Page 47 of I Dream of Danger (Ghost Ops #2)

“I know they appreciate it.” She smiled at him. The compliments on her cooking were frequent and fervent and she understood completely. Before she arrived and reorganized the communal kitchen, Mac had cooked. Every person who told her that had winced.

He was searching her eyes again, a look so penetrating it was as if he were walking around inside her head. “You don’t believe me when I say I find you more beautiful than before.”

She kept an easy smile on her face. “Lucius, it’s not necessary for you to say that. I don’t need it.”

“I know you don’t. But I need to say it. Stella—” He stopped. Licked his lips. Swallowed. Looked down at their linked hands, then back up at her.

If Stella didn’t know better, she’d say he was nervous.

But that was impossible of course. Mac, Nick, and Jon were three of the toughest men on the face of the earth.

Capable and brave and determined. They had defied—were still defying—the US government and the entire military.

They were unbreakable men, and this man, this man holding her hand, was their commanding officer.

Had led them into battle. That kind of man didn’t do embarrassment.

And yet…

“Stella, I have something to say.” His voice, already hoarse, had roughened. “And I’m finding it—I’m finding it hard.”

“I’m listening, Lucius.” She couldn’t imagine it hard for Lucius to say anything.

He drew in a deep breath. “I’m falling in love with you. No, scratch that. I am in love with you. Since the moment I saw you when we were brought into Haven.”

Oh God. Tears pricked her eyes. Lucius and the three others had been carried into Haven because they’d been unable to walk.

All four of them had been on the verge of death.

She remembered Lucius clearly lying on the gurney in the infirmary, a wounded and broken man.

It had hurt to look at him, clearly a once-strong man who’d been tortured almost to death.

Catherine had had a near-death experience herself and was in a coma, so it had been up to Stella and their two nurses, Pat and Salvatore, to take care of everyone.

After the attack, Stella had had four surgeries and had spent months in the hospital. With nothing else to do, she’d observed the nurses and had a pretty good handle on what to do.

Lucius had opened his eyes briefly when she approached him on the gurney. “We’ll take care of you,” she whispered. He’d nodded and passed out.

That was the first time he set eyes on her.

Since then, she’d looked after him. Not out of pity, oh no.

Partly out of rage. She’d been subjected to insane violence too, just as he had.

The violence of the cruel and cowardly. She knew exactly what that was like, and the idea of a man like this, a combat hero, who’d dedicated his life to his country, being tied down like an animal and tormented—it drove her half crazy.

But the real reason she’d looked after him was that she’d seen right through the naked, half-dead man who’d arrived in Haven and saw, very clearly, the extraordinary, strong man he’d been.

His courage and strength had been clear to her from the start.

He’d been smart and strong and brave. Handsome, even, as she’d been beautiful.

And then they’d fallen into the hands of monsters.

But she came out of it and he was coming out of it, and in watching him put himself back together, she’d lost her heart to him.

He reached out a hand to her face, finger trying to trace the worst scar of all, running from her left eyebrow down to the right jaw. The one that had taken 64 stitches to close. She was lucky to have a functioning eye.

Instinctively Stella reared back. No one had touched it since the surgeon had taken out the stitches.

“No, no,” he whispered. “No, darling. Shhh. Let me touch.” His finger, slightly rough, traced the deep white scar over and over again, slowly, from end to end.

That had been the first slash, the stalker having taken her completely by surprise.

Her entourage had known for years that she had a violent stalker.

Nobody told her, the idea being that she’d ‘lose her focus.’ And they’d lose their gravy train.

The stalker had sent her menacing letters, horrific gifts, had made threatening phone calls.

All intercepted. The man she’d considered her personal assistant was a bodyguard.

His dead body had been found just outside her bedroom door, lying in a pool of blood.

It was the cut that had hurt the most, slicing her face and her life in two.

Lucius’s touch was so gentle, his eyes so understanding. They just sat there in the quiet room, his finger tracing her worst nightmare from temple to chin. His thumb wiped away the fat tears that welled from her eyes.

