The Spy Who Saved Christmas (3 page)

He couldn’t breathe. He rose anyway and lunged, caught her by the knees and brought her down harder than he’d intended—he didn’t exactly have full control. “Sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough.” She kicked at him one more time, missing his face by an inch.

He compartmentalized the pain and somehow got her pinned under him again, more carefully this time, taking no chances. “Stop for a second, would you?”

“Get off me.” She did her best to head-butt him. Her eyes burned with hate and desperation as she wriggled, hissing and threatening murder.

Hot memories aside, one thing was becoming crystal clear: this Lara wasn’t the Lara he still dreamed about sometimes, still fantasized about, the Lara who’d so sweetly surrendered to him.

Where the hell was the timidly curious virgin he remembered?

She had
grieved
for him.

Lara fought, blind with fear and anger. She’d grieved for him when his bakery had burned, with him inside, hours after she’d left him that night. And she’d grieved again when she’d found out that she was pregnant, grieved for her babies who would have to grow up without a father.

But he hadn’t been dead. He’d been alive; he just hadn’t cared enough to tell her, too busy taking knockout blondes to dinner. He was involved in some nasty stuff, probably organized crime or drug dealing or something.

God, what an idiot she’d been.

“I go to your grave almost every Sunday, you jerk.” She tried to shove him. Might as well shove a brick wall.

Reid looked taken aback. “I have a grave?”

“The town buried you when no relatives came forward. They paid for the lot. There was a collection to pay for the coffin. I paid for the service. From my insurance money.” Even with him standing in front of her, she could still feel the lingering grief. Obviously, her mind was having trouble catching up with reality.

“I’m sorry.”

She tried to heave him off. “If you say you’re sorry one more time, I swear I’ll kill you.”

He managed to restrain her at last, the bloody bastard. “You’re a lot more violent than I remembered.”

She stilled. Mostly because there was little else she could do. And also because he was right. She was acting completely out of character.

She’d threatened murder twice in the last ten minutes. This wasn’t the kind of person she was. It wasn’t the kind of motherly example she would want to set for her boys.

“Must be rubbing off from you,” she shot back, as confusion, pain and humiliation hit her in quick succession. She tried to shift under his familiar weight, looking for a way out. “Please let me go.” For her babies, she would beg. “I won’t say anything to anyone. I’ll forget I ever saw you again. You can be dead to me again. I want you to be dead to me.”

Some dark emotion passed across his face, but it was gone before she could identify it. He waited a beat, measuring her up, then pushing away. “Okay. Cease fire.”

She nodded because he was stronger than her and she had no other choice. He’d always been tough and rough, had bad boy written all over him, the very thing that had drawn her to him in the first place. He was the hottest-looking guy she’d ever known, opening up shop right next to hers the week after she had. She was a goner the first time she’d laid eyes on him—six feet four inches of muscle and attitude.

She swallowed hard, pushing those memories away as she sat up. “Are you sure those men will track me down?”

“They’ll follow any lead they think might lead to me. Your kids are at your house?”

“Yes.” She buried her face in her hands. Her heart beat out of control. “With a babysitter.” God, she’d known that going on a date as far away as New York City was a huge mistake. But Allen had asked, not for the first time, and everyone she knew was on her case, telling her that she needed to get a life and move on. So she’d said yes.

The guilt was going to kill her. If worry didn’t kill her first. She rose to her feet and glanced at the door, weighing her chances of getting by Reid.

He was dialing his phone. “Hey. I’m fine. I’m heading out. I’ll call you back when I’m on the road. One thing right now. I need protection in Hopeville, P.A.” He gave her address.

Strange that he would remember. He hadn’t bothered coming back to tell her that he was okay. She couldn’t have been that important to him.

“Whoever you have closest. Local cops, fine. Outside surveillance, not to go in unless needed. Anyone approaching but me should be considered armed and dangerous. There are kids inside,” he added, then hung up and walked to a wall panel that opened to reveal a frightening cache of weapons. He tossed boxes of ammunition and guns into his bag, along with hand grenades and other things she didn’t recognize.

