Page 41 of Kane (Ghost Ops #4)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“So,” Blaze said with a grin when Kane stalked into the break room half an hour later for a bottle of water.

“What?”

“You and Daphne.”

Kane twisted the cap viciously. “Me and Daphne what?”

“Ethan said something about spanking. Gonna assume you didn’t do that with clothes on.”

“None of your fucking business.”

Blaze nodded. “Yep, you’re right. But you have any idea how happy this is gonna make Emma, Rory, and Callie?”

Kane took a drink. “None of their fucking business either.”

“You cut her loose already?” Chance asked, walking into the room. “Man that was fast. I think. When did it start?”

Kane swung his gaze toward his other fucknut teammate. “No. She cut me loose. And recently, though I’ll reiterate that it’s none of your business.”

He also wasn’t telling them that recently meant they’d started yesterday. That was a lightning fast fuck up, even for him.

“Whoa, that’s not typical. Losing your mojo, old man?”

“Something like that.”

He had a fucking headache. And maybe a heartache.

He could hear her voice in his head, sneering at him.

Telling him she was done because he didn’t respect her as an equal.

Yeah, maybe it’d been wrong to have an agreement about her, but he also didn’t blame Ghost for urging him not to fuck around with Daphne.

He didn’t have the best track record, and he’d been the object of female tantrums before.

Jeez, those were two words he wasn’t about to say in Daphne’s hearing. Female tantrums.

She’d eviscerate him.

He didn’t miss the look that passed between Chance and Blaze. “How you feeling about it?” Blaze asked.

“Just peachy. We done?”

“Guess so. Just trying to be there for you, man. You don’t seem happy.”

Kane blew out a breath. “Were you happy when your woman was in danger?”

“Nope.”

“Same. Daphne isn’t my woman, not that it’s anyone’s business but mine and hers, but I’m not happy her life’s in danger.

Not happy she’s the key to bringing down an entire fucking criminal organization.

We don’t know what that’s gonna entail, how it’ll affect her life.

What if they want to put her in witness protection, huh?

Or prosecute her for being an accessory? We could lose her forever?—”

He couldn’t keep going. The reality that he could lose Daphne, that she’d go into protection and he’d never see her again, sat like a stone in his belly. It was the same gut punch feeling he’d gotten when he’d learned that Hannah had been killed. That he would never see her again.

It staggered him, that feeling. Was it because everything was so far out of his control and still spiraling?

Or was he going too soft, wanting what he knew he couldn’t have? What didn’t really exist, no matter how much his friends might believe in it? Love, as the song said, was a losing game. He knew it better than most.

“We just have to wait and see,” Chance said. “Diana’s got connections. Maybe she can make the whole thing happen without needing Daphne to testify. And she makes any noise about prosecuting Daphne, we’ll hide her so deep undercover the FBI won’t find her ever again.”

“That’s right,” Blaze added. “We won’t let that happen. And we’ll argue for protecting her ourselves. She can get another new identity, maybe stop working at the range for a while, go do something else. She can cut her hair, dye it, wear contacts. There are ways to disguise her.”

Kane took a deep breath as his heart started to slow again.

God he loved these guys. His family. Way more of a family than his dad, the venerable Navy captain, had ever been.

Kane hardly ever wondered—or cared—what the old man was up to in Virginia Beach.

One thing was for certain, though. He’d have never put himself into any difficulty for Kane.

These guys? They’d plunge head first for him. Same as he would for them, the nosy bastards.

“Thanks.”

“For what it’s worth,” Blaze said. “Took almost losing Emma for me to realize I’d rather take the risk with her than never find out if we could be something. Not sorry I did either.”

Kane didn’t know what to say to that. Fortunately, the chime sounded for the side door. He glanced at his watch.

“Fourteen hundred. Guess that’s our favorite FBI agent,” Chance said. “Want me to get Daph for you? Or do you think she’s cooled off enough by now?”

“I’ll get her,” Kane said. He was simmering down now, and he owed her an apology.

No, he hadn’t been able to tell her about his reasons for being in Alabama and he wouldn’t have broken his oaths to his country to do it.

But he could understand why she was angry with him for having secrets.

In his opinion, hers were more deadly. Didn’t change the fact she had her reasons for not telling him, same as he had for not telling her.

It wasn’t the same thing as Hannah’s lies, and he knew it. Even if he was still pissed about it. But pissed and right weren’t always the same thing, and he was man enough to admit it.

Daphne emerged from her tiny office a moment before he got there. She stopped abruptly, her gaze hardening. He held up both hands. “Just coming to tell you Diana’s here.”

“I know that. I heard the chime, and I can tell time.”

Kane sighed. This thing between them wasn’t going to get any better unless he took charge and did what he needed to do. “You’re right. I was a dick.”

“Which time?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Possibly all of them. But I’m specifically talking about keeping secrets.”

“Go on.”

“Alex told you why I couldn’t say anything, and if he hadn’t told you what he could, I’d have never said a word.

Won’t apologize for that. I took an oath to the Constitution and I’m duty bound to uphold it.

