Hot for His Hostage (18 page)

“I assume it wasn’t Tait’s beloved bomb.”

“To our minds, it was way better. The entrenchment of Homer also meant we got a new
fringe bennie.”

 “Which was…?”

“A menagerie.”

Zoe blinked. “For real? As in, animals?”

“Yeah, for real. They came and went, of course—and at first, T and I were a pair of
kid-power protesters, thinking the creatures were being used for ‘nefarious’ purposes—but
Mom ensured us they were making the animals better with their research, not worse.”
He gave a lopsided grin. “We were pretty damn relieved when she was right.”

“So Homer and the menagerie became fixtures.”

“Bingo,” he confirmed. “One week turned into two, then three, then a few months. Mom
and Homez—that’s what T and I finally started calling him—literally invented a geek-speak
language of their own around the project.”

She leaned toward him, more fascinated by his story with each minute. “Do you remember
any of it?”

He grimaced. “I’ve tried, but we were kids. If it didn’t mention Transformers, Nintendo,
or the Husky we hoped Homez would let us keep as a pet one day, we weren’t into the
grown-up chatter. But I remember their excitement. They were onto something big.”
Though his tone was steeped in pride, his tight frown lingered. “Dad saw it, too—so
much that he actually invited the guy over for dinner twice a week.”

Zoe didn’t hide her surprise. “
That
was generous.”

“He wanted to make Mom happy, even if that meant gutting his sanity to make it happen.”
He deepened her bewilderment by ticking up one side of his mouth. “And she kept loving
him, though the drinking got worse.”

“So things were a teeny bit dysfunctional.”

“We’re all a little dysfunctional, Zoe. The goal is to simply find someone who balances
yours out.”

For a long second, she couldn’t decide whether to smirk in cynicism or frown in disbelief.
“Okay, so they were…balanced. Right up until the day Homer left, right?”

“Right.”

“And she left with him.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No.” There wasn’t a note of hesitation in his voice. “Gotcha, didn’t I?”

She surrendered to a baffled smile, instead. “It’s not a very typical story.” She
paused for a moment as another though struck. “Though nothing’s been very ‘typical’
since the moment I met you, Shay Bommer.”

She knew better than to get used to the name—both their lives might depend on her
keeping up with the ruse that he was Shane Burnett—but the sampling felt nice on her
lips. Probably too nice. The man himself was no help for her resolve to put it away,
responding with a look of at least four feelings she couldn’t decipher. It was best
to quit while she was ahead than try to play through the puzzle, simply enjoying the
intensity of the emotions of his features, making her more than ready for the moment
he moved a hand to her cheek, caressing the sensitive trail of her hairline. Beautiful
shivers came, racing all over her scalp, but why’d they have to find their way to
the expanding bud between her thighs, too? She swallowed hard, forcing herself from
moaning at him in abject need…then bucking her hips up in open invitation…

“You’ve been so damn brave, Zoe,” he finally murmured. “So strong. Just like Mom was…especially
after Homer left.”

“What happened?”
You can now return to the innocuous part of our programming, everyone. Thank God
. “Did they finish the project? Or did Washington just summon him back?”

“Neither.” He spoke it with certainty. “My research doesn’t bear it out and neither
do my memories.”

“Okay,” she returned. “What do you remember?”

“Fights. Bad ones.”

She pressed her hand over his when shadows took over his face. “Ugh,” she whispered.
“So your dad and Homer finally had enough of the gentleman’s agreement?”

“Oh, no. It wasn’t my
dad
and Homez. It was mom.”

“And Homer?” She didn’t hide her bafflement. “But why? Weren’t they going to be the
new Fonteyn and Nureyev of science?”

Again, his face angled into different reactions. Every one of them was steal-her-breath
gorgeous but perplexity seemed to finally win out. “Who and who?”

She couldn’t help a beguiled smile. He really was such a big, burly military hunk.
Her imagination went off like a sparkler, thinking about all the classic dance videos
she wanted to make him sit through. “Maybe one day, I’ll have the chance to enlighten
you.”

