“I’m so sorry.”
“The bastard had been fucking my fiancée while I was deployed. He sent me into combat and fucked my fiancée.”
“And the baby?”
“I demanded a paternity test. She resisted at first. The baby wasn’t mine, but the two of them were fine with letting me believe it was.”
Gabriela remembered his reaction to discovering she was an Agency officer and not a religious sister—the rage, the sense of betrayal.
No wonder he hated being deceived.
“I’m so sorry, Dylan. I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”
“That wasn’t the worst of it.” He shook his head, a grim smile on his face. “I found out the next day that the Team guys knew. The married guys—their wives knew. Word got around, but no one bothered to tell me.”
Gabriela’s heart shattered for him. “You lost everything—your whole life.”
“It was all a lie.” His gaze met hers again, his eyes shadowed by grief—and anger. “After the paternity test came back, I resigned. I reported Kruger to higher-ups and spent a month drinking. I figured I must have done something to push her away. I must not have been the man she needed.”
That’s why he thought he wasn’t good at relationships.
Gabriela took his hand. “It wasn’t you, Dylan. It was Valeria.”
“Maybe.” He drew a breath, let it go. “Eventually, I sobered up and tried to figure out what to do with my life.”
“You found Cobra.”
“A friend of mine knew Javier Corbray. He’s former DEVGRU also. He and Tower pulled me out of a nosedive, gave me a new purpose.”
“Thank you for trusting me with that.” Gabriela tried to digest what he’d just shared with her. He’d been with Cobra for five years, so this hurt wasn’t new. But it wasn’t ancient history either—and it cut deep. “I can’t imagine how hard that was, how hurt you must have been. I bet it’s been difficult since then to make friends.”
Or to trust women.
“Yeah.” He took her hand. “I have feelings for you, Gabriela, but I…”
She waited for him to finish, then tried to articulate what he couldn’t seem to say. “You’re afraid of being hurt again. You find it hard to trust. That makes so much sense, Dylan. But there’s one thing you’re forgetting.”
“What’s that?”
She rose onto her knees, kissed him. “I’m nothing like Valeria.”
She made love to him then, soft and slow, pouring her heart into every kiss, every caress, trying to show him what she couldn’t tell him.
Afterward, they lay together, hearts thrumming, his fingers tracing a line along her spine, the cry of gulls and the pulse of the surf in the distance.
21
“One day you’re running fromsicarios. The next, you’re relaxing on the beach in Curaçao, soaking up the sun.” Dylan sipped his mai tai, the taste of rum and citrus shimmering over his tongue, the sea and surf calling to him.
“It’s surreal, isn’t it?” Looking lethally sexy in a low-cut one-piece suit in white, Gabriela ate the cherry from the top of her piña colada. “It feels like a lifetime ago that I was abducted from the mission, but it’s only been twelve days.”
“A lot can happen in twelve days.”
Like falling in love.
They’d slept in, fucked each other’s brains out, ordered room service, then bought bathing suits and hit the beach, scoring a couple of reclining chairs not far from the bar. After all that had happened, neither of them felt bad about drinking before noon.
Hell, Dylan needed the alcohol. He was in love with her—and after last night, he was pretty sure she felt the same way. It ought to have been easy, but it wasn’t. He should be able to trust her after what they’d been through together. Then again, he’d trusted his Team guys, and look how that had turned out.