Dangerous Secrets

Twenty-one

“Excellent,” Vassily said, pale eyes glittering. “I knew I could count on you, dushka. It is meant, my dear. Never tamper with fate; you will only get hurt. It is one of life’s harshest lessons.”

He put his arm around her and squeezed her shoulders. His voice was louder than usual and his arm around her was so tight it almost hurt. There was something odd about him, something almost feverish, so unlike the normal, coolly rational Vassily Charity knew. She wondered if he were ill, coming down with flu.

He was holding her so tightly his fingers bit into her shoulder. Charity breathed deeply, thinking perhaps that would discreetly dislodge his hand, but it didn’t work. It only made his grip more painful.

There was the strangest vibe coming from Vassily—it was as if he were…excited. Or worked up, or overwrought. It felt as if he were losing his grip on himself. His breathing was speeded up. She could feel his rib cage rising and falling against her side, so quickly he was almost panting. He looked agitated, restless, and fitful.

If she’d felt any better, she would have inquired after his health. He was a friend, more or less the same age her father would have been if he’d lived. Certainly her elder.

It would be the polite thing to do, after all, for polite Charity Prewitt. You could always count on her to do the right thing.

Not right now, though. She wasn’t going to do the polite thing, be the nice little girl who’d been well brought up in a nice family. The fact was, she was barely holding it together—utterly depleted, rendered down to bedrock herself, clinging to the shreds of her self-control by her fingernails. She could barely stand upright. The last thing she needed was to deal with Vassily’s agitation.

What had possessed her to accept his invitation? Where would she find the strength to go out, when all she craved was solitude and the dark?

And it was entirely possible she was coming down with the flu herself. She’d thrown up three or four times between yesterday morning and this morning.

Right now, there was nothing left in her to give to Vassily, sick or not. She was down to scorched earth.

“Vassily—” Charity tried to gently pull away from him, but found to her astonishment that it was almost impossible. He’d put his other hand back on her knee so that she was effectively pinned down. Or at least that was what it felt like.

He wasn’t doing it on purpose, she was sure. How could he know he was hurting her? But he could certainly know he was crowding her.

She stood. It was the only thing she could think of to break Vassily’s grip and start getting him out of the house. She craved solitude the way an alcoholic craves a drink, an addict a fix.

Deeply, desperately. Like she would die if she couldn’t get it right now.

Vassily stood, too. Charity didn’t see him do anything, he certainly didn’t pull out a cell phone or make a gesture, but the instant he stood, she saw his limousine pull up out front, long and sleek and black. The driver stopped precisely at the point where the passenger door met her walkway.

Vassily walked slowly to the front door, helped along by his cane, elegant, controlled, limping. Charity accompanied him, hoping her legs would hold out at least until she could close the door behind him. She was close to total collapse.

Vassily turned to her, pale blue eyes staring intently into hers.

“Ivan will pick you up at six, my dear. Until then—” He reached out a scarred finger and caressed her cheek. It took all her self-control not to jerk away. He dropped his hand and pulled on gloves, looking around for his hat. Charity picked it up and brought it to him. The felt wool was thick, of excellent quality. He donned his hat, never taking his eyes from her.

“I will see you tonight, dushka.” His gloved hand picked up hers and he bowed over it. “À bientôt, cherie.”

Charity withdrew her hand and reached around him to turn the doorknob, something he would find difficult to do. “Good-bye, Vassily.”

He moved excruciatingly slowly. Out of politeness, Charity stood behind him in the open doorway, freezing. The gelid morning air sent painful frozen fingers of ice deep into her bones. She tucked her hands into her armpits in a vain attempt to keep some warmth in her system.

Very little light penetrated the slate gray cloud cover. It was almost too cold for snow. A few tiny frozen flakes tried to settle on the ground, but the wind whipped them into a frenzy before they could. Charity felt the ping of sleet needles against her cheek as she waited impatiently for Vassily to leave.

Finally, he was over the threshold, walking haltingly toward Ivan waiting at the top of the steps, his arm out. As soon as Vassily was safely in the care of his chauffeur, she scrambled to shut the door behind him, trying not to slam it in her haste to have him out of the house. Once she heard the snick of the latch, she sagged against the door, eyes closed. Panting, exhausted.

Alone again. Thank God.

After a while, she heard the whump! of an expensive car door closing and the deep purr of a powerful engine. She watched through the living room window as the limo pulled away. The windows of the limo were tinted but she thought she saw Vassily’s pale face pressed against the glass. Looking at her.

