Ready (22 page)

“I think Nemesis means to kill me.”

The time he’d shoved her into traffic, she could have been badly hurt or killed and this thing with her car’s exhaust had been even more dangerous.

Which is what she said to Joshua.

“Most people start vomiting before they pass out when they’re exposed to carbon monoxide.”

“So?” Was that supposed to mean something to her? She swore, sometimes talking to Joshua was like coaxing honey from a turnip.

“If you’d reacted classic textbook, you would have pulled over sooner.”

“Before I got so disoriented I drove over the guardrail?”

“Yes.”

“So, you
don’t
think he’s trying to kill me?”

Joshua’s hand on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles were white. “
Not yet
.”

S
uddenly cold, she reluctantly tugged her hand from his so she could pull off the green cotton top and put her sweatshirt back on. “Not yet?” she prompted.

“He’s too cavalier with your life. There have been two incidents now that could have been fatal. Both times the chance of injury was greater than that of death, but you can’t get around the fact that he was willing to risk it. I think he has plans for the future.”

The need to vomit Joshua had mentioned earlier hit her now. “You think he’s on some sort of timetable, or that he just wants to taunt me sufficiently before killing me?”

“It could be either, but I wondered if yesterday’s incident wasn’t engineered so he could kidnap you.”

“Why kidnap me?”

“Honey, that’s a question I’d rather not answer.”

As one terrifying and soul-sickening scenario after another started flying through her imagination, she realized it was a question she wished she hadn’t asked, either.

Joshua’s takeoff was smoother than any commercial flight she’d been on, but the change in pressure still affected her head. She took some painkillers with a long drink from the water bottle he’d given her after belting her into the co-pilot’s seat.

He sent her a concerned glance. “You okay, Lise? Maybe we should have waited until tomorrow to fly out.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I wanted to get you out of Washington.”

Because he’d been worried about her even though he would never admit it. The knowledge did more to dispel her headache than any pain reliever could.

“Did you fly in the Rangers?”

He nodded. “Choppers. I didn’t learn to fly a jet until the year after I went independent.”

“Why did you leave the army?”

The thing that had fascinated her the most when she’d been interviewing mercenaries for her books had been their varied reasons for becoming what they were. They had ranged all the way from wanting to do what they did already, but with no red tape limiting the success of their missions, to simply wanting to get paid more for risking their lives.

Joshua had a lot of integrity. She’d bet his reasons for going independent were good ones.

But when he didn’t answer at once, she began to wonder if his reasons had been painful as well. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

He turned to look at her, the plane on automatic pilot now that they were flying at altitude. “I got married the second year of my tour in the Rangers.”

“
You’ve been married?
” The news shouldn’t have come as such a shock. After all, she’d been divorced. But it did.

His eyes reflected faint humor at her surprise. “Most men over the age of thirty have, at least once.”

“I guess you’re right, but I never pictured you as the domestic type.” A warrior, yes. A hearth and home man, no.

“It wasn’t a craving for domesticity that prompted my marriage. I was a nineteen-year-old kid who wanted a little softness when I wasn’t in the field. Melody was soft—at least, her body was.”

“Did you love her?”

“I thought I did, but I learned that kind of love is more illusion than reality.”

He couldn’t have meant his words the way they sounded, but she had to ask to make sure. “Are you saying you don’t believe in the love between a man and a woman…at all?”

His jaw tightened, his expression hardening. “No.”

She inhaled air into lungs that hurt with the effort it took not to protest the wound his words inflicted. If he did not believe in love, it was a safe bet he did not love her and that news was about as welcome as a snakebite in the desert.

“What about Jake and your sister, what about your parents?” Bella had told her that their parents were happily married and had been for decades.

“Lee is not my real father.”

“So, he’s your stepfather, but that doesn’t negate the love he feels for Myra. He adores her.” Even if Bella hadn’t told her that, it had been obvious at both the wedding and Genevieve’s christening.

