Chapter 14
K ane cursed his carelessness as he reached to snatch the phone from Beth. She thrust her elbow up. It smacked into the underside of his arm with surprising force as she twisted to evade his countermove.
Breath heaving, curls in her face, she glared at him as she brought the device to her ear. “Listen to me, Nic. You need to relieve your buddy now before I kick him in the balls.”
“Stay put,” Kane yelled. “We’re fine.”
He could hear Nic’s laughter across the few feet separating him and the pissed-off sugarplum with the surprising moves. She wasn’t kidding when she said she had self-defense training. The sharp blow to his arm had taken him by surprise. So had her speed and agility. He held out his hand. “Give me the phone, please.”
Nic’s chuckle carried through the air again. “Give it to him, Beth, so I can tell him to stop being a dick and be nice to you.”
She handed the phone over with a huff.
Kane brought it to his ear. “We’re good. I’ll call you later.”
“Not so fast, mi hermano. Haven’t you learned anything from me about how to treat a lady?”
Kane hung up on his brother and shoved the phone in his pocket.
Beth pointed to the door. “Get out.”
“Not a chance, sugarplum.” Even if he were to leave, which he wouldn’t, he couldn’t until Nic arrived. After the liquor store incident, he wasn’t leaving her unprotected.
“Stop calling me that silly nickname.”
He shook his head. “Not a chance of that either.”
“Fine, then I’ll call you stalker-hole.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Get it, stalker and asshole.”
“I wasn’t stalking you.” Well, he wouldn’t call it stalking. More like protecting, but he didn’t think she’d see the difference right now.
She stepped toward him and lifted her chin. “It was you who upgraded my security system, wasn’t it? I didn’t win a damn thing. You arranged it so you could have access to my account. My cameras.”
He didn’t flinch at her accusations. “Yes.”
Another step brought them toe to toe. “Have you been watching me?”
He nodded, mesmerized by the fire blazing in her eyes. “But I’ve only been monitoring the exterior cameras to make sure nobody breaches the property.”
Her brow furrowed as she cocked her head. “Why?”
“Because Scarlett’s home was broken into. You got caught in the middle, which, by association, put you in danger. And you were so afraid that night. You put on a good show of being tough when we were at the hospital, but I saw through it. And when you fell asleep and screamed for help, in the car on the way home, and then in your bedroom when I watched you sleep, I knew someone had hurt you. I couldn’t allow that to happen again. ”
Long moments went by. She didn’t say anything, just stared at him with those beautiful eyes, the gold rims burning like the edges of a bonfire. “You watched me sleep?”
“I’ve stayed up all night with sick horses so they wouldn’t be alone and scared. Of course I didn’t leave you.” He’d never leave someone he cared about crying alone in a bedroom, or anyplace else, ever again.
Something warm brimmed in her gaze that wasn’t anger. She crossed her arms over her chest as if to snuff it out. He chanced a step toward her.
She backed up. “Was Scarlett in on this?”
He glanced out the window and scanned the street. “No. She has no idea. Neither does Chris. I paid Nic’s buddy to do the upgrade.”
“That’s…” she ran her fingers through her hair and pulled at the ends. “That’s the definition of stalkerish. God, Kane, did you ever come into my house when I wasn’t home?”
“No, I never went inside.” He sucked in a deep breath. May as well tell her everything and get yelled at all at once. “And since the break-in, I’ve been driving by at night to make sure things are secure.”
She blinked. “Christ, Kane. You drove by my house every night?”
“Not on the nights I was working.” Their teammate Gage drove by since he kept an eye on Scarlett while they were deployed, but Beth didn’t need to know that.
“Did you follow me home last Saturday? I thought someone was tailing me for a few miles. I was about to pull into someplace safe when a black pickup turned a corner and didn’t appear again.”
He cringed to show remorse he didn’t feel. “Scarlett mentioned you were at a bar with some guy. I thought you said you didn’t do relationships. ”
“I don’t. It was just a drink with a…friend.”
He eyed her until she let out a huff and rolled her eyes.
“Fine, Kane. You want to know the sordid details about my dating life? He was a friend with benefits.”
White-hot jealousy, like the kind he’d felt when he’d watched the guy kiss her outside the bar, flashed to life. “How much do you know about this dude? Has Scarlett vetted him?”
“Does Scarlett vet the women you hook up with? You said it yourself that you don’t do relationships, but Christ, look at you.” She raked her gaze up and down his body. “You’re prime fling material, and from the way I’ve heard Nic talk about your nights on the town, you take advantage of it. Do you call Scarlett and ask her to run a background check before you take a random woman to bed?”
“First, I haven’t hooked up with a woman since we’ve met because I’ve been busy watching over you.” He paused as surprise and something he didn’t dare try and define flashed in her gaze. “Second. I don’t have a stalker after me who might disguise himself as a nice guy at a bar.”
