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Quickly recovering from his surprise, Warwick took a step toward her, protective instincts on overdrive. It was dark out but the streetlamps around the parking lot gave enough light for him to see her face. And he could tell she’d been crying.
Raw protectiveness streaked through him. “What happened? Are you alright?” Jesus Christ, had someone targeted her again since he’d seen her last? Had she been in an accident?
She wrapped her arms around herself and raised her chin while the rain pattered the pavement softly. “No.” He could feel her anger pulsing at him from where he stood.
Before he could open his mouth to say anything else, she turned her back on him and began to walk away. He started after her. “Wait—”
He stopped abruptly when she suddenly whirled to face him.
Squaring her shoulders, she marched right at him, the rain making her hair glisten. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, eyes narrowed.
“Are you okay?” he repeated firmly, refusing to budge until she told him she was truly okay.
“I’m not hurt if that’s what you’re asking—not that it’s any of your damn business. Now answer me.”
She was right, of course. Except it did feel very much like his business. She’d just walked out of the hospital, crying. Something was seriously wrong. It tore him up that she no longer felt safe turning to him. That he had lost the right to comfort her.
“I came across an unconscious woman on the beach south of town,” he said, battling the urge to reach for her. “She was lyin’ half in the water with a stab wound on her side.”
Her brows contracted. “Stab wound?”
“She was hypothermic and unresponsive. They’re treatin’ her now. I just finished giving a statement to the sheriff. Now you.”
“Now me what?”
“Why are you here? You’ve been cryin’.”
For a long moment she stared at him with clear resentment burning in her eyes, her jaw clenched. So long that he was convinced she wouldn’t answer. But just when he thought she was going to dismiss him and walk away again, she answered. “One of our residents had a major heart attack and was rushed here by ambulance. He’s in the ICU.”
That she’d answered him at all felt like a gift. But death at a nursing home was a common enough occurrence, and he doubted she got this emotional over them all. Clearly this particular resident meant something more to her. “Are you close to him?”
Unguarded emotion flitted across her face for an instant, then she firmed her lips together and glanced away. “Yes, his name’s Henry. He’s a grumpy former Marine and I love him. They don’t think he’s going to make it.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. Are you alone?”
“No. Decker’s waiting for me over there.” She nodded across the lot.
Her brother was here? She’d told him their relationship was distant and a bit strained at times. Maybe they had reconciled since last summer. There was so much he didn’t know about her life now, and he hated it.
He’d have given anything to pull her into his arms right now. Dammit, it was killing him to be this close to her again and have such a huge wall between them. A wall that existed purely because of him. “I can drive you home.”
She snorted. “No,” she said, and turned to leave again.
“Wait.” He lunged after her, caught her arm to stop her. “Can we talk? Just talk. Please.”
The muscles in her arm were as rigid as the rest of her, her normally warm brown eyes accusing. “About what? Why you faked your death to get away from me?”
He stared at her, aghast. That’s what she thought? “I didn’t—” He bit the rest back, knowing it would be useless at this point. “Let me explain. Not out here. In my vehicle.”
“My brother’s waiting,” she said curtly.
“So tell him to leave. I’ll drive you back after.”
She threw him a look that said where he could shove his offer. “Like hell.”
“Look, you have every right to be angry—”
“You’re damn right I do,” she shot back.
“But there are things I want to tell you. Things I need to explain. I know you must want answers.” She deserved them as much as he owed them to her. He hadn’t been able to tell her before. Now that she knew he was alive, he wanted her to at least know some things so she wouldn’t always wonder or think the worst.
“I want the truth. No lies,” she added with a hard look.
He dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
“What you can? That’s not good en—”
“Marley, please,” he said impatiently. “Just hear me out. But not here.” They were standing in the middle of a lit public parking lot. A busy one, in the rain, no less. They were too exposed. He didn’t think anyone had tailed him, but he couldn’t be sure about her after the other night, and there had to be security cameras around the place.
