Personal Target: An Elite Ops Novel (17 page)

She held up her hand. What a way to shut down the afterglow. She felt ridiculous for not realizing that not having used a condom would be one of the first things he’d think of.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. All tested here, too.”

After discovering Collin’s affair, she’d run—not walked—to her doctor to have a full battery of tests for every STD out there. Thankfully everything had come back negative. She didn’t want to go into that sordid story now, but she did want Nick to assume that she was on birth control. Under no circumstances did she want to tell him the real reason he didn’t have to worry about her getting pregnant.

He nodded. “You’re sure everything is okay? Because you could have missed a few days of your pills there in Mexico.”

“I’m fine,” she repeated, disappointed in herself to hear the edge in her tone.

“Alright.” He shrugged. “Look, I just . . . I’m trying to be responsible here and—hey, are you okay?”

Ah, God.
She was crying. She had no idea where the tears had come from, but suddenly there they were, burning at the edges of her eyes and overflowing down her cheeks. Trying to hold them back was useless. It was like a running faucet she didn’t know how to shut off. She’d already cried on him once. She hadn’t wanted to do this again, but there seemed no hope for it.

Her nose ran as he slid back down onto the mattress beside her and pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay,” he murmured.

A huge sob escaped, and she shook her head.
I have to tell him.
This was about ten years ago, not today. Could she do it? She’d been this close a couple of times. But she
had
to do it now. She clasped her hands in front of her and against his chest.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

“Shhh . . .” He shook his head and held her more firmly, but she kept talking before she lost her nerve.

“When you left after that summer. I didn’t tell you . . . I . . .”

God, what was she doing? She could feel his slow, steady heartbeat under her palm. She pulled back to look at him, and as she watched, something changed in his eyes. That change scared her more than when the man had held the revolver on her in the cab. She clenched and unclenched her fingers. It was time.

“I-I didn’t tell you that I got pregnant that summer.” She blurted the words, and in the quiet of their bungalow by the river, it felt as if she’d shouted them.

She stared at him, twisting the ring on her finger as a myriad of emotions crossed his face. At first he appeared stunned, followed by an expression that came and went so quickly she didn’t recognize it. Then his eyes went cold as he carefully pulled his hands from her sides.

Chapter Fifteen

N
ICK SWALLOWED
. H
IS
mind was awash in disbelief and something else he was scared to focus on.

Jenny had been pregnant with his child.

What had happened to it?

She was crying harder, yet his arms loosened at her waist. It might make him an ass, but he moved away from her in the bed, unable to hide his icy demeanor.

“You got pregnant the summer we were together?” He was surprised his voice didn’t crack.

She nodded with tears streaming down her face. “I was going to tell you. We were writing back and forth, and you seemed very interested in pursuing—”

“So why didn’t I ever get a letter about it? God, you were having a baby.”
My baby.
He fought to keep his tone even.

“I was. I mean, I did. Write. The letter was written.” She sniffled, and he flooded emotionally, unable to do anything to comfort her or himself.

All too clearly he recalled the hurt and confusion he’d felt when she’d quit communicating. There was no way he could hold her now, as much as she might need him to. Instead, he went cold.

Because no matter what she said, there’d been no letter, no email, no explanation.

He’d been in his own personal hell, dealing with choices about his future and trying to put the ramifications of his parents’ death and his dad’s disgrace behind him. He’d always thought Jenny had changed her mind about him and just didn’t want to deal with all his baggage after that summer. He hadn’t been able to blame her for that, even though he’d wanted more. But this news put an entirely different spin on things.

“Why didn’t I receive that letter?” he repeated.

She wasn’t looking at him anymore. “I had a miscarriage.”

At first he wasn’t sure his mind was registering the words she said.

“I was at SMU on a full-ride scholarship and five months along.” She took a deep breath and inhaled with a soft wheeze. “There were complications. I ended up having a hysterectomy.”

