Chapter Six

Ghost

R egal, stunning, her long dark hair blowing behind her, the only woman I trusted stood staring at the ocean, ignoring me.

She'd been ignoring me.

This morning. The past couple of months.

All my texts had been read but unanswered.

The petite blonde in the car, the fucking encounter at the farmer's market—I didn't have time for this right now, but this was Safiya.

My Safiya.

Palming her throat to get her attention—the only way I could get her attention these days—I laid down the law. "When I text, you acknowledge receipt."

"I am aware of your protocols."

"You seem to have selectively forgotten some."

She threw back the one promise I'd made to her that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. "You are touching me when you said you would not. Is that selective?"

"I do many things I shouldn't with you." She was my first.

"You do nothing you do not plan."

She was unplanned. "Contingency is the second most common noun in my vernacular for a reason. Protocol is the first." I tightened my grip with warning. "Remember that."

"As you wish."

Her answer too quick, her tone too dry to hold any weight, I studied her a moment, hoping I wasn't going to see it, but it was there. Her dark eyes, always haunted but today showing more resolve than fear, gave her away. She was done.

My first save.

My first wife.

She was fucking done, and I couldn't blame her.

Dragging in a breath, I exhaled with the weight of what I was about to do to her. "The protocols are to protect you." If I got nothing else out of her, I needed that.

"So you have said."

I read her how she always read me. "When have I ever not spoken the truth to you?"

She looked back at the ocean. "Why are you really here?"

To destroy the only stability I'd ever given her. "You're moving out."

Not giving me any reaction, the thrum of her pulse steady under my fingers, she didn't nod, she didn't protest, she didn't voice an argument.

I'd trained her not to.

Cursing everything I'd taught her, selfishly wanting more out of her, I dropped my hand. "Five minutes. Meet me at the car." I turned to give her those minutes in peace.

She threw them back at me. "I do not wish to leave."

I glanced over my shoulder. Her dark-eyed gaze met mine, and her beauty struck me all over again. "I know, Safiya."

Not warning her that I wasn't alone, I scanned the lanai of the oceanfront house I'd bought for her, sight unseen, and the memory hit as I walked back to the car.

"I do not understand." Her arms around her waist, rocked forward in the passenger seat like she was ready to spring at any minute, she glanced around the darkened roadway for the countless time. "Why would your military send an American SEAL for me?"

"Sit back." Five klicks on foot, then seventeen hours on the road, and her posture hadn't changed. She'd also already asked this. One of only two questions she'd asked. The other was for tea when we'd stopped for gas a few hours ago. Black with sugar. That was it. She hadn't asked for food, water or shoes. She didn't even ask where the hell I was taking her after I'd gotten her out of that shithole. She was a fucking mess, and I wasn't much better after seventy-two hours of back-to-back hostage retrievals, ones I never should've had to make, but all this woman wanted to know was why me.

Good goddamn question.

She glanced around again, but she didn't lean back into the seat. "I have never been in an automobile."

I took the hit like I had the others, with guilt. I'd also made a silent vow. The second I'd found out she'd been taken hostage by the same insurgents that'd been waiting to eliminate me when I'd been HALOed in to a bogus Black Ops mission, I knew I was going back for her. Not only had she saved my life with crucial intel that gave me an exfil route, she was taken in the first place because she'd been seen with me—while she'd watched her mother die.

I wasn't fucking leaving her.

"I'll teach you to drive once I get you relocated." I scanned the rearview mirrors, but so far, we hadn't been followed.

"Relocated," she repeated slowly as if teaching herself the word.

"Yes. A couple more hours and we'll be out of Greece." Via a private jet I was going to borrow—without permission— because, as of seventy-three hours ago, I was no longer Navy. Which meant no access to military transport, but it also meant I wasn't a pawn for that fucking Agency profiler who'd set me up. The brunette was lucky I'd needed her alive to pull the right strings to get my release papers signed. Not that she'd had a choice when I'd held a Glock to her head.

"A couple hours and then I will learn relocated driving with the American SEAL sent for me."

