“I panicked that night.”
He had been cold and practical, she remembered. He had merely said they should stop pretending that their relationship would work out and that he was leaving. “You didn’t look very panicked. You just said some things and left. You didn’t listen to me. You got on a plane and flew to America without me.”
He nodded. “I was a special forces soldier. I’ve been pinneddown in firefights and made suicidal runs at machine gun nests. I’ve rappelled out of helicopters into terrorist compounds to rescue Swiss citizens. I’ve swum underwater for miles, just sipping the air in my tank so it wouldn’t run out, through enemy territory to rescue people.”
Flicka watched the small twitches in his brow and the way that his mouth had tightened at the corners. A lot was goingon in there.
Dieter drew a long breath. “Yes, after I saw who was at your cotillion that night, I panicked. My hands were shaking. My stomach was in knots. If they had recognized me, if they had known you were the love of my life and my soul, you would have been in danger.”
Flicka’s heart stilled as if a beam of sunlight had found its way into her darkness. When you’re used to the dark, warmthand illumination are foreign, and their beauty seems alien.“Whowas there?”
He said, “They might have killed you that night on the dance floor, just to make a point. They might have kidnapped you and killed you slowly, to make an even greater point. It was too dangerous for you. It still is.”
Her heart warred with what he was saying.Finally,there was a reason other than that she wasn’t goodenough for him, that he had never loved her. “You didn’t say that.”
“Maybe I should have said all this, but you might not have believed me. Maybe you would have convinced me that they wouldn’t care after all this time or that I could somehow keep you safe from them. And then they would have found out about us. And then they would have killed you. And then I would have made sure that I died, too,and taken as many of them with me as I could.” Something changed around his eyes, and the gray smoke within him turned to ghosts. “And maybe I wouldn’t have been a soldier anymore at that point. Maybe I wouldn’t have been a guardian of the mountains. Maybe I would have become something worse, and I would have done something terrible to hurt them the way they had hurt me. And the world would havebeen a worse place for it.”
He looked up at her. “I love you. I have always loved you, and I love that you are making the world a better place with your schools and your work. I admire you. I didn’t make the world a better place. I made it worse, and I don’t want to be that man again. If they kill you, I will become that raging, rabid animal again, and the world will have lost you. It’s not worthit. The world cannot lose you and gain another angry, savage beast. It’s the opposite of what you’ve been doing all your life and everything you’ve planned. So I left. But it worked. I protected you from them. You’re still here. No matter how I hurt, no matter how I grieved forus,I knew you were safe from them.”
“You shouldn’t have done it,” Flicka said, woozy from the whiskey. “You shouldhave told me why.”
He shook his head. “I’ve betrayed your brother three times, but two of those lies kept him alive. I betrayed you that one time, and it kept you alive, too. I lied to you, but youlived.Misinformation is a weapon, and I used it to shield you.”
“You used that weaponagainstme,” Flicka clarified.
“I’m a monster, but you need to be a monster to fight the monsters.” He staredat the trace of whiskey in the bottom of his glass and placed it on the table. “I’ve had too much of this.”
“I don’t think so,” Flicka said, the whiskey making her brave. “I think you haven’t had enough.”
“I think I have.”
“You need to tell me the rest of it,” she said. “You need to tell me who they are and why.”
“We’re away from them, here. If there’s any place you’re safe, it’s in the wildsof Las Vegas.”
She stared right at him. “But you’ve been guarding Wulfram. You’ve been guarding him for years. They might kill him if they’re that dangerous and persistent.”
Dieter shook his head. “Wulfram was a client. They wouldn’t have bothered him. They would come after a woman I loved.” He glanced up at Flicka. “They would come after my wife.”
She flinched. “Then I guess Gretchen leavingyou was for the best.”
“I meanyou,”he said. “I wanted to marry you when we were together in London. I looked at rings more than once. I still want to marry you. I want to get this damned divorce of yours finalized and take you to the courthouse the next day. I meant every word I said on that airplane. I want to be with you the rest of my life. I want children with you. I want to see my childgrowing in your body. I want to hold you in my arms every damn night for the rest of our lives, but I don’t want us to die next week, either. So we can’t be together. We can’t be married. We must not.”
Flicka didn’t want to journey down that maudlin path again. She knew right where that one ended up: with her sobbing in London and vulnerable to any flatterer who promised to love her, and Dieterin Chicago with another woman.
“So we have tonight,” she said. “We have tonight and a few more weeks.”
He nodded, but he still gazed into the dregs of his whiskey.
“I need you to keep me safe until I can file the paperwork to divorce Pierre.”
Dieter’s head rose a little, and he puffed up around the chest and shoulders.
She continued, “And I need you. I don’t know if we’ll ever figure outa way to be together forever, but I have these weeks with you. When I was alone in London, I prayed for another pot of coffee in the morning with you, another evening of watching the soccer recaps, or another night in bed with you.”
Dieter’s fingers gripped his glass more firmly, and he swallowed so hard that his head bobbed. When he glanced up at her, a glaze shone on his gray eyes.
She said,“I love you, and if this is all the time we’ll have, let’s be together.”
