He was on his side with his back to her, squeezing a pillow in his arms as if he were about to tear it apart. She could practically feel the tension of coiled-up muscles. Tentatively, she put her hand on his bare shoulder.
He was burning up as if with fever. Whatever memories he was wrestling with in his nightmare, they were taking a physical toll on him. It was like putting her hand on the lid of a pot of boiling water.
But he didn’t flinch or lash out. Instead his body stilled.
Emboldened, she sat down on the bed beside him and moved her hand over his back in gentle little caresses, almost as if she were trying to quiet a baby.
“It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “You’re just having a nightmare.” He seemed to relax into her hand. “Go back to sleep.”
He turned to look at her. Or maybe he was just responding to the sound of her voice, because the next moment he’d pulled her down onto the bed in front of him and brought her in tight against his chest. His arms went around her and held her there.
She was instantly enveloped in heat and muscle andthe scent of a man who’d just done battle. Of course, just as everything else about him, he even sweated sexily. John Donovan didn’t stink; the soapy smell of his skin was just intensified.
Suddenly, he sighed. Deeply. As if utterly contented. He fell into what sounded from his breathing like a deep sleep.
But he held on to her as if he would never let her go. She felt like a beloved teddy bear. Which just might be the most awesome feeling in the world.
Brittany didn’t sleep. She just listened to the steady flow of his breathing until dawn, her heart breaking for him the entire time. John might not want to admit it, but whatever had happened out there was hurting him.
He was mourning the death of her brother maybe even more than she was—which wasn’t all that surprising. Other than the three weeks that summer, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen her brother in the past twelve years since their parents had died. John and Brandon had been best friends since they’d gone to SEAL training together—BUD/S, or whatever they called it—eight years ago.
Brandon had been more John’s brother than he’d been hers. She envied him that relationship even as she saw the pain it was causing him now. Brittany mourned Brandon, too, but not in the same way. Not so immediately. More in that she regretted their estrangement and the loss of the brother she’d known and loved as a young girl. But there had been a hole in her life where Brandon was concerned for a long time. Now it was permanent.
About an hour before dawn—such as it was in the land of the midnight sun—Brittany crept back to her bed in the semidarkness. It felt as if everything had changed. The question was what she was going to do about it.
Fourteen
Kate tried to get a little sleep when she returned home to Arlington from the airport after the red-eye. She tossed and turned for an hour before giving up. A shower, an omelet, and a triple-shot latte made her feel almost human again.
She decided to work from home for the day rather than go into the office. Percy, who had been living with her since their engagement, had been tied up with a morning meeting and had sent a driver to the airport to pick her up, but he’d checked in on her later that morning with a phone call.
“You’re sure you are okay?” he asked after she filled him in on what had happened in San Diego.
Or, rather,mostof what had happened. She left out Colt’s last cruel dig, which had felt something like a jagged knife opening an old wound. An old wound that for a moment had been very raw and very painful.
How could she have let him get to her like that? She couldn’t put her shield down even for a moment when it came to him. But she’d been lulled into a false sense of complacency. They’d been getting along so well, she’dactually thought that maybe she didn’t hate him as much as she thought. That maybe they could work together like two rational adults. Which was idiotic, as there had never been anything rational about the two of them.
She’d made a mistake in a moment of weakness, which she attributed to the accident. Seeing that child nearly run over and then holding the baby until her parents arrived had stripped her to her core and left her unusually vulnerable.
“I’m fine,” she assured her fiancé. “Just tired. You know how I don’t sleep well on planes.”
If Percy didn’t quite believe her explanation, he was too polite to disagree with her. Sometimes his very proper Englishness could come off as coldness or aloofness, but right now she was grateful for it.
“Don’t forget about the party tonight. The car will be there at five to pick you up.”
“You aren’t coming home to change?”
“I brought my tux with me.”
“I’ll be ready.” She wasn’t looking forward to a formal party tonight, but she knew it was part of her duties as the soon-to-be Mrs. Ambassador.
They’d met while she was briefing him on a joint US/UK operation. There had been some pushback from both sides about security issues when they’d started dating, but because she was a counterterrorism analyst and not a field agent (aka a spook), they had only been asked to give an occasional report on their dates.
Marriage was more problematic. A CIA agent marrying a foreign national—even from our closest ally country—was frowned upon, which is why she hadn’t formally told her superiors yet. They could try to revoke her security clearances, although she thought it unlikely since she didn’t do clandestine work. Percy intended to retire from the diplomatic service when his posting was up. She knew he wanted to return to England, but theyhadn’t really talked about that. They hadn’t talked about a lot of things. She paused. “I was hoping we might have time to talk along the way.”
“About what?”
“Have you had a chance to look over the information I gave you?”
