Forbidden Stranger Read online

  She’d suspected for a while that transferring the files was a useless task, but hearing him say it outright was still surprising. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, forget it, all of it. The puzzles you hate so much. The stupid files. Concentrate on getting better. Paint. Run. Climb those stairs. Eat,” he added with a little chuckle that twisted something inside her into knots she didn’t want to feel. “The work was just—”

  “An excuse,” she put in. “Something to keep me occupied.”

  He nodded. “It was a way to give your mind something to focus on, so you could heal and recover. But it’s so galactically boring, Nina, there’s no reason you should keep wasting your time on it.”

  “I can’t just not . . . work,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  A creak at the top of the stairs had them both turning. Aggie stood there, her gray hair wild as though she’d been outside in the wind. She gestured at them both, her gaze intense.

  “I’ve received some rather distressing news,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Donahue, but I’m going to have to ask for a leave of absence.”

  * * *

  “It’s my son,” Aggie said in a low voice when Nina had left the attic office. “He was hit by a truck while riding his buzzbike. They’ve put him into a coma until they can determine more, but he’s been in and out of surgery already.”

  Aggie’s usual broad, casual accent had gotten crisper. She twisted her hands in the apron she still wore, but her entire demeanor had changed enough that there’d be no mistaking her for being only a cook and housekeeper now. She met Ewan’s eyes squarely, although her tone was apologetic.

  “It was a hit-and-run. They don’t know if he’s going to pull through.”

  “Of course you have to go. You and Jerome both. I understand completely.” Ewan also kept his voice down, although neither of them was saying anything that would give away the extent of Aggie’s true role even if Nina were listening in.

  Aggie wasn’t crying, but her gaze went fierce. “I’d never leave if it wasn’t for this, Mr. Donahue. I hope you understand. I would never abandon her. Or you.”

  “I would never think that,” Ewan told her.

  “I can arrange with the agency to have a replacement sent, but that might seem . . . confusing,” Aggie said. “And no guarantees, of course, that the new person would be as capable. But I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, and the pair of you, here alone . . . I’m sorry, Mr. Donahue.”

  “We’ll manage to feed ourselves.” It had taken Ewan a long enough time to find help with the credentials and skills he needed, paired with the domestic experience. He knew that wasn’t what Aggie was really worried about. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Aggie, I promise you. We’ll be fine. I’ll ramp up the security around the island. Nobody will be able to get to us. And there haven’t been any threats, not even a rumor of anything from Katrinka Dev, and if there was anyone who wanted to try to get to us, it would be related to her.”

  Ewan’s team had been monitoring any level of threat against not only him, but also Nina, for months. Despite Katrinka’s fury with him, there’d been nothing to indicate she was doing anything other than trying to beat him to the solution in deactivating the destructive programming. The world trend had moved toward outrage in other quarters. He’d recently also put out scans for anything related to the twelve remaining enhanced soldiers. Eleven, he thought, reminding himself. Now there were only eleven.

  “And if Miss Nina has some trouble?”

  That was obviously more of a concern, one he did not intend to dismiss. “I have the tracking app installed. I’ll watch her. I’ll be careful.”

  Aggie didn’t look relieved. “There’s no way of knowing what might activate the program, Mr. Donahue. And if she does try to harm herself, well. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you’re not as strong as she is. You’ve no medical training. I really think you need to have someone come in.”

  He couldn’t disagree with her. “I’ll call Zulik, see if he can come out to give her a checkup. She won’t think that’s odd, and he can stay at least for a short time, until you figure things out.”

  “And if I can’t make it back for a while? Or perhaps at all?” Aggie asked, lifting her chin, her voice trembling.

  Ewan reached for her hands and squeezed them both. “We’ll worry about that when we have to worry about it.”

  Aggie nodded and swiped at her eyes before looking at him again. “I take great pride in my professionalism, Mr. Donahue. I want that to be very clear.”

