Crazy Sweet (24 page)

But he didn’t say anything. It had been a crazy night, that was all, and kissing her was the right thing to do, right up until she was starting up the drop ramp to get into the plane, a twin-engine, low-wing Beech Baron.

“Take care of yourself, Honey.” He kissed her cheek one more time, while he held her in his arms one more time.

“You, too, Smith.” She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth, one more time, and he was pulling away and giving her a little push in the right direction, up the ramp. Honey York was going home, where she belonged.

But halfway to the hatch, she stopped and turned around.

“You never told me what the
C
stands for in C. Smith Rydell.”

God, she was beautiful, with the sunlight in her hair and the sky behind her, with his pants rolled up to under her knees, and her shoes a testament to just how tough she’d been. A quarter of a million dollars—
geezus,
it was all a little unbelievable, that she’d done it and was getting out in one piece.

Oh, yeah, she was beautiful. More than beautiful, and he was never going to forget.

The
C
in C. Smith Rydell—a grin curved his mouth. She was a piece of work, all right.

“Next time,” he said, giving her a short wave as he backed away.

Yeah.
Next time.

CHAPTER

33

I
REMEMBER my mother,” Gillian said from the middle of her hospital bed.

“Good.”

“She’s sweet.”

“Very,” Travis agreed. Lydia Shore was a very sweet woman, but maybe she was starting to hope too much, expect too much.

Gillian had survived the night in Commerce City, but the week since then had been full of ups and downs.

“I’m not sure about that guy she hangs with,” Gillian said, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. A small grin curved her lips. “I think she’s doing him.”

Travis grinned with her. “You mean that guy we call your father?” His grin broadened. “Yeah, I think she’s doing him, too.”

A nurse came in then, and Travis stepped aside. It was something he’d been doing all week—stepping aside.

She was a hard woman, and she pushed him.

He heard Dr. Brandt come in, but he stayed at the window, looking out over the capital. Washington, D.C., wasn’t such a bad city. He actually liked it, even if this time he hadn’t gotten much beyond Walter Reed Medical Center.

Gillian had changed. Things were happening in her body and in her mind, and no one was placing any bets on how it was all going to turn out. She seemed to have gone to an entirely new level of strength and power and speed—and she remembered her mother.

Maybe that would help, Travis thought. Having something as sweet as memories of Lydia Shore in a person’s brain had to be a help. Maybe inside that goddamn convoluted space called Red Dog’s mind, Lydia could fight some of the battles that raged.

Royce was dead. Gillian knew it, and somehow, maybe, that was bringing her some peace.

Two days, that’s how long she’d been physically comatose, while every machine they’d had hooked up to her had been going crazy, straight off the charts. Dr. Brandt had tracked every second of those days, charted them, studied them, been fascinated, and sometimes, secretly, Travis had wondered if the good doctor wasn’t also just a little afraid—not
of
Gillian, but for her.

Then she’d “woken up,” and the dark weight that had been crushing the life out of him had lifted.

Fuck.

She wanted to get back into the gym, back out on the range. She wanted to work. She wanted to run, and shoot, and probably to goddamn fly.

She was a hard woman.

“Angel?”

He turned at the sound of her voice. The nurse and Dr. Brandt had left, but probably not for long. Red Dog’s hospital room was like Grand Central Station.

“Yeah, babe.” He walked back over and sat down in a chair next to the bed.

She took his hand, which he didn’t mind, and she leaned close, which he didn’t mind too much. He’d been trying not to get too close.

“Want to help me escape?”

Two weeks ago, they would have done it together, made their escape, but now…but now he didn’t know which end was the fuck up.

But she was close, and he was such a goddamn fool.

Leaning closer, he kissed her cheek, once, lightly, then rose to his feet and went back to the window.

He couldn’t do this.

“Angel.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Just don’t.”

She tore him up, and sometime, someplace, at some goddamn moment, a guy had to cut his losses.

He knew now.

Dylan had been investigating a man named Sir Arthur Kendryk. The guy was actually an English lord, Lord Weymouth, and Travis knew now where Gillian had been that month when she’d fallen off the radar. Kendryk had been tied to the hit in Amsterdam. Apparently, he’d been after the same thing SDF had been tasked with acquiring: the death of a man, the shutting down of one path of terrorism that had threatened the United States and one of Kendryk’s business deals.

Survival—they’d all been trained for it, trained to do whatever it took to survive.

Fuck.

He dragged his hand back through his hair and watched the cars driving by outside.

He had not been able to sort things out, and maybe he never would, not as long as he was with her.

“Travis?”

He hadn’t heard her get out of bed and cross the room, and now she was
way
closer than he thought he could bear, coming up behind him, wrapping her arms around him, sliding up under his arm.