I didn't correct her English, tell her we were getting on a stolen plane or explain I was no longer active duty, but I'd always be a SEAL. And I sure as hell didn't tell her not one Agency fuck had given a damn about her or the fallout in her village when they'd sent me on a training op disguised as a mission just to test my ability to make it out alive. No one had given a damn about the stunning Turkish girl who herded sheep.

But I did. "What else do you want to learn?"

"The ocean." Her voice went soft, quiet. Submissive. "I have never touched it."

I glanced at her, and for a beat I was speechless. It wasn't only her voice that'd gone soft. Her entire expression had morphed. Innocence, hope. Beauty. Jesus . "You want to swim in the ocean?"

"Is it warm to touch?"

Her eyes brighter, her cheeks flushed, the weight of the hell she'd been through momentarily missing, it wasn't even a choice. Scrapping the plan to take her to a lake property I owned in northern Georgia, I pivoted. "You like warm water?"

"I have never touched warm water. But I saw ocean once. The sun was shining on it. It looked… nice. I thought…. I wanted…." She stopped speaking and looked at me like she had before her mother was killed.

Like I could move fucking mountains. "You want to swim in a warm ocean."

"Yes." Her head dipped, but her eyes stayed on mine. "Please."

"Done." Focusing back on the road, I pulled out a burner and risked making a call.

It rang once. "Ja."

I switched to Danish. "I need an oceanfront property STAT."

Shoving down the memory, walking past the pool and around the side of the house where I'd taught her to swim, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in years.

Four rings later, I got a generic voicemail and hung up as I reached the SUV.

Sitting in the front seat with her knees pulled up to her chest and her dress falling down her thighs, the petite blonde hugged herself as she watched my approach before nervously darting her gaze toward the house.

I got behind the wheel and cupped the back of her neck. "You did good this morning, baby girl. Stop worrying." Releasing her from the same hand that only moments ago had been on Safiya, I made her a promise. "Everything's going to be okay."

"Why are we here?"

I'd already told her when we'd pulled in. "Pickup." And another collision of my worlds that was never supposed to happen. Putting the two of them in the same city had been a calculated risk for this exact scenario—my most vulnerable rescue and my biggest weakness—but that didn't mean it hadn't been a bad fucking idea.

Unshakably curious and still innocent with the kind of na?veté that'd thrown her headfirst into my world, the petite blonde's voice held the soft wonder of a teen that belied the fucking horror she'd come from. "Is it a pickup of one of us?"

As far as she was concerned, there was no us . There was also no jealousy or animosity in her question. I could've answered truthfully, but I never would. I didn't disseminate intel. I gathered it.

Not replying, I watched Safiya exit the house and pull the door shut behind her without a backwards glance.

" Oh ," the young blonde gasped. "She is so pretty ."

Safiya wasn't pretty. She was fucking beautiful.

She was also my Achilles' heel.

In the same summer dress that showed off her bare shoulders and long neck, the first woman I'd done this with floated down the front steps of the gated oceanfront mansion with an overnight bag in one hand, a pair of shoes in the other, and the grace of a woman not from this life. Still preferring bare feet after all these years, she held her back straight and ignored the wisps of hair the breeze blew into her face.

Trying not to stare, I reached for my door handle as I gave the blonde a direct order. "Stay."

A small hand landed on my wrist and gripped for a second. "No."

I threw her a quick glance.

Wide blue eyes met mine. Then the petite blonde did the one thing she was becoming surprisingly adept at despite her lack of age—she read between the lines. "Put her in front. She deserves it. I'll sit in the back." Like she had a fucking read on me and had grasped the dynamics of the situation, she squeezed my wrist, then let go to climb over the front passenger seat.

Not arguing with my number eighteen, a number that wasn't lost on me, I got out of the stolen SUV and spared the eighteen-year-old in the back a glance.

Eighteen years ago, I'd enlisted.

Ten years later, I'd been pulled from the Teams for a Spec Ops assignment that'd been designed to kill me.

The same assignment where I'd found her. The woman walking toward me who'd saved my life—right before I stole hers.

I opened the front passenger door for my number one.