Forget Me Not (30 page)

She stood in the same spot with her arms akimbo and her chin in the air. She looked so striking that he wanted to toss aside the broom and grab her. He wanted to punish her with a kiss that would leave her shaking and trembling the way she'd left him that perfect May night.

He'd cherished the memory for months, now. A cool breeze, a full moon glinting on the ocean's waves, and a mysterious woman, dancing in his arms on the terrace of the Shifting Sands nightclub. All seduction and smoldering glances, he had fallen over his feet to get to her first. To his amazement, she'd accepted his advances. He'd swept her to his home where he had spent all night putting out her fire.

Apparently, he'd done his job too well. Toward the wee hours of dawn, she'd slipped away while he slept. And she hadn't even left a note.

That night had changed him forever. Gone was the fear of, what he would do when he retired from the SEALs. He was going to have a wife and kids, a vision he'd never pictured for himself. It was a revelation. Yes, he'd have a wife exactly like his dream lover and a little girl, like the one who'd smiled at him in the hallway.

He stopped less than a foot from Leila's tense form, devouring her with his gaze but not touching.

She was breathing hard, he noticed. Clearly she was not as immune to him as she would have him believe. "What's your excuse,
bonita?"
he inquired, returning to his lecture. "Or do you always use men so callously?"

"It's no more than men do to women every day," she countered, her black eyes glittering.

"Not all men," he corrected softly. "You know what I think? I think you are a coward. Only cowards do not give their names."

He was goading her and he knew it. Yet he wanted to wound her with his words, because she had done worse to him. She had made him crazy with lust and then she'd disappeared.

"You're afraid of intimacy," he added, moving close enough to smell her jasmine-scented skin. He took a long deep breath, unsettling her enough to make her take a step back.

"And what do you know of intimacy?" she hissed. "Have you ever been married?"

That shut him up. No, he hadn't. He'd been married to his job. It wouldn't have been right to give his best to the SEALs and expect a wife to make do with leftovers. "No," he admitted.

"Have you ever had your heart ripped out by the one person you trusted most?"

She was trembling now, reminding him of a butterfly, and he knew with a sudden pang that she'd been married to the wrong man entirely, someone who had not seen what he saw in her right now. Longing to comfort her, he looped an arm around her and pulled her against him. He gripped the broom in his other hand, a link to sanity. She had a gift for making him lose his mind.

He couldn't tell which was stirrer, the broom handle or the
woman, but at least she wasn't resisting him.

"Ah, querida,
I didn't know," he said soothingly. "I am sorry." Bit by bit she relaxed against him, her body conforming to his, softening with the heat that grew between them. He put his nose to her hair and gave an inward groan. Her fragrance recalled that magical night so vividly!

She had a perfect shell of an ear, one that begged to be ravaged by his tongue. Her breasts were flattened against his chest, the way they'd been when they made love. The woman was exquisite. She was also vulnerable, delicate. He would take his time with her this time.

"Will you have dinner with me tonight?" he asked.

She struggled to free herself, but he held her fast. "I'm working tonight," she said quickly.

"Tomorrow then," he insisted, loving the feel of her small hands against his chest.

"I work tomorrow as well."

He kept a lid on his frustrations. "I am only asking for dinner," he assured her. "I promise I won't touch you."

"How can I believe that?" she scoffed. "You're holding me against my will right now!"

"Against your will?" he asked with disbelief.

"Yes!"

"Then you wouldn't want me to put my lips on yours and kiss you until your legs give out?" he asked, looking her straight in the eye.

"No," she answered faintly. Yet her knees seemed to wobble, and a pulse beat frantically in that tender spot at the base of her neck.

"Very well." It cost him a great deal, but he released her, mollified to see her waver on her feet. "Pick a night," he demanded inexorably.

Leila wrung her hands. "Just dinner?" she queried, her gaze dropping regretfully to his mouth.

"Just dinner. I give you my word."

Out in the hallway the chime went off, and the sounds of teenage laughter heralded the next batch of students. Leila glanced, distracted, toward the door. "I'm free on Friday," she told him.

