Free Fall (Elite Force 4)

Pain, loss, and regret all radiated off her in waves. He walked past the covered meal to stand beside her, crossing his arms behind his back as he stared out at planes taxiing. “Seems to me since she is also an agent she might have a little understanding for the difficult decision you had to make. You sacrificed a lot to keep her safe.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.” She pressed a hand to her throat. “You don’t have to pretend to be nice anymore.”

“You think I was pretending?”

“It was your job to get close to me, to do whatever it took, to be whomever you needed to be to get under my skin so you could watch me. I get it. Now the need to playact is over.”

Playact? She thought he was pretending to care about her? He couldn’t let her go on believing that, but he wasn’t sure how much she was ready to hear.

So he just touched her arm lightly, but even that brought back memories of their kiss and how much more he wanted from her. “Not everything is an act. You should also know the best covers for agents are the ones that blend the truth in with the fiction. That makes it easier not to trip up.”

Her chin tipped proudly, but he could have sworn her eyes held a tentative hope that fired him to clasp both her hands and continue.

“If I had just wanted to get close to you, the simplest way would have been to pretend I was in love with someone else, perhaps a heartbroken widower who could never love again.” He’d played that role before on a prior mission in Cairo. “I would have created a backstory to keep you at arm’s length romantically while still staying close to you.”

“Instead, you chose to be my friend for a whole year?” She glanced down at his hands holding her. “Friends don’t kiss.”

Why was she making this difficult? Perhaps because she did not want the same thing? Or he had missed his chance by being too cautious? Too honorable? Frustration chewed at his already overtaxed self-control. “That’s because I do not want to be your friend, damn it, and this may not be the best time to tell you, given all you have been through today.” His hands slid up her arms to hold her shoulders. Finally, he allowed himself to vocalize his deepest wish since he’d first seen her. “But I want to be with you, romantically. I always have.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows shot upward as quickly as the plane outside climbed into the night sky.

“Oh? That is all you have to say?” He had bared his pride to her, and she could only say… “Oh?”

“It’s the always part that I’m stuck on.” More light powered on outside, casting beams across her incredulity. “Always?”

The power of that first meeting with her surged over him again, the sense that he had been waiting for her his whole life. “From the moment I met you. You were sitting in your classroom putting together some kind of project for a bulletin board. You had the saddest look on your face. All I wanted in that moment was to make you smile.”

He still did.

“I remember the day you arrived, that moment you introduced yourself.” She angled her head to the side, her beautiful face so dear to him, every freckle imprinted on his memory. “I was thinking about my daughter and how we used to make art projects together when I came home—things to hang on the wall or even use as a doorstop. I needed to know that I’d left a part of myself with her whenever I left.”

Guilt creased deep grooves into her face, weighting down her words. More of that pain swelled from her and he realized that was the wall between them. She couldn’t allow herself to be happy. “Annie, I know you and I am certain you tried your best.”

Tears welled in her dark green eyes. “All of that doesn’t matter. The reality is, I let her down. I let my boys down… my husband too.” She looked at him with those sad eyes again, just like she had the first day he met her. She blinked and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t think I could live with myself if I failed again.”

“Annie…” His voice came out strangled and hoarse. He gathered her against his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of the hand lotion. So many times he’d walked by that bottle she kept on her desk and resisted the urge to lift it to his nose. “I meant what I said. My feelings for you have never been an act.”

“Still? Even after everything I’ve said?” she asked, all the self-doubt in her voice tearing him up inside. “The kind of person I am—a woman who could leave her husband and her children?”

Decades ago when he’d begun his undercover career, he might well have judged her, back when he’d been stuck in very narrow views of right and wrong. He’d seen too much since then to live that way anymore. Life was far more complicated.

“Annie, you are not perfect. Neither am I. No one is. This is likely the worst possible time to tell you, but I loved you the first time I saw you. Each day, as I got to know you better only made me love you more. It made me want to leave behind my old job and teach by your side in reality. To have the privilege to keep right on loving you.”

More of those tears flowed from the strongest woman he’d ever met. “Sam…”

He touched her mouth. “You are not alone anymore.”

She swayed into him, her mouth opening to speak, but he stopped her again. “Just think about what I said. I do not want an answer now when so much is turned upside down in your life. I only told you so you would know, you are not alone anymore.”

She kissed his fingers lightly, then held his hand to her chest. “It’s that simple for you to commit?”

“Not simple at all. But it is true and I have had much longer than you to think through this.”

Her pulse raced against his hand pressed to her heart, a tentative smile pushing through her tears. “Sam, I want to believe I can have that kind of happiness again. The picture you paint of us teaching together is incredible. I want to be with you, if that’s possible once I find out if I even have a future…”

The beautiful smile on her face faded into a frown, her eyes drifting from him to the window, then widening with confusion, then outright fear.

She pointed toward the tarmac outside, toward the halo of halogen lights. “That’s Ajaya, from the school. And one of those agents wearing a dark suit has a gun pointed at him.” The light gleamed off the agent’s cowboy hat. “He’s forcing Ajaya onto an airplane.”