“Maybe one day.” His gaze turned a soft butterscotch, threatening her focus yet again.

“What happened?” she forced out. “Between your mom and Homer?”

The softness dissolved from his gaze. Then his whole face. “I really don’t know,”
he admitted. “They were loud enough to wake Tait and I, but the dialogue itself…either
it was too muffled by the lab walls or I just don’t remember.” He shook his head.
“But after the dustups, Mom would bawl and Homez would leave.”

“Back to DC?” she ventured.

“That’s what we assumed.” He pulled his hand away to rub the back of his neck. “It
got to be that his time there outweighed his days in the lab with Mom. She was miserable.”

A huge fist lodged beneath her ribs. “And your dad definitely noticed.”

“Every second,” he confirmed. “Finally, after one really bad blowup, Homez bugged
out for good. Took everything except Scout, the dog. By that point, we were all kind
of relieved. Even Mom.” His shoulders clenched. “But Dad didn’t see it that way.”

The fist punched hard, banishing her breath. “Oh, no…”

His shoulders clenched. “He was drunk,” he muttered. “And she was distraught. Conclusions
were reached. His temper blew.”

“Shay,” she rasped. “
Lo siento.
I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t the last time.” He flattened his lips, as if berating himself simply for
the defensive tone, before going on, “But for some reason,
every
time, she just took it. Fuck, Tait and I were so angry—at her as much as him.”

She gulped. At least there were no tears to worry about this time. The grief in her
heart tore past the realm of tears. She ached for the little boys he and Tait had
been, forced to become men far too fast. “And I’ll bet you both tried to stand up
to him.”

“Fuck, yeah. Of course. But one time, she actually screamed at us to stop. She said—”

“What?” she rasped into his lead-heavy pause.

“She said we were only making it worse.”

“
Ay
.” She shoved back her bitterness to ask, “What did you do then?”

He squeezed his neck harder. “What
could
we do? We moved the hell on and tried to stay out of Dad’s way as much as possible,
especially after she disappeared in the middle of the night, about three months later.”

For a second, she let her jaw plummet in freefall. “She just left? No note? No good-bye?
No explanation?”

“Oh, there was an explanation. It came from Drake Bommer, who was happy to tell us
about the ‘stone-hearted bitch’ who’d left us and him for Homer, the hunk of scientific
hotness. Thanks to his new bestie, Mr. Jim Beam, we had the treat of hearing that
one over and over—and
over
.”

“
Higueputa
,” she spat.
Son of a bitch.

“It wasn’t an easy time for him.”

“Are you making
excuses
for the
cabrón
?”

“You think that’s what this is?” He dropped—make that nailed—his stare back into her.
“He was a shit, okay? No pardons for that. But he was also a Bommer—and if I’ve come
to understand anything about that while growing up, it’s that his pain ran through
deep fucking canyons.” He pulled in air through his nose, bitterness still gleaming
from his gaze. “Thanks to Cameron Stock, I almost lost my brother to those same canyons
last year.”

“Don’t forget the fine example your father set,” she grumbled.

“Well, Tait pulled through. He let his heart, his character, his stubbornness—and
yeah, the love of a great woman—take him to a better place. I’m damn proud of him”
The light in his eyes dulled. “Just wish I could tell him that, dammit.” 

Zoe pulled his hand down and tangled their fingers again. “You will,” she encouraged.
“Soon.”

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “I know. But thanks for saying it.”

Her heart clenched once more. He and Tait were as tight as she and her sister. Like
Ava and her, they’d had to be. Would she be as strong if she’d lost Ava’s devotion,
even temporarily? Would she be strong enough to keep such a huge secret from her sibling?
The conflict had to be tearing at Shay.

She could help him. Refocus him. “So what did you two do then?” she queried. “You
had someone to go to, right? Someone to talk to?”

He actually laughed. “We were
boys,
Zoe. The sons of an alcoholic abuser, at that. We sucked it up and moved on because
we had to. We were old enough to know that ‘talking to someone’ would likely mean
being placed into separate foster homes faster than you can say
ay caramba
.”

