Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
A flash of something—regret?—flickered across his features, but it was gone a heartbeat later. “This is getting us nowhere.” He sidestepped and walked away from me, headed for the front door. “You didn’t even lock the damned thing.” He threw the dead bolt and turned, leaning back against the door. “You’re supposed to be in some glitzy office at that law firm in New York, so I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?”
“Making a difference. I believe that’s what someone suggested.” I padded across the soft carpet to the kitchenette and pulled out two bottles of water. “Want one?” Even as pissed as I was, my first instinct was to care about him. God, I was pathetic.
“Sure. Thank you,” he answered, his voice softening. “And this”—he gestured to the suite—“was not what I had in mind when I made that suggestion.” He caught the bottle I hurled his way. “But it’s definitely what your parents had in mind, isn’t it?”
I shrugged and opened the water. “It’s where I landed.” I took a drink, hoping it might dislodge the boulder in my throat. “What are you more pissed at, Nate? The fact that I’m not where you left me? Or the fact that I’m meeting the version of you that you never wanted me to see?”
“It isn’t safe for you to be here.” He rolled the bottle between his hands, clearly ignoring the question. “The country is unstable as hell.”
I cocked my head at him. “But that’s why you’re here, right? To keep people like me safe? Is that what you do now? Where you’ve been for the past three years?”
His jaw ticked. “I can’t tell you where I’ve been for the last three years. Rules of the game haven’t changed—they’ve just gotten more restrictive.” He twisted the bottle open and drank half of it down.
All these years and he still wouldn’t open up. Guess his world hadn’t changed that much, but mine had. “Fine, if you’re not here to explain what happened in New York, and I’m not going to take your suggestion and leave, then why exactly are you in my room?”
“I’m not supposed to be here.”
“No shit. I highly doubt Holt’s security detail is in his room drinking from his minibar.”
“That’s not what I mean.” The corners of Nate’s mouth turned up, but it wasn’t quite a smile, so at least I didn’t have to deal with that dimple of his making an appearance.
Nothing knocked off a few IQ points like the sight of that dimple.
“Please, do stop speaking in army-guy codes.” My gaze narrowed slightly. “Assuming that you’re still army?” They’d told us we’d have Special Forces as our security, but there was a black-and-white name tape on the left side of his chest that read Green, not Phelan.
No matter what name he was using, he still looked so damned good. Someone hadn’t been skipping the gym.
Stop it.
What was it about being in the same room with Nathaniel Phelan that made me revert back to eighteen years old?
“Yeah, I’m still in the army. Just the part that no one talks about,” he answered slowly, raising his eyebrows. “And as for my phone, my email, my social media . . . it was all sanitized.”
“Okay then.” A tiny kernel of something like hope took root in my stomach at the small but openly offered truth. “And that’s why you don’t . . . exist anymore.” The days and months following his disappearance had been maddening, but part of me had always known why he’d fallen off the face of the earth. This had always been his dream.
Making his obsolete had become mine.
He nodded.
“And Green?” I motioned to his name tag. “Is that your call sign or whatever?”
“No. These”—he pointed to the name tag—“are for you guys, not us. It’s what you need to call me—if I stay. I told you I’m not supposed to be here.” He glanced toward the window and then back, as if meeting my eyes was something . . . painful.
“Where are you supposed to be?” Was there someone else in his life now? Someone who had the right to know if he made it home? Someone waiting? A nauseating twist of jealousy struck deep inside me, souring my stomach.
“On leave in the Maldives.” He had the decency to look a little guilty.
I blinked. “You were going to the Maldives?” Indignation heated my blood. “Funny, but I thought that was an October thing.” Did our pact mean absolutely nothing to him? Of course it didn’t. He’d blatantly shown me that for the last three years.
“Yeah.” He flinched. “But Sergeant Brown came down with something, so I filled in for him.”
“Let me guess. Sergeant Brown isn’t his real name either?”
“Just roll with it.” He finished off his water and twisted the top back on. “Point is, you walked off that plane.”