With Tracy, how could he not risk it?
Love hadn’t wandered his way before, and he doubted it would again. He’d learned young that love is rare. A gift he’d hungered for his whole life, and it had eluded him.
Her breath warm on his neck, she reared back, certainty burning in her eyes. “I don’t want to have sex with you, Adam.
His chest went tight. “I don’t want to have sex with you, either.” He didn’t. He wanted to make love with her. God, did he want to make love with her. But she had known love before, and so he doubted that was what she had meant. He could seduce her-her physical reaction to him proved it-but he didn’t want to take from her. He’d taken too much already, had made too many choices for her, and that truth had guilt stabbing him like a knife. Knowing he had cost her plenty and he could, and probably would, cost her even more, twisted the blade and cut deeper.
He backed away to the sink and turned on the water. “I’d, um, better get this stuff off.” He couldn’t look at her. One glance, one hint of a glance, and his resolve would slide right down the drain with the hair dye.
She stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching him, then softly sighed and went back to bed.
His knees nearly folded. He rinsed the dye from his hair, pulled the towel up over his wet face, and stared at his reflection in the mirror, reminding himself of the thousand reasons he would be out of his mind to finish what they had started. When he considered himself convinced, he went back to the bedroom.
Tracy heard his footsteps and closed her eyes. She lay still on her side, calling herself forty kinds of fool. She’d kissed him, survivor to survivor. He was her captor and proving a point. He didn’t care about her beyond that, and she didn’t want him to, not really. She didn’t want to invest emotionally. Certainly not with a man who wouldn’t recognize love if he was slugged with it. Not with any man.
And yet Adam had made her feel things no man, including Matthew, had ever made her feel. She’d loved Matthew enough to marry him, but he’d never made her feel like this. Never like this … Yet Adam had snubbed her, too. He’d turned away. Had he been suckering her along so she wouldn’t turn him in? No, he couldn’t be that manipulative. It wasn’t in his eyes.
Desperate men commit desperate acts, fool.
Oh, shut up.
Adam turned off the lamp on the nightstand between their beds. He didn’t take off his jeans. For some reason, that surprised her. Shuffling covers and punching his pillow, he settled in his bed. Did he snore?
“Are you asleep, Tracy?”
Should she answer him? “Not yet.”
“Thanks for helping me with my hair.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled and cranked open one eye. Faint moonlight slanted in the window from between a gap in the plastic drapes. “Did the color cover the paint?”
“Yeah, it did.” He sounded pleased.
“That’s good.” She was happy for him. The streak had to eat at him. Seeing it every time she looked in a mirror would drive her insane. She should stop there, but herself wouldn’t let her. “It never should have happened. I, um, owe you an apology for that, Adam. I should have expected that they might beat you and I didn’t. I’m … sorry.” It sounded so lame. It was lame.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes it was. I know how things work at the facility. I should have anticipated it, and I would have, but I was too self-focused and-”
“You didn’t beat me, Tracy.” He raised up on one elbow and an arc of -moonlight swept across his shoulder. “They did. Let the blame rest where it belongs.”
Forgiveness. So easily given, and yet so hard to accept. She swallowed hard. “Thank you,” she said in a shaky whisper, wondering how he had found the courage to forgive even now, when so much had been stolen from him.
“I want you to know something.”
Turning on her side, she pushed down the edge of her pillow and looked over at him. It was too dark to see anything more than his silhouette, but she still felt his gaze on her. “What?”
“I trust you.” He grunted. “That shouldn’t seem like such a big deal to say, but I’ve been working up the guts to do it for half an hour.”
His frankness surprised her. She had read his Intel file cover to cover. She knew the type of missions this man performed. He faced terrorists one-on-one, infiltrated enemy territory to gather intel, dealt with people the rest of the world was only too happy to forget existed. Adam had more courage in his big toe than she had in her entire body. And yet he’d had to work up the courage to tell her he trusted her. She closed her eyes and savored his words, knowing his family had made them hard for him to admit to himself, much less to her.
His voice dropped a notch, strained. “Do you think one day you’ll trust me?”
