Page 49 of Deadly Attraction
“So I don’t hurt them.”
“And how do you imagine you would hurt me by being my friend?”
“My track record at keeping people safe is abysmal, and if I get emotionally attached in any way, well, the odds of me successfully protecting you go down even farther. I need to be clear-headed and detached so I don’t let emotions interfere with your safety.”
She was quiet for a long moment, her attention falling on Pepper and the way he was petting the dog. “You’ve been a bodyguard before?”
“Not in the strict sense of the word, but…”
His throat shut down, pressure forcing it closed.
“But you felt intrinsically responsible for someone and that person got hurt?”
Was he really doing this? He scanned her face, saw the neutrality in it. Her eyes slowly came back to his, and he nodded. “My brother. He…died.”
“You believe it was somehow your fault.”
Another nod. “It was.”
She tilted her head. “How so?”
His guts crawled. The story ate at him, night and day, always there, hovering.
“Mac is—was—ismy twin. Older by a minute.”
His sweat turned cold as the image of Mac’s face swam in front of his eyes. The look of relief on that face he had known so well. “Mac was a Green Beret. His squad got ambushed in a showdown between some local gangs in a Yemen border town. I was nearby in Saudi Arabia on an intelligence mission with another Special Forces group and we got the SOS Mac sent out.”
“You went in to rescue him,” Emma said, softly. Her voice barely penetrated his memories. “But something went wrong.”
Mitch could still feel the brotherly slap Mac had given him right before Mitch had told him to haul his injured ass over to the rundown building nearby while Mitch covered him with gunfire. “I had analyzed the situation and ran best-case scenarios on the way there—that was my job. It was a ground fight, and there were only a dozen or so shooters. Once my team arrived, we split up. Me and three other guys went to get Mac’s men into a nearby building, stabilize the injured men, and the second group would concentrate on taking out the gang members.”
“Mac didn’t make it to the building?”
“He made it.” Mitch’s ears rang with the distinctive sound of a fighter jet bearing down on them. His knees shook from the way the earth trembled when the bomb hit the building…
A fireball erupted. “No!” Mitch yelled.
“Mitch?”
Suddenly, his ass was on the floor and stars danced on the edge of his vision.
“Mitch, look at me.” Emma was suddenly in front of him, her hands on his shoulders as she shook him. “You’re here, in my office. You’re not in Yemen. Look at me. You’re safe.”
A warm, rough tongue licked his face, causing him to refocus and shake off the sticky cobwebs of memory. He blinked, concentrating on the smooth skin and tiny freckles dotting Emma’s face.
His tongue felt thick, his face hot. He hadn’t had an episode in months, and here he was, getting sucked into the past and nearly blacking out. “Oh, fuck.”
Emma shooed Pepper back and checked the pulse in his wrist.
He snorted derisively and yanked it away. “Sorry, I have these flashbacks and then I… I’m okay, really.”
Her countenance said she thought differently, but she didn’t argue. She sat facing him and petted Pepper, who crawled halfway into her lap. “What happened? To your brother?”
Mitch ran a hand over his face, through his hair. For a minute, he couldn’t speak. Emma didn’t say anything, patiently waiting for him to get his shit together.
“I was laying down cover with the other two guys in my group. All of Mac’s men made it to the building and then… The building was bombed.”
“Bombed?” Her shock was evident. “By one of the gangs?”
