All Due Respect (23 page)

“A few evasive skills.” Seth reached down and grabbed a sports bottle filled with water. “Sometimes it’s smarter to run than to fight.” He sprinkled water into the dusty dirt, grabbed a broken piece of branch, and stirred. “Sometimes it’s not so easy to run. You can find yourself outnumbered, or civilians stand in your way.”

“Civilians?” Odd term for him to use. No. He’d been in Special Forces with Matthew. It wasn’t odd at all.

“Innocent bystanders,” he amended. “Anyway, at those times, shooting a firearm carries risks you don’t want to take. So you have to learn evasive tactics, ways to extricate yourself from the situation.”

She stared down at the ground. “And you do this by making mud pies?”

“No.” He dipped his hands into the mud, then stood, pecked a kiss to her startled lips, and smeared her face. “You do it by becoming invisible.”

“Seth!” Julia groused, but stayed still. Had his eyes always been that deep a gray? Held that amused twinkle? She really liked that twinkle. Attempting to diffuse a sudden sensual awareness, she backed away. “Geez, all this training and a facial, too.”

Seth grinned. “No extra charge.”

THE evasive tactics came much easier to Julia than the offensive ones. She had escaped and evaded a million times in her mind, replayed each and every attack—especially the one that had hospitalized her—over and again until she had found a way for it to end with her safe and unharmed. But when Seth began teaching her hand-to-hand combat skills, she ran into trouble quickly.

Squared off and facing her, his feet spread, his jeans pulling tight across his thighs, his face as mud-smeared as his shirt, he went still. “What’s wrong?”

The dried mud caked on her skin, made her face feel tight. “My arm’s too weak.” Pain rippled through her left arm, across her shoulder, down her spine. “I exercise it nearly every day, but it’s just not strong enough for this.”

“Julia, we all have challenges and limitations. The key to survival is to make them work for us instead of against us.”

“How, Seth? Either I can use my arm, or I can’t. And I can’t.” It wasn’t a matter of will, damn it. Her will had saved her life many times. She had inner strength—except when it came to.risking losing Seth again. It was physical strength she lacked.

“Block with it, like this.” He demonstrated, hiking his arm, crooking his elbow. “Then use your leg and foot to compensate.” He kicked out, pulling back to keep from knocking her fiat. “Will that work for you?”

She tried it and, not expecting her to carry through, Seth took the full brunt of her thrust to his stomach. The air in his lungs gushed out, and he fell to the ground.

Stunned, Julia stared at him.

He stared back, equally as surprised.

She stepped closer, smiled down at him. “Yeah, I think that’ll work fine.”

“Smart-ass.” He stood up and swiped at his muddy seat with his hand. He didn’t smile, but his eyes had a pleased twinkle in them.

She definitely liked the warmth in that twinkle. It had been a long time since a man had looked at her with warmth and appreciation. At least, that she’d noticed. Actually, she liked it a lot. She liked Seth a lot.

You love him.

Queasy, she lowered her gaze. It couldn’t be love. Love would not be a smart move for a woman in her position. In fact, it would be damn stupid. Julia refused to be stupid. Again.

Do you honestly think you have a choice? You feel what you feel, Julia.

No, she could refuse. She chose to refuse to survive.

“Okay, foot queen,” Seth said. “Let’s go at it again. Only this time, you won’t catch me off guard. I’m bigger and stronger than you, so you’re going to have to outthink me.”

“Yeah, right.” She raised her arms and lifted onto the balls of her feet, posturing. “You’re forgetting you’re a genius. How am I supposed to outthink a genius?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” He shrugged. “You’re a genius, too.”

She blinked hard, as if stunned by the reminder. “True.” She feigned a left jab, crossed with her right, and connected with his forearm. “I forgot.”

Seth went statue still. His voice deepened, husky and low and serious. “Maybe it’s time you remembered exactly who you are, Julia.”

His meaning wasn’t lost on her. It stopped her dead in her tracks. The next thing she knew she was fiat on her back, looking up at the sky.

Seth reached out a hand to help her up. “I thought maybe that would reinforce my reminder.”

She flipped him.

He smiled. “You’re learning.”

“Like I said, I’m motivated.” She extended a hand.

