A Beautiful Lie (34 page)

Or worse. 

There was one thought on his mind and one thought only – if she was gone, she’d never know how much he loved her. 

Garrett squeezed his eyes closed and kissed the top of Parker’s head.  She pulled her cheek away from his chest and looked up at him, keeping the rest of her body as close to him as she could.  He stared deep into her eyes, and she felt her heart speed up. 

Garrett brought his hand up to push some of her hair behind her ears so he could cup her cheek.  His thumb moved lazily back and forth against her skin while the butterflies in his stomach fluttered rapidly.

“I love you,” he told her softly, his gaze never wavering from her own.

Parker heard him say the words, she saw his mouth move to form the sounds she waited a lifetime to hear, but it didn’t seem real.  She was afraid if she closed her eyes, if she looked away, it would all be a dream.  Nothing about this day made sense. It only seemed right that this shouldn’t either.  Of course Garrett loved her.  They’d been friends for years and now they were intimate.  He was scared he'd almost lost her today, and it made him want to reaffirm the love he had for his friend.  It was a natural response to a scary situation, a knee-jerk reaction to the adrenalin still coursing through him.

“I know,” Parker replied softly, understanding evident on her face even though she wished things were different.

“No, I don’t think you do,” Garrett said with a shake of his head.  “And that’s completely my fault.  I should have told you a long time ago.  I shouldn’t have waited until I almost lost you.  I know love isn’t something that comes easy for you or that you even believe in it.  I know and I don’t care.  I don’t care if you’re afraid to love me back, I don’t care if you never feel the same way that I do.  I just need you to know, right here and right now, that I am in love with you, Annabelle Parker.”

Parker bit her bottom lip in an effort to stop the flow of tears that were threatening to spill over onto her cheeks, but it was useless.  His admission alone would have made her fall apart, but the way he said her name, like she was the most important person in the world to him, forced a sob past her lips.

Garrett hadn’t given one thought to how Parker would react to his declaration. He just spit it out.  She hadn’t said a word since he’d spoken; the tears just slowly leaked from her eyes as she stared at him in disbelief.  Garrett felt like maybe he said something wrong.  He should have planned it better, given her some kind of warning about how he felt before throwing it at her after the day she had.  He was so busy kicking himself he almost missed Parker’s whispered response through the tears.

“I’m scared.”

Garrett knew because of her father and the way she was treated she refused to give all of her heart to someone.  Garrett didn’t want her to feel guilty for one minute because she couldn’t return his feelings. 

He bent his knees so he was eye level with her.

“I told you, it doesn’t matter to me if you can’t-”

Parker quickly reached up and covered his mouth with her hand before he could finish. 

“I’m not scared because I can’t give you my love in return,” she told him softly.  “I’m scared because I love you so much sometimes it’s hard to breathe.”

Garrett groaned softly behind her hand.

“I’m scared because I never ever wanted to lose myself in someone as deeply as my parents did.  I’m scared because I was so stupid to realize I would have no control over that where you were concerned.”

Garrett closed his eyes for a moment, letting Parker’s words sink in and letting himself believe in everything she was saying.  He opened his eyes as another tear fell from her eyes and slipped down her cheek and over her lip.

“Everything I have to give, it’s yours.  It’s always been yours,” Parker told him with a sob.

Garrett lifted Parker up into his arms, her hand quickly falling away from his mouth as he captured her lips and sighed once they were connected.  The exchange of breaths, the slide of tongues, everything was more enhanced than it had been before.  Garrett’s hand went to the back of Parker’s head, holding her in place against his mouth.  He turned and walked with her to the bed, climbing onto it and laying her down in the middle, never breaking the kiss.

The towel was pulled away from Parker’s body, and Garrett’s clothes were quickly shed.  The words had finally been spoken and now the actions took their place.  Garrett kissed his way down Parker’s body, savoring every inch of her, finally accepting she was his.  He worshiped every spot that his mouth touched, repeating the words of love after each press of his lips against her.  He brought her to release with his mouth and knew he’d never hear anything sweeter than the sound of Parker shouting his name.

