Prestige, page 8
“Why?”
He found the strength to look at her but couldn’t stop the way being so close to her made his heart break a little. He’d told himself a million times that it was the job keeping them apart, but now he had to consider that it wasn’t the job. She didn’t love him like he had loved her. She’d lusted after him. And it had ended there for her.
He pushed the disappointment down and focused on her question. “The new watch and car that I mentioned, for starters. Also, he’s dating a woman that he hasn’t told anyone on the team about. I found out when I started investigating the team. We tell each other everything. Okay…almost everything. But he never told me about her.”
“For how long?”
Troy rolled the information he’d been gathering through his mind. “About four months.”
“How long were they clients?” she asked, referencing Logan’s family’s stay under Lochlin’s protection.
“Four months.”
Meri heaved a sigh. There was no denying the coincidence of that. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“How many times did I tell you guys not to think with your”—she glanced at the boy still sleeping on the bed, then softly added—“private parts. You men never listen.”
Troy chuckled. He could say the same thing about women, but he didn’t. “Randall’s got three years until he can retire, yet he never made team leader. He never even made it to second in command. He watched me climb the ranks of our team, but he never moved forward.”
“He didn’t have it in him to be a leader. He didn’t think things through. He would have missed something, made a mistake, and gotten someone killed.”
“I’m not disagreeing,” Troy said. Randall was smart and dedicated, but he was overly confident in his abilities. Though he made rash decisions without considering all the options, he never would have had the guts to grab Logan and run. He would have gone through the system, played by the rules, and possibly put Logan in even more danger. “I’m simply pointing out,” Troy continued, “that sometimes a guy works his entire life for something that he never gets, and it can make him bitter. And angry. And anger makes for bad decisions.”
“Damn it,” Meri said. “He’s a good guy. I’d hate to think he blew his career for money.”
“Money makes people do stupid things. So does sexual attraction.”
She shot her gaze at him, and he grinned. She might not have loved him in return, but their lust had been strong. He would cling to that if it was all he had.
“Jesus, you’re incorrigible,” she muttered before grabbing her bag and walking toward the bathroom.
Troy laughed. He couldn’t help himself. They might be in danger and on the run, but he had Meri at his side again. That made the rest of the situation—even accepting that his affections had been one-sided—more tolerable.
5
Meri wrapped a stiff towel around her torso and tucked the end in. As she used another towel to dry her hair, she couldn’t ignore how her muscles were already starting to stiffen again. The long hot shower had done little to ease her tension. She’d like to blame the stress on the long day or Logan’s predicament, but she knew the reason she was so tense.
Troy said he’d been in love with her when they worked together. Which she’d known. She’d known long before that day over a year ago when he’d muttered that losing his job was worth the risk as he grabbed her sides and yanked her to him. All the other members of their team had rushed off to grab an early lunch after their morning meeting had ended.
Troy had lingered, as he tended to do. She had been far too aware of him all during the meeting, but having him dawdle when everyone else was gone, knowing they were alone in the room, made it hard for her to focus on gathering her notes. Then he’d closed the door as he said he had something he needed to talk to Meri about.
The clicking of the door sounded like thunder, signaling the start of a storm.
Her heart nearly burst because she knew—or strongly suspected—what he was going to say. There was no way they could keep denying what they both obviously knew. The attraction between them was electric and only getting stronger. They had to find a way to control it before someone else started feeling the shocks.
They couldn’t keep ignoring what was happening between them, but they couldn’t act on it either. Meri had been trying to figure out what the hell to do. Actually, she had known for some time what she had to do—she simply didn’t want to do it. She had to put an end to all of their non-business-related interactions. She had to go back to treating him like a subordinate and less like the friend he’d become.
She was going to tell him that. She was going to draw the line in the sand. But then he’d said he didn’t care about his job and pulled her to him. She had managed to tell him that they shouldn’t be doing that before he’d pressed his mouth to hers.
In that moment, she stopped caring about agency rules and professional integrity. The world had stopped turning. Her heart had stopped beating. She couldn’t breathe. All that mattered was Troy and how absolutely perfect having his arms around her felt. How kissing him was even better than she’d fantasized. And how she’d never wanted that moment to end.
But it had ended. Abruptly. Sarah walked in and slammed the door behind her so hard the pictures on the wall had shaken as if they, too, felt her rage.
Meri tried to force the memory from her mind, but as she dressed in leggings and a tank top, she heard every vicious—and true—word Sarah had screamed at her.
Troy had attempted to take the blame, but Sarah wasn’t buying it. Meri didn’t blame her. Meri was the superior. The blame was hers. Always. After Sarah stormed out, Troy had put his hand to Meri’s face and promised everything was going to be fine. And then he left Meri alone to come to terms with how much she’d screwed everything up in those few passionate seconds.
