Wild Card by Lora Leigh
A sob caught and locked in her voice. “He’s not coming back.” And it hurt. It hurt until she was a mass of pain, worse than it had been when she thought he was dead. More all consuming. Ravaging her insides.
He lowered his head. Shook it. Then stared back at her. “He loves you with all his soul. If he’s not coming back, then it’s for you, Bella. Not for him.” He looked to her stomach. “And he left you life. Don’t be bitter, girl. Don’t convince yourself he doesn’t love you. You know better.”
The sob tore free. Grandpop did the same thing he’d done when he came to the house after the notice of Nathan’s death. He rocked her. Wrapped his arms around her and rocked her against the pain before she drew back and shook her head.
She wiped her tears. She had cried for him the first time. She wasn’t crying for him again. Grandpop, in some ways perhaps, was right. Nathan had always had a sharp, very narrow vision of honor. He would leave her to protect her. She had known that ever since she had realized who he was, that he was hiding, pretending to be dead. If it meant her life, or her sadness, he’d take her sadness gladly. Just as she would have.
But she couldn’t pull herself out of the chair. She waited. She waited until the sun rose high overhead. The phone rang and no one answered it. Finally, Rick arrived.
He looked haggard. Years older. Blood stained his clothes and grief etched his face, but his eyes were hollow.
“State and federal agents are on scene rounding everyone up,” he told Jordan. “They’re covering the judge’s involvement in it. He was hustled out of there by the first two agents on scene. The marshal’s dead. They found Gaylen Patrick in a gully, gutted like a fish, and son of a bitch if they didn’t catch Mayor Silbert in the group. Most of the militia is dead. What’s left alive won’t live long. Otherwise there were no other bodies to collect.”
Noah was alive.
“And you?” Jordan asked him. “How much of this will you keep to yourself?”
Rick’s lips tightened. “Sienna and Sabella were kidnapped. Sienna was killed in a rescue attempt. That’s the orders from the feds.” His lips tightened. “What the fuck-ever. Kent doesn’t need to know his mother was a fuckin’ murdering junkie. And I’ll be damned if I can find it in me to give a shit right now.”
Jordan nodded.
Rick turned back to look at her, his shoulders straight, his gaze direct. “I’m damned sorry, Belle. If I’d suspected . . .”
She shook her head. “None of us did, Rick. It’s over. Let’s let it stay over.”
But it wasn’t over. She turned to the mantel and saw the pictures and felt something wither inside her.
“Grandpop. Rory. I want to speak to Jordan alone.”
“Belle.” Grandpop started toward her.
He was stooped and aging, and it broke her heart how he accepted the man his son was, and the deceit of his grandson. Noah, Nathan, he hadn’t told grandpop either. They were losing him all over again.
“Alone, Grandpop,” she whispered. “Just for a minute.”
Rory shook his head as Grandpop sighed. They moved out the front door with Rick. She watched from the wide window as they walked the sheriff to his car.
Sabella turned back to Jordan and walked toward him slowly.
“Where. Is. My. Husband.” She made it simple for him. Said it clearly. Even a simpleton couldn’t mistake the question.
Jordan inhaled roughly. His lips tightened but he stared her in the eyes and he lied to her. “Nathan’s dead, Belle.”
She wasn’t aware of her own clenched fists until she delivered a right hook her father would have been damned proud of.
“Fuck!” Jordan stepped back, shock, disbelief filling his eyes. “Damn, Belle. You hit me.”
“Do I need to ask you again?”
He stared back at her, keeping plenty of distance between them now. He watched her carefully, that edge of Malone calculation in his gaze.
“It won’t change my answer, Belle.”
Her smile was tight. Hard. “Go home. You’re not needed here.”
“Belle.” His protest was low, rough.
He was a damned handsome man, she thought. He resembled Nathan. Just as Rory did. The Malone men were quite simply male perfection. In looks anyway. And he had been her friend. Once.
