the freshly painted walls and the bouquet of fresh flowers on the front desk when they registered.
Instead, all she focused on was the fact that they’d be sharing one room. One bed, when an entire town right now wouldn’t be big enough to cover the silence hanging between them.
Kelly bit her lip as he counted the money for the room. Gone was the carefree camaraderie between them. Sam had taken charge, assertive in skirts, a no-nonsense attitude.
The red-tiled room had bright blue painted walls, a simple pine desk and one nightstand. An overhead fan lazily swept the air over a small, narrow bed.
She turned to see Sam’s glamour vanish. But this time he was dressed in an olive-green T-shirt, camouflage pants covering his long, muscled limbs.
The compassionate, funny Sam vanished, replaced by the efficient soldier known as Shay.
She had taken the man and turned him into a machine. Somehow, she had to reach him again, get inside to find the real Sam.
“We can’t stay here. We have to push on to La Aurora,” she said.
“It’s too late. Time to take a break.”
“I don’t need a break.”
Sam unzipped his pack and withdrew his pistol. “I do. I’m not thinking clearly. I need to calm down. And you need sleep. You’re on the edge of collapse.”
“But the kids... What if the rogue Arcanes get to them before we do?”
He glanced up, hazel eyes hard. “I know you don’t like to take risks, but that’s one you’ll have to take.”
Ouch. Kelly winced as he tossed back her own words. Sam’s expression softened. “They won’t get to them. I suspect they’re more interested in getting to you.”
He gestured to her head. “You’re exhausted and your glamour is fading. Look.”
The mirror on the bathroom door showed a man with reddish hair, soft mouth and...she glanced down to see rounded hips.
“Change back. Then shower and get to bed. I need you fresh and alert. We’ll leave before dawn.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but seeing his expression, she changed her mind. Kelly closed her eyes and summoned her true form. The mirror now reflected a redhead with sallow skin and purple shadows beneath her eyes.
Sam was right, dammit. She looked exhausted. Yet he was tough as steel and showed no signs of stopping.
Hating the distance between them, Kelly investigated the bathroom, a tiny area where she could barely turn around. Checked tile walls of red, blue and yellow were accented by a bright yellow cabinet. She looked longingly at the miniscule shower.
“Go.” Sam sat on the bed with his pistol, turning it over in his hands.
“Aren’t you going to shower?”
“You first. I have other priorities.” At her expression he added in a hardened voice, “This is a mission. Checking my weapons and the equipment comes first.”
An air of danger quivered in the air, emanating from the man on the bed, holding a pistol in an experienced grip. Somehow, she had to break through that reserve, find the Sam she’d glimpsed before. The Sam who once had believed her, trusted and listened to her.
Even though he had no reason to do so.
Kelly dropped to her knees before him, putting a hand on his sleekly muscled thigh. He stiffened.
“Sam, I didn’t mean to say that about all Elementals.”
“But you can’t help but thinking it deep inside. We’re all the same. Can’t be trusted.”
Drawing back, she curbed her temper. “Hard to trust you when you left after paying my bond, no forwarding address, just a formal letter ending everything.”
Sam looked away.
“You left me, because I was an Arcane. No longer just Kelly.”
Lacking her father to arrest, the Mage authorities tossed her in jail for twenty-four hours. Sam had paid her bail but had vanished. It was the roughest time of her young life. Missing Sam dreadfully, wishing he were with her, teasing away her fears with his wicked charm and humor.
Too terrified to trust anyone, grieving for Sam’s family, heartsick over her father, she finally went to the cabin where they’d first made love...and saw an envelope from him. With eager, fumbling fingers, she’d torn into it, knowing Sam, the man who professed his love, wouldn’t abandon her.
Instead, she found a key and a crisp letter directing her to a bank safe-deposit box, along with instructions to use the money to start over and “forget about us.” Sam had severed the ties between them with words as sharp as the ax her father used to cut trees.
A heartbeat of silence passed. Sam picked up the pistol, turned it over in his hands.
“I had to leave. Wasn’t possible to stick around. Not when I’d lost so much.”
“You didn’t lose me.”
“Wrong,” he said quietly. “I lost you the moment you insisted on Cedric’s innocence, even after we’d seen him run from the house. The fire destroyed my family, my life. But your fidelity to your father, and your own kind, destroyed everything between us, Kelly.”
“I had to defend him. They were set out on a witch hunt. It had nothing to do with you.”
“It had everything to do with me. Even though he’d disappeared, you chose him over me. It used to be you and me against the world, and you turned it to your people versus mine.”
Torment shadowed his eyes as he stared at the wall. “I felt so alone, trying not to show it. When the Mage authorities showed up that night and kept questioning us, you didn’t just insist Cedric was innocent. You ranted at them, saying they automatically blamed an Arcane. You said, ‘Because that’s what you damn Elementals do. You’re all the same, nothing but arrogant, rich, entitled, powerful aristocrats.’”
Tension pulled his muscles tight. “Every insult you lobbed at my people included me.”
“Never!”
He ticked off his fingers. “Rich. Arrogant. Entitled. Powerful. Aristocratic. You called me all those once, as a joke maybe, but that night you weren’t joking.”
Shock punched her low in the gut. Sickened at this revelation, Kelly drew back on her haunches.
“I couldn’t deal. Not after my heart was ripped to shreds and all I had left was a crumbling shell of a home and three gravestones. I needed you badly, Kelly. You were all I had left. But you weren’t there for me.”
“Sam,” she choked out. “Oh, gods, why didn’t you tell me? I never knew how you felt. It would have changed everything.”
“Would it?” His broad shoulders stiffened. “Go take your shower. I’ll secure the room.”
Trembling, she stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Once they’d been lovers, had laughed together, planned a future as they lay close, talking long into the night. One night had changed everything, damaging them both.
Her throat constricted as she undressed and stepped into the tiny stall. The shower was cool and refreshing. She stood beneath the trickle of water, letting it wash away dirt, grime and tears.
After placing safeguards on the windows and doors so he’d detect the slightest tap, Sam returned to the bed. His hands curled around his Sig. He hated the hurt look on Kelly’s face, knowing he’d put it there.
The steady patter of the shower conjured images he didn’t want. Kelly, standing naked beneath the shower, head thrown back as the water cascaded down her breasts, a droplet sliding in between those lush mounds. His body grew tight and hard as he thought about tracing each drop with his tongue, his hands splayed around her hips, the musk of her womanly scent drowning him...
He was a SEAL and trained hard to deploy on the toughest assignments in the world. This was one. Maybe Curt should schedule more training time on how to deal with ex-girlfriends on a mission, he thought humorlessly. Lesson one: close-quarters defense when faced with a woman you badly wanted to fuck.
He’d deal with it. And then what, when he returned Kelly to the States and into Mage custody?
Shay didn’t see a way around it. He lived by the rules. They kept him centered and focused when his world had fractured, kept the feral wolf inside him at bay.
Not anymore. She was naked, just a few feet away.
