She laughed before she settled back against his chest. His hand found its rhythm again—up and down her spine, the same absent path, the same steady motion.
“When this is over,” she said, “I want to go back to Flathead Lake. With a better canoe.”
He pulled her closer, chuckling. “With a much better canoe.”
She was quiet for a while. He thought she might have fallen asleep, but then her fingertip traced a line along his sternum and she spoke again, her voice soft and half-dreaming. “I’m going to draw you,” she said. “Tomorrow. Like this.”
“Like what?”
“Unguarded.” She pressed her lips to his chest, right over his heart. “You never let anyone see you like this. But I see you, Mack. I want an updated version of you just like this for my sketchbook.”
She was right—he didn’t let anyone see this version of himself. He’d built the walls deliberately, reinforced them with training, discipline, and, after their breakup, the carefully maintained fiction that he didn’t need anyone.
And she’d walked through every one of them tonight.
He didn’t regret it. He might tomorrow—when Edwards was still out there, the cartel was recalculating, and the operational complications of being in love with the woman he was protecting became impossible to ignore.
But right now, with her breathing against his chest and her heartbeat synced to his, he felt peace settling over him like snowfall.
He kissed the top of her head. She fell asleep within minutes. He felt it happen—the gradual softening of her body against his, the way her breathing deepened and steadied, the small unconscious way she burrowed closer, seeking warmth.
When he’d bought her the engagement ring, the jeweler had asked about her ring size, and Mack had known it—6.5—because he’d measured it while she was sleeping. He’d slid a piece of string around her finger with the same steady hands he used to field-strip a rifle.
He wondered if she still had it.
She shifted in her sleep, mumbled something. Her hand curled against his chest.
He stayed awake. Not because he was on watch, but because he wanted to hold this. This moment, in this room, with this woman.
Tomorrow, the war resumed. The reality that he was in love with his principal. Garrett would have every right to pull him from the detail, and they both knew it.
Tomorrow, he’d deal with all of it.
Tonight, he held her. And remembered what it felt like to be the man on the dock—the one who sat for an hour with dead legs because the woman in his arms was peaceful and he would have sat there forever if she’d let him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Alyssa woke to Mack’s heartbeat under her ear.
The faint hum of the dry-cleaning equipment drifted up from below. She opened her eyes and found Mack was already awake.
His left hand rested on her back, but his gaze swung between the window and the bedroom door. Part of him was always on watch. She was learning to love that about him rather than resent it.
“Morning,” she said.
He looked down at her. His expression softened. He kissed her forehead. “Morning.”
She stretched and sat up. The safehouse bedroom looked different in the daylight, the blackout curtains edged with thin lines of morning sun. Reality seeping in around the margins, the way it always did.
Mack swung his legs over the side, reaching for the sat phone on the nightstand. She watched the muscles in his back shift and saw him flinch. His wound had no doubt stiffened overnight.
“Let me look at your arm before you do anything else.”
He glanced back at her, a smile quirking his lips. She raised an eyebrow. He sighed and hung up the phone.
She went to the bathroom and washed up, smiling in the mirror when she saw how alive she looked this morning. She grabbed fresh bandages and alcohol from the medicine cabinet.
The gash looked better—the edges were clean, and the flesh around it was pink but not inflamed.