Filthy hot two complete.., p.19
Filthy Hot: Two Complete Steamy Romance Novels, page 19
I took a sip of my coffee, set the mug on the table, and turned to face her. “This can’t wait. There are things you need to know. And you need to make a decision.”
Her brows furrowed and she cocked her head to the side a little. “I already did. I told you, I’m not going anywhere. I want to be with you.”
I searched her face, watching it change from its earlier relaxed expression to worry, and now to what appeared to be abject fear. Or anger. Maybe both.
Her lips closed tightly and she shook her head. “Don’t do this.”
My breathing was getting shallow. I recognized it the instant it started and I needed to get it under control, remain calm, keep my cool. I took a slow, deep breath before continuing: “Catherine—”
She cut me off. “You’re setting me up to leave me.”
I had feared she would interpret this conversation like that, and she did, in just one sentence. Her issues with abandonment would come raging back, flooding her mind, clouding her ability to understand what I was really doing.
“I’m not leaving,” I said. “Everything I’ve said to you is true. Exactly how I feel. You said you trusted me. I need you to listen to me.” I kept my voice as soft and low as I could, not wanting to upset her anymore than I already had.
She didn’t say anything. Instead, her eyes left my face and her gaze dropped down to her lap where she held the steaming coffee mug.
“You said you would trust me,” I continued, and her eyes shot back up to my face. “You can’t truly trust me unless you know exactly what it is you’re getting into. It would be selfish of me to downplay the risk and danger you face. And I can’t do that. I want you to be with me, by my side, the rest of the way. But I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t make you aware of exactly what you’re facing.” I paused for a moment. Our eyes were locked on each other’s. “Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“I live a dangerous life. It’s dangerous for me, and for other people. I’ve gone ten years knowing it could all end at any second.” I hesitated for several seconds, not wanting to say the words, but knowing I had to. “I promised that nothing would happen to you, but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t make it clear that there’s always going to be risk. It’s just the way the world works.”
Her face was still a mask of fear and worry. The anger had disappeared. I hated putting this kind of pressure on her, but it had to be done. She had to face it squarely in order to make the best decision for her.
She wasn’t answering yet. She probably knew I had more to say.
“We’re already more involved than either of us could have thought,” I went on. “Once you’re in, though, there’s no turning back—not from the lifestyle I live, and there’s no turning back from me. I’d never be able to leave you out there, alone, with the threat of your connection to me posing a threat to your safety. I’ll never be out of your life. Everything will change in a major way.”
“I’ve thought about it so many times,” she said, this time without hesitation. “And each time, the future looks nothing like my life so far. I want that. I want you.”
“You have me,” I said. “You just need to decide if you want to keep me.”
She smiled as a tear rolled down her cheek. “I’ve spent my entire life feeling like I was either in a prison or randomly floating around with no anchor. I thought changing my lifestyle and cutting myself off from people and getting a good job would give me something to hold on to. It’s a safe way to live, but it’s not a life.”
She paused for a moment, and I couldn’t help but think how similarly we looked at the world. Solitary lives, singularly focused on doing our jobs. She was right. It was no way to live a life. I’d known this for a while now, more and more as I got older and each year passed, but I’d never felt it as strongly until I met her.
I lifted my hand to the side of her face and wiped her tear away with my thumb.
“I haven’t felt as real as I do now. Ever,” she continued. “You’re the only person I’ve ever had any kind of connection with, and that’s why I took a chance on you. I’m so glad I did. I realize you’re asking me to take another chance, but you’re taking a chance on me, too, you know?” Her eyes flicked back and forth between mine.
She was right. I nodded.
“So,” she said, “I trust you, Daniel Pike. I do. But do you trust me?”
“Absolutely.”
I pulled her to me, pressing my lips to hers. She began to cry a little more, and tried to pull away, but I couldn’t let her. I wanted to feel her lips on mine a little bit longer. After a moment, I let her go.
“So, as far as you letting me go?” she said. “You couldn’t even if you tried.”
I pulled her onto my lap and leaned back on the couch. She leaned in toward my face and we kissed. There were almost unspoken words as our lips and tongues devoured each other. Words that would soon be spoken when the time was right—when I felt she was safe enough to hear them.
She sat back up, her hands on the sides of my face. She was smiling a smile that I could have looked at for hours, but she had to get to work and I had to get back to Baltimore and spend a few days on something this week.
“Maybe you should do something the next couple of nights,” I said, sitting up. “Something normal.”
“Something normal?” Her feet hit the floor and she stood.
I stood before her, gazing into that beautiful face of hers. “Go out with what’s-her-name? Tara? She’s always trying to get you to do something. Go. Have fun.”
“But—”
“I know. You’re going to worry. It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Chapter Thirty-Three (Catherine)
I had no idea how I was going to function normally at work that day. During our conversation, Pike had said everything about my life would change. As if that were sometime in the future—a week, a month, a year away—but I could already feel the beginning of it that morning.
