Check Mate (13 page)

"We took a stupid risk," she said. "I can't believe we did that."

His expression somber, Jake replied, "What just happened doesn't really change things. I still don't trust you."

She nodded.

"I don't trust you and I haven't forgiven you for lying to me, but I wanted you so much I couldn't think straight," he told her. "You've got my mind and my emotions all screwed up, and I hate like hell to admit that to you. But I'm not going to lie to you. I consider whatever happens between us to be nothing more than temporary insanity. Do you understand?"

Oh, yes, she understood, all right. He wanted to have sex with her, but he didn't really want her. No commitments.

No love. No affair of the heart. It was nothing more to him than you-scratch-my-itch-I'll-scratch-yours. This was a first for her—sex for the sake of sex. No emotional ties. She'd never had sex with a man she didn't care for deeply.

Get real, Mariah, you care about Jake. You care too damn much. You have an emotional investment in him. But she couldn't kid herself about Jake's feelings. He'd made them perfectly clear.

"Mariah? Do you understand?" he repeated the question, apparently needing a verbal response.

"Yes, I understand. We just had sex. And if it happens again, that's all it will be. Sex. Nothing more. I get it. You
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don't have to tell me again."

"You say you understand, but you sound upset. Are you sure—"

"I'm a big girl, Jake. I'm not some simpering teenage virgin who believes you love me. We've got the hots for each other. Anything this hot will bum itself out pretty fast."

"Right. Sexual attraction combined with close proximity equals—"

"Mutual stupidity."

That comment gained her a tentative smile from Jake. He ran his hand over his mouth and jaw. "We're damn lucky we didn't get caught in the act."

"Uh-huh. Next time, we'll be more careful."

Jake cocked his head to one side and gave her an inquisitive glance. "Next time?"

Mariah sighed. Oh, great, she thought. Open mouth, insert foot. "Yes, next time. And we both know there will be a next time. This hot thing between us can't bum itself out without adding more fuel to the flames."

"I like the way you think." He cleared his throat, apparently in an effort not to laugh. "Most women wouldn't look at our situation the way you have."

"I'm not most women. Or haven't you already figured that out?"

"I'm beginning to," he told her. "I'm beginning to."

Switching gears while she was still ahead, Mariah said, "I'm going to clean up in the bathroom. Stay here and stay quiet. When I finish, the bathroom is all yours. I'll go downstairs and give my comrades a positive report on our second hypnosis session."

"I assume you're going to let them know we'll be undertaking another session this afternoon and you'll want complete privacy."

Marian's heart skipped a beat. She knew what Jake was asking. Sex in the afternoon.

"Of course, we'll need another session. There's no need not to enjoy ourselves while we're playing this game."

With that said, she left him alone and escaped into the bathroom. After she freshened up, she looked at herself in the mirror.

"You're a fool, Mariah," she told herself aloud. "A damn fool. You're going to wind up with a broken heart." And since Jake doesn't have any condoms, you just might wind up pregnant. Oh, God! She groaned. Yeah, that little thought never crossed your mind, did it?

For all she knew, she could have already conceived Jake's child. And what bothered her more than anything was the fact that she wasn't overly concerned, wasn't even upset at the thought of being pregnant.

***

Needing to put some space between them, Mariah deliberately stayed away from Jake until after lunch. She'd fed Burgess and Lester a line of bull. Thankfully they had believed her without question. Lester had, as usual, made a pest of himself, but nothing she couldn't handle. And when she had requested that Burgess take lunch upstairs to Jake as a reward for Jake's cooperation, he'd spared her having to face her lover until later. Despite wanting to be alone with Jake, she suspected that the wise thing to do was have Burgess hang around while she faked another session later today. The more she had sex with Jake, the more likely it was that she'd fall deeper in love with him.

Mariah jumped up off the sofa. "I'm going to take a walk. I need some fresh air and I should report in."

"Need some company?" Lester asked.

