from England, with a neighbor. She was blond, delicate, and beautiful, and I fell like a ton of bricks for her.
“The affair lasted until the end of summer, when her parents found out. They had the neighbor’s ranch hands beat the hell out of me, and when that didn’t work, they locked her in her bedroom, refusing to let her out until arrangements could be made for her to return to England. And I thought I could rescue her.” The tone of his voice warned her that perhaps that young love hadn’t died, but had instead contributed to killing the belief in love Jordan had once possessed.
“I slipped into the house, picked the lock to her bedroom door, and slipped in.”
He paused and Tehya wondered what he was thinking, remembering. The silence wasn’t as heavy as before, but it still held the weight of the scars she knew he carried deep inside.
“She had been playing with us all,” he finally sighed. “It was a ploy to force her parents to return her to England rather than have her attend the private school they were considering in America. She wanted to be with her Irish lover.” Mockery filled his voice. “She considered me an acceptable stand-in for the summer, though.”
Sixteen. God, how that must have twisted his male pride, as well as his heart.
She felt him shift in the bed until he turned to face her, the gleam of his eyes in the dark pulling her, giving her a connection to him that she desperately needed.
“It was nearly ten years later before I saw her again. I was commanding a small team, working with the British in routing a terrorist cell in London. We managed to strike during a meeting being held by their Afghani commander. Their second in command was there as well, an Irish national who had led the cell for years. They were in interrogation when I had a visitor. At first, I couldn’t believe it was her. She didn’t just act older, she looked older, more coarse, less like the lady she had pretended to be when she was a teenager. And she needed a favor.” It wasn’t anger or pain in his voice, instead, there was a heavy vein of mockery overlying the amusement. “She thought she could give me a little fuck for old time’s sake and I would help her gain her lover’s release. The Irish second in command was the stable hand she’d played me and her parents to return to. I looked in her lying eyes as though they were windows into my own career. We knew there was a link from British Intelligence into the terrorist cell, and we hadn’t been able to find it. I was staring at it. She was the daughter of one of the highest ranking intelligence directors in MI-6 and she was the terrorists’ link. But I wanted proof. I wanted it, and I betrayed her to get it without a moment’s hesitation or guilt. At sixteen, I would have died for her. For years after that, I compared every woman I took to bed with her. But I betrayed her in less than a heartbeat and I didn’t feel a damned thing for her as they led her away in handcuffs two weeks later.”
“Jordan, she betrayed you,” she whispered. “It’s not the same when two people love each other. When they’re together, when they’re working toward a future together.”
“Isn’t it?” He reached up and touched her cheek again, as though that connection, as small as it was, was needed.
“Mom and Dad were working toward a future. They had three sons, they had a life together, and they were committed to that ideal of love that they professed was so strong.” Now, there was anger, pain. “Dad loved her until nothing mattered to him as much as his wife. When one of the young families that worked for us on the ranch was targeted by racists, she fought back for them. She didn’t tell Dad what she was doing, and she didn’t tell her sons, who were nearly grown. She didn’t tell anyone she was driving out to rescue them and take them to a friend’s house in the next county. When her vehicle went over a cliff and exploded, the sheriff ruled it an accident. There was no investigation, no questions asked, despite the fact that there were three adult bodies and a child’s in that vehicle as well. We had no idea what the