She pulled his body up the length of hers, needing him close and his skin touching her everywhere.  She traced Garrett’s lips with her fingertips and sighed in contentment when he slowly pushed into her.  They moved together, never once breaking eye contact.  There was more meaning in the touches and greater significance in the way that they fit together.  Everything was heightened and nothing was lost on either one of them.  They both knew everything about this moment would change them forever.  They both understood there was no going back.

Garrett didn’t know how he ever survived without the knowledge of Parker’s love before.  He was overwhelmed with emotion as he rocked against her and pulsed inside of her.  He felt like he could finally breathe but at the same time, he felt a clawing tightness in his throat with the need to keep repeating his words of love so she’d never forget. 

Parker’s legs wrapped tightly around Garrett’s hips, and her arms held him firmly against her as she flew over the edge of another release, arching her back with the force of pleasure that coursed through her body.  Garrett never wanted the moment to end, but she was slick and throbbed around him as he pushed deeper.  She craned her neck forward and pressed her mouth against his, pulling away just enough to tell him she loved him again.  Her soft words ghosted against his lips, and he came fast and hard, her name echoing into the room as he shouted his pleasure and spilled inside of her.

Parker fell asleep wrapped in Garrett’s arms, exhaustion from the day’s events and admissions finally taking its toll on her.  Garrett wanted to know what exactly happened out on the dock.  He wanted to know how it was possible she hadn’t been on board when it exploded. 

Now more than ever Garrett knew the timing of Parker’s job offer for the CIA, her friend Lacie Butler’s death, Milo’s trip to the Dominican, and the formation of The Target Agency all happening at the same time hadn’t just been a coincidence.  There was something more than a little suspicious about all of those facts lining up, and he knew that he and Parker needed to talk about those things immediately.

For now, he pulled her in close and let the woman he loved sleep.  He closed his eyes and prayed that nothing would ever ruin the perfection of this night.

Chapter Eighteen

“I
did
board the boat.  I looked around for a few minutes before I realized I left my camera in the car and needed to have it in case I came across something,” Parker explained to Garrett as he drove them back to the resort, early the following morning.

Now that everything was on the table between them, so to speak, Parker had no problem resting her hand on Garrett’s thigh while he drove, and Garrett had no problem lifting her hand to his lips so he could kiss the back of it every time they came to a stop.

After the horror of yesterday, it seemed frivolous to both of them that they had wasted so much time denying their hearts what they really wanted.   It took a near-death experience for them to finally realize they needed to take hold of every moment together and cherish it.  Professing their love for each other had been so easy.  They’d both been so stupid and blind, wasted so much time
not
talking; all they wanted to do now was tell each other everything.

“I was so jealous when I came back to the resort and saw you with Cole the other night,” Garrett told Parker with a sheepish smile, glancing over at her nervously to gauge her reaction. 

He’d been doing that ever since they left the hotel that morning, throwing in little tidbits of his feelings while she explained what happened the previous day.  It felt good to finally say those things out loud, but at the same time, it helped ease the ache in his chest while Parker replayed the events for him.  Garrett had barely slept the night before.  He was afraid if he closed his eyes, he would wake up and realize he lost everything, that he'd open his eyes and find out he never pulled Parker from the water, never heard her tell him that she loved him. Garrett had held her body close and watched her sleep, felt her low, even breaths until the sun shone through the window.

Parker let her head fall back on the head rest and stared at Garrett’s profile as he navigated the streets, taking in his strong jaw line, the slope of his nose, and the way the sunlight streaming in through the front windshield of the car highlighted the dimples in his cheeks.

“You had nothing to be jealous of. Cole is like a big brother to me,” Parker told him softly.

