Chapter 15 #2
His own hand found her waist. He hesitated—half a second, maybe—but she didn’t pull away. So he settled his palm there, fingers splaying just slightly over the curve he’d once memorized.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“It’s cold,” she lied. The barn was warm. Stuffy, even.
He let the lie stand, content to drown himself in the delicious torture of holding her in his arms.
Because suddenly it didn’t matter that they were standing in a barn full of people. Didn’t matter that he could list every exit and threat vector without thinking. Didn’t matter that he’d come here and watched her every move under the guise of protection and not . . . this.
The world narrowed. The music blurred into a low hum. The lights softened. Conversations around them dissolved into a distant, meaningless murmur.
If the barn had blown away in that moment, he wouldn’t have noticed. He wasn’t entirely certain he would have cared. There was only her. And with every step, he was more confident that there had always only ever been her.
“Julie looks beautiful,” she whispered after a moment, eyes fixed on his chest instead of his face. Like it hurt to look at him. Or like looking might give something away.
“Yeah,” he said. “She does.”
What he wanted to say—that Norah was the most beautiful woman in the room. That he counted the days he didn’t see her—pressed against his ribs.
She hummed in agreement, her gaze drifting to the family again. “Your mom looks happy. Proud.”
“She is,” he said quietly. “Days like this . . . she lives for them.”
Norah glanced at him then, soft but careful. “You still fit here. Even with . . . everything your job demands.”
Marshall let out a slow breath. “Some days I fake it better than others.”
Something flickered across her face. Empathy, maybe. Understanding. But then she pulled back just an inch, a subtle shift of shoulders, a reminder of the line between them. The one she needed. The one he had no right to blur. “We all do what we need to do for our family.”
And in that small movement, the truth settled in his chest. He couldn’t give her what she needed. He hadn’t been able to stay fifteen years ago. And the real answer—I’d cross continents if you needed me—wasn’t something he had the right to offer her anymore.
The pastor’s earlier words drifted back uninvited. Love demonstrated in sacrifice. Anchored in something greater. Marshall had spent the last decade trying to pretend those truths didn’t apply to him—that faith was for people who didn’t know how sharp the world could cut.
But holding Norah now, with her heartbeat brushing his chest and her fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt like she remembered him the way he remembered her . . .
He shouldn’t be holding her like this. He shouldn’t want her like this. He shouldn’t be anything but professional. Nothing compromised a mission like distraction. And she was the biggest distraction he’d ever faced.
But she fit against him like she always had—like they’d never broken, never bled, never walked away for reasons that still scraped raw. She felt like home. And he’d been without one for a very, very long time.
“You should stay off Morris’s radar when we get back,” he said quietly, trying to keep his voice level. “We don’t want anyone from the Syndicate looking at you more than necessary.”
She lifted her eyes. “Funny you mention that.”
He raised a brow, curious where she was going.
“Morris has an event next week,” she said. “A gala to kick off her presidential election bid.”
He’d heard about the gala. Every high-level Syndicate member they’d identified was going to be there.
“Hale expects me to attend,” she continued.
He did not care what Hale expected. Hale didn’t get to decide where she went, who she went with, or how close she got to Senator Morris.
He didn’t care if Morris herself had written the invitation in blood. The only thing that mattered was that Norah walking into a Syndicate-adjacent gala was a tactical nightmare—and the thought of her doing it with Hale made something territorial and unwelcome burn through his ribs.
His fingers tightened subtly at her waist.
Another—more twisted—part of him was already calculating how he could get inside that gala.
How could Black Tower slip someone past the metal detectors, the donor lists, the fund-raising handlers.
An event that big? They could make entry work.
They could run surveillance. They could use it to get close to Morris’s inner circle.
Perhaps identify other key members of the Syndicate.
Even clone a few cell phones. Hale’s cell phone would be a good place to start.
But not with Norah in the blast radius.
“And he just told you to show up?” he asked. His voice sounded steady to anyone else. Inside, he was a live wire.
She hesitated, fingers curling in the fabric at his shoulder. “It wasn’t . . . really a request.”
He swore silently. Of course it wasn’t. Hale had been grooming her for years, trusting her judgment, bringing her into rooms she had no business being in. Marshall used to think Hale was just overly reliant on her brilliance. Now he wondered if it was strategic.
Another beat of music throbbed between them—slow, aching, too intimate by half. He shifted closer without meaning to.
A gala that size meant choke points, cameras, security teams, crowded entrances.
A hundred ways to get someone alone. A thousand ways for things to go wrong.
He didn’t want her anywhere near that room.
Not as an analyst. Not as collateral. Not as the woman Hale expected to have at his side like she was some expendable accessory.
“He expects my boyfriend to come with me.”
Marshall stopped moving.
Her breathing brushed his collarbone, shallow and uncertain. The music kept going. The crowd kept laughing. But Marshall’s focus tunneled to a single word still ringing in his head. Boyfriend.
He needed air. Space. Distance from the hundred watching eyes and the suffocating warmth of her body pressed to his.
“Come with me,” he murmured.
It wasn’t a question.
He released her waist only long enough to guide her off the dance floor by the hand, weaving them through swaying couples and clustered family members with practiced ease.
