All or Nothing

Jayne stopped toe-to-toe with him, still not touching him, and if she did, his control would be shot all to hell. For whatever reason, she was taking charge and seducing him. Except she would be doing so for all the wrong reasons, vulnerable from whatever had frightened her in the dream.

He couldn’t take advantage of her while she was riding the memories of a nightmare. But he also couldn’t leave her in here upset and alone.

Grabbing the door to keep from reaching for her, he stepped back into the hall. “I think we need to get out of this bedroom.”

“Why?” She nibbled her bottom lip.

He swallowed hard. “We need to go. Trust me.”

She laughed softly. “Trust you? That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Fair enough, I deserve that.” He always had liked the way she never pulled punches and found it every bit as arousing now as he had when they lived together. “Or you could just trust me because you’re a nicer person than I am.”

“All right, then.” She placed her hand in his, her soft fingers curling around his.

And holy crap, she leaned in closer to him as they walked down the hall. The light scent of her shampoo teased his nose. The need to haul her into his arms throbbed harder, hotter. Damn it, he was supposed to be protecting her, comforting her. He reined in thoughts fueled by three years of abstinence.

Three. Damn. Years.

Out in the main living area, he guided her to the sectional sofa, wide palm ceiling fans clicking overhead. “Have a seat, and I’ll get us a snack from the kitchen.”

She settled onto the sofa, nestling in a pile of pillows. “Just some water, please.”

That would give him all of sixty seconds to will back the raging erection. Hell, he could spend an hour creating a five course meal and it wouldn’t be enough time to ease the painful arousal.

He snagged two bottles of water from the stainless-steel refrigerator in a kitchen he’d actually learned to use and returned to the living room. He twisted off a cap and passed her the Evian. “Let’s watch a movie.”

“A movie?”

“I can pipe anything you want in through the satellite.” He opened his bottle. “I’m even open to a chick flick.”

“You want to watch a movie?” She shifted in the mass of throw pillows, looking so much like a harem girl he almost dropped to his knees.

“Or we can talk.” And he realized now that Salvatore was right. He should talk to Jayne and tell her more about the man she’d married, the man she thought she wanted to crawl back in bed with. He needed to be sure her eyes were wide-open about him before he could even consider taking her up on what she offered.

She was stuck here because of him. They were both forced to watch over their shoulders—also because of him and the choices he’d made. While he couldn’t see much he would do differently, at least he owed her a better perspective on why he’d broken the law.

Why he’d ruined so many lives, including theirs.

He sat by her, on the side that didn’t have his gun in the way. On second thought, he unstrapped the shoulder harness and set the whole damn thing on the teak coffee table.

Too bad his past couldn’t be tucked away as easily.

He wrestled with where to start and figured what the hell. Might as well go back to the beginning.

Elbows on his knees, he rolled the water bottle between his palms. “You know what I did as a teenager, but I don’t think I’ve ever really explained why.”

She sat up straighter, her forehead furrowing, but she didn’t speak.

“A teenage boy is probably the dumbest creation on the planet. Pair that with a big ego and no moral compass, and you’ve got a recipe for trouble.”

Seventeen years later and he still couldn’t get past the guilt of what he’d done.

“You were so young,” she said softly.

“That’s no excuse. I was out of control and hating life. This girl I liked had dumped me because her parents didn’t want her around my family.” He glanced at her. “Her dad was a cop. My ego stung. And I decided to show him and the justice system what screwups they were, because I—a teenager—was going to do what they couldn’t. I would make the corrupt pay.” Starting with two leches he’d caught hitting on his sister, damn near assaulting her, and his dad hadn’t done more than shrug off his friends’ behavior by insisting no harm, no foul.

“You had good intentions. All of the news reports I read said as much. And yes, I searched every one of them since you’re usually closemouthed about your past.” She set aside her drink and clutched his forearm, squeezing. “While it’s admirable you feel bad, you can also cut yourself some slack. You were exposing corrupt corporations.”

“Not so much. See, I could have infiltrated my dad’s records and those of his crooked friends, then turned them over to the authorities. And I could have had a better motivation than getting back at some girl or showing up my old man. But I wanted to make a statement. I wanted to make him see that even if I didn’t do things his way, damn it, I was still every bit as smart. Because I would get away with it.”

She didn’t rush to reassure him this time, but she hadn’t pulled away in disgust. Yet.

“Twisted, isn’t it?” He set aside his water bottle to keep from shattering it in his fist. “I wanted to bring him—as well as a couple of his friends—down and make him proud of me.”

“That had to make getting caught all the worse.” She gathered a pillow to her, her voice steadier than her hands.

“That’s the real kick in the ass irony.” His hand fell to the lacy edge on the short sleeve of her nightgown and he rubbed it between two fingers. “I didn’t get caught. I would have gotten away with it.”

“Then how did you end up in reform school?”

“I found out that one of the CEOs of a business I’d helped tank with my short sales... He took his life.” Acid fired at the lining of his stomach, burning up to his throat with a guilt that would never leave, no matter how many missions he completed or how much money he donated to charity. “I turned myself in to the police, with all the information on what I had done, everything I could dig up on my father.”

“And the police gave you a more lenient sentence because you came forward.” Her hand settled on his back, soothing. “What happened was horrible, but you did come forward with all that evidence, even when it incriminated you. That counts for something.”

Laughter rumbled around in his chest, stirring the acid and mixing in some shards of glass for good measure to flay his insides. “Turning myself in didn’t count for jack. I only got sent to that school instead of juvie because my dad hired the best lawyers. He got off of every major charge, and I could not beg my way into prison.”

His dad’s lawyers had made sure the press learned—through an “anonymous” leak—that every targeted company had been guilty of using child laborers in sweatshops overseas.

Once the media got wind of that part of his case, he’d been lauded the white knight of orphans. The pressure had nudged the judge the rest of the way in cutting him a deal. Through the colonel’s mentorship, he and his friends had learned to channel their codes of right and wrong. Now they had the chance to right wrongs within the parameters of the law.

“I’m just damn lucky I landed in Salvatore’s program. I owe him more than my life, Jayne.” His voice strangled off with the emotion clogging his throat and squeezing his chest. “I owe him my self-respect.”

Wordlessly she slipped her arms around him and pulled him to her. He pressed his forehead into her shoulder and drew in the pure, clean scent of her. She was too good for him, always had been. There just hadn’t been anyone in her life to warn her away from him the way his teenage girlfriend’s dad had.

“Conrad, Colonel Salvatore couldn’t have built something within you if the foundation and all the essential parts weren’t already there. You’re a good man.”

He didn’t know how long they sat there, and a part of him knew he should let her go back to bed before he took anything more from her. But having her this close again felt better than he’d remembered, different, too. The glide of her fingers along the back of his neck soothed as much as they aroused. She was such a mix of contradictions, everything he wanted and all he didn’t deserve.

She turned her face to graze a kiss across his temple before taking his face between her hands and looking him in the eyes. “I think we’ve both been hurting long enough.”

Oh, God, this was it. The moment she would send him packing for good. She wouldn’t wait around for him to sign the papers. She would pursue the divorce without his consent, an option that had always been open to her due to their lengthy separation. He hadn’t realized until now how much hope he’d been holding on to. Like a sap, with every day that passed and no divorce, he’d allowed himself to believe there was a chance they would reconcile.