“My husband has been dead for six years,” she told him. “And he was never the man I thought he was anyway. I don’t need your compassion or your sympathy over another man that never cared enough to stick around either. So leave.”
He started to say something more.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Just go.”
He left.
It took longer to convince Rory and Grandpop to leave. It hurt more to make them go. But finally, the house was silent. She turned the phones off, she locked the doors, and she walked to the mantel. The pictures.
She stared at them, seeing the stranger who had held her and the stranger she had married. They had loved, but they had never known each other, not fully. She had sensed all that darkness roiling in her husband, but he had never shown it to her. And she—she touched his brow in the closest picture. She had been what she thought he needed her to be. She wouldn’t ever be that woman again. Not for him. Not for the man he was now.
As she stared, the fury rose inside her. It bit inside her mind, dug vicious claws into her soul, until she screamed with the rage and the pain that exploded through her.
In one long hard swipe of her arm they crashed to the floor. Glass shattered, flew around her. She pressed her fists to her stomach and let the first sob free. It ripped out of her. It tore through her. It was a howl of agony that echoed through the house and caused the man standing in the doorway to flinch.
Noah felt the ragged pain inside him as though it were his own. Sharper, brighter than any pain Diego Fuentes had ever dealt him.
He watched as she knelt in the middle of that broken glass, lifted the broken frame of their wedding picture, and held it to her breasts as she curled over it.
The sobs were wrenching, torn, desperate, and he couldn’t handle it. He hadn’t been able to handle the pain since the moment he walked from those caves.
He had lost it. Lost control. Lost that icy edge. He had slashed through the militia in a rage so brilliant, so white hot, it had terrified him.
He moved across the room now, still bloodstained. He hadn’t changed clothes. Dirt and blood were caked on him. He smelled of death. Reeked of it. But he hadn’t been able to stay away from her. He hadn’t forgotten the knowledge in her eyes as he walked away from her. Heard her last desperate cry in his ears.
She had known. All along, his Bella had known who he was. And still, she had loved him. She had waited. She had cried and she had fought for him in every way that she knew how.
He bent his knees and crouched down in front of her, staring at the past, destroyed in front of his eyes.
Her head lifted, tears streaked her pale face, fury burned inside her.
“Six years,” she sobbed accusingly. “Six fucking years. Where were you?”
He stared at her, at the pictures, and he knew the truth for himself. “Nathan truly died, Sabella. The only part left living was his love for you.”
Not he was dead. Or her husband was dead.
Sabella heard the quiet acceptance in his voice, the resignation. And in part, he was right. The man he had been had changed. Changed drastically, but he was still the man she loved.
“But that part of him is here,” she whispered. “Has always been here.”
She couldn’t stop the sobs, the tears, the agony. “And that part was alive inside me. No matter the name, Noah, no matter who or what you want to call yourself, that part of you has always been with me.”
His hands hung between his bent knees, his hair was tangled, dusty, and fell over the savage angles of his face like a fall of worn silk.
His eyes were wilder, darker than they had been before he disappeared. His face sharper. His brows were the same. Hi
He looked at the pictures and finally lifted another of them together. He held it out to her. “This man,” he said gently. “Nathan Malone didn’t know the darkness, Sabella. He didn’t know the hell other men could inflict. He didn’t know the monster that lived under his own skin.”
She shook her head.
“Listen to me, baby. The man you married didn’t kill first. He didn’t go after blood on a mission. He pulled his punches, he tried to be fair. Until he was forced to spend nineteen months pumped up on hell’s own mix of drugs. All he had to do was break his marriage vows to find death. To escape it. All he had to do was fuck whatever they brought him, and he would have known peace.”
Shock and disbelief brought her mind to a stop.
