hell happened until her friends slipped into the house late one night and told us what she had been doing.” A shard of bitter laughter filled the room for a second. “She loved so deeply that she didn’t care about risking her own life, the life her husband and children depended upon.”
What was she supposed to say? She stared back at him, her eyes burning with tears.
“The same as you and your men are forced to risk your lives protecting and saving the world,” she finally pointed out huskily. “How is it any different, Jordan? She wasn’t just helping that small family, she was imagining her own family in the same danger, and had no choice but to react.”
“You know, that’s the same bullshit excuse I gave Killian when his wife Catherine disobeyed orders and slipped into the warehouse where Sorrel’s men were holding a young girl they had kidnapped. We had to wait on orders to go in and they were getting ready to move the kid, but we still had time. I was on the line with my director and we were getting the order to go in. It was coming,” he snarled. “We told her it would get there in time. But she went in. She went in, she got the girl, and she was running out of the warehouse with her.
“They shot her before she made it to safety, before we could get to her. She protected that kid, covered her body with her own as she went down and kept her alive until we got there. But she died, Tehya, and she took Killian’s unborn son with her. A child she hadn’t even told him about. And they gave him the same useless argument. A mother’s instinct. The need to protect.”
He came over her, pushed her back to the bed as she stared up at him, eyes wide, her breath catching.
“If you ever, ever fucking endanger yourself like that, then I will walk away,” he snarled. “I won’t watch helplessly, Tehya, while you destroy yourself. I will not let you kill me inside because of your damned stubbornness.”
“Then you’ll live by the same rules.” She was back in his face, teeth bared, furious, aching, hurting for him and yet drawn into the emotional vortex she could feel swirling out from him. “Wrap me in cotton, Jordan. See if I give a fuck. Because you’ll be right there with me or you can kiss my ass good-bye.”
Jordan stared down at her. He could barely see the outline of her face, but he could see her eyes. Wicked, witchy cat’s eyes that glared back at him, that demanded, that refused to back down.
She had an answer for everything.
She made him want to believe in love. Made him want to believe in that unspoken emotion he couldn’t seem to get a handle on inside himself. That illusion he had always disdained in the past.
She made him want to give her the world, and even when he’d been sixteen, when he’d been dick dumb, he hadn’t truly wanted to give any woman the world.
What did she do to him? He wanted to walk away, because he knew she was a weakness. He wanted to keep her at a distance, remain aloof, but it was damned impossible. She was tying his guts up in knots and at the same time, finding a way to keep his attention focused squarely on her.
And he couldn’t figure out how she managed it.
“While we’re together,” he stated. “When this is over.” He had to force himself to breathe through the words. “When it’s finished, Tehya, I don’t want to walk away. At least, not immediately.”
She was silent, still. He could feel her hurt, he knew she had expected more.
“Don’t walk away, Jordan.” Thick, heavy with unshed tears, her voice whispered through the darkness. “For as long as you can, don’t walk away.”
He lay back down beside her before pulling her into his arms, her head resting against his shoulder.
He held her, his chest heavy with words he had no idea how to say. Hell, he didn’t even know what the words were, just that they struggled to be free. That something inside him felt trapped.
As he stared into the darkness, he wondered, for the first time, if the illusion of love were cared for, if it were cherished, was there any way it could be preserved?
* * *
Sleep hadn’t come easy for Jordan. The soft weight of Tehya in his arms had felt too