More Than Friends (The Warriors) Read online

  Brett removed his jacket and dropped it next to the picnic basket, his dark eyes fixed on Leah. His intense emotions showed in his sharp movements as he shook out the blanket and then arranged it on the sandy floor of the cave. "What’s going on? You’re a million miles away."

  Leah finally met his worried gaze. She lifted her chin, the stubbornness now a fixture of her personality clearly visible in her expression. "I’m not ready to talk about it yet. I’m still sorting through the details."

  "More memories?" he asked, his tone of voice deceptively mild as he studied her pale features.

  She nodded, shed her jacket and knit cap, and wandered several feet away to an outcropping of rock shaped like a bench. Sitting down, she massaged her forehead with her fingertips and tried to sort through the tangled web of half memories and dark shadows in her mind. All the while, she kept wondering, where is my son?

  "Leah?"

  Startled, she glanced up at Brett. He towered over her. Tears of frustration pooled in her eyes and blurred her vision. She blinked them back, but one slid down her cheek before she could brush it away.

  He dropped to his knees in front of her. Curving his hands over her slender shoulders, he smoothed his open palms up and down her arms. "Talk to me, please."

  She shook her head. "I can’t. Not yet, anyway."

  His expression neutral, Brett carefully drew her forward.

  She went willingly, her resistance gone, her emotional strength devastated by anxiety and confusion. She needed Brett too much right now to play games or act coy, but she also needed answers.

  "Forgive me for being such a bastard," Brett whispered against her temple as he held her. "It seems as though I’m destined to hurt you every time we’re together."

  She sagged in his arms, grateful for his presence and no longer furious with herself for loving such an impossibly complex man. She welcomed the emotional strength he always seemed willing to share, just as she appreciated the reassuring power and sturdiness of his body as he held her.

  Leah lifted her head to look up at him in exactly the same moment that he peered down at her. Their lips brushed. Eyes widening as they stared at each other, they both froze. They shared the same wedge of air, passing it back and forth for almost a full minute before their mouths met and fused.

  Leah slipped her arms around his neck, slanted her head to one side, and parted her lips. Brett took her shattered sigh into his mouth.

  He eagerly accepted the access she offered, his need of her surpassing his customary restraint. Thrusting his tongue into her mouth, he stroked and tantalized her senses even as he explored the warmth and sweetness of her. He kneaded her hips with strong fingers, then he used his palms to leave a sweeping trail of sensations up and down her spine before measuring the narrowness of her waist with his hands.

  She tore at his heavy sweater and vest, determined to touch him, to have him naked and inside of her before he could think of a reason to deny her what she knew in her soul they both craved. His actions matched hers in haste and intensity as he freed her of her vest and turtleneck sweater. She wore nothing beneath those two garments. Claiming her mouth again, he closed his hands over her breasts, shuddering with barely leashed violence as he caressed her.

  Her nipples tightened instantly. Her breasts swelled and firmed to fill his hands. She shivered with need too long denied. She clasped his head, cupping the sides of his face as his lips traveled from her mouth to the pulse throbbing in the hollow of her throat and then to the taut tips of her breasts.

  Skin sensitive almost beyond bearing, Leah arched into his mouth, gasping as he alternated between her breasts, circling her nipples with his tongue, licking at them and then gently biting at them. She felt that she might go mad from the pleasure steaming through her veins and the heat skating over her skin.

  "You’re on fire for me."

  "Yes, yes," she whispered, sounding as feverish as she felt.

  Her hands found the fastening of his jeans. He inhaled sharply, shaking beneath her intimate touch when she trailed her fingertips down the length of his swollen sex. Brett shuddered, his conscience warring with his need for her.

  He straightened, his body filling with increased tension as she explored him. He clenched his jaws as pleasure seared him like a hot brand. Circling his shaft with her fingers, Leah stroked up and down, discovering, measuring, and sighing over the satiny smooth power of his pulsing flesh.