Oh God. What had she done?

Charity pulled the living room curtains closed—she’d had enough of the outside world—put the tea glasses, tea pot, and jam onto a tray and carried it into the kitchen. She was feeling so weak the tray shook in her hands, the tea glasses rattling. That moment standing in the open doorway had sucked what little warmth she’d had right out of her, together with what little strength she’d been clinging to.

She stopped and leaned against the sink, arms around her midriff. Such a bone-deep chill, as if her insides held a core of ice. She felt completely ground down, reduced to bone held together by skin. Not too far from the grave herself.

The trembling grew stronger. Bile rose in her throat again. Tears leaked out of her eyes. She didn’t know whether to try to make it to the bathroom to throw up or simply collapse to the floor and throw up there.

With difficulty, she swallowed back the bile trickling up her gullet, then waited while her stomach settled. She locked her knees.

No vomiting, she told herself sternly. No collapsing to the floor. There will be no one to pick you up if you do.

It felt as if there couldn’t possibly be enough heat in the world to warm her up. The only thing that could make her warm again was Nick, and he was in a coffin in the stony cold ground.

Oh, how he had warmed her! She hadn’t felt cold once in the week they’d been together. Sleeping naked in the dead of winter hadn’t been a problem with Nick in bed with her. He was a furnace. A constant source of spine-melting heat.

Had been. Now what was left of him was frozen bones.

She would never be warm again, for the rest of her life.

Oh God, how she missed him! A sob wanted to rise from her chest but she repressed it, clapping her hand over her mouth. Her throat shook. A wild keening sound escaped from behind her hand.

She couldn’t cry again. Crying required an energy she simply didn’t have. The tears would be wrung from some irretrievably shattered place inside her and she would never be whole again.

She pressed her hand so hard against her mouth she could feel her lips pressing against her teeth and waited. Waited for the upwelling of grief to subside, like the lash of a scorpion’s tail. All she needed was for it to go down a little, just a little, just enough for her to make her wobbly way back to the bedroom and collapse onto the bed.

She hugged herself even more tightly, in a vain attempt to give herself the warmth Nick had so easily given her.

This sharp, lancing pain had to stop at some point. Didn’t it?

Didn’t all the books say grieving eventually abates?

It was all she had to cling to, that some day this wracking pain would lessen, even if it would never go away. She was like someone who had been grievously wounded in battle. The surgeons and nurses could give her blood transfusions and stitch her up, but deep inside her, the tissues were rent, and the wound would never completely heal.

Surely the craziness would stop some day. It would have to, wouldn’t it? Prewitts were long-lived. She could easily live to ninety. Her skin crawled at the thought of another sixty-two years of this madness.

Over the past three days, she’d felt Nick’s presence a hundred times a day. He was around the corner, behind that door, he’d just left the room. And each time her heart would soar and then crash and burn when he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there. He would never be there again.

So why was her body tormenting her so? Wasn’t it bad enough that her husband was gone, without having these flashes of his presence?

Like…now.

Every hair on Charity’s body rose as she walked slowly toward her bedroom. Her feet dragged, her heart thudded. A big boulder of terror pressed down on her, cutting off her breath. Spots formed in front of her eyes, like a big buzzing cloud of gnats.

For she could feel Nick, feel his presence. She could smell him. He was here, in this house, right now. Thinking that was craziness, she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself.

This was an entirely new level of slick horror added to the grief, the terror that she was losing her mind.

With each step toward the bedroom, she could feel his presence more strongly. It was insane. Her mind was telling her she was crazy but every sense was on alert, sending frantic signals to her brain. He’s here he’s here he’s here! Like the beat of a jungle drum.

In the week they’d been together, her entire body had become a tuning fork, attuned to Nick’s body. He was here, she could feel it. No amount of reasoning could convince her he wasn’t.

This was beyond horrible.

She’d observed firsthand Aunt Vera’s slow, awful slide into dementia and it was the most terrifying, horrific, heartbreaking thing she’d ever seen. Aunt Vera, too, saw long-lost loved ones in the shadows in the corners.

Terrified, Charity reached out a shaking hand and pressed it flat against her bedroom door. There was nothing behind that door but an unmade bed and tear-sodden handkerchiefs strewn about the floor. She knew that. She knew that. But on an entirely different level, her body knew something else.

