You Only Love Twice (Masters and Mercenaries #8)(38)

Every time she looked at them she remembered how she’d laughed when Jamie had given her the first one for Christmas the year she turned seventeen. He’d bought them for her every birthday and Christmas until she had a complete set. They would laugh and have little races to see whose head bobbled the fastest, and then they would go back to reading because of all the books she’d read, Harry Potter had been her favorite. Jamie had read them after he realized how much she loved them. Those stories had become the first way they had really communicated.

“Are you sleeping with Jesse Murdoch?”

Her heart twisted at the hardness in Ten’s voice. “No.”

“But you want to.”

“I’m not going to.” She was tired and it was hours before she could do anything about it. She wondered if she could even sleep with Jesse in the same room. It was part of their “cover” that they stay together. “I understand why we’re playing things the way we are, but nothing is going to change. We’re pretending to be lovers. Nothing more. Did your men buy it?”

“It doesn’t matter. I told them we’re out of it, that you decided to stay on at McKay-Taggart with your boyfriend and Taggart is stashing you here until he can find the assassin. They now understand that it wasn’t a drill and there was no misunderstanding. They definitely got the point that Taggart is going to find the assassin.”

“So it’s safe to say that if this person is really hell-bent on killing Jesse, they’ll pick up the pace.”

“And they’ll know exactly where he is and who he’s with. I suspect they’ll underestimate you. All of my men now have tails. The minute one makes a move, we’ll be on them.” A long moment passed with Ten taking one drink and then another. “You know you can’t stay alone forever, Phoebe.”

“It’s too soon.” Her stomach knotted. She wasn’t ready to talk about this.

“It’s been two years.” Ten wouldn’t let it go. “Do you think Jamie would want you to be alone for the rest of your life?”

“I think it doesn’t matter because I’m not sleeping with Jesse.”

“But you want to.” He said it more softly this time.

“Damn it, Tennessee. What do you want me to say? I like the man. I think we were wrong about him. In all the time I’ve watched him he hasn’t done anything suspicious.”

“He talks in his sleep. A whole lot of Farsi. He talks about the man he called the Caliph.”

“And what does he say? Does he pledge his will to him?”

A sharp shake of Ten’s head was answer enough.

“He’s scared of the man.” If there was one thing she knew it was that Jesse hated the man who had tortured him.

“He’s angry, too,” Ten conceded.

“Has he done or said one thing in all the time you’ve watched him that made you believe he’s some kind of sleeper?”

“I think that sleepers are asleep until someone wants them to wake up. That’s why they work so well. They can stay inactive for years,” Ten said ominously. “I worry someone is going to wake that boy up and we won’t know how to deal with him. You won’t be able to handle him. You’ll be right there in the line of fire.”

She couldn’t help but think about how Jesse had calmed down at the sound of her voice. He hadn’t once threatened her even when he was in that state. He’d been protective. “He won’t hurt me.”

Ten stared ahead. “Nah, this is my fault. I made a mistake sending you in. It was a stupid idea. I should have given you a team and settled you in at Langley. You would have been safe there.”

She couldn’t let him go on feeling guilty about assigning her to McKay-Taggart. It was time to confess. “I wouldn’t have been okay at Langley. I wouldn’t have taken on a team. No matter how it turned out, this was the right assignment at the right time.”

“You would have settled in.”

“I thought about killing myself.”

The room seemed to stop. She’d never said the words out loud, never told a single soul, but now it weighed on her.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“After you brought Jamie’s body back, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to eat. I thought I had accepted that he was dead, but until you brought his body home, I think there was a part of me that was waiting for a miracle. It might have seemed like I threw myself into work, but my mind was always on him. When you came home with him, I couldn’t even hope anymore. Right before the funeral the doctor gave me some sedatives and I counted them out. I sat there and I counted out all of them, trying to decide the right dosage. It’s hard because if you take way too many, you can throw them back up, and then it’s all for nothing. I needed just the right amount so I could be wherever Jamie was. That’s the worst part you know. Not knowing where he is.”

“You did not.” Ten’s jaw had tensed and she could see the sheen of tears in his eyes. “Tell me you didn’t try that.”

“I thought about it, and then I decided to honor you and wait until after the funeral.”

“But that was when we decided to send you in.”

She smiled just the tiniest bit. “Yes. You gave me something to do, something about Jamie. I wouldn’t have taken on a team. I would have pled off and then I would have done what I needed to do. But you gave me a way to avenge my husband and that saved my life, Ten. And then I got to be Phoebe Graham. I liked being that Phoebe, and suddenly I realized that avenging Jamie wouldn’t bring him back. Slowly I started to really like the people around me, and I knew that revenge on Jesse Murdoch was stupid because he was innocent. He needed protection, not surveillance.”