Along Came a Husband

At the end of the familiar greeting, she said, “Sean, it’s Missy—”

The phone line crackled. “Missy?” He was obviously screening his calls. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, but I need your help. For someone at my house. Can you come right away?”

Sean lived only a few blocks down the street in a home very similar to Missy’s. “What’s the condition? I need to know what supplies to bring.”

She hesitated. “A gunshot wound.”

There was a long pause on the line. “What—”

“Please. He needs you right away.”

“He? Missy—”

“I’ll explain when you get here. Hurry.”

She hung up, knelt back down and applied pressure to Jonas’s wound. As she stared at his face, memories enveloped her. The helicopter wreckage, the charred black remains of a body, the wake, the funeral. It hadn’t been a dream. It had been real. She’d relived every god-awful minute of it for years afterward. Jonas was supposed to be dead. Yet here he was on the floor, hurt but very much alive. It didn’t make sense.

“How could you do this to me?” she whispered, emotion clogging her throat.

A brisk knock sounded on her front door. She peered through the curtain to find Sean standing on her steps, yanked open her door and ushered him inside.

Sean took one look at Jonas and, biting back the questions, flung off his raincoat and tossed it over a nearby chair. “Let’s get him up somewhere, so I can work.” A few moments later, after half carrying, half dragging Jonas’s heavy body toward the back of her house, they had him lying atop her bed. “Let’s get these wet clothes off him.”

While Sean held up Jonas’s limp frame, she tugged off his sweatshirt and shirt. “Get his pants off, too,” Sean ordered as he went about cleaning the wound. “We need to get him warm.”

Missy went to the waistband of Jonas’s jeans and hesitated as her fingers touched the line of black hair trailing down his bare abdomen. Heat spread through her as she glanced at Jonas’s toned upper body. He’d been lifting again, heavily, and his skin seemed darker than normal, as if he’d been in the sun.

“Missy!” Sean said, snapping her out of her appraisal. “We don’t have any time to waste. This man’s in shock. Get him warm. Quick.”

She grabbed the waistband of Jonas’s jeans and worked to undo the button, draw down the zipper and drag the damp fabric off his too-cool skin. Thank heavens his boxers remained relatively in place.

“Get every bit of wet fabric off him,” Sean said. “Or it’ll drain his heat.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.” Sean was pulling supplies out of his bag. “Now.”

Missy did her best to avert her gaze as she tugged at Jonas’s boxers. The moment she cleared his ankles, she drew a heavy quilt over his lower body, but the image of his nakedness was already branded in her mind. No wonder no man had been able to measure up, in more ways than one, all these years.

Dammit. Stop it. He ruined your life once. Do not let him ruin it again.

Resolutely, she glanced at Sean. “What else can I do to help?”

A half hour later, Missy having assisted where needed, Sean had cleaned and stitched the entrance and exit wounds as well as two other cuts and had finally stopped the bleeding. While he’d been busy, they’d barely spoken other than requests for this and that.

He was wrapping Jonas’s chest, when he said, “This guy’s lucky the bullet went straight through his side, but he’s got a broken rib. Various other cuts and contusions.” He pointed at the slices on the side of his face, as if Jonas had been punched by a man wearing a ring, and the bruising on his arms and abdomen. “Someone really worked him over, but from the old scars it looks like he’s used to it.”

Missy well remembered the other bullet wound on Jonas’s shoulder, but the three-inch scar on his right arm was something new.

“He’ll need to be on antibiotics,” Sean went on. “And he’ll need this bandage changed at least—”

Jonas’s hand shot out and grabbed Sean’s wrist. His eyes fluttered open and he glared at Sean. “Who are you?”

“Jonas!” Missy hissed. “Let him go!”

Sean stared back at Jonas. “That’s a damned strong grip for a half-dead man.”

“Answer my question or lose a hand.”

Sean’s only sign of emotion was the slight flaring of his nostrils. Missy had never seen the calm, unflappable doctor this angry. She placed her hand on Jonas’s. “Let him go right now, Jonas, or so help me God I will kick you out of my house!”

Without glancing at her, Jonas loosened his hold on Sean’s wrist.

