Rekindled (Titanium Security Series) (7 page)

She tilted her head slightly, those intelligent eyes measuring him. “You guys lost Hassani, didn’t you?”

She must’ve seen the news and figured it out on her own. Alex nodded, seeing no point in denying it. “Yeah.”

“Did you find him?”

“Not yet.” But they would. It was his top priority once he and Grace cleared the air. There was plenty he had to say.

“Well, what happened—”

“As much as I want to tell you everything, I can’t talk to you about an ongoing investigation.” Though he wished he could. Having Grace as a sounding board would take a ton of weight off his shoulders. She was fucking brilliant, her mind every bit as sexy as her lush body. He’d always thought she’d make one hell of a confidant and advisor for him.

She nodded once in acceptance, her arms still folded tightly beneath the enticing curve of her full breasts he couldn’t help looking at. “Fair enough. So what
do
you want to talk to me about?”

“Us.”

At that, her eyes widened and she snorted in disbelief. “First off, there
is
no us. Apparently there never
was
an us, only I was too stupid to see it.”

And there it was. The knife in his gut twisted. He shook his head. “You know better than that.”

“Yeah, I do now,” she replied bitterly. Sighing, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin like she was getting ready to do battle. “All right, let’s just get this over with. Say what you came to say.”

Even though he’d gone over it a thousand times, being confronted with the very real possibility that he might lose her forever after this filled his chest with lead. Four years ago she’d frozen him out, completely ignoring all his frantic attempts to contact her. Two years ago she’d sent him the final, brusque e-mail that had smothered the tiny flame of hope that had kept burning in his heart.

I have nothing to say to you and I don’t care to listen to anything you have to say to me. If you ever cared about me at all, leave me alone and stay out of my life. Forever
.

He’d finally realized then that he’d lost her for good and stopped trying to contact her. A part of him was still terrified he’d never break through that icy wall again. She was so cold, so distant, it filled him with something close to panic. He indicated the couch with a tilt of his head, fighting back the fear and desperation clawing at him. “At least come sit.”

She didn’t budge from her spot. “I’d prefer to stand, thanks.”

So she could open the door and throw his ass out the moment she’d heard enough to seal the coffin on their dead relationship. He didn’t intend to make it that easy for her to dismiss him. “All right, then
I’ll
sit.” He tugged his pant legs up at the thigh and sank into the couch cushions, stretching one arm across the back of it in a pose that made him appear far more relaxed than he actually was.

Grace didn’t move, only raised one fiery brow at him expectantly. “Well?”

Shit, it was killing him to finally be alone with her after all this time and have this unbridgeable distance between them. It was all he could do to stay where he was instead of rushing over there to wrap his arms around her again. If he could just touch her, reach her through that cold mask she’d put on to protect herself, maybe there was still a chance for them. He couldn’t give up on that hope, couldn’t accept that he’d truly lost her. “I hated lying to you,” he began in a low voice.

She stared at him, unmoving, unblinking. But he could see the anger and resentment simmering in her eyes.

He pushed out a hard breath, got right to the heart of it. He didn’t blame her for holding a grudge. She had every reason to hate him. “When we met I was working undercover using my nickname. I was named after my father. My middle name is John, but my parents always called me Jack.”

No answer. Just that hard, cool stare that had him squirming inside. His muscles tensed as he fought the urge to reach for her. He couldn’t stand seeing the hurt and anger in her eyes, knowing he’d put it there. He’d give anything to make it right. “So yeah, I lied to you about my name and what I was doing on that op because I had to, not because I wanted to. But everything else was real.”

“Except for the part where I stupidly thought you were falling in love with me, but it turned out you were just using me to get close to people in my social circle you suspected were funding terrorists in Kenya.”

The acid in her tone hit him harder than that icy look on her face. Alex’s gut tightened. He wished he could punch her ex-husband in the face for telling her that. His hands curled into fists and he drew in a steadying breath. “It wasn’t the way he made it sound.”