  "I want you," he whispered against her lips. He sucked at her lower lip, his teeth and the tip of his tongue tantalizing her while he smoothed his hand across her breasts and plucked at her nipples with his fingertips.

  "Then have me," she breathed when he released her mouth. "Have me now."

  He cupped her face with shaking hands. "There are things about me you don’t remember."

  "I know enough," she insisted. "We can talk later."

  Thunder rumbled menacingly just beyond the cave’s entrance, startling them both. The sky grew darker, diminishing much of the natural light in their shelter as the rain hammered outside.

  Brett froze, self–disgust taunting him. He grabbed Leah’s hands, lifted them from his aching flesh, and held them away from his body. He struggled to breathe, to find an island of calm in the center of the storm already upon him. His eyes burned like live coals, his face filling with such tension that he looked as though he’d been carved from the most unforgiving slab of granite.

  "You have to listen to me, Leah."

  "Not again," she pleaded. She wilted against him, the air in her lungs gushing out of her, her body weakened by the frustration now streaming through it. "Words won’t change what I feel."

  He folded her into his arms, molding her to his naked chest. Her nipples pressed into his flesh like tiny points of flame, reminding him that this was probably the last time she’d allow him this close.

  "Your conscience and your overdeveloped sense of honor are going to be the death of both of us." She exhaled shakily and started over. "Brett, I trust you, I love you, and I want to feel whole again, not like some damned jigsaw puzzle with half of the pieces missing. My feelings for you are all I’m certain of right now. They give you the right to make love to me. I give you the right to make love to me. Here. Now." She pressed a tender kiss to his lips. "You keep asking me to trust you, and I do, but you need to trust me now. I know what I want."

  He sank down onto his haunches, the muscles in his chest and thighs rippling with strain. She joined him, her breathing still erratic. Positioned knee to knee, they faced each other. Brett dragged his gaze from the sharp rise and fall of her breasts. He closed his hands into fists to keep himself from reaching for her. "I forfeited all of my rights where you’re concerned a long time ago."

  "That’s impossible. You said we’ve been friends for years."

  "We were lovers for almost two years. Hell, when we were together, we thought we owned the patent on love, but that was a long time ago. We were engaged to be married. I walked out on you just weeks before the wedding. I told you I didn’t love you enough to marry you, even though it was a lie."

  "Why?" Shock and confusion shone in her eyes.

  He raked shaking fingers through his dense hair. "I wanted to protect you. My work with Naval Intelligence was and is dangerous. You would have lived in constant jeopardy as my wife. If my cover had ever been blown, you would have become a pawn in a game where lives are less important than matchsticks. I opted to walk away from you rather than expose you to the risk. I’ve stayed out of your life for the last six years and three months, despite the cost to both of us."

  Leah stared at him when he paused. She felt the sweep of his gaze on her face, as though he sought some indication that she truly understood why he’d left her. But she didn’t understand—not at all. He’d walked away from her, damn it. And he had not looked back—not once.

  "About a week ago one of my European informants alerted me to a contract that had been put out on you and my son," he continued. "That’s why
I’m here with you now. I decided to protect you myself while Micah finishes the final stages of an operation we initiated a few years ago in conjunction with several other intelligence agencies. You didn’t just trip and take a fall while you were packing for vacation. Two men were trying to kidnap you." He exhaled a hard gust of air. "They intended to kill you. When I showed up, one of them shoved you aside and they fled. That’s how you were injured."

  She swallowed against the dryness in her throat. "And that truck in the urgent care clinic parking lot? The driver was aiming at us. He wasn’t just some drunk who’d lost control?"

  "Contractors hired by a terrorist leader who’s very close to being taken into custody. The same men who tried to snatch you."

  "And those men following us when we left San Francisco?"

  "I don’t know yet," he admitted. "Washington’s checking them out for me."

  "Your son. Is he safe?"

