She’d recognize it anywhere, even when he was clearly trying to tiptoe.
Her pulse tripped over itself like it did whenever he entered a room.
And then he was there. Entering her room.
Or, rather, he stopped on the threshold, his green eyes pinging to her bed before sliding around the space and stopping once he found her tucked into the chair in the shadows of the corner. She would swear it felt like a physical touch when his gaze collided with hers.
“You’re awake.” Surprise had one eyebrow arcing up his forehead. That fabulously wide forehead with that knee-weakening whorl of hair and that faint, crescent-moon scar.
“You’re home,” she whispered back, and the words sounded too soft, too…something, even to her own ears.
He leaned a broad shoulder against the doorjamb and crossed one booted ankle over the other. Then, he ran a hand down his face. And that’s when she got a proper look at him in the soft glow of the lamplight that reached across her room and framed him in the doorway.
He was exhausted. It was there in the neck stubble that sprouted beneath his neatly trimmed beard. There in the new lines carved into the corners of his eyes. There in the wild riot of hair that looked like he’d either raked his fingers through it a hundred times or rode with his head out the window.
Heaven help me, all I want is to pull him into bed, smooth the line from between his eyebrows, and hold him until he falls asleep.
A few months ago, she would’ve done exactly that without thinking twice.
Now? She couldn’t find the words to bridge the distance that’d opened up between them. Couldn’t find a way to go back to how things had been…before.
“Ayuh.” He nodded. “I’m home. And none too soon, either. I feel like a man who’s been draggin’ lobster traps with no gloves on.”
Her lips tugged at the corners. Only Hew could compare exhaustion to Maine fishermen and make it sound miserable and endearing all at the same time.
“Bit of a whirlwind, was it?”
“When Boss puts together a quick escape package”—his tone was wry—“he doesn’t mess around.”
“No, he does not,” she agreed. “You should’ve heard him barking orders and calling in favors over the phone.” She tilted her head. “How is he, by the way?”
“Back home with Becky and the girls. Said he’d catch a few winks and then come in later to give everyone a sitrep on our most recent adventure.”
She turned her head to peer at him from the corners of her eyes. “Does that mean I have to wait to hear how it went?”
He hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans, letting his hands dangle loose. She stared helplessly at the veins tracking the backs of his hands. At those long, knobby-knuckled fingers.
The same fingers that had once taken her apart piece by piece until she’d been nothing but shaking, shivering, screaming surrender in his arms. The same fingers that had expertly put her back together again.
“We flew her low and fast over the border into Bumfuck, Ontario,” he said. “Landed in someone’s hay field where one of Boss’s old combat buddies was waitin’ in a mud-splattered pickup truck to take her from us.”
He stopped, one corner of his mouth tilting ruefully. “Ya think Boss looks like he’s seen some shit? Should’ve seen this guy. I swear he was carved from driftwood and rawhide. More scars than skin. But he had a firm handshake and trustworthy eyes. So even without Boss’s endorsement, I would’ve been tempted to like him.”
Her own lips twitched at the vivid picture he painted. Despite being reticent by nature, when he did speak, it could be almost…lyrical. Or maybe literary was the better word.
All that reading, no doubt.
“Apparently, he had a little float plane parked at the dock on a nearby lake. He agreed to fly her up to Alaska, where a friend of his will load her up on a rusted-out fishin’ boat and sail her to Russia. After that, she’s on her own.”
“Good riddance.” Sabrina made a face. Just the thought of Black Widow was enough to leave a bad taste in her mouth.
“To bad rubbish,” Hew finished with a dip of his chin.
Her brow creased. “And these guys…they just volunteered to do all this? Because Boss asked them to?”
That’s when Hew smiled.
Not his usual half-smile. Not the guarded, fleeting tipping up of one corner of his mouth.
