“Whose car are we taking that won’t be reported stolen?” Aiden asked, whispering in her ear.
“Someone who won’t miss it.”
Nick McKenna. Fellow marshal and former lover, currently out of town visiting his girlfriend, Lori Carpenter, who happened to be in WITSEC. They’d fallen in love on a yearlong assignment where he’d protected her.
A solid, stand-up guy, Nick could be relied on in a pinch. At least Charlie hoped so, considering their baggage.
Before she joined the SOG and was assigned to San Diego, she’d been at the Omaha field office. Her work relationships there had got so ugly they’d become toxic. When a woman slept with multiple colleagues—it was a small town and choosing lovers from the work pool was pragmatic—she developed a reputation that a man never would’ve had to contend with.
San Diego was a fresh start. She’d been careful. Then one night after dinner and drinks, she’d wanted Aiden so badly she ached. But what she shared with him was the most important relationship in her life, and she wasn’t going to spoil it acting on an impulse that they’d regret.
So she’d taken the convenient bait of Nick’s overtures and gone home with him.
A stronger woman, a better woman, a sober woman would’ve picked a random stranger. Someone anonymous. Someone disposable.
It had been fun, casual, easy, until she realized it had been a lie. Nick wasn’t capable of emotionless sex. To him, none of it had been casual. Or easy.
“We’re going to take Nick’s truck,” Charlie said.
A muscle jumped in Aiden’s jaw. If she’d blinked, she would’ve missed it.
“What is it?” she asked as he straightened away from her. “What’s wrong?”
Chapter Eight
Aiden reined in the sudden storm of emotions rolling through him, locked them up tight and washed his expression clean.
The day Charlie had been assigned as his partner and they’d shaken hands, the rush of endorphins was immediate, the attraction visceral. He’d been in a relationship at the time, but the more he got to know Charlie, slowly over time, the less he could silence the little voice whispering that she was the one.
So he’d broken it off with the other woman. Believing it was only a matter of time for him and Charlie until their point of happy confluence and they’d be together.
“What is it?” Charlie asked. “What’s wrong?”
Every single detail from that night in the restaurant was burned into his memory. The flush on her cheeks from the alcohol. Candlelight on the table sparkling in her animated eyes. He’d put his palm on her thigh and she’d leaned into his touch, pressed her cheek to his. The way she’d smelled of wild summer flowers, the warm heat of her breath on his face. He’d caressed her jaw, her skin was delicate, soft, and every atom of his being screamed kiss her.
Then she’d straightened away from him, as if waking from a dream before he could, and gone to the restroom. He’d wrestled with his feelings and what to say, not wanting to still be stuck as just a friend in the morning.
Aiden wasn’t interested in a brief fling with Charlie. He wanted forever.
But she’d never made it back to the table. Nick had found her at the bar, or she’d found him.
Either way, Aiden wouldn’t think of the devastation.
He recalled happy things instead—riding a horse with the wind in his hair, making it through SOG training, the sound of his nieces and nephews laughing as they played—and pulled on a soft grin.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, doing his darnedest to sound laissez-faire. “It’s smart.” And it was. “Nick won’t miss his car while he’s curled up in bed for a week with Lori.” Aiden watched, waited to see if an ember of jealousy sparked in her.
Charlie didn’t bat a lash. “My thoughts exactly.”
He wasn’t sure which hurt more. The fact she’d slept with someone in the office, his friend Mr. Dark-and-Stormy with that carved-in-stone jaw, or that it had meant so little to her.
Nick was everything Aiden wasn’t. A super serious loner, choosing a scowl over a smile. Hotheaded and impulsive to a fault. In many ways, Nick was like Charlie.
Aiden thought the fling would’ve lasted two nights, two weeks at most.
It’d gone on for two months.
Two months of dinner and drinks and public displays of foreplay. Two months of watching Nick’s infatuation grow while Charlie maintained her “touch, but don’t feel” approach, guarding her heart like the gold reserve at Fort Knox, and Aiden played man-trapped-in-the-freaking-middle.
Sixty-five days of torture.
Charlie had been blind to the pain it caused Aiden. She still was. In her defense, he worked very hard to blind her.
She wasn’t property that he owned. They were friends, close as family. She had a right to sleep with whomever she chose without a guilt trip, without pettiness, without judgment on his part.
Aiden only wished she had chosen him.
They got off the trolley in the Gaslamp Quarter, two blocks from Nick’s apartment building. The urban center was the heartbeat of the city.
Aiden preferred his tranquil condo overlooking the water. There he had peace of mind and the quiet to reflect.
Whereas Nick enjoyed the hubbub with energy always circulating, always something to do to keep him from thinking about life. Perhaps that was why things had lasted so long between Nick and Charlie. They’d been objects in constant motion bouncing between work, activities down at the Seaport, entertainment here in the Gaslamp Quarter, which turned into a playground for adults after dark, and then off to the bedroom.
Pushing it from his mind, Aiden followed Charlie into the residential parking garage. They walked to Nick’s designated spot and found his Dodge Ram.
“Can you break in without smashing a window?” Aiden asked her.
“No need.” She dropped to the ground by the front wheel on the driver’s side and felt around for something. “Bingo.”
Charlie stood, holding a magnetic key box. Inside was an extra fob.
Aiden had no idea it was there. Nick was like a Boy Scout, always prepared, but it was salt in the wound realizing that his buddy and his best friend—the woman he loved—knew things about each other outside the bedroom that Aiden didn’t.
The stab of longing and jealousy in him was sharp.
No way was he delving toward things inside the bedroom.
Aiden tossed the bag in the back. They stripped off the scrubs and he got behind the wheel, firing up the fully gassed truck.
They took I-8 East. The first step was to get out the city, then the state.