The Captive's Return (Wingmen Warriors 10)

He wanted better for Lucia than he'd had and already her start had been so far from normal. Something they would have to deal with once they set up housekeeping, a thought that popped a cold sweat. What did he know about building a family?

"My parents were good folk, Irish descent. Dad was a cop shot in the line of duty. He lived through the injury, but twenty-percent disability didn't cover much and he didn't have any other skills. So they both worked minimum wage jobs."

"Worked? Past tense? Are they dead?"

"Dad is. The depression from the shooting finally took its toll. Mom went into a nursing home a few years ago."

"You're only thirty-nine so she can't be old."

Sara was only twenty-nine. So damn young. And hot. And in his bed.

Talk, damn it.

"She's seventy-four, but her health's not great, emphysema..." God, he hadn't strung this many words together at once since...ever. Or the last time Sara picked around inside his brain. At least conversation would offer a distraction from thinking about Seabrook out there somewhere. "Where are you going with this?"

"Trying to figure you out since you don't give excuses or reasons." She reached to cover his hand with hers. "You're a tough man to get to know, Lucas Quade."

O-kay. He could see where this was going. If he wanted to get back in her good graces, he would have to spill his guts as a peace offering.

"I grew up in a rough inner-city neighborhood. People didn't trust cops—or a cop's kid—even an ex-cop."

She skimmed her fingers along his chest, right where the scar rested under his T-shirt. "So you didn't fall out of a tree."

"No." His pecs contracted beneath her featherlight caress, her touch searing.

Sara drew circles on his chest, her eyes trained on her spiral path rather than his face. "Was a woman involved?"

"You're a good guesser." Damn it was hard to talk with Sara's fingers searing through his skin and the past burning through his brain.

"Were you defending her honor?"

"Hardly." He would have, though, and that bit his pride worst of all. He'd been an idiot. "She was the one holding the knife."

"Where is she so I can scratch her eyes out?"

Well damn. Sara hadn't even assumed for a second that he deserved to be cut. She trusted him that completely. He was humbled.

And shamed.

She deserved the same level of trust from him, and he'd failed her. He owed her more than an apology, but all she'd asked for were a few words.

He turned to kiss her palm. "Sorry, but you can't scratch her eyes out. Dawn overdosed at nineteen."

After a beating from her pimp of eighteen months. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to label Dawn a hooker out loud, even after what she'd done to him or however much Sara wanted confidences.

She gasped. "How awful."

Yet how common where he'd lived. "When you grow up where I did, it's tough to trust other people no matter who your father is. Simple mistakes had major repercussions in my building. Somebody down the hall talks about a new color television—break-in happens. Guy on the floor above forgets to lock the door—his sister gets raped."

"No mistakes? You can't expect yourself to be perfect."

"Believe me, I know better than anyone that I'm far from perfect."

Five years ago when he and Sara had argued on the embassy lawn, he'd been too caught up in his pissed-off frame of mind to take note of his surroundings in a country at least as dangerous as his old neighborhood. Sara had paid a horrible price for that lapse. Lucia, too.

Three days ago, he'd again been too distracted to do his job and now one of his crew members was out there somewhere—and he hoped like hell she was still alive.

"Is something else wrong?"