Heron's Cove

He didn’t put her down at the top of the stairs. In a few more strides, he had her in his bedroom. It was pitch-dark, the shades pulled, not so much as a night-light on. She had hastily made the bed that morning, but Colin kept any remarks to himself as he ripped back the duvet, just as she had pictured, dreamed about, in the weeks since he’d left Rock Point.

“The sheets will be cold,” she said.

“Not for long.” He wasn’t breathing hard at all as he laid her on the bed. He grinned and gave a mock shudder. “Damn. It is cold.”

“Are you sure about this? You need time to decompress and reintegrate—”

“Exactly.” He fell with her onto the bed, his mouth finding hers. “Nothing’s changed, Emma. Nothing. I want you now as much as I did when I carried you up here the first time.”

“That’s good,” she whispered, her throat tight with emotion and a rush of desire.

Her shirt went first, then his, joining the blankets on the floor. Emma inhaled sharply when he skimmed his hands over her bare breasts, then caught a nipple between his lips. She sank deep into the bed, already warm from their presence. He licked, tasted, teased, even as he smoothed his palms down her sides, over her hips.

Her pulse raced; her skin was on fire.

In another two seconds, he had her jeans off, and she raked at his, until finally they, too, were gone, cast onto the floor.

He came to her, as ready as she was. She’d dreamed of this moment, ached for it, hoped for it. He was her soul mate in the only way she understood soul mates.

“Emma,” he whispered, “stop thinking.”

She could hear the amusement in his tone and drew her arms around him, coursed her palms up his back. “No more thinking. Promise. It’s good to have you here.”

“Glad you put that pie in the oven?”

The man was irresistible, impossible. She smiled, tried to answer, but he shifted position on top of her, eased himself between her legs, and she found that she couldn’t speak. Instead she drew him into her, closing her eyes, lying back, taking in the heat and hardness of him. He thrust deeply and went still, as if to give them both the chance to absorb that this was real, that they were together again, making love on a dark autumn night. Then he drove into her again, and she was lost.

Only later, when her heartbeat had calmed and the cool air chilled her overheated skin, did anything resembling a thought work its way into her consciousness, and it was a good thought. She didn’t want to be anywhere else but where she was right now.

She realized there was only one pillow left on the bed, and they were sharing it, facing each other. Colin kissed her on the forehead but didn’t say a word.

* * *

Colin ended up on the outer edge of the bed, with Emma asleep in the crook of his arm. The milky light of dawn brought out the honey tones of her hair, and he noticed her black lashes against her creamy skin. He’d slept, but not a lot. She was right about the need for decompression and reintegration. They were as important to his work as training, preparation, reports, analysis, experience and instinct. Fatigue bred mistakes. Mental and physical exhaustion put not just his own life in danger but other people’s lives, and it jeopardized the mission. It led to burnout and it frayed relationships.

The problem was, he seldom recognized when he was past the point of no return. His ability to push through exhaustion and fear was part of what made him good at undercover work, but he also knew that it made reentry into his home life—his real life—tricky, even difficult.

What made it even harder was his distaste for lies and deception.

His bruises ached, but not as much as before making love to Emma. Pain wasn’t what had awakened him and kept him awake. His instincts had. He trusted them, and they were hammering at him now, telling him that Emma’s Russian jeweler and her warning about a Russian collection weren’t just some obscure Sharpe matter.

He pictured Pete Horner’s supercilious smile. “I see you’re back from the dead.”

Back, but determined to finish the job he had started when he set out from Maine last month. He wanted Horner, Yuri and Boris in custody. He wanted to find out how they planned to get weapons now that Colin’s stash was no longer an option. Did they have other contacts in Vladimir Bulgov’s old network—access to the same stockpiles of Soviet-era weapons?

When had Horner and his Russian colleagues discovered their turncoat undercover agent had jumped into the Intracoastal? Had they searched for him? Had they tried to go back to the rented house but realized it was crawling with feds?

Had they figured out he wasn’t a turncoat after all?

Were they the type to seek revenge? Did they still think they could force him to help them?

Who was their buyer?

Colin had run the same questions over in his mind for hours.

He didn’t see himself spending the next two weeks kayaking, drinking whiskey and digging bean holes with Finian Bracken.

Making love to Emma, yes.

She and Matt Yankowski both were holding back on him. Did Yank know about this Tatiana Pavlova?

The wind rattled the windows, reminding Colin that he needed to get the house ready for the winter. He could do that over the next couple weeks, too. Caulk windows, stack wood, clean the chimney.

Dwelling on his frustrations and questions in the middle of the night wasn’t helping anything. He looked at the woman lying next to him and put emotion and desire aside. The Sharpes were a family with sixty years of investigations, contacts and secrets behind them. Emma had worked art crimes with her grandfather from childhood—long before she’d become an FBI agent.

Colin didn’t expect to know everything about her in the short time they’d been together, but he doubted even Yank knew what all lurked in the Sharpe family vault of secrets.

She shifted slightly, throwing back a slender arm. Colin held her close, and she rolled over, touched her fingertips to a deep purple-and-yellow bruise on his side. “They did this to you?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“You could have said something before we—”

“Trust me, sweetheart, I wasn’t thinking about my aches and pains while we were making love.”

“There are more bruises?”

“A few. I heal fast. Being back here helps.”

“They were trying to kill you—”

“Not when they hit me. They were just trying to get me into their car, show me they were in charge. They disagreed on killing me.”

“They knew you were a federal agent,” Emma said.

“By then, yes. They thought I was playing both sides and was willing to sell them weapons at a cut rate.” Colin thought a moment, then said, “Yank is getting the go-ahead to involve the team, but there were three men. Pete Horner, a private pilot out of Florida. He flew planes for Bulgov but wasn’t one of his regular pilots. He wanted to wait to kill me.”

“The other two?”

“Russians. Yuri and Boris. They wanted to kill me right away. Yuri is in his late forties, with short, thinning gray hair and blue eyes. Boris is younger—maybe thirty. Medium brown hair, brown eyes. Good-looking. Yuri’s kind of flat faced.”

Emma sat up slightly. “You’re describing them to me because you think I might recognize them.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“They could be anywhere. They could have split up, or they could still be together. They could have new IDs. Another boat. They could have had a car or a plane waiting for them. I had to bail too soon—”