Chapter Fifty-Nine
Ethan
Ethan didn’t know how long they walked or how far they traveled. His training was failing him. His father would have killed
him. He knew better than to lose himself in time and space and try to operate with imperfect intel, but Maggie made him crazy.
No. Maggie made him brave.
She held his right hand—his bad hand—but it had never felt more steady as they made their way through the shadows of the passage
and then finally up a steep slope toward a wooden door.
“Is there a knob?” she asked. “Do we knock? Can we—”
He kicked and the wood splintered as the door sprang open, ricocheting on its hinges.
“Oh look,” she said. “The door’s open.”
It was exactly what he’d said outside Eleanor’s office one day and a million years before, but Ethan didn’t let himself smile
at the fact that she’d remembered. He was too busy sweeping into a dark, cold room, trying to keep Maggie behind him while
he cleared the space and scanned the walls.
“What is it? What is it? What...” She was like a little girl on Christmas morning as she took in the limestone walls and
low ceiling. The rough, wooden floor and narrow bed. “Oh. It’s a cottage!” she exclaimed like she’d always wanted to see one
and wasn’t this convenient.
Ethan drew back a curtain and peered into the dark and swirling white. It was snowing again, harder now. And the wind roared
and moaned, but Ethan felt almost hopeful because—
“I think I can see the garage from here. Come on. Let’s go see what the duke’s Range Rover can do.”
But Maggie pulled back. “Do you have the keys?”
He’d never been more insulted in his life. “I don’t need keys.”
“We can’t drive,” she told him. “The bridge is out.”
“Damn it. Okay. I’ll drive as far as I can, then walk for help.”
He started for the door, but Maggie’s hand was a soft weight on his arm. “Do you hear that?” She went quiet, pausing until
there was no sound but the roar of the wind. “It’s blowing like crazy.”
“So?”
“So it’s a whiteout out there. And even if you could see the road, it’s buried under a foot of snow. It’s pitch-black and
we’re in the middle of twenty thousand acres we know nothing about.” Her voice was starting to shiver, to crack. “You could
stumble off a cliff, fall down a ravine. You could die.”
“I’m getting you out of here,” Ethan snapped, but she was looking up at him and biting her lip. Nervous. Leery. Almost afraid,
but the question was: Of what? The killer or the cold or the man she hadn’t trusted at all until very, very recently? It didn’t
matter. Ethan didn’t care, so he bent down to look in her eyes. “I’m going to walk until I find a cell signal and then I’m
going to call for a helicopter and I’m going to get you out of here.”
“You don’t even have a hat. Or gloves. Or—”
“They’re trying to kill you!” he shouted because that was the only part that mattered. “And I’m not going to let that happen,
so you have two options. Buckle down in here and don’t make a peep or walk through hell knows what out there and...” He
shook his head. “Screw that. You have one option.”
He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “It might be warmer in the tunnel. Wait there. I’ll be back soon.”
Maggie darted out in front of him before he could reach the door. “Where are you even going to get a helicopter?”
Should he pick her up and move her? He could pick her up and move her.
“Ethan? Where—”
“My father.” He didn’t want to say it, but he didn’t have a choice. About anything. “My father has contacts in the UK. I can
ask him for a favor.”
“The book burner does favors?” No one had ever sounded more aghast and that just made him love her more. “Ethan. No!”
He ran a hand through her hair. “He’ll send it. I’ll owe him, but he’ll send it.”
She shuddered and backed up until she was braced against the door. Her voice shook. “Owe him what?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Owe him what?” she demanded, and Ethan had to look away.
“He’s been asking me to join the family business for a while now, and—”
“No.”
It was the sharpness of that word that did it, cut his last thread of self-control and let him loose. He wasn’t joking, wasn’t
teasing, wasn’t charming anybody anymore. This was who he was—deep down. The man he’d never wanted to be: single-focused and
determined and dangerous.
“If it means saving you, then yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“You don’t have to do that.” She might as well have told him to stop breathing.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why—”
“Because it’s you!” The words were already out there, turning to ice in the frosty air, and Ethan couldn’t bring them back.
And worse, he didn’t want to. “It’s always been you, Maggie. Losing my job? It was nothing. I was glad to be rid of it. Losing
my mom? It sucked but it was a long time ago and I’ve made my peace. But losing you? It would break me.” He felt his pulse
change rhythms, like his heart had found a gear he didn’t even know it had. “It would break me in ways that would never, ever
mend.”
