Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6 (22 page)

He should have.

If it’d been anyone else, he would have, but she’d been through enough for one night and thankfully slept the whole way. “Would you like a shower?”

“Yes.” 

After setting her up downstairs in one of the master suites that came with an assortment of new clothes, he backed out and stood there with his hands on the doorframe, staring at the closed door and wanting to shove it open again.

Chapter 27

Valene dried her hair on a towel that belonged in the Ritz and tossed it on the closed bidet. This place was as spacious as any mansion she’d been in and she had a feeling that on the outside it would look like somewhere a hobbit lived.

Not a window in any room so far.

She’d avoided the mirror since stepping in here and finally gave in to see the damage.

The bruise on her cheek smarted, was purple and blue, but would turn lovely shades of yellow and green by tomorrow. That hadn’t concerned her.

She ran her tongue over the split inside her lip. Tolerable. Not as bad as it had felt earlier. She’d suffered her share of dings when training.

None of that had stopped her from facing the mirror.

All the damage along her side and sore shoulder could be overlooked.

She’d been avoiding peering into the eyes of the woman who had wounded Dingo upstairs. “He risks his life for you and you still complain. What’s wrong with you? Yes, you’re hurt. Yes, you want him back the way it was before. Yes, he’s still elusive and distant.”

Her conscience thumped her between the eyes, forcing her to admit, “But he never misled you, Valene Eklund.” Dingo might not have told her who he was or what he did, but neither had he pretended he was any more than what he presented.

Would admitting the truth hurt?

Maybe. If she told him what she really felt, everything she’d tried to hold inside and keep hidden would be out. She’d have to accept that no matter what she said, he was going to leave again. One of her panicked thoughts during the kidnapping had been that she’d failed to tell Dingo she loved him.

The mirror blurred from fog billowing out of the shower and she closed her eyes, seeing her dad’s face in her mind.

You’re no coward, Hot Shot.

I might be, Dad.

Always remember that there is nothing more important than this moment.

He’d said those words to her all the time, reminding her that she was in charge of her own destiny. How many times had her dad tried to get her to lighten up and go with the flow?

Not her. She ran straight ahead, bulldozing her way through life and expecting everyone to think the way she did.

In a moment of frustration with her, Henri had pointed out, “You can’t force the world to fit your plan. No one can. Confucius said, ‘As the water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it, so a wise man adapts himself to circumstances.’ You expect a man to shape himself to the vessel
you
choose and be happy while he’s doing it. I’m not able to fit the confining image you have of marriage and, to be honest, I don’t want to be the man who does.”

Henri had closed the door on their marriage the next day.

She was hurt, but not the soul-crushing pain of when Dingo never returned. Henri had been her friend since high school. They’d been confidantes.

In hindsight, she missed that more than she missed the marriage.

Was it so wrong to be passionate about life and expect others to step up their game?

Or was Henri right when he accused her of masking her flaws by thinking of them as righteous dedication when a more accurate description would be stubborn and inflexible?

She ran her hands through her damp hair and opened her eyes. The mirror had cleared and the same unhappy woman stared back at her. When was the last time she’d been genuinely happy? Seven years ago.

What she wouldn’t give to be as carefree as Henri, to take life as it came at her.

She had responsibilities. Henri did, too, but he ignored his business goals, left them sulking in the corner, while he built a world around Geoffrey.

But Henri was happy when he gazed at Geoffrey.

Grabbing her hair, she stalked to the bedroom. She’d love to let go of everything, just climb into Dingo’s lap, tell him how much she missed him, how amazing he was, how all she’d like to do was spend the night tangled in sheets and warm in his arms.

Her father had tried to teach her how to let go and throw her cares to the four winds on occasion, but she was too driven to be so casual. Bad things happened when she let go of the reins as she had in the last few months she and Dingo were together. Her father became very ill without her realizing it. Everyone gave up on him, said he would be gone in six months.

Not her. She didn’t walk when the going got tough and she wouldn’t give up on her father.

Then don’t give up on Dingo
whispered through her mind.

But how long was she supposed to hold out hope? Seven years? Ten years? A lifetime?

Enough of this. Dingo would never change and neither would she. Two powerful forces on a collision course would destroy everything around them. If nothing else came of being in this seclusion, she was not leaving without answers.

After digging around in the closet where clothes had been shelved, she pulled on sweats that fit and a T-shirt she could sleep in later.

A teak chest of drawers held unopened packages of underwear for both sexes, but she was picky about hers and would just have to go commando until the freshly washed pair dried.

She looked like hell and shouldn’t care, but she’d pictured being with Dingo again many times in her head and she’d envisioned being irresistible when he walked in.

Not a battered wet rat wearing someone else’s frumpy clothes.

When she made it back up the stairs and across the great room, she inhaled an aroma that had her close to drooling.

Wouldn’t
that
be attractive?

Dingo had on a pair of jeans and no shirt. Three scars marred his toned back. She’d known about the one on his shoulder and on his lower back, both knife wounds from what he’d told her, but the obvious bullet wound was new.

Not raw new, but new enough for her to wonder if that came from when Dingo had gained the attention of Navarro’s father by saving his life.

Some men worked out to the point of bulging muscles that were hard as the slate floor she stood on, but Dingo had developed muscles that were powerful and fluid at the same time. She’d seen plenty of attractive male physiques back when she had time to surf often. None of those bodies had drawn her the way Dingo had the first time he’d shrugged out of his clothes.

What woman would gain Dingo’s heart some day?

