Navy SEALs Complete Series: 3 Books + 3 Novellas (Tempting Navy SEALs) (137 page)

“Maggie, let me help you.” Matthew leaned closer, his hazel eyes compassionate as he watched her. “We’re not interested in prosecuting you, not if we get that information. Otherwise …” Otherwise, they would hang her out to dry on whatever trumped-up evidence Grant had left.

“So, it wouldn’t matter to you if I had been a part of this?” she accused, as she waved her hand toward the pictures before her, the morgue shots of the young women who had been killed because of the horrible drug Grant had helped to distribute. “As long as you get whatever Grant had hidden, then you would just wipe the slate clean?”

“I give you my promise, Maggie. The DA will put it in writing …”

“Then you’re a fool,” she screamed, jerking to her feet as she grabbed the nearest photo and slapped it beneath his face. “
You
look at her, Matthew. She was savaged. And you’re willing to let go someone you suspect of being capable of helping in it?”

She was shaking so violently she could feel the very core of her threatening to shatter apart. She couldn’t fight her tears any longer, or her rage. She wanted to leave here, she wanted to go home, and
then she wanted to find whatever the hell it was she was supposed to have and throw it in Folker’s face.

“Sit down, Maggie.” He sat back in his chair, calm, remote.

She had known the detective for nearly ten years now, since she had come to the station with her father when he worked with the paper. It was as much her world as the newspaper office was.

“Don’t tell me to sit down.” She shook her head furiously. “I did not do this, Matthew. Not in any part.” She pointed a shaky finger at the pictures between them. “And if you had the evidence you say you do, you and that son-of-a-bitch Jordan would have arrested me while he was spitting his accusations in my face earlier.”

The door opened at that second. Maggie jerked around, her heart exploding in her chest at the sight of the man standing there, tall, remote, his brown eyes so cold and hard they were like chips of dark ice.

“No, Maggie, they wouldn’t have arrested you,” Joe told her softly. “Because I won’t let them. Now get your stuff together and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Out of there? To where? She had thought he would be her salvation, that if anyone believed in her, Joe would. But as she stared into the cold hard depths of his eyes she was terribly afraid that Joe didn’t believe in her any more than anyone else did.

One week later

Maggie stared into the misty morning of the South Carolina Mountains and contemplated mistakes. Past mistakes, present mistakes, and how they would lead into the future. She was twenty-eight years old, and she might not live to see twenty-nine. The choices she had made in the past two and a half years led her to this mountain, this cabin, and the man she couldn’t forget.

She had been such a fool. Two and a half years before she had walked out of Joe Merino’s life, believing she had left in time to save her heart, to go on and to find happiness with someone else.

He hadn’t loved her. They were damned good in bed, but he had made it clear he didn’t want or need her in his life. Real clear. Another woman on his arm type clear.

She curled her feet beneath her, tucking her body tighter in the
rocking chair that sat on the weathered wood porch of the cabin Joe had brought her to a week before.

That had been the beginning of her downfall into hell. She had broken all ties to Joe Merino two years and six months before. Several months later, she had met Grant Samuels. Six months after meeting, they had married.

She should have known better. The moment she learned Grant was in law enforcement, she should have run. But Grant had been a detective with the Atlanta Police Department at the time, and Joe had been an agent in the DEA. They might know each other, but it had never occurred to her that they had been as close as they were. And Grant had kept the secret until only days before their wedding.

She should have broken off the engagement the day she learned Grant and Joe not only knew each other, but were supposedly best friends. And she would have, except Grant had pleaded with her, swore he loved her, and the wedding had been only days away.

Grant had claimed he had known about her and Joe, and hadn’t told her who he was because he had been terrified of losing her. That much would have been the truth, considering how easily he had used her, how he had intended to use her.

She had loved Grant. Or she had thought she did. Within months she had learned that the man she loved didn’t exist. Grant had married her because he believed Joe cared for her. She had been a trophy, something to torment Joe with, and nothing more.

She had tried to leave him. Three months after their marriage she had walked out, only to learn the true nature of the man she called her husband and the information he had gathered to ensure she never divorced him. Information that would destroy her father.

And now here she was, still fighting to escape the hell of a marriage that had been doomed from the start. Older, wiser, and more certain than ever that Joe Merino would end up breaking her heart, if Grant’s deceptions didn’t end up getting her killed first.

Where would he have hidden the information Joe needed so desperately? Information that would seal the government’s case against the remaining Fuentes family? Hell, did he even have the proof his journal had stated he had? Everything else in that damned book had been a lie.

