1941002110 (R) (26 page)

“I’m sorry you had to do that for me,” she said, and he made a shocked sound in his throat.

Then he was clasping her shoulders, sliding his hands up to cup her cheeks. “Sophie, it’s not your fault. It’s what I do, and I’d do it again if I had to. I… Fuck, I just thought you should know what kind of man I am, what kind of things I do. You don’t want to be with someone like me, Soph, even if it were possible.”

She gripped his wrists. “Are you crazy? The kind of man you are is amazing and honorable. Protective. Loyal. You’ve done more for me in the past few days than anyone ever has. If you think I don’t know that or appreciate it—well, you don’t know me then.”

He lowered his mouth to hers, took her lips in a hot, searing kiss. “I know you, babe,” he said when she was breathless and aching for more. “I
know
you.”

He said stuff like that and her heart melted. And, God, she was afraid it was true. He really did know her in a way no one else did—or ever would. He pulled her head down and kissed her forehead softly, tenderly.

“I like you, Sophie. I’ll always like you.”

He got to his feet and strode out the door, shutting it quietly behind him while her heart cried out at his words. They were everything in one way—and nothing at all in comparison to the words she wanted.

32

^“
M
an, the shit that’s in these files.”

Billy Blake’s eyes shone with excitement as he scrolled through the newly decrypted files. It had taken almost twenty-four hours to bust through, but he’d done it.

Pages and pages, all in Russian. Chase scraped a hand through his hair and tried to keep his cool.

“Does anyone read Russian?” he asked. Calmly, he thought. But Hawk and Kid turned to him. Matt “Richie Rich” Girard and Garrett “Iceman” Spencer were there too, having returned from their R & Rs yesterday. They were all looking at him like he’d kicked a puppy or something.

“Got that handled,” Hawk said. “Send them over, Kid.”

Billy tapped a couple of keys and the files shot through the ether, going somewhere.

Chase’s eyes were gritty and his whole fucking body ached. Too much excitement and not enough sleep. Their plane had landed a couple of hours ago, and Matt had met them rather than letting them take the car they’d left in the lot, driving them to Hawk’s offices in a nondescript building in Annapolis. They weren’t too far from HOT HQ or from DC. It was a great location, and it still kept Hawk closer to home on the Eastern Shore.

The offices were modern and filled with state of-the-art equipment. But it wasn’t HOT. At least there was a private area with couches and a small kitchen. Evie Baker, soon to be Girard, had taken Sophie there for some coffee.

Sophie. Fucking hell, he tried not to think too hard about Sophie, but that was damned near impossible since he’d just spent seven hours in a flying tube with her head on his shoulder. She smelled good. Looked good. For a while he’d wished they really were Nathan and Beth Chandler, two innocent people on their honeymoon, starting their life together.

But they’d landed and reality crashed down. She was his fucking stepsister and his fucking father was a part of her life. And his mother would be hurt if Tyler suddenly became involved in Chase’s life—where the fuck would they spend Thanksgivings? Christmases? Sophie might not have had a great life with Tyler and Justine, but she still loved her mother and she’d want to see her.

And that meant Tyler would be there.

Chase’s mother had always said she didn’t hate him, but Chase didn’t know how she couldn’t. She’d given Tyler his address because she was kindhearted and she’d believed him when he’d said Sophie was in danger. That was the only reason.

He blew out a breath and flopped into a chair.

“Dude, you all right?” Hawk asked.

“No, not really. I want this over with, and I want Sophie to have her life back. Who the fuck is going to read all that Russian and translate it for us ASAP? Who can you trust to do that?”

Hawk lifted an eyebrow. Chase knew he was being a cranky bastard, but his teammates forgave him for it. They’d all been there at one time or another.

“Mendez.”

Chase blinked. “You mean HOT’s involved?”

“Yeah… and Mendez is reading, along with a couple of handpicked translators.”

“Mendez is
reading
it? The colonel speaks Russian?”

Iceman snorted. “Yeah, who the fuck knew, right? I mean, it has to be in his record, but it’s not like that’s the sort of thing we have access to. Fucking badass dude reads and speaks Russian.”

