You Only Love Twice (21 page)

The sweetness of the vision pierced her, making her ache all
over again. “I wanted that, too. I never meant to be a lifer. Plans change.”

“But they didn’t and that’s what’s killing me now. Yes,
Jamie died and we will mourn him forever, but we have to move on. I don’t know
what I believe in—God, the universe, whatever—but I do know that you are being
given a second chance and you’re too stubborn to take it. You will never find
another man like the one you just walked out on.”

She wasn’t about to argue with him about Jesse. “He’s so
good. I care about Jesse, but you have to know that you just wrecked
everything. Any chance we had of being friends is gone. He can’t forgive me for
what I did. I came up with the plan that sent him into hell. I did that. I’ve
been lying to him. He didn’t know Jamie was with him.”

“He still doesn’t know.”

“What?”

“He wouldn’t let me tell him. He said if it hurt you for him
to know, then he didn’t need to know.” Ten sighed and sat on the edge of the
bed, looking wearier than she’d ever seen him. “I’ve gone over every possible
scenario in my head. He’s too good to be true. I’ve even thought about the fact
that if someone wanted to send in a sleeper, it would be interesting to send in
one no one else trusts. Hide him in plain sight. Jesse would be perfect. You
could train him to know what to say, how to act, how to look vulnerable enough
that someone like Taggart would want to protect him, train him, give him
access. Like I just gave him access to top secret files.”

“I can’t believe you gave him clearance.” She knew he was
trustworthy. It just wasn’t like Ten to change his mind.

Ten nodded slowly. “There comes a time when you have to put
the past aside, put paranoia and experience aside and go with your gut.
Sometimes things aren’t what they seem, but every now and then they’re exactly
what they look like. I viewed him through the eyes of an operative and a man
who lost his brother and was looking for someone, anyone to blame for it. But
it changed when I did one thing.”

“What was that?”

“I decided to look at him through your eyes. And I made a
decision. I will trust him. I would trust him with you and therefore I’ll trust
him with my life, too, and the lives of every person in this country. He won’t
let us down.”

“He doesn’t know?” A little hope lit inside her. Why, she
wasn’t sure. She just knew she didn’t want him to hate her. Even if he never
spoke to her again, she didn’t want him to curse her name and wish he’d never
met her.

“He wouldn’t let me tell him.”

“We can’t let him die.” She didn’t want to even think about
a world where he wasn’t alive and vibrant and so sweet it hurt to look at him.

Sometimes he wasn’t so sweet. Sometimes he was in control,
demanding. Yes, she’d liked that Jesse, too.

She turned and looked out the window. In the distance, she
could see the McKay-Taggart building. She probably wouldn’t be going back
there. She wouldn’t see all those kids again.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you pushing him away?” Ten
asked.

“Because I can still feel Jamie. It’s like he’s still here
with me.” She could feel his arms around her, sense him close. It had almost
gone away, but if she concentrated hard enough, she just knew she could get it
back.

“If he is, it’s because you won’t let him go. I don’t know
what happens when we die, but I know Jamie wouldn’t want you to hold him here.
And he probably couldn’t leave until he knew you were safe. You’re safe with
Murdoch. Let him rest, Phoebe.”

It wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t be with Jesse. “Do
you think some people are just cursed? Like nothing can really go right for
them.”

She heard him moving and then his arms came around her. For
so long the only people she had any kind of affectionate contact with had been
Jamie and Ten.

“I think some people are too stubborn to see what’s right in
front of them. My mother dumped me in a trash bin. She meant for me to die. I
should have died. From what I understand, I was dead when they did find me. It
was just luck, you know. Some bum was poking around, looking for food. He found
me and I was blue. Most bums would have run to get help or maybe just run. Not
this one. No, he was a former Army medic down on his luck. He held me in his
arms and did CPR. He brought me back and wrapped me in his coat and walked two
miles to the police station. How random is it that a fucking former Army medic
just happened to fall on hard times and just happened to pick that trash bin at
exactly the right time? You know how Franklin found me?”

When she thought about how close Ten had come to not
existing, to being nothing more than a baby no one wanted, her heart clenched.
She covered his hands with hers. “I thought you won a sharp-shooting contest.”

“Hell, I didn’t have the money to enter a damn thing. I had
a foster dad who taught me how to shoot. He was a good man. I was with him for
a long time before he got cancer and had to let me go. I snuck in. I stole one
of the entrant’s badges. I don’t even really know why I did except I wanted to
remember what it felt like to be with him. They figured out I hadn’t paid after
I won and they were calling the cops on me.”

