Romancing the Alpha: An Action-Adventure Romance Boxed Set (99 page)

The great charmer indeed.

Kent bowed at her approach, his passport still clenched tight in his hands. “I was just telling them how much your mother hates me and how we’re really hoping the baby will make things better.”

“Probably not. Need this?” Elena flashed her red passport. One man reached for it. She met him halfway, shoving it into his chest, before directing her attention back to Kent. “As long as you don’t start complaining about things that can’t be changed, we won’t have a problem.”

“So now it’s my fault?”

“Well, it’s not hers. She’s from a different time and a different place. It won’t hurt you to be a little more—”

“Me? Me? I’m not the one who...”

The soldier flicked her passport between them. “Welcome home, and welcome to Bhutan. Next!”

Their lovers’ spat continued for another two intersections until they were well away from the checkpoint. With one last look over his shoulder, Kent stretched and held out a primed fist.

She bumped it with one of her own. “Now, we just need to get a rental car and—”

“I like fighting with you.”

“That’s...okay. I’ll get a rental car. Hang outside. I think—”

“That man has western clothes.”

“Focus, Kent.”

“So does that one and that dude over there.”

“Your point?”

He tugged at the collar of his
gho
. “No point, I guess.”

“Good. Now, let’s—”

“It’s just, you insisted I wear this to prevent drama. It didn’t work, and that’s fine. But there’s a lesson to be learned here.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’re not right about everything, Elena.”

Kent had stayed on her bad side since he’d called her out this morning, and she was perfectly willing to leave him there. If there was one thing she hated, it was people who had to be right all the time. She hadn’t asked him to walk down a mountain on his fingertips, merely to put on a damned outfit.

At least it hadn’t affected her driving. Unlike the bus, here, she was in complete control. With her life in her own hands, she handled the narrow roads like a pro, even if her fists were clenched around the steering wheel.

Kent hadn’t said anything too wide of the mark. Just the truth. Still, she didn’t like being truthed to death.

“Elena, can we talk?”

“No.”

“People who think they’re right all the time usually end up getting proven wrong at the worst of times. I didn’t say it to be mean, just to prove a point.”

“I will not be chastised like a child.”

“That’s a little strong.”

“Fine. I will not be chastised like a child by a boy-man who is—”

“Boy-man?”

“More concerned with what he’s wearing than—”

“Jesus, lady. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t apologize? I can’t win with you.”

“Then stop trying.” Jerk.

And
that
had been the end of their conversation until they reached the capital city of Thimpu. Gold-capped buildings peeked over the road. Ancient monasteries and white-walled forts were the trademarks of this country. Back home in Stockholm, buildings loomed
.
Here, the height felt more like a warm shelter from the spring chill.

The small town where she’d trained in the north of Sweden had ten or so stoplights. Here in the capital of Bhutan? None so far, and perhaps none for many years to come. Traffic moved slowly, thanks to blue-suited patrol officers, who popped from little red and orange huts when too many cars rumbled through an intersection at once.

Many men wore
ghos
, but just as many sported western clothes. She absolutely dared Kent to say something. Blessedly, he kept his mouth shut until they hit one of the busier areas of the city. “Do you need me to drive the next leg?”

“I once sat in the same position for nine hours straight to get the perfect shot.”

Kent’s head lolled to the side. “Let me guess. You killed the guy, along with twenty other terrorists, using the same bullet. So, no, you don’t need me to drive.”

“Something like that. Pump the petrol.” She pulled into the station and slammed the door behind her. “I’ll get canisters for extra.”

She left Kent and the attendant speaking in broken English and stepped inside the small store. No one paid much attention to her as she filled her arms with liters of bottled water. Someone bumped against her, or maybe she hit something on the right.

No.

No way.

She was being pick-pocketed. Elena dropped her bundle and whirled around with her arm out, sending an elbow into the throat of the young man shoving her phone into his pocket.

The cashier rushed over screaming, but the gagging teenager stumbled backward with his hands locked against his reddening, veiny throat. She grabbed the phone. The thief moved like Frankenstein’s monster. His rigid arms and face locked in terror, and his legs seemed unsure of the floor beneath him. Rivers flowed from his eyes as he turned and stumbled away.