Seth clasped it, and pulled her down to the grass. Half covering his body, Julia sucked in a sharp breath. His expression turned serious. “Maybe it’s time you learn who I am, too.”

“Who are you, Seth Holt?”

“A man who trusts you. A man you can trust with anything. A man willing to go to the wall for you, Julia. Any wall, anywhere, anytime.”

Her heart melted and, knowing she shouldn’t, knowing she first owed him the truth, knowing once he knew that truth he wasn’t likely to want anything to do with her, she accepted that the gulf between emotions and logic was broad and deep.

One breath at a time.

Chest to chest, thigh to thigh, she stared down into his face, and emotion won. Wise or not, whether she wanted to or not, safe or not, she loved him. “Maybe it is time.” Slowly, she lowered her head and pressed her lips against his.

Seth closed his arms around her and kissed her deeply. Her response seemed different; more open, less tentative. She cared about him, too. He felt it in the touch of her hands on his shoulders, his neck, his chest; sensed it in his soul.

The time for truth had come.

Turning, he hovered above her, tense and serious. “I’m not opposed to kissing you, Julia. I think about it a lot. I love doing it even more.” Again, he opened the proverbial door. “But one of us needs to remember something significant.”

She lifted a finger to his shirt. Ran it along the placket between his second and third buttons. “What’s that?”

“You’re married,” he said. “I know you, and I know you’re not the type of woman to engage in affairs. So what’s happening here, Julia? What is this between us?”

It was the perfect opening, and she started to take it; started to, and stopped. Why had she stopped?

“I know I need to explain some things, and I will, Seth. I promise. But can we not talk about them right now? Right now, I need to focus on survival skills.”

Disappointment rammed through him. Trust couldn’t be demanded, but he felt he had earned it. Yet she had a point about slivered focus and survival. “All right, we’ll wait.” Clasping her hand, he helped her to her feet. “Time is short, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

Seth worked her hard, then harder, until they both had worked up a respectable sweat. He was angry. With her for not being honest and open with him, and with himself because, dishonest and closed, and married and vulnerable or not, he wanted her anyway.

She paused for a drink of water and squirted her face to

cool down. The mud streaked her skin, reminding him of Jeff’s face-washing. Julia had put effort into learning. Seth knew why. At least two dozen times during combat training he’d heard her mumble, “Victim no more.”

She was motivated. But was she motivated to defend, or to attack?

JULIA crawled into bed groaning.

If a square inch anywhere on her body wasn’t sore, she had yet to find it. But it was a good kind of sore. With each tactic Seth had taught her, she had felt stronger, more confident of her ability to defend herself. And more competent to help defend him and Jeff.

She lay in the dark, pulled the comforter up around her shoulders. It was quiet here. If there were locks on the doors, she might actually be able to sleep. But, as much as she needed locks to feel secure, she understood Seth’s aversion to them. After what had happened with his mother, how could he not hate locks? Still, her understanding wasn’t going to do a thing to help her sleep. Not with a guilty conscience gnawing at her. In the morning, first thing, she had to damn the consequences and tell Seth the truth. She had this inkling he had already figured it out. If he had, it said a lot for him that he wasn’t pushing her for an admission. For tonight, she’d lie here aching and sleepless. She’d watch the sun rise, just as she had this morning, and not sleep a wink. Not… a … wink.

THE woman slept like the dead.

Seth eased her bedroom door nearly closed and then sat down on the floor just outside it. Stretching his legs across the hallway floor, he lifted his mug. The hot coffee burned going down his throat.

She needed a good night’s sleep and, after today’s workout, she should get one. If she caught him guarding her door, she would think he had lost his mind. But after Matthew’s two-word warning during their last phone call, Seth

didn’t much care if she thought he was nuts so long as he kept her safe.

Stand guard.

Matthew hadn’t expounded, but cryptic was enough. Earlier, Seth had asked Matthew to keep an eye on Julia. The warning proved he was doing it, and that she wasn’t just under threat. She was under siege.

Direction or nature didn’t matter. Forewarned was forearmed, and Seth stood armed to the teeth. To get to Julia, any attacker had to go through him.

He only wished she would come to him. Several times that day she had started to tell him the truth; he’d sensed it. But suddenly she had stopped. He hadn’t pushed her, though he wondered now if not pushing her had been a mistake. Julia wasn’t like most women. Maybe she was different about pushing and prying, and getting her nose out of joint, too.