Her heart contracted, clenched as if he had squeezed it in his fist. She wouldn’t lie to him. He deserved better. “I’m working on it.”
“That’ll do for now.” He let out a sigh and rolled over onto his back. “Can I ask you another question?”
Not sure if she wanted to open up any more doors between them, she hesitated. But then she recalled his leap of faith, and she refused to be a coward. “Sure.”
“When I went into the store to buy the hair dye, why didn’t you report me? I know you considered it, but why didn’t you do it?”
She could be kind or honest, but not both. Honest won. “I did seriously consider it,” she confessed. “But then you bought me orange juice. II “What’s that got to do with it?”
“About as much as me going to your funeral.”
“Oh.”
“I know. It’s a fluff answer, but it’s true.”
“It’s not a fluff answer.”
Her heart tripped, then hammered. “Really?”
“Really.”
One little word, yet it meant more than she could say.
“My instincts tell me there’s truth in what you’ve told me. I’m not convinced you’re innocent, Adam. But I’m dead certain you’re not guilty.”
“Now that’s a fluff answer.”
“It’s not She grunted into the darkness. “Okay, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I know what I mean, and it’s not fluff.”
,,you want hard evidence.” He sighed and stared at the ceiling. “There’s a part of me that is really pissed at having to prove I’m innocent-I won’t lie about that. But the soldier in me understands. It still resents, but it understands.”
She rubbed the soft cotton pillow slip between her forefinger and thumb. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” He sounded surprised.
:What you’re having to go through all of this.”
,I’m sorry I’m dragging you through it with me. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t.”
She believed him.
,,I could damn the system, or anything else-and I probably will before all the dust settles. But not right now.” He rolled toward her, stared across the empty space between their beds. “I got into some trouble back when I was a boy. Nothing serious, but it was a wakeup call. “I was thirteen and, I thought, invincible. I stole a basketball from a neighbor’s kid.”
“We’ve all done something like that as children, Adam.”
“Not to the police chief’s son.” He laughed, low and deep. “Good came out of it, though. The chief took me down to the station and called my parents. They refused to come get me. I’d gotten into trouble on my own and I could get out of it on my own, they said. I think their reaction shook the chief up. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with me. It took a little while, but he decided how to handle it.
“What did he do?”
“He blistered my ears with a lecture fit to reform a murderer and then locked me in a cell for half an hour.
I thought I’d be stuck in there forever. When he let me out, he warned me that if I didn’t turn my life around, I’d end up in a cell forever.”
“Good grief. That’s a little extreme for stealing a basketball.”
“It was perfect. One of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me.”
The hint of a smile etched his voice. “I owe him a lot.”
“What? How can you be grateful for that?”
Adam explained. “While I was in the cell, I accepted that I couldn’t rely on anyone else. I was responsible for Myself and for the type of person I became. I took stock and accepted facts. I stopped drifting through life and blaming others for the way things were, and I started building the life I wanted to live.” Adam sighed. He’d done well, too, damn it. Until no He’d kept his pact with himself on becoming the type of person he wanted to be. He’d thumbed his nose at temptation and stood fast. He could take solace in that. Others had fallen. But he’d stood fast. “It hasn’t all worked out as planned,” he confessed. “But I didn’t put the screws to my men, my country, or to myself.” He looked over at Tracy. “Someone put the screws to me.”
“What exactly do you mean?” She kicked the covers off her feet.
“I was allowed to survive the incident only so I’d be alive to take the blame for causing it.” God help him. He was crazy about a woman who wore Pooh slippers, even to bed. “They thought I’d slash and sever.”
“Slash and sever?”
“Cut and run.”
chapter 20.
The truth hit Tracy between the eyes. He had been all-alowed to survive-the incident and the fire-so that if I I the truth should be unearthed, he would be available to take the blame. Bloody hell. “With the charges hanging over your head, of course Hackett, et al, thought you would cut and run. Who would dream you’d risk the death penalty to come back to clear your name?”
I wouldn’t have. But then you got involved and things got complex.”