  Brett nodded, caution filling his gaze. "Matthew’s with his grandparents in a safe house. Naval Intelligence supplied a security team at my request."

  "You should be with him, not baby–sitting some crazy woman who can’t remember the most important parts of her life." Leah studied her hands a moment before looking at him. "I have a son, too. I just can’t remember anything about him. I’m not sure… " Tears flooded her eyes. "I’m not even sure if he’s alive. What kind of a mother am I that I can’t remember my own child? Do you… can you help me find him when this is over? He might be frightened because I’m not with him."

  Brett seized her, jerked her into his lap, and wrapped his arms around her. "Leah, he’s fine. He always spends the week before Easter with his grandparents. I wanted you to remember him on your own, not because I force–fed you a bunch of facts about your life that had no real meaning for you."

  She went weak with relief. She stared at him for several seconds, and she suddenly felt as though someone had flipped a switch in her head as she studied Brett’s tense features. Comprehension and hope dawned within her mind in the same moment.

  "What are you thinking?" he asked.

  "We had a baby together, didn’t we?" she whispered, stunned by the possibility that they’d created a child. "Matthew… your Matthew is my son, too."

  Brett’s body felt bruised from the tension suffusing it. "Yes, Matthew is our child. Leah, we haven’t seen or spoken to each other in more than six years. I know I hurt you when I broke our engagement. What neither one of us knows is whether or not you’ve ever forgiven me for abandoning you. You were pregnant with Matthew when I called off the wedding, but you didn’t realize it until after you’d quit your job and moved to Monterey. When you discovered your condition, you kept the truth from me. You gave birth to our son without me, and you’ve raised him alone for almost six years. I didn’t find out about him until shortly before his birth. I might never have known about him if it hadn’t been for Micah."

  Leah heard nothing resembling censure in his voice. She felt compelled to say the words out loud, to clarify her comprehension of Brett’s admission one more time. "Matthew is my son, the baby I dreamed about last night. He’s our baby."

  Brett nodded.

  "I thought I was going insane," she confessed, not quite able to grasp everything he’d told her so far. "I kept seeing myself in the delivery room."

  "Micah said you had a rough time. I just wish…" He sighed. "It doesn’t matter now."

  "Do you hate me?" Leah asked.

  Obviously startled, he didn’t say anything at first. He finally asked in a hoarse voice, "Why would I hate you?"

  "I’ve kept you from your child."

  "That’s not completely true. I know him from a distance, even though I’ve never actually met him or spoken to him."

  "Through Micah?"

  "Yes. He shares your letters, the photographs and videos you send. He’s caught in the middle, Leah. On the one hand trying to protect you and his godson, and on the other, trying to help me know my son because we’re friends and he understood and supported my decision to break our engagement."

  Leah frowned, puzzling over an image that popped into her head and then flitted away a few seconds later. "Micah sends me money, doesn’t he, even though you said I’m the co–owner of a successful business?"

  Brett looked at her with pain–filled eyes. "I want Matthew to have the best. I was afraid you wouldn’t take anything from me."

  "He needs a father!" she exclaimed. "Not money. Why haven’t you forced the issue? Sued for joint custody or just simply demanded to be a part of his life. Am I so impossible to deal with, so inflexible, that you can’t reason with me where our son’s welfare is concerned? My God, what kind of woman am I?"

  He clasped her hands and held them tightly. "You’re everything a mother should be and more, Leah, so don’t doubt yourself because of decisions I made a long time ago. And yes, I want to be a part of Matthew’s life, but I didn’t want to hurt you again and I don’t want my son harmed. I can’t be anywhere near the boy until I’m well out of this business. I’ve tried to keep you both from becoming victims of the violence of my world. I didn’t have any other choice. The people I deal with are ruthless, and they don’t care who they destroy. Micah and I have always known the risks to our loved ones if our covers are blown and our identities discovered. Placing you, our son, and your family in jeopardy is not at the top of our list of things to do. As careful as we were, though, someone leaked information that resulted in contracts being put out on you and Matthew."