“Holy shit.” Not for the first time, Chase felt pride in his organization and his commander swelling his chest. Jesus, that Mendez
was
a badass motherfucker. You didn’t get to be in command of an organization like HOT by being anything less than stellar, but sometimes commanders got so entrenched in the desk jockey aspects of the organization that you forgot they’d once been operators.

And Mendez must have been a damned good one.

“Yeah, holy shit. But if there’s anything in there, he’ll figure it out. We’ll know something in the next few hours. Until then, you and Sophie can crash.”

Chase rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “I’d rather stay here until we know.”

“We’re all staying here,” Matt said. “Brandy and Victoria are on the way, and so are Knight Rider and Georgie. Flash is still on his honeymoon. Big Mac and Lucky are flying back from the Caribbean, and Dex is still in Kentucky.”

Chase’s throat was tight. This is what family was to him. The ties you made voluntarily were just as strong, sometimes stronger, than the ones you were born with. In his case, that was certainly true. He’d do more for these fuckers than he’d ever do for Tyler Nash.

“I meant that you and Sophie can crash in one of the offices if you like,” Hawk said. “Not letting you leave here until we have an answer.”

“I’m good,” he said, unwilling to move. Unwilling to go and talk to Sophie, to face being alone with her in a place where they weren’t surrounded by other people or the droning of jet engines. What the fuck would he say? What
could
he say? Last night, when he’d held her close and told her he liked her, he’d said everything.

Everything he knew how to. He didn’t know how to do more than that, though something within him wanted to. But what more was there?

He rubbed his temple. Jesus, he’d made mistakes. Huge mistakes. He should have never gotten involved with Sophie, never let his dick rule his brain where she was concerned. Because he had to admit, even if it were just to himself, that he was fucking addicted to her body. That even now he was jonesing for another taste, another hit.

Like a junkie, he was trying to figure out how to get that fix. How to hit it one more time without hurting anyone. Without hurting Sophie, because fuck, she didn’t need any more disappointment in her life.

The door opened and Evie walked in with Sophie, ending his battle with himself not to go to her. Evie’s long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her belly had the slightest curve to it now.

Chase didn’t miss the way Matt looked at his woman, at the way his eyes went soft and his face looked as if someone had handed him the keys to heaven. Chase’s heart lurched at that look, then his gaze slewed to Sophie.

Her hair hung in waves down her back and over her shoulders. She was dressed in formfitting jeans, the motorcycle boots, and a black tee that hugged those magnificent breasts of hers. She was wearing that cherry-red lipstick again and looked like sex on legs.

Ice was deeply, totally in love with Grace Campbell, but even he couldn’t help the way his eyes slipped over Sophie. Chase saw it and wanted to growl, but then Ice looked away and Chase decided he had to give the man that much since this was the first time he’d laid eyes on Sophie. Matt had seen her at the airport, and of course Hawk had met her a few days ago.

Ice had been in this room the whole time, so he hadn’t seen Sophie when she’d arrived. Billy was too engrossed in his screen to look up—but then he did, and he did a double take too.

Chase was seriously ready to pounce on someone, but Billy got his shit together before Chase could act. After the initial shock of Sophie, the guys looked at her no differently than they looked at any of the other women who came into their paths. Every man in this room, except for him, was married or committed—and they were all in too, because Chase knew what they had done for their women.

Risked it all.

Risked their lives.

Gone to hell and back for love.

No, they might look at a beautiful woman—they’d have to be dead not to—but they weren’t interested.

“Got anything, baby?” Evie asked.

Matt took her hand and stood, guiding her into the chair he’d been occupying. She smiled up at him with such a look of love on her face that Chase envied the motherfucker more than he already did.

“Billy broke the code—now we wait for the translation.”

Sophie looked tired as she pushed her hair back behind an ear. “Of course it wouldn’t be as simple as English files with a big red arrow pointing and saying,
Look here for the incriminating shit.
”

“Never is,” Billy said.

Sophie leaned against a desk and crossed her legs, her hands going behind her to brace herself. Chase couldn’t help but think of the first night he’d fucked her when he’d put her on the counter and tasted her pussy for the first time.

As if she knew what he was thinking, her gaze sought his. Their eyes locked for a long minute. They said things without saying a word, and Chase’s heart rate kicked up as he stared at her.