"Friday, then," he said, taking the offer and running with it. "Seven o'clock? Where should I pick you up?"

"Right here," she said. "I have to ask you to leave now. I need to get ready for the next lesson." She held her hand out for the broom, and he relinquished it, giving no indication of the triumph that blazed in his chest.

"Until then,
querida."
He let his gaze drift over her scantily clad figure. Then he turned away, trying not to strut as he walked to the door.

The teenaged girls in the front room fell silent as he strode past them en route to the exit. They gaped at his lean, dark looks.

Not bad for a man of forty, he thought, pushing his way out into the heat.

The sight of his Ford Falcon still covered in primer with a crooked front fender, drew him up short. He couldn't begin to picture Leila in the passenger seat. He would have to come up with alternate wheels. His car wasn't good enough for her.

Maybe Westy would lend him his sapphire-blue 300ZX. A hot, little sports car suited Leila Eser far better. Yes, yes.

Just thinking of her in Westy's car made him as horny as a toad.

But he'd meant what he said. It might kill him to do it, but he was going to treat Leila like an icon of the Virgin Mary on Friday night. They were going to enter into this relationship slowly. Because as heavenly as Leila was, she'd once been devastated by love. And if he intended to make her his bride, he had to first put her heart back together.

From his usual straight-back chair, Gabe studied Dr. Terrien's expression for any sign of duplicity. The man had greeted him with affable delight and trailed him down the hall to their meeting room.

"Tell me everything," the doctor invited, looking straight into Gabe's eyes. "Your wife says you recovered most of your memories earlier this week."

With a stab of betrayal, Gabe imagined the doctor and Helen chatting behind his back. "That's right," he confirmed. "We went to Annapolis to visit her parents, and the dream I had there must have switched a trigger or something. I remembered everything, actually." He decided at the last second to stretch the truth as a sort of experiment. Let the doctor believe he knew
everything,
then wait for the consequences. If someone came after him immediately, Gabe's suspicions would be justified.

Dr. Terrien regarded him with his shaggy eyebrows raised. "Well, wonderful!" he exclaimed. He seemed sincere in his praise. "It's only been, what, a couple weeks. That's tremendous! Tell me all about it. Start with the mission. What do you remember there?"

Gabe assumed a reflective posture. It was curious that the doc would suddenly want to talk about the mission-gone-wrong. Or was that just a sensible place to start?

He concocted a story based on what he could recall of the explosion, viewed from the back of a truck. "I was keeping an eye on me fourth missile," he related, "hunkered down behind a pallet of barrels, when suddenly I looked up and this tango was standing over me."

"Tango?" the doctor interrupted, betraying his civilian background.

"Terrorist. He knocked me in the face with the butt of a rifle"—like Gabe would ever be caught unaware like that— "and it must have rendered me unconscious. I was bound with electrical tape and dumped into the back of a pickup. Next thing I heard was the warehouse exploding. I have no idea what caused it."

"Fascinating," Dr. Terrien murmured, shaking his head sympathetically.

Gabe then recounted his stay at the mountaintop compound. He highlighted his friendship with Jun Yeup and explained how the young man had aided his escape. He mentioned helping himself to the information in me computer room and forwarding the intelligence to the FBI. He added that his efforts had convinced Lovitt to meet with him the day after tomorrow.

"So what do you think?" Gabe added. He watched for the smallest nuance that might betray the doctor's thoughts.

"I think you're a hero," Dr. Terrien replied, admiration shining in his eyes. "You deserve the highest commendation for everything you've been through. You really are an incredible man, Gabriel." The light in his eyes dimmed with consternation. "Your wife tells me that you think your life is in danger," he added.

Gabe's heart felt like it was folding over on itself. Why didn't Helen believe him? Were his convictions that farfetched or was the truth simply too awful to imagine?

"Someone tried to kill me in Pyongyang," Gabe said baldly. "I have reason to believe they'll try it again."

"But you said it was a terrorist who tried to kill you," the doctor reminded him.