And the guns weren’t the scariest by far. The measured way he moved, his cold method as he assessed each weapon before selecting it spoke of a man who wore danger and violence like a second skin. How could he have hidden it so well two years ago when it was obvious now?

She inched toward the door. She really, really needed to leave. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked without looking her way, keeping up with his preparations.

He could have been the hero of some action movie.
Or the villain.
Two years ago, with his tattoos, the fact that he rode a bike, with those bedroom eyes of his that awakened her body for the first time to the fact that she was a woman, he was the most dangerous man she’d ever met. Just talking to him had always been a thrill. But he was so much more than she’d ever known.

“Please let me leave.” To think that despite her stunned reaction at the sight of him in the restaurant, she’d been so incredibly happy to see him. Sitting there, alive, he was the answer to all her prayers. She used to have dreams like that. His coming back, telling her it was all a big mistake. The two of them making a real family. His promising that he would love her forever, would never leave her again.

And now her fondest dreams were turning into a nightmare in front of her eyes. She pressed her jaw together for a second until the pain passed. “Please let me go home,” she entreated once she could breathe.

He barely looked up. “I can get you there faster than anyone else. Guaranteed.”

He was going to take her? “No offense, but I’m not sure I want you anywhere near my babies.” She thought of the gunfight at the restaurant. The way he’d left his date there, lying in a pool of blood. Okay, she was sure she didn’t want him anywhere near Zak and Nate. And she kind of wished she’d never told him about the twins. She’d been still too shaken up. Hadn’t been in her right mind. Hadn’t been able to think.

He closed the panel. “I’m one of the good guys.”

She kind of figured that from the phone conversation, and would have been lying if she said that wasn’t a great relief. But… “Good guy and dangerous aren’t mutually exclusive,” she pointed out. “Whatever you’re involved in, I want no part of it.”

“Too late.”

Was that regret in his voice?

He took the few steps necessary to reach her, and she had to look up at him. He was a good couple of inches taller and almost twice as wide in the shoulders—and she wasn’t a small woman.

He hesitated for a second, then huffed some air out through narrowed lips. “I was working undercover tonight.”

A couple of things clicked into place. Her mind raced. “And back in Hopeville when we met?”

He tossed her a coat, then once she’d put it on, grabbed her by the wrist, heading out to the garage. “Yes.”

Of course.
He’d been new to town. But then again, she’d been new, too. They had bonded over being outsiders who were trying to get their small side-by-side shops going, trying to fit in.

“Is Reid Graham your real name?”

“Yes. I was hoping to find a way into the cell through an old army acquaintance who knew me back then. He’d gone the wrong way after he quit the army. He has a cousin on the fringes of the cell. My record was doctored to make it look like I quit, too, shortly after him. I ran into him ‘accidentally’ and was trying to get into his confidence. Anyway, I had to use my real name.”

“Who was the blonde at the restaurant?”

“An asset. She had information I needed.”

A disposable asset, apparently. Obviously, his business involved using people and casting them aside if necessary. Then she thought of something else, and her throat constricted.

“Was seducing me part of your cover?”

“You came to me.” His voice was low, tightly controlled. “But regardless—” He paused while he let his car quietly roll out of the garage. He was scanning their surroundings. “What I allowed to happen…plain bad judgment on my part.”

Tears burned the back of her eyes as they reached the street and he stepped on the gas. She looked away from him, blinking rapidly, staring out the side window at the houses that zoomed by.

“I have a situation here.” He was talking on his phone again. “Personal. I need a safe house somewhere near Hopeville, P.A.” He listened. “Not much. I have the tag numbers of the SUV the shooters drove.” He rattled that off, then looked at her. “What’s your husband’s name?”

Husband? Oh, Allen.
“Allen Birmingham.”

“Anybody by the name of Allen Birmingham at the restaurant?” His face darkened as he listened to the response. “I figured,” he said before ending the call.