Damn it, no. He couldn’t have come back for her. She had to be reading him wrong. “Does Hackett have the kind of clout it would take to arrange arson at the facility?’
“He could. He’s got contacts worldwide,” Adam said. “General Nestler definitely does.”
overwhelmed, Tracy lay silent. What if Nestler was involved? Then Adam would be going toe-to-toe not with a single senior officer but with a whole damn group Of them. They had the clout, and the odds. “Adam, why didn’t you just disappear?” He was Intel-trained like Janet, only be had a lot more experience. if she knew how to make someone disappear, then certainly he did.
“Three reasons,” he said, sounding hesitant to reveal his rationale. “Even believing I was dead, you kept seeking the truth, and you were being stalked for your dedication to finding it.”
“What’s the third reason?” she asked, hoping she didn’t regret it. Two of three reasons had been because of her. She loved and hated knowing it. Feared the responsibility of it.
“It was a matter of honor.”
That could mean anything. Devotion to country, the Force, a sense of duty. Anything. “Could you be a little more specific?” A breeze danced through the pines, slanting shadows and moonlight through the window.
“I had to watch over you.”
“Why?” Three for three. Her heart strummed. If not for her, he would have disappeared.
Avoiding her eyes, he paused, and his voice dropped to a mere whisper of sound. “You cried for me, Tracy.”
And no one else had. The depth of meaning that held for him stole through her chest, and tears stung her eyes, made her throat feel thick. She curled on her side, her knees to her chest, and fisted her hand at her chin, rebelling against an intense urge to weep.
As if realizing how emotional they both had become, Adam cleared his throat and turned the topic. “You know, we’ve got a lot of implications but no hard evidence. I want the truth as much as you do-maybe more. The question is, how do we find evidence?”
Lying in separate beds in the dark, they discussed possibilities, dissected them and the implications, and in the space of a breath, she confessed knowing about Adam’s past and calling his mother after the fire, trying to get the woman to demand an autopsy. “I can only imagine how much your parents hurt you over the years. But I’m sure it’s been a lot.”
“Early on, yes. But after a while, I stopped letting them.” He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “Of course, my ex-wife picked up where they left off, until I stopped letting her, too.”
“I’m curious about her.”
“My mother?”
“No. Your ex-wife.” Tracy couldn’t fathom him allowing a woman to get close enough to him to hurt him. Not after his parents. And yet his ex obviously had or he never would have married Lisa.
“She was beautiful, sweet, and gentle-natured,” he said matter-of-factly. “She wanted to love me. At least, I think she did. But she just couldn’t.”
“You are, lovable, Tracy felt a catch in her heart. Adam.”
“it was the job,” he said. “In theory, she wanted to be married to an Intel officer. She just didn’t like the reality of it. The secrecy of the missions, me being gone so much-all of it.”
“That’s a common problem.” Tracy had heard it again and again at the JAG office. Spouses tired quickly of the job coming first and family taking a backseat to duty. Wearied of military members leaving abruptly, unable to say where they were going or when they’d be home. And they resented having to handle alone all of the crises and problems that inevitably cropped up at home during their members’ absences. The base offered counseling services and a family liaison to assist, but many spouses hesitated to air their family’s personal laundry, unsure how it might impact their members’ careers. They suffered in silence. some endured the trials without bitterness, some with it. Some kept on enduring, and some cut and ran. Lisa had cut and run.
“I thought we could work through it,” Adam confessed. “When you marry into Intel, it takes a while to get used to the way things are. But she didn’t make the transition.”
The change in his voice had Tracy frowning. Why had it become so hard-edged? Was he still in love with Lisa? or just still resentful that she too had left him? “What happened?” Tracy shouldn’t have asked; it was too personal. But done was done. Would he answer her?
“I came home from a three-month TDY in the Pacific and found her playing house with another man.” ‘ It didn’t take much imagination to visualize that scene, or how it had crushed Adam. Reaching out and trusting someone had to have been hell for him, yet he had done it, and she had betrayed him. Why had she had to betray him? It wasn’t fair. Not after what he’d been through. His marriage had been just one more kick in the teeth. One more scar on his heart.