Page 63 of Explosive Vengeance

But how the hell could it ever work between them? She wasn’t the settling down type, and he was due at his next job in nine days. He’d be gone for months, and she’d disappear long before he was done, off on another deadly hunt.

She gave a shuddering sigh and tried to roll away again, wiping at her eyes.

“No, it’s okay,” he protested, urging her to lie down again. “You stay put.” He went to the bathroom and brought her a warm washcloth.

She wiped her face, her shoulders still shuddering, and avoided his gaze. Her face was blotchy, her nose and eyes red. He wanted to kiss every mark away, make the pain stop. But this wasn’t a bullet or shrapnel wound he could treat. All he could do was be here for her.

He set the cloth on the nightstand next to him and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear while she pulled the sheet up to cover herself. “You can talk to me.”

She shook her head. “You know everything already.”

He could tell it bothered her to have him watch her right now. It made her feel too vulnerable, and embarrassed. She had nothing to be embarrassed about, but he understood so he gathered her close and tucked her head beneath his chin. “Can I do anything?”

“No, but…this is nice.”

Yeah, it was. He stroked a hand over her hair, down the length of her spine. “Want to go back to sleep now?”

“Can’t.” She snuggled closer, making his chest constrict, and gave an exhausted sigh. “I don’t think I’ve cried since my mom died,” she murmured almost absently.

His hand stilled on her back. Was she serious? “How old were you?”

“Six.”

Whoa. That couldn’t be healthy. “What happened?”

“Bone cancer. I was too young to remember much, but I know it was awful. She was in terrible pain at the end. She would cry because the medicine couldn’t take it away.”

God, that must have been hell to watch. Even worse than what his own mother had gone through. “And you didn’t have any family to take you in?”

“No. She was a single mom. Got pregnant in eleventh grade and her mom kicked her out. My dad took off, denied any responsibility, and my mom was too proud to fight him. So we moved to a different town.”

So they’d both grown up without a father.

She was quiet a moment. “I’m glad she left all that behind and raised me on her own. I wouldn’t have wanted to be part of a family like that anyway.”

He didn’t blame her. “Ty said you went into foster care. Did they take good care of you?”

“Yes. But I was hurting about my mom. My foster parents were good people and they tried to make me feel safe and cared about. It just wasn’t going to work. I was put into another foster home, and that’s when I landed on someone’s radar involved with the Valkyrie Program.”

It was still hard to wrap his mind around the whole thing. “But you didn’t have a choice.”

“No. I was proud, though. Less than thirty-percent of us made it through the selection process. Of course, we didn’t know what the program was called until the final training phase, after we’d been put into our specialties.”

“What happened to the ones who washed out?”

She shrugged. “They were funneled into other programs. Intelligence work, investigative work. At least, that’s what we were told. None of us know for sure what happened to them.”

It boggled the mind. What other top-secret programs was the U.S. government hiding from the world?

“So how long’s your contract in Syria?”

“Three months.” Too damn long. “I can’t pull out now. The guys there need me. I can’t let them down.”

“I get it.” Then her expression turned pensive. “Hmmm.”

“Hmmm? What’s that mean?”

“Nothing. Just thinking ahead.”

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