She stood for long moments with her trembling hand on her door, afraid to open it because behind it would be nothing but proof that she was losing her mind.

Chilled, sick, trembling, she finally gave a little push. The door slowly yawned open, the sound loud in the still of the house. The room behind was shrouded in shadows. She hadn’t bothered to open her bedroom shutters.

Nick’s presence was very strong.

Charity was rooted to the spot, utterly unable to enter her own bedroom. Her perfectly ordinary bedroom had suddenly become a place of monsters, waiting to eat her alive. A black pit with her sanity on the bottom, forever lost to her.

The door opening had created currents of air that brought Nick’s scent, Nick’s presence even more strongly to her.

There was a slight noise inside her bedroom.

She couldn’t stand this, simply couldn’t. There was nothing left in her that could withstand this kind of madness. She tried to lift her foot, tried to chide herself into walking into her own bedroom, but she couldn’t. Her feet were anchored to the floor, as if mired in quicksand. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.

The shadows in the room swirled, or maybe it was her vision blacking out. Her legs were trembling now, barely able to hold her up.

The shadows shifted and shifted again.

The sound of a boot heel striking her hardwood floor. The darkness coalesced, gained an outline.

A tall, broad-shouldered figure dressed in black stepped forward. A deep voice said, “I won’t let you go to Worontzoff’s house, Charity.”

Nick. Back from the dead.

Her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

Fuck!

Nick leaped forward to catch Charity before she collapsed onto the floor, cursing himself as he did. He hadn’t war gamed it. He hadn’t run it through his head in any way, which is what he always did, no matter what the move. This time, for the first time in his life, he just barreled ahead without any thought for consequences.

Otherwise he might have thought about the shock to Charity’s system at seeing her dead husband alive once more.

Nick eased Charity down, icy dread flooding his system. People died of shock, he knew that. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Charity’s face was bone white, almost waxen. Her system was sending as much blood as possible away from the periphery toward the heart, as always happened in moments of great stress. Some shocks are so great blood circulation slows and eventually stops.

In Bosnia, ten days into his first assignment, Nick had seen a mother keel over dead from shock upon viewing the remains of her daughter’s body after Serb soldiers had finished with her. There hadn’t been much left.

Shock kills.

He took Charity’s ice-cold slender hands between his, trying to warm them up. Her hands were completely still. She wasn’t moving at all, not even her chest.

In a sudden panic, he put a hand under her sweatshirt, feeling for her heartbeat. She wasn’t wearing a bra and Nick was half ashamed of the surge of desire as he felt her soft breast under his hands. He loved her breasts.

A Delta teammate, Kit Sanderson, once said he worshiped at the Church of Big Tits and without thinking about it too much, Nick had, too.

The first time he’d touched her there, cupped her in his hand, feeling the velvety pink nipple harden to a point, he’d become an instant convert to the Church of Small Tits, this classy little Greek temple, where they played Bach on an organ, so unlike the other church—loud with raucous country music.

He laid two fingers over her left breast. Ah, there it was—fast and thready, but a definite beat. He rocked back on his heels, still crouching beside her.

Jesus, what now? He’d had basic medic training. If she were bleeding from a bullet wound, he’d know precisely what to do. If she had a broken bone he could probably set it, if she needed stitches he could do that, too. But this was beyond him.

“Charity,” he said softly, then louder. “Charity!”

Christ, she was barely breathing. Her nostrils were pinched and white, her muscles completely lax.

This wasn’t good. She was run down anyway. Her cheekbones were sharper, that sharp little chin more pointed, collarbones more prominent. She’d lost weight and she hadn’t had that much weight to lose in the first place.

Damn, he should have played this differently, but how? How do you tell a grieving widow—Whoops! Husband not dead, after all! Big mistake; sorry about that. Hey, shit happens.

Nope. There was no way he could have revealed himself without shocking her in a big way. And no way he could keep her from going to Worontzoff’s tonight without revealing himself. What was he supposed to do—send her e-mails from beyond the grave? Leave her messages written in lipstick on her bathroom mirror?

No, this had to be done in person.

The story of his life—only one possible hard road to take, dead ahead, with narrow walls and no side streets. The only way out was straight through. No alternatives, no detours.

Charity moaned and he watched her face carefully as a little color crept back in. Thank God she wasn’t paper white anymore. She was coming round.

He’d have poured her a finger of whiskey and forced her to drink it, but that fuck Worontzoff had already made her drink vodka. With nothing in her stomach, that much alcohol would knock her right back out. And besides, he didn’t want to leave her side.

