“If not now, then soon. I think I got him in the gut.” She felt him grimace. “Those wounds are generally fatal. And I wish I could say I’m sorry, but he took a shot at you, Chels, tried to kill you, so I’m not. I’mgladhe’s dead. Does that…” He swallowed. His Adam’s apple moved against her lips. “Does that shock you? That I can…that I can kill a man without remorse?”
“No, I…I’m…” She stuttered to a stop.I’m just stallingwas what she should have said. Lord help her, she didn’t want to lose him. Not yet. She had ninety minutes, right? And the Big Bad Secret wouldn’t take more than ten to tell.
I have time, she assured herself.Time to love him a little more and let him love me.“I guess I was just worried he might…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Follow us across somehow. I mean, hedidfind us in Folkestone.”
“You don’t have to worry about him. I guarantee you that. Now come closer.” He pulled her tighter against him, scissoring their wet, jean-clan legs together and slipping a hand inside her sopping coat. His flattened palm against the small of her back was warm and possessive. “This sub is hard and cold, but you’re soft and warm. And since we have an hour and a half to kill, I’d like to do it snuggling with you. We never got the chance to snuggle. You know…after. And that’s my favorite part. Well,oneof my favorite parts.” He chuckled. The sound was low and seductive and did familiar things to her belly.
A thumb under her chin had her lifting her head. Even in the semidarkness, even listening to the eeriepopandcreakof the vessel as it dove to depth, she was mesmerized by his stormy gray eyes.
Lovely eyes, really. So soft and steady and…quiet.
Yes, there was an inner stillness to Dagan that was not to be confused with the stillness that sometimes came over him when they were arguing or when the world around them was threatening to end.Thatwas the calm before the storm. But this? This came from a well of inner certainty. He was a man who had made his place in the world and was comfortable there.
Not that he didn’t have regrets. She knew he did. She saw the shadows of them lurking in his eyes sometimes. But he had come to terms with them. Learned to live with them. And she could only hope that in the near future, she could do the same withherregrets.
She hadn’t realized she’d been silent until Dagan said, “You’re quiet, but you have an unquiet mind. I can smell the wheels burning up here.” He tapped her temple. “What’s up, babe?”
“I was just thinking about…my mother.” It wasn’t a total lie. Her mother was never far from her thoughts.
“Your mother?” He cocked his head. There it was. That Clint Eastwood gunfight stare. “You think she’ll be embarrassed or ashamed because of the news stories? Chels, you know that’ll clear itself up. It may take a while since Morrison isn’t Spider and everything. But heknowsSpider. I mean, heknewSpider, which likely means he was tangled up with him insomethingillegal. Ozzie will figure out whatever it was from Morrison’s files. Then the CIA will claim the credit for exposing the old sonofabitch, with you as their agent, naturally, and your reputation will be free and clear. Of course, then your cover will be blown. I’m sorry as hell about that; I really am. But at least—”
“Wow.” She shook her head. “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”
His chin jerked back. “Of course.” The hand against her back rubbed up and down, up and down, somehow soothing and scintillating at the same time. “It’s your life. And since I plan to be a part of that, I—”
She closed her ears to what he said next. She knew the words, thosewonderfulwords, would flay her. And she already felt like she’d lost a layer of skin.
“My mother isn’t embarrassed or ashamed,” she said after he’d grown silent. “If she’d ever been the kind to care about what people thought or said, she never would have married my father.”
“You know, you never told me what happened.”
She tucked her head back beneath his chin. Some of her hair got stuck in his beard, which was no big surprise since she knew her ’do had to be a frizzy, kinky mess. But oddly enough, Dagan seemed to like it. He palmed her head and rubbed a lock between his fingers.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, you were able to secure the position with Morrison partly based on your background, on your need for money and his belief that that need made you desperate and vulnerable and likely to put up with his pawing. But you never said exactly what was going on. Will you…will you tell me now? Tell me why you need money? Because maybe I could—”
Before he could offer to help her, which would crush to dust her already broken heart, she interrupted him. “Money. That word…it just…sticks in my craw. I mean, it sounds so harmless, doesn’t it? Rhymes withhoneyandbunny. But when you don’t have any, it’s an insidious thing that impacts everything you do.”
From the smallest decision, like whether you buy brand-name cereal or the generic stuff from the bottom shelf, she thought with disgust.To the biggest decision, like whether you give up paying a double mortgage and let the bank take the home you grew up in or you keep your job, keep a Big Bad Secret, and keep on paying the bills.
“For years now, my mom and I have…uh… We’ve been slowly trying to dig ourselves out of the debt left by my father’s passing,” Chelsea told him. Even with her chin tucked under his chin, she couldfeelhis frown.
She never spoke about this part of her life, and it showed in the puttering way the words left her mouth. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of her situation. More like she had always reckoned it was nobody’s damned business that she and her mother weretoo poor to paint and too proud to whitewash, as her father would have said.
“My mom never wanted to be anything but a wife and a mother. So that left my dad as the breadwinner of the family. Not that there was atonof bread. Public school teachers make jack shit, but he made enough to buy a piece of land after he and Momma married. He went to the local banks to try to secure a construction loan, but no one would lend him the money. Apparently, the loan officers had all sorts of reasons why they couldn’t take the risk, but the truth was they simply didn’t want to lend money to a…amixed marriagecouple, I think was the term they used. Remember, this was the South in the eighties.
“Anyway,” she continued, “Mom and Dad saved up during the school years, living on rice and beans so that they could purchase the supplies and equipment they needed. For five summers before I was born, brick by brick and nail by nail, they built their dream house. Myhome. We all lived there together for seventeen glorious years.” She swallowed the lump in her throat and took a breath. “And then Dad died.”
Dagan’s hold tightened, his arms so warm and strong. She closed her eyes at the comfort his embrace provided, comfort she had no business feeling.
When she continued, her voice was hoarser than usual. “Dad had a life insurance policy, but that didn’t cover much more than funeral expenses. Mom needed a job. But she didn’t have any schooling or training past high school so she was forced to take out a loan on the house to pay for dental hygienist school. Then I went to college, and she had to take out a second mortgage to help cover the cost my scholarship and student loans didn’t. Suddenly, the banks were all too happy to lend her money. Go figure.”
Taking a deep breath, she told him the rest. “Fast-forward a few years to the bursting of the real estate bubble and…” She shrugged inside the circle of his arms. “Every extra penny I’ve made goes to my student loans and the bank that holds the mortgages on the house. And even at that, sometimes Mom and I are late on our payments.”
It was hard to fathom that in all the years since she’d graduated summa cum laude with a double master’s in statistics and international studies that she had barely made a dent in her and her mother’s combined six-figure debt. Working for the Central Intelligence Agency was exciting, but the pay sure wasn’t.
“I’m so sorry, babe. If it’s any consolation, I know what it’s like to be desperate for money.”