Oh, he had really managed to mess her life up completely. The journal claimed she knew the location of the proof he had taken against the Fuentes family. Pictures and video discs of Santiago and Jose Fuentes along with Roberto Manuelo, the cartel general that had been killed the night Grant had tried to kidnap a female DEA agent, coordinating the drugging and rapes of over a dozen women in the past two years. The location of the lab where the drug was created and even the identities of several influential political figures involved with Fuentes.

In the past week, Maggie had learned exactly why the police department was so eager to drop any charges they could bring against her in return for the information they were looking for.

So why couldn’t the bastard Grant just write it in his journal with all the lies he had written against her? He could have included some truth in it, just for a change of pace.

She pushed her fingers through her hair, the circles in her mind exhausting her. There were no answers, and the cold suspicion in Joe’s eyes was killing her. He had changed since Grant’s death. Since he had been forced to kill Grant, rather. There was an edge of unrelenting ice in his expression, in his eyes, that hadn’t been there before. Amusement had always lurked in the chocolate brown gaze, sensuality; playfulness had always curved his lips.

Even when they had argued, when she had walked out on the relationship they had, there had been regret, sadness, softness. There was none of that now. This wasn’t the man she had given her heart to.

So why was he protecting her? Why did he give a damn? Those
were questions he had refused to answer since their arrival at the cabin, questions that garnered no more than a cold silence.

At this rate, she was going to have frostbite before the month was out.

“You’re a sitting target out here.”

Maggie flinched at the sound of his voice from the doorway. The dark sensuality of the tone couldn’t be hidden, no matter how coldly furious he might be. It throbbed just beneath the ice and sent heat curling through her system.

She hated that. She hated the response to him, unwilling and unwanted, that she had learned she had no hope of controlling.

She stared into the forest, watching the mist rise like a veil of dreams above the treetops to meet the heat of the rising sun.

“If the Fuentes family knew where I was, then they would have already struck.” She shrugged her shoulders, wishing she had worn a bra beneath the loose T-shirt she had slept in.

Her nipples were hardening, her breasts were swelling, and this was no time for it. She could feel the steadily rising sense of expectation building within her. She had spent a week with Joe, alone, and the tension was only growing worse by the day.

“You aren’t showing much faith in my protective abilities,” he grunted.

“Of course I am.” She kept staring into the forest; she wasn’t about to watch him. Watching him only aroused her further. “I’m sitting here watching the dew meet the sunrise, in plain view. See, I trust you to know I’m well hidden.”

“You make about as much sense now as you ever did.” His voice turned surly. “Come inside, I have coffee ready.”

Yeah, she had smelled it for the past half hour, tempting, strong, teasing her senses. Rather like Joe did.

This was not going to work.

“You’re sitting out here pouting,” he accused, when she didn’t move to follow him.

“I don’t pout, Joe,” she reminded him. “I think.”

“You think too much then,” he growled. “Now get your butt in the house. Maybe the coffee will even out your temper.”

She clenched her teeth. She was not going to argue with him. Arguing with him was a pointless exercise. It was like beating her head against a wall. She only ended up hurting herself.

“I don’t have a temper.” She was restrained. Hell, he was still alive, wasn’t he?

“Uh-huh.” Was that amusement she heard in his voice?

After a week?

She couldn’t help herself, she turned and looked at him and her senses went into overload. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The leanly muscled contours of his hair-matted chest brought back memories better forgotten. Memories she had never forgotten.

The warmth of him as he came over her, his thighs parting hers, the feel of his cock nudging against her sex, filling her slowly, riding her fiercely.

Maggie shivered as her vagina clenched with a sudden spasm of hungry need, a clenching of lust as the heated dampness began to prepare her for a touch that certainly wasn’t coming. She jerked her eyes from his chest and lifted them to his face. Beard-roughened, the darker growth contrasted with the dark blond, rakishly cut hair that framed his face. The two days’ growth was nearly black, and gave him a piratical appearance that was too mouthwatering for words. It just made his lips appear sexier, more lickable. And she really wanted to lick them.

“Come on, Maggie. Coffee and breakfast. Then we can talk.” He held his hand out to her, the ice that had filled his eyes for the past week thawing, warming.

Maggie licked her lips nervously, feeling her heart racing in her chest, her nerve endings sensitizing. She rose from the chair, though she ignored his outstretched hand as she watched him warily. He was like a damned chameleon, and the abrupt changes were throwing her off balance.

“So where’s the prick I’ve spent the last seven days with?” she asked as she moved around him to enter the cabin, feeling the walls closing in on her as he stepped in behind her.

He had a habit of that, sucking all the space out of a room until nothing remained except him. At least, that was all she was aware of. The warm, cheery tones of burnt reds and soft desert browns of the living room were lost on her. The couch was wide, comfortable. Joe liked making love on couches. Floors. Coffee tables. Kitchen counters.

