“I care for you.” The sudden, fierce sound of his voice, the underlying fury in it, had her eyes closing in pain as she fought the hitch in her breath that would have been a sob. “I don’t want to lose you, Tehya. Not your friendship. Not … this.” The snarl in his voice assured her that he meant much more than whatever relationship they had had at the base.
“Then keep me, Jordan.” She stayed, in the bed and refused to look directly at him. “But you can’t do that either, can you?”
She couldn’t be weak. She had felt something earlier when he had taken her. She had felt something from him that she didn’t understand, something she didn’t know how to describe.
She wouldn’t fight him, but that didn’t mean she was giving up. Sometimes, a person just had to give Jordan time to think, to find the truth himself.
Even if it meant letting him walk away to find it.
“Good night, Jordan,” she said softly when he said nothing more.
He stood in the doorway, still watching her, the shadowed contours of his face appearing more savage, his eyes bluer as they gleamed in the low light reflecting behind him.
Sometimes, there were some things that just weren’t meant to be, she told herself. She was prepared for that. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t hope, that she couldn’t pray that when this was over, when the past was finally defeated, buried, and destroyed once and for all, then just maybe, she would have a chance at holding his heart.
A Malone man, he loves, not just with his heart, but with his soul. She remembered Riordan Malone’s words years before when she had met him in Alpine, Texas, the small town the Malone family had lived in for decades. Remember that, Tehya. It’s not their hearts that lead them, it’s their souls. And such a love is never easy. Such a love is never truly won but by the faith of a woman’s very spirit, and her ability to understand the battle she faces.
At the time, she hadn’t understood why he had told her that. Now, though, she knew. Riordan had to have seen what she had already begun to feel. He had to have known exactly how stubborn, how completely bullheaded his son could be.
Just as she had known how dominant, how powerful, and how incredibly gentle Jordan could be as well.
Jordan was a man who had made his decisions and faced his understanding of the world years before. He’d created the defenses he needed and survived the only way he knew how. By not believing, by not loving. But the truth was, Jordan had loved far more than he would ever admit.
She didn’t understand the battle she faced in claiming what her soul ached for. And she had no idea how to fight it.
All she knew was that she was terribly afraid she couldn’t live without him.
CHAPTER 14
The bedroom door closed, stripping the light from the room and leaving Tehya to stare into the dark.
She listened as he undressed and checked his weapon before laying it on the bedside table, then slid into the bed, all without the aid of the light.
Once he settled in, a moment of tense silence filled the room before he spoke.
“I was sixteen, she and her family were visiting from England, with a neighbor. She was blond, delicate, and beautiful, and I fell like a ton of bricks for her.
“The affair lasted until the end of summer, when her parents found out. They had the neighbor’s ranch hands beat the hell out of me, and when that didn’t work, they locked her in her bedroom, refusing to let her out until arrangements could be made for her to return to England. And I thought I could rescue her.” The tone of his voice warned her that perhaps that young love hadn’t died, but had instead contributed to killing the belief in love Jordan had once possessed.
“I slipped into the house, picked the lock to her bedroom door, and slipped in.”
He paused and Tehya wondered what he was thinking, remembering. The silence wasn’t as heavy as before, but it still held the weight of the scars she knew he carried deep inside.
“She had been playing with us all,” he finally sighed. “It was a ploy to force her parents to return her to England rather than have her attend the private school they were considering in America. She wanted to be with her Irish lover.” Mockery filled his voice. “She considered me an acceptable stand-in for the summer, though.”
Sixteen. God, how that must have twisted his male pride, as well as his heart.
She felt him shift in the bed until he turned to face her, the gleam of his eyes in the dark pulling her, giving her a connection to him that she desperately needed.
“It was nearly ten years later before I saw her again. I was commanding a small team, working with the British in routing a terrorist cell in London. We managed to strike during a meeting being held by their Afghani commander. Their second in command was there as well, an Irish national who had led the cell for years. They were in interrogation when I had a visitor. At first, I couldn’t believe it was her. She didn’t just act older, she looked older, more coarse, less like the lady she had pretended to be when she was a teenager. And she needed a favor.” It wasn’t anger or pain in his voice, instead, there was a heavy vein of mockery overlying the amusement. “She thought she could give me a little fuck for old time’s sake and I would help her gain her lover’s release. The Irish second in command was the stable hand she’d played me and her parents to return to. I looked in her lying eyes as though they were windows into my own career. We knew there was a link from British Intelligence into the terrorist cell, and we hadn’t been able to find it. I was staring at it. She was the daughter of one of the highest ranking intelligence directors in MI-6 and she was the terrorists’ link. But I wanted proof. I wanted it, and I betrayed her to get it without a moment’s hesitation or guilt. At sixteen, I would have died for her. For years after that, I compared every woman I took to bed with her. But I betrayed her in less than a heartbeat and I didn’t feel a damned thing for her as they led her away in handcuffs two weeks later.”
“Jordan, she betrayed you,” she whispered. “It’s not the same when two people love each other. When they’re together, when they’re working toward a future together.”
“Isn’t it?” He reached up and touched her cheek again, as though that connection, as small as it was, was needed.
“Mom and Dad were working toward a future. They had three sons, they had a life together, and they were committed to that ideal of love that they professed was so strong.” Now, there was anger, pain. “Dad loved her until nothing mattered to him as much as his wife. When one of the young families that worked for us on the ranch was targeted by racists, she fought back for them. She didn’t tell Dad what she was doing, and she didn’t tell her sons, who were nearly grown. She didn’t tell anyone she was driving out to rescue them and take them to a friend’s house in the next county. When her vehicle went over a cliff and exploded, the sheriff ruled it an accident. There was no investigation, no questions asked, despite the fact that there were three adult bodies and a child’s in that vehicle as well. We had no idea what the hell happened until her friends slipped into the house late one night and told us what she had been doing.” A shard of bitter laughter filled the room for a second. “She loved so deeply that she didn’t care about risking her own life, the life her husband and children depended upon.”
What was she supposed to say? She stared back at him, her eyes burning with tears.