“And that’s when Franklin showed up, right?”

“Nah, that’s when Jamie distracted them long enough for me
to run.” Ten laughed. “I ran right into Dad. I remember him looking down at me
and saying a boy who could shoot like that didn’t have to run from anything.
Two days later, I was living with him, going to a prep school. It seemed
random, coincidental. Maybe it was. Maybe it could have gone another way, but it
didn’t and that’s how I found my family. I just can’t accept after everything
we went through that none of us gets to be happy. You have a shot with Murdoch.
Jamie would want you to take it.”

“I was happy. I was happy when it was you and me and Jamie,
and accepting anything less seems wrong.” But it wasn’t less, she realized
suddenly. What she had with Jesse wasn’t less. It was different. It was
special. “I could love him. I just can’t let myself. I would be living a lie.
How would Jesse feel if he woke up one day and realized I had lied to him about
my part in his capture?”

“You made a command decision. I honestly think he’ll
understand. What he won’t understand is why you didn’t trust him enough to tell
him.” His arms tightened around her. “I’m leaving you here, sister, and that’s
an order. When Murdoch goes to Dubai, you’re going with him.”

“And after the op is over?”

“I’ll tackle that problem when it comes, but you should know
I won’t be able to send you back to Virginia alone. If you make that choice,
then I’ll go, too.”

“You’re already based in Virginia.”

“No, Phoebe. If you go back, I’ll quit the Agency. I’ll do
it because my main job in life will be to watch over you, to protect you—even
from yourself.” She felt him lay a brotherly kiss on her cheek before letting
go. “Hell, maybe we can open a brother/sister detective agency. That oughta be
good for a laugh. You think about what I said. I’m going to help Tag and
Murdoch, and by help I mean I’m going to help myself to their Scotch because
it’s already been an excruciatingly long day.”

She heard him step away and the door closed. She looked out
into the distance. After a long moment she closed her eyes and tried to bring
up that picture of Jamie that was always right there.

All she could see was Jesse. She feared she’d traded one
ghost for another because Jesse seemed as far from her as Jamie was.

Jesse stared at the files in front of him. He’d been staring
for so damn long the words were starting to blend together. It felt like he’d
been looking at them for hours. He glanced up at the clock. Yeah. It had been
hours. Hours and he still wasn’t any closer.

Every man on Ten’s team was remarkable in some way. Ace
could fly anything with wings. Boomer was a sniper of extraordinary talent.
Deke had forgotten more about explosives than most people knew. Hutch was a
hacker to rival Adam and Chelsea, while Bear was a mechanical genius. Michael
Malone had an IQ off the charts, and the two younger Taggarts were already taking
after their older brothers and showing great leadership skills.

Unfortunately, not a single one of the files had a red flag
on it that said “also turned into a traitor by crazy freak.” He knew he should
discount most of the team and simply look at the ones who had been taken for
periods of time, but he had to consider everything.

He sat back, rubbing the space between his eyes.

“Can I get you anything?”

He turned and Phoebe stood in the doorway to the conference
room. She’d taken her hair back down and looked more like the Phoebe he knew.
Maybe it had been easier when she looked cool and professional. His dick
reacted to softer Phoebe. His dick was a perpetual optimist. It was also a
moron that didn’t know when to stop. “Nah, I’m fine.”

“I can’t believe he left you with those files.” She was
shaking her head as she walked into the room. “My brother is a freak about
files, and especially about his team. I would have been surprised if he let
Taggart look at them, much less anyone else.”

It was nice to know he could still surprise her. Too bad she
was surprised that someone would trust him. “He did let Tag look at them. He
also didn’t get far. He and Tag ran out to grab a late lunch. If it helps, he
told me he would kill me if I used anything against him.”

“You would never do that.” She gave him a tentative smile.
“He trusts you. It’s a good thing. It means you don’t have to worry about him
watching you again, though he’s really fast to ask you for a favor. You’ll have
to watch out for that. He’ll have you picking up packages for him in the
weirdest places, and sometimes the packages end up trying to kill you. I should
know.”

He knew what she was trying to do. She was trying to find
their easy camaraderie again, but he just couldn’t do it. Even being friends with
her would be too hard. He just had to survive until she could go back to
Virginia and the house she shared with her perfect husband. He nodded and
stared back at his file. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’m sorry.” He heard her move toward him. “You know I was
married. I haven’t done that with anyone but him. Have sex, I mean. It hit me
afterward. It really wasn’t about you.”