Damn.
That move was one she’d perfected early on in her career. It could kill without medical attention.

Elena dried sweat-drenched hands against her
kira
, picked up her phone and water bottles, and threw some money at the gap-mouthed cashier.

The man’s jaw hardened to stone, and his eyes shrunk to pinpricks of suspicion.

“Silly boy. I know his mother. She’ll have him when I tell her what he tried to do.” She’d spoken in Nepali. It was a natural slip—to speak the language her mother had taught her, but at hearing it, the cashier threw her money back.

“The boy has no mother, Southerner,” the man said in a crisp Dzongkha, the language once forced on her mother’s people.

Time to go.

She left the money and got the hell out of there. In a capital of fewer than a hundred thousand people, news traveled fast, especially news involving both a foreigner and a Lhotshampan...and possibly a dead teenager. She had to find that kid, get him to safety, and place Thimphu firmly in their rearview mirror.

“Kent.”

Kent and the gas attendant, by now the oldest damned friends in the world, were doubled over in back-slapping laughter. “Are you finished, my lovely wife?”

“Yes, dear husband. We should get on the road.”

“Well...” His eyes flickered over her shoulder to the cashier now yelling out behind her. “Probably a good idea.”

*****

“M
y stupid eye. I didn’t see him coming. Hell, I can’t even see him now.” Elena twisted her whole body around to see out of the right side passenger seat.

“You can.” Kent had paid the lot attendant god knows how much money and got out of there, leaving the backup tank behind. If they didn’t have time to go back for the extra gas, they sure didn’t have time to look for some thief who’d laid hands on Elena.

“He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He didn’t deserve that.”

“It’s not your fault, Elena. You didn’t start this. You sure as shit finished it, but you didn’t start it. There was a threat, and you removed it. It’s not as if you rushed him for no good reason. Your body reacted the way it was supposed to.”

She snorted and shook her head. “It’s my body’s fault. I can’t trust it anymore. I’m five seconds too late for everything. I didn’t sense him until—”

“You sensed him enough to stop him. Imagine how bad things would have been if he’d kept your phone.”

“Well for one, he’d still be alive.”

“You don’t know that he isn’t.”

She
uumphed
and tapped the window. “Turn left. I think I saw someone stumbling around the corner.”

“Good. Now we can leave.”

“We can’t. Let me check. Please, Kent. I don’t need this weighing me down either.”

It must go against what her training told her to do. Instinct had sent her arm back, and now she wasn’t trusting it. That same instinct ought to be screaming the need to drive the fuck on, but with one small part of her gone, she seemed unable to trust the other ninety-nine percent.

Worse, she was throwing him off his game. Everything inside him said, fuck the thief, ignore the woman, and get the hell on with the mission. And he would.

Definitely.

For sure.

Or would have, if not for the look on her face. The confidence was gone. Her lips hung too low. “I’ve killed before, Kent. You don’t know what it’s like.”

Well, shit.
Kent signaled and took the car down the narrow street, one eye on the road and the other on the mirror for cops. “I have and I do.”

“Really?”

Her shock said so much more than those six teeny letters. The urge to correct her, even at the risk of digging up memories better off buried, twisted in his chest. Something primal. Deep. A basic yearning to let her know that he was a
man
, one who’d been through fire and come out on the other side—a man willing to go back and pull her out of it. “If it means anything to you, Elena, I have killed. That doesn’t make me any better or any worse than you or the person you thought I was before. You don’t judge a man by his body count. You judge him on what he did, what he felt he had to do. Taking a life isn’t a prize.”

“I didn’t...you don’t look like...”

He didn’t look at her face, not certain he’d like what he’d find: shock, or worse, admiration for his kills. He kept his eyes locked ahead. “You put on armor after going through hell, and everybody’s armor is a bit different. Heads up. I think we found your boy.”

A lanky teenager bent against the wall, back heaving and palms braced against his shaking knees. The boy’s eyes bugged out, and he turned as if to run, but Kent drove behind to cut him off while Elena hopped out of the still-swinging door.