“No?” She widened her eyes in feigned shock for a moment, then narrowed them. “Because it sure seemed that way to me when you abandoned me there in that hospital.”

He lowered his arm from the back of the couch and leaned forward, every instinct screaming at him to walk over there, wrap his arms around her and hold her until he broke through this invisible fucking wall between them. A dozen volatile emotions battled for supremacy inside him. Anger, fear, grief.

He shook his head, fighting to stay calm, keep his voice down. “You think I wanted that? I didn’t have a
choice
, Grace. By showing up there my cover was blown, and I didn’t care. What does that tell you? Your husband—” God, he hated saying that word, because they’d been legally separated and Robert had been anything but a husband to her long before that— “was going to have me arrested. He had the cops waiting there for me when you came out of the O.R.. I had to pull every string I knew of just to get through security and be let in to see you in your room the next day.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful for that?” She shook her head in bewilderment, thrust an accusatory finger at him. “The man I
thought
I knew wouldn’t have let that stop him. He would have stayed no matter what. If you’d really cared and wanted to be with me, you would have found a way.”

“I tried!” He swallowed a snarl of frustration, ran a hand through his hair as he sucked in a harsh breath. He realized she had a low opinion of him now, but how could she believe
that
of him? That he would ever willingly walk away from her when she’d been distraught and recovering from bullet wounds he should have prevented? “God dammit, it
killed
me to leave you like that. Ripped me to pieces, Grace.”

She lowered her arm and swallowed, her eyes still full of accusation. “You swore you wouldn’t leave me. You
swore
.” Her voice broke on the last word. She looked away, put a hand to her mouth.

Alex was on his feet moving toward her before he even realized what he was doing. Grace saw him coming. She shook her head, tried to stave him off with an upraised hand and a sound of protest, but he couldn’t stay away from her a second longer when she was hurting. Just couldn’t.

Even when she backed away from him and came up against the door with nowhere to go, he still didn’t stop. He halted only when he stood inches away from her. The warm vanilla scent of her hair and skin rose up to torture him. He could see the apprehension in her wide eyes, the dread, and it broke something inside him to see how afraid she was of being hurt again—of
him
hurting her again.

“Grace,” he whispered unsteadily, staring into those beautiful clear eyes. He had to undo the damage, win her trust back. There had to be a way. If she shoved him out of her life for good after this he didn’t know how he’d survive it. He wanted her forgiveness, yes, but what he wanted—needed—was to have her back in his life for good. Without her, he’d only been going through the motions of living. His life had been empty.

She angrily brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “You left me there. I don’t care about why you did it, I just know that I was alone there for days, in pain and afraid.  And you. Weren’t.
There
.”

Alex couldn’t speak, his throat was too tight. He was on the verge of losing it, totally breaking down and sobbing like a fucking pussy. Everything she said was true and he knew he deserved it. Nothing he ever said could change that. It felt like someone had their hands wrapped around his throat, squeezing until he could barely breathe.

He struggled to find his voice. “I know. I know you were and I’m so sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know.” It had broken something inside him to imagine what she’d been going through all alone during the aftermath. Hearing it confirmed from her own lips was ten times worse than anything his imagination had conjured up.

“Why?” she whispered, shaking her head as she searched his eyes, looking for answers he couldn’t possibly make her understand. “Why did you do it?”

“The NSA pulled me out. By blowing my cover I’d exposed myself and the rest of the team. They had us all out on a chartered flight an hour after I saw you that morning, and it was either that or be arrested.” And when he’d tried to reach her by phone and e-mail, she’d never answered. Not that he blamed her. “It shredded me, Grace. Leaving you, especially like that when I knew you needed me was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I need you to believe that I would never have left you by my own choice.” He raised a hand to touch her, powerless to stop himself, but froze when she flinched.

“Don’t.” A whispered plea. She shook her head once, panic and denial flashing across her face. Her hands came up to block him, her palms hitting the wall of his chest and he could feel the tremor in them. He ached to touch her, take her pain away.