He looked up at her, surprised. “No one else?”

“No. I was a virgin when I married Jamie. Well, not when I
married him, but I did end up marrying him, so I sort of lost my virginity to
my husband. I certainly hadn’t slept with anyone since I lost him.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” It had been the last thing on
his mind. Pleasing her, making her want him—those had been the things going through
his mind. He’d failed.

“It wasn’t like that. You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s
what I’m trying to explain to you. I had an emotional reaction.”

And he’d wanted to hold her. Even as he understood she was
longing for another man, he’d wanted to comfort her. “It’s all right. We made a
mistake. We won’t do it again.”

She flushed, her face going pink, but she nodded. “Yes. We
won’t do it again. I just wanted you to know that I…I’m going to miss you when
this is done.”

“Sure.” She would remember the dude she wished she hadn’t
slept with and he would remember that he’d failed utterly. It was a great
trade-off.

“Do you want to talk?”

“No.”

She frowned at him. “No?”

What did she want from him? “No. You said what you had to
say, Phoebe. I get it. I won’t bug you again.”

“You don’t get anything. You don’t understand and that’s why
I want to talk. You’re saying all the right things, but I can see you’re still
blaming yourself. It’s not right. Let’s talk about it and maybe you’ll
understand what’s going on.”

Tag was right. Chicks talked too much. Better to shove that
shit deep and move on. He was going back to hookers. Hookers didn’t need to
talk. They got the job done and went their own way. “We’re cool. I won’t hit on
you again and then you don’t have to lock me out of the bathroom. It’s as
simple as that.”

Her face flushed a nice shade of pink. “Is that all you’re
upset about? That I locked you out of the bathroom?”

Maybe it would be better if he played this cool. He spent
all his damn life being an earnest idiot. He wasn’t going to fall to her feet
and beg her to let him in. It wouldn’t work. He’d played her fool more than
enough. “My toothbrush was in there. Oral hygiene is very important to me.”

A long sigh came from her as she shook her head in obvious
frustration. “Jesse, please talk to me. I know I hurt you and I want you to
understand.”

He held a hand up. “It’s cool. Hey, it wasn’t that great for
me anyway. We definitely don’t have to do it again. At least I don’t have any
desire to do it again. I don’t think you do either.”

Now she went a pasty white and there was no way to miss the
way tears clouded her eyes. “All right then. I’m going upstairs for a while.
Let me know if you need something.”

Shit. He started to get up to go after her, but forced
himself to sit back down. He wasn’t the bad guy here. He was trying to put some
much-needed distance between them. Yeah, he’d been a douchebag, but that didn’t
mean he should run after her and fall at her feet.

“That was rough.” Kai Ferguson leaned against the doorframe.
He was dressed in khakis and a white button-down shirt with black loafers. It
was what Jesse liked to think of as Kai’s shrink uniform. He wore the same
clothes, though in different colors, almost every day. At night he wore
leathers, but even then there was something soothing about the psychologist.
Despite his neat clothing, his hair was long, brushing his shoulders, though he
usually had it back in a queue. He reminded Jesse of a brainy surfer half the
time.

It struck him that Kai Ferguson likely had secrets of his
own. There was probably something nasty bubbling under his calm surface.

Damn but he wished Kai hadn’t been a witness to that scene.
“Sorry. You didn’t need to see that.”

“To know you’re in trouble? No. All I had to do was read the
file on Phoebe Ian sent me to know that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at some conference?” He’d started
working at Sanctum a few months before, setting up an office in the previously
unused second floor of the building.

“Came back because Tag said he could use some help.
Apparently Alex and Eve’s baby arrived early. They weren’t expecting him for
another week, but the birth mother went into labor yesterday morning. The
baby’s perfectly healthy so they have leave to take him home. Cute little
thing, but now Eve wants maternity leave, so I’m here to take her place. The
downside is I was making time with a schizophrenia specialist. The upside, I
got a private jet all to myself, complete with top secret files. Apparently you
got the files, too. Any thoughts?”

He would do just about anything to not have to think about
what had happened between him and Phoebe. “I think it’s one of the soldiers who
went missing. I’ve pulled their files in particular.”

“I agree. I talked to Tag when I hit the ground and he told
me your theory. Very smart and I believe accurate. I’ve been going over the
psych evaluations. Naturally there’s nothing that would cause alarm or they
wouldn’t be on the team. I would really like to interview them. I think the
real proof isn’t going to be in words on a page. I need to meet the men. There
were two things that concerned me.”

