Forbidden Stranger Page 15

  Nina sat up and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. Without a word, she went to the bathroom, first to draw herself a few handfuls of water from the tap that she gulped down but did little to ease the heat in her cheeks and throat. Then she started the shower, aware that taking this liberty seemed almost a more intimate action than what they’d just done in the bed. She stepped beneath the hot spray and bent her head under the water, her eyes closed. Both hands on the tile wall.

  In a moment, she heard the sound of Ewan’s feet on the floor. Sensed his presence as he stepped into the shower with her. Nina did not move, waiting for him to speak and ruin everything that had just happened. If he apologized . . .

  Ewan said nothing. He drew her gently back against him, his mouth pressed to her shoulder blade. He kissed her. He turned her after a moment to take her in his arms. Her face nestled perfectly against his chest. The water fell down all around them, blotting out anything but the sound of his heart thudding beneath her cheek.

  They couldn’t stay in the shower forever, even if the water never ran cold. Nina finally pushed away from Ewan to look into his eyes. His smile stopped her words, whatever they were—she wasn’t even sure what she’d meant to say.

  “Come back to bed with me,” he offered.

  So she did.

  * * *

  Ewan woke from the first full night’s sleep he’d had in almost a year. Nina was gone, the bed still warm beside him where her naked body had rested next to his and kept him deep in his dreams until dawn. Last night they had cuddled naked for a while, then slept. Woken again to make love, slower this time. They’d fallen asleep spooning, him behind her. They hadn’t spoken much at all.

  They were going to have to. Making love was not going to take the place of conversation. Nina had to have dozens of questions Ewan would probably be unable to answer.

  He stretched, yawning and drowsy and not eager to get out of bed just yet. Through the window he could see gray skies. The patter of rain on the roof meant it was still storming, and although he saw no flashes of lightning, a far-off rumble of thunder still came now and then. Faintly, he smelled coffee. His stomach rumbled. They hadn’t eaten last night. Nina would be in the kitchen, he thought. If he was hungry, she had to be starving.

  Downstairs, he found a pot of coffee and a mug set out for him. A platter of warmed blueberry muffins with a small dish of honey butter sat next to it. He grabbed one and filled his mug, ate half the muffin to quiet his rumbling stomach, and sipped the coffee as he sought to find Nina.

  She was working out in the den. She wore a tank bra and workout leggings. He was as familiar with her body as his own, but it had been months since he’d seen her in anything less than full clothes. Well, until last night, and most of that had been in the dark. She looked strong, but much thinner than she had been.

  He admired her grace and strength from the doorway, quiet so he didn’t disturb her. He wanted to watch her do this every morning for the rest of his life. He’d never been religious, but sent up something that resembled a prayer now, to the Onegod, to the universe, to whatever force would listen. A single word.

  Please.

  “Morning,” he said finally.

  She straightened from the twisted pose she’d been in. Her skin glistened with sweat he wanted to lick off. Her smile bloomed, a flower in the desert. “Hi.”

  “Thanks for breakfast.” He held up the muffin and shifted to hide the way her smile had affected him.

  She tilted her head to look him over as though she knew, anyway. She probably did. “My pleasure. I didn’t wake you when I got up, did I?”

  “No. Did you sleep all right?”

  “Shiny fine,” she assured him.

  Silence. Ewan finished the muffin so he could pretend he didn’t want to talk with his mouth full, not that he was sure what to say. The coffee, next, although it was too hot to gulp and he burned his tongue with the first sip.

  Nina continued her workout, moving into each position confidently and with smooth, sexy precision. “Want to join me? I’ve been studying from those viddies you had saved on the old tablet. ‘Stretch for Success’?”

  “Oh, no. You haven’t. What?” Ewan snorted laughter. “Those are ancient.”

  “They’re fun, though. Easy. I’ve added some of my own um . . . well, embellishments, I guess you could say.”