Kent reached for his gun, but the kid’s guttural voice squeaked what could only be an apology. Elena spoke to him like a mother with a crying kid in her arms. A pained smile cracked the boy’s face. Then she tapped her eye and Kent knew she shared something with the boy that she hadn’t yet trusted Kent with.

He turned away and walked back to the car, giving them the moment. Elena returned not much later, smiling. “The neck is mostly cartilage, and he’s young, but all the same, I gave him a small fortune and promised him more when he came back from the doctor’s office.”

“Ah.” Kent put the car in reverse, driving them out of the alley. “And how are you going to find him?”

“I won’t, but it was the only carrot strong enough to make him move. He’ll go...and look, there he is now.”

Kent punched the horn. The kid jumped in the street and pivoted enough for Kent to capture his image on his Ambra issued phone. He’d make sure the kid got his money. It might not be now, but someday—when the kid applied for work or a permit—he’d have his picture taken by the government. He’d be databased and catalogued, and Kent would be waiting on the other side to give the once nameless face a belated gift. “In one to three years, we’re going to be out on a beach celebrating.”

“You’re flirting right now?”

“You’ll know when I’m flirting, Elena. Right now, I’m simply speaking the truth. And the truth is, you’ll want this date.”

“Because?”

“Because that’ll be the day I make your promise to that boy come true, dear. When you join Ambra, you’ll find that our best weapon is intelligence. Finding information and using it. Sometimes to steal. Sometimes to help. Sometimes to find the perfect partner for a mission...”

“Enough already.”

“And sometimes, to find a thief you promised something to. It’s a date, then?”

She wouldn’t fall for it. The man proved himself a troublemaker time and time again. There was no way his antics were looked upon favorably by this Dragon, who had so much power.

Elena lodged another brick in the wall surrounding her heart. It had started to crumble in the bus and again in the hotel, but her job was too important to screw up, even for an annoying cutie like Kent. The weird mix of him—cocky and sweet—drove her insane.

A good insane.

A dangerous insane.

An insanity that she didn’t have time to entertain.

The car rolled to a stop at the checkpoint outside the city gates. She needn’t have worried. The charm offensive rolled on strong, and that, combined with their passports, visas, and marriage certificate, were enough to get them waved through.

He’d been quiet on the ride, other than double-checking the directions every half hour or so. Kent looked as if he wanted to say something. His full lips would part, his eyebrow would quiver, and he’d close his mouth. Finally, she’d had enough. “What?”

Kent shook his head. “It’s not my place to ask.”

“But you want to?”

He shrugged and rewrapped his scarf. The poor thing had absolutely no tolerance for cool weather.

“You should be on a mission in the islands, I think.”

Kent’s fingers snapped, and that wide smile of his did more for the chill than anything mechanical. “I have said this countless times. No one hears my plaintive pleas. No one cares.” He looked over expectantly. “I care,” he mouthed, egging her on until she laughingly gave in.

“I care, Kent.”

“Hey, Elena?”

“Are you going to ask me out on a date again?”

“No.”

“Sorry. What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

And of course, she laughed. He was the great charmer, and damn him, but it was starting to work on her too. “I think I’m jealous of your armor.”

“Oh? Why? All armor starts out as pretend. You pretend to be happy until you are.”

“So it’s all fake?”

“No, oh, god. No, Elena. It feels that way sometimes. But if I have to put on a face anyway, I’ll put on one that makes someone else smile, if not myself. ‘Cause here’s the really strange thing, love. I find that every once in a while, someone else’s smile passes on to me—like when you smiled when you danced in the street.”

She pushed back into her seat and looked out the passenger window. It hurt her back, having to turn the whole way, a painful reminder of her burden. “My armor’s heavier than yours, Kent.”

“Set it down, then.”

She wanted to smack him. And hug him. And punch the shit out of him for being so damned cavalier. It wasn’t just an eye. It was her life. Her job. Her whole future brushed away because of a terrorist’s bullet. Worse, that single gash ruined her past too. Years of work, long nights in tears, torn ligaments, busted lips to earn a uniform she no longer had a right to wear.