Mariah simply gave him an eat-dirt-and-die glance.

"You'd better wrap up good," Lester told her. "It's colder than a witch's—"

"Don't follow me," she warned him. "I'll have my pistol with me and I'd just love for you to give me a reason to use it on you. I want a little privacy when I make my call. My reports to headquarters are none of your business."

Burgess chuckled. Lester snapped his head around and glowered at his partner. Mariah took that opportunity to escape the aggravating twosome. She slipped into her down jacket and pulled her knitted cap over her head, but didn't remove the gloves stuffed into her coat pocket. After exiting through the kitchen door and entering the garage, she went directly to her vehicle, unlocked it and slid into the driver's seat. After retrieving her cell phone, she punched in the number for her Coalition contact and waited, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. He answered on the fifth ring.

"I have good news," she said. "Mr. Ingrain cooperated fully, if somewhat reluctantly, during this morning's session.

I believe I'll be able to reprogram him, but it's going to take time. Even though he's willing to cooperate in the hopes of saving his brother, his subconscious mind is resisting."

"We're willing to give you more time, but there is a limit to how long we'll wait."

"If Mr. Ingrain could see his brother—"

"Not possible. I thought I made that clear to you."

"Yes, you did." Mariah decided it would be useless to pursue the matter. She knew she couldn't come up with a
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persuasive argument, which meant they would have to find a way to locate Gideon. "I'll call tomorrow with another update."

With that conversation ended, she got out of the TrailBlazer, punched in the number for her FBI contact, then slipped on her gloves and walked outside into the frigid afternoon. A north wind whipped around her, slicing through the barrier of her thick winter clothes, pinking her cheeks and nose, and vaporizing her warm breath.

When she heard the agent's voice on the other end of the line, she said, "Ingram refuses to come with me. He's determined to find his brother. I need to know where they're holding Gideon Faulkner so I can promise Jake our guys will be able to rescue him."

"Good news and bad news," the agent told her.

Marian groaned. "Hit me with it."

"Gretchen Miller broke the secret code the Coalition has been using."

"Hallelujah. So this means—" She stopped herself abruptly. "That was the good news, wasn't it? So what's the bad news?"

"We went in after Faulkner, but came up empty-handed. The Coalition had already moved Ingram's brother and now they know we've broken the code, so..."

"So, they won't use that code anymore." Great. just great, Marian thought. One step forward, two steps back. It would make things easier if she didn't tell Jake about this. But she'd learned her lesson. No more lies between them. No more secrets.

"Look, Daley, if you can't get Ingram to agree to leave with you, then use whatever means necessary to get him to us. Understand?"

"Yes, I understand." Drug Jake. Knock him out. Bring him in. Make sure he's safe. "It could take days before another opportunity to escape arises."

"When it does, take it. Don't hesitate. And do not allow Ingram's determination to save his brother influence you in any way."

"Yes, sir."

Marian punched the off button on the phone and returned it to her coat pocket. She'd already walked down the gravel road about a quarter of a mile. She picked up her pace to a slow jog as her mind absorbed all the information.

Her loyalty lay with the bureau. Her future depended upon her doing this job well, and that meant following orders.

But if she followed orders, she'd have to betray Jake.

Make a decision, she told herself. Make a decision and stick to it. Are you willing to risk your career to prove your loyalty to Jake? Breathing in the cold, crisp air, she broke into a run, filling her lungs, testing her fitness. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not outrun her problems. Mariah stopped, bent over and caught her breath, allowing her body to rest and her heartbeat to slow. She was a federal agent working undercover, which meant playing a part, deceiving the bad guys, making them believe she was one of them. And if she stood by Jake in this matter that would mean deceiving her own team, lying to them in order to allow Jake to handle his brother's kidnapping in his own way.

