Cassandra had battled her weakness for him and lost. He already held her heart, but she wasn’t sure she could give him what he wanted—a long-term relationship. She knew what it was to love someone so deeply that your lives became intertwined, interdependent, like two supporting beams in a structure, and when that person was gone your soul crumbled, unable to withstand the weight of life without the other weight-bearing beam alongside it.
Her parents had been that way, complementing and supporting each other. One lending the other the strength to deal with events and situations they wouldn’t have been able to handle on their own. She had memories of when her mother was still alive. Good memories. Her father smiled a lot back then. And then the void, the emptiness of life after her mother was gone. Her father had become a shell of a man. No smiles. Only order kept him from losing his mind.
Those memories brought back her fears in a rush. She shook her head and took another step back, creating the physical distance she needed to keep her thoughts straight. As much as she loved Trevor, she wasn’t sure she could allow herself to have him—wasn’t sure she had the guts to take a chance on that type of a bond that would leave her debilitated, even handicapped, once he was gone from her life.
She tried to analyze the pros and cons of a relationship, but the pros became eclipsed by the biggest con of all—the unavoidable certainty that one day one of them would die first. In her heart she knew she would never be able to handle losing him. She now understood the sheer strength of mind it had taken for her father to have lived through something like that.
Cassandra struggled to find anything, any small thing, to keep Trevor at bay, so she latched onto the one thing she knew he couldn’t refute: “I don’t know you well enough to love you. You’re a stranger with your secrets and
Trevor-classified
information. It wouldn’t work, Trevor.”
Cassandra’s heart wept when his face blanched and his eyes darkened to the blackish-blue color of a turbulent sea.
Trevor had expected her to fight the truth, but he had never foreseen that she would use the one thing he was not ready to disclose as the excuse for not being able to love him wholeheartedly. They had been on this adventure together for only a couple of weeks. In reality, they really didn’t know each other, but they did know what their hearts were telling them. Their hearts had been speaking loud and clear from the first time they had laid eyes on each other. Trevor and Cassandra belonged. That was all that mattered.
Silence stretched between them. From the way she was studying him, Trevor knew his emotions were an open book shining through his eyes as he analyzed his own reasons for concealing part of his past.
He didn’t want her to see him as a complete lunatic, obsessed about something he couldn’t change. He feared that she wouldn’t understand his motives or all the time and effort that would be tied up in finding the truth about his parents’ disappearance. He was lucid enough to know that no woman could be satisfied with taking second place to ghosts.
The many small but meaningful times over the past few days, when they had disclosed bits and pieces of themselves to each other, flashed in his mind. The strength and determination she displayed at completing her tasks, the vulnerability showed at the thought of failure, the many amazing skills she had honed over the years, drilled into her by her father and her CIA training—she was his woman, he was certain of that. She was his match and counterbalance. She was his other half. He couldn’t picture himself going back to his desk job and living life without her. He made his decision—one that would make or break their future together.
“My parents disappeared off the coast of Africa four years ago.”
The first sentence was the opening of a dam. The whole story poured out of him—his past, his origins, who he really was, and his connection to Brennan Enterprises. He talked about his parents’ lives in Sligo, their love of sailing, their disappearance, the ridiculous assumptions made by the investigators, his many questions and doubts about the case, and finally, the nightmare from a few months back that had set him on his collision course with her. All of it tumbled from him in one gigantic tidal wave, the images in his head still as clear as the day they had startled him from his sleep. The weather conditions, the state of The Morrígan—his parents’ yacht—and the items found in its interior. That nightmare had been an exact replica of the Gárda’s inquiry report—with one difference: in his nightmare, his parents had still been on board.