She moaned again, her hand flexing inside his. He lifted her torso up, keeping his arm around her back for support.

Unexpectedly, her eyes opened. No coming-around process, no fluttering of eyelids, so he’d have a chance to prepare. Just those beautiful light-gray eyes, closed one second, wide open the next.

She looked frightened, lost.

“Nick?” she whispered. She lifted her hand, tentatively. It trembled. She moved it slowly toward his face, as if she were pushing her hand against a waterfall. Slowly, slowly closer.

Finally, she touched his face, gingerly. As if touching him might burn her. Cheekbone, temple, jaw. Reassuring herself by touch that he was here, alive. As if the evidence of her eyes and ears weren’t enough. A little line appeared between her ash-brown eyebrows. “Is it you? How can it be you?”

Nick slid his other arm around her knees and rose with her in his arms, frowning at how slight she felt.

This next part was going to be…tricky. Before he even got to the part where he convinced her not to go out tonight, which was like climbing Everest, he had to hack his way through thorny woods, ford raging rivers, cross blazing deserts.

Worse. He had to tell her that every word he’d ever spoken to her was a lie.

So he knew he was in for an uphill battle and the best way to deal with that was to tell her the truth—or as much of truth as he could—while touching her.

His words had been lies, but his body hadn’t lied. Not once. Every time he touched her, every time he slid into that lovely, warm, welcoming body, his body’s delight was genuine. No lies there.

Touch is a powerful tranquilizer, soothing animals and soon-to-be furious women. He was going to need every advantage he could get.

He sat them down in the corner of the couch, Charity’s back against his right side, her legs stretched out. Her eyes never left his. One shaking hand was on his shoulder, kneading his shoulder muscle.

“You’re alive,” she whispered finally. It wasn’t a question.

Nick nodded, watching her face. “Yes, sweetheart, I’m alive.”

She blinked and shuddered. “I’m going crazy, like Aunt Vera. You can’t be alive. I buried you. I’m hallucinating.”

“No, you’re not hallucinating. You’re touching me,” Nick said. He bent to kiss her cheek. “You can feel me. I’d pinch you to make you believe, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt you in any way.”

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. She drew in a deep breath and sat up straight in his lap.

Ouch. Right over his hard-on.

Yep. Unbelievably, with all this heavy stuff coming down, danger on the horizon, Apaches outside the gate, he’d got himself a woody.

Her eyes widened. She felt it. For a moment, it was as if everything in the world stopped. They even stopped breathing. There wasn’t a sound in the house or from the street outside. Utter silence reigned as he watched her struggle with the concept of a dead man having a hard-on for her.

This could go either way. Sex between them had been more than good, from the first quick kiss in his car on the way to Da Emilio’s to the last time they had made love on Friday morning. Her body was attuned to his. Though she was small, she had been requiring less and less foreplay for him to fit. Sometimes all it took was a kiss, a touch, and she was ready, wet and swollen and hot. As if simply being near him was foreplay for her.

So he had to watch her eyes very carefully, and if she softened, it was entirely possible that he’d start kissing her and one thing would lead to another, maybe right here on this pretty little couch—it wouldn’t be the first time, either—and he’d say I’m sorry I deceived you, and she’d be looking up at him after coming, all rosy and dewy, and say I forgive you, Nick and he’d say good and by the way, don’t even think of going to that fuckhead Worontzoff’s tonight and she’d go whatever you say, Nick and that would be that.

Charity reared her head back and narrowed her eyes. “Don’t. Don’t even think of going there.”

Then again, maybe not.

“No,” he said. Damn, it would have made things easier, cut through a lot of the crap.

“Who—who did I bury?” Charity whispered.

Nick shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Her mouth tightened and she tried to get out of his arms. No way. She was staying right where she was, with him touching her. He tightened his hold.

“I’m sorry, honey. That’s the honest truth. I don’t know who he was. But he was trying to kill me and I do know who sent him.”

She was barely listening, watching his eyes carefully, as if trying to identify him. She licked dry lips. “Where have you been these past days?

“Here,” he said bluntly. “Mainly outside your house. I slept in a motel about twenty miles from here.”

“Here?” she whispered. Her eyes left his face to wander around the living room, as if seeing her house for the first time. Her gaze locked back onto his face.