Sean slowly pulled away. “My name’s Sean Griffin. I’m Mirabelle’s only doctor.”

Jonas threw an accusatory glance in her direction.

“I considered letting you bleed to death.” She glared back at him. “But I wasn’t sure how to dispose of the body.”

Jonas turned back to Sean. “Tell anyone I’m here, and if I get the chance…I’ll kill you.”

“You hurt her—” Sean tilted his head toward Missy “—and I’ll kill you.”

Jonas’s gaze flashed at Missy as he was assessing the connection between her and Sean. His eyes held the barest hint of betrayal before he quickly looked away. “Understood.” Clearly in a lot of pain, he lowered his eyelids and seemed to focus on his breathing.

“Here.” Sean poured a couple pills out of a bottle, reading Jonas better than most. “This’ll help with the pain. Let you sleep.”

“Don’t need it,” Jonas growled.

Sean sighed. “Fine.” He set the medication on the bedside table.

Missy crossed her arms and frowned at Jonas. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”

“It’ll have to wait until morning.”

“I want answers now.”

He cocked his head toward Sean. “Then he needs to leave.”

Sean shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere until I know Missy’s safe. How do I know whoever shot you won’t be showing up on her doorstep in the middle of the night?”

“Because I know how to cover my tracks. I’m not an idiot.”

“You’re idiot enough to almost get yourself killed.”

Jonas made a quick move toward Sean, but clearly the pain knocked him flat on his back. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Doc.” Jonas gritted his teeth. “So why don’t you just get the hell out of here?”

Glaring at Jonas, Missy quickly gathered the medical supplies and led Sean out of the bedroom and down the hall. “I’m sorry about all of this.”

“It’s not your fault.” He stuffed everything she held back into his bag and glanced uncertainly into her eyes. “Maybe I should stay. I don’t like the idea of leaving you here alone with that man.”

That man. She almost laughed. “It’s all right. He won’t hurt me.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Who is he, Missy?”

“An FBI agent. At least he used to be.” That didn’t answer the real gist of his question, but Missy didn’t know where to begin.

Sean stared at her, as if trying to make sense out of the situation. From the moment he’d moved to the island last fall, Missy had felt a connection with him. Though he was guarded, rarely sharing anything of his past, she understood. She had secrets, too.

Most of the islanders speculated about a romantic relationship between her and Sean, but she’d never considered the two of them closing down Duffy’s on more than one occasion as anything more than a good time, especially since he’d never officially asked her out or made any attempt to kiss her.

They were friends. Good friends, but still only friends. She could trust him, and she owed him the truth. At least part of it. “It’s a long story,” she whispered. “I need you to keep this between us.”

“Missy?” He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Who is he?”

She swallowed and looked into his eyes. “He’s my husband.”

JONAS STRUGGLED TO MAINTAIN consciousness, strained to hear the conversation taking place down the hall. Whispers. Quiet and intimate. Missy with another man. He didn’t know why it should surprise him. As far as she knew, he was dead, and his death would’ve only given her a ticket to ride anything and anyone her freestyle heart desired.

Old familiar stirrings of jealousy reared up inside him and, at the sound of the front door closing and steps coming down the hall, he quickly tamped back the feelings. He couldn’t spare the energy for jealousy. Not now. Not ever.

Slowly, Jonas retrieved his gun from the bedside table. He slipped it under the covers only seconds before Missy came back into the room, looking confused and unsettled. “Why—”

“Will your doctor tell anyone about me?” he interrupted, not at all up for the interrogation she was sure to be formulating.

“No.”

“Who is he to you?” he murmured in spite of himself.

“None of your business.”

“I need to—”

“You’re dead, remember. You have no needs or rights when it comes to me!”

“Well, unless that divorce you were planning went through before my death, you’re still my wife. And I’m still your husband.”

“Husband? I haven’t had a husband for more than four years. As a matter of fact, as absent as you were for most of our marriage, I’m not sure the term husband ever applied to you.”

He closed his eyes and took several breaths in and out. “I just need to make sure your doctor can be trust—”

“He can be.” She paced beside the bed. “Unlike some men I know Sean keeps his promises.”

“Good for him,” he murmured.

