RULES OF LOVE (A Navy SEALs Romance) (18 page)

“You’re three seconds away from getting whacked over the head,” she warned.

“I don’t care.” He moved closer, and this time, when she flinched at his sudden closeness, he smirked.

And she decked him, again. “You asshole! You sit there and get mad at me for tricking you? What the hell was all that bullshit about caring, huh? You just wanted a damn good lay. Get out of my way or when I hit you this time, you won’t get back up.”

Beau stretched his jaw at the pain but still didn’t move. “I meant what I said. I did care about you—about Naomi—but you’re not her.”

“No? And why the hell not? I haven’t changed.”

“You expect me to believe you’re not just bitter over some old war injury? A mission went south and you got shot, so now you’re pissed off at the world? Was it Coleman’s men? Did they get to you?”

“I’m not answering your questions,” she said, her voice lower, and she didn’t meet his eyes.

He stepped even closer. “Yes, you are. Tell me, damn it! What happened to you that was so godawful?”

“You think I want to wake up screaming?” she yelled, her voice shaking with so much pain that Beau paused. “You think I want to be haunted by the shit I went through? You think that’s all fake? You think this injury is fake, or the scars you kissed? I have been through hell! I am not going to stand here and have you accuse me of faking any of it to be a distraction!”

Beau watched her green-eyed glare, and the anguish there was real. It hit him hard, as if she’d decked him again. “Eddie—”

“No. You want to know what happened, I’ll tell you what happened.” She gripped her cane as she slammed it into the floor before she spoke again. “Three years ago I was on a recon team with five others, one of which was my fiancé. Gabriel Willem. We thought we’d be in and out and done, get what we needed so your team could move in.”

Beau remembered the plan for the mission. They’d finally caught a lead on Coleman and were moving in on his main base of operations, but the intel never reached them. He and his team were sent in for a rescue instead. His brow furrowed as he glanced at Eddie’s stance and her clenched jaw.

“Two of our team were compromised,” she said quietly. “They’d been so from the very beginning. Most thorough identities I’ve ever seen.” She laughed sharply. “One of them was my fiancé.”

“What are you saying?”

“Gabriel Willem was Hugh Coleman. No one saw his face and he checked out, passed all the backgrounds and in-depth searches on Willem. We didn’t know until he turned on us and… and…” She couldn’t get the words out. Her body faltered, and Beau lunged forward to catch her.

He guided her to the bed and set her down, squatting down in front of her. “Take a deep breath. Probably still from the overdose.”

Her lips twitched in anger, eyes filling with tears he knew she’d never let fall. “No, it’s not.”

He watched her closely, the screams from earlier replaying in his mind. “When that man injected you, you started screaming for them
to stop touching you and to kill you instead?” Eddie sank back farther into the pillows and avoided his gaze. “Eddie, what really happened to you?”

She pushed her tongue against her lip like always when she was thinking too hard, and Beau thought she’d tell him off again.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said gently. “Your screams are enough.”

She looked at him long and hard, her face blank except for the overwhelming hatred and sadness in her eyes. “No, they’re not.”

Beau’s hand tightened protectively around hers as every muscle in his body tensed. Not caring about this woman was hopeless at this point. He was still pissed at her, but he wasn’t going to let her suffer like this, not alone.

“They took us to Coleman’s underground warehouse in a bunker, and we were held there for two weeks. Food maybe every couple of days, and hardly enough water for the three of us.”

She closed her eyes tightly, and her free hand gripped the bed hard. Beau thought he was ready for what she said next. He was wrong.

“We were tortured for information. They wanted to know what knew about Coleman. I’ve never bled so much in my life. They liked to see how much pain we could handle.” Eddie shook her head, rubbing her wrists as if she could feel their hands on her now, and her lips twisted into a leer. “Never thought I could be raped by my fiancé. It’s a good thing I didn’t marry him before the mission.”

Beau’s entire body stilled. She’d been raped by a man she trusted to protect her and watch her six. How she acted around him when they first met—everything fell into place as a white hot rage filled him. “You were his fiancée and he… he did that to you?” There were no words for this. Fury filled him along with the desperate need to take it out on the one man who deserved it. “I’m going to rip his head off.”

“Wait in line. I get him first,” she snapped, and when Beau’s eyes met hers, he knew she wasn’t lying. If she found him again, she would kill him—painfully and very slowly. He knew because it’s exactly what he would do.

“Your leg… That’s from a gunshot,” he stated, barely able to form words around his newfound hatred for Coleman.

“Two, actually. I made a break for it—nearly found the door, but they caught me. If your team hadn’t been on their way to get us, I’d be dead.” She laughed darkly. “So that’s two times you’ve saved my life.”

The woman they’d brought out on a stretcher all those years ago… Eddie. His fingers traced the edge of her face, then lower to her neck. Scars lined it, scars he’d been told were from a car accident, but now he knew. She’d stayed strong, told them nothing, even during the torture. Coleman and his men received no answers that day. He saw it in the fierceness in her eyes. Beau’s hand moved lower to her arms, tracing each individual scar. He waited for Eddie to pull away, but she didn’t. Despite what he said about not trusting her, she—finally, it seemed—trusted him.

When his fingers reached her wrist and the large gashed scar there, she pulled away. He closed his hand around her wrist gently before she could, though. “They slit your wrists… Or was that you?” he asked quietly, and she didn’t meet his gaze as more anger filled him when he thought of her feeling so helpless, so alone, that the only way out was to kill herself. “Eddie?” She tried to pull away again, but he didn’t let her. “No, no more hiding, especially from me. What did you do?”