Jesse sat up straighter. If Kai had something that bugged
him, he wanted to hear it. “Yes?”

“First of all, Deke resisted when the team went in to save
him. They actually had to knock him out to get him back to base. According to
the reports from the squad leader, he even broke one of their noses and
afterward he told them he didn’t want to go home.”

Odd, but it didn’t mean he’d turned. Jesse remembered how it
had felt. He hadn’t actively fought the team who came for him, but he hadn’t
cared much either. He’d been afraid to go back, afraid he didn’t belong there
anymore. “You feel dirty. At least I did. I didn’t have a family to go back to,
but if I had, I would have felt weird about it. I didn’t want to be around
anyone I knew. I felt like the man I’d been was gone, and being around old
friends would just remind me. Sometimes it got so bad, I wanted to die.”

It hadn’t helped that no one welcomed him back. He’d been
met with suspicion and distrust, and people who wondered what he’d done to live
when everyone else had died.

“I understand what you’re saying and that’s fairly normal,
but I have to take into consideration that it could have been an emotional
reaction to leaving a place he now thought of as home,” Kai mused. “Ace, on the
other hand, was very calm. There’s nothing in his reports that even says he has
nightmares. He could be stoic. He could be lying to preserve some sense of
manliness, but I get suspicious when there’s no emotion at all present.”

“Maybe he’s not an emotional guy.” He’d met a lot of
soldiers who knew how to hide what they were feeling. The battlefield wasn’t
the place for a bunch of feelings.

Kai adjusted his glasses as he spoke. “We’re all emotional,
Jesse. It comes out in different ways, but the smart person can read it for
what it really means. Take the reaction you had to Ms. Grant. You intended to
get her to believe that you are no longer interested in her and that she’s bad
in bed. Way to punch a chick in the gut by the way.”

His stomach dropped. Did they have to go back there? “I
didn’t mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it?”

Jesse looked down at the files again. “It doesn’t matter
now.”

Naturally Kai wouldn’t leave it be. The man never let up.
“If I had to guess, you two finally had sex and then she realized she wasn’t
ready, but couldn’t talk to you about it until this morning. You realized you
love her and think you can never have her. It’s one more thing you want in life
that you don’t get, one more thing you managed to taste before it was taken
away from you. So you tried to throw up a wall between the two of you.”

He was getting a little irritated. “Do you have a point,
smarty pants?”

“I do and it’s about the problem with Ace Monroe. Even when
we know we should stay calm, we lash out. My point is one way or another, there
should have been some kind of reaction, whether it’s relief or anger or
anxiety. The other two who were taken were treated for depression briefly.
There was nothing in their records that drew my attention, but I would need
access to them personally to really understand them. I can’t do that right now
so I’ve got time for a session with you. How about it, neighbor? I could go and
get Phoebe and have a little couples counseling. After all, I kind of have to
live with you two. It would be nice to not be in a war zone.”

Jesse had zero illusions about why Kai had been brought in.
Eve had felt Jesse needed more specialized treatment and Tag had found Kai, a
former Army Ranger who now specialized in treating PTSD in returning soldiers.
A whole crew of sad sacks now came in and out of Sanctum via stairs that led
directly to Kai’s office. Unfortunately, Kai’s office was also his home. He’d
set up a whole suite of rooms where he worked and lived. Jesse and Phoebe were
staying in his guest suite. And Jesse had stayed in Kai’s room the night
before. Where the hell would he go now? “Sorry about this. I’ll try to convince
Tag to let us use a couple of the privacy rooms now that you’re back.”

Kai’s lips ticked up. “I don’t think you’ll convince Tag of
anything. That is one man who could use some time on my couch. I dream about it
at night, you know. Ian Taggart is one large mass of previously undiagnosed
personality disorders. He’s like a walking, talking Nobel Prize. Well, if they
gave them out to psychologists.”

“You know what I’m saying.” In his own way, Kai was as
sarcastic as Ian.

“I’m happy to have some company, man. I’ve started to feel
like the Phantom of the Club some days. No, really. It’s lonely during the day.
I found myself playing the keyboards and laughing maniacally. Scared the crap
out of the cleaning staff.” Kai settled himself in a chair across from Jesse.
“I was mostly joking about the couples therapy, though from what I understand,
you could probably use it. You’ve been through a lot in the last few days. You
want to talk about it?”