Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“You were jealous in the car.” Asher leaned his shoulder against the wall in the hall outside the hotel door.
Owen balked. “What?”
“I was testing you back there. You should’ve seen your face at the idea of Sam and that Javier dude hooking up.”
Owen lowered his eyes to the floor, unable to meet his friend’s stare.
“I get it. You guys hooked up in Cabo, and no one wants to think about a woman with another guy, but—”
“First of all, we didn’t have sex, and second of all . . .” He’d already lost his train of thought, too pissed Asher had pulled him aside before going into the hotel room to have this heart-to-heart. What was with all his friends jonesing for these kinds of conversations lately?
“You stayed overnight in her room. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t screw?” A dark brow arched in question.
Owen shook his head. “No, we didn’t.”
Asher’s mouth tightened and curved down slightly in surprise. “Well, good. But you need to stop looking at her the way Luke looks at Eva.”
“I don’t look at her in any way.”
Asher faked a laugh. “Don’t lie to me, man. I know you.”
“Maybe you don’t.” He turned, about to swipe his card to get into the room when Asher’s paw of a hand wrapped over his shoulder.
“You can’t go down this road with her. This whole situation is complicated enough without adding to the mix she was Brad’s woman.”
Owen slowly turned and expelled a deep breath. “I know that. Trust me.”
Asher lifted his shoulders. “This could end badly, and I’m just looking out for you.”
“Well, I’m good. And why the hell are we having this conversation, anyway? There’s much more important shit to talk about than my love life.”
Asher lifted his palms in surrender. “Love life?”
“Just get ahold of Luke—find out if Handlin’s okay.” He handed Asher the envelope with the original image inside. “I can’t keep holding Sam back from telling her parents what’s going on.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” He nodded then walked away.
Once inside the hotel room, he saw Sam pouring a mini blue bottle into a Styrofoam coffee cup. “You raided the mini bar?”
She looked up from the cup. “I’ll pay you back. Promise.”
He smiled. “You sure you want to drink at”—he checked his watch—“two in the afternoon?”
“Mm-hm.” She settled onto the chair by the window. “My dad just messaged me. He got Senator Abrams on board. We got the last signature.” She faked a laugh. “Everything is in place, but now . . . it may not matter.”
“Don’t think like that, Sam.” He closed the distance between them and rubbed at the tension at the base of his skull.
She rolled her lips inward, wetting them. “You called me Sam.”
“Yeah?”
“You called me Samantha last night, and I was pretty sure you’d never want to . . .” She let her words die, and maybe that was for the better.
After a few blinks, she raised the cup back into the air.
“This is a celebratory drink, then.” She hiccupped. “Cheers to my dad for getting Abrams on board.” She took another sip. Actually, it was more like a heavy gulp.
He cocked his head, studying her. She was a beautiful and strong woman who was willing to go to bat with Russia—but right now, she looked fragile and a little broken.
“I also think I deserve a drink since I found out someone has seen me naked and been watching me for maybe two weeks.” She stared down at the carpet in a daze, the realization possibly slamming into her at the moment, and then she tipped back the rest of her cup.
Yeah, he couldn’t blame her on that. The idea had him wanting to fix himself a stiff drink, too. “Well, can I at least order room service, so you don’t get shit-faced on an empty stomach? My hangover cure might not work tomorrow, otherwise.” He lifted the phone. “What can I get you to eat?”
“Something greasy and unhealthy.” She stood and retrieved another small bottle from the minibar. “And maybe some juice to mix with this.”
“Sure.” He forced a smile, even if it didn’t feel right to wear at a time like this.
After ordering the food, he went to the bathroom, hoping to pull himself together.
He was hanging by a thread, and damn, he wasn’t used to that.
The past twenty-four hours had been a bit much, even for someone like him.
He braced the bathroom counter, and memories from his past shot through his mind, which had him drawing his eyes closed.
Brad and I are going to head to Sin City for my birthday next week while on leave. Do you think you can make it? Brad’s bringing his new girlfriend, so I need my wingman. Besides, you can tell the ladies you’re a pilot. I can’t exactly say what I do, Jason had said over Skype.
I won’t be able to get off base. Sorry, man. I promise I’ll make it up to you next year.
There hadn’t been a next year, though.
His hand turned to a fist atop the counter as he peeled his eyes open.
He stared at his reflection for a minute, guilt twisting in his gut that he’d lived to see another day while so many hadn’t.
Brad’s new girlfriend: Sam. And now, here he was, in a hotel room with her.
When he found the energy, he left the bathroom, and the band of tension in his chest lightened a fraction at the song now playing from the music station on TV.
“Tiesto.” He sat on the edge of the bed.
She looked up from her cup and smiled. “I almost forgot we have the same taste in music.”
“You ever see him perform?”
“Yeah, once. You?”
“Nah, never had a chance. I’m sure it was an incredible experience.”
She took another sip, this time, without wincing.
“I saw him perform when I went backpacking across Europe for three months.” Her lids became heavy, but she kept her eyes open.
“I was planning on blowing off law school after Brad died.” Her chest rose and fell with slow breaths.
“But I made a deal with my folks that, if they let me go to Europe, I’d stick with the plan to go to law school after. ”
It’d been a rough few months after Jason had died for him and his family, too. But he’d been in the service, and as much as he maybe wanted to, he couldn’t take off and make the world go away.
“You ever hit up Ibiza?” he asked, needing to think of anything other than losing his brother at that moment.