“You were outside the house while I was crying my eyes out? Grieving for you? So hard I thought my heart would stop?” She straightened suddenly in his lap and he winced. “You came into the house, didn’t you? You were here. It was real.”

Charity wrenched herself out of his lap and stood, trembling. He’d opened his arms to let her go. Her movements were so violent he’d hurt her if he tried to keep his hold on her.

She was shaking, arms wound tightly around her midriff, gemstone eyes bright in her white face. “I thought I was losing my mind. I felt your presence all the time. I smelled you. I’d walk into a room and expect to find you. I thought I was going crazy.” She glared at him narrow-eyed. “Is this some kind of game for you? Pre—pretending to be dead, letting me think I b—buried you, then coming around later? Is this your idea of a joke? Because if it is, I’m not laughing.”

Nick stood. He moved slowly because she looked like she would bolt—or shatter—at any untoward movement.

“No joke,” he said softly. “No game. And if I could have avoided this, I would have, believe me. It’s just that—”

Charity went even whiter. “Avoided this?” She brought a shaking hand to her mouth. “You wanted to avoid me? You wanted to just leave me hanging, thinking my husband was dead?” She swallowed heavily. “You’re not Nick,” she whispered, shaking. “You can’t be. He would never do this to me. He’d never leave me mourning him. Who are you?”

“No!” God, this was going badly. “I didn’t mean I was avoiding you, it’s just that—”

But Nick was talking to empty air. With a moan muffled by the hand she clapped to her mouth, Charity bolted for the bathroom, making it barely in time. She slid to the porcelain bowl, slammed both hands on the tiled wall behind the toilet and bowed her head. Nothing came out but tea and vodka. She coughed and retched alcohol-scented brown liquid, eyes streaming.

Nick was right behind her. He ran a small hand towel under the sink faucet and wrung it out. He wrapped one arm around her from behind and gently wiped her face. She was gasping, shaking, sweating, coughing. Her stomach muscles clenched hard under his hand as another bout of retching seized her.

They were dry heaves now, but no less wrenching for the fact that there was nothing left in her stomach to come up. She made little moves to dislodge Nick’s arm, but he wasn’t having it. She needed his support. She was running on fumes and he was sure she’d fall to the ground without his arm around her.

When a few minutes went by with no more spasms, she finally stepped away, trying to escape his arm. Nick didn’t budge. He rinsed the towel out again, turned her toward him, and wiped her face and neck.

Charity stood meekly, head bowed, eyes closed. He’d seen ice with more color than her face.

She looked so miserable his heart squeezed in his chest.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “You belong in bed. We can talk about things later, but right now you need to be lying down.” Frowning, he lifted the back of his hand to her brow. She was cool. Still—“You’re probably coming down with something, you’re so run down. We’ll be lucky if it’s just the flu. This is bronchitis or pneumonia weather. I think I’m going to take you to the hospital.”

Good idea. The hell with opsec. He’d drive Charity to the hospital in the next town over, stay in the background. Make sure she checked in, make sure she was all right while Di Stefano and Alexei kept watch over Worontzoff.

“No.” She made an effort and stood up straight, moving away from him. “I’m not sick. I’m grieving.” She glared at him.

“I didn’t know grieving made you throw up a thousand times a day. That’s a new one.”

“I haven’t been throwing up a thousand times a day! That’s ridiculous. Just in the mor—”

She stopped suddenly, eyes wide. Nick froze, too. They looked at each other. There was utter silence in the pretty little bathroom as Nick searched her eyes for the truth he suddenly felt in every cell in his body.

“Go ahead, finish that sentence. You only throw up in the mornings. You know what that means, don’t you? It means you’re pregnant.”

“No,” Charity whispered. Her hand went immediately to her belly, as if trying to feel what was there through muscle and skin. Nick knew what was there. A baby. His baby. He would bet his new million dollars on it. “No. No way. I can’t be pregnant.” She looked appalled at the thought.

Nick frowned. “You certainly can be pregnant. God knows we fucked enough, and once without a rubber is all it takes. Ask any teenaged girl.”

Charity flinched. “This is—this is ridiculous. I can’t possibly know anything for sure. Not now, not yet. I’d need tests, blood tests, urine tests, whatever, it takes weeks to be sure…” Her voice tapered off as she stared wide-eyed at Nick. Both of them were absolutely certain, he knew it, but Charity was having problems coping with it.

