“I’m willing to give it a try.”
“Give…uh…” She had to swallow. “Givewhata try?”
“Us,” he said the word simply. But it wasnota simple word. It was a crazily complex word. And it was enough to send her heart plummeting into her churning stomach where acid immediately went to work on it.
Her plan, her glorious plan, had backfired.Big time.
“I think we should giveusa try,” he added. “I mean, I’m not asking you to marry me this instant. And I have no idea how we’re going to work out the details. My future is a huge question mark. What happens after BKI shuts its clandestine doors? Am I really supposed to be satisfied building bikes for a living? I’m a trained Intelligence agent, for God’s sake. And what about Avan? What if he falls off the wagon again? If I’m not making good money, I won’t be able to afford his treatment. All of this terrifies me, Chels. Ihatethe unknown. Always have. But wanting you…it’s the one thing I do know, the one thing I’m sure of. So for now, I say let’s let the future happen when it happens. For now, I sayokay.”
Oh no. Ohno! The time had finally come. She would have to do what she had hoped and dreamed and prayed she would never had to do. She would have to tell him the truth. Expose her guilt and shame and dishonor and finally face the consequences she had spent years avoiding.
“Dagan…”
Something dark and exciting sparkled in his eyes. “Say it again.”
“Dagan, I—”
That’s all she managed before he groaned, the sound low and male and deliciously sexy. He cupped her jaw in his rough hands. Then his lips claimed hers.
Her mouth formed a surprised O, and he took that as encouragement to dip his tongue inside. Slow, savoring licks… That’s how he tasted her. It brought to mind how he’d attend to other parts of her body if only…
If only she had made a different decision all those years ago. If only she had been braver or less desperate. If only she had been able to see into the future to this moment, when he was offering her the world.
Her mind drifted back to the exact second when she could have changed it all. Changed herfate…
Agent Zoelner was in the building. She had seen him shuffle into her boss’s office for a brief moment before he’d made his way down the long hall to knock on the door of the director of the CIA. His head had been low, his shoulders hunched, looking like he had aged ten years in the two days it had taken him to return from Afghanistan.
Chelsea sat at her desk on the edge of a veritable sea of desks, and the sound of her fellow analysts click-clacking at their keyboards was a constant chatter that matched the racing beat of her heart. Her legs quivered. Muscles in her thighs twitched with an eagerness to stand.
She almost did it. She almost jumped from her desk to follow Dagan into the director’s office and spill the whole sorry, sordid tale. But something held her back.
She recognized that something as fear. Pure and simple. Fear that what Ted Edens, her boss and the director of the Office of Advanced Analytics, had threatened her with would come true. Then where would she be? Where would hermotherbe?
Some place other than the house she adored, that was for sure. Some place that didn’t hold the mementoes and spirit of the man they had both loved to distraction. Some place that had no meaning, no memories, no soul. Some place that wasn’t…home.
It was that fear, fear of losing what she and her mother were working so hard to keep, that held Chelsea in her chair.
The seconds dragged by like hours. Her own saliva soured in her mouth. And then the director’s door opened and Dagan walked out. He was white as a ghost, a muscle sawing in his jaw.
Two security guards converged on him. One of them indicated with a hand that Dagan was to follow them. Chelsea suffered no delusions that their destination was beyond the walls of Langley, and that Dagan Zoelner would never set foot in the hallowed halls again.
Edens had convinced the director tofirehim! How could he have done that? Howcouldhe?
Curling her fingers around the edge of her chair, Chelsea watched with burning eyes as Dagan was escorted down the hall and across the room. When he walked by her desk, she suddenly found herself on her feet, her mouth open and two words spilling out: “Agent Zoelner?”
He stopped to look at her. The fluorescent lights overhead were no friend to the bags beneath his eyes. She absently wondered if he had slept since it had happened.
“Agent Duvall?” he asked absently. “Something I can do for you?”
“I—” she began but was cut off by one of the security guards.
“Sorry, Agent Duvall.” His name was Larry…Something. “I’m supposed to escort Agent Zoelner from the building immediately. He’s to go nowhere and talk to no one along the way.”
Chelsea swallowed past the mountain of a lump in her throat. The words were there, theconfessionwas right there, poised on the tip of her tongue.
Then the sound of someone clearing his throat had her turning. Her boss leaned against his office doorjamb, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. And she knew… He would make good on his promise. He would ruin her as easily as he had just ruined Dagan.
She turned back as a wave of horror engulfed her. It was followed quickly by a swell of disgust. And then, right behind those two soul-crushing tsunamis, came a tide of self-loathing.