Garrett brought her hand up to his lips once again, this time kissing the inside of her palm.  She knew he was trying to keep her calm as she went through the events from the day before, and it made her love him even more.  Parker knew he had been scared. When he pulled her from the water his eyes roamed frantically over her checking for injuries and he refused to leave her side or stop touching her in some way the entire night and this morning, as if to reassure himself that she was really okay.  She knew it had affected him and forced him to think about losing another person in his life and that had been the catalyst to him pouring his heart out to her, but he would put all of that in the back of his mind to make sure she was okay first. Parker was finally realizing that it was all about her when it came to Garrett; that it always had been.  For all these years, he always put her feelings first, always made sure she was taken care of that she was okay.  That’s why he never acted on his feelings for her, because he only wanted her to be happy.  He saw her happy with Milo and vowed to never do anything to ruin it for her.  Parker wanted to crawl across the car and climb onto Garrett’s lap to be as close to him as possible. She wanted to roll down the window and shout her happiness to the world.  But all that would have to wait.  Right now they needed to concentrate on what happened at the marina.

“I noticed a stack of papers on the table in the lower cabin.  They were lists of names.  I flipped through them quickly but none of the names were ones I recognized.  They were definitely all female though.  I knew Brady would have better luck with them and I didn’t want to risk moving them, so I made my way up to the deck and got off of the boat so I could jog back to the car and get my camera, but I never made it there,” Parker explained.

“Did you see any clothing laying around that you recognized?  Anything that would implicate that Milo had definitely been on the boat at some point?  Just because he owned it doesn’t mean he was the one using it.”

Even though Garrett had come to terms with his best friend hiding a huge secret, it still didn’t mean he was guilty of anything―yet.  There was a maid who saw him in a hotel and paperwork showing he owned a boat.  Neither proved, without a shadow of a doubt, he was the one responsible for the disappearances and deaths of those girls.  The whole purpose of this mission was to find out why he was killed and so far, all they’d done was uncover more questions.  They could wager a guess that Milo’s death had something to do with his involvement, innocent or not, with the missing girls, but they still didn’t know for sure.

“I glanced around but the first things that caught my eye were the papers on the table.  Nothing else stuck out as being familiar or something that would belong to him,” Parker explained.

Her knee bounced nervously as they sat in silence for a few minutes at an intersection. Garrett squeezed her hand gently and tried, once again, to lighten the situation and calm her nerves.

“I was hard as fucking stone when we were on the plane and you stole my gun out of its holster,” Garrett muttered.  He tried to inflict irritation in his voice, but the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth gave him away.

Parker laughed and wished for what seemed like the millionth time that they hadn’t been so stubborn and would have done this a long time ago.  She didn’t have to work at being happy with Garrett; it just came naturally as it always had from day one.  The way they argued, the way they joked, the way they loved, and the way they took care of one another―it all boiled down to the fact that they were just meant to be together like this.

“I’ll have to remember to make an appointment at the shooting range when we get back home now that I know you have a thing for chicks with guns,” she told him with a smile.

“Not
any
chick with a gun, just you.  And as long as we have the place to ourselves, I have no problem with that,” Garrett replied with a mischievous look on his face.

The thought of Garrett bending her over the waist-high ledge in one of the shooting booths while other patrons fired off shots around them and had no clue what was going on made Parker cross her legs and shift in her seat.  She could almost feel Garrett’s breath on the back of her neck as he looked over her shoulder while she aimed at the paper target hanging down from the ceiling.  She could picture the noise of firearms discharging all around, masking the sounds of him pounding into her and her echoing cries of pleasure.

Parker cleared her throat and her mind from those thoughts before she lost all of her concentration.  She needed to spit this next part out quickly before the memories of it threatened to break her down.

“When I stepped off of the boat, I heard a ticking sound.  Almost like someone typing on a computer.  I actually laughed a little because I figured I’d been spending too much time with you and Brady lately, listening to the two of you bang away on your keyboards.  I walked a few feet down the dock and the ticking sound got a bit louder and then suddenly…it stopped.”