So, what's it going to be Mariah—Jake or your career? She'd worked her whole life to reach this point in her career, to achieve a position that her brothers envied and her father greatly respected. She was damn good at her job and her future with the bureau looked bright. On the other hand, what did she have with Jake? Sexual chemistry? They had no past and no future. She didn't mean anything more to him than a warm body. They were simply two ships passing in the night.

Mariah knew what she had to do. It was just a matter of doing it.

***

Jake had wolfed down lunch, then alternated between pacing the floor and lying in bed staring up at the ceiling. The hours alone had given him too much time to think. About Gideon. About his own situation. And about Mariah. He knew what he had to do. He had to find his brother and rescue him, with or without Mariah's help. His first allegiance was to his new family. Protecting them had to be his main focus. Mariah was a distraction he didn't need. He couldn't believe he'd had unprotected sex with her. That alone proved her hold over him. He'd never done anything that stupid in his entire life. Saving his brother wasn't simply an act of brotherly concern. Gideon's capture could result in another international crime with dire, far-reaching consequences. If forced to participate in further criminal acts, Gideon might never recover emotionally. And once his usefulness ended, the Coalition would dispose of him like yesterday's trash.

Jake knew that if he allowed himself to care about Mariah, she would become a liability. The Coalition was already using his devotion to his brother in the hopes of controlling him. If they ever discovered that he had deep feelings for Mariah, her life would be endangered. He couldn't allow that to happen.

But do you have deep feelings for her? Jake asked himself. Yeah, sure, you feel something for her. But are those feelings coming from your heart... or from the southern regions of your anatomy? Wanting to have sex with a woman and loving a woman were often two separate desires. The two had been combined in his relationship with Tara, but he
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hadn't hungered for Tara the way he did Marian. Face it, hotshot, you might not be in love with your FBI bodyguard, but you'd do just about anything to protect her, just as you would to protect your family. Doesn't that tell you anything?

The sound of footsteps on the stairs alerted him that he'd soon have company, and from the lightness of the taps, he suspected it was Mariah. He sat up and dropped his feet to the floor, then looked toward the open door. She paused before entering, as if waiting for his permission.

"I'd begun to think you'd run off and left me," he said, halfway joking. But he couldn't completely erase a niggling uncertainty. As with many adopted children, Jake had had abandonment issues that he'd worked through years ago, and then he'd met Violet Vaughn and learned the truth about his personal history. Still reeling from that discovery, he'd been dealt another emotional blow when Tara had ended their engagement. He was better off without Tara and he knew it, but being rejected by someone you thought you'd spend the rest of your life with certainly made a man question any other woman's loyalty.

"I'm not leaving here without you," Marian told him as she walked into the bedroom they shared. "Until this situation ends in a satisfactory resolution for everyone concerned—you, Gideon, me and the bureau—you and I are going to be joined at the hip, so to speak."

Jake grinned. "I'd rather we be joined at another location other than the hip."

Her lips twitched. "That can be arranged."

"You were gone an awfully long time." Jake stood up beside the bed. "What have you been doing, playing footsies with Burgess and Lester?"

"Ha-ha."

"Not for Lester's lack of trying, I'm sure."

"Jealous?"

Jake chuckled. "Not of Lester, since I know how you loathe him. But, to be honest, I would be jealous of any other man. I tend to be the possessive type."

She stared at him, apparently speechless.

"No clever response. If you can't think fast on your feet, you'll never checkmate me."

Marian sighed. "I think that the best I could hope for with you would be a tie. There are ties in chess, right?"

"A draw," he told her. "If the players choose not to continue a game they can agree to a draw."

"But we haven't reached that point, have we? We both still want to play."

"I don't see us willingly stopping the game. We'll play until one of us checkmates the other. You know, someday I'll have to teach you to play chess. I believe you'd make a formidable opponent."

She walked toward him. He waited for her, realizing he wanted her to make the first move. When she was only a couple of feet away, she paused and looked directly into his eyes.

"As much as I enjoy our witty repartee, we need to get serious. I have something to tell you," Mariah said.