  “But this is your son. You have to go. We’ll be all right.” Ewan gave her hands another squeeze before he pulled up a menu on his screen and tapped in some commands. “I’ve arranged for the airtranspo to take you to the mainland, where another transpo will be waiting to pick you up and take you to wherever you need to go. I’ve transferred some additional travel funds—”

  “No.” Aggie shook her head vehemently, sounding shocked. “You don’t have to do that.”

  Ewan shook his head. “I want to. You’ve worked for me for almost a year without taking any time off—”

  “That was the assignment,” Aggie interrupted.

  “Even so,” Ewan continued, “you’ve performed above and beyond. Let me do this for you.”

  Aggie’s eyes glinted, and she gave him a broad, if somewhat watery grin. “Thank you. I appreciate it. But I still don’t feel right, leaving the two of you behind. You hired me and Jerome to make sure Nina was taken care of, make sure she was kept safe. And I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Donahue, I’ve grown very fond of her over the past few months. If you could get the doc here sooner, I could possibly wait . . .”

  “Absolutely not. Your son is hurt, and you need to be there. I could never in good conscience ask you to stay even a minute longer than necessary. I will take care of Nina,” he added quietly. “I might not be as good of a cook as you, but I won’t let her starve. And I will keep her safe. I love her more than anything in the world, Aggie.”

  “I know you do. I’m going to pack my bag. Jerome is ready.” She hugged him hard and excused herself, but turned back to add, “She’ll remember you soon. I know she will.”

  Ewan wished he had the same confidence that she did. The conversation he’d had with Nina, the one Aggie had interrupted, weighed on him. Once again, he’d found himself keeping the truth from her, and once again, he’d convinced himself it was for her safety and well-being. Would Nina think so, though? Ewan doubted it.

  Did she . . . love you?

  She did.

  Does she still?

  I don’t think so.

  Maybe she could again, if you had the chance to make things right with her.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Ewan said softly, aloud, but was this his best, or some half-assed attempt at doing what was right because he was too afraid of what she might do if she knew everything?

  He wanted Nina to remember, he told himself as he tapped in a message to Zulik, asking the doc to get in touch with him immediately. Ewan wanted Nina to know who she was, and who he was, and what they had been together . . . yes, even if it meant she remembered that she had every reason and right to hate him.

  He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that because she wanted to kiss him that meant anything more than a physical attraction. It had been nearly impossible to turn her down. Touching her, tasting her, all of that had been a small taste of the heaven he’d had and lost. He could not take advantage of her in that way, though. Not without hating himself forever.

  He hadn’t meant to make her think there was another woman in his life, though. Her question had surprised him into an answer that had been based in truth but layered with lies, and now he was tangled up in all of it. No way to take it back or change what he’d said.

  Ewan rubbed at his eyes until a soft knock came at the doorway. It was Nina. She looked worried.

  “Is Aggie’s son going to be all right?”

  �
��I don’t know yet. She and Jerome are going to be leaving on the airtranspo as soon as they can.”

  Nina nodded, her expression still concerned. “I’ll go see if I can help her with anything.”

  “Good, of course. Nina,” he called after her. Only when she turned back did he realize he wasn’t sure what he’d meant to say. He blurted the next words. “If you want to go with them . . .”

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head.

  Relief rippled through him, although he tried not to show it. He hadn’t yet heard from Zulik, so he wasn’t going to tell her that he’d asked the doc to visit. “Once the airtranspo leaves, you know it has a minimum three-day turnaround for flight clearance and refitting before it can get back here.”

  “I know. I don’t want to leave.” She looked embarrassed. “I still feel anxious about that. The stairs don’t freak me out anymore, but leaving does. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry, Nina. You know you can stay here as long as you have to.”

  She looked as though she meant to say more to that, but only pressed her lips together and nodded, then left him alone. Just in time, because Ewan’s personal comm pinged with a viddy call from Zulik. He got up to shut the door behind her so he could answer it. Quickly, Ewan laid out the situation.

