The Wrong Gentleman(64)

“You could try,” Avery said. “It’s not like you did it to be mean. And it wasn’t anything personal. Was it?”

“She’s better off without me,” I said, pushing my food around on my plate. I might have had to lie to Skylar this time, but I wasn’t good at sharing my feelings on my best day. I knew she deserved better than that. And the things I’d said to her? I hated myself, but knew it had been the right thing to do.

I might not be ready to accept that I loved her, but I did think about her. A lot. Hers was the first face I saw when I woke up, and the expression she’d worn when she climbed into her cab was the last thing I pictured before I went to sleep.

“I’m just going to say one thing, and then we can drop this,” my brother said. “I thought I’d lost Avery at one point, and it would have been easy to give up, to walk away. But I knew if I did, I’d be losing someone I’d miss forever. Someone I could picture a future with, and I knew I’d be an idiot to walk away. And the idea that I hadn’t done everything I could to keep her in my life was . . . Well, I couldn’t live with that.”

Silence echoed around the table.

Hayden and I rarely talked about our feelings, but I knew meeting Avery had changed him, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that meeting Skylar was just as important to me as Avery was to him.

“Brother, I know that you’re a man who likes to finish what he started—see things through—from an operation in the army to the arrest of an arms dealer,” he said. “You’re anything but a quitter. From where I sit, Skylar might be the mission of your life. Make sure you don’t quit before the job is done.”

Shit.

Hayden knew exactly what to say and it made me want to punch him. He and I both knew that for me, quitting when the stakes were high wasn’t an option, and the stakes had never been this high.





Thirty-Eight





Skylar


I bit down into my apple, shutting one eye and then the other as I stared at question number seventy-two in the book that promised to be a surefire way of acing any college entrance exam. I was sure I’d read somewhere that shifting how you looked at something sometimes shook an answer out of the brain. But no. I was stuck. Math just wasn’t my strong suit.

I hadn’t even changed out of my diner uniform. As soon as I’d gotten back to my motel room, I’d sat down and opened my books. I checked my phone. It had been an hour and a half. Time for a break, a shower, and a change of clothes. I could fit in another hour before bed. And then at least two before my shift tomorrow.

I groaned at the knock at the door. I was paid up for the next month—the date I’d set to sit the exam—so there was no reason for anyone to be interrupting my routine.

I dropped my apple into the trash, pulled open the door, and stumbled as I tried to figure out what was going on.

It was Landon.

In Ohio.

What the hell was in that apple? I glanced at the trash.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” I replied, still unsure if I was imagining Landon on my doorstep.

“Can I come in?” he asked, his eyes narrowing in that sexy way he had.

What was he doing here?

I opened the door and straightened my dress, embarrassed that I hadn’t changed when I’d got in. “I wasn’t expecting you. Why are you here? How did you find me?” Avery and August were the only people who knew I was in Ohio, but I hadn’t told them exactly where.

“I used to have my own private-security firm. When I was in the SAS, we did a lot of work that you’d normally associate with MI6 or the CIA. It wasn’t difficult to find out where you were.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know how to react.

“You weren’t hiding, were you?” he asked as he took a step forward, and I backed into the room.

I’d wanted to escape. “Not hiding, exactly.”

“But running,” he said, reading my mind. “From me?” He closed the door to my room behind him and glanced around.

“Why are you here?” I asked again.

He drew in a deep breath. “To explain. To apologize. To see you.”

I dropped down to sit on the bed, my limbs already heavy with resignation. “There’s no need. It is what it is.” I still replayed that final conversation we’d had over and over in my head. He’d been so . . . cold. So unfeeling.

“I didn’t expect to be here. I’ve never felt the need to talk . . . explain. I’ve always operated on the basis that I told people as little as possible about operations.” He took a seat on the stool I’d been using to study. “It was always a strength of mine. In the army, I mean. And even when I started my own business.”

I didn’t need to ask him how he’d managed with women, because I knew he’d never had relationships that lasted more than a few hours. “And that’s why you prefer one-night stands.”

“I guess that’s part of it. No one asks any difficult questions of a naked stranger. I’ve never had to navigate any other type of relationship.”

“So, what are you here to say, Landon?”

He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out some paper. “I think this explains it better than I can.”