Karen Whiddon - Mission - Marriage

“ This is all you can come up with?” She wanted to hit him. “I was your wife, the one person you could trust. You let me believe you were dead, ripped my heart out, and this is your explanation? Sean, I grieved for two years. Your death ,” she spat the word, “changed my life.”

“It changed mine, too.”

She wanted to weep. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever—”

“It worked.”

“No. It didn’t. You’re here now. I’m getting shot at. Nothing worked.” Raising her gaze to his, she let him see the depths of her bitterness.

“Nat, I—”

“No.” She lifted her hand, managed a careless wave. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Ah, but I do.” The rancor seeped through to her voice, and she let it. “That’s why you need to drop it, Sean.”

“But—”

“If you want to work with me, don’t say another word.”

Turning her back, she blinked back tears. Their marriage had seemed so different, so real. Based on mutual respect and trust and love, or so she’d believed.

That only proved what a gullible fool she’d been.

No more.

“Go to sleep, Sean.” Without waiting for an answer, she got up, turned off the light and sat in the chair by the window.

“What about you?” His voice, combined with the room’s darkness, made her ache again.

“I’m going to sit here awhile.” She kept her tone curt. “I’ve got a lot to think about.”

Sean dreamed. For the past two years, he’d been unable to forget Natalie’s kiss. Or the feel of her body, supple and welcoming, wrapped around him while they made love.

Now, in his dream, he kissed her again, with all the ferocious passion pent up inside.

Instead of kissing him back, in his dream she froze, her huge amber eyes wide open.

He tried to deepen the kiss.

She made a sound of denial against his mouth.

Stunned, he backed away. What the hell was this? He knew she was angry with him. He didn’t blame her. But he’d been certain her fury would melt the instant his mouth touched hers. Always, always, always, the touch of his lips had made Natalie melt.

Not this time.

Made of ice, she hadn’t softened as he moved his mouth over hers. Hell, she hadn’t even parted her lips.

Had she really gotten over him so completely?

In his dream, sorrow engulfed him as he realized she had.

Worse, she didn’t understand why he’d done what he did. If she couldn’t handle that, how would she deal with the rest of his past?

He’d given her up to save her life. During the two years away from her, he’d almost managed to convince himself that he had no regrets.

He’d been lying.

The intensity of his pain woke him. Fully awake, he punched his pillow.

“Does your leg hurt?” Natalie’s voice, from across the room.

“Like hell.” Nearly as much as his heart. He pushed himself to a sitting position and clicked on the lamp, looking for her.

With her legs curled under her, she occupied the room’s single armchair. He couldn’t help but remember how she used to sit, head tilted just so, lost in the pages of a good book. This time, she’d been sitting in the dark, as lost in her thoughts as he’d been in his dream.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Blinking, she stared at him. The hostility in her voice dropped the temperature in the room ten degrees.

“You’re in no condition to go after anyone. I’m going to ask Corbett to get you out.”

He tried to move, to push himself out of the bed, but couldn’t make his leg go anywhere. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Sean, I’m perfectly capable of taking the Hungarian down alone. As it is now, you’ve become more of a liability than an asset.”

Stung, he bit back a sharp retort. “You’re using my leg as an excuse.”

Her reply was short and sweet. “Sorry. Sue me.”

He couldn’t believe the sweet irony of their situation. “Look. You can’t just dump me. You wanted to tag along with me to protect me, and the entire reason I wanted you nearby was to protect you .” He laughed, a tired, bitter sound, even to his own ears. “Admit it. And I’m not done protecting you yet.”

“I don’t need your protection.”

“Nor I yours.” He wished he could kiss her, hard and quick, like he had in the old days.

But he couldn’t, so he wouldn’t.

“How about a truce?” Her quiet question surprised him.

“I didn’t know we were at war.”

She shook her head, her short spiky hair making her look as if she’d just climbed from his bed. She was almost unbearably sexy.

Damn and double damn.

Swallowing, he collected his thoughts and tried again. “Look, we both want the same thing, right?”

She nodded. “I want to find him.”

“And learn who he is and why he—”

“Did what he did.”

“Yes.”

He held out his hand, bracing himself for the cool slide of her fingers into his.

“Let’s work together.”

“We’ve already tried that.” She didn’t take his hand. “You’re wounded. You need to go home. Once you’re healed, you can rejoin me.”

“I doubt you’d be alive.”

The statement didn’t appear to faze her.

“Such confidence you have in me,” she drawled. “Why don’t you let me worry about that, and you go back to doing what you do best—protecting your own ass.”

The barbs were getting sharper. He elected to opt out rather than continue slinging words.

“You know me. A little thing like this leg won’t get me down. We make a good team, Nat. Always have, always will.”

“Our marriage is over.”

He swallowed. Though she hadn’t meant it to be, that sentence was the most hurtful of all. “I’m not talking about our marriage. We are a working team, colleagues. You know that neither of us can get to the Hungarian alone. And to try to do so is suicide. Quit being so stubborn and admit it. Before you get yourself killed.”

Tilting her head, she considered his words, forced by their vehemence to put aside her personal feelings. “You may be right.”

“You know I am.”

Ignoring this, she continued. “If we’re going to be a real team, we need to lay down some ground rules.”

This should be interesting. “Like?”

“I’m in charge.” She said it so smoothly he wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly.

“Uh, no.”

She cocked her head, crossed her arms, and merely looked at him.

Still sexy as hell. But ten times more infuriating.

“Natalie, sweetheart—”

“I’m not your sweetheart.”

He tried again. “I’ve been doing this sort of thing far longer. I’m a trained assassin, for pity’s sake. I’m older, stronger and male.”

“So? Men lead and women follow, is that it?”

Since she had it pretty much in a nutshell, he didn’t see the need to elaborate. “You’ve got it.”

He waited for the explosion.

Instead, she threw back her head and laughed.

It was a truly amused, gut-rolling, belly-shaking laugh. The sort of laugh a confident woman had, a woman who knew what she was and where she was going.

Natalie had never, in the entire time he’d known her, laughed like that.

He stared at the beautiful woman who’d been his wife and finally acknowledged the truth. She’d become a stranger. Two years had passed, an eternity of living separately, time enough for both of them to change.

Though he might long for things to be as they’d been, too much water under the bridge ensured that could never happen.

Yet he couldn’t stop wanting her.

Despite the desire coiled in his gut, Sean had to sleep. Though his restless mind and tumbling thoughts tried to pump him full of adrenaline, his exhaustion was so complete that he found himself nodding off in the middle of Natalie’s next question.