Nick was a soldier, Charity wasn’t. All his life he’d never flinched from reality. He saw what was, not what he wanted, always, and he saw it immediately. He never needed time to adapt. Christ, if you need time to adapt to new situations, stay away from battlefields.

Taking time to process things is a very good way to get killed.

Charity came from a gentler background, where bad news came rarely and there was time to acclimate. She was still processing the idea while Nick was already planning ahead.

A baby. A baby! Jesus. He’d never wanted marriage and he’d always rejected even the thought of kids. What the fuck did he know about families, about raising kids? He’d grown up in an orphanage and brutal foster homes, not exactly role models of domesticity.

Of course, Jake had grown up the same way and he was the best husband and father on earth. But that was Jake. Nick was Nick. All it took was a hint from the woman du jour of wedding bells or even jewelry and Nick was in the next state. It wasn’t anything he wanted, or anything he ever expected to want.

Which is why the jolt of desire he felt nearly knocked him to his knees. Desire for Charity, but also desire for their child. It was a totally new emotion, but he processed it instantly as it settled inside him. There was no doubt it was real. He recognized it instantly, as if it had been there all along, patiently waiting for him to acknowledge it.

That angry buzzing that had filled his head and clouded his mind was gone. His mind was completely clear, and he knew exactly what he wanted.

He wanted Charity and this child he’d made with her. He wanted it ferociously, more than he’d wanted to become a Delta operator all those years ago.

In a flash, his life turned around 180 degrees.

He wanted it all. A real marriage and fatherhood. He wanted to live with this beautiful woman in this beautiful house in this beautiful little town. He wanted to raise their son or daughter in a loving home, protected and cared for. And he wanted more kids. Why the hell not? Why stop at one?

Of course, between now and that future there were a few hurdles to overcome and one of them was staring at him right now, white-faced and shell-shocked.

Nick took her hands in his. They were ice-cold. He brought them to his lips and kissed them. Charity drew in a deep breath and snatched her hands away from his. He let her do it. Right now was not the time to force her in any way.

Like a child, Charity hid her hands behind her back. She looked up at him, searching his eyes, trying to read him.

Nick knew exactly how to deflect curiosity and hide whatever he wanted to hide. It was one of his gifts, together with stillness and emotional detachment. It was what made him such a good undercover cop. He knew how to keep people out. But now he needed to switch gears, fast.

He deliberately drew down the shield he’d had all his life around his mind and heart and let her in.

Charity shook her head slowly. “Who are you? I think I’m going crazy. I fall in love with a man in the space of a week, then I marry him and become a widow on the same day. And now my husband comes back from the dead. It’s too much to take in.” She swallowed heavily. “I need the truth. Tell me what’s going on, Nick. Or is Nick even your real name?”

“Yeah, my name’s Nick. I’ll tell you everything, but first you’re going to clean up and then you’re going to sit down before you fall down.”

He held her hair back with one hand while she splashed cold water on her face. He put a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste on the sink shelf and looked at her pointedly. She brushed her teeth, then rinsed her mouth with mouthwash. He put a comb in her hand and she combed her hair. Nick knew that these small grooming motions made her feel better, more in control.

A little color was returning to her face, but her hands were still shaking. He turned her toward him. “Okay now. We’ll have our talk, but not in here. It’s too important a conversation to have in a bathroom, so we’ll go to the living room. You’re going to walk to the couch or I’m going to carry you. Your choice, but you have to take it now.”

Charity blinked. He knew how to put command in his voice. She obeyed instinctively. She made for one of the armchairs, but he steered her to the couch and sat down next to her. She drew back, alarmed.

She wanted to avoid him. Tough shit. He was here and he was staying. He reached over for her hand. She gave a little halfhearted tug to try to get her hand back, but his grip was firm. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he wasn’t letting her go. He needed to be touching her for this part.

She turned to him. “Okay,” she said quietly, hand still in his. “This is what I know about you. Your name is Nicholas Ames, you’re thirty-four years old, you are—were—a stockbroker in New York. You made some money and this year you retired from the office you’d worked in for twelve years. You want to open a business of your own. Your father was a banker, your mother was a lawyer. So tell me—how much of that is true?”

Nick was so goddamned proud of her. Any other woman would be screaming by now, but not Charity.

Her words echoed in his head. How much of that is true? “Basically none of it,” he confessed.

She lost what little color she’d acquired. Her hand slipped out of his to cover her mouth. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “You’re already married. That’s what this is about.”