But you’re right that being pissed at you for your secrets is hypocritical.

Even if I still think you should have told us so we could help. ”

She shook her head. “And how was I supposed to know you could help me? What I knew—what everyone knows—is that the six of you retired from the Army and moved here to make your dreams of owning a shooting range and security training facility come true. In what universe does that make you equipped to deal with the mafia, huh?”

She had him there. Much as he hated to admit it.

“Point taken.”

“Okay. Anything else you need to apologize for?”

He had to think about it while her eyebrows climbed higher. Any second now and he’d start to sweat. He felt like he was back in fifth grade and Mrs. Chen wanted to know why he hadn’t done his homework. He’d had no excuse then and he had none now.

Then it hit him.

“I’m sorry I entered into an understanding not to, uh, flirt with you or ask you out without considering that you can make your own choices.”

“I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Are you just saying it because you want to return to fuck buddy status or do you mean it?”

A hot, sharp feeling bloomed in his belly. “I mean it,” he said roughly. There was something about hearing her describe what they’d done as fuck buddies that didn’t hit right this time. Which didn’t make a damn bit of sense, but there it was.

He didn’t have time to work it out, though, because she brushed past him and started toward the break room where Diana Corbin was surely waiting.

FBI agent Diana Corbin. A woman who could take the information Daphne gave her and use it to put the O’Malleys away for good. A woman who wouldn’t care that Daphne belonged here in Sutton’s Creek with him and the One Shot gang. That she was one of them.

Agent Corbin wouldn’t hesitate to use Daphne. To compel her to testify and then send her into witness protection. Or prosecute her for her part in her family’s crimes.

Kane’s gut turned to ice. Despair flared hot and deep. He caught Daphne’s arm and turned her. There was shock on her face. Fear? God, he hoped not. He couldn’t handle making her fearful for even a moment.

He pressed her to the wall, bracketed his palms on either side of her head, crowded her sweet body with his much bigger one. Her eyes weren’t fearful as they gazed up at him. They were soft, confused. Maybe a little bit hopeful?

“What’s the problem, Candy Kane? Grunt it to me if you can’t talk.”

He wanted to laugh and he wanted to kiss her. He chose kissing her.

Her mouth softened beneath his, her lips opening. His tongue found hers and he shuddered with the rightness of it. He needed time with her. Time to explore this thing, to find out if his shriveled heart could beat again. If she could heal him.

But time was what they didn’t have. Diana Corbin waited. Like her namesake, the ancient goddess of the hunt, she was filled with deadly purpose. She would use any tool at her disposal to achieve justice. Ordinarily, Kane would agree.

But he couldn’t agree when the tool was Daphne. When she was a living, breathing, beautiful person he cared about.

Daphne’s hands curled into fists in his shirt. She sighed, and he kissed her deeper. He would have forgotten everything but her if not for the clearing of a throat.

“Was just coming to fetch you two,” Ethan said apologetically when Kane looked up. “I just got back. Jackson’s not staying at the Inn, by the way. Didn’t ask around town yet since I had to get back for the meeting, but that’s next.”

Fuck.

“Okay, thanks. Be there in a sec,” Kane said.

“Make it quick. Ghost—shit, Alex—is getting impatient.”

Ethan disappeared and Kane’s gaze tangled with Daphne’s. “Ghost, huh? You got a cool name too?”

“Demon.”

“Demon?”

“Yup. Scared an instructor so badly during training that he called me a demon in disguise. It stuck.”

“I see.”

“Best not acknowledge that you heard that. Or the word Ghost in connection to Alex. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes. Why did you kiss me, Kane?”

He sighed. “Because I’m a fuck up with the words, but I know I’ve got the kissing down.”

She snorted. “So full of yourself.”

“A little. Maybe. But Daph—I just. I need you to know I don’t want anything to happen to you. I like being with you. I want to keep being with you.”

“For somebody who likes his sex meaningless, you’re saying a lot of words that aren’t.”

“It’s not meaningless with you. I wish it was, but it’s not.”

She patted his chest. “Flatterer. Okay, you’ve made your point.

I’m not entirely pissed at you now, and you’ve made things move down south if you know what I mean, so jumping you later is not entirely out of the question.

But maybe we need to get into that room before Alex comes out here looking for us.

I have a feeling he won’t be so nice if he does. ”

No, he definitely wouldn’t be.

Kane wrapped her hand in his. She looked at him questioningly.

“No point hiding it anymore.”

She gazed at their hands, then at him again. “No, I guess not. You okay with that?”

“Absolutely. You?”

She nodded. “One hundred percent.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “I’m on your side, Sunshine. No matter what happens in there, nothing’s changing that.”

She looked concerned. “Don’t get yourself in trouble for me, Kane. I don’t want you to do that.”

“Nobody left behind, Daph. You’re one of us, and I promise you I’m not the only one who’ll fight for you.”

Her smile was wobbly. “Don’t tell anybody, but I think I love you all.”

His heart skipped a quick beat. He found himself wanting her to say she loved him specifically, but that was a crazy want.

Because he wasn’t somebody who could believe those words even if she did.