His gut clenched as he shook his head from side to side. “And you never told me,” he whispered.

Jenny had been pregnant with his baby, and she’d never said a word. The knowledge hit him like a sucker punch.
A baby.

He couldn’t believe it. He felt like he was learning of his father’s embezzlement all over again.

“I never told anyone. I was a senior in college with no family, remember? My aunt had died the year before. Having a baby was going to change my entire world. I wouldn’t have been able to keep my scholarship and finish school because the money was in place only for full-time students. I felt like I was completely on my own.”

Only because you chose to be. I would have been there if I’d known. If you’d told me.
But he couldn’t say that out loud. He’d already said too many hurtful things that couldn’t be taken back.

“Only the doctor and my advisor at school, Teddy Langford, knew. And Teddy didn’t know until the week before I lost the baby. I’d finally gone to him for help. He was trying to figure out how to salvage the scholarship situation.

“I didn’t even tell my roommate. The miscarriage happened during Christmas break, the day after finals were over in early December. I called Teddy from the hospital. He helped set things up so I could take the next semester off and go to China on a field study and keep the scholarship. I was gone from late January until July.”

“You didn’t even tell Angela, did you?” He was back in control, for the moment, his iceman persona taking over.

“No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell you either. What could I have said that wouldn’t have made you feel horrible? You were starting your life over with a new direction and a new career, still working through all the issues with your parents’ accident. In your letters that fall, it sounded like you loved what you were doing. I didn’t want you to feel some obligation to me—and you would have—particularly once I was no longer . . .”

“Pregnant,” he finished for her.

“I’d convinced myself that we’d had a simple affair, a summer romance.”

He’d moved to the far side of the bed and turned away from her in an attempt to escape the painful things she was revealing, but he needed to hear this more than he needed to protect himself. Finally, he turned back to her. She was still wrapped in a sheet and looked almost exactly the same way he remembered the first time they’d slept together.

A stinging regret washed over him, like a breaking wave on the shore filled with broken shells and sand. Overwhelming sorrow engulfed him as he realized all they’d lost by not communicating. Then anger bubbled inside. Where was all this emotion coming from? He tried to push it away, to push it down. But everything spun up together and spilled over in a hot, ugly rush.

“We were friends, Jenny. Friends before we slept together. Did it ever occur to you that I had a right to know? A fucking right to grieve the loss? It was my baby, too.”

She swallowed hard but never cowered at his tone. “No. At the time your grief over this didn’t enter into my thinking. I was twenty-one, self-absorbed, and focused on my own misery. My own catastrophe. You’d lost your parents six months before and changed the entire direction of your life. You were trying to figure things out. How would knowing this have helped?”

Jesus, if she only knew. He’d been a walking disaster but hadn’t wanted anyone to know it. Nick had wanted everyone to think he was thrilled with what he was doing. In reality, he’d been reeling from the loss of his parents. In addition to his father’s betrayal, Nick had been trying to pick up the pieces of his own life and support his brother, Drew, who was finishing up his own degree. As much as it burned, he appreciated Jenny’s honesty about where her head had been ten years ago.

She swallowed again audibly. “Not telling you has always bothered me. It’s the part of all this that I screwed up so badly.”

He watched her, unwilling to say anything else because he was concerned for what other hurtful things might pop out of his mouth while he was still reeling from the shock.

“I was broken and a complete mess,” she said.

“You married that spring.” He heard the accusation in his voice and only mildly regretted it.

As long as he lived he’d never forget that phone call from Drew. It came just before he was scheduled to leave on his first tour in Afghanistan. As they said their goodbyes, his brother told him that Jenny had gotten married while studying abroad in China.

Nick had found himself actually struggling to breathe as Drew told him how surprised Angela was at the news but how happy Jennifer seemed. The bottom had dropped out of his world when he belatedly realized the terrible price of not having told Jenny how he really felt.

