“Looks it, too, I’m pleased to say.”
“I just heard what happened tonight, or I would have called y’all to check in,” Lou Ann said. “Eden, honey, you are one brave woman. Thank God you were there to be a guardian angel to little Gracie Stevens.”
Melody laughed. “Jeez, Lou Ann, don’t put that title on her.” To Eden, she said, “If you’re Gracie’s guardian angel, you’ve got yourself a full-time job.”
“One that ought to come with hazard pay,” the other woman interjected, then held out her left hand to Eden. “I’m Addy DeShay, by the way.”
“Eden Braxton.” She turned to him, so he stepped over. “This is my fiancé, Michael Swain.”
“Pleased to meet you, Ms. DeShay.”
“It’s Addy,” she corrected. “Congratulations on your engagement. Have y’all set a date?”
The conversation turned to weddings, and he happily transitioned from participant to observer. As he watched Eden show off her ring and talk about plans, a strange mood came over him. He should have felt optimistic, based on the outcome of Eden’s conversation with Dobie, and, certainly, proud of what they’d accomplished tonight. It took a minute to identify the prickly emotion as his very own dose of the guilt he’d told Eden was unwarranted. Now he stood corrected, because he saw that they weren’t just deceiving Dobie and Kenny. They were also deceiving perfectly decent, completely innocent people who were unknowingly investing their kindness and friendliness in a lie.
The bourbon turned bitter in his gut. A desire to get away from living lies accounted for a large part of why he’d left the Marines. He’d wanted community. He’d wanted real interactions with regular people. He’d grown tired of the manipulation, the isolation. And yet, here he was, neck deep in another cover. The difference being when this assignment ended, he wouldn’t be uprooted and planted somewhere else, with a new cover and a different mission. And neither would Eden.
No, they’d have to stick, survive some amount of notoriety, as perfectly decent, completely innocent people realized they’d been deceived, and slowly work to earn back trust. Could he do it? Up ’til now, life had been about executing the con and moving on. Was he even equipped to con his way out of the con?
The question made his head hurt. So yeah, the unfamiliar teeth of guilt gnawed at him, and loneliness, too, because although Ginny knew the score, as we
ll as a handful of people in the PD and the Sheriff’s Department, the only person in the entire town who really understood the pitfalls of this assignment was Eden. She wasn’t just his partner but his link with reality. She’d become his safe zone. His constant in a life that heretofore hadn’t had many constants. The one person truly with him now who would still be with him on the other side of this op.
He hoped so, at any rate, because all these things he felt for her weren’t going to disappear at the end of their assignment. They felt permanent. They felt…not that he had any experience with it, whatsoever, but they felt like…love.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Do you think the meet is going to happen?” Eden turned away from the dark scenery zipping by to look at Swain’s profile.
He shrugged. “Don’t know, but”—he tossed her a smile before steering the Bronco into the turn for their driveway—“most ops involve a lot of work, a lot of skill, and some luck.” He pulled to a stop by their porch and turned to her. “You got us as far as we can go on work and skill.”
His smile disappeared. Blue eyes, deep as midnight in the faint light put out by stars and headlamps, scanned her face. He smoothed her hair behind her shoulder. “I’d say we’ll know if luck smiled on us by this time tomorrow.”
A flock of possibilities took flight in her stomach. Despite the intimacy of the moment, she had to move. She swiveled away and hopped out of the car. Swain met her around the hood and followed her up the porch steps. At the door, with him focused on sliding his key into the lock, she asked the deceptively simple question that had been circling her mind for days. “What happens if their source declines the meet?”
He pushed the door open and gestured her through. “At that point, we have very little to lose. I can ask the guys to give me his name so I can talk to him direct. More likely, you could ask,” he conceded as he pulled the door shut.
She walked into the living room, clicked the side-table lamp on, and snuggled into a corner of the sectional. The sectional where she’d first had sex with him, because even though she’d been telling herself she detested him and couldn’t trust him, a part of her had wanted him nonetheless. Now all of her wanted him—all of him. “You think they’d tell us?”
He sat, too, and pulled her over until her head rested on his thigh. “I don’t know. That gets tricky.” Long fingers combed slowly through her hair. “I think Dobie would tell you just about anything, but he wouldn’t want to put you in the crosshairs of a guy who’s already told him he doesn’t want to meet. He wouldn’t feel as protective of me. He might even think I should go on and argue my case face-to-face, instead of pressuring him and Kenny to be intermediaries.”
She nodded, enjoying the feel of his thigh under her cheek. “I wheedle a name out of Dobie, with assurances that I’m sending you to have the conversation. Geez, we’re playing that guy like a fiddle. Why in God’s name does he let me?”
The hand in her hair stopped. “Because you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his entire tiny-town life.”
“Pfft.” She rolled onto her back and stared up at him. “What makes you say that?”
He stared down at her, his handsome face serious as stone. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of things.”
Her heart scrambled for a foothold in her chest. “Don’t say stuff like that to me. I might get used to hearing it.”
“Would that be so bad?” He smoothed his hand over her forehead, then rested the other across her chest, palm over her heart. “Getting used to it? Getting used to me?”
Her pulse stuttered, then raced off at triple time. There was no way he couldn’t feel it. “What are you asking, Swain?” The question came out of her tight throat as barely more than a whisper. “One way or another, this assignment’s going to end in a few days.”
He shifted her head to the cushion and stretched himself out on the sectional, propping his upper body on his forearms so his head hovered above hers. “I’m asking if this”—he slipped a hand beneath the neckline of her gauzy sundress and covered her breast—“has to end when the assignment ends.”
Her nipple instantly rose to greet his palm through her bra. He felt it. She knew by his satisfied smile and the way he moved his hand over her, gently abrading the sensitive crest. Without a thought, she arched into his touch. Her breath escaped in a shaky exhale because her pounding heart took up all the room in her chest. “What would this not ending look like?”