  “I’ll have to reschedule things, but yes. I could take your airtranspo back and spend a few days on the island with our patient.” Zulik eyed him. “If anything should happen, I would be there to help. But you know that it’s also possible I could do nothing.”

  “That’s been true all along,” Ewan said.

  “What else is going on? She’s remembering things. Has she had another breakthrough?”

  Ewan paused, not wanting to share the intimate details of the kisses Nina had offered him, but knowing he shouldn’t keep secrets from the doc. He told the story quickly, as dispassionately as possible. He made sure to make it clear that he’d done his best not to take advantage of it.

  Zulik didn’t seem impressed with Ewan’s self-control. “You know that your relationship with her is likely to be an enormous trigger. It could be devastating. It could be fatal.”

  “I know that,” Ewan snapped. “But damn it all, Doc, anything could. Everything could.”

  Ewan told the doc about the success of helping her face her fear of the stairs and falling. Midway through, Zulik was pursing his lips and shaking his head. He held up a hand before Ewan could finish.

  “She didn’t fall down the stairs to begin with. That’s something she was led to believe to keep her from knowing the truth. She was afraid of a lie, Donahue. While it’s wonderful that you helped her face the stairs and that it relieved her fears, nothing in her would be activated by that, because she never fell down them in the first place.”

  Frustrated, Ewan scowled, but it wasn’t the doc’s fault. Before he could say anything, Zulik continued.

  “Katrinka Dev’s team has come up with something.”

  “What? I hadn’t heard anything—”

  Zulik held up a hand again, effectively cutting Ewan off. “She used Article 757 to try it on her son. He almost died. I was one of the team they called in.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Yes,” Zulik said grimly. “Barely. There’s no way to tell if she was able to remove the self-termination programming. He was reset, but physically he’d been so brutalized by his own actions that it will be weeks before he’ll even approach enough of a recovery to find out how the new programming works.”

  Ewan frowned. “My team is close, but they haven’t found anything yet that we can be confident using on anyone.”

  “Might be time to paint some of your morals in shades of gray,” Zulik said. “Before you run out of time.”

  Ewan thought of Al’s offer, but shook his head. “I invented the tech to help people. I can’t just risk the health and lives of all those soldiers because I wanted to rush something that’s supposed to help them. If I’d been the one to create that excremental self-termination program in the first place, I could do more, but I wasn’t. We’re doing the best we can. We have to do this right, Doc, or it’s not going to be worth doing at all.”

  Zulik nodded with a sigh. “It’s going to take me a day or so to wrap up things here.”

  “I’ve arranged to get you to my private airtranspo. It’s scheduled to return to the island in three days,” Ewan said.

  “I’ll be on it.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “The weather’s cleared enough for us to go,” Jerome said from the kitchen doorway.

  He gave Nina and Ewan a brief nod. He looked exhausted and worried, and Nina couldn’t blame him. His and Aggie’s departure from the island had been delayed by a few hours because of the storms outside, and Nina knew they were both quietly frantic at not being able to get to their son sooner.

  “I’m ready,” Aggie said as she wiped her reddened hands on her apron. She’d put it on over her blue dress and cardigan at the last minute, so she could check on the roast in the oven.

  “I can take care of that,” Nina said pointedly as she stood from the table where she’d been eating a thick slice of buttered bread. Her heart ached for Aggie and Jerome, but her stomach had still insisted on being fed. “You both go. You didn’t need to cook us anything at all.”

  “I needed to do something to pass the time instead of worrying myself into sickness,” Aggie said as she took off the apron and hung it on the hook by the back door.

  “We’ll appreciate it later, when we’re hungry again. But right now, you go.” Nina looked up as Ewan came into the kitchen.