  Ewan had seen some of her additions already. Nina might think she’d made them up to supplement the exercise viddies he’d downloaded as part of a post-surgical therapy for a minor back injury years before. What he’d seen her doing, though, was hard-core military training, along with the years of additional training she’d undergone as private security. Uncomfortably, he was reminded that he knew that about her but she didn’t. That conversation, he thought, was going to suck.

  “Want to try it with me?” she asked and gave him a curious look. “It’s not that strenuous, I promise.”

  “Maybe I just prefer to watch.”

  Her eyebrows flew up before her expression turned sultry. Flirting. “Uh-huh. ’Cuz this is so sexy, right?”

  She twisted and contorted her body to get her hands flat on the floor and turned only her head to wink at him. She wiggled her hips to show off her butt. Ewan groaned. Nina stood up, laughing.

  “C’mon,” she said in that same sultry tone. “Are you worried you can’t keep up with me?”

  Ewan got into place next to her. “Sounds like a contest.”

  “Maybe it is,” Nina said. “What do I get if I win?”

  “What would you like?” He followed her lead as she twisted at the hips to plant her feet shoulder-width apart.

  “I’ll let you know when I pick you up off the floor,” she told him.

  Ewan had always made a point of being physically fit, but there was no way he could keep up with Nina. Not only did he not have the training, his body didn’t adapt to the stresses of activity in the same way. He couldn’t control his heart rate, temperature, breathing. There was no way he was going to surpass her, so he wasn’t surprised that after only about fifteen minutes of seemingly easy stretches and twists, he was huffing and puffing as hard as he did after running up the side of the cliff.

  “Tapping out,” he said with a laugh. “You win, you win.”

  Nina went still, breathing out, then joined his laughter. She shook her head. “Okay, old dude.”

  She seemed to catch herself at that and shook her head, looking embarrassed. “Sorry. That was rude.”

  “I’m not offended. You kicked my ass.”

  They stared at each other. Both began to speak at the same time. Ewan silenced himself and gestured for her to continue.

  Nina drew in a breath. “So, we aren’t going to pretend last night didn’t happen. Are we?”

  “I would prefer we didn’t,” he said. “But if you want to—”

  “No,” she cut in hastily. “I don’t want that. Not at all.”

  “Good. I don’t want it, either,” Ewan said sincerely.

  Nina tapped the tablet to stop the exercise viddy she’d been streaming to the wall comm. She straightened, one hand on her hip. She licked sweat from her upper lip and pushed her riotous, damp curls away from her forehead.

  “This drives me crazy,” she said. “It won’t stay in place.”

  “It used to be longer,” Ewan said without thinking.

  Nina eyed him. “I know you’re in love with someone else, Ewan. I don’t expect what happened last night to change that.”

  He shook his head, wishing he could just tell her that she was the woman he loved. Wishing he could just tell her everything, exhausted from having to keep everything a secret. He gave her as much truth as he could. “It doesn’t change anything, Nina.”

  “And I don’t expect anything from you because of it,” she went on. “You’ve already been hyper generous with me, for reasons I’m not sure I will ever completely understand, but I do appreciate.”

  “Did you sleep with me out of gratitude?�
�� he asked with a frown.

  Nina looked surprised. “Gross. Of course not. I slept with you because I wanted you.”

  “Good,” Ewan repeated in a different tone this time. “Because you don’t owe me a onedamned thing, Nina, especially not sex. If that’s why you did it, I don’t want it.”

  She nodded, looking pensive. “I will always be grateful for your generosity, but I didn’t fuck you because I thought I owed you something. You’ve made it clear that you feel responsible for what happened to me, and even if I don’t understand what or how or why, I believe you. I just wanted you to know that I don’t expect this . . . us . . . to be anything more than what it was last night. It feels shiny fine to me, Ewan. I don’t know if that’s the sort of person I’ve always been, but I’m all right with this being physical and nothing more.”

  That he’d already known that about her didn’t make him feel better. That she referred to it as fucking instead of making love also didn’t sit well with him. He made the best of it with a smile he had to force.