“No!” He grabbed her hand back. “God no, I’m not married. Never have been, either. Or rather, yes, I am married. To you.”

“No, you’re not. My husband’s dead,” she whispered. “I buried him.”

“No, honey, you buried someone else. Someone who tried to kill me. I have no idea what his name was because he had no ID on him.”

Charity blinked back tears. “He might not have had ID, but he did have your wedding ring.”

“Yes, he did.” Nick looked her straight in the face. “And putting that ring on his finger was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But it had to be done. It identified the body as me, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her face drawn. “When the police officer gave me that ring, I thought my heart would stop.”

Nick bent forward slowly until his lips touched her hair. She held herself stiffly but she didn’t draw back. One small victory. “I know,” he said against her hair, his breath moving a silken strand.

He’d almost forgotten the smell of her. A mix of shampoo, some springlike scent, and her skin. He breathed it in and somehow it calmed him. He’d been running on adrenaline since he’d driven the man off the cliff, wound tighter than a drum, feeling as if someone had ripped a huge, gaping hole in his chest.

Touching Charity, breathing her in, calmed him down, cooled something inflamed in him. He’d been like some wounded creature in the forest, blasted by a hunter, stumbling around blindly, in pain, losing blood. Charity healed him, made him whole.

“Start with your name. I need to know your name.” Her head tilted as she studied him.

“Nick. Nick Ireland. But that’s not my family name. I have no idea what my real name is. I was left in the baby hatch of an orphanage in upstate New York. There was a note pinned to the blanket saying that the baby’s name was Nick. Later that day, a girl called, asking if I’d been found. She was crying. The secretary of the orphanage said she had an Irish accent, so they called me Ireland. No one has any idea who she was.”

Nick watched Charity’s eyes. He’d never told this story to a woman, ever. He was really good at making up fake legends. It never even occurred to him to tell the truth. He didn’t want to see pity or horror.

He wasn’t seeing them now.

Charity was listening quietly, watching him, face somber. “Go on,” she said.

“I was in the military for ten years. Army.” He didn’t say which part of the army. Actually, he couldn’t. Delta operators’ jackets were kept confidential for twenty years. “I was wounded on a mission and had to resign my commission. I’ve been working for the government for the past couple of years, on a special task force investigating international organized crime collaborating with terrorists. There’s more and more of that, and we’re there to stop it.”

He watched her process the information. He was sure she was filing away every piece of data he was giving her, putting it all together. He kept forgetting how smart Charity was. It was easy to forget, at times. She was so pretty, so gentle you could easily overlook the fact that she was as sharp as a tack.

“The army,” Charity mused. “So, I guess you didn’t fall on your aunt’s shower curtain rod, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.” There was utter quiet in the room as she absorbed this news.

Charity was losing that shell-shocked look. She had no expression at all, like a porcelain doll. He didn’t like it, because more bad news was coming, as inevitable as a wave rolling in to shore.

“So—if your job is as an undercover cop—that is basically what you said, isn’t it?”

Nick nodded.

“So, what are you here for? Parker’s Ridge is a quiet little New England town. What could you possibly be looking for here?”

This was it. Nick had to walk carefully here, over hot coals. Barefoot.

He tightened his grip on her hand. “We’re here because of Vassily Worontzoff. He’s the head of one of the most powerful Russian mobs and there’s a lot of chatter that he’s about to get in touch with an al Qaeda cell. And that is highly classified information, Charity. I don’t have to tell you that it goes no farther than this room.”

She was staring at him. She gave a half laugh. “You’re investigating Vassily? Are you crazy? He’s a writer, what does he have to do with—wait a minute.” Nick could almost see the cogs in her head, spinning so hard they generated steam as she put the pieces together. “If you’re after Vassily—which is crazy—then that means that you were after me. Everyone knows I’m his best friend here.” Charity pulled her hand away and suddenly stood up. “Oh my God.” She put her hands on her head and spun around, as if finding it hard to be in the same place with what she was saying. “You came to me for information. I was—I was your mission. Oh God, oh God. You were sent here to seduce me. Like Mata Hari, only a male. I can’t believe this. I was your job.” Her voice was rising in agitation.

Nick opened his mouth, then shut it as a car braked sharply in front of her house and a man emerged fast, coming at a run toward the front door. A second later, the bell rang.

Well, this was getting interesting.

It was Di Stefano, and judging by the look on his face, he was furious. At Nick.

Here to join the rapidly growing I Hate Nick Club.