  Leah struggled to get free of Brett. "Where is he? I need to see my son. I want my little boy!"

  His grip on her effectively stilled her movement. "Calm down. You have to believe me when I tell you he’s safe. I have no intention of leading professional killers to his doorstep, which is what I might inadvertently do if I take you to him now. The operation is almost over, and I’ll be able to get a status report from Micah by tomorrow or the next day. He’s running things while I’m with you. Your parents are caring for Matthew, and no one can get to them. No one."

  "I don’t remember him!" she cried. "I don’t remember anything about him."

  "You’ve remembered giving birth to him," he reminded her, "and you’ll remember everything else about him, but only if you let it happen naturally."

  "I gave him your middle name. Would I have done that if I hated you?" she asked.

  "I hope not, but I honestly don’t know."

  She covered her face with her hands, her thoughts racing a hundred miles a second. She found it next to impossible to deal with everything Brett had just revealed to her. She hated all of the unanswered questions, just as she resented the confusion that now threatened to overwhelm her. She also felt stunned to realize that, regardless of his reasons, she loved a man who’d abandoned her in favor of his professional commitments. And the only reason he was with her now was because she was the mother of his son.

  Finally lifting her head, Leah asked, "You really didn’t know I was pregnant when you left me?"

  "I guess I deserved that," he conceded in a voice tight with control. "No, Leah, I didn’t know. I would have found another answer for us if I’d known."

  Forgetting the fact that she was only partially dressed, she remained huddled in his lap for a long time, periodically asking questions, lapsing into thoughtful silences, which Brett didn’t disturb. Finally, she succumbed to her emotional and physical fatigue.

  He held her close to his heart as she dozed in his arms. The rain eventually tapered off, and late morning turned to afternoon. Although muted by both his worry and his determination to protect her, his desire for Leah kept his body aroused and his senses acutely attuned to the vitality and warmth of her skin as he loved her with the reassurance and comfort of his embrace.

  Despite his long–held fantasies about a life together, Brett refused to lie to himself about the consequences of revealing the truth about their relationship to Leah. The minutes passed, and he steadily lost hope that they might find their way ba
ck to each other in a lasting and meaningful way.

  10

  Leah spent the next twenty–four hours trying to come to grips with Brett’s stunning revelations about their shared past, her escalating worry about the threat to their son by terrorists, and the additional stress of recalling portions of the time she and Brett had spent together in Washington, D.C. In addition, she grappled with the reality that she’d loved him enough to have his child without the benefit of marriage.

  She withdrew, emotionally and physically, keeping to her side of the bedroom whenever he was in their room. She sat in front of the fireplace when he left her to her own devices with the cautionary comment that she wasn’t to answer the door under any circumstances.

  Leah felt grateful that Brett didn’t seem inclined to initiate conversation, but she also grew increasingly unsure of herself around him. With her uncertainty came embarrassment that she’d thrown herself at him. Not once, but several times.

  She remembered her intense love for him, not just the highly charged sensuality of the passion they’d shared. Her dreams contained such erotic and arousing images that she wakened during the night to find herself drenched in perspiration and her body tightly coiled with desire that she knew only Brett could assuage.

  As hard as she tried, though, Leah failed to recall any of her emotions during their years apart. Had she continued to love him? Or had she become bitter enough to turn her back on him, thus deliberately depriving him of a place in his son’s life? If she’d done the latter, Leah wondered how she’d rationalized such behavior in her own mind. No matter how hurt or angry she’d been, she hated the possibility that she’d robbed her child of his father.

  Mired in her conflicted thoughts, Leah remained silent and aloof even after Brett informed her shortly before dawn the next morning that they needed to move on to another location. She cooperated, dressing and packing hurriedly, willing, despite the strain between them, to defer to his knowledge of the best way to handle the threat posed by the agents of the terrorist faction tracking them.