The bonfire in her gaze roared brighter. “I’m capable of choosing my own sex partners. I didn’t need your protection then and I don’t?—”
He snaked his arm around her waist and spun her back to his chest. One hand wrapped around her neck. The other yanked her hard against him. Ignoring his body’s reaction to her ass pressed against his cock, he grazed her ear with his lips. “Tell me, sugarplum. What would you do if your date had done this?”
“My date was my friend who went home by himself that night, by the way.” She executed a maneuver she’d practiced a million times in the gym. As she spun to escape Kane’s hold, she smiled. “But if he’d been a threat, I would have done that. ”
“Impressive. That would probably have worked on a normal guy. But if Chavez and his men…” He shook his head to block the images of what the sick fucks would do to her.
Of what they’d done to Jenna.
Her chest heaved as she backed to the center of the room and faced off with him. “You violated my trust.”
“You must trust me some because you were about to tell me about your nightmares.”
“I’m not telling you any of my secrets.” She twirled her finger around the room. “And you’re sleeping anywhere but here.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the number. “I’ll take this downstairs. Get ready for the party and stay away from the windows.” He pointed to the purple pullout sofa as he strode to the door. “And before I fall asleep on that couch tonight, you can tell me about your nightmares.”
Closing the door behind him, he brought the phone to his ear and fought to douse the emotional firestorm blazing through him. “Hey Gran, make it to Atlanta okay?”
“Just landed. Are you with Beth?”
“Yes. We got here about an hour ago.” And it had only taken that long for his infatuation with the pretty scientist to bite him in the ass.
“Did you ask that girl to marry you yet?”
“Not going to happen, Gran.” By the time he was ready to settle down, Beth would be happily married to a man whose biggest threat to his life was eating too many super-sized meals, not frequent dangerous missions.
Gran let out a long, heavy sigh as he crossed the hall to the guest room. Kane knew that sound and braced himself.
“My dear boy, you can have your career and a family, you know. ”
“No, I can’t.” Especially not with Beth. The anguish in her voice when she had nightmares messed with his equilibrium. He’d lied when she said she’d been out cold in the car on the way to the liquor store. She hadn’t screamed while she’d been asleep, but she called his name in a muffled plea that had nearly made him swerve off the road.
Gran tsk’d. “What happened to your mother doesn’t happen to everyone.”
He closed the door behind him and dropped his bag on the bed. “But it happens enough.” Learning about a buddy not coming home and his family struggling was one thing. Jenna dying in his arms while whispering her last words to her husband was another. But watching his mom languish in her room, hearing her cry for his father night after night as she drank herself into oblivion, had broken something in him.
Up until now, the plan he’d made to follow his path to serve and put love on hold had been to protect the nameless, faceless woman he’d fall for someday. Now, she didn’t just have a name and a face, but a heart he couldn’t bear breaking.
“Listen to me, Kane. I only met Beth for a short time, but that’s all it takes for me to know when someone is right for another. If she wasn’t strong enough to handle the kind of life you lead, the universe wouldn’t have put you two together.”
A beep sounded in his head. He glanced at the unit in his arm. “Gran, I’ve got to take this call from Nic. Kiss Livvie for me. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“What’s up?” he asked Nic over the mind comms.
“What’s up with you?”
“Beth found out about the security upgrade and that I’ve been watching, and she’s pissed.” Kane pulled off his shirt. He’d give her space but only planned to get ready for the party in the guest room, not sleep .
“That must have been one hell of a conversation. Do I need to come out there?”
“Depends. Do we have any new information?”
“Ryan and his team are sifting through Jenna’s intel. We should have a report by tomorrow. In the meantime, he’s going to send you a file on Chavez and his known associates.”
“Good.” Kane stepped to a stout Christmas tree on the dresser. His gaze fixed on a silver Christmas ball with “Twenty-Fifth Anniversary” engraved above two intertwined hearts.
Thanks to the enemy sniper who killed his father in combat, his parents never had an ornament like this. Jenna and her husband would never have one either. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering if Jenna’s husband was trimming a Christmas tree or drowning in a bottle like his mother had when the love of her life didn’t come home. If he were to chance a relationship while he was still an active human weapon, would Beth care if he returned to her in a coffin?
Nic snorted on the other end of the connection. “Dude, you still there, or are you bleeding out cause Beth cut off your balls?”
“ She’s getting in the shower, so my balls are safe for now .” The sound of water running through the pipes streamed from behind the walls. “ What else is going on at headquarters?”
“No sign of Chavez or anyone suspicious in the crowd at the liquor store, but Ryan determined that the store’s interior and exterior cameras were hacked. Someone was watching, and someone’s been trying to hack into my buddy’s security company, specifically Beth and her parents’ account.”
Kane whipped his gaze to Beth’s room. Her parents’ security system was configured for the cameras in the bedroom to come online when the house was vacant. But if someone was trying to hack into the system, they could override that and see…
“Fuck,” Kane said as he tore across the hall.