Ready (28 page)

He’d been that far gone.

Making a stab in the dark for what he hoped was the case, he said, “You didn’t come looking.”

“Didn’t need to. The surveillance equipment showed two warm bodies in the jungle room.”

While Joshua did not do video surveillance in the rooms of his home, his sensors could pretty accurately pick up the number of people in each room.

“I thought you might be a tad upset if I interrupted your afternoon hot tub.” The Georgia twang was liberally laced with wry humor.

Joshua didn’t bother replying. His friend was right and he was glad the other man’s sometimes off-the-wall sense of humor hadn’t prompted him to knock on the door. He didn’t want Lise embarrassed. “What’s the latest word from Nitro?”

“He and Josie are making good time, but they’re still two days out.”

“No contact from Nemesis yet?”

“No, but Nitro says he’s being followed.”

When you lived a great deal of your life relying on your instincts, you learned when you could trust them. Joshua trusted Nitro’s as surely as he trusted his own. “Good.”

Hotwire took a long drink of beer from the bottle at his elbow before talking again. “I did some more digging and you’re not going to like what I found.”

“What?”

“Ed Jones belonged to a fringe militarist group, the kind who pass out
The Anarchist’s Cookbook
as Christmas gifts.”

The perp was getting more irritating by the minute. “How heavily involved was he?”

“I’m not sure, but it looks like he did some computer hacking for them. He quit the group a couple of years ago.”

“Do you know why?”

Hotwire nodded his blond head. “According to some e-mail correspondence I found on their server, he was offended when he wasn’t given a leadership position among them.”

“Because of his hacking?”

“Yeah. Apparently, he thought he was more important to the cause than the rest of them did.”

“Sounds like an egoist.”

“That’s only part of the picture.” Hotwire popped a couple of kernels of popcorn in his mouth and chewed. “His employee records also indicate dissatisfaction with his career growth. He saw himself as more key to the company than management did. Losing his job would have been a huge blow to a guy like that.”

Joshua’s face tightened. “Nothing like the blow I’m going to deal him when I get my hands on him.”

Hotwire’s expression said he understood and agreed. “How’s Lise holding up?”

“She’s fine, but I want that jerk off her back.”

“Considering how much time you two spent in the jungle room, I’d say she’s more than fine.” His eyes mocked Joshua.

“That’s none of your business.”

Hotwire’s lips quirked. “Nope, it sure isn’t, but I’ve got to say I’m glad I wasn’t the enemy.”

“Anyone but you, Nitro, or I would have a helluva time getting through my security.”

“True.”

Joshua ran his fingers through his hair. “I know I should leave her alone.”

“But you can’t?” Hotwire asked with interest.

“No.”

“That’s different.”

“
She’s
different.”

“Are we going to be moving up our plan to go into security consultation?”

They’d been talking about getting out of the merc business for the last year. Although they’d been soldiers for almost two decades, none of them had been ready for the switch just yet, particularly Nitro. He still had a lot of the restlessness that drew men to their line of work.

He got up and started putting things away, tossing his friend’s beer bottle in the recycling container. “Lise deserves better than a merc with my past and no emotions to speak of.”

“You don’t look like your emotions are dead when you’re around her.”

Joshua was beginning to believe that, but that didn’t mean he had a future with her. “She’s innocent and so damn sweet.”

“And?”

“I’ve done and seen things that would make it into most people’s nightmares.”

“Haven’t we all? But I don’t think she minds.”

“That’s because she’s made me into something in her mind that I’m not. Once reality hits, she’ll want to move on.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I heard what you two were saying that day in the apartment about how this was like an adventure in one of her books. It’s a fantasy for her, not reality.”

“You just keep telling yourself that, Wolf, but I’ll flip Nitro for the best-man slot at your wedding.”

The next couple of days went by quickly with Joshua and Hotwire coordinating the trap for Nemesis, Lise trying to meet deadline on her current book, and she and Joshua making love each night in the privacy of Joshua’s bed.

