“This is what I do.”
“No, it isn’t. You run a security company. You have a staff. You have other people to do this kind of thing.”
“So I should send someone else out there to die?”
She felt as if he’d hit her in the stomach. She clutched her midsection and bent at the waist.
He was going to die. That’s what he was trying to tell her. The claim of it only being a thirty percent chance had been a lie designed to calm her fears.
“Ashley—”
“No!” she shouted, straightening and glaring at him. “All my life the people I’ve cared about and loved haven’t loved me back. Not enough to stay. Not enough to keep from dying. I thought you were different. I thought you really cared, but because of your background you couldn’t get in touch with your feelings. But now I know that I was wrong. You can’t express your feelings because you don’t have them. I thought you would change and realize you love us, but you won’t. You don’t love us. You’re going to leave me and die, just like everyone else. You don’t think I’m worth living for.”
He rose. “You’re wrong. You are worth living for. I have every intention of coming back to you.”
“That’s not good enough. I don’t want you to go.”
“I have to go. It’s my job.” He hesitated. “You knew what I was before, Ashley. Nothing has changed.”
“Yes, it has.” Before, she hadn’t realized the truth. “Loving someone means wanting to stick around.”
As soon as she said the words, she braced herself for him to say he didn’t love her at all, so what did staying matter. But he didn’t. Instead his expression turned sad.
“I would have thought loving someone meant accepting every part of that person,” he said. “You knew who and what I was when you first met me, so I don’t understand why it’s suddenly a problem. It’s ironic. Nicole could accept what I did, but not what I’d become. You understand who I am, yet you won’t accept what I do. I guess we both expected more of each other.”
Ashley felt as if he’d slapped her. She’d been so sure she was the one in the right and that he was wrong. But his words caught her off guard. Too stunned to speak, she could only watch as he walked out of the room.
* * *
Jeff waited the entire night, but she never came to him. He’d tried to go to her, but her door had remained closed and she hadn’t answered his light knock.
The next morning he packed his suitcase and made his way downstairs. He’d left the folder on the coffee table in his study. If something happened to him, he wanted Ashley to be able to find it.
She was in the kitchen with Maggie. The dark circles under her eyes told him that she, too, had had a restless night. As they stared at each other, he wished he could find the words to make it right between them. He wished there was a way to explain why he had to do this job—why he had to do every job. That stepping into the line of fire was the only way to atone.
Maggie saw him and scrambled out of her seat. “Daddy, Daddy, Mommy says you have to go away and I don’t want you to go.”
She flung herself at him. With an ease he wouldn’t have believed possible just a couple of months ago, he set down his suitcase, bent low and picked her up, swinging her into his arms. She clung to him.
“Don’t go,” she said, her big blue eyes filled with tears.
“I have to. This is about work. But I’ll be home in about a week.”
“A week is a very long time.”
“I know. I’ll miss you.”
As he spoke he looked over her head toward Ashley, but the woman who had so changed him wouldn’t meet his gaze. She sat at the table, carefully stirring her coffee.
Maggie rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. She was so small, he thought uneasily. How could she possibly survive? He found himself wanting to stay, to make sure that she was going to be all right. But he couldn’t. He had a job to do.
“I’ll bring you something,” he told her as he set her on the floor.
She brightened immediately. “A kitten?”
“No. Mommy and I have to talk about that first. But something nice.”
“Something for Mommy, too?”
