He exhaled roughly. “Let’s just say our original target has a brother who is really not happy with what happened to his family member. In fact, he’s so unhappy that we had concerns about your personal safety, since it turns out you posted some of your lagoon photos before we could shut you down.”
She blinked, the hurt and anger still simmering in her eyes. “I took photos of your operation?”
“That morning when I surprised you at the lookout point,” he confirmed. “You got off a couple of shots of the Zodiacs coming in. There’s enough detail there to make out our target’s face. Fortunately, you didn’t get any of my team. My team does a lot of covert ops.” He cleared his throat. “It helps if the world doesn’t know our faces. We go in, we blend in. That’s why we were working as staff here on the island. It gave us a credible reason to be here, and most people don’t look too closely at the staff.”
“I don’t even know you.” She looked horrified. “Is Mason Black even your real name?”
This wasn’t the woman who had been the most adventurous lover he’d ever had, who had opened her arms and her heart to him. He wanted that woman back, because he was fairly certain she did know him in all the ways that mattered.
“That’s me.”
She wasn’t done, though. “We don’t really know any of the important details about each other. We know what each other likes in bed, but that’s really it, isn’t it?”
She steamed on ahead. “I don’t know if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. If you like quilted toilet paper or plain. Where your family lives, where you went to school, who your last girlfriend was and if your mom liked her.”
Not sure how any of those things connected, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “My last girlfriend married me.”
Her eyes widened. “So you are married.”
“Not anymore. I was a kid, Maddie. I was eighteen when I got married and I was divorced by twenty.”
Yeah. There was no missing the disgust written on her face, and he didn’t think it was because she was worried about having committed adultery with him. “Do you have kids?”
“No.” He leaned in. “No kids. No wife. Being a SEAL isn’t a family-friendly activity. I’m gone for months at a time and there’s always a chance that I’m not coming back.” Meeting her gaze head-on, he added roughly, “Shit happens, Maddie, even on training runs. We push hard, live on the edge. There’s a price tag on that kind of living, and it wasn’t one my wife was willing to pay. I wasn’t much better. I was still a kid. I hadn’t figured out how to give her what she needed, and I thought a steady paycheck would be enough.”
She thought about that for a moment. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.” Although right now he felt as though he was pushing eighty. Or eight hundred.
“One last question.”
Crap. Her voice caught on the last word as she moved to the closet and grabbed a bag. She needed more than he could give her right now, but he had no way of manufacturing more time.
“Shoot,” he said, moving closer. Maybe if he could see her face, he could figure out the right thing to say. Find the words that would fix everything.
She swept her passport into her bag and turned around to face him. “Did I ever truly matter to you, or was I just convenient?”
There was absolutely nothing convenient about how he felt for her. Her face radiated pain and he...had a timeline.
“We need to move.” And screw the mission. Leaning forward, he gently cupped her cheek. God, she was soft. And vulnerable. All your fault, sailor. “Yes, you did. You still do. But things are complicated right now.”
She stiffened, the hollow expression on her face replaced by anger. “You’re the security expert here, Mason, but I feel I need to make one thing perfectly clear.”
Uh-huh. As long as she moved, she could say whatever she wanted. He owed her that and more. Cracking the door, he scanned their surroundings. So far, so good. It was a long shot that Santiago had made it back from the Belizean mainland only to ambush Maddie, but Mason wasn’t taking chances.
“First, those words? Are the biggest cop-out ever. Second, I agree with you. We need to move on,” she said, allowing him to pull her out and onto the porch. “I need to move on. After you get me wherever it is we’re going—”
“Naval cruiser about a mile off Fantasy Island,” he responded, tucking her into his side and pulling her into the jungle. They’d cut through the trees to get to the beach, which would give them better cover.