A comfortable Julia is a reserved Julia.

He sipped from his steaming mug and stared at the ray of light streaking from the den across the hallway’s wooden planks. But an uncomfortable Julia wasn’t acceptable to Seth. Not after her attacks and injuries. When he thought of her being in the hospital and then in rehab for months, it ripped him up inside. And it hadn’t escaped his notice that she still hadn’t said a damn thing about Karl.

She had to know Seth would realize something was wrong there and he’d be reasoning through it. Scientists operated that way, including Julia. She would know Seth was thinking that if she were his wife, she wouldn’t have to ask another man for help learning to defend herself— especially since Karl was a cop, trained in defensive and offensive tactics and techniques. And that Seth would be shaking his head at Karl’s not teaching her to defend herself after the first attack.- And certainly she would know Seth was wondering why Karl hadn’t objected to her spending the weekend alone with another man, learning what he had chosen not to teach her. She had to know all those things. And because she hadn’t addressed them, and because she

had kissed him several times, Seth felt certain Karl had been her attacker. If they were at odds over her uncle Lou’s accident or she felt Karl was responsible for her attack by putting her in a vulnerable position, she would be more at ease revealing the truth to Seth. Karl’s being her attacker, however, was different. An abuse thing. One that would take an act of Congress to admit because the wounds cut so damn deep and a lot of them were self-inflicted: an unfortunate but natural result of constant attacks on victims’ self-esteem.

Seth bent a knee and braced his arm atop it, watched the steam lift from his mug and curl up into the shadows. Then again, she’d had a lot on her mind, personally and professionally. Maybe Seth’s observations and deductions, or even his curiosity, hadn’t occurred to her.

Seth mulled on that. Impossible. She was too sharp. She’d learned to bury strong emotions and function normally. No, it had occurred to her. All of it. And she had chosen to deceive him. What he didn’t know was why.

“NO. Don’t. Stop it. Oh, God, please. Stop it!”

Seth barged into Julia’s bedroom, tripped over her shoes and banged a shin against the bed frame. “Julia?”

Light spilled in from the hallway, formed a bright bar across her bed. She lay curled on her side, gasping in deep, labored breaths as if trying to feed starving lungs.

“Julia, what’s the matter?” Seth stepped closer. “Are you okay?”

“Nightmares.” She shoved at her hair. Sleep-tossed and tangled, it fell right back over her cheek. Seth’s white T-shirt hiked high on her thigh and clung to her breasts with the rise and fall of her rapid breaths.

Never before had he considered a T-shirt on a woman sexy. But on Julia… “Nightmares about the incident?” That’s how she had referred to the first attack.

“More or less.”

How did he respond to that?

Her breathing steadied and she stared up at him, the light

slanting across her chin. “I think, more than anything, I’m suffering from a guilty conscience.”

“Why?” Seth asked, but now he wasn’t at all sure he really wanted to know the answer. Her confession had to be professional. Why would she have a guilty conscience for anything personal?

The sensor-codes theft ran through his mind. It couldn’t be that. He couldn’t live with knowing Julia was a traitor. She couldn’t be a traitor.

“Sit down, Seth.” She patted the bed next to her hip. “We need to talk.”

If she wasn’t being honest about Karl, what else was she lying about? “Do you want to talk in the living room?” He was human, damn it. Just a man. He needed distance. “Or I could fix you something to drink in the kitchen.”

“No.” She flatly refused. “This is going to be hard. I need … darkness.”

Seth’s stomach soured. Julia wasn’t a coward. She’d gone nose to nose with honchos dozens of times. This wasn’t about guilt. It had to be about shame. It was about the sensor-codes theft.

He sat down. The mattress sank under his weight, and her hip shifted, coming to rest against his side. Knowing instinctively his illusions about her were about to be shattered, he steeled himself to hear what she had to say.

“I’m not married to Karl anymore, Seth.”

Shock pumped through him. “What?”

“We’re not going to get very far if you shout at me.”

“I’m not shouting.”

“You are.”

Okay, maybe he was, but she’d stunned him, damn it. Here he’d been terrified that he had brought a traitor into an extremely sensitive program and, worse, he’d been feeling guilty for loving her, knowing she was another man’s wife, and she was not another man’s wife, and—