Alex’s own hand shook slightly as he reached up to cradle her cheek in his palm. She flinched at the contact but didn’t shove him back as he’d feared. He stroked his thumb gently across the silken curve of her cheek, dying inside because he needed so much more. “It was
me
,” he whispered back. “Whatever I did and didn’t tell you back then, it was still me.” He wrapped the fingers of his other hand around her palm, pressed it to his chest over his pounding heart. “I’m still the man you knew, no matter what else has happened.”

Grace squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head again as she tugged her hand from his grasp. “Back up and give me some space. I can’t breathe—I can’t think when you touch me.”

But he couldn’t back away. Not now.

Instead he leaned in closer and put one hand on the door, caging her between it and his body. “I don’t want you to think, I want you to feel.
Feel
me, Grace. Feel
this
.” He grabbed her hand again, pressed it tight to his chest. “Feel that? The connection? It’s still there, you know it is, because it’s
real
. Whatever else I lied to you about, I never lied about this. Us.”

She drew in a shallow breath, and just when he thought she would shove him away or scream at him, instead she opened her eyes and looked right at him. The sheen of tears he saw in them shredded his heart. “And here you are again, showing up out of the blue right when I’m in the middle of something important. How do I know you’re not just using me for my connections this time? How can you expect me to believe anything you say?”

Fuck.
The lump in his throat was the size of a fucking baseball now. He understood why she’d doubt him, even knew he deserved it in light of everything that had happened. It drove him insane that there was no clear way to fix this, to get it through her head that he would rather die than hurt her in any way. Now she was here in front of him once more but she was so afraid, so skittish. The unfamiliar burn of tears started at the backs of his eyes.

Fighting for control, Alex closed his eyes and bent his head until their foreheads touched. He could feel her trembling there against the door, and his body screamed at him to soothe, to protect. “You already know why I’m here. And I wouldn’t do that to you. Not ever. Not even to get Hassani, I swear it on my life.” The hoarse words held a desperate edge, a reflection of exactly how he felt on the inside. “I didn’t use you last time, either. Meeting you through my CIA contact was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. What Robert told you was a lie. I already had my contacts in Mombasa—if anything I was using them as an excuse to see you.”

She’d never see that him blowing his cover for her told her everything she needed to know about what he’d felt for her, and he didn’t expect her to. And the guilt, Christ, the fucking guilt was still eating a hole in his gut. “When I heard about the attack…” He stopped, swallowed again as the memories swamped him. The sheer terror of knowing he couldn’t get to her in time. “We were in the final planning stages of an op to take the terrorists down when we got the call. I grabbed a team, broke every traffic law in the country getting there and when I saw you lying on that stretcher covered in blood…”

He exhaled, shook his head. “I’ve never been that afraid in my life. I didn’t want to go, Grace. I wanted to stay—so many days I’ve thought about what it would have been like if I’d been there. I would’ve done everything I could to help you through that. I would’ve held you, been there when the nightmares and flashbacks came, fed you by hand, even washed your hair and given you sponge baths in the hospital because I know you can’t stand to feel dirty. I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t there to do any of that, or be there for you afterward.”

Something in his words or his tone must have reached her through that wall, because she made a little choked sound and twisted her face away to bury it in his neck. “You don’t know how much I want to believe that.”

His heart swelled painfully. “Believe it.” He needed her to. Needed that more than he needed air to breathe. He couldn’t take her hating him anymore, thinking the worst of him.

She didn’t respond but she didn’t pull away either, so he took a chance and slid one arm around her back. He could feel the tremor in her muscles, heard the hitch in her breath as he gathered her close. Alex almost groaned aloud at the feel of her against him, all soft, generous curves. The fragile truce between them was tenuous, but it was there, he could feel it.

He bent his head to nuzzle her temple, breathed in her warm, sweet scent. “I missed you so much, Grace. Every day, I never stopped. I hated that you wouldn’t talk to me, even though I understood why.”