Maverick (Elite Ops 2)

“Belibi tamid.” In my heart always. He couldn’t give her what she needed, he couldn’t be the man she needed, but he had given her his heart. He knew it. He accepted it. Just as he knew he could never reveal that to her.

A smile trembled at her lips, a saddened curve as her blue eyes moistened with tears. As though she knew what he couldn’t speak.

Her hand cupped his cheek. “It’s day,” she said then, her voice rougher; the emotion that filled it had his jaw clenching with such pain that he wondered how he breathed through it.

“It’s day,” he agreed.

She nodded slowly, slid her hand from his cheek, then turned away.

Micah watched as she moved from the bed, her naked body graceful, beautiful.

“I’ll shower first,” she told him. “I promise to save you some hot water.”

Not that she had ever used it all. But he knew what her escape hid. It hid her tears.

CHAPTER 20

IT WAS NEARLY noon before Micah received a call from Jordan to meet with the team in the other apartment while Emily Krieger, Morganna McIntyre, and Kira Richards took bodyguard duty.

Risa watched as her friends stepped into the room and the door closed behind them.

“It’s too early for wine.” She shrugged negligently as she moved to her desk and began arranging the accounts still awaiting her. “There’s coffee though.”

She turned back to the other three women and felt her lips tremble at the sight of the tears on Emily’s face.

Damn, she loved Emily like a sister. Several years older than Risa, Emily had been kidnapped the night Risa had. She had been drugged. She hadn’t been raped, but Risa knew the scars ran deep in Emily’s soul from that night.

“You’re not allowed to cry.” Risa felt a tear track down her own cheek and swiped at it hastily. “The time for crying is over for me, Emily.”

Risa wanted it to be over. She needed these three women to believe it was over. When Micah was finished here and he left, then she would want solitude. She would need time for her tears, and she would need it alone. She wouldn’t shed any more before then.

“Does that mean we’re not friends any longer, Risa?” Emily asked, her voice strong despite her tears.

That was Emily. She was one of the strongest people, on the inside, whom Risa knew. Emily’s confidence had always been something Risa was in awe of, her inner strength something Risa envied.

Risa turned and braced herself against the desk.

“We’re friends,” she said simply. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Even though we lied to you about Micah? We set you up?” Yeah, that was Emily. She could go for the jugular when she needed to.

Risa’s lips quirked. “Yeah, well, I’ll just be sure to remember this the next time you try to fix me up with one of your husband’s friends.”

There wouldn’t be a next time.

“Coffee.” She cleared her throat as she turned and headed for the kitchen. “Micah drinks it faster than I do. He finishes the pot before I’ve finished the first cup.”

She was uncomfortable, and Risa hated feeling that way with the friends who had helped through the horrors of readjusting to life after nearly two years of drugged captivity in a private asylum.

She moved into the kitchen and begin preparing the coffeemaker. She wanted to turn back to them, to joke as they once had, but the time for joking was past and the future undecided.

“How long was this operation in its planning stage?” she asked the women as she finished and turned back to them.

She kept her fingers curled over the counter’s edge behind her as she watched them.

Emily breathed in deeply. “Kell told me when the information came in that you were in danger. They had a week to get a plan together.”

Risa nodded at that as her throat burned with a mix of humiliation and despair.