“Thank you,” Jennifer whispered.
His dark brows rose.
“For saving me.” Not the lovemaking part. She felt her cheeks stain. “I thought I was going to die out there.” Her wrists were still red and raw from the rope burns. She tried to smile. “I sure am glad you were the navy SEAL assigned to my case.” She was more grateful than words would ever be able to express.
I would have died without him.
“Your father wasn’t going to let you vanish,” Brodie assured her. She caught the faintest hint of a Texas drawl in his voice. There one moment, gone the next. “He used all his pull to bring in my team.”
“My...father?” She kept the emotion from her voice—she’d learned that trick long ago. For her, life was all about acting now. Hiding emotion was necessary for survival.
“Yeah, the oil magnate. He’s the reason you were pulled into this mess.” Anger roughened his voice for a moment. “Your captors thought they could ransom you for a fortune.”
No, they hadn’t. They’d just planned to kill her. But there was some information she couldn’t tell her rescuer. He didn’t have enough clearance to know everything.
Jennifer leaned forward. Her lips brushed across his. “Thank you,” she said again.
His arms curled around her as he pulled her up against his body. Powerful, hard, hot—those words perfectly described Brodie. She wanted to just stay there with him. To forget the rest of the world for a while.
But forgetting wasn’t an option for her. Especially not when she could hear the pounding of footsteps right outside their safe house.
Gasping, she tried to pull back from him.
“Easy.” He let her go and rose to his feet. Brodie jerked on a pair of cargo pants and peered through the thin crack between the window and the long, dark curtain. “It’s my men.”
His men. Okay, right, but his men could not see her naked. Jennifer grabbed for her clothes—bloody and dirty though they were—and she dressed as quickly as she could. When she whirled back around, Brodie was fully dressed, too—looking all crisp and in control, and not at all like a man who’d spent the hours of the night making passionate love to her.
When he opened the door, Jennifer saw that his gun was tucked into the waistband of his pants. Men streamed into the safe house then, men who moved with the same controlled, soundless steps that Brodie used.
“We have a chopper waiting for you, Ms. Wesley,” one of those men said. He was tall, with blond hair and bright blue eyes. “You’ll be on your way home in less than an hour.”
Home. She didn’t really have one of those. Her gaze slid back to Brodie. She shouldn’t ask this, but Jennifer still heard herself say, “Will you be on the chopper with me?” Because Brodie made her feel safe. In a world of lies, he was a man that she trusted. Someone she could count on.
It wasn’t every day that a man risked his life to save her.
But Brodie shook his head. “I have to stay for mission containment. That’s your flight to freedom, not mine.”
The others were watching them. Did they know what had happened in that safe house? Jennifer felt as if the truth was stamped on her face. No, it isn’t. You never reveal what you feel.
She closed the distance between them. She rose onto her tiptoes and, putting her mouth close to his ear, asked, “Will I ever see you again?”
His body was so tense against hers. “Hopefully, you won’t need to see me.”
She eased away from him.
“Try not to get kidnapped again, and you won’t need me.”
Not get kidnapped? No, she couldn’t make that promise. He didn’t understand the world she lived in.
Her gaze swept over him. Lingered. He hadn’t been what she’d expected, and she wouldn’t be forgetting him anytime soon.
Jennifer headed toward the door.
“I’m...I’m sure your father will be glad to see you,” Brodie’s gruff voice followed her. “He moved heaven and hell to find you.”
Glancing back, Jennifer gave him a faint smile. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled when he sees me.”
And that would be a miracle, actually, considering that her father had been dead for ten years.
She followed her new guards and slipped out the door. The men with her were saying that she had to hurry, that her safety depended on a quick departure.
So Jennifer didn’t glance back. She didn’t waste time on goodbyes with Brodie.
Yes, he’d been unexpected...and Jennifer was quite sure that she’d never forget him.
Too bad he had no clue who she really was.
Chapter One
Six years later...
A ghost from his past had just walked right through his office door. Brodie McGuire shook his head, an instinctive response, because he could not be seeing that woman. There was no way she was standing there. No way.
Usually she only appeared in his dreams.
She couldn’t have just walked into his office at McGuire Securities. She was far away, some place safe and no doubt with—
“We have a walk-in appointment that I was hoping you could handle,” Brodie’s older brother, Grant, told him. “This is Jennifer—”
“Wesley,” Brodie finished, then cleared his throat because that one word had sounded like a growl.
Grant’s brows climbed. “You two know each other?”
Yes, they did. Intimately.
“Well, that just makes things easier.” Grant flashed a broad smile. “Ms. Wesley, I will leave you in my brother’s capable hands.”
Brodie realized that he’d leaped to his feet as soon as he’d gotten a look at Jennifer.
Grant glanced over at him, a faint frown on his face. Brodie offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile as he hurried around his desk and toward Jennifer.
Grant hesitated a moment more; then he slipped from the office. The door shut quietly behind him, and, just like that, Brodie was alone with the woman who’d been in his dreams for far too long.
Brodie almost reached out and touched Jennifer, just to make sure she was really there, but then he remembered the way desire had burned so hot and wild between them before.
To play it safe, he tucked his hands in his pockets and just inclined his head toward her. “Been a long time, Ms. Wesley.” He was impressed that his voice came out sounding so calm.
Her laughter sounded the way he’d thought it would. Sweet, light, musical. She hadn’t laughed when they’d been together in the Middle East. She’d been far too afraid for laughter. He’d hated her fear, and he was damn glad to see her like this...happy.
“And here I was worried you wouldn’t remember me,” she murmured. Her smile flashed, a wide, slow smile that made her deep brown eyes light up. “But I really think you can drop the ‘Ms. Wesley’ part, don’t you?”
Then she made a terrible mistake. She came forward and wrapped her arms around him. Her scent, a light lavender, drifted in the air as she hugged him. He probably shouldn’t have wrapped his arms around her and hugged her so tightly. Probably shouldn’t have inhaled her scent so greedily. But he did.
She fit against him, perfectly so. He’d thought that before, on that long-ago night.
Jennifer eased back and stared up at him. “You haven’t changed. You look exactly the same, even after all this time.”
He’d changed plenty. Most of those changes were on the inside, though, because he was good at keeping his mask in place. Brodie forced himself to let her go, when he wanted to hold on to her tightly.
That part hasn’t changed, either.
After the night they’d shared together, he’d wanted to grab hold of her and never let go. But the mission had waited. Her life had waited.
He eased out a slow breath, and his gaze swept slowly over her face. Her eyes were big, dark, almond-shaped and framed by the longest lashes he’d ever seen. Her hair was a black curtain around her, and her skin was a warm, sun-kissed gold.