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She-who-bickered would of a certainty want them shut.
He eyed the bathroom door and the floor mat in its way. He could shut that at the last minute. Never let it be said that Adrian Sinclair had more than a regular dislike for small spaces. Just don’t ever put him in a submarine.
‘Hey, Trig.’ Lena’s voice floated through the door. ‘Five things you never wanted to be. And don’t say, “Your babysitter”.’
Never wanted to be in love with my best friend’s sister, he thought darkly. Especially since she’d never once given him the slightest encouragement.
‘I never wanted to be a motor mechanic,’ he said instead.
‘Be serious.’
‘I am serious.’ He turned on the shower taps, hoping for a little pressure. Nope. Maybe if he turned the bath taps off. He shucked his clothes and dropped them on the floor. And Lena appeared in the doorway.
‘Dammit, Lena! Close quarters!’ But he didn’t reach for a towel or turn to hide his body. