To the Brink (29 page)

He had no sense of how much time passed before he felt the mattress shift, felt the warmth of her body as she lay back down beside him.

"I'm not going to leave you." Her whisper filled the dark like a promise.

I'm not going to leave you.

The words floated in from a distance. Through a dream. As he drifted. Drifted deep into sleep again. Drifted back to a time when the words got garbled, twisted, and butted up against the stark reality of another place, another time, when
I'm not going to leave you
became a tearful
I
have to leave you
and all he could do was let her walk away.

Chapter 20

TEL AVIV

SEVEN YEARS AGO

Darcy wanted to dance, so Ethan took
her dancing. It wasn't his cuppa, but it was hers and he'd do anything for her. Including stop badgering her for one night about requesting a transfer back to the states.

"I promise," he'd said just before they'd left the apartment and she'd begged him to just enjoy the evening. "No pressure."

She'd gone up on tiptoes and kissed him.

And he set his mind to making sure she had fun. Yet all night it ate at him. Crippled him with worry for her.

If she'd just use her head. But whether she was on assignment in Peru or here in Israel, he knew her MO. She was always sticking her neck out a little too far, taking reckless chances to help U.S. citizens abroad. And if she didn't stop, she was going to get hurt. Or worse.

It was the worse that ate at him like a cancer.

The song ended and he dragged himself back to the woman in his arms.

The night was balmy, the music rockin' and loud, as he took her hand and led her off the crowded dance floor. "Let's get out of here."

"But I want to dance with you some more," she protested, dragging her feet. Her eyes danced with deviltry as she tried to tug him back toward the dance floor beneath dozens of paper lanterns hanging from the crisscrossing lattice suspended above the outside bar and restaurant.

He didn't budge. "Tell you what, twinkle toes, let's go home and we can do a little dancing that doesn't call for an audience."

She laughed and fell against him, draping her wrists over his shoulders and kissing him full on the mouth. "You mean dirty dancing?"

His gorgeous wife was not much of a drinker. She had a misty glow going and it had loosened her up enough that he'd recognized it was time to take her home. Before she kissed him like that again and talked him into a quickie in the bushes.

He'd already nixed that idea once tonight and not for lack of interest on his part. While the club was nice and many of the patrons were embassy staff and Israeli professional types, he didn't like the neighborhood. And he didn't want to get caught with his pants down—literally—if some of the seedier elements he'd seen on the streets on the cab ride over decided he was an easy mark.

"Or how 'bout a little mattress dancin'?" she purred, and rubbed up against him.

He groaned. "Come on, woman. I am definitely taking you home."

With her tucked under his arm, he snagged her purse from the table and herded her toward the street.

"It's so nice out. Let's walk," she suggested, wrapping both arms around his waist and snuggling close.

"It's a thirty-minute cab ride," he pointed out. "I don't think you're up for walking quite that far. And I know I'm not."

"We could dance that far," she said brightly, and on a laugh pulled away from him to execute a wobbly pirouette.

"You are so smashed," he said on a chuckle as she did a really awful ballerina spin, dancing and twirling in front of him with a childlike joyous smile on her face.

God, she was something. It made him ache just looking at her. Her red hair few around her bare shoulders. Her short little strapless emerald green dress hugged her lean body like a glove. The dress was just tight enough to make him wonder if—

"I don't have any panties on, you know," she informed him, reading his mind, as she floated in close and danced a circle around him, angel turned devil.

"You are really determined to get in trouble with me tonight, aren't you?"

She giggled when he made a grab for her hand and missed. "Catch," she said, kicking off one black shoe that wasn't much more than a high heel and a slim strap across her arch.

He caught the shoe as it flew by his head, caught the other when it came sailing at him, too. "You're turning me into a girlie man," he accused as he stood there, holding her purse and now her shoes.

"Just so you're
my
girlie man," she assured him.

"Hokay. That does it. I'm hailing a cab."

"Spoilsport."

Walking backward away from him, she put a fair amount of lip into a pout. He was just about to tell her he had better uses for those luscious lips when he spotted the man stepping out of the shadows of a building.

"Darcy!"

Too late. The creep had already lunged for her.

Which made him as good as dead.

Ethan cleared the fifteen feet between them in a single heartbeat. It was over in less than that.

With one merciless lethal blow to the neck, the thug went down like a rock, his gun clattering into the gutter.

Stunned sober, Darcy stood there, hugging herself, her eyes wide with terror.

"Did he hurt you?"