The next time she had seen Troy, her team was watching the police investigate the scene of Sarah’s murder. Troy had called Meri several times after that. He’d come to her home and knocked on the door. He had even tried to corner her at the funeral. She’d avoided him, ignored him, and then she’d left him.
Without a word.
Her disappearing act hadn’t been fair to Troy, but she was certain it had been necessary to save him. She was going to go down in flames if anyone found out about the confrontation that had occurred prior to Sarah’s death. She wasn’t about to take Troy down with her. If she left, they could place the blame on her. Troy would be safe.
She didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do, but as soon as she got home after Sarah’s funeral, she had changed her clothes and grabbed her go bag and as many extra clothes as she could fit into her duffel bag.
She’d called her mom on the way out of town and told her that she would hire someone to pack the rest of her belongings and put them in storage. Her mom had tried to change her mind, of course, but Meri needed time and space to think.
Once she landed in a new city, she had gone about covering her tracks enough to not be followed. Looking back, she realized she could have done a lot better. She had known Troy would come looking for her. And she’d left enough breadcrumbs for him to follow.
She hadn’t meant for her departure to be a test, but maybe, on some unconscious level, it was. Maybe she wanted to see if he cared enough to find her. She’d always hated games like that, but perhaps she’d played one without intending to. The years of experience at Lochlin Private Security certainly had given her the skills to go completely underground, but she hadn’t done that. She’d used a family name, kept her first name, and worked within a similar industry.
She certainly wouldn’t have allowed a witness to do any of those things. The slate could have been wiped clean to make it next to impossible for Troy to follow her. She’d left so his job would be secure. But she’d made it easy enough for him to locate her if he wanted to.
It had only taken a year and a kid in crisis for him to do so.
Easing the door open, she tip-toed into the area of the room where two queen beds filled most of the space. Logan was still asleep, and she wondered if maybe they should wake him up. She didn’t know much about parenting, but she did know that if they let him sleep too long now, he wouldn’t want to sleep at night.
Everything else in his life was spiraling out of control. They should do their best to keep him on a regular schedule. But then she looked at Troy, sitting at the table, this time with papers spread in front of him. She didn’t doubt those were the notes he had told her he’d been compiling before going on the run.
She’d tossed her career away because she didn’t want to see him delegated to some desk job he’d hate or get fired from the agency. He was a good marshal. He was strong and smart. Smart enough to know the team had been compromised. Smart enough to know that he needed to print out and delete the digital copies of his evidence so it couldn’t be seen by the wrong person.
He’d moved up the ranks to become the leader of the team she’d left behind. She was proud of him. She always knew he had it in him to be a good leader. Leaders had to make tough decisions. Like leaving for the betterment of her team or going into hiding with a child whose life was in danger.
The exhaustion Troy felt was so obvious, and not in his sagging shoulders and the bags under his eyes, but the determination in him never wavered. He had always been honorable. He’d always been strong and brave. He’d always had some magnetic force about him that she hadn’t been able to ignore. She’d felt the pull between them the first time they’d met. She’d known then he was going to be her undoing. She’d accepted that long before he’d kissed her.
He had been worth it. Leaving her job, losing her career, walking away from her life had been worth that one moment. She’d been clinging to the memory for a year. She had dated other men in a vain attempt at letting Troy go, but they’d never come close to erasing him from her mind. She hadn’t allowed them to because she knew he would come for her. She knew he wouldn’t give up that easily.
So, she guessed, she had played a game with him. She’d tested to see if he was worth the life she’d lost for him. She knew now, watching him struggling with the fact that he had to dissect his own team to protect Logan, that he was. He was worth everything.
“That’s some pretty heavy thinking going on over there,” Troy said. “What’s going through your head?”
She smirked. “I was thinking that…” She stopped herself before she could give him her usual sarcastic retort. He had given her the truth. He deserved to hear hers. “I could have done better at covering my tracks. I could have made it harder for you to find me.”
“It took me a year.”
“If I’d put more effort into it, you wouldn’t even be close. Yet here you are.”
A lazy grin curved his lips as he continued looking at his research. “Maybe I’m smarter than you.”
“Ha. That will never happen.”
He still didn’t look at her, and she realized his focus on his papers was deliberate. He clearly didn’t want her reading his face, as she could so easily do.
“So, what you’re saying,” he said, “is that the only reason I won is because you let me.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s what I’m saying.”
“And why would you let me win?”
She held her breath, swallowed hard, then blurted, “Because I was in love with you too, and I was terrified of what that meant for both of us. I didn’t want us losing our careers over something that might or might not work out.”
Troy froze, his hand hovering over the page he was about to pick up as he slowly turned his face up to her. “I thought so,” he said, and his smile spread. “But it’s damn good to hear you say it.”
A strange sense of peace washed over her, like she’d finally confessed the deepest, darkest secret that had been weighing on her soul.
“I couldn’t let you throw your life away, Troy.”
He sat back, no longer pretending to be distracted by his papers. “So you threw yours away instead?”
