Another thought had her turning around to face him.
“How convenient that my phone had been tampered with just before this happened,” she stated mockingly. “Perhaps we should launch our own investigation, Jordan. Into Killian Reece and whether or not he betrayed me.”
Killian hated her because Sorrel was her father. He would have no problem turning her over to Sorrel’s enemies. As far as he was concerned, blood would tell, and he had no compunction saying it to her face.
“It’s already begun,” he promised. “But that doesn’t change our present situation so stop attempting to change the subject. Are you ready for this party, Tehya? Will you be able to handle meeting the Taites?”
“No, Jordan. I’m not. But just as with anything else in the past, it doesn’t appear as though I have a fucking choice does it?” She fought to throttle her fury.
She swung away from him and stalked across the room, intending to pass him, to move into the living room, to get away from the reality of what she could never have, as well as the realization that she was moving closer to them with every second.
“I’ve never seen you like this.” He caught her arm as she would have passed him. “You’re not focused, nor are you trusting me as you used to, Tey. What happened?”
Confusion swept over her as she glared back at him.
“What do you want from me, Jordan? How else do you expect me to be? For the first time in my life, I thought I was safe, only to learn I wasn’t. My home was invaded. I’m being thrown into a situation where my entire life once again is out of my control. Should I simply be calm and collected and expect you to take care of it all?” The
anger that burned inside her filled her voice now.
She couldn’t help it. She was moving too quickly into unfamiliar territory and was unable to get her bearings fast enough. It had been three days since she had lost the small measure of peace she had found, since the security she had unknowingly craved so desperately had been taken away from her.
“You’ve always trusted me to protect you.”
She was confused by the darkness in his tone now, by the glint of anger in his blue eyes.
“This has nothing to do with protection, Jordan,” she argued, desperate now to escape this conversation.
“What does it have to do with?” He questioned her rather than releasing her as she tried to jerk her arm from his grip. “Tell me, Tehya, since when do you believe I would allow anyone to dare to harm you.”
Jordan couldn’t explain why her belief in him was so damned important. Why he had been watching her for three days, probing at her trust, pushing her limits.
The night before he had broken through the reserve she had held against him where her body was concerned. That step had been imperative. Though he had no idea why. He couldn’t explain it to himself and prayed she didn’t demand explanations. It had forced her to probe those emotions. It had forced her out of that shell and placed him in a position to help her rebuild it.
She had lost too much, he couldn’t allow her to lose faith in him as well. When this was over, when the time came to rebuild her life, yet again, he didn’t want her shying away from her dreams.
Unfortunately, it had come with more emotion, with more pain than he had wanted to see her facing. That pain was beginning to make him want to commit murder, even as he wondered how her trust was surviving.
That ultimate trust, from a woman to her lover, was the same trust that came with the illusion of love. And with love, there always came heartbreak. God knew he didn’t want to break her heart, but that pain was preferable, he thought, to losing the dreams of her home.
“I’ve always believed in you,” she finally answered, her eyes flashing with a vulnerability that surprised him, and a glimmer of emotion he hadn’t expected to see. Not yet. A part of him went icy cold, denial snaking through his brain.
She believed she loved him, and the ache in his chest at the knowledge of the pain that belief had brought her, that it would bring her, tightened through him. Even now he could see the grief she felt, and her fear that emotion would never be returned.
It hurt more than he had thought it would.
“I’ll protect you, Tehya,” he whispered, his free hand cupping her cheek, his thumb brushing over her lips. “In all the years we’ve worked together, I’ve never lost an agent, have I?”
“Never,” she answered, staring back at him painfully, her gaze haunted with so many hopes and fears, and the realization that dreams were just never meant to be.
He wanted nothing more than to erase the pain in her eyes. To see a smile in her gaze, to see just the smallest glimmer of happiness. In that moment, Jordan realized he would do whatever it took to give her a chance at that happiness. Even if it meant destroying the illusion of emotion she thought she felt for him.
Her lips parted against the pressure of his thumb as those incredible green eyes flashed with exactly what he wanted to see. Mixed with the vulnerability, the emotion she believed was love, he saw that moment when her heart, her brain, her senses locked into the emotion and her trust in him cemented.
For a moment, he let himself bask in that emotional heat, a response he was certain, absolutely positive, she was even fully unaware of.
And it had been achieved with an ease that indicated the depth of emotion she had felt for him before ever leaving the base in Texas.
That knowledge tightened his guts. In a split second he was hard, and filled with such remorse that it shocked him.