Suddenly tired to the bone, Jonas wrapped his fingers around the cold but oddly comforting grip of his gun. As he closed his eyes, the remembered sound of gunshots echoed through his mind. One. Two. Then, as if in slow motion, he once again saw Matthews taking a direct double hit to the chest and flying through the air.

Jonas remembered turning, his weapon drawn, and that’s when he’d gotten hit in his side. He’d managed to fire off several shots. Before spinning out of the alley, he’d hazarded a quick glance at Matthews. His partner had been lying in a puddle on the ground, his head bent backward at an unnatural angle. Dead. This time for real.

Fatigue settled swiftly over Jonas. He was tired of the lie he’d been living these past years. Tired of trying to be someone he wasn’t. Tired of…just plain-ass tired.

“Jonas?” Missy said.

Feigning sleep, although the reality wasn’t far off, Jonas didn’t answer. More so than hearing her, he sensed her stepping back, maintaining her distance.

“Jonas?” she said impatiently. “I want some answers.”

He imagined her standing there with her arms crossed protectively in front of her, her chin tucked defensively. He let his breathing turn heavy and she hesitated. She wouldn’t touch him. He knew it, was counting on it.

“Are you awake?” She waited a minute, maybe two, then he heard her rummaging through a dresser drawer. Suddenly, she spun around and flicked off the light. “Asshole,” she muttered on her way out of the bedroom.

Yeah? Tell me something I don’t already know.

“THE BIGGEST DEAL OF MY LIFE is coming together!” Delgado yelled. “You assured me nothing—nothing—would get in my way!”

“Don’t worry.” Pretending a calmness he sure as hell wasn’t feeling, Mason Stein spoke into his cell phone while searching the frame of the couch. “You’re still on.”

“What about your renegade agent?”

The man who may have foiled Mason’s plans to be on a tropical beach in about three weeks with a couple million in an offshore account? “We’ll find him.” He pulled out his switchblade. “Before he does any damage. You have my word.”

“Your word doesn’t mean shit to me,” Delgado bit out. “You don’t get your money until my deal goes through.”

“That goes without saying, but it might not be a bad idea to move up your timetable.”

“Impossible. This deal is done. It’s going down in three weeks, regardless. I want this taken care of before I get back to the States next week.”

“I’m working on it.”

“I get busted, my men get busted, or my inventory is confiscated and you’re a dead man.”

Click.

“Son of a bitch!” Mason shoved his phone in the holder at his waist and then slashed open a cushion with his knife. He gutted the couch. Nothing. The chair. More nothing.

Frustrated, he flung his knife across the room, and it stuck with a satisfying thud in a kitchen cabinet. He’d torn this damned apartment to pieces and had come up with zilch. No addresses or phone numbers. No laptop or memory devices. Not even a single cell phone record. The man took the concept of anonymity to an entirely new level. How were they going to find him when they had absolutely nothing to go on?

As Mason stood there his cell phone rang. He glanced at the display and answered. “Tell me you found him.”

“Not a trace.”

“Dammit!” he bit out. “I want—”

“Relax, Mason. With all that blood in the alley, he’s dead or dying.”

“Not good enough.” Mason paced around the mess he’d created of furniture stuffing, hunks of broken dishes and fractured picture frames. An end table was the only piece of furniture still standing. “This is your fault. You told me he’d turn. You told me—”

“So I was wrong. Shoot me.”

“I want the body.” Mason struggled to keep his voice down. “Then I want it never found.”

“What do you think I am, stupid? If he’s identified, people are going to start asking questions. Did you tell Delgado?”

“I didn’t have to tell him. His people did.” Mason closed his eyes. “If I go down, I won’t be going alone. Understand?”

“Oh, I understand. Do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re working outside the lines right now, remember? This is no-man’s-land. So don’t give me any more orders. Understand that?”

“Yeah,” Mason muttered. And when all this is over and done with, you’re dead, no matter what.

“Good. ’Cause we got bigger problems on our hands than you think.”

“How could this get any worse?”

“He kept files.”

“Of what?”

“All the evidence he turned over to you over the course of the last four years. He backed up everything on a memory stick.”

Mason broke out in a cold sweat. “You gotta be shitting me.”