She gripped the seat belt. “What? What happened to Allen?”

“The cops talked to him when they showed up. They asked him to wait in the manager’s office because they needed to talk to him again about your
kidnapping,
after they secured the scene and got what they could from the rest of the witnesses.” He looked at her, regret in his cinnamon eyes. “By the time they came back to him, he’d disappeared. Hey.” He took her hand, his fingers warm and strong around hers. “I’m sorry.”

“You think those men took him?” She was beginning to feel light-headed. “They wouldn’t hurt him, would they?”

He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her hand, the car flying over the road. It was getting late, so that traffic was beginning to thin, not much standing in their way.

She pulled away to wrap her arms around herself. “He isn’t my husband,” she said at last, dazed.

“Boyfriend? I guess he’s the father of your boys?”

She held Reid’s somber gaze when he glanced over. Bit her lip.
Sooner or later…
It wasn’t as if he wanted anything to do with them anyway. God, she’d been dreaming about this moment, wishing for this miracle for so long. And now that her most impossible dream had come true, nothing was as it should have been. It broke her heart.

She ignored the pain and filled her lungs. “No. You are,” she told him.

He almost drove into oncoming traffic. Reid eased off the gas and straightened the steering wheel, trying to get his racing mind under control. “This would not be the best time to mess with me.”

She said nothing.

“How is that possible?”
Don’t be an idiot,
he thought as soon as the words were out of his mouth, just as she said the exact same thing out loud.

He swallowed back a snappy response. Okay, so, yes, they’d done the necessary deed. But still, a pregnancy
wasn’t
possible. But if he wasn’t the father, then who was? Why wasn’t he told that she was pregnant? He had asked for an update on her after he’d been evacuated from Hopeville. Someone had gone out, checked on her and reported back that she was fine.

Of course, her pregnancy might not have been showing at the time. The report had focused on the fact that her butcher shop had burned, too, but she’d received enough insurance money to rebuild. Not that he hadn’t felt guilty anyway.

He stole a look at her from the corner of his eye and decided to play along, figure out what her game was. “Which one?” She’d said Zak and Nate.

“Both. They’re twins.”

He gave a strangled cough as saliva went down the wrong way. He had to give it to her, when she did some thing, she really went to town with it. He loosened his hands on the steering wheel, which he’d been gripping so hard, his knuckles were beginning to ache.

“How did the fire start?” she asked.

And his muscles tightened again. “I can’t talk about that.”

Her voice deepened with anger. “I think you owe me an explanation.”

Words she stole right out of his mouth. He waited a couple of seconds while he arranged his thoughts. He could give her the generalities. She did deserve something. “I was watching someone I suspected was a member of a group we had an interest in.”

“We?”

He didn’t respond.

“Law enforcement? Some government agency?”

“Something along those lines. Anyway, there was a leak somewhere. They figured out who I was. They came after me.”

She was watching him, wide-eyed. “But then whose body was that in the ashes?”

Right. The body she had buried. An image rose in his mind—her standing by a headstone carved with his name. No reason he should feel bad about that—he’d just been doing his job—but he felt like a jerk anyway. “I took one of them out before they got to me.”

That revelation silenced her for only a second. “How did you get out?”

“I wasn’t as dead as they thought when they set the place on fire. I crawled off, called for help. The decision was made that it’d be best if I wasn’t officially resurrected.”

“You could have told me.” Her voice was full of accusation.

“I was under orders not to. And the less you knew the safer you were.”
The safer I was.

If they’d spent any more time together, if he’d gone back… She would have become a complication. She would have made him vulnerable. He couldn’t afford that. No weaknesses were allowed in his line of work. Soft spots had a way of turning deadly. He’d had to cut her off before she could come to mean too much to him.

She took a few seconds to digest his words. “Who were you watching?” she asked after a while.

He considered how much he could tell her. He was skating dangerously close to lines he should not cross. “Remember the gun shop across the strip mall?”