I had no interest in doing my job. No interest in going back. Ever.
Arriving at work that morning, I felt as if I were stepping into the past. Many parts of my life were starting to seem inconsequential, and work was one of them. It had never been a job I’d aspired to, and while I knew I was providing a much needed service, it was still just a steady paycheck to me.
Now, it wasn’t even that. Rather than a reliable, comfortable setting that provided stability, it now felt like nothing more than something that was holding me back.
Before leaving earlier that morning, Pike had told me he would need a few days to take care of something. He didn’t say what it was, and I didn’t ask. I trusted him. I knew he would be back for me.
Still, the three days I didn’t see him felt more like three months.
Tuesday was a busy day in the mail security facility. Tara and I barely had a chance to talk until we broke for lunch.
“When do you see Mr. Mysterious again?”
If only she knew just how appropriate her new nickname for Pike was.
“Probably this weekend,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her that I’d seen him last night. I was feeling like I needed to be more secretive with each passing hour.
All day I’d felt like I was being watched. Of course, I was always being watched, considering the numerous cameras throughout the building. But this felt different, like someone was on to my secret. I knew it was just paranoia, which may not be such a bad thing to feel sometimes, especially when you’re harboring a secret like the one I had.
“That sucks,” she said. “I mean, it’s good for you. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. But I was going to invite you to my aunt and uncle’s lake house in Virginia this weekend.”
“Oh, sorry.” I tried to make it sound as genuine as I could, but I’m not sure I pulled it off. Either way, Tara let it slide.
“Hey, we have all summer. You’ve got to see this place. It’s so beautiful. There’s so much to do there.”
I closed my locker. “That sounds really good. Sure.”
“Going to your bench?” she asked. “I could meet you there. I’m going to pick up a sandwich or taco or something from one of the food trucks.”
“Actually, I need to make a phone call. I’m sorry.”
She looked a little disappointed and I felt bad. But I needed some alone time.
I got to the Mall, only to find a family sitting on my favorite bench. The sun was high and bright, a cloudless day, and I’d been looking forward to sitting in the shade. I managed to find a spot, sat on the ground, and got my phone out.
I texted Pike: I miss you.
He wrote back almost immediately: Couple more days. You won’t be missing me then. You won’t be able to get me off of you.
I smiled for the first time that day.
Tuesdays weren’t my normal day to go to the shelter, but I felt like it was what I needed. They never turned away help, anyway. I fed some of the dogs in their crates, refilled their water bowls, then took a few out for a short walk.
When I got back, I took Winnie to the grooming room and spent an hour washing her, drying her, clipping her nails, and before it was all over I tied a little red ribbon around her left ear in the form of a bow.
“You look so pretty,” I said to her. She panted hot dog breath back in my face. “And you’ve just been pampered more than I’ve pampered myself.”
I never felt strange talking to dogs. They always listen and they never tell your secrets.
Later that night, I managed somehow not to text or call Pike. It took all the resolve I could muster not to reach out to him, tell him that I missed him something awful, and wished he were with me, by my side all night.
Instead, I lost myself in a book and drifted off to sleep early.
Chapter Thirty-Four (Pike)
I woke up early Tuesday morning, rented a car, and set out for Alexandria, Virginia, just on the other side of D.C.
It was where the next operation was going to go down, and it was where I was going to meet Chris Spencer. We hadn’t talked in over four years, and the last time I’d seen him was a decade ago when we embarked on the mission to Chechnya.
Staying in Alexandria for a couple of days also put me closer to Catherine’s apartment. Without much to do until Spencer arrived, I drove by her place a few times Tuesday morning and afternoon.
Call it paranoia. Call it whatever you wish. The situation was changing rapidly and I was growing more and more concerned for her safety. Aside from the work I was doing for Atherton, I had never felt that kind of vigilance.
For her own good, I hadn’t told her where I was going. For all she knew, I could be in Tennessee or Connecticut.
I wasn’t expecting an FBI raid on her house, or a drone strike. I hadn’t quite let my concern grow that much. What I did worry about, though, was someone snooping around her place at the behest of McDowell. I knew he had done all manner of surveillance on other operatives and people they were associated with. Not much of it seemed like anything Mr. Atherton would have directed, but I couldn’t be sure of that, either.
What I was facing was almost cliché—a threat from within, someone who was supposed to be on my side.
That also made me wonder if I had been given the real story behind McDowell’s decision to send Spencer to work with me on this operation.
. . . . .
My suspicion didn’t diminish when Spencer arrived just after 1 p.m. He had called and said he was about thirty minutes out, so I went to Savio’s, an Italian restaurant in Alexandria, where we had planned to meet.
I got a table in a back corner and ordered an appetizer and a beer, and it wasn’t long until Spencer entered the restaurant and approached the hostess stand. His eyes scanned the place until he saw me.
I stood when he got to the table, extended my hand to shake his, but he pulled me into a hug.
“So good to see you, mate.”
“Good to see you, too,” I said.
