Charmed: A Masters and Mercenar - Lexi Blake Page 0,63
money, the company, hell, according to Tag and Alex, he was putting her above the country. He didn’t get what he’d done so wrong, why she’d looked at him like he’d torn her apart.
Alex’s expression turned slightly sympathetic. “I wouldn’t say bad guy exactly, but you’re definitely the asshole. You’ve been around Nina for a week now. I would assume you’ve talked to her. Or have you just spent time in bed?”
He’d spent more time with her in the last week than he’d spent with anyone in years. “Of course I’ve talked to her. I’ve gotten to know a lot about her. You might think I’m an asshole, but I care about her. I care about her more than I would have expected. Hell, I’ve spent days trying to figure out how to keep her here with me after this mission thing is over.”
“Then you should know about her last job.”
He sighed in pure frustration. The last thing he wanted to talk about was the asshole who’d gotten her fired from Interpol. “I’m not using her. I’m not lying to her to try to get something out of her. I know I didn’t tell her I knew who she was, but I saw her and I wanted her more than I’ve ever wanted a woman in my life. I asked myself why it mattered that we would be working together.”
“Then shouldn’t you have made that argument to her?” Alex asked.
He’d thought about this, too. “I didn’t want to risk it.”
Alex nodded as though that was exactly the answer he’d expected. “Then you lied to her because you wanted to manipulate her into doing something. Namely you.”
“It’s not the same.”
Alex took a short drink and seemed to savor the Scotch. “Okay. Well, then you’re in the right and she’s overreacting.”
JT sank onto the seat beside Alex. “That’s not what I’m saying either.”
“Then you should say what you mean to say.”
Wasn’t that the problem? “I don’t know what I mean to say. I didn’t want any of this to happen. I wanted to be with her. That was all.”
“But her job is a big part of who she is,” Alex pointed out. “This isn’t an office job she chose because there wasn’t anything else out there. She trained for this. She puts her heart and soul into this job, and she’s had it all ripped away from her before.”
“I wasn’t trying to take her job away.” But he could see how it might look that way from her perspective. “I was trying to keep her safe.”
Alex put the drink down. “She’s not safe. That’s part of who she is, and you’re rejecting that part of her. How would you respond to a girlfriend who attempted to talk your father out of sending you out to check on rigs?”
“That would be ridiculous.” Half his job was making sure the rigs were properly working.
“Why? It’s dangerous. It’s precisely why you have security on every one of those rigs, and even then, bad shit still happens.”
“Yeah, well I’ve never been shot.” He winced. “But I have been in dangerous positions. Damn it. I didn’t mean to make her feel like she’s less. She’s starting to be everything to me.”
“Do you want my advice? From a man who lost his wife because he didn’t understand or appreciate how strong she was? I ask because I really will back off if you don’t want my opinion. Unlike Ian, who would just plow through.” Alex got a whimsical smile on his face. “I often think he does that because he never really fucked up before. He can be that arrogant because he was mostly right.”
“That’s the not the way I heard it.” JT had been told a lot of stories about Big Tag. “I heard he was a complete ass when his wife made it back to him.”
That comment elicited a full belly laugh from Alex. “Yeah, he was, but that lasted a whole three days. She put him through hell for five years. When you really look at it, he blustered briefly, and there was never a question in my mind what the outcome would be because he loved her. Because I watched for years as he mourned her. I sometimes wonder if he gave in so quickly because he’d seen how badly I screwed up.”
“You and Eve were divorced, right?” He’d heard a bit about it from his brother, but he knew far more about the younger guys Michael worked with on a regular basis. Not