Wedding Party Collection: Don't Tell The Bride: What the Bride Didn't Know / Black Widow Bride / His Valentine Bride

‘Oh.’

He sat back against the headboard with Lena still on top of him. She leaned into him and he started drawing lazy lines across her back. Nice. As was the firmness still tightly lodged against her thighs. She rocked against him ever so gently. ‘You going to take care of that?’

‘It can wait. Tortured denial’s my thing.’

‘Really?’

‘Apparently.’ Those clever hands of his scratched at a spot behind her ear and almost set her to purring. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, and it sounded like a prayer for salvation. ‘Let’s see how you’re tracking tomorrow.’

* * *

He couldn’t sleep. How was a man supposed to sleep when his head was full of the scent of the woman he loved and his heart was fair breaking under the weight of all the lies he’d just fed her. Not all of it lies: his proposal had been true. Lay his soul bare and hope Lena remembered in the morning.

See where this road led them and hopefully stumble across Jared along the way.

He still hadn’t forgotten the real reason Lena was here, even if she had.

Because he could take Lena home the minute she was cleared to fly, and wait for her full memory to return, but the minute it did she’d be back out looking for her missing brother again.

He had half a mind to try and find Jared over the next couple of days, get Lena and her brother to sight each other and then take Lena home.

Trig slipped from the bed and reached for his T-shirt. He left the room with a mobile phone and minimum fanfare. The phone had come from Damon. Not government issue, nothing that could be traced back to him.

He punched in a number he knew off by heart and waited to see if a message bank would pick up the call. The message bank wasn’t full and it should have been by now. Someone was clearing those calls. Hopefully it was Jared.

‘Hey, man.’ Jared would know who it was by the sound of his voice. If someone else had Jared’s phone, Trig didn’t plan on making it any easier for them to identify him. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while and we’re in the area so we’re going to drop in. You owe me, big time. And you need to be there.’

EIGHT (#u0c550a3f-3468-59b6-bf3b-8a7b3c1e097c)

Lena woke the next morning feeling clearer-headed than she had in days. Trig wasn’t there—she remembered him rolling over and gathering her close and kissing her temple and then telling her he was heading out to get breakfast. She’d told him she’d come too, but she hadn’t opened her eyes or properly woken up, and when she’d murmured something along the lines of five more minutes he’d told her it was five in the morning and to go back to sleep.

A command she’d been only too happy to follow.

So her husband was an early riser. She’d been an early riser too, back in the day when surfing had been an option, or sea kayaking had been an option. Kayaking might still be an option, come to think of it. Plenty of backwaters not too far away from Damon’s beach house.

Or maybe it was time to get a pretty little cottage of her own, somewhere on the river. A cottage with panelled half-walls, high ceilings and bay windows. A yesteryear cottage that cried out for Persian carpet runners and wide verandahs. Her family would think she’d gone nuts—but she could put an indoor bathing pool in one of the rooms if she got creative enough. She could fit it out like a Turkish spa.

She was still in that lovely dream place where anything was possible when Trig came back with breakfast. Strawberry yoghurt today, and mixed nuts and flaky pastry and some kind of spicy scrambled egg.

She sat up and pushed her tangle of hair away from her face. Every night she plaited it and tied it off with a hairband. Every morning the hairband had disappeared and the plait was a tangle. She hoped Trig liked the dishevelled look.

She should probably let him in on the granny cottage idea as well. ‘Do you think any shops here sell marble water-spouts and feature walls? And tiles like the ones in the pool yesterday?’

‘Why?’ He handed her a cup of tea and bent down to place a fleeting kiss on the very edge of her lips.

‘I want a Turkish bathing room in the cottage we’re buying on the banks of a lazy river.’

‘We’re buying a cottage?’

‘On the banks of a lazy river. So that I can get up and go kayaking and you can get up to no good with a tool belt.’ Trig’s father was a carpenter-builder. His older brother was a builder as well and Trig had spent many a school holiday with a tool belt strapped to his waist. Lena had the niggling suspicion that Trig’s father resented the hell out of the Wests for leading Trig away from the family business.

‘You want me to put on a tool belt?’

‘Only when you’re not out protecting national secrets. And if it’s hot on the banks of that lazy river you can lose the shirt. I might even make a calendar of you looking like that. You could be Mr January all the way through to December.’

‘Don’t you dare.’

‘Oh, I dare. You should know that by now.’

Her husband smiled his wide, happy smile. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, and then his gaze slid to the rings on her wedding finger and his smile dimmed. ‘How’s the head?’

‘The bump is on its way down.’ She took his hand and slid it through her hair. ‘Feel.’

He did. Damn but he had a nice touch. She closed her eyes, tilted her head back and let him cradle the weight of it in that big hand of his. ‘Mmm.’

He let her go in a hurry and retreated to the other side of the table.

‘You are the shyest person I know when it comes to physical affection,’ she told him grumpily.

‘Doctor’s orders.’

‘I’m going back there today, just to get that particular directive lifted.’

‘You still can’t remember squat.’

‘I’m remembering a little more each day. I’m on disability leave from work. And I just failed my physical.’

Trig grunted.

‘I was a slow waddling duck for those pickpockets. ASIS isn’t going to put me back in the field. Not sure I want to go back in the field if all I’m going to be is a liability. I need a new focus. Maybe a whole new career.’ She eyed him curiously. ‘Have you ever thought of quitting the business?’

‘Not yet.’

‘But you took a desk job.’

‘You remember that?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ He rubbed at his temple.

‘What’s it like?’

‘Lot of analysis.’

‘Frustrating?’

Trig gave a reluctant nod.