Oh, shit. She didn’t mind if he stank. She’d accepted that she was in lust with him, accepted that he meant way more to her than she’d felt comfortable with, even accepted that he could cause her a lot of heartache, but until now she’d managed to avoid admitting the truth to herself. Not minding if he smelled like a bear was the kicker, and she couldn’t dance around with her emotions any longer.
She was in love with him.
CHAPTER 23
TOWARD THE END OF JUNE, ANOTHER LETTER ARRIVED for Morgan. It came on a day when he’d gone to town with Bo, and while she dealt with things in the police station, he’d ridden patrol with Jesse. He’d become friendly with all her officers; she suspected it was some guy instinct, that they sensed that his level of expertise in weapons and explosives and hand-to-hand far exceeded theirs even though she knew he wouldn’t have talked about it, and they gravitated to him. After her refusal to sit on his back while he did push-ups, he’d started working out at the small gym in town, and whoever wasn’t on duty had begun working out with him. Her guys made an effort to stay in pretty good shape, but Morgan’s idea of “in shape” made theirs look like kids playing in the yard. Sometimes she marveled that they didn’t all choke on the testosterone levels, but they were trying to keep up with him.
He executed the U-turn and pulled up to her mailbox, retrieved the mail, then passed it all to her to sort while he wheeled into the driveway. Bo sifted through the catalogs and sales papers, extracting her lone credit card bill and the plain envelope without a return address that was for Morgan. Silently she held it up to catch his attention. He gave it a quick look. “Open it. It won’t say anything you can’t read. If there was any news, he’d have called your cell.”
She tore open the envelope and extracted the single sheet of paper, on which had been typed two whole words: No news. No one would ever accuse Axel of being chatty.
Morgan scowled in frustration. “Shit. It’s been over three months. I know Axel, know he’s been spreading word that I’m recovering my memory, but no one is moving. Whoever it is is playing a waiting game, but that’s dangerous.”
“Or they suspect a trap,” she pointed out.
“There is that. Anyone who knows Axel knows how devious he is.”
“In which case, they don’t really believe you’re recovering your memory-which you aren’t, given that you never lost it to begin with, but let’s not quibble.”
He reached over the console and patted her thigh. The familiarity of the gesture made her smile. They’d been sleeping together for a month now, and she didn’t know if she’d ever stop going off like a rocket every time he touched her. On the side of fairness, he seemed just as hot for her. She knew she was attractive, in a noncurvy kind of way, but she’d never felt sexy-until Morgan. She’d look up and find him watching her with an intensity so hot her skin felt seared. She didn’t even have to do anything, at least not anything special. As far as she could tell, just watching her load the dishwasher turned him on. She honestly thought he’d made love to her more often in a month than her ex-husband had in the almost-year they’d been married.
She was happy. She was peaceful. What they had was so great she thought it was worth the pain she’d feel if/when he eventually left. Every so often he’d mention something they could do in the future, but it was always near future, not long-distance future. She didn’t make any assumptions based on that, because assumptions led to expectations and expectations led to disappointment. She simply accepted, and lived-more joyously than she’d ever lived before.
When they got to the house, he tossed the envelope and letter into the trash with the rest of the junk mail. The weather was hot enough that they were waiting until closer to sundown to take Tricks on her last walk; she fed Tricks, then she and Morgan began throwing together a quick supper. He was quiet, and whenever she glanced at him she saw the narrow-eyed intensity of his expression, meaning he was mentally attacking his situation from every angle, trying to worry loose some detail he hadn’t noticed before. His work was dangerous but important, and until this situation was resolved, he couldn’t do it, couldn’t live under his own name, couldn’t drive his own vehicle or live in his own home. She was happy, but he was in limbo, his real life on hold.
Perhaps she was part of his real life now, but she’d never know for certain until he got his real life back. Her instinct was to let the issue lie untouched, to take what she could get of him while circumstances still favored her, but-was that fair to him? He’d built the life he wanted, put himself through inhuman training and lived on the knife edge of danger in order to do what he did. If he chose to walk away from it at some point, that was different-because it would be his choice. Being locked out would eat at him.
She knew that he had mentally gone over and over the details of the day he’d been shot, knew that he and Axel would have analyzed it all down to the nth degree, and come up with nothing. Going over it again likely wouldn’t accomplish anything, but she did have an orderly mind and could listen, and sometimes a little back and forth could knock something loose that he’d realize was significant.
“You want to do a rundown of that day, start to finish?” she asked, keeping her tone even so he wouldn’t be able to read how much she really didn’t want to do this.
He frowned down at the salad he was tossing. “I’ve gone over it until I want to punch the wall. It’s frustrating, knowing something is there but damn if I can see it. What the hell are these little green things?” he asked, poking at the salad.
She leaned over and looked. “Capers.”
He filched one out of the salad and tasted it. “What exactly is a caper?”
“Pickled flower buds.”
“Who the hell ever thought of pickling a flower bud?”
“Someone hungry.”
He laughed and popped another caper into his mouth. “Yeah, that’ll do it. I’ve eaten some weird shit a time or three because that’s all there was. Okay, let’s go over it; a fresh point of view can’t hurt.”
She braced herself to stay noncommittal, to just ask questions and let him sift through the details. “Start at the beginning. What did you do when you got up?”
“Called a teammate, asked him if he wanted to go fishing. He said no. He had companionship of the female variety, and that’ll outweigh fishing with him every time.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Only with him?”
He hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her over for a hard, hungry kiss, one that involved tongue, lingered, and ended with them both breathing a little harder. He lifted his head and wiped her mouth with his thumb. “I didn’t say that. If I had you naked in bed-yeah, I’d skip fishing, too.”
“Oh, thank you so much.” She slid her hand along his ribs, feeling the hard layers of muscle, then regretfully eased away in the interest of keeping up the conversation because if they kept kissing, then dinner would go on hold and they’d end up naked. That had already happened too many times for her to think otherwise. “Did he know where you were going?”
“No, but he knows where I live so he wouldn’t have had to hack any database to get my address.”
“That could have been to fake people off.”
“That’s what Axel said.”
Bo scowled at him because she didn’t like thinking she had anything in common with Axel the Asshole.
Morgan grinned and tapped her chin with his finger but continued, “I don’t see it, myself. Kodak is a friend, has been for a long time. If I got crossways with him during the mission we were on-and I didn’t-he had plenty of opportunity to take me out and make it look legit. I’ve trusted him with my life a lot of times, and vice versa. My gut says no.”