Noah sighed heavily. “I was a SEAL, but I was also one of the few used for extreme high clearance missions. I knew things. They thought if they could force me to break my vows, then the rest of my honor would fall by the wayside.” He shook his head at the thought. “They brought women that looked like you. That could mimic your pretty Southern accent. But I always knew. I knew; I would look at them and in my head, I’d come here.” He looked around the room, his expression heavy, filled with pain. “I saw through your eyes. I felt your pain. Your love. And went mad from the agony. But you were seeing through me too, weren’t you, Bella?”
Bella. He called her Bella. Not Sabella, rife with hunger and pain. But Bella, as he had called her before.
“I knew,” she whispered tearfully. “I called Jordan, and he lied to me.” Her lips trembled. “And you lied to me, Noah.”
He shook his head. “I never lied to you.”
“You told me you were dead,” she cried out furiously. “Stared me in the eye, and lied to me.”
“Bella. Nathan Malone is dead.” He caught her shoulders, shook her.
“No!” she screamed back. And she couldn’t hit him. She wanted to, and she couldn’t.
“Look at me,” he yelled. “Look at me, Bella. What happened killed the man you loved. All that’s left is this. The man you see now. The name I carry now. Anything else is not possible.”
“No!” She pulled away from him, stumbled to her feet, and shook with the rage pounding through her. “The name might be dead, but you are not dead. You weren’t just a SEAL,” she cried. “You weren’t just a friend, or just a son or a grandson or brother. You weren’t just a warrior.” She clenched her fists, pressed them to her stomach as the agony welled through every cell of her body. “You are my husband. My lover. And you hid that from me, Noah. I had the dark passion you hid from me while we were married, and I saw the ferocity of the man who would protect me in those mountains. It doesn’t matter if your name is Nathan, Noah, or Hey Fucking You, you are my lover. My soul. My heart. And by God, you are not dead. Because if you were.” Her lips trembled. “If you were, then I’d be dead. Don’t you know that? Don’t you see that? If the man that loved me was gone, then I’d be ashes now. Not standing here screaming at a moron with more pride than good sense.”
Noah felt his heart unclench. He felt something dark, something nearly rabid in his soul, finally shudder as it eased. He rose slowly to his feet and stared back at his wife, seeing all that strength. Seeing the woman who had always watched him with what he knew now was a touch of amusement. Because she had known, he had no idea that she was so much more than he realized. But she had always known him. Had always sensed the darkness. Had always sensed the pride that he had in overabundance.
“You always knew,” he said then. “Didn’t you?”
“I always knew you,” she cried angrily, swiping the tears from her face and staring at him scathingly. “Big tough SEAL. You would walk into this house as though nothing existed in it until you entered the door. Lord of your domain. The big warrior who could fix everything.” She sniffed. “How often did you have to fix anything?”
He never had. Sometimes, he swore she had to think of things to do, and he had accused her more than once of hiring people to fix things he was certain should have needed fixing.
“Bella.” He shook his head. “You were always my soul.”
“Except for eighteen months.” She sneered. “Where were you?”
“Recovering. Retraining.”
“Alone.” Her finger poked into his chest, dug in. “Without me.”
Without her.
God, his hands were shaking. He was staring into her face and he wasn’t looking at a woman willing to forgive and forget.
Noah swallowed tightly. Had he waited too long? Christ, no. He couldn’t consider that. He hadn’t waited too long. Made mistakes, yes. She would forgive mistakes. She would have to.
“I love you, Bella,” he whispered.
The look she gave him caused him to wince. Feminine fury, disbelief, and intolerance. Fuck.
“Why?” she snapped. “Why did you wait?”
“Because I was a mess,” he said simply. “A hard-on-packing, ignorant fool too fucking scared to have his wife see him weak,” he snarled. “Is that so fucking hard for you understand?”
“Weak, my ass,” she yelled back. “You were probably a son of a bitch railing and growling at everyone and everything in sight.”
His lips almost twitched and he should have been raging now.
“You think I wanted to rage at you?” he bit out instead.
“It was my right.” She was back in his face. “Do you hear me, Noah? My fucking right to put up with it. And to do it gladly. You bastard!” He caught her fist, stared at it. His eyes narrowed.
