To the Brink (34 page)

There you go. Blame it on an out-of-body experience.

Oh God. How could she have been so stupid? This never should have happened. And she had only herself to blame.

"Don't." Ethan wrapped his arms around her when she made to move off of him. "Just... don't," he whispered, softer this time as she let her cheek rest back against his chest. "Don't think about it. Don't analyze it. Don't be sorry about it."

A tear leaked out, hot and fast and unexpected. Perfect. This was just perfect.

She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to cry.

She had to get off of him. Had to get out of here.

"I... I'm getting cramps ... in ... in my calf," she lied.

He immediately let her up. But he wouldn't let go of her hand. Without a word, he rose and, slinging an arm over her shoulder, walked her to his bathroom.

She met his eyes when he turned on the shower. Shook her head. She couldn't do this again. She couldn't take this brand of intimacy and not want more. She couldn't... she just couldn't.

"I got you all sweaty. And besides, I need your help," he said simply. Then he smiled with just enough mischief and mayhem that she folded.

"You play dirty, Garrett," she said, and held him steady as he stepped into the tub.

"Yeah, well," he dragged her under the spray with him, "whatever works."

Chapter 23

They hadn't made love in the shower.
Well, not in the traditional sense. Darcy really was worried about Ethan's strength. Even more worried about ripping his stitches.

For all the good her worrying did her. And whatever happened to her resolve?

Gone. Like soapsuds down the drain, evidently, because when she woke up several hours later, she was still naked and still wrapped in his arms.

At least this time they were both horizontal. And that's the way she wanted him. Not for sex, though Lord knew sex with Ethan had always been incredible.

No change there,
she thought with a tingling sense of satisfaction.

But after—after, she'd wanted him resting. And he had. So had she.

She yawned as she stretched an arm over her head and caught a glimpse of his bedside clock.

It was almost 9:00 p.m. Amazing. She'd slept the day away right alongside him. Evidently, she was still in recovery mode, too. Recovery from the abduction.

Now she had another recovery to make: recovery from him.

She threw her arm over her forehead and stared at the shadowed ceiling. Before all this had happened, she'd really thought she'd put Ethan Garrett behind her. Okay, in sporadic and infrequent moments of abject
denial
she'd thought she'd put him behind her.

But as she lay here in his bed again, wasted and spent, bombarded by a glut of emotions, loving the familiar feel of him, the scent of him, she recognized what a liar she'd become—at least she'd been lying to herself. She'd never stopped loving him.

And to what end? What good would come of it? Nothing had changed. The same issues that had driven them apart would keep them apart.

She thought back to that final year of their marriage. The year after the incident in Tel Aviv. While she'd been concerned before then—about his unreasonable demands that she quit her job or at least go stateside, about his inability or unwillingness to talk to her about what went on inside his complicated, intelligent head—everything changed between them that night.

Beside her, his chest rose and fell as she remembered the confusion. The strain. The concern. Most of all, she remembered the hurt.

She'd known he'd been trained to kill. But seeing what he was capable of doing—even in defense of her. It had been a little unsettling.

Okay. She sighed into the night. It had scared the hell out of her.

Her warrior husband was programmed to protect and defend, and yet what Ethan had done to that man that night...

She shivered at the memory, despite the warmth of Ethan's body against hers. It had eaten at her—just as her safety had eaten at him.

After that night and in the few days they'd had left together, she'd seen way too much of the dark side of her husband. A side that made him quiet sometimes. Withdrawn. Angry.

She'd been hopeful that he would open up to her. That'd he'd grow to trust her with that part of himself that he must have felt she wouldn't condone.

But he never had. And Tel Aviv proved to be the beginning of the end of them.

The next two years still seemed like a blur. She'd expected something as cataclysmic as the death of their marriage to be earth-shattering. Universe altering. But over time, it just sort of faded away.

Somehow, it was more painful for the ease of it all. Ethan had even quit badgering her about leaving the State Department, she realized in retrospect. He quit caring. A year drifted to two, and the chasm between them grew to a yawning hole of uncertainty and chilling silences.

Since she hadn't had him in any real sense of the word for longer than she cared to acknowledge, she finally asked for a divorce. Missing him, missing what they'd never found in each other, but too tired to fight to hold things together any longer.

She was still tired, she realized as she rose slowly from the bed so she wouldn't wake him.

She headed straight for the guest bathroom that was adjacent to the guest bedroom where she'd spent last night. Pulling the hair back from her face with her hands, she stared at herself in the mirror—and saw a fool.

The worst kind of fool.

A fool in love.