His eyes—they knew her somehow. No one had known her. Her fame had been like a stone wall between her and the rest of humanity. Even her lovers pleasured her body without ever touching her heart. They didn’t want to touch her heart anyway. That had always been very clear.

This man, with the ruined face and broken body, this man touched her heart.

A sob escaped her, quickly stifled. She never cried, ever. The tears were…a mistake.

“Hush, darling,” he said, that deep voice so tender. “I haven’t finished talking yet.”

She nodded, throat too tight for words.

“I love you, Stella. I know I have nothing to offer you, not even myself. I can barely stand upright. I have no career, no place to call my own but here. I am a hunted man, together with the others. Should we be caught, we’d be court-martialed, but I don’t think we’d make it to a tribunal.

They’d shoot us first. I don’t have anything resembling a future.

I’m not even fully a man again. But I swear no one else could ever love you like I do.

Someday I’ll be whole. I believe that completely.

It won’t be today and it won’t be tomorrow.

But, do you think—do you think you could wait for me? ”

That strong, scarred, beloved face was open for her to read, to see his anxiety. Those dark eyes were locked onto hers.

The tears were falling freely now, catching on her upturned lips. She cupped his face with her free hand.

“I’m not going to wait for you, Lucius.” He flinched and she clutched his hand harder. “I don’t have to wait. I’m already yours.”

“Do you think Jon will find a clue in Elle’s house?” Catherine came out of the bathroom with perfumed steam billowing behind her, like some goddess coming out of the mists of time.

Billowing steam, goddesses, mists of time. Christ. Mac didn’t recognize the thoughts in his head these days. They were totally unlike the thoughts of Mac BC—Before Catherine. He seemed to be having a lot of those thoughts nowadays, though.

Everything in his life had changed since Catherine, not least the small bump showing in her belly.

When he saw it, when he touched it, his heart gave a huge kick in his chest. His child.

Their child. Though Catherine was his heart and life, this child would be his only blood relative in the world.

Just thinking about it gave him the shivers.

Catherine walked to their bed, smiling sadly. If anyone knew what it was like to be hunted down by the goons of Arka Pharmaceuticals, it was Catherine.

Mac held his arms out and grunted with satisfaction when she went into them. The world was fucked up almost beyond repair, but when his arms closed around his wife, he could almost hear an audible click , as if a piece of sophisticated machinery were working well.

He ran a hand down her dark, soft hair. “If Jon doesn’t find what we need tonight, we’ll just attack it full bore tomorrow. Everyone will pitch in. We’ll figure it out.”

Looking down, he could see her smile, felt her head nod against his shoulder.

She wasn’t quite convinced. True, there were only a few of them against a huge multinational corporation, but they were the best. And they had two secret weapons—Catherine and Elle.

Between them, the two women had about a billion advanced degrees and they were highly motivated.

“I appreciate what you and Nick and Jon are doing.” She looked up at him, cupped the burn scar on his face.

As always, when she touched him there was a sensation of deep warmth and well-being.

And something else. Her eyes opened wide because she also got a blast of the surge of lust that took him.

It wasn’t anything new, he felt a low-level desire whenever she was around and they were alone.

Like now.

She was pregnant and worked hard at the infirmary, so Mac tried really, really hard to keep a lid on it, or at least keep his dick down.

If it were up to him or his dick, she’d be flat on her back all night and most of the day.

But he loved her too much to act on his lust every time he felt it.

She never said no , but he could read her like a book now.

If she was tired, faint bruises appeared under her gorgeous silver eyes, and that ivory skin became even paler.

That was when he really stepped back. And he knew to keep it tucked in his pants when she was absorbed in a task.

She was worried now, that was clear. He smoothed out the furrow between her eyebrows with his thumb. “We have to do this, honey,” he said gently. “For Nick, if nothing else. Because he’d go it alone if he had to and we simply can’t let him do that.”