She nodded. “The truth would have come out if I’d stayed. There would have been an internal investigation, and every move we’d ever made would have been scrutinized. We both would have been dragged through the mud, and then we would have been fired. Our careers would have ended, and…and the reality is, we probably wouldn’t have survived that. Together, I mean. We would have been torn apart.”
“So you thought it was your responsibility to take the fall.”
“It was.”
He slid his chair back and stood, slowly walking toward her. “You don’t always have to take the blame, Meri. Other people screw up sometimes too. Me kissing you was inevitable. Me kissing you in a conference room at the office was stupid. I just…I couldn’t hold my feelings in for one more minute. That was on me.”
He stopped in front of her, and she filled with equal parts dread and anticipation. He was going to kiss her again. He was going to pull her to him like he’d done the last time. He was going to put his mouth on hers. And then she was going to lose herself again. At least this time, there was nothing to stop them from acting on the attraction between them.
He slithered his arms around her and pulled her into an embrace so tight she couldn’t breathe. Not that she wanted to. Troy lifted her several inches off the floor and carried her to the little alcove with the sink, where he eased her feet to the dark-green carpeting, but he didn’t release his hold as he leaned down.
Without hesitation, he crushed his mouth against hers. She could have sworn the world swallowed them whole. Nothing else existed. Time stood still. His heat enveloped her, and she finally allowed herself to feel beyond the physical attraction they’d shared from day one. Beyond the lust, she felt love.
Love for him and loved by him.
She’d known for months before he’d acted on what they were feeling that they had somehow fallen in love with each other without even having touched intimately. What they felt was so much deeper than physical connection.
Feeling his warmth around her now, she felt the same. She didn’t doubt for a moment that he was telling her the truth. He loved her. And now that he was standing here, she couldn’t deny the other half of their truth—she loved him too.
“I’m sorry,” she said when he finally pulled back for a breath. “I should have told you I was leaving.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” He held her face like he’d done before he’d followed Sarah that day. His skin on hers was like fire lighting a fuse. Sparks practically danced along her flesh. “This is what matters. We’re here. And we’re going to find out who the mole is and we’re going to get Logan back to safety. And then we’re going to be together like we should have been all this time.”
Meri opened her mouth, but he hushed her with a stern look.
“Don’t argue with me,” he warned.
She grinned. “I was simply going to say that’s the best plan I’ve heard from you all day.”
“Hey,” he said with mock offense.
She softly laughed as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. “I knew I was going to hurt you when I left, but I had to do what I could to protect you. I didn’t want you to lose your job.”
“I know. I would have done the same thing if I’d been in your position. I would have left too. I knew why you disappeared. I was pissed, but I understood.” Stroking his hand over her hair, he smiled. “I love you, Meri. Still.”
Her heart felt lighter, like the burden she’d been carrying for so long was lifting. “I love you. Still.” Resting her head on his shoulder, she closed her eyes and soaked in the feel of him. She had missed him so much more than she’d allowed herself to think about.
She never would have considered herself one of those clingy women who wanted to crawl inside her man, but in that moment, she wouldn’t have minded if Troy never let her go. She’d gone too long without feeling his arms around her.
Troy threaded his fingers through her hair as he kissed the top of her head. His touch was comforting and filled some of the void she’d been feeling, but she wanted more. So much more. Tilting her head back, she caught his mouth with hers again and parted her lips, ready to give him a real, deep kiss.
“Are you guys really married now?”
Troy jerked away from Meri as he turned, and they both looked at Logan standing a few feet from them. Neither seemed to know how long he had been standing there.
“I thought you were asleep,” Troy said as Meri wiped her mouth.
“I got thirsty,” Logan stated as if his predicament should be the most obvious thing in the world. “Did you get married? For real?”
“No,” Troy said. “We were just…”
“We’re very good friends,” Meri offered.
Logan narrowed his eyes. “I saw my dad kiss my nanny like that once. When I asked Mom why he did that, she got mad. She said only married people are supposed to kiss like that. Then she yelled at my dad, and I had to get a new nanny.”
Meri felt Troy stiffen beside her. Clearly he too was surprised by this revelation.
“Your dad…” she asked hesitantly, “kissed the nanny?”
Logan nodded. “Mom said only married people kiss like that. If you aren’t married, you shouldn’t kiss like that.”
“Uh. You know what,” Meri said, “that’s true, but since Troy and I are really good friends and…and…” Shit, she was about to manipulate a kid. “And since we are pretending to be married, you know…it’s okay that we kissed like that.”
Logan stared at her for a few seconds before accepting her answer. “Can I have some water?”
Meri unwrapped a plastic cup and filled it from the tap as Troy headed back into the sleeping area of the room. After handing the drink to Logan, she patted his head.
“Put the cup back on the sink when you’re done,” she said, and then she followed Troy to the table where he started scribbling on the notes he’d been poring over before she had disturbed him.
