BENNING CLOSED THE door to his and Olivia’s room behind him. He’d calmed her down enough to quiet her sobs, but nothing would settle the fear hooking deep into her head. She didn’t want to remember what’d happened when she and her brother had been taken, and he couldn’t blame her. There was nothing he could do—nothing he could say—to make his six-year-old daughter believe she wasn’t responsible for what’d happened to Owen, even if she had been able to remember something that would help find him. And he wasn’t about to push her fragile mental state more than he already had. Abducted, suffering head trauma, being shot at... Olivia had been through more in the past ten hours than most children experienced in their entire lives. How much more could he honestly expect her to take before she broke?
Fisting the T-shirt he’d discarded before hitting the shower, he headed back toward the kitchen barefoot. Even with the self-imposed distance between them and the outburst from his daughter, he couldn’t get Ana’s words out of his head. She blamed herself for the death of that girl, the teenager who’d gone missing seven years ago. But deeper than that, she blamed him. Isn’t that what she’d meant when she’d sworn not to let her emotions cloud her judgment again? That the feelings they’d had for each other had caused her to lose focus? It’d taken both of them jumping into that relationship with both feet, and that made him as much responsible for her imagined failure. He and Ana had only been together for a few months, but those few months had been the most intense days of his entire life. He remembered every second of them, and the fact that Ana was trying to forget—to discount everything between them—knotted his gut tighter.
Every cell in his body froze as he stepped directly in a wet pile of what he hoped to hell was raw cookie dough. The island in the center of the kitchen was a mess. Flour, egg shells, sugar and random land mines of chocolate chips scattered over the countertop. Bowls, whisks, measuring cups. The place resembled a battlefield, and there, in the center of it all, Ana attempted to clear the casualties from the cabinets. He couldn’t help but smile at the combination of small bare footprints and larger boot prints dusted into the floor. “Did you at least win?”
“Not even close. But to the loser go the spoils.” Turning, she pushed her bangs out of her face. She held up a half-eaten bowl of unbaked dough, specs of flour and butter crusted into her hair, as she spooned a mouthful of sugar and butter past her lips. His heart jerked in his chest. In that moment she wasn’t the federal agent assigned to recover his son. Right then, she was the woman who’d gotten his daughter to laugh. That sound, the sound of Olivia’s exaggerated screams, had pulled him from the shower, but what he’d seen would be burned into his memories forever. Ana chasing his daughter around the counter with a spatula. Olivia’s wide smile that he feared he’d never see again after what she’d witnessed. For those gut-wrenching seconds, the kidnapping, the evidence he’d stashed on his property, the reason for Ana coming back into his life... It’d all disappeared. In a matter of minutes he’d gotten a real-life glimpse into the fantasy he’d constructed in his head. A family—his family—complete. Happy.
“That right there makes losing worth it. I’d offer to share, but I don’t want to.” Speaking around her mouthful of dough, she studied the stains across her shirt, the dish towel still in one hand, and Benning couldn’t help but follow her gaze across the long, lean muscle running the length of her body. Heat speared through him as the past rushed to meet the present. The feel of her skin against his, how he’d memorized every scar, every mole, with his hands. She hadn’t changed a whole lot over the course of the few years. If anything, Ana Sofia Ramirez had only become more beautiful, more...tempting. “Although, I’ll admit I didn’t think she’d destroy me this bad.”
“You got hustled.” He hobbled to the kitchen sink to clean the dough off his foot. Trying to focus on the raw egg stuck under his heel instead of the reaction his study of her had ripped through him, he gave in to the laugh rumbling in his chest. “That girl asked me to teach her how to shoot my rifle when she was four years old so she could help the police solve crimes. The only way I can ever get her to calm down during a temper tantrum is to promise to let her listen to an episode of a true crime podcast. She loves the idea of saving lives and catching bad guys and has better aim than anyone else I know. She’s not afraid to show it, either. Next, she’ll want me to take her to the police station to ask if she can help solve one of their cases.”
“Well, maybe I can give her a tour of TCD headquarters in Knoxville one day. You know, give her a chance to see what federal agents really do on the job.” Ana stilled, the weight of her attention pressurizing the air in his chest, but he didn’t miss the assumption there would be a one day for them. That she wouldn’t disappear from their lives after Owen came home, and his blood pressure spiked. She cleared her throat as though she’d caught herself making promises she might not be able to keep. Just as she had with Samantha Perry’s family. “You must be proud. She’s going to make a hell of an agent one day.”
“That’s her plan, and probably why she opened up to
