Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
As soon as he saw her face, Ghost could tell something was wrong. Diana got out of her car and walked toward where he stood on the porch, her expression troubled. He took the stairs down and met her on the grass, pulling her into his arms and pressing a kiss to her silky hair.
“What’s wrong, Princess?”
She tipped her head back to look at him. “How did you know?”
“You look like somebody stole your lunch out of the work refrigerator.”
She laughed, a soft sound that wrapped itself around his heart. “Never happens because I always eat lunch out. Can’t cook, you know.”
“Huh, really? Guess I should have asked. Taking a point out of the ‘reasons why you’re okay’ column.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“When it makes you laugh.” He took her hand and led her up the steps and into the house.
They went straight to the kitchen where he poured a glass of red wine and handed it to her in one of the wine glasses Daphne had procured on a thrifting trip.
Cabernet Sauvignon, because that’s what Diana liked.
He’d bought a couple of bottles to keep around since he didn’t drink wine very often.
“Thank you.”
He cracked a beer and ushered Diana onto the back porch.
She sank onto the couch, and he sat beside her, leaning into the cushions and studying the landscape beyond.
It was peaceful with the trees turning gold and orange, and a soft breeze blowing.
It would be dark soon, but right now the light was golden where it kissed the grass.
Had to admit he liked it better than living in the DC metro area.
“Bad day at work?”
She sipped the wine. “Work was fine. Mostly. We’re working an espionage case at the moment, and a bomb threat to city hall.” She frowned. “Something else happened.”
“You want to talk about it?” He wanted her to talk about it, but he knew better than to order her to do it.
She toyed with the stem of the wine glass, rotating it slowly back and forth before she finally spoke.
“I was dating a guy from work, off and on the past few months. Joel Newman. He’s an analyst, not a field officer.
He was with me when we saw you and your friends on the fourth of July.
We broke up about a month ago, around the time the Dashevsky case moved to Washington.
It was his idea.” She frowned, stared at her wine.
“He was in the parking lot waiting for me when I got to work. He said he wanted to get back together.”
It felt like somebody twisted a knife in his belly. He’d seen her with the guy in the Dawg sometimes, and at the Independence Day Festival. It’d always made something tighten inside him to see her with another man. He’d thought it was annoyance, mostly because she’d been in his space.
Wasn’t annoyance now. It was possessiveness.
“Do you want to?”
Her gaze flew to his. “No! And that’s what I told him. I thought he’d be hurt, maybe, or sad. He was a nice guy. Never heard him raise his voice at anyone while we were dating.” She hesitated. “He was angry when I told him we were better apart, and he said some things.”
“What kind of things?” His voice was a growl.
She put a hand on his arm. Squeezed. “It’s nothing all that bad.
It just surprised me, and I keep thinking about it.
Basically, he knows who I really am—and he threatened to tell people I’d gotten my job due to nepotism, that I’m not really qualified.
It was ugly and mean, and I guess I’m still shocked it happened.
I never thought he’d threaten me like that. ”
Ghost wasn’t. People could hide a lot of ugly when it suited them.
Challenge their beliefs or their entitlement, and it all came gushing out.
Like the people who said they weren’t racist but the first time they got into a heated confrontation with a person of color, the slurs came out of their mouths as natural as breathing.
People would show you who they were if you let them.
“He say anything else?”
She shook her head. “No. I told him to fuck off and left him in the parking lot. That was this morning. Didn’t see him again.”
“You know you have to watch your back, right? You wounded this fucker, and he’s gonna look for a way to wound you in return.”
“I don’t think he’ll do anything, but I’ll be careful. If he decides to blast the building with my identity, nothing I can do about that. It’ll make life harder for me at work, but I’ve faced challenges before.”
“Who else knows about your family?”
“The local director, of course. People in HR, probably. It’s not a secret so much as I don’t tell people my real name.
Hell, I doubt many of them would know who the Adlers are.
It’s not a common name, but it’s also not rare.
Even then, would they connect me to Uncle Stephen?
Or my cousin Julia, the princess? Or would they think it a coincidence, like two people named Bishop or Smith?
If the president was a Bishop, would people think you were related?
No, they wouldn’t.” She shrugged. “I’m not ashamed of my name.
I just didn’t want it to be common knowledge that I’m one of those Adlers.
It’s hard enough being a woman in what’s traditionally been a man’s job. ”
He didn’t doubt that. Women had finally been allowed to qualify as Army Rangers, but they still weren’t allowed into special units like Delta or HOT or SEALs, for instance.
Mendez had been forward thinking enough to bring in a few women as contractors.
Victoria Royal, now Brandon, was a fantastic sniper who’d done active ops with HOT many times.
Just not while wearing the uniform. There were others, too.
Miranda Lockwood, now McCormick, was CIA and sometimes went out with the teams. One of the most lethal women of Ghost’s acquaintance was Mendez’s wife, Kat.
Then there was Natasha Black, who was probably the most formidable of them all.
“I can pay him a visit.” In fact, he looked forward to it.
She gave him a significant look. “And do what? Threaten to disembowel him if he breathes my name to another soul? That’s not going to work—not to mention it’s downright insulting.
I could have made that threat myself and put enough weight behind it to make him think twice.
It would only make him more determined, though. Human nature.”
“I was thinking something a little more painful, but okay, point taken.”
“What’s more painful than disemboweling?”
“Do you really want me to enumerate the ways in which I can cause pain?”
She frowned. “No, probably not.”
He pushed a hand over his scalp. “I’ll say it again. You need to be careful of this guy, Diana. Don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s not capable of escalating. People get upset when they’re rejected. Mature people deal with it. People who can’t handle their emotions have outbursts.”
“He’ll cool off.”
“Maybe.” He threaded his fingers in hers, raised her hand to his mouth to kiss the back of it. “It could be nothing but blowing off steam. He might even be embarrassed he lost his temper. He might never say another word to you. Or he could be planning his next move right now.”
“I just don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head. “He broke up with me. He said I pushed him away and wouldn’t let him get close, and he wanted somebody who could be there for him. Then today he said he realized he just had to let me be me, and we’d work it out.”
“But you don’t want to work it out.”
Her eyes met his. Held. “No.”
“I’m glad,” he said, his voice rougher than he expected. Then he tugged her towards him and kissed her. His body lit up like the fourth of July whenever their mouths touched, but he didn’t take it any further just yet. “You staying here tonight?”
If she said no, he was going into Sutton’s Creek and staying with her. Nobody threatened his woman and got away with it.
His woman?
Yeah, his woman. For as long as they were doing this, she was his.
When it flamed out, then it was done. But until then, she was his—and he protected what was his.
He’d be there for her after, and he’d protect her if she needed it, but right now it was non-negotiable.
She was his, and he was a possessive and protective son of a bitch.
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.” Because he believed in saying what he wanted. Games were for people with too much time on their hands.
“Then I guess I’m staying.”