He couldn’t do this.

He started to unwrap her from around his waist, lifting her arms away, but she stopped him with a word.

“Please.”

Yeah, that was a good word.

Please don’t cheat on me.

Please don’t lie to me.

Please don’t—just fucking don’t.

No doubt about it, please was a helluva word. He knew another helluva word, and with her way too damn close to do anything but remind him, he laid it out between them.

“Kendryk,” he said, looking down and meeting her gaze straight on. She was his lover, yes, but she was also his partner, and she’d lied, by omission if nothing else. It was unacceptable.

And she knew it all, understood it all. Everything he was thinking was reflected in her golden-eyed gaze, along with a measure of regret that really didn’t do a damn thing to make him feel better.

“A means to an end,” she said—which also didn’t do a goddamn thing to make him feel better.

“Bullshit,” he said and looked back out the window. “You weren’t that hard up for help.”
You had me,
he wanted to say, and probably back her up against the wall and get in her face while he did it.

She’d had him, goddammit, and she’d known it. She’d known it from the start.

“I got hurt in Amsterdam. Kendryk’s men found my position. They found me. He knew someone else was tracking his target, and he didn’t want any interference, so he sent a team to take me out.”

And they’d failed.

“How many were there?”

“Two in the first group. Four on the team that finally captured me.”

Captured.
His jaw hardened.

She’d been captured once before, by Negara and Souk and Royce—and they’d tortured her.

“You said you were hurt,” he said, the deeper question implied.

“Roughed up during the initial fight. No other harm was done, not in the whole time I was there.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure. A castle in the woods. It could have been anywhere. I was released in London.”

“And Kendryk?”

“I…I thought…” Her voice trailed off. After a moment, she let go of him and turned away. “I thought I could use him to get to Royce, and—”

“And you got used instead,” he cut her off, his voice not nice. But
shit
. He didn’t need to know the details, not from her. The thought of her being with another man was enough to make him sick, and nothing would change the facts.

“No.” She shook her head, still faced away from him. “I got what I wanted. I got the Uzbek, and the Miami deal, and the rest of them, and now, because of what I did and how I did it, Royce is dead. It’s just that—” She wrapped her arms around her middle, and suddenly she looked so alone, so singularly and frightfully alone. “It’s just that the price is always high in this business. No matter how you try to cut your losses, you end up paying more than you want, no matter what you win, and every time, you tell yourself it was worth it anyway.”

She was right, but that really didn’t make him any less angry.

“It’s all big boy rules out there,” she continued, making a gesture toward the window and the densely packed metropolis of Washington, D.C. “There are no dispensations for being a girl, Angel, not in the work we do.”

She was right again. He hated it, but she was right.

She lifted her shoulders in a small shrug, and he saw her wipe at her cheek with the back of her hand.

The gesture riveted him in place.

In two years, he hadn’t seen her cry, ever. Red Dog didn’t cry. It was part of what she’d lost. It was in her charts and records, an emotional dysfunction.

“I’m stronger now than I was before,” she said. “Not so desperate, not so willing to make sacrifices.”

And you’re crying,
he thought, still held solidly in place.

“No matter what happens from here on out, I’ll find another way, Travis. I won’t give in to fear. Never again.” She turned her head and looked up at him from over her shoulder.

And it had been fear motivating her, the morbid, self-destructive fear of Tony Royce, and of her own inconstancy, her own vulnerability, all the crap she couldn’t control. He knew her better than anyone, and he knew that—and he was still so fucking blown up by the whole goddamn mess.

It would be so easy to throw it all away. To walk out the door and not look back, and just let the world know she’d done him wrong, the bad girl with the heart of steel.

So fucking easy.

And so impossibly hard.

So impossible.

He was tougher than that. Tougher than her.

Goddammit all anyway.

He looked at her where she was standing in front of him, looked down at her “wind tunnel” hair and warm golden eyes, and he knew he was doomed.

Geezus
. He hadn’t known love could be so goddamn demoralizing.

She wasn’t that big, that tall, but what she had was power. It pulsed through her in a steady, unending beat.

Thank God. It’s what he needed to know. That she would go on.

“We’re going to make it this time, right?” she asked, and he could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t at all sure.

But he was. This time.

“Yes.” The answer was so simple, and right there in his heart. He hadn’t had to go looking for it.

Because no matter what happened, he didn’t want to live his days without this feeling, without the connection between them, the hot, dark sweetness of it running through him with every breath, of being part of her, of her being part of him.

Sliding his hand up around the back of her head, he gently pulled her in closer, bringing her against his chest. A sigh left her, and her arms tightened around his waist.

She was a hard woman, but that was good, because he was a hard man.