When The Morrígan had been discovered adrift in high seas after a major storm, the authorities had found the spare beds unused and the possessions his parents had taken with them—laptops, cell phones, house and car keys, clothes—untouched. The yacht’s lifejackets and the emergency raft had never been deployed. His parents had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Trevor disclosed to her what he had been told. There was no sign of a struggle or any destruction of property. Even though some items were strewn around, the disarray had been attributed to the violence of the storm. No sign of foul play. No DNA or items not belonging to the couple were ever uncovered. The only logical explanation was that they had been either knocked overboard in the violence of the storm or had committed suicide together, their bodies most likely never to be recovered.
He knew that both his parents were confident sailing the seventy-foot yacht. His father, an old seadog, was a very experienced sailor. To think that Conor Brennan would make such a serious mistake was almost too incredible to believe. He winced at the thought of his parents meeting such a horrible demise, but he knew deep inside that it could be the harsh reality.
Cassandra watched him intently. She listened quietly, studied him closely, and watched his gestures, all without one single interruption during the story-of-his-life
confession. He could tell she was trying to puzzle through it.
“The codename of the formula was the reason I hacked into the servers.”
Her eyes narrowed and she finally spoke. “How can a formula’s codename have anything to do with your parents’ disappearance?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “It doesn’t. When I heard the name at that time, I believed it did. The Morrígan was the name of my parents’ yacht. It’s from an Irish legend. I was intrigued that the formula had been given the same name. I was looking for a connection between the disappearance of the formula and my parents’.”
“And?”
“Nothing. My father was the head developer for the biometric software created to measure the new drug’s efficacy. I don’t know how the name was chosen, but it could have been a simple coincidence. Either way, I’m glad it did or I’d never have met you.”
Trevor finished his tale and exhaled a deep breath. The rest of the story was hers to write. He had given her his all. He had bared his soul. He waited for her to move closer, touch his face, say something to reassure him he had been right about her feelings, but the actions and words he sought never came.
Squaring her shoulders, Cassandra scrubbed her face with her hands. She felt disjointed, lost, and slightly out of control. “I need to think.”
She brushed past him before he could say anything else and walked into the restroom. Shutting the door, she stared in the mirror and remembered doing the same not too long ago when she had questioned her sanity in asking for Trevor’s help. She didn’t regret it; if she had to do it all over again, she would still take the same path.
Kenyon’s lifeless body flashed in the mirror and Cassandra had to acknowledge what Jessica had been trying to tell her all along—life was too short. She needed to leave the shade of the rock under which she had been living and walk in the sun.
With a shaky hand, she turned on the shower. When steam filled the room, she dropped Trevor’s shirt to the rug and stepped under the water’s spray.
****
Trevor’s heart broke in a million pieces as he watched Cassandra walk away from him. Each step she took was as if she was putting a mile between them. Staring at the closed bathroom door, he prayed that she would open it again and run back into his arms. He hung his head when the door didn’t open and tried to grasp what had just happened.
He had thought that baring his soul to her would give her what she needed, the last piece of him. Instead, it had created a chasm between them—one that he was not sure he could cross.
Trevor shoved his hands into his pant pockets and slowly walked to the window. He stared out at the view of Monte Carlo’s streets bordered by the sea, all pinpointed in light, with the brightly illuminated casino in the background. The view was one of romance and beauty, but he was immune to its allure. It was the dark skies above the beautiful view that matched the darkness growing inside him.
Trevor frowned at the idea of what his existence would be from that point on. He could return to his ordered and quiet life, his somewhat stimulating desk job, and the house he shared with George, but Cassandra had permeated every single aspect of him. He knew nothing was ever going to feel the same. Images of her—impatiently standing by his desk, her angry stare as she grabbed his arm in the meeting room, the fire burning in her eyes at his comeback to her touch, leaning against the car with sunglass-shaded eyes, and later challenging his masculinity in his living room—scrolled rapidly in his head. Those memories would never fade. Ghosts of a failed dream that would forever haunt him.
His thoughts wandered toward his search for his parents. He had a goal and he planned to tackle it with all his might. Maybe Ireland was the cure for all his ills. Time was all that was left to him to lay the dream of a life with Cassandra to rest. He hoped moving back to his homeland to continue the investigation would keep him occupied. He truly prayed it would. It was all he had to hang on to.