Scowling at him, she jerked her arm free of his grip and pulled her phone out of the bag looped over her shoulder. She shot off a quick text. “I’ll give you one chance to explain. Then I’m leaving.”
He was smart enough not to argue with her about that for the moment. Any opportunity for time with her, he was taking. So he nodded. “This way.”
He stayed vigilant on the way to his rental car. Paused to look around once before opening the passenger door for her. After shutting it, he rushed around to the driver’s side, started the engine.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving us.”
She eyed him in annoyance.
“I just want to move us to a more secure spot,” he said. “I’ll explain after that.”
She crossed her arms and snapped her head around to face forward, staring through the rain-streaked windshield while the silent tension thickened between them.
He drove them several blocks away to make as sure as he could that they hadn’t been followed, then pulled onto a quiet, dark street lined with trees and parked across from an empty driveway. He turned off the ignition, plunging them into a brittle silence broken only by the rain on the roof.
“Okay, start talking,” she said.
Where to begin? He’d thought of what he’d say so many times, had rehearsed it often enough, yet now he felt rattled and overwhelmed. One wrong word and this would be over almost before it began. “I didn’t fake my death.”
“No? Then how the hell do you explain the call I got from the cops saying you were dead? And the call I never received from you, telling me you weren’t.”
“It was a misunderstanding on their part. I almost died. Well, technically I guess I did briefly a couple of times initially, before the medical team resuscitated me.”
Her eyes tracked over the scar on his face, down the side of his neck. And now he could see concern there in place of the anger and resentment.
“There was a clerical error. In the chaos a report was issued sayin’ I was dead. The agency I worked for didn’t correct it initially because they didn’t expect me to pull through. I didn’t find out about it until I came out of the coma three weeks later.” The agency had corrected the mistake once they’d discovered it.
And then he’d had to make the hardest call of his life in deciding not to inform Marley that he was alive.
“And so why the hell didn’t you call me then? You knew I must have been out of my mind with grief. You knew how and where to reach me if you’d wanted me there. One call and I would’ve been on a plane over there to see you.”
“Aye. I know.”
She studied him, wary and angry. “Are you a criminal or something?”
“What? No, course not.” He rubbed a hand over his face, realized he needed to go further back. “I told you I worked for the UK government.”
She didn’t answer, just stared at him in stony silence.
“And that I was former military.”
“Yeah. So?”
“It was more than that.” So much more. “I served in the SAS. And when I met you, I was working for MI6.”
She stilled, a frown tugging her perfectly arched eyebrows together, and watched him closely. “Seriously?”
“Yes. I’m out now. Obviously.”
“MI6. As in the equivalent of our CIA.”
“Aye.” It felt risky to tell her even this much. But God, he’d wanted to tell her for so long. Needed her to understand at least this much, to make her believe him. “And the reason I couldn’t tell you before was—”
“I know how security clearance protocol works,” she said shortly, her expression still skeptical.
Aye. Of course she would, having served in the military herself. And he didn’t blame her for doubting him now. “I couldn’t tell you any of it before. Not about my military service, and not about my job. There are things I still can’t tell you because they’re classified.” And others he wouldn’t tell her because he didn’t want to put her in any more danger.
“So what the hell happened after you got that call at the resort? Where did you go when you left me?”
“I was called away on a mission to capture a domestic terrorist. We tracked him to the Lake District, where the PM has a vacation home. But things went sideways and when we moved in to take him, there was an explosion. And this...” He gestured to the scars on the side of his face. There were plenty of others on his body as well, some from shrapnel or burns, and others from surgeries. “Was the result.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “And after you woke up you decided to just let me keep believing you were dead.”
He watched her, trapped in a hell of his own making. Marley was strong. Possibly the strongest woman he’d ever known. The last thing he wanted was to cause her more pain. But he owed her this at least. “I felt it was better for you that way.”
“Better for me?” She gave a humorless laugh. “That is such selfish bullshit—”
“You didn’t know what was really goin’ on. And I didn’t want to involve you in any of it or make you a possible target—”
“What do you mean?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “How would I be a possible target?”