“Sabella, you’re not allowed to hit,” he reminded her carefully, staring into her bruised little face, her thunderous gaze.
God, he loved her. Wanted to go to his knees and thank God for her.
“Are you staying?” Her chin lifted. “If not, get the hell out now.”
“Yes!” They were nose to nose now, anger flipping and flaring around them rather than contained as it had always been in their marriage. “By God, you’re not getting rid of me.”
Nose to nose. He’d never gone nose to nose with her. He had brooded, hid in the basement. But maybe he liked this better. Because the arousal was suddenly bursting, burning, whipping through him like the storm raging in her eyes.
“Did I say I wanted to be rid of you?” Hoarse, furious, her voice caressed his senses as nothing else ever had.
“It wouldn’t do you any damned good if you did,” he bit out. “But Malone stays dead, Bella. It’s Blake. Period.”
Her eyes narrowed. “The team you’re a part of? Is that why?”
“We’ll talk why later.” He gripped her arms, jerked her to him. “This is us, Bella. Me and you. He stays dead. Do you hear me?”
She knew her husband. She knew that look in his eyes. This was for their safety, not for his pride.
“The name stays dead,” she amended. “But the man.” Her lips trembled. “The man you are is my soul.”
Two tears ran down her bruised face again. Sienna had died for those bruises. Man or woman, nothing, no one, would risk what was his again.
He cupped her tender cheeks and felt the pressure behind his eyes, the lump in his throat.
“My Bella,” he whispered. “My heart died for you. Every day, every minute. Every second that I thought you believed I was another man. Every second you believed I was dead.”
And her smile lit him, from the inside out. A tremulous, vulnerable smile. “I always knew who touched me,” she whispered. “Only you, Noah. Only you can touch me.” Then she touched his cheek, her fingertips touched his lips. “But you really need a shower first, sailor boy. You reek.”
The laugh that tore from him shouldn’t have surprised him. The surge of love, of pure joy that ripped through him, should have been uncertain, should have been rife with the fears he knew had consumed him for so long. That Sabella couldn’t accept the man he was. That she might regret. That she might see him without
He realized now, she had never worn the glasses. He had. Deliberately. Because of pride. Because of that fear inside him that he’d lose her. And losing her was his greatest fear.
“Shower with me.” He picked her up, cradled her in his arms. “I’ll wash your back.”
He moved through the broken glass, took the stairs easily, held her to his heart.
“We’ll talk terms later.” She snuggled against him.
“What terms?”
“Marriage terms, Mr. Blake,” she informed him. “Our baby isn’t being born without a marriage. Don’t even consider it.”
Smug satisfaction filled her as he came to a blinding stop in their bedroom. He could feel his eyes widening, feel the panic that bit at his chest.
“What did you say?”
Her smile was female, triumphant. Loving.
“Our baby, Noah. When I went to the doctor yesterday, she told me. Antibiotics and birth control don’t mix, and I just didn’t think.”
He shook his head. “A baby?”
Their baby? Jesus. She was pregnant?
She cupped his jaw, kissed his lips, and whispered, “Our baby, Noah. I’m pregnant, with our baby.”
He set her slowly on her feet.
“I can’t wait to shower.” His cock was pounding. So hard it was brutal. The engorged length felt bruised. Desperate.
“Shower,” she whispered, caught his hand, and led him to the bathroom.
Mindless, in shock, he could only follow. He’d follow her, no matter where she led him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
He was alive. And he was hers.
Sabella stood beneath the shower, staring up at him. She couldn’t stop touching him. His face, his wet hair, his scarred chest, his powerful thighs. The heavy, thick erection that bobbed out from his body. Luscious and wide, dark and delectable.
She let him wash her hair. It was something he had always done years ago. Washed it slow and easy, threading his fingers through it as he conditioned it, kissing her brow, holding her to him. Then he washed her body.