphasized how badly her fingers shook. Pulling her to a stand, he gently cupped her face in his hands. As he searched her eyes, he got spooky-still. This was where he would tell her good-bye. This was where he would—

“Chelsea Lynn Duvall?”

“Yes?” she managed past the massive lump in her throat.

“I forgive you. I’m not going to let this come between us. I believe love really does conquer all.”

They were the words she had begged him to say back in Gautier’s sub. Words she had convinced herself she would never hear.

The sob that burst from her was loud enough to make the crane across the way take flight.

Dagan pulled her into his arms. He was so solid and hot and male against her. His leather jacket and his wind-kissed skin were the sweetest scents she’d ever smelled. And when she slipped her hands beneath his coat and wrapped her arms around him, the whole wonderful landscape of his back slid beneath her fingers.

“I love you,” he breathed against the crown of her head.

She choked on her own I love you and tilted her chin back to stare into his mesmerizing eyes. A deep sense of contentment, of a love strong enough to last a lifetime, wrapped around her as warmly as the big arms that held her close.

And then Dagan did one of the many, many things he did best. He got carnal with her mouth.

Oh. My!

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