“No, it doesn’t.” He adjusted something on the instrument panel. “I should have said that I don’t believe in it for me. What Jake and Bella have is unique.”

“You don’t think you’re capable of experiencing those feelings?”

“No.”

“Because of your marriage?”

“What I thought was love turned out to be nothing more than sexual infatuation.” His dark eyes bored into hers, letting her know he believed everything he was saying. “When our marriage ended, the only thing I missed about Melody was the sex and holding someone at night.”

Was that all he would miss about her when she moved back to Texas and he went on to his next assignment? She’d miss the sexual intimacy, too. The passion between them was beyond anything she could ever have imagined, but for her it was so much more. The pain in her chest grew and she wondered if broken hearts really did shatter.

She could not force herself to say anything, even the inane, but apparently he wasn’t expecting an answer because he went on.

“Melody and I played at marriage. Looking back, I realize our relationship was nothing more than a series of intense sexual encounters. We didn’t talk. We didn’t want to buy a house, or do any of the things married couples interested in becoming a family do.”

“You mean like having children?”

“That was one thing. She didn’t want kids and I didn’t want to try to be a dad when my life was dominated by my job in the Rangers. I’d seen too many marriages split, leaving kids devastated.”

“You got married thinking you might get divorced?”

“The divorce rate in the Rangers is eighty percent. I had to consider the possibility.”

“Even so, that’s a pretty cynical attitude.”

“I was right.”

She couldn’t exactly argue with that. “What happened?”

“I came back from assignment and found my wife having sex on the coffee table with one of my Ranger buddies.”

“On the coffee table?” The image was mind-boggling.

“Yeah. They were going at it so hot and heavy, they didn’t even realize I’d come into the room until I dumped a bucket of ice water on them. I never got so lost in sex with Melody that I didn’t know what was going on around me. To tell you the truth, it pissed me off that he was getting something from her I hadn’t managed to find. Complete oblivion.”

She put the rest of his comments in the back of her mind to dissect later and focused on how he’d handled the situation. “You dumped ice water on them?”

“It beat taking my Ranger brother apart until there was nothing left.”

“Brother?”

“
Brother
. Being in the Special Forces is an intense way of life. If you can’t trust your buddies absolutely, you can’t do your job.” He sounded like he was reciting incontrovertible truth. “You believe they’ll cover your back no matter what it takes, and you’ll risk your life to cover theirs. You learn to trust them more than your own family.”

“And your
brother
betrayed you?”

“Yes.” Joshua’s expression hardened and she could almost feel sorry for the other man. “Melody’s betrayal hurt. I won’t pretend it didn’t. I was still a kid with illusions about love.”

And those illusions had been smashed to little bitty pieces, both by his ex-wife’s betrayal and his own less-than-consuming emotional reaction to it.

“But my buddy’s betrayal made me reevaluate my priorities, who I trusted, and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”

“And you decided you’d rather be a soldier of fortune than an enlisted man.”

“I didn’t trust my buddy anymore. I wondered how many of the other Rangers would let me down in the right set of circumstances. It was a bad mental attitude. Dangerous. When it came time to re-up, I chose to go it on my own.”

“But you still wanted to be a soldier?” Amazing how she could carry on a conversation with her heart a dead weight within her.

“Yes, but I decided that if I couldn’t trust my companions, I might as well be in a situation where I knew that was the case than one in which I had a false sense of belief in their integrity.”

“You trust Hotwire and Nitro.” If he denied it, she’d call him a liar.

The bond between the three of them was extraordinary.

“We were buddies in the Rangers. They stuck it out for another tour, but they both had their own reasons for leaving and when they did, I talked them into joining me. I trust them because they’ve each proven themselves in numerous ways.”

“It goes both ways, though, doesn’t it? They trust you, too.”

“It’s more than any of us ended up having in the Rangers.”