“If we don’t find him soon, he could turn everything over and we’re dead anyway.”

“Why didn’t you grab his files while you had the chance?”

“Why didn’t you kill him in the alley? If you had this wouldn’t be a problem. Did you find anything at his apartment?”

“What do you think?” Mason barely held his temper in check. He hadn’t really expected anything to be here, but every base had to be covered. “I have meetings tomorrow in D.C.”

“I can handle things on this end.”

“I’m telling you he’s hiding with someone he knows. Someone he trusts. His father. His wife.”

A loud laugh sounded over the line. “There is no one. Why do you think I suggested him for this assignment in the first place? No one in the world gives a rat’s ass whether Jonas Abel lives or dies.”

CHAPTER THREE

JONAS WOKE TO THE SOUND of a robin warbling loudly and quite happily outside the bedroom window. He glanced through the filmy pale green curtains and located the noisy little bastard perched on the branch of a massive elm tree. Lacking the energy to blow the damned thing to kingdom come, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ignore the sound.

What do you think you’re doing?

Get up. Get it done. Do your job.

Sighing, he tried to sit and pain sizzled through him, knocking him back down. Damn, it felt as though his body had been first tenderized and then run through a man-size meat grinder. Apparently, that’s what first getting jumped by four men, then shot, and then losing half the blood in his body did to a guy. He was in no shape to do anyone any damage.

Rolling over in the hopes of falling back asleep, he buried his head under a pillow. On his next breath the scent of something hauntingly familiar came to him. Something sultry and lush. Something that oddly enough had him feeling at once content and restless.

Screw sleep.

He cracked open his eyes to find a set of pale gold orbs staring back at him. Cat eyes. Short-haired and black, but for a slit of white on its chest and a white sock on one rear paw, the cat sat serenely at the edge of the bed and studied him with curious disinterest. The animal had the muscular build of an outdoor cat and one of its ears was notched, most likely from a fight, ramping up the tough guy look.

“How did you get here?” he murmured.

From what he remembered, Missy had been frightened of cats since as a youngster she’d tried breaking up a couple of toms going at it. A nice long scar on the back of her left hand was all she had to show for her good-natured efforts. He, on the other hand, had absolutely no good reason for his dislike of cats.

The cat, taking his life in his own paws, crouched down and rubbed the side of his black head against Jonas’s hand. Jonas’s instinctive reaction was to flick the thing off the bed, but then the silkiness of the animal’s fur against his calloused hands registered. It’d been a long time since anything that soft had touched his skin.

Unable to resist, Jonas turned his hand and scratched the underside of the cat’s chin. The animal purred and pushed harder against Jonas’s hand. The more he scratched the louder the purr. Before he knew it the damned thing was inching onto Jonas’s chest looking for more.

“Oh, no you don’t.” He lifted the covers, unseating the animal and forcing it to the ground. Instead of being upset, the cat stretched languorously as if it’d been his plan all along to jump to the floor before walking slowly out of the room. “Cocky little shit.”

Jonas chuckled, and another wave of pain moved through him. Considering taking something to make it through the day, he glanced at the bedside table. Clustered together were several small sample containers of prescription medicine and a large cup with a bendy straw that appeared to hold water. Apparently, the good doctor had left some halfway decent painkillers as well as an antibiotic and a sleep aid.

Awfully nice of Missy’s boyfriend. And he was her boyfriend. Jonas was sure of that. The man had looked at her last night with a distinctly protective and proprietary air. How long had they been seeing one another? How much had she told the doctor about Jonas and their past?

Why should he care? He set the bottles down and knocked back a couple of ibuprofen. Movement sounded upstairs, followed closely by the running of a shower. Missy was not only awake, she was also most likely naked and wet. Now there was an image he didn’t need running through his mind. Come to think of it, he was buck naked himself under the covers. How had that happened?

Missy. He had a vague recollection of her hands brushing his skin, her fingers on his stomach as she worked the zipper on his jeans. Think of something else, you idiot. The last thing he needed in his sorry state was a hard-on.