  “It’s already something more,” he told her. “We’re friends, at least. Aren’t we?”

  To his relief, she nodded and gave him a slow, wide grin. “Yes. I guess we are.”

  “I’ve done a lot you need to forgive me for. But I hope you can,” Ewan said.

  Her smile faded, not quite becoming a frown. “I can try. I know there’s so much that I don’t understand, stuff I’ve forgotten, things that would make sense if I knew the whole picture. But I don’t know it, Ewan, which means you need to be honest with me about what’s going on. What was all that about, yesterday, when you wouldn’t let me go with you to the shed? Why were you so determined not to let me out there? What did you think might happen? Because if it was to keep the fact it’s full of surveillance and security equipment from me, I’m going to break it to you not very gently. I already knew about it.”

  “That wasn’t why.” So, she’d discovered the shed, but evidence of security and the concept that the island had to be so fiercely protected had not activated anything. That was a good thing.

  “What, then?” Nina demanded.

  “Can I convince you I was being chivalrous?” Ewan already knew she wouldn’t accept that answer, but he hoped she might at least chuckle.

  Nina rolled her eyes, although the corners of her mouth tipped up a tiny bit. “Try again.”

  “Let’s sit,” he offered, then softened his tone to make it a request and not a command. “Please?”

  She settled onto the couch. Ewan took the spot next to her. He thought about taking her hands, but that seemed presumptuous. He settled for letting their knees touch. Nina looked wary, but her eyes never left his. She trusted him. He couldn’t forget that.

  “I was worried that something had gone wrong with the generators because there might have been interference,” he began, struggling to put the words in the right places.

  “What kind of interference?”

  He let out a sigh and scrubbed at his chin before answering. “I was afraid that maybe someone had come onto the island to try and hurt us.”

  Please, he thought again, a silent plea to unseen and unknown forces. Please let her understand without coming to harm. Please let me be able to help her find her way back to herself. To us.

  Nina frowned so hard, her brow furrowed and tiny lines appeared along the sides of her nose. Ewan braced himself, ready to try and grab her if she got up to run. His personal comm could lock all the outside access doors within seconds, if he had time to get to it, but he didn’t know if the self-termination programming would override Nina’s avoidance of the cliffs. She was already no longer afraid of the stairs. His mind raced with scenarios, each of them horrific, each of them leaving him feeling helpless.

  Nina didn’t move except to rub her palms against her thighs. She gave her head a small shake. “Is it likely that someone might want to come to the island to hurt us?”

  “Yes,” Ewan answered simply.

  Her frown deepened. She looked as though she meant to get up off the couch, but when Ewan tensed like he was going to grab her, she settled back into her place. Her gaze bore into his, thoughtful and assessing, with none of the unfocused and faraway staring he’d come to associate with her memory blanks. Nina was there, fully present and aware.

  “The day you helped me confront those stairs, I saw all of it. The monitors, the security systems. I’d gone looking for you, and I found Jerome in the shed. He didn’t show me anything, but I saw it. It never occurred to me exactly why you’d have so much security, but I was so angry at the time I didn’t think about it.” She paused and gave him a small smile. “Then so much else happened, I was distracted.”

  “Jerome is a great handyman and groundskeeper. He’s also in charge of making sure the island’s security is always working and up to date.” Ewan bumped his knee against her. This time he gave in to the impulse to take her hand. He linked their fingers and squeezed. “This island isn’t just my vacation home, Nina.”

  “It’s a safe place.” Her voice had gone low and her gaze a little unfocused. It cleared, though. She didn’t blank. “You have a safe house.”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes pinned him. “In all this time, I’ve never felt like I was in any danger here. You and Aggie and Jerome have made me feel nothing but safe and protected.”

  “Good,” he said fiercely. “That’s how I meant it to be.”

  “Yet you can’t tell me why all of this has been necessary.”

  “I can’t,” Ewan said. “It could be dangerous for you.”