Nitro and Josie McCall arrived late in the evening. It had been snowing softly for a couple of hours and Lise had been fretting about driving conditions. Joshua laughed at her. “Nitro has driven in full-scale blizzards on balding tires. Don’t worry about him and Josie making it up the mountain.”

Lise had nodded, but bit her lip. The relief she felt when the decoys made it safely to Joshua’s home was palpable.

Nitro parked outside, a ways from the house. He and Josie crossed the snow-covered ground and cleared walkways to the front door.

“I can’t believe how much she looks like me,” Lise commented to Joshua as Josie followed Nitro into the house.

Josie smiled at Lise, though the smile looked strained to Joshua. “Makeup and a wig will do wonders, but I’ll be glad to get them off.”

“I can imagine.” Lise’s voice was typically warm with understanding, and Joshua put his arm around her waist as he led them all into the primary surveillance room where Hotwire continued to monitor the equipment.

She smiled up at him and for a second, he forgot about the other people crowding into the room.

“I’ll leave Nitro to give you the report.” Josie’s voice brought him back to the present. “It isn’t much, really, and I’m going to go turn back into me.” She turned to Hotwire. “You want to show me the way to a bathroom?”

“The report can wait—I’ll show you,” Nitro said before the other man had a chance to answer.

He went to take Josie’s arm to lead her off, but she sidestepped his touch. “Just show me the way, Hotshot. You don’t need to manhandle me to do it.”

Nitro’s expression didn’t change, but the sense of leashed intent emanating off of him rose several notches.

However, he spun on his heel without a word or further attempt to touch her and stalked away. Josie followed, her expression readable if Joshua’s buddy’s was not. The female operative looked ready to chew nails.

A half an hour later, they all congregated in the primary surveillance room off the entryway again.

Lise had been surprised when Joshua had showed it to her the first time. “Why do you have two of them?” she’d asked.

“It’s convenient.”

“It’s overkill, if you ask me. How many monitors can one man possibly need?”

“I’m the security expert,” he reminded her and she stuck her tongue out at him, which led to a long, drawn-out kiss when he showed her more effective uses for it.

“A car followed you onto the road, but it didn’t go past checkpoint two,” Joshua said now to Nitro.

“Nemesis.”

“There’s no way of knowing that,” Lise said.

“I feel it in my gut. He was following us.” Nitro looked at Josie. “You felt it, too.”

She nodded, her gaze nowhere near meeting Nitro’s. She focused on Lise. “I’m sure he was there. It was like I could feel him watching.”

Nitro made a sound that could have been taken as agreement, or something else.

It made Josie stiffen, but she didn’t look at him. “I’m a damn good operative and my instincts have never let me down. Regardless of what some pigheaded, chauvinist, badass mercenaries of this world might think.”

“If I didn’t think you were the goods, I would never have brought you into the case,” Joshua said, knowing she wasn’t talking about him, but wanting to pull Nitro’s chain.

“I think you’re one of the best operatives I’ve ever known,” Hotwire said, his Georgia drawl very pronounced and his blue eyes filled with mischief.

The smile he turned on Josie was all Southern charm, and Nitro looked ready to kill someone.

Josie wasn’t looking at him, so she didn’t see it, but everyone in the room knew who
her
glare was for. “
I wasn’t talking about you two
.”

Nitro said something that made Lise gasp.

“Are you two going to have a problem working together?” Joshua asked, not altogether just to push his friend.

He didn’t want the mission screwed up because of a personality conflict.

“Yes.
I’m
a professional.” Josie turned to give Nitro the benefit of her filthy look this time.

“It’s not a problem,” he said, his eyes narrowing as they took in Josie’s hostile stance. “I survived four days on the road with nothing but her company—I can last out the end of the mission.”

Josie’s eyes clouded with pain before she turned her body so that her back was to Nitro. “What do you want me to do?” she asked Joshua.

He felt sorry for her. Nitro
was
a badass, and if Joshua’s emotions were on ice, his buddy’s had been burned right out of him. Something was obviously going on between them, but Josie would be smart to cut her losses, because Nitro was not a man to give a woman emotional power over him.