Love hadn't been enough before,
she reminded herself as, wide-awake now, she wandered into the living room. And she couldn't put herself through the pain of thinking love was enough now. Not with a man who either wouldn't or didn't know how to be a half of a whole.

"Just in time for the summer travel season, the price of crude oil has risen yet again, surpassing an all-time high established last summer. OPEC officials blame the..."

Ethan tuned out the sound of the cable TV news anchor. He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb that opened to his living room and watched the profile of the woman who continued to complicate his life.

He hadn't been surprised to wake up and find Darcy gone from his bed. Just like he wasn't surprised to find her sitting in front of the TV in the middle of the night engrossed in the ten o'clock news.

From what he could figure, this was how she'd spent the bulk of last night, too. Flipping from one cable news channel to another.

He stood in the dark, watching her, the images on his plasma screen the only light in the room. She didn't know he was there. And he wasn't sure why he was. Except that making love with her had changed everything between them.

At least he wanted to think that it had.

But then, sex had never been their problem. It was everything else that had screwed them up.

"On the international news front, the story out of Manila in the Philippine Islands concerning the fate of U.S. Embassy employee Darcy Prescott remains uncertain."

The newscaster lent immediacy and reality to the moment and drew Ethan's attention back to the TV.

"As we reported in our live exclusive from Manila earlier," the anchor continued, "Ms. Prescott, who served abroad in the vice consul's office, went missing several days ago when she failed to return to her hotel in Zamboanga City following what a hotel employee referred to as an evening walk."

Ethan darted a glance back at Darcy.

Curled up on one end of his sofa, she sat perfectly still. If her heart was beating as hard all over as the pulse jumping at the base of her throat, she wasn't nearly as cool and collected on the inside as she was on the outside.

She hadn't been cool and collected earlier. He could still see her moving above him on his weight bench. Could still feel her skin, slick and soapy, her hair soaked and cascading around her face as she'd gone down on her knees in front of him under the spray and taken him in her mouth. Destroyed him.

He dragged his attention back to the newscast.

A photograph of Darcy that appeared to have been taken from a personnel file appeared on the screen.

Ethan watched Darcy closely as all of her focus was concentrated on the TV. She watched it in intent but impassive silence until the camera cut to an impromptu interview with a man getting into a limo.

She gasped and her mouth tightened in the next instant.

Ethan jerked his gaze back to the TV when the anchor announced, "As you can see, we're rolling some footage shot two days ago when our reporter caught the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Charles Gatlin, leaving the embassy in Manila."

"Mr. Ambassador," a reporter called out from off camera, "what can you tell us about Ms. Prescott's disappearance?"

Ethan studied the man who was the center of attention and had caused such a pronounced reaction from Darcy.

Charles Gatlin looked to be sixty-something but well preserved. Tan skin. Two-hundred-dollar haircut. Expensive, tailored suit. Crisply knotted tie. Overall, as slick and polished as a new recruit's boots.

"When we have more information," Gatlin was saying, smiling into the camera but still managing to look properly concerned, "we will notify you. In the meantime, rest assured, we are doing everything in our power to locate Ms. Prescott. I have every confidence that she'll be found hale and hearty. Now, please excuse me. I have a meeting and I'm already late."

The ambassador ducked into the backseat of the limo, graced the press with a politician's smile, a dismissive wave, and shut the door behind him.

"Bastard," Darcy swore in a harsh whisper.

Ethan reached down and turned on a table lamp. "Not boss of the year material?"

She jumped. Her head swiveled around so fast he was afraid she'd sprained her neck.

"You scared me half to death. God, Ethan." She dragged her hair back from her face with both hands. "How long have you been standing there?"

"What's the story with Gatlin?" he pressed, ignoring her question and resisting the urge to calm her.

The truth was, Darcy was too calm as a rule. Too collected. Maybe if he kept her a little rattled, she'd let down her guard and talk to him.

No such luck. She visibly settled herself. "Well, he's not Al Hayden," she said evasively.

Ethan knew, he just knew, there was a lot more to what she was saying than a personality comparison to a man they had both known and loved but who had, sadly, died from a stroke shortly after Darcy had left Peru.

"How long are you going to play this game?" Ethan was pissed now. Good and pissed that she wouldn't come clean.

She picked up the remote and flicked off the TV when the anchor moved on to a train derailment in Australia. "I'm sorry if the TV woke you."

So, we're playing the "ignore the question" game.

She rose from the sofa, wrapping her robe around her. "I'm going to turn in."

He snagged her arm when she walked by him. Glared at her when she squared off in front of him. He ignored the feel of green silk against the back of his hand where it pressed against her ribs. Ignored the woman scent and heat of her and bullied his way on.