She stepped back quickly, giving him plenty of room as the corner of his lips kicked up in a grin.

“Same cautious Maggie,” he said, as he moved past her and headed to the kitchen. “How long did it take me to get you into bed the first time?”

“Not long enough,” she stated. “And I am not having sex with you again, Joe.” Yeah. Right. Her body was all in agreement on that one. In another second, the dampness building on the folds of her sex was going to start dampening the fleece of her pajama bottoms. If it wasn’t already.

“We’re sleeping in the same bed …”

“That’s not my choice,” she argued, as he glanced over his shoulder, casting her a wicked look. “You wouldn’t let me sleep on the couch.”

“Sure you can.” He shrugged his tanned shoulders negligently. “But it’s going to be an awful tight fit with both of us there.”

That was pretty much his stand on it seven days ago. She followed him slowly into the kitchen, admiring the tight contours of
his rear beneath the snug jeans he had only zipped, not buttoned. Yeah, she had caught that little detail out on the porch.

“How much longer are we staying here?” She finally asked the question that had been hovering on her lips for days. “When are you going to give up, Joe?”

“When the Fuentes family is dead.” He padded to the coffeepot, lifted the carafe, and poured the liquid into waiting cups.

His answer shocked her. Before, his answer would have been once a culprit was behind bars, not dead.

“I just want to know how they managed bail,” she sighed, moving to the kitchen table as he turned back, the coffee cups firmly in hand.

“One of Fuentes’s lieutenants paid off the judge. We have the money and evidence in hand. Judge Gilmore was none too pleased with the offer. He could take the money and let them out, or his grandchildren could suffer the consequences. We opted to go with the bribe, taped it, and now have the money impounded in a safe location until it’s needed. All with Jose’s and Santiago’s fingerprints.”

She couldn’t have been more surprised if he had said he was Santa Claus.

“And that’s not enough to lock them up for a while?” she asked, amazed.

“We need it all, Maggie. We want them locked away forever, if they’re smart enough to live until the trial. I don’t want them out on a technicality. And I don’t want families murdered to get them there.”

Maggie stared back at him suspiciously. She had been questioning him for a week now, and he was finally giving her the answers she wanted: Why?

“If I’m suspected of being part of this, then didn’t you just put several people in danger by telling me?”

His gaze was hooded as he glanced back at her before shrugging. “I don’t believe you’re part of this.”

Oh yeah, she really believed that one at this late date.

“So I’m here why?” she questioned him as he sat the coffee in front of her. “And they are still out on bail for what reason?”

“We need that proof Grant hid and the Fuentes family still believes you have that.” Joe took his seat across from her, watching her steadily. “You don’t know where it’s at; that means your life is still in danger. And the Navy needs that mole. There’s too much at stake here to risk a trial on what little evidence we have of the two aiding and abetting Diego. If we want to shut down this cartel and that drug, then we have to do it here.”

Ahh, so the truth was emerging, perhaps.

“You’re using me …”

“Hell no!” Anger flashed across his expression. “You are not bait, Maggie. No matter what you think. I told you I’d protect you, and I meant it.”

And she didn’t trust him, not even for a second. Fear raced down her spine as she stared back at him, suddenly wondering to what lengths he would go in capturing the Fuentes men. But she knew the lengths he would go to, she reminded herself. He blamed the Fuentes family for what happened to Grant, rather than blaming Grant himself.

“And this information the federal prosecutor thinks I’m hiding?” she asked, not bothering to hide the mockery in her voice. “Have you just given up on it, Joe?”

He tilted his head as he regarded her for several seconds. “You don’t know where it’s at. That’s a dead end.”

“Oh, you are so good.” She would have cried if it didn’t hurt so damned bad. The truth was there in his eyes, the suspicion, the calculation. Others might not have recognized it, but Maggie saw it
and knew it for what it was. “Do you really expect me to swallow that line of crap, Joe? Do you think I’m that stupid?”

“On the contrary, you’re not stupid at all. Suspicious,” he chided her with a quirk of amusement. “But not stupid.”

Maggie ignored the coffee sitting before her, the smell of it suddenly as unappetizing as the lies passing his lips. Standing slowly to her feet, she stared back at him impassively, fighting to hide the pain exploding inside her.

“You’ve changed, Joe,” she whispered. “I never pegged you for a liar. An asshole and a prick maybe, but not an out-and-out liar. Congratulations, you did the impossible. You made my opinion of you sink lower than it was two and a half years ago.”

Turning on her heels, she moved to stalk from the kitchen, to put distance between herself and his games, his lies. She hated lies. She hated herself. Because she wanted to believe him, she wanted to trust in the arousal and the warmth that had heated his eyes, just as she wanted to believe that he could trust in her, just once. She was a fool.