She fidgeted but looked him in the eyes when she said, “Suicide attempt, two of them. Wrists were in the hospital right afterwards. I couldn’t take it, kept seeing his face, feeling his hands on me…” She shuddered, and Beau wanted to pull her close and tell her she was safe, but he didn’t, not yet. “The second when I tried to drive my Jeep off a cliff.”

“You are never allowed to try that again, understand me?” His words were harsh as he thought of her bleeding out. “Never again. That is an order.” His thumb brushed over her old scars as his lips touched hers.

“I thought I was just a liar and manipulator,” she muttered against his lips.

“I was wrong,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I’m sorry for it. Still pissed though.”

“I don’t blame you,” she murmured, and to his surprise, brought him back for another kiss. It grew in heat. He needed her just as much as she needed him, no matter how hard it was for either one to admit it. His hand tangled in her hair, and he wanted nothing more than to show her what a man who loved a woman was really about, but she was still recovering. And the word ‘love’ passing through his mind seized his body.

“I need to shower and change,” he managed to announce. “Still covered in blood.”

“Who’s here?” she asked as he helped her back to her feet. He considered telling her to lie back down, but the second his gaze landed on the bed, she followed, and her eyes narrowed.

“Agent Laon is on her way if she’s not here already, and Shane with her.”

Eddie told him she would be down there to see what she could find out, if anything. He knew they wouldn’t tell her anything. He was more pissed at Reinhart than Eddie, anyway. The man in charge should’ve brought Beau in from the start; then none of this would’ve happened.

And you never would’ve met Eddie
, he thought, stiffening at the realization of it. The man trying to kill them both was the only reason they were together in the first place. Beau frowned at the irony of it and contented himself with imagining various tortures to use on Coleman for what he had unleashed on Eddie.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Eddie reached the bottom stair in the new safe house, barely a quarter of the size of the first, to find Jackie standing near the fireplace, yelling at someone on her cell. When she turned and saw Eddie, she hung up and rushed over to her.

“I thought I said no more scaring the shit out of me,” she snapped. “What happened at the house?”

“All I know is I was drugged. You want to fill me in?”

Jackie waited until Eddie sat down on the couch, wincing and rubbing her knee. “You going to live?”

“Been through worse,” she muttered. “What do we know?”

“Look, Reinhart does not want you doing anything stupid, Eddie—you or Savage. Got it?”

She glanced at her knee with a raised brow. “Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”

Jackie frowned but didn’t say anything as she sat across from Eddie in the armchair and opened the files on it. “Those men from the house are dead. Cyanide. Didn’t get anything out of them before they offed themselves.”

“Anything off West?”

“No, just the pictures of you and Savage. We found the other missing agents dead in Milan.”

Eddie listened to Jackie go over what they’d found, but they were still waiting to hear back from the techs to see what could be gathered from the old security footage. Eddie doubted they’d find anything they could use, so for the moment, they were once again at a dead-end.

“Reinhart’s pissed the safe house was attacked,” Jackie added after silence fell over the room. “He kept it together while he was there, but the second he was back at command base, he lost it. Tore up his office. Never heard that man curse so much.”

“Not surprising. It’s taking everything I have right now not to call him and tell him I told you so.”

“I don’t think he’d even be mad about it,” she chuckled without humor. “But he doesn’t want either of you to leave this house. You’re not even allowed on the front porch.”

“Great, so house arrest,” she muttered. “What the hell are we supposed to do here?”

Jackie winked. “I think the two of you will come up with something to keep yourselves busy.”

Eddie glared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I don’t know a thing about what’s going on.”

“He told you we’re having sex?” Eddie hissed in a whisper as she leaned forward. Jackie burst out laughing then quieted as she shook her head. “Damn it, I hate you.”

“Hate me all you want. As long as you’re being taken care of, I don’t care.” She gathered up the files on the table and checked her watch. “Your brother should’ve been here by now.”

Eddie shot a look towards the front door as an agent passed by it and the front windows, talking on a radio. “You know everyone outside?”

“I do, checked them out myself. Ted’s out there, too.”

She frowned. Ted and Gareth had been with her through those weeks of torture. The last thing she wanted was for this to bring up any bad memories for them, too. None of them should have to deal with this again, but Coleman wasn’t disappearing anytime soon. She’d hoped, after not hearing anything about him for so long, someone would’ve shot him. Buried him in a ditch.

Everything in her career up until that point meant something to her. She had a purpose when she got up in the morning, when she worked with her team. She helped bring down drug lords, war lords, terrorists, and gathered intel from places across the entire damn globe. But the moment Hugh betrayed her, everything just stopped. Nothing helped her move past it until Savage came into her life, but Hugh was trying to take that away from her, too.

If she lost Savage, she would lose the last bit of hope she clung to for a normal life. It couldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen.

“You’ll keep me posted on everything you find out?” she asked Jackie as her friend stood.

“Whether Reinhart wants me to or not,” she promised. “We’ll find him, Eddie. We’ll get him this time. He won’t hurt you again.”

She watched Jackie leave before going back upstairs to check on Beau and find out if her cell and gun survived the attack and trip to the new safe house. Beau hadn’t come down yet either, and she didn’t hear the shower running. There were only two bedrooms upstairs. The first was empty, and when she reached the room she’d woken up in, she found him passed out on the bed. He’d showered and thrown his jeans back on but left his shirt off.

The slash against his back was red and puckered, tugging a bit as he breathed.

As she watched him sleep, saw the bags under his eyes and the lines on his face, she realized she knew hardly anything about this man who’d managed to break down her icy walls of bitterness and rage. He was arrogant, but that was only a front for what he dealt with during his career. His arrogance was his defense against caring, like anger had been hers. Now, they were both vulnerable to whatever happened next. Before, she’d told herself that after this was over, he would hate her too much for lying to want to be with her and that it could never work between them. Ever.