Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Nathaniel stood in my doorway, dressed head to toe in black combat gear, to include a Kevlar vest and squiggly little earpiece that probably kept him connected to the other ninjas who’d escorted us from the embassy.
First a scruffy beard and unmarked uniform, and now this? Apparently, Nate had been busy in the last three years.
“We need to talk.” He nodded toward the room behind me. “Inside.”
That burn in my chest transformed into a searing flame that threatened to incinerate me from the inside out. Those eyes would always be the death of me, so blue they deserved their own classification, but the warmth I’d always depended on had chilled, making the man in front of me seem more like a stranger than he had the morning we’d jumped into the Missouri River.
My anger stuttered in response to that glacial gaze.
Of course he looked like the next action star on the Hollywood screen, and I didn’t even have the armor of some decent mascara.
“. . . that’s not what a partnership means!” Jeremy barked in my ear, finishing some tirade I hadn’t really heard. “Let me come and get you. I’ll take the family jet. I can be there by morning.”
“Now,” Nate whispered, a muscle in his jaw flexing.
“I have to go,” I told Jeremy, hitting the end button before he had a chance to counter.
I backed up a step, and Nate brushed by as he walked into my suite, the scent of earth and spearmint tingling my nose. He still smelled the same. Did that come-screw-me fragrance just emanate from his pores, or was it bottled somewhere?
He didn’t pause or speak as he swept through my room, checking behind the curtains before marching into my bedroom like he owned it.
Not this one, at least.
“I’m not hiding someone in my shower, Nathaniel,” I called after him, perching my butt on the edge of the desk and abandoning my cell phone to its surface. Jeremy could wait. I didn’t have the answers he wanted. Not yet, maybe not ever.
“Very funny,” Nate called out from the bedroom.
My muscles tensed, ready for battle with this you-shouldn’t-be-here version of Nate, but there was a part of my soul that seemed to settle and calm just because the asshat was in the same room.
“Just making sure there aren’t any assassins hiding behind your curtains.” He walked back in with that confident, efficient stride and moved to the window, nodded at whatever he saw in the courtyard below, and turned to face me.
“No one wants to assassinate me.” My boss was a different story, but she wouldn’t be here until next week, and her upcoming visit wasn’t public knowledge anyway.
“Yeah,” he said, his face deadpan as he stared me down from the other side of the room, “they do. What the hell are you doing here, Izzy?”
Izzy. So few people called me that anymore. The second I’d walked into Senator Lauren’s office, I’d become Isa, plain and simple.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I fired back, crossing my arms over my chest. Heat sang through my cheeks as I felt the bulk of my Georgetown hoodie behind my arms. I was dressed for bed, barefoot in pajama pants, not outfitted to confront Nate.
Nate. After three years, this is how it happened? Not because he’d come back, or apologized for disappearing off the face of the earth, but because once again, we’d proved to be the magnets that fate could never quit playing with?
This was bullshit.
“Nice earpiece, by the way,” I continued. “At least someone here knows how to get ahold of you.” I fought the knot in my throat. There were too many emotions fighting for supremacy, each choking the other out until the hurt of it all won out, turning my words sharp and acrid.
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
His jaw flexed once. Twice. “Say it. Whatever it is you’ve been holding back all evening, just say it.” He folded his arms across his chest, mirroring my stance, but he pulled it off way better. He had the whole “dark mercenary thing” going for him, though I knew if he was on our security detail, then he was still on the government’s payroll.
“You abandoned me.” The words slipped out.
He arched his brow. “Really. I abandoned you? Is that how you remember it? Twisting facts. Guess you really are a politician now, just like Daddy wanted.”
“You disappeared!” I came off the desk in a flurry of years-old anger. “Not one letter! Email! Your social media? Erased. Your phone? Disconnected!” My fury carried me across the room until I was bare foot to boot with him, glaring up at the face that had haunted my dreams and a few of my nightmares. “You vanished!” The years of not knowing, of wondering if he was safe, or hurt—or worse—erupted in every word. “Do you have any idea how hard I looked for you? I went to Peru as we planned. Borneo too. By the next year, I got the point.”