His words forged new hardness in his face. Zoe watched the transformation with a mix
of fear and wonder. She and Shay had to be near each other in chronological age, but
he suddenly seemed eons older and generations sadder. “So you clung to each other
for strength,” she whispered.

His grit was suddenly infused with wariness. He reeled back a little. “Don’t get carried
away, Miss Tiptoe Tulips. I don’t ‘cling’ to that dork-ass for anything. He smells
like a goat and he snores.”

Just like that, the man again melted her like a brick of chocolate in the sun. She
gazed up at him, hoping her face conveyed the depth of her gratitude for his honesty
in revealing his past, and his bravery in confronting it for himself.

“Thank you for clearing that up, Sir.”

He grinned and bestowed a deep kiss to her mouth. “You’re most welcome, baby girl.”

She yanked on his shirt, keeping him near for one more moment. “I mean
all
of it.”

He kissed her again. A little longer. A lot deeper. “I know.”

“So, what happened then?” she asked. “How did you two little men do your
not
clinging to each other thing?”

“We carried on. Went to school. Kept our damn noses clean. Worked hard. We had
one
angel on our side, our Uncle Jonah, who took care of crap like signing the school
papers and making sure we even got to school.” As he shook his head, the old man she’d
seen on his face abruptly disappeared, and he sped to the other end of the spectrum
as an eye-rolling teen. “You didn’t want to ditch when Uncle Jonah was around. We
made that mistake only once. Shit wasn’t pretty.”

She brushed her knuckles down the side of his face. “Did you get to have
any
fun?”

“Hell, yeah. Mrs. Verona, our neighbor, sometimes let us help her bake cookies. We
had a dog, Scout, who was like a lab mascot for Mom and Homez during the good days.
And when we got older, maybe we met the Jernigan twins a couple of times at the donut
place in town. Those girls were…really sweet.” The reemergence of his naughty grin
widened the melted puddle of her senses. “But the one treat we always gave ourselves
was a weekly trip to the half-price movies. They didn’t show the latest shit, but
they showed the best. Every Saturday, we survived on a cultural diet of Stallone,
Willis, Cruise, and Schwarzenegger. Take a wild guess what we both wanted to be when
we grew up.”

She added her grin to his. “Special Forces?”

When Shay nodded, somberness stomped back across his face. “It was good timing for
both of us. In Tait’s senior year of high school, Dad’s liver finally gave out. By
the middle of that summer, I took the equivalency exam and became a grad, too. Uncle
Jonah put us up for six months while we sucked raw eggs for breakfast and trained
like goddamn Olympians, preparing for the physical requirements of the job.

“By the time we signed up for the big green machine, we were ready. We didn’t make
it a secret to anyone that Special Forces was our ultimate goal. They all told us
we were crazy to think we’d both make it past the cuts, but we did.” His gaze sobered
by another degree. “It was harder for Tait than me—I saw it in every step he trudged
and test he took—but damn, I was proud of him. He hung in there, sometimes literally
by the skin of his teeth. He’s a stubborn fucker.

“For the next few years, life became a blur of working hard and playing harder. When
I wasn’t training for or actually out on an op, I was increasingly fascinated by the
connection that BDSM offered.”

Zoe slipped her hand to his neck and squeezed. “Connection. I like that description,
too.”

He scraped his fingers across the back of her hand. “I know.”

Before she succumbed to the longing to pull him down and mash their mouths again,
she probed, “So what led you to start looking for your mom?” The question was hard
to get out. There was a good chance he’d explain that he’d been involved with someone
else, and the importance of that relationship led to the desire of completing his
psychological circle with his mother. Despite the Freudian flawlessness of the theory,
dammit if it didn’t drive in a stranger-than-strange spike of jealousy. Though she
was certain he’d never have slept with her last night had he still been involved with
someone else, she didn’t enjoy even the concept of Shay with somebody else, period.