Her lip trembled. Her eyes were too big, and he didn’t know what it meant that she’d never looked more terrified.
“We barely know each other.”
“Yes.” He took a small step forward. “We do.”
“But... But... We hate each other.”
“No.” Another step. “We don’t.”
She was shaking her head but searching his eyes. It was like being at a drive-in movie, the way the last five years flashed
across her features, a highlight reel of the best and worst moments of his life.
Then her eyes closed. Her voice trembled. “Is this about Tucson?”
Did she really not know? “It’s about every time I’ve ever seen you. It’s about the fact that you’re nice to everyone but me. It’s because you’re the
only person on the planet who’s willing to call me on my bullshit. It’s because you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met
and yet you’re the only person who doesn’t get that. It’s because I love you, Margaret Elizabeth Chase.” He almost sounded
angry. “Don’t tell me I don’t, and don’t tell me to stop because, believe me, I’ve tried. I know you don’t feel the same.
But I love you. And so I’m going to get you out of here.”
He’d been pinned down by a sniper the day before, but Ethan had never felt more exposed. The wind howled outside those old
stone walls, blowing snow and turning the darkest night of the year pure white. And she was right, there were deep drifts
and rocky cliffs and a hundred other ways to die out there. But it didn’t matter. Because what was in here mattered more.
The big, silver flashlight picked that moment to flicker and go out. They’d already turned off the little one to save the
battery, so all that was left was the darkness. Even the moon was hiding, so Ethan could do nothing but listen to the sound
of her breath. The faint creak of someone taking a small, slow step on ancient floorboards. And then there were fingers, searching.
Pressing against his chest, then sliding to his shoulders, his neck, the back of his head. And then he felt the soft brush
of lips against his.
“Maggie...”
She sighed into his mouth as his hand slid beneath her seventeen T-shirts and touched the soft, warm skin of her back. “I
have to keep you safe,” he breathed against her neck, but the impossible woman just squeezed him tighter, like she was never
going to let him go.
“I am safe.” She sighed again, sinking against him, like she’d spent her whole life just trying to stay upright. Like it was
the first time she’d ever been allowed to lean. “I’m always safe with you.”
And that was the part that broke him. “No, you’re not. If you knew the things I want to do to you...”
“What kinds of things?” Her voice was timid and bashful. Even in the shadows, he thought he saw her blush.
“I want to know what your hair feels like wrapped around my fist. I want to lift you up and press you against that wall until
your lips get plump and your breath goes ragged and your legs wrap around my waist because, otherwise, you’d just melt away.
I want to feel your hands on my shoulders and mine on your waist. On your ass. I want to feel you everywhere. I want to know
you everywhere. I want to purge you from my system and I want to never let you go. I want you. And I want it to end.
“But I can handle those moments, painful as they are. The bad moments—the ones I really hate are the five hundred times a
day I want to hold your hand. Or touch that little piece of hair that never stays behind your ear. Or walk just a little bit
closer to you than I have to. I want to stop feeling like life is a game of tag and you’re base. I want to forget that base
hates me.”
“I don’t hate you.” Her hands were on his shoulders then, almost like he’d willed them there. “And maybe...”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe I want those things too?”
It was like finding their way up a mountain in the dark, feeling along, trying to determine where the boundaries were and
then realizing there were no boundaries. It was like realizing you can fly. And Ethan snapped.
In the next moment, Maggie was in his arms, and her legs were around his waist and he was pressing her back against the door.
Even in that freezing room, his blood burned. His head spun. He wasn’t strong enough to fight it anymore, and he never, ever
wanted to fight it again because there was a click , the way she snapped into place, fitting herself into his arms and his body and his soul.
He didn’t have to see her; he could feel her. The brush of her breasts and the squeeze of her thighs and the way she tilted
and canted and ground as if trying to get closer, needing... more. They both needed more. He’d never felt so complete and
so unfinished at the same time, so he turned and carried her to the bed and they fell together in a tangle of arms and legs
and roaming hands, cold sheets and warm kisses that rose and fell and crested like the tide. He was never going to get enough
of her. Of this. Of them.
She sighed and stretched and arched her back as he kissed the soft skin of her throat.
“Do you want this, sweetheart? You need to tell me.”
“Yes. Yes, I’ve always wanted this.” Her voice was small and shallow, like she’d forgotten how to breathe, and something about
it jarred a laugh out of him.
“Since when?”
She stilled beneath him. Her hand rubbed across his cheek where he needed to shave. “Since Tucson.”