Her gaze darted from Ethan to the still figure sprawled facedown, his head at an unnatural angle to his shoulders.

"Did the fucker hurt you?" Ethan roared, and pulled her hard against him.

"No ... no," she stammered.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here."

She pulled away from him. "But... don't you think we should call for help? He may need a doctor."

"He's dead, Darcy. There's not a doctor in the world who's going to fix that."

Her eyes widened in horror. "Dead?"

Ethan's jaw went tight.

"Oh my God, Ethan."

As her gaze shifted from him to the body of the man he had just killed to protect her, the shock in her eyes transitioned to something that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

"He'd have killed you," he said flatly.

He wasn't going to defend himself beyond that. Didn't have to. And he sure as hell didn't have to watch her stare at him as if he were some kind of a monster who could have pulled his punch. Could have taken the worthless piece of shit down without taking him out.

No, he didn't have to watch her look at him. Not that way. Because when she looked at him that way, he saw himself a little too clearly.

Everything changed between them that night. As hard as she tried to hide it, every time Ethan met her eyes he saw it. Uneasy speculation. Confusion. Even a little fear.

Fear. Of him.

It ate at him that she'd seen his darker side—the trained soldier, the emotionless killer—but it had been kill or be killed, so he'd killed for her.

And if he told himself often enough that he hadn't had another choice, he thought grimly, he'd begin to believe it.

Darcy walked out of the bedroom, gathering her hair at her nape and securing it with a gold clip. She stopped when she saw him. "Why aren't you ready to go?"

Ethan didn't look at her. He sat on the tiny balcony of her apartment wearing only a pair of black cargo pants, his bare feet propped on the iron rail. He took another pull from the half-empty bottle of beer he'd been nursing for the past half an hour. They were supposed to meet some of her friends from the embassy for dinner.

"Ethan?" She joined him on the balcony, leaning her hips against the rail, her back to the street and facing him.

He looked her up and down. She was wearing that little black number she'd been wearing the first time he'd seen her. His gut tightened at the memory.

"Go on without me," he said, and stared at the traffic bustling by two stories below. "Just make sure your cab delivers you right at the restaurant door."

"Don't you feel well?" Her voice was filled with concern as she stepped into him, pressed her soft hand to his forehead.

"I'm fine. And you're not my goddamn mother," he growled, and pushed her hand away. "I don't need you to take care of me."

He could count the seconds between heartbeats as she stood there, stung, confused. He felt like the biggest prick on the face of the earth. Because he was. And he couldn't get himself to say he was sorry.

"What's going on?" she asked in a small voice.

"Nothing." He rose and shouldered by her, a big, bad, surly sonofabitch. He hated himself for it. "I just don't feel like going out, okay?"

"Then we'll stay in," she said simply.

Only there was nothing simple about it. For the last two days since she'd been attacked outside the dance club, they'd tried to pretend that nothing had changed between them.

He knew different. Everything had changed.
Everything.

And the tension humming between them was driving him nuts.

"Look, just go without me." He dug into the refrigerator for another beer. "You'll be safe at the restaurant."

"I don't want to go without you," she said from the kitchen doorway. "I want to be with you."

"Well, maybe I don't want to be with you right now."

Jesus. He twisted the top off the bottle, tipped it up for a long, deep swig as the self-anger built and gorged on itself. So, of course, he took it out on her.

"Maybe," he said, turning to face those wounded eyes that had been messing him up for two days, "maybe I don't want to see you looking at me like that for just two goddamn hours! Is that too much to ask?"

He yelled the last of it. Swore again, then turned away from her. And felt tears ...
tears
sting his eyes, for chrissake.

Perfect. Just fucking perfect.

On a roar, he hauled back and hurled the beer bottle at the wall.

It hit with a shattering crack. Splinters flew in every direction. The stink of beer filled the tiny kitchen, as bitter and sour as the taste in his mouth. The taste of raw anger and frustration and pain.

The silence echoed. And then he heard her footsteps. The creak of the pantry door opening, then closing.

"Leave it," he said when she walked past him toward the broken glass with a dustpan and a broom.

She started sweeping.

"I said leave it!"

She whirled on him, good and pissed now. And hurting with it. "Fine. Clean it up yourself."

She shoved the broom into his chest, slammed the dustpan on the floor at his feet, and all but ran from the kitchen.

He tossed aside the broom and tore after her. Caught her by the arm and spun her around toward him before she could get to the bedroom.

"Leave me alone!"

He dragged her flush against him. Slanted his mouth down hard over hers.