“When I’m not with Lise,” Joshua said to the female operative, “I want you with her. Nitro, Hotwire, and I will split the surveillance watch and the outside reconnaissance, but I don’t want Lise alone ever, okay?”

“Are we bunking together?” Josie asked.

“No, she’s staying in my room.”

Surprise contorted Josie’s features. “
On a job?
”

“This isn’t a regular mission.”

Josie shook her head, comprehension dawning in her eyes. “I thought you’d never fall. You always acted so immune.”

Lise turned six shades of pink and tried to move away from his arm. “He didn’t fall, he’s just…”

“Not going to talk about it.” He reined her back in, keeping her small body close to his own.

Josie smiled, her whole stance relaxing. She even laughed. “That’s great. It really is, but I’m mum on the details from here on out. Sorry,” she said to Lise, “I wouldn’t have said
anything
if it hadn’t come as such a shock.”

The sound of disbelief that came from Nitro really had Joshua wondering what was going on between the two of them, but nobody pried into Nitro’s life, not even his friends.

It was a way of being Joshua identified with well, despite having two sisters and a mother who didn’t know the meaning of the word
privacy.
Which was probably one of the main reasons he’d never invited them to visit his sanctuary. There were big chunks of his life they knew nothing about. Stuff they could not handle if they did.

L
ise’s body convulsed with pleasure, her heart exploding with emotion, and she cried out, “I love you, Joshua!”

She couldn’t keep the words inside. She didn’t even try anymore. Not when they made love.

His mouth slammed down on hers, marking her as his while at the same time sealing her words of love inside her. He came, his whole body shuddering over hers while he threw his head back and shouted her name over and over again.

Interspersed with her name were words of need, of approval, of volcanic pleasure.

But no words of love.

And Lise’s heart contracted with pain, even as her body knew a satiation that left her totally drained.

Afterward, he got up to take care of the condom and she tried to regain emotional perspective in the brief solitude, but hot wetness burned the back of her eyes.

He was the perfect lover, burning her up with his passion and yet patient when she needed him to be. Her love for him grew more powerful every time they came together in physical intimacy, but that was only part of it. Unquenchable emotion also consumed her on each occasion he exhibited the bone-deep character that made him who he was.

Not to have her feelings returned shredded her insides. But how could any man be so tender and caring for her every need, when he felt no real emotion for the woman in his arms?

When Joshua came back, he pulled her against him like he always did after making love.

She searched his eyes for some indication of deep emotion as their breathing returned to normal, but his chocolate gaze remained impenetrable.

She stifled a sigh and said good night, unwilling to break their rapport with questions she wasn’t sure she wanted the answers to.

Warmth flared briefly in his expression as he leaned forward to kiss her lips and whisper, “Good night,” before tucking her head under his chin.

Emotion beat around her in the ensuing silence, and she would swear on her publishing contract that it wasn’t all coming from her.

Hope flooded her and she took his hand in hers, bringing it to her mouth to kiss his palm, her love for him pulsating on her lips and through her fingertips.

She pressed his hand against her heart and nuzzled his chest. “I do love you, Joshua.”

He didn’t say anything, though he hugged her more closely to him. It definitely wasn’t a rejection, but could it simply be physical consolation for his lack of emotional attachment to her?

“Joshua?”

“Shh, Lise. Go to sleep, honey.”

She tried to do as he said, but inexplicably, despair grew second by second until she could stand their intimacy no longer.

It was too much of a reminder of what she needed that he couldn’t give and she turned from him, scooting away so their bodies no longer touched. The immediate sensation of being cut off from something infinitely precious and necessary swept over her in a drowning wave, and she had to bite her fist not to cry out at the pain of it.

His big hand settled on her naked shoulder. “Lise, is something wrong?”

Nothing she wanted to talk about, so she shook her head.

He didn’t ask why she’d pulled away, but he tugged her back into his arms and she let him. Even this false sense of emotional intimacy was better than nothing.

Only a small voice in the back of her head said she was doing it again, hiding from a reality she didn’t want to face, but one that wasn’t going to disappear.