“Hey, drop the fake American accent for a little while, huh? Loosen up, Pike.” He laughed and we sat down.
I smiled. “Second nature now, you know?”
“What’s that, the accent or your uptight nature?”
“Fuck off, Spencer.”
“Same old Pike,” he said, looking around, as the waitress came out of the kitchen. “Beer, please. Same as my friend here.”
We ate lunch and talked about the old days, such as they were. A decade isn’t really that much time, but when you have lives like ours, it can seem an eternity sometimes.
Spencer and I had become fast friends when training for the mission in Chechnya. He had lost a brother, sister-in-law, and two nieces in the terrorist attack. He’d had a rough go of it early on during the training. We stayed in the same room on nights when the team slept at Atherton’s farm, and on more than one occasion, I had heard him shouting and thrashing around on his bed. Nightmares.
I’d never had them. Not a single one. I don’t know what to attribute that to.
Spencer had a tendency to take out his anger on the dummy targets on the shooting range, often going out there at night and emptying multiple clips in them. Our trainers said he was just working out his anger. We were all angry, but none of us were as volatile as him.
We were all worried about it fucking up the mission, but he pulled through just fine like the rest of us. And afterward, he changed. He was no longer angry, but from that point forward just determined and dedicated like the rest of us.
Our whole team watched him make the transformation. As the years passed, I had come to think of Spencer’s situation as an act of catharsis for the team. Maybe even more necessary than any of us realized at the time. It refocused the rest of us on discipline, and we pulled him along with us.
Since then, he’d been a damn good operative judging from the periodic reports I would get from his sector of the United States.
Even with the minimal contact we’d had over the years, I had come to know the new him as a happy guy, always ready with the sarcasm and jokes, very easy to get along with. He worked as an independent personal trainer, a job that suited him well.
And as he sat across from me in Savio’s that afternoon, he was just as I’d expected him to be.
I briefed him on what I knew so far about the operation. He filled in some of the holes with last-minute information he had received.
Later, the conversation got more personal than I’d expected.
“Holy fuck, Pike, I’m in love,” he said after we had finished our meal and wrapped up the reminiscing part of our conversation.
“Really,” I said flatly. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. His breezy nature made him so different from me—he dated, for one thing, and he had apparently become part of a tight-knit group of guys where he lived.
He shook his head back and forth. “I can hardly believe it myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always thought I’d settle down and start a family. But I wasn’t planning on it now.”
“Pregnant?”
He nodded slowly. “Couldn’t believe it myself, but when the fourth test came back positive, well, there was no denying it. And before you ask, because I know you want to know, we weren’t exactly trying very hard to prevent it.”
“It’s going to change everything for you.”
He knew what I was getting at without my having to say it bluntly. He shrugged, as if he didn’t care. “It’s time to move on from all of this.”
“How much does McDowell know?”
He laughed heartily, throwing his head back. “Fuck McDowell. I’m going straight to Atherton about it after you and I are done with this one.”
I signaled the waitress and caught her eye. “Another beer, please.” I’d planned on having only one and had switched to Coke as we ate, but I had a craving for a second one. “You know McDowell probably already knows.”
“So what? He hasn’t come to me about it, and I haven’t volunteered anything. Like I said, I’m done after this op, so his time to torment me is running short.”
I almost told him about Catherine right then. I wanted to tell him the situation, and how McDowell had given me an order. But I didn’t want the conversation to open up to an exploration of my private life.
For one thing, I was still slightly suspicious about the possibility that McDowell had planted Spencer with me to dig for more information, maybe even talk me out of continuing things with Catherine.
But more than that, I still had a lot to sort out for myself without input from anyone else, least of all Spencer. His advice to me would have been a form of justification for his own current situation and decision. I didn’t need my thoughts clouded by that.
The waitress stopped at our table and cleared some of the plates. “Separate checks?”
“No,” I said, “I’ll take it.”
She smiled and said she’d be right back with it.
“Thanks, mate,” Spencer said.
“It’s the least I can do, considering you’re going to be buying diapers and baby food and new clothes every year and paying college tuition—”
“Whoa, whoa,” he said. “I know you’re a distant, jaded man, but that’s a bit much, isn’t it? I’d think a little congratulations would do just fine.”
“You’re right. Sorry.” I sipped the last of my second beer. “And congratulations, of course.” I held my glass up and he raised his. We toasted, and I was even more relieved that I hadn’t reversed course and told him about Catherine.
“I’m serious, Pike. You’re too cynical, too isolated. There’s no woman in your life?”
“No,” I lied.
“See, that’s your problem right there. And I’m not just talking about getting some pussy, either. I’m talking companionship, trust, love. Three things you’ve denied yourself for over a decade now.”
He was right, of course. I had deliberately deprived myself of those things. While I always told myself that such denial was all a matter of security because of my job, there were times when I felt the truth pushing through a little, telling me that I was depriving myself of relationships as a matter of personal, psychological security. You can’t lose what you don’t have.