  He’d changed into a pair of dark trousers in a soft fabric that clung to his . . . Nina coughed as she inhaled a few loose bread crumbs. She covered it up by taking a long swallow of synthmilk. She was despicable, letting her pervy notions run wild in her head when Aggie and Jerome were facing tragedy. Ewan gave her a glance, and without a word, went to take Aggie by the shoulders.

  “The weather is going to turn again, and soon. You both need to get moving.”

  Aggie nodded. Her kind face looked drawn and weary, but she managed a small smile for them both. “I’m not leaving the pair of you on this island without making sure you’ll be fed while I’m gone.”

  “We need to get moving, love.” Jerome jerked his chin toward the still open door, beyond which the gray skies were already spitting rain.

  Aggie’s eyes gleamed with tears. To Nina’s surprise, the older woman drew her out of the kitchen chair for a long, hard hug. When Aggie pushed her back to look at her face, Nina felt herself nearly wanting to cry at the fierce concern in her gaze.

  “You’ll be fine, my dear. You’re going to be just fine.”

  “Yes, of course I will.” Nina wasn’t sure what had prompted this display, although she supposed that Aggie had taken a motherly attitude toward her and with her own, real son in such danger she might be worried about her semi-adopted daughter, too. “You let us know as soon as you can how Bernard’s doing, all right?”

  “And if you need something, anything, all you have to do is ask. Whatever it is, I’ll make sure you have it,” Ewan said.

  Aggie nodded. “You’ve been beyond generous already, Mr. Donahue. Jerome and I cannot thank you enough.”

  She gave Nina another lingering, concerned look and another strong hug before she allowed Jerome to lead her to the airtranspo. She did insist that Nina and Ewan stay in the house, watching from the front door, so they could stay out of the rain that had started slanting down hard enough to sting them, each droplet like a pebble. The vehicle took off and headed out across the open water, and Ewan closed the front door.

  Nina didn’t dare look at him. He would see her desire all over her face, or he’d see the effort of her hiding it, and neither option was something she wanted to experience. Especially since it would be bad if she did not see it reflected in his gaze, and worse if she did and knew he would not act on it. Once more, she wondered if she ought t
o have pushed through the nausea and pain and anxiety and gotten on the airtranspo with Aggie and Jerome. Then again, without knowing where she would go once she got to the mainland, she’d have ended up being a burden to them when they needed to focus on their son. Even if she tried not to be, she knew Aggie would have insisted on making sure Nina was taken care of.

  Ewan had said something, but she’d missed it. “Hmm?”

  “Are you all right?”

  His concern was evident in his gaze and in the tone of his voice. Ewan Donahue cared about her. Nina knew that. That would have to be enough, she told herself. And she’d be better off, certainly. There wasn’t much more cliché than the old “sleeping with your boss” routine, and everybody, even women who couldn’t remember diddlydoodle, knew that it never ended well.

  “Shiny fine,” she said with a forced smile.

  It wasn’t as though she’d started to fall in love with him or anything. Not after a couple of heated kisses. Yes, those moments had been sultry as anything, and yes, she’d been unable to stop thinking about the taste of him. Yes, she’d been thinking of him in “that way” for weeks now, if not months. And yes, his kindness and generosity, not only with her but with everyone she’d ever seen him close to, the way he’d helped her face her fears, the gifts he’d given and the obvious care he’d taken . . . all of that was a recipe for the kindling of feelings that were more than friendship.

  None of that meant she had to give in to them, though.

  Ewan had made it clear there was someone else in his life. Technically he wasn’t a taken man because that other relationship had ended, but even if his body was willing, it was obvious that his heart was not available. She briefly closed her eyes against the sense memory of his body pressed to hers. Surely she wasn’t so desperate that she had to throw herself at him. Was she?

  Outside, a roll of thunder made them both look at the ceiling. Rain spattered the roof and the windows. The lights flickered, but didn’t go out.

  Nina frowned. “I hope Aggie and Jerome will be all right.”

  “We’ll know the minute they get to the mainland,” Ewan reassured her.