Her neck bore his mark just as his did hers. It had to be clear to anyone watching them that they’d gotten involved over the past few days.

Hawk’s voice cut into the silence that had descended on the room. “If you want to sleep for a while, Sophie, you can use one of the offices. It could be hours before we know anything, but you don’t have to stay up if you’re tired.”

Sophie shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”

“All right then, who’s hungry?” Hawk asked. A chorus of voices agreed they were. “I’ll order pizza.”

The pizza arrived within half an hour, and everyone grabbed a slice. Sophie picked at hers of course, and Chase felt unaccountably angry about it. She’d been free with him over the past few days, lost some of that self-consciousness and eaten without thinking too much about it.

Now she was right back to the way she’d been before he’d shown her how much he loved her body just the way it was. He hated seeing her like that, but what could he do? He had no right to say anything. No right to have an opinion.

He finished his slice of pizza, stood, and carried his plate over to the trash and threw it in. When he turned around, several sets of eyes were on him. Except Sophie’s. She didn’t look at him at all. She picked at her pizza and didn’t look up.

“Going out for some fresh air,” he said, and then he turned and blasted out of the building before anyone could stop him.

There was a green space behind the building, adjacent to the parking lot, and he went into it, stood there with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. It was dusk, the sky awash in orange at the horizon. His breath frosted in the air, curling around him as he stood and tried to clear his mind.

What the fuck was wrong with him anyway? What the fuck did he care if Sophie picked at her pizza? What the fuck did he care if he never tasted her again? There were other women. Plenty of other women.

The door behind him opened and closed. He didn’t turn. He expected Hawk or Matt to come and stand beside him, tell him he was being a moody fucker and that it needed to stop.

He was wrong. Her scent hit him like a blow and he sucked it in, holding his ground. He thought she might touch him, but she didn’t. She came to stand beside him, her hands shoved in her own pockets.

“You okay?” she said.

He glanced at her, his body tightening almost painfully. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

“Nobody else thought it was a bad idea.”

It probably wasn’t a bad idea for anyone but him. “You weren’t hungry?”

She shrugged. “Not really.”

“Bullshit. You’re back to thinking about Justine and Tyler and your fucked-up childhood. Thought you were over that. Thought I proved to you it didn’t fucking matter.”

“Nobody gets over shit like that overnight, Chase. Besides, maybe I’ve got new reasons not to be hungry.”

He turned to look at her. “What the fuck does that mean?”

She faced him, her eyes flashing. “This is a lot to process, Chase. You, us, everything. It’s been a whirlwind few days, and I’m not quite sure how to feel about any of it.” She sucked in a breath. “I don’t like where we are now, how we’re acting toward each other. There’s a damn elephant in the room and everyone knows it. I’ve been asking myself just exactly
why
we have to pretend like nothing happened between us, why there’s no possible way forward. You aren’t my brother; I am not your sister. We aren’t related—we’re no more than two kids who knew each other once. But now we’re grown, and there’s no real reason we can’t have more.”

He stared at her. “Other than the fact you live in New York—or is it LA now?—and I live here? And then there’s my mother, who’s already put up with so much shit from Tyler that I can’t begin to heap more shit on top of her.” He shook his head vigorously. “No, no way. It’s not that fucking easy—and besides, who said I wanted more? It’s pussy, Sophie. I can get that anywhere.”

She stared at him, her eyes glittering like diamonds as she straightened, her head going back and her chin going up. “Okay. Well, I can see I was mistaken then. My bad. You just go ahead and go back to fucking around, and I’ll pretend like none of this ever happened.”

Her voice broke on the last and it about fucking killed him. He wanted to reach for her, but he didn’t. Jesus, she was tearing him up—and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it.

“I thought you were brave, Chase. I thought you were strong and unafraid of anything. I see I was wrong. I see that you’re just a little boy who’s still running scared. Your daddy ignored you—news flash, you aren’t the first person who had an uninvolved father. I never even met my real dad—and Tyler, hell, he tried sometimes, but he wasn’t much better with me than he was with you. I got over it. But you—you let it control you. All that talk of being your own man—and you let it control you!”