****
Brushing her hands over her face, Cassandra let the water wash away the images of Allison, Kenyon, and her mother. Soaping her hair, she faced the fact that she couldn’t change her father. As she reached for the wash rag, she resolved that she would not be going back to work for him. It was time for her to move on. Trevor had also gone through loss—a harder loss to digest, due to the circumstances surrounding it, and yet he was somehow moving on with his life—one he wanted to build with her. Turning her back to the shower’s spray, she rinsed her hair and knew that she would take a chance on Trevor. When her hand brushed against the scar at her hip, it was like a floodgate had burst open.
Tears began to mix with the water and she slumped to the tile floor of the shower. Circling her arms around her legs, she pulled them tight against her chest and dropped her forehead against her knees. Overwhelmed by it all—her injury, her father’s scrutiny, her encounter with Nathan, her failure to protect the formula, the murders of Allison and Kenyon, and the tragic story of Trevor’s parents—sobs racked her body.
Everything made sense to her now. Trevor’s infiltration on the server had not been to steal or cause damage. He had told her the truth from day one. His curiosity about the name and the possibility of a clue to his parents had driven him to do it. He had never had any interest in the formula itself. That was the reason there hadn’t been any connections between him and the pharmaceutical world when she had checked on him. Her instincts at the time had told her he was hiding something, she just never imagined it was something completely apart from what they were after.
All her red-flag concerns had been answered in one single swoop. All of the barriers she had created and nurtured during the few weeks they had been travelling together, and throughout her life, had crumbled at her feet. Trevor was all she ever wanted and never thought she would find. The caring, respectful man who admired her intelligence, who never took her moral or physical strength for granted, who loved her for who she was, who saw her for who she was on the inside, and who trusted her opinions and judgment as much as his own.
She was his, just like she knew he was hers. No point in running from it. If she avoided commitment for fear of the emptiness at possibly losing him, she would miss out on a lifetime of fulfillment while she did have him.
The chill of the water broke her out of her introspection. Cassandra turned the water off, stepped out, and dried herself. She wrapped the towel around her and, with one last look in the mirror, went in search of Trevor. She found him standing by the window looking out at the darkness, seemingly lost in thought. She moved to stand in his line of vision and cupped his cheek to draw his attention. He covered her hand with his, closed his eyes, and released a deep breath. She moved closer, placed her other hand over his heart, and felt the hard, fast beat of it under her fingers—a beat that matched her own.
“Please say something.” Trevor, afraid to open his eyes, was uncertain what her touch meant. Did it mean he had finally broken through her shell? Or did she pity him for his madness?
“You’re right.”
Trevor’s eyes snapped open and collided with hers.
“Wow. No words, huh?” She smiled softly. “Don’t get used to hearing ‘you’re right’ all the time. It might not happen in the future as often as you’d expect.”
Trevor’s eyes widened slightly at the mention of a future. “What are you telling me, Cassie girl?”
She laughed out loud. “Are all Irishmen this dim? You were right. I was scared, but not anymore. I love you, Trevor. Believe it or not, I’ve loved you since the first
shite
you said in front of me.”
Trevor pulled her into his arms. A soft chuckle rumbled deep in his chest before he took her mouth with his.
Cassandra pulled back. Out of breath, she rested her forehead on Trevor’s chest, gasping. His kiss had scattered her thoughts and her pulse raced out of control. She needed him again, this time not out of a desire fueled by danger but out of desire born of love.
Slowly, Cassandra raised her head and met Trevor’s questioning gaze. She took his hand and drew him toward the bedroom with her. Trevor’s breath hissed when she let the towel drop to the floor and reached for the zipper of his pants. Sliding it down, she slipped her hands inside along his hips and pushed his pants off. When Trevor stepped out of them, Cassandra took his hand again and pulled him to the bed.