He'd been caught in a lie already. "All right," he admitted, shifting in his seat. "The truth is I still can't remember the mission. But what if it wasn't a tango?" He thought of Forrester, killed in a hit-and-run. "What if it was someone I knew, someone I'd dug up some dirt about and he didn't want me ratting on him. Suppose he decided to eliminate me, only it didn't work. I survived, thanks to a couple of locals who dragged my ass out of the warehouse before it exploded. What then? Wouldn't this person want me dead?"

Dr. Terrien regarded him dubiously. "Gabriel," he said, "I want to believe you—well, you know what I mean; of course I wouldn't want any harm to befall you. But you need to realize that your nervous system is so accustomed to threat that, perhaps, you've invented this situation in order to justify the way you feel. It takes time for the mind to grasp that the danger is over."

Oh, Christ, not this again,
Gabe bit his tongue and forced himself to hear the doctor out. The man still thought he was paranoid.

"Have you called the police about this?" the doctor asked, looking worried.

Gabe thought of the police car that had tried to mow him down. If he said the police were in on the scheme to kill him, the doctor would definitely think him crazy. "No," he said succinctly. "But I can tell you that an agent from the DIA, the one looking in to my disappearance is dead, killed in a hit-and-run."

That news gave the doctor pause. He rubbed his chin with his fingertips, his brow puckered with concern.

"Let me ask you a question, Doc," Gabe added, driving his point home.

"Go ahead," the man invited generously.

"Is there, by any chance, someone else who's been following my progress?"

It was impossible to tell if the flicker in the doctor's blue-gray eyes was guilt, surprise, or consternation. "Well, of course," he said. "Your commander wants to know the moment you're completely recovered. He can't wait to have you back on the team."

Commander Lovitt. "You've talked to him about my progress?"

Dr. Terrien cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. I'm required to give him updates."

So much for confidentiality, Gabe thought with a sneer. He should have heeded Forrester's advice and said nothing to his psychiatrist—not that Lovitt was in any way involved in the conspiracy to kill Gabe. But if Gabe hadn't shared his paranoid thoughts with the doctor, he'd have stood a better chance of returning to active duty. God damn him for an idiot!

"You know what," Gabe said, standing up abruptly. "Thanks for hearing me out. I'm sure these sessions helped my memory to return, but I think I'm wasting my time now."

With a curt farewell, he strode from the room and out of the office suite, only to stand on the curb outside, waiting for Sebastian to pick him up.

M
allory regarded her reflection in the bathroom mirror through critical eyes. The dye was coming out of her hair so that it was now a charcoal gray instead of black. Her nose was too big for her face and covered with freckles. Her mouth was too wide. She hated the way she looked.

Maybe she should dye her hair another color or put some earrings in those empty holes in her ears. Mom and Dad would have a cow if she did that. The thought of them having a cow intrigued her. They'd have to talk about what they were going to do to her for defying them She reached for the jewelry box on the counter and fished out a couple of sterling silver studs. Putting earrings into the holes that were almost completely closed was pretty painful. It took her mind off Gabe's absence. The house echoed with silence during the long hours that her mother worked, but Mallory couldn't stand to go outside. Every father in America was vacationing with his kids. It made Mallory sick at heart to watch them rollicking in the surf and souvenir shopping.

She'd been so sure that things would work out with Gabe coming back into their lives. He was everything a dad should be. He was fun but strict at the same time. He was nice, too, making faces at her and casting her warm looks that made her feel good about herself.

The best part was that her mother liked him, too. She'd held his hand all the way home from Annapolis, right up to when Gabe thought the car behind was following them and he'd pulled a gun out from under his pant leg.
A gun!

That was when everything got weird. Dad had started talking about someone trying to kill him. Mom had turned tense and quiet. Mallory's blissful happiness had started to crack apart and splinter, just as it had years ago when her new dad had gone out of his way to avoid her.

Holding her ear still with one hand, Mallory pushed four studs through the narrow holes with the other, biting her lip for bravery. God, that hurt! Slipping the back onto the posts, she regarded her handiwork.

Four silver studs in her left ear didn't make her any prettier, she realized, disappointed.