He let out a long breath. “The terrorist’s name was Isaac Grey.”
Her gaze sharpened. “The dual British-American citizen who was killed a few weeks ago in the UK.”
He nodded. “In Durham.”
“You were there?”
“Aye. With Walker and Ivy. Do you know them? He works for a local security firm here in town.”
“I know of Walker. Heard about him and Ivy from his daughter at book club.” She paused, dragged a hand through her rain-dampened hair. Faced him again. “I thought you said you got out after you were wounded.”
“I was medically discharged after the ‘incident,’ as they call it. Received my pension, such as it is. I thought I was done with it all. But then they called me back on a contract basis for the Grey job. I couldn’t say no, not after what happened. I wanted to end that bastard.”
She was still frowning. “If he’s dead, why would you be a possible target now, let alone me?”
“Because there are...holes in my memory around the day of the explosion. Things I can’t quite remember except I know that they’re bad. Dangerous.” It drove him crazy that he couldn’t put the pieces together. Was it about someone connected to Grey? Home Front, the terrorist organization he’d been connected to?
Marley kept eyeing him, a hint of pity in her gaze. “Grey’s gone, and you suffered a brain injury. Maybe it’s paranoia.”
He shook his head, tamping down the rising frustration. “No. It’s not. I feel it, and it’s been worse since Durham.” He’d thought he’d seen two men following him there. Had brushed it off as heightened paranoia after an intense mission that had nearly gotten him and his team killed. But maybe they had been following him. Planning some kind of revenge for Grey’s death.
“Somethin’s off,” he continued. “Somethin’ happened either before or during the Lake District op that I can’t explain, and I can’t let it go. That’s why I wanted to stay away from you. I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t put you in danger.” And he might already have.
“Yet you magically turn up in Crimson Point anyway. For what, a holiday? And I just happen to be living here? Come on.”
“I saw a video with you in it on Walker’s mobile in Durham.” He’d sworn the world had stopped turning for a moment. “You were at the book club with his daughter, and I...wanted to come see you for myself. One last time, to see how you were doin’ and make sure you were okay.” She had no idea that she’d been his secret obsession the entire time they’d been apart. Still was.
“So you found out where I live.”
There was no point denying it. “Aye. I parked down the street waiting for you to come home. I didn’t mean for you to know I was there, but then the shooter hit your place and...” It all seemed so amateurish. The more he thought about it, the more he questioned whether they could have been trying to kill him the other night. Unless they’d chosen to shoot in Marley’s direction right in front of him to send him a message?
“And then you burst back into my life for all of ten minutes before taking off again without any explanation or word since,” she finished in a hard tone.
He had to admit, it looked selfish as fuck. “There’s a chance the shooter could have fired those shots while I was there to make a point. And a few times since I arrived in Portland, I’ve felt like someone was trackin’ me.”
“Who? And why would they want to track you here?”
“I made a lot of enemies on the job. Enemies who would love to see me dead, and all it would take is for one of them to find out my identity in order to come after me.” Anyone connected to Grey, for starters. “And I did come back later that first night, and again last night, but you were gone. I went by your work a few times as well, but you weren’t there.”
“I was there. I borrowed Everleigh’s car instead of using mine and parked under the building instead of the outside lot, just in case.” She gave him a hard look. “So you’ve been stalking me, is what you’re saying. And if that shooter hadn’t hit my window the other night, you would have left town without me ever knowing the truth.”
Basically. Hell, how did he make her understand the kind of danger that might have followed him? “I was trying to protect you—”
“Yeah, you already said. But I’m done now.” She reached for the door handle.
He shot out a hand to stop her, grabbed her wrist.
She whipped her head around to glare at him. “Don’t touch me.” Her voice was cold, sharp as a whip.