“Of course.”
“I assume your dad wasn’t a fan of you going to places like that.”
“He’d have a heart attack if he ever knew I went to raves.”
“Sounds like your dad stresses about a lot of things,” he noted.
“It’s the life.” She tensed then released a nervous light laugh before a somberness took hold of her face.
“But, back then, the music sort of made me feel alive again. I’d felt so dead on the inside; it was like pressing one of those defibrillator things to my chest when being surrounded by free-spirited people and an electric bass. ”
I know the feeling. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words.
“It was hard coming back home after feeling so free.” She wet her lips and pulled her bottom one between her teeth as she stared down at the floor.
He tried not to drop his gaze to her long, tan legs—but he couldn’t help himself. He remembered how those legs had felt wrapped around his hips as he’d held her pinned to the wall in the hotel room a few days ago.
“Owen?” There was a velvety rasp to her tone when she said his name.
“Yeah?”
The knock at her door must’ve silenced whatever she’d wanted to say. He grabbed the room service and handed her the burger and fries before proceeding to make her a cocktail.
“You own the tavern now,” she said softly. “You must know a thing or two about making drinks.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t work there much these days.” He stirred the fruity concoction he’d made.
“That’s where Brad and I met.” She paused. “Where he proposed.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood, and her words had his hand stilling midair, the liquid dropping off the plastic spoon, splattering onto the desk.
“Crazy, right?” she whispered, her words light as air but heavy as fucking bricks in his mind. “My best friend and I went to Charleston for a weekend, and we were bar hopping. I met Brad there. He introduced me to Jason.”
He slowly turned with the drink, and their eyes connected as he handed it to her, their fingers brushing during the exchange.
“I haven’t been back there since . . .” She allowed her words to trail off, and they both remained quiet for a few minutes.
What was there to say, after all?
She’d met Brad in the bar he owned, a place he escaped to when he needed to pretend it was okay just to kick back and have a drink and chill—hoping the world wouldn’t fall apart while he took a second to relax.
And now, that bar was a place of pain for her.
He tensed at the thought, then coughed into his fist, needing to change the subject. “So, uh, what’s the deal with that Javier guy?” He wasn’t sure how that question had managed to roll off his tongue.
She smiled, though. And hell, for a second, her smile managed to melt away the awkwardness, like she had a blowtorch in hand.
She shrugged. “We met at a political fundraiser two years ago, and he’s been asking me out for months.”
“Based on the way he was looking at you, I’m gonna have to say you’ve been turning him down?” He stole a fry from her plate since he hadn’t ordered himself any food. His appetite had been less than stellar, and eating was the last thing on his mind.
“He’s a good friend.”
“You said back in Mexico you’re not looking for a relationship. Some guys have trouble understanding a woman focused on her job, I’m betting.”
“So many guys in D.C.,” she said after finishing a bite of food, “are assholes, to put it mildly.”
“Gotta be a few good men out there though, right?” He leaned back in his seat and studied the woman before him.
A woman who could probably bring D.C. to its knees.
Hell, she’d nearly had him tripping all over himself back in Mexico. On the plane home, he’d considered chucking his rules about dating out the window.
Within an hour of knowing her, he could tell she was a woman you didn’t let go of. A once-in-a-lifetime kind of woman.
She was Brad’s once-in-a-lifetime though, he had to remind himself. Surely she’d find someone else in the future, but he was crazy to think that someone could ever be him.
But it threw him off that even being within arm’s reach of her, somehow managed to dissolve some of the darkness that had consumed him for years.
The darkness of what he learned yesterday, on the ten-year anniversary no less, should’ve swallowed him whole .
. . and he wondered if she was the reason why he hadn’t totally lost his shit and gone to the range to tear up a target, or maybe a hundred.
Of course, Sam had been the reason why he’d unleashed more intensity than normal in the boxing ring with Asher that morning. He’d been so damn pissed to discover she not only lied, but she was off-limits, that Asher about hung up his gloves, which wasn’t like him, mid-fight.
“You’re amazing, you know.” Her whispered words had him peering at her.
The slow drum beat of his heart scaled up with each passing second of silence.
She sipped her drink. “I just don’t know how you do so much. To go into the Naval Academy, which is like really hard to get into, then to switch from—”
“Your FBI pal told you all of this about me?”
“Um.” She set her drink back down onto the makeshift dinner table. “Jason used to brag about you whenever the three of us hung out.”
His stomach squeezed at her words, and the tight pressure in his chest nearly eclipsed every feeling inside of him, and he fought to catch his breath.
“Owen, are you okay?”
“I can’t do this.” He stood and dragged a palm down his jaw, blinking a few times.
“Do what?”
He shook his head. “I can’t talk about the past.”
She nodded a few times. “Okay.” She rose and came to stand before him and gently touched his forearm.
He lifted his eyes to find hers, and it had emotion choking in his throat again, which further irritated him.
“We don’t have to talk about the past, then.” Her lower lip quivered ever so slightly, and he found himself wishing he could kiss the tremble away and make everything right. “I’m sorry.”
She’d been apologizing nonstop since he’d learned the truth, but it still didn’t make things right; it still didn’t change the fact that now he felt something for her, and it was her damn fault.
“I didn’t mean to upset you again. I’m—”
“Then you never should have lied to me back in Mexico.” And the words scraped against his tongue as he said them, knowing he was so damn screwed.