No one stopped them. No one noticed anything was wrong.
He didn’t breathe until they slipped out the side door of the barn and into the cool night.
String lights stretched across the lawn like low-hanging stars. The music thumped faintly behind them. Crickets hummed in the tall grass beyond the fence. Out here, it felt like another world.
Marshall released her hand, paced a few steps, then turned back to her.
“What did you just say?” His voice was low. Calm in the way only a man barely holding the line could sound.
Norah wrapped her arms around herself. “I said Hale expects my boyfriend to attend with me.” Her words left small clouds of steam in the night air.
Marshall stared at her, every trained instinct parsing the implications. Without his eyes leaving hers, he pulled off his coat.
“Your what?” he said softly.
She gave a helpless, small laugh. “I panicked. At the meeting last week. I told one of Morris’s aides I had a boyfriend to keep him from flirting. Hale heard. Now he wants this imaginary man to show up.”
He stepped closer, hanging his sport coat around her shoulders. November in West Virginia was no place for a silk dress with far too much skin exposed. His jaw worked once—slow and lethal—as he processed her words.
Of course Hale had heard. Of course he’d latched onto it. And of course he’d decided her “boyfriend” should come along to the one event in DC Marshall least wanted her within fifty miles of.
Somewhere in his chest, something hot and territorial snapped its teeth.
A gala full of power brokers, foreign donors, political kingmakers, and Syndicate-adjacent operatives? Absolutely not. Not with Norah walking in unprotected. Not with her walking in on someone else’s arm. Not with her walking in at all.
He drew in a slow breath through his nose, trying to get oxygen into the places panic and possessiveness had carved hollow.
“So,” he said finally, voice gravel-low, “this imaginary man . . .” His eyes locked onto hers. “He’s still imaginary?”
Her pulse fluttered visibly at her throat.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Good. Good, because if she’d said otherwise—
He swallowed the thought. Hard.
He focused back on the problem at hand. Black Tower needed to be at that gala. He needed to use the opportunity to move against them.
And the thought of her walking in with anyone else? Unacceptable.
When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to something quiet and resolute. He stepped closer so she could hear him.
“Then I’m going with you.”
Her lips parted. “Marshall—”
“It’s not a discussion.”
They’d drifted even closer, like their bodies were instinctively trying to recapture the closeness of the dance floor. His thumb brushed her waist under his jacket—barely a touch, almost an apology—but his tone was steel.
“You need someone at that gala who knows the terrain. Who knows what Morris is capable of. Who knows how men like Hale think when they want something.”
A beat. He didn’t drop his gaze.
“And Norah? I’m not letting just anyone stand next to you in that room.”
Something in her expression shifted—fear, relief, longing, all tangled together.
“But Marshall . . . as my boyfriend?” she whispered.
His throat flexed. It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t be personal.
“That’s the cover,” he said evenly. “And it’s the only one that makes sense.”
The only one he’d allow.
Her lips parted, trembling. “This is about the mission.” There was only the smallest hint of a question in her words. Only the barest quiver that betrayed the possibility that she hoped it was about more than the mission.
Was it?
Yes. No. Mostly.
Not at all.
He swallowed hard. “It’s operationally sound.”
She searched his face, something unraveling in her eyes. “And emotionally stupid.”
His jaw flexed. “Probably.”
Their bodies were pressed too close. The song was still playing inside, slow and warm and heartbreakingly familiar. Her breath brushed his cheek. Her fingers curled slightly in the fabric at his shoulder.
If she leaned in an inch—one inch—he’d be lost.
“Marshall . . .” she whispered, his name breaking on her tongue.
He closed his eyes.
Don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t cross the line.
She’s an asset. She’s in danger.
You can’t afford to want her.
He opened his eyes.
She was right there.
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
She was so close he could feel the warmth of her breath against his jaw, feel the soft give of her body leaning instinctively toward his. He hadn’t meant to look at her mouth—but the second he did, the world narrowed to that single, impossible distance between them.
He could close it. Every cell in his body wanted to.
One tilt forward and he’d have her taste on his tongue again, the past crashing into the present like it had been waiting for this exact heartbeat.
His hand flexed at her waist. The air shifted . . . expectant . . . electric . . .
And that was the problem.
Marshall inhaled hard and stepped back—one controlled, mechanical movement he’d perfected in a dozen war zones, never once for a woman.
If he kissed her now, he wouldn’t stop. And if he didn’t stop, he’d forget the mission, forget the danger, forget that someone might have already marked her as leverage.
He couldn’t let her get hurt because he was weak.
So he put space between them. Barely a few inches. Enough to break the gravitational pull before he did something he couldn’t take back.
Her breath hitched—hurt, confused, wanting. He felt it like a bruise.
“We should . . . go back inside,” he whispered, not meeting her eyes.
“Yeah.” Her voice was rougher than it should’ve been. “Okay.”
But when she turned away, Marshall’s fingers twitched uselessly at his side, every instinct in him screaming to haul her back against him, kiss her until the earth stopped spinning, forget the mission and the danger and the lines he wasn’t supposed to cross.
She walked toward the barn lights. He stood in the shadows, trying to relearn how to breathe. And failing miserably.