“So, your marriage convinced you that you weren’t capable of romantic love?” she said, going back to the aspect of the conversation that concerned her most deeply.

The one that was tearing her apart on the inside.

“It convinced me that
erotic love
rarely lasts.”

Funny, she was pretty sure the love she felt for him would last for the rest of her life. There was a big dose of erotic love in there, but he got to her on a level that went much deeper, too. If she told him, he would probably deny it, but she knew that even if she never saw him again, she would not be able to forget him or stop loving him.

Clearly, he didn’t feel the same way toward her, and as much as she wanted to blame him, she couldn’t. He’d never once implied anything more on his part than physical desire. He’d said it was more than sex, but she now realized he was most likely talking about the friendship that had developed between them and his willingness to help her for Bella’s sake.

They had a family connection, but not a heart connection, and hers was bleeding to death because of it.

“I can’t believe you let one bad experience convince you of something so important.”

He let out an impatient breath. “It didn’t, not completely. I’ve been divorced for over a decade. I’ve had some very satisfying sexual relationships, but I’ve never found anything like what Jake and Bella have.”

Which told her in unequivocal terms just what his feelings for her were.

He could not have the same intense tenderness and need growing inside him toward her that she felt toward him and deny his ability to feel true love.

She turned her face away, her eyes closing on the tears she was not about to give in to. “I think I’ll take a nap.”

He reached out and brushed her temple.

She flinched, his touch hurting in a way that had nothing to do with the physical.

“Are you still in pain, Lise?” Concern deepened his voice and she fought the urge to latch onto it.

“Yes.” It was the truth, even if she wasn’t talking about her head.

He didn’t say anything else and eventually her body relaxed into sleep.

When she woke up they were flying directly toward the side of a mountain.

She sucked in her breath and then opened her mouth in a silent scream as Joshua tilted the plane on its side and they flew into the crevice of a ravine. The next few minutes were harrowing as he expertly guided the plane through twists and turns that made her stomach flip with each dip of the wings.

Then there was a landing strip in front of them and he was bringing the plane to a smooth stop.

“Is that how you land your plane every time you come home?” she asked, her stomach roiling.

“Yes, but it’s nothing compared to landing in Hong Kong. There, you’re maneuvering between skyscrapers.”

She didn’t even want to imagine it and made a mental note never to fly into Hong Kong. “Whose bright idea was it to put the landing strip in a ravine?”

“Mine.” He grinned at her, the smile stopping the breath in her chest. “You wake up cranky.”

She certainly had today, anyway, both that morning and just now. “Not always,” she defended herself.

“No, not always.” And the look he gave her left no uncertainty about what he was remembering.

The way she woke up in his arms.

Cranky
could not begin to describe her attitude then, but that wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on right now.

“Stop that,” she grumbled.

One dark brow arched. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Why did you choose such a dangerous landing strip?”

“It’s not dangerous if you know what you’re doing.”

“I think the people who die mountain climbing every year say the same thing.”

“You really are in a bad mood.” His brows drew together. “Are you feeling okay?”

She closed her eyes and sighed before opening them and forcing a smile that was a little ragged around the edges. “I’m fine, I just don’t get why you built your landing strip this way unless you like the testosterone rush it gives you pitting your skills against such a harrowing takeoff and landing.”

He searched her face as if trying to decide whether or not she was telling the truth about feeling okay. “Being in the ravine makes it virtually impossible to detect from the air. The locals don’t know it’s here because there’s a town at the base of the mountain on the other side with a municipal airport, so the jet noise doesn’t cause any suspicion.”

She frowned, unbuckling her safety belt. “You’ve got a real thing for privacy.”

He was already moving into the main cabin. “In my line of work, it can mean the difference between life and death.”

Chilled at the reminder, she followed him.

In the main cabin, she grabbed the coat she’d bought after moving to Seattle and zipped herself into it. Even so, the frigid air outside about stole her breath when he released the plane’s door.