i Mossad interrogation specialists.
“Perhaps we’ll get lucky and it’s just a rumor that doesn’t pan out,” she said hopefully.
John Vincent’s sources were damned impeccable though. He and his wife, a former CIA agent and heiress to billions, had built an information pipeline that spanned several nations.
“I doubt it,” and he sounded damned confident.
“There’s a first time for everything,” she replied with a flippancy she didn’t feel. “Just because someone knows where I am, or who I am, that doesn’t give them a reason to search for me, or to want to hurt me.”
She didn’t want to deal with the danger again, the fear, the knowledge that nothing in her life was secure or safe.
Looking around the kitchen, she remembered the feeling that had swept through her when the real estate agent had shown her the house and property.
A sense of belonging had eased through her that she hadn’t felt since the day she had walked into the Elite Ops base. She’d stared around the sunlit kitchen, the large open living room, and she’d known she could make a life there. It was the same feeling she’d had when she checked out the local landscaping company for sale.
The employees were willing to stay on if the owner needed them, she’d been told. It was as though fate had laid everything she needed right at her feet, and now fate was taking it away.
“One of these days we’ll have a home, Tey.” Her mother’s smile, weary and showing her diminishing hope, hadn’t reached her eyes the night she had held her daughter to her as they hid among the bridge people in New York City after one of the many times Sorrel had nearly found them.
Their clothes had been ragged, but they had been warm. Teyha had been terrified, shaking with fear, and all too aware of the resignation beginning to edge into her mother’s determination.
“Just think,” her mother had whispered as she kissed Tehya’s forehead and pulled their blanket tighter around her. “A real house. With doors and windows and electricity. We’ll have a little garden in the back.” Her mother’s hand had trembled, her voice had trailed away. When Tehya had looked up at her, a single tear had been easing down her cheek.
“Momma?” Tehya had whispered, the sight of her mother’s tears so rare, they were a frightening thing.
“You’ll have a house,” her mother had promised her, her gaze suddenly stronger, determined, as Tehya had always remembered it. “One day, Tehya, you’ll have a home.” That memory, all but forgotten, was almost shocking. A little house with the perfect garden in the back. A place of serenity and security.
She looked around, saw the dream she hadn’t truly realized she’d accomplished until now. Until she discovered that her past was attempting to steal it from her. Until she had realized she would rather face the demons of her past than to allow them to take her home.
Jordan watched as she surveyed the rooms of her house and he saw the weary somberness that came over her expression, the sheen of tears she was fighting back. In the haunted depths of her eyes he saw the realization that she could lose everything she had ever dreamed of having. It was breaking her heart, possibly even more than he had broken it that last night at the Elite Ops base. And watching it enraged him.
Son of a bitch, he couldn’t ask her to walk away from this. He couldn’t allow her to walk away, which she may try once she realized the truth of the situation. He’d been determined to force her to relocate, to accept a new identity, a new life. But it would never be the same for her. Tehya would never be able to trust in her ability to belong again, deeply enough to lay down even the most fragile roots, if she lost this dream to a past that refused to die. A past that had taken every other dream she had ever dared to allow herself.
He had to find a way to save it for her. A way to neutralize those demons once and for all.
“When are John and Bailey arriving?” she finally sighed as he watched her closely.
“Half an hour.” He checked his watch absently.
When his head lifted again her expression had cleared, chilled, and her eyes were all but emotionless. Calm, serene. But he knew she was a volcano seething with anger and pain on the inside.
“Why are you doing this, Jordan? Why are you here? Why do you care new when you didn’t care before?”
“Do you really fucking believe I didn’t care?” he snapped furiously, not bothering to hide his anger. “Dammit Tehya, that team is a fucking family and you know it. All of us. We’d do the same for anyone of them and you know it.”
That shocked her. She shook her head. “You don’t allow yourself to get close to anyone, Jordan, except Noah.”
“I’ve spent up to twelve years with some of these men and six with you, do you really think I managed to remain that distant? Was I distant when I was fucking us both to orgasm?”
He hid so much, she’d always been aware of that. It was another facet she had learned about the man she couldn’t help but love. But she was learning these things too late. He should have given her this chance years ago. At the latest, nine months ago.
Perhaps he would be as protective with the others, she thought, but it didn’t change the fact that she hated seeing her friends, the men and women she had protected from base for six years, now risking themselves for her.
“I need to change.” She indicated the revealing clothes with a slight wave of her hand along the front of her body as she tried to adjust to too many changes in her life, too fast. “Order pizza or something. I don’t have the supplies on hand to cook for more than one, and honestly, I’m really not in the mood for it.”
She turned away and strode to her bedroom as Jordan stared at her back in surprise. Hell, he had no idea Tehya knew how to cook. She’d sure as hell never offered to cook for him.
Taking the satellite phone from the clip at his side, he pulled up the local pizza places that delivered before calling and giving the order.