A streak of jealousy a mile wide slashed through her.

He should be hers. No one would ever love him the way she would, if only she had a chance. But that would happen when hell became the new Antarctica.

Dingo was busy stir-frying something in a wok that looked as if someone had beaten the metal with a hammer. Two glasses of red wine waited on the center island, with a bottle of merlot.

A rice cooker steamed on the counter.

Where had this domestic version of Dingo come from?

Not a recipe book in sight. Bottles of spices and a half can of green curry paste crowded near the stove, all waiting their turn.

He whipped around to check the rice cooker and caught sight of her.

Time stilled, stretched and turned clumsy.

He cleared his throat. “Hi.”

“Hi.” 

“Grab a wine.”  Then he was back to cooking.

But not before she saw the uneasiness in his eyes.

Or had that been sadness?

Valene reached for one of the wine glasses the way a drowning man went after a life preserver. With enough wine, she could convince herself she hadn’t put that forlorn look in Dingo’s whiskey-colored eyes.

He talked to her without looking her way as he stepped over to stir the rice. “Have to let the coconut milk cook down a little then we’ll eat.” 

He was putting a lot of effort into sounding casual.

If they kept this up, tonight would be worse than the years she’d spent watching for him to return.

She put her glass down.

Enough was enough. “What were you doing at Navarro’s tonight, Dingo?”

Snapping the lid down on the now warming rice, he stood still, eyes on the counter, then turned and leaned back against the sink.

He crossed those guns he called biceps and said, “I had a tip.”

“Your evasive answers worked once,” she said, moving around the island to face him. “I’m not as accepting as I was years ago.”

He covered his eyes with his hand.

She’d started this. She would finish it, even if it meant getting her heart ripped out and stomped on again. She’d been twenty-two back when they met and far from naïve, but forgiveness and acceptance had come easily when she’d been caught up in lust.

Then she’d figured out it was more than wanting his body.

She’d wanted the man. All of him.

And stupid, stupid woman, she still wanted him even knowing he was no one’s keeper.

Truth hit her like a lightning bolt as she stood there looking at him. If she couldn’t have him all the time, she refused to live without him at least some of the time.

You have to take what you can out of this world when you can, Hot Stuff.

I’m finally hearing you, Dad.

“Navarro talked about you,” she continued, watching Dingo. “He said you saved his father’s life–“

“Yes,” he admitted, dropping his hand to his folded arms.

     “–then betrayed him,” she finished.

“Yes.”

“Why did you join up with his father and later betray him?”

“His father was running a massive criminal organization with a string of profitable endeavors from drugs to gun running to white slavery.”

She waited for more, but true to nature, she had to prod him. “Is that why you disappeared without a word? To join that group?”

“Yes.”

She hated one word answers. He’d joined a deadly group of men. She had a sick feeling building in her stomach about what had prompted that move. “Why, Dingo?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She slapped the counter. “It does to me! I’m asking for the truth. One. Time. Is that too much? Navarro told me a lot before you got there.” Not really, but Dingo had no way to call her on it. “I’ve waited a long time–
too long
–to find out what happened back then. Just tell me.”

A debate raged in his gaze that sparked with gold flecks, then he looked away.

She added, “Please. You owe me that.”

When he turned back to her, she wasn’t ready for the pain in his face.

He said, “When I asked you to locate any family or childhood friends of Giuseppe, I didn’t consider how far you’d dig. When you showed up with everything from three addresses to personal banking to the 9mm he’d hocked plus the places he frequented and a bartender who had just seen Giuseppe that week, I saw the connections between him and Satan’s Garden Club that I’d been investigating for a long time.”

She recalled that moment when she’d been expecting to be showered with affection as her reward and Dingo had raged instead, then left, saying only that he had to check on something.

That had been her last vision of him. Angry with her.

“When did you save Navarro’s father?”

“Two in the morning on Labor Day after I left you.”

She’d seen him on Saturday night. “You still haven’t told me why.”

He dropped his hands to the counter on each side of the sink and cupped the ledge. “I can’t tell you about what I do.”

“That isn’t good enough anymore. Not on this. Why. Did. You. Do. It?”  She would not lose her temper. Not now.

Dingo didn’t look as if he could make the same claim. “Leave off on this, Val,” he ground out between clenched teeth.

She walked all the way around the counter and stopped an arm’s length from him. “No, I won’t. Why, Dingo?”

“It doesn’t concern you,” he lashed out.

“I think it does and you’re lying,” she yelled back. “Why, dammit!”

His grip on the counter had turned white-knuckled. He didn’t shout but the growl in his voice should be shaking the room. “Some things are better left unknown.” 

She was too close to snapping that control he clenched with all his might. She poked him and couldn’t stop the hot tears rolling down her face. “Tell me why you couldn’t have cared enough to tell me goodbye! Why?”

He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her only because his body thundered with fury. “I couldn’t risk any contact with you once I went deep undercover. Not after I walked away to keep Garcia from touching you, dammit! Giuseppe worked for him and talked too much, which was why you were able to find some of the things you shouldn’t. Garcia tortured Giuseppe’s daughter and killed her baby in front of her and Giuseppe before cutting their throats and throwing all three bodies in a bloody dumpster.”

Oh, God.

He’d rushed into danger to keep her safe and she was bitching him out for it.

Valene lunged up and kissed Dingo, clutching at his shoulders that were tight, ready to battle.

Dingo vibrated and she knew it was from the effort of not stepping over that line again. Screw that. She deepened the kiss and said, “I want you.”