  “But you also can’t tell me why it would be dangerous for me,” Nina said in a tone that was more resigned than angry.

  Ewan shook his head. “No.”

  “Am I the target?” Her words came out easy and natural, without a hint of hesitation.

  “You could be,” Ewan said, although he paused, because it wasn’t exactly the truth.

  Nina tugged her hand from his and linked her fingers, leaning back against the couch and tucking her knees beneath her chin. She rested her forehead on her knees for a moment before looking back at him. She drew in a long breath and her words spat out like shots fired.

  “Am I a criminal? Did I do something really bad?”

  “What? No. Onegod, Nina. No!” It had never occurred to him she might think that, and the look of relief on her face at his answer moved him to reach for her again.

  Nina pulled back, stopping him. “Did I kill someone?”

  Ewan could not answer that, not at first. Because of course Nina had killed someone. More than one.

  “You said I wasn’t a criminal,” she said. “That I didn’t do anything bad.”

  “You didn’t,” Ewan said.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, her mouth thin and grim and her lips trembling. A pair of silver tears slipped over her cheeks. She swiped them away.

  “I did kill someone. I know I did. I remember it,” she told him. “Or at least I remember knowing that I did. Not the actual . . . murder. But I did it.”

  “Not because you’re a criminal, Nina. That is the truth. I swear to you, anything you ever did was justified.”

  She looked at him, and Ewan felt like a monumental sphincter. “How could anything like that ever be justified? Was it self-defense?”

  “Yes.”

  “So we’re back to the beginning,” she said flatly. “Someone was trying to hurt me, but I hurt them instead. And you can’t tell me why they wanted to hurt me, so even though I know it happened, I don’t know all the details, and you can’t share them.”

  Ewan gave an anguished, strangled groan. “I’m sorry. This is not how I wanted things. I’ve been trying to do the right thing for you, Nina, that’s all I wanted to do. I know I’ve made a mess of it. I could have done better. I should have. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to be honest with you. You deserve to know everything, and I want you to. But you have to find it on your own, because if I tell you . . . Shit. Shit. S
hit.”

  He ran his hands through his hair, a true and physical pain ripping through him, agony at having to keep hiding things from her. Ewan drew in a breath, then another, forcing himself to get it together. He wasn’t going to be any good to her if he lost it.

  Nina uncurled herself and leaned toward him, offering her mouth. He brushed his lips over hers. She sighed and withdrew, her pale amber eyes dark with emotions he could see also playing across her expression. No tears, though, and for that he was grateful. Selfishly, he didn’t think he could bear to see her cry.

  “Who was I, Ewan? And who am I, now?”

  He pulled her into his arms, relieved that she allowed him to hold her. He pressed his lips against her temple. “You are Nina Bronson. You are strong and beautiful and you have a hell of a temper, but you mostly keep it under control, even when you have the right to be furious. You can’t cook very well, but you can run very fast.”

  Her laugh sounded a little watery, but she still wasn’t crying when she pulled back to look at his face. “One step at a time. Like the stairs?”

  “Yeah. One step at a time.”

  Thunder rolled overhead. Rain slashed at the windows. Nina looked outside, then at Ewan.

  “Looks like a good day for a bottle of wine and a monster movie marathon,” she said.

  He kissed her again. “Done.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The sound of the wind and rain whipping at the windows might have sounded ominous or threatening, but to Nina, the crackling fire and glass of wine were comforting enough to chase away anything frightening about the night. It was Ewan, too, she had to admit to herself as she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He’d gotten up to adjust the fire, and as he leaned over to tinker with the controls, she couldn’t stop herself from admiring the way his soft pajama pants clung to that hard, muscled butt.

  What the hell were they doing?

  They’d spent the day exactly as she’d suggested. On the couch, watching movies, although they’d now made their way through more than one bottle of wine. They were taking a break from viddies to read. She kept waiting to be drunk, but so far all she felt was warm, cozy, and cared for. Lazy, too, since she had dressed in a nightgown after her post-workout shower.