Maybe it was foolish and unrealistic. Rationally she knew it was too much to expect, but the tightness squeezing her chest told her that her heart just wasn’t getting it.
And Scott had no idea how wrong he was about Mick.
She knew why Scott suspected him. Mick had been gorgeous. The type of guy women flocked to. When she first met him, Mick had still been playing hockey, and she’d been over the moon, not to mention the envy of all her friends, when the tall, muscular, bronzed god had come up to her in the Georgetown restaurant where they were celebrating her coworker’s twenty-fourth birthday to ask her out.
She’d refused at first. She didn’t go out with strange guys—even ones as good-looking as Mick. He’d persisted, however, and told her she could check him out—that he played professional hockey and wasn’t a psycho.
The first part had proved correct. She’d foolishly taken Google for a reference and accepted the date. But their “date” was all a pretense, as she would learn when he came to pick her up.
He didn’t even bother to take her to dinner before telling her what he wanted. That job at the Pentagon that she interviewed for, but didn’t want? She was going to takeit. And the freshman fifteen that she’d put on in college and hadn’t taken off almost seven years later? Lose them. He wanted her ready when and if she was called upon.
Ready for what? she’d asked, totally discombobulated. To—get this—spyon the only country she’d ever known for Russia, the country that had imprisoned and killed her parents and left her and her sister in an orphanage. He had to be crazy. She’d actually laughed in his face.
Which was a mistake she never made again. Mick had shown her exactly how serious he was by trying to take her power away. He’d held her down right there in her apartment and raped her.
But it hadn’t broken her, maybe because of what she’d been through at the orphanage as a child. She knew bleakness and suffering, and she knew she would recover. She wouldn’t let his physical strength make her cower.
Even after the rape, she’d refused to do what he asked until he’d made threats that she couldn’t ignore. It was the kind of leverage that governments used on “assets” all the time, albeit more deadly.
It wasn’t ideology that had turned her into a spy; he’d threatened her family. First he’d started with her birth parents in Russia, insisting they were still alive and would suffer if she refused. Not believing him and knowing in her heart that they were dead as the orphanage had told her, she’d demanded proof. When he showed her a picture, she’d known he was lying. The dour woman in the photo was not her mother. Natalie might not be able to remember her face, but she’d known it on a bone-deep level.
But it hadn’t taken him long to find a threat that could make her jump.“I hear your father is in bad health.”Her breath had frozen in her lungs. The thought of him targeting the loving parents who’d adopted the twoscarred and scared children and brought them into their home... how could she let that happen?
And then, just in case there was any doubt, he uttered the coup de grâce that would assure her agreement.“You have a younger sister, don’t you?”he’d asked, looking her up and down. There was no mistaking the gleam in his eyes. He would hurt her sister the way he had her. Just the thought of it had made her sick. She would do anything to protect her sister. Anything. Natalie had failed Lana once; she would never do so again.
Natalie had accepted the job, lost weight, dyed her hair a lighter blond, wore the stupid colored contacts, and dressed in the sexy heels and suits he told her to. She learned to act cool and confident, even when she wanted to just curl into a ball and cry.
It hadn’t been so bad at first. Natalie had kept her head down and did her job as quietly and efficiently as she could. Which turned out to be a mistake, when her efficiency—not, ironically, the sexy silk blouses—caught the eye of the deputy secretary of defense. Mick forced her to take the new job. Fortunately for her, however, the deputy secretary was happily married to a wife he adored. Natalie was thus spared the horrible “request” from Mick to sleep with her boss for information.
That was the man Scott thought had fathered her child. An opportunistic, rapist thug who sold out the country that had offered him a home, not for idealistic or sentimental reasons but for money.
But she’d learned that many years later. As she had learned why she’d been targeted.
“It will take about a week.”
The doctor’s words brought Natalie back to reality. Mick was dead. The only bad thing about that was that she had not been the one to pull the trigger.
How many times had she dreamed of it? Only knowing that the men he worked for would retaliate had stayedher hand. But although killing Mick might not have ended her nightmare, it definitely would have been personally satisfying.
“A week?” Scott repeated, clearly finding that unacceptable. His expression was what she imagined his men saw when he needed something done. The flexed jaw. The steely gaze. The confidence and unwavering authority that was hard to argue with. “I can’t wait that long.”
The doctor was young but had already learned the skill of dealing with difficult patients—or, apparently, difficult authoritative SEAL commanders. She was equally firm and unyielding as she responded, “I’m afraid that’s our standard turnaround time.”
Scott seemed to realize he’d overplayed his hand so he changed tactics to one Natalie had never seen him use before.
“Can it be expedited? I don’t care what it costs. I’ll pay whatever it takes if you can have it sped up.”
Natalie knew all about Scott’s blue-blood background, but he rarely flaunted or even discussed his wealth. She’d certainly never seen him use it to get what he wanted. His father had left him millions, but Scott told her he’d put it in a trust. She knew he felt guilty about inheriting money from a man who had been duped into claiming another man’s son.
His wealth and perceived influence due to his family connections had been part of the reason Mick had forced her to target Scott—not to mention his role as a SEAL. She’d never forget her shock at walking into a meeting at the Pentagon and seeing the man she’d just had forty-eight hours of almost nonstop sex with in a hotel room seated at the table. Worse was discovering that her “sailor” was actually the OIC (officer in charge) of one of the platoons of the president’s personal secret SEAL team. Natalie still didn’t know how Mick had found out about him so quickly.
But neither she nor Mick could have guessed how fruitless her efforts would be. Scott was closemouthed about his work and not interested in using family connections, and she was the worst spy ever who stupidly fell in love with her target.
But recalling Scott’s background put another spin on his request for the paternity test, and Natalie felt the ache in her chest ease a little. It wasn’t just about not trusting her. Her pregnancy had unwittingly struck a still-raw wound. One that he tried to pretend didn’t matter to him.
The doctor frowned. “I’m not sure. No one has ever requested that before.”
Scott wasn’t used to acting like a rich asshole, and Natalie could see he was uncomfortable with how his request had come out. “I’d really appreciate it if you could check into it. There are extenuating circumstances that I’m not at liberty to discuss.”