He withdrew his hand, the need to touch her a physical ache so painful it felt like his chest was being crushed. He wanted to pull her to him and lock his arms around her. Hold her as he’d wanted to for over a fucking year—the longest, darkest and loneliest of his life. Somehow make her understand he’d done all of this to keep her safe.
“Alright,” he said instead, even though everything in him screamed not to let her walk away. Forcing her to stay would only make her hate him more. “I’ll drive you home.”
“No.” She pulled out her mobile. “I’ll get a ride.”
He clamped his jaw shut with difficulty. He didn’t like the idea of her getting a ride from a total stranger, but he also didn’t want to risk her jumping out and storming off alone in the dark either. “At least stay in here until the driver shows up.” He wanted to make sure the license plate matched what was on her mobile.
“Fine.” She finished ordering a ride and put it on her lap, folded her arms and sat there stiffly, refusing to look at him.
It felt like a lead weight was stuck at the bottom of his stomach. Nothing he’d said had made any difference. Not that he blamed her. But Christ, he’d have given anything for things to be different.
“I’m sorry, Marley,” he murmured into the brittle silence. “More sorry than you’ll ever know. For everythin’.”
For the things he’d hidden from her before. For letting her believe he was dead. For coming here and possibly putting her in danger, and hurting her all over again in the process.
“Did I ever mean anything to you at all?” she asked in a strained voice.
He stared at her, stricken that she could even ask that. My God. From the moment he’d met her, she’d been the beating heart in his chest. “Aye,” he said in an agonized voice, reaching out to touch her face while choking back all the rest of the words flooding onto his tongue. Feelings for her that she wasn’t ready to hear.
Marley recoiled as if he’d been about to strike her.
He reluctantly lowered his hand. Clenched it into a fist on his thigh, wanting to scream from the anguish tearing him apart. “Whatever else has happened, you must know I loved you. You must.” Did even now. And always would. Even if it felt like he was dying from it right now.
She gave him an incredulous look. “You don’t know what that word even means. Because if you did, there’s no way you would’ve done what you did.”
He set his jaw, feeling like he was about to come apart. “That decision was the worst and hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life.” Worse than his miserable childhood. Worse than killing people throughout his career. Far worse than the physical agony he’d endured after the bombing.
Marley remained silent, unmoved by his words.
The frustration bubbled back to the surface, the anguish twisting inside him unbearable. “Do you think I wanted this? That I wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to be with you if I’d thought there was any way to make it work?”
“Stop talking,” she snapped, folding her arms across her chest as she huddled against the door. Desperate to get away from him.
A myriad of desperate explanations tumbled through his mind as he tried to think of something else to say, anything that would make this better. He didn’t deserve her forgiveness, but he couldn’t live with her thinking he hadn’t loved her with everything in him. That the decision he’d made wasn’t a knife in his heart every waking hour—and plenty of sleeping ones also.
“I never meant to hurt you, I swear to God. And everything I felt for you then was real.” I still feel it now, he almost said aloud. “Whatever else you think of me, please believe that at least.”
She didn’t answer. And there was nothing more he could say.
It felt like he was bleeding inside. Dying slowly in front of her.
So he shut his gob. An uncomfortable, endless fifteen minutes passed while they sat there without a single word more between them before the driver finally turned up. The license plate matched. He relaxed only slightly, didn’t let his guard down.
Marley immediately opened her door. “Don’t you dare follow me. And one more favor?”
“Anything.”
“Just leave me the hell alone,” she said without looking at him as she got out, then slammed the door shut.
Warwick shoved out a hard breath, hand clenching around the steering wheel as her tall, sleek silhouette walked away, torn between respecting her wishes and running after her. Holding her. Somehow break through the icy wall standing between them.
Show her he still loved her, had never stopped. Plunge his hand into her hair and kiss her with all the pent-up longing in his soul. Make her his again.
But that was all just an impossible dream now.
He stayed where he was, resolve hardening inside him. He still didn’t know what kind of danger he faced, but until he could be sure she was safe, he was staying.
So once again he would have to break her trust. Because they both knew he was going to follow her home.
