Out of Time Read online

  His mouth fell in a hard line. That was just it. He hadn’t really known her. She’d confounded him from the start.

  When she’d introduced herself as an “assistant” that first night in the bar, he’d assumed she worked for a lobbyist or someone on the Hill—sure as hell not the second-highest-ranking official in the DoD. It was well known in the Pentagon that if you wanted to get Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Waters to do something, you needed to appeal to his assistant.

  She was known as being smart, a tough negotiator, extremely protective of her boss, and hot as hell. But her cool, confident exterior scared a lot of guys off. She definitely had that Eastern European sexy, but hard “don’t fuck around with me” thing working for her. Ironically, he’d thought she might be Russian or Czech and had asked about it one time. She’d paled, and only now did he realize the significance.

  Given that he usually dated the girl next door, he’d been surprised by that initial attraction. But not by what had come after. He’d never forget the first time he’d looked down at her in bed—when they’d finally made it to the bed—and he’d seen that soft, tousled, well-sated look of a woman who’d been well pleasured.

  Knowing that he’d done that to her. That he’d been the one to make her look like that . . . it was satisfying as hell. It had made him feel powerful—as if he was revealing a different side of her that no one else could see.

  That two-sides-of-the-coin thing had sucked him in. Hard. It was still doing it.

  Scott opened the refrigerator and he had this very fact brought home to him again. He was stunned to see a variety of leftovers that included not only chicken and steak but bacon—a food she’d turned away from every time he’d offered it to her. His herbivore was apparently a hard-core carnivore.

  Was there anything about her that had been real?

  It was hard to believe that the woman he’d shared so much with—whom he’d fallen in love with—had deceived him so completely. Their relationship might have started on the X-rated side, with forty-eight hours of pretty much nonstop sex, but it had never been just about that. Over the next six months every moment that he wasn’t working he’d spent with her, making up every ridiculous excuse in the book to get to DC. He’d been drawn to her in a way that he’d never been drawn to another woman. When they were together, he could put the stress of his job behind him and relax. He’d told her things—personal things—that he’d never shared with anyone else. He’d always been too focused on his job to get serious with anyone.

  How the hell could he have gotten it so wrong?

  He pulled out the plate of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes and sat down at the table to eat. He didn’t bother heating it in the microwave; it looked too damned good. It tasted better.

  Natalya Petrova wasn’t just a spy, she was also a hell of a cook.

  He was so busy devouring the food that he didn’t hear her come up behind him. “Hey. I was going to have that for dinner.”

  He frowned when he saw her. “You should be resting.”

  She was pregnant. Pregnant. It was still hard to accept or know how to react. A few months ago, he would have been shouting from the rooftops. He would have jumped up and pulled out a chair for her and made her put her feet up. Hell, he probably would have swung her into his arms and carried her back to bed. But now . . . now it wasn’t his place. Even if the baby was his, he couldn’t pretend the happy-family thing. He could hate her all over again for what this would do to their baby—if it was his baby.

  She still wore the clothes she’d put on to go to the hospital. A pair of old jeans and a Yankees sweatshirt that belonged in the trash—and not just because it was ratty. He was a dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox fan. Apparently she’d been holding out on him in that arena, too.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She handed him a piece of paper. “Here.”

  He glanced down at it long enough to see that it was a handwritten list of some kind. “What’s this?”

  “Read it.”

  Reluctantly, he put down the fork, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and began to read. It didn’t take him long. When he was done, he looked up and met her gaze.

  “That’s it,” she said. “That’s everything I told Mick.”

  He’d figured that much out. But in between things like recommendations regarding the military health system, the budget for special operations in Afghanistan, the results of a review on whether there should be a new chief management officer in the DoD, ways of getting costs down for replacing Air Force One, and various other classified but not overly sensitive information, he saw only a few things that might have interested Russia. But they weren’t anything critical. What was missing was any information to do with technology, defense systems, or operational plans, including Special Forces operations such as Team Nine.

  He put it down and looked up at her. “I think you are missing something.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not. I told you, I didn’t intentionally tell him anything about your mission. I didn’t know anything about your operation until Mick told me.”

  Scott stood up and opened the refrigerator again. He’d been focused on food before, but he’d noticed something else that he figured would help for this conversation. He pulled out a Bud Light, twisted off the cap, took a swig, and sat down. He preferred Coors Light, as most of the guys did on the Teams, but as she’d drunk only wine when they were together before, he couldn’t exactly complain. At least it wasn’t vodka.

  Putting the bottle down in front of him, he leaned back and crossed his arms. “All right. Tell me.”

  Obviously relieved to have her chance to explain, she took a seat opposite him and folded her hands on the table in front of her.

  Her eyes rested on his arms for a moment before turning back to his face. But from the soft pink blush in her cheeks he knew exactly what she’d been thinking, and the knowledge of how his unintentionally flexed arms had turned her on wasn’t without effect.

  Pissed at the heat rushing to his groin, he let his arms drop and flexed his jaw instead. But he’d never been able to control his desire for her. Why should it be any different now?

  “Where should I start?” she asked tentatively.

  “At the beginning.”

  He could tell she was nervous because she reached for the bottle. Not to drink, but to do something with her hands. She fiddled with the label by peeling the edges back with her short nails. Her short, unpolished, and unmanicured nails. It seemed as if everything had been stripped away. From the tips of her fingernails to her fancy clothes and well-made-up facade. The fact that this natural Natalie appealed to him just as much wasn’t something he wanted to think about.

  Scott listened as calmly and open-mindedly as possible, but ready for lies and inconsistencies, as she told him how Mick had targeted her at a bar four years ago and asked her out on a date. She’d been flattered to be singled out by the good-looking hockey player and had agreed, but that had changed the moment Mick picked her up at her apartment and told her what he really wanted from her.

  “I thought he was nuts, but when I realized he wasn’t . . . I refused at first. But he . . . uh, threatened me, and when that didn’t change my mind, he threatened my family.” She told him how Mick had targeted her Russian parents first, but when his proof hadn’t convinced her that they hadn’t died as the orphanage had told her, he’d moved on to her family in Minnesota.

  She paused to look back up at Scott, her eyes bright with fear—as if Mick were threatening them all over again. “He said he’d kill my parents—the only parents I’ve ever known—if I didn’t do what he asked. They are good people, Scott. Whatever you think of me, know that. They brought two troubled children into their home and showered them with love and patience. They gave me happiness, security, and a life I never could have dreamed of in the orphanage.”

  He wanted to ask about the orphanage, but