He’d hung up after hearing that news, boarded the troop transport bound for Kandahar, and never looked back. With Jenny married to someone else, there’d been no reason to look back. He’d gone on to become a SEAL, eventually joining the CIA and NCS. His throat tightened and his chest hurt for everything he’d lost without even knowing it.

Jenny nodded. “I met Collin Petersen on that dig in China. I was trying to forget you, the baby . . . everything. I was trying to feel again. I mistook distraction for attraction, and I said
yes
.”

Nick had no idea what to say to that. He completely understood the
not feeling
part. It was the
wanting to feel
again
he couldn’t get a handle on.

“I recognized the mistake pretty fast, but unfortunately I was already married.”

“Right.”

“I had no clue what I was doing or what I wanted. I just knew I didn’t want to hurt. And honestly, I didn’t, not really, not until Collin had his first affair.”

Nick didn’t want to feel sympathy for her right now, but he did. “Were there others?” he asked.

She nodded. “There was a revolving door on his office sofa. That doesn’t even make sense, but you know what I mean. He had several extremely ‘attentive’ grad students. But I think he’s going to marry this last one since she’s just . . .” Jenny’s voice drifted off.

“She’s just what?”

“Collin’s girlfriend just had a baby earlier this month.”

Without being told, Nick knew that had to be the ultimate betrayal—her husband having an affair and getting the other woman pregnant. It must have been excruciating. He didn’t want to give a shit, but he did.

Still, he was mostly numb. Fifteen minutes ago he’d wanted to rip Jenny’s clothes off, now he just wanted out of the room and away from her.

“I suppose that was . . . difficult.” God, he sounded like a complete ass. No longer able to stay in the bed, he stood up and gathered his discarded clothes and suitcase. “I’m going to clean up.”

He never looked back as he closed the door behind him and headed to the other bathroom off the second bedroom. He didn’t want to say anything else nasty to her, but he would if he stayed in that room one moment longer. He desperately needed to process everything she’d just told him, and there was no way that was happening if he was lying in bed next to her.

Given the security situation, he couldn’t leave her alone in the bungalow either. He needed to wait for Bryan. Hopefully Hollywood would be back before Nick went completely crazy.

He showered and changed because he smelled like Jenny. When he came out of the second bedroom, the master bedroom door was still closed, and he could hear the shower running.

Good. He didn’t want to see her. The image of her standing under the shower spray splashed across his brain for a split second.
Shit.

The sense of betrayal was just as strong now as it had been a half hour ago when she’d first told him about the miscarriage. The ache of loss was new but old at the same time. And to top it off, he still wanted her.
Christ.
He might need psychiatric help before this was over.

He stalked to the window and peered out the wooden blinds toward the Niger River. Birds that looked like cranes stood at the water’s edge, calling to others circling overhead. The sun would slip below the horizon in the next hour.

In the quiet of the bungalow, he heard the shower shut off behind him, and again his mind flashed on Jenny wrapping her damp body in a towel.

Where the hell was Bryan? Nick needed to get out of here, but there was no way he’d leave Jenny unprotected.

At last, there was a knock at the front door.

“It’s me.”

Thank God.
Hollywood was back. Nick stepped on the porch to talk, to breathe.

Bryan took one look at his face and asked, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just need some air. Did you get the transportation settled?”

“Got it. We’re all set. The plane will be ready tonight.”

“What did you find out?” asked Nick.

“I tried to check in with Gavin, but he didn’t answer. I left a voice mail with all the details about the attempted kidnapping at the airport, the shooter, the tattoo, all of it. He or Marissa should pick up the message. I caught Leland real time and gave him the scoop, too. He didn’t have much. He hasn’t heard anything back from Hosea Alvarez. He did ask if you were still going to let Jennifer go on the dig.”

Nick laughed, but it was a bleak sound even to his own ears. “You mean, besides the fact that I don’t have a fucking clue how to stop her?” He stretched his neck from side to side and suppressed a moan as the vertebrae popped. “Did Leland have anything else?”