After prepping himself with a slow, measured breath he threw back the green leaf-printed comforter—knowing Missy, it was probably organic cotton—then gingerly rolled onto his good side and slowly pushed himself to a sitting position. Damn, he felt weak. As he waited for the rush of light-headedness to pass, he located his pack on the floor by the door, looking as though it’d been left unopened. Good. That was good.

Still waiting for equilibrium, he glanced around the room. The woodwork was enameled white, but the rich, milk chocolate-brown on the walls seemed to curiously vary in shade from one side to the next. Knowing Missy, and her tendency toward impulsiveness, she’d changed her mind while in the middle of painting.

The furniture was a mishmash of wicker, metal and some kind of natural hardwood. A big, leafy plant hung from the ceiling near the window, and a couple smaller pots sat on the dresser and bedside tables. A collage of different shaped and sized photos covered the wall above the headboard of the bed.

He might’ve thought it a guest bedroom but for the jewelry lying atop the long dresser. Beads, crystals, metal pendants or Chinese coins. It was exactly the kind of stuff Missy would wear—

He’d slept in Missy’s room. In her bed. No wonder the scent on the pillow had felt so familiar. That’s when he noticed something hanging over the arm of the nearby wicker chair next to his jeans. He picked up the pale yellow scrap of fabric and held it out. A nightgown. Flimsy. Lacy. Sexy as hell, especially if he imagined Missy in it with her long curls, her beautiful shoulders, her breasts—

Full-blown hard-on. He swallowed and hung his head. What a loser. After all these years, after the way she’d turned on him and broken his heart, how could he still want her?

The gown felt soft and slippery in his hand. Had she ever worn it for the doctor? Was she sleeping with him?

That’s none of your damned business. She doesn’t want your sorry old ass. She made that more than clear, remember? Besides, you’ve got work to do, so get to it so you can get off this hunk of rock floating in the middle of nowhere.

He grabbed his jeans, dug out the memory stick attached to a lanyard he’d hidden in a secret pocket in the thick waistband and hung it around his neck. After releasing a deep breath, he stood, tested his balance, then rummaged through his pack, verifying that his laptop had not been compromised.

After pulling on some clothes and tucking his gun inside the waistband of his sweats, he made his way slowly down the hall and into the main living area of the house. The space felt airy and open without any barriers between the kitchen and living room, living room and all-season porch.

Footsteps sounded behind him and, instantly on alert, he spun around. Pain shot up his side at the sudden twisting and he cringed.

Missy was coming down the stairs. “We have to talk.” She barely glanced at him as she moved past to put a teakettle on the stove.

The pain, mostly, subsided. “I’m not sure we have anything to say to one another.”

“Well, I have plenty to say to you, but first I want some answers.” She scooped some loose tea leaves into a metal mesh container and then focused on him. “Why aren’t you dead?”

Oh, yeah, that.

Jonas carefully eased himself onto one of the bar stools at her kitchen counter and studied her. Apparently having grabbed what she’d needed for today before she’d left him last night, she’d dressed simply, in a pair of straight-legged jeans and a long, loose, short-sleeved brown sweater. With naturally clear skin, she’d never needed much makeup. Her hair hung in damp curls. The only jewelry she wore was a necklace, a couple of hefty faceted quartz crystals strung on a strip of woven leather.

But it was the way she carried herself that set her apart. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it the first time he’d met her, the way she held herself, so straight and confidently. The regal set of her chin, angled slightly downward as if she were looking down upon the masses. Her hands. Long, royal-looking fingers and bones so fine she looked as if he could break her in half.

There were changes, too. Not a lot, not enough that most people would notice, but noticing things was part of his job. Her easy way of smiling seemed to have been replaced by a touch of seriousness about her mouth. There was more depth to her eyes, a more sober line to her brow. Was it possible she’d matured inside as well as out? He wasn’t holding his breath.

“I’m not dead because there was no helicopter crash,” he finally answered. “It was staged.”

“Brent Matthews? The other agent in the helicopter with you?”

“No one died, Missy.”

“There were two bodies,” she said as if she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around this twist in the past. “I saw them. I saw…your body.”

If he didn’t know better, he’d have said a shadow of something damned close to sadness momentarily passed over her features. “John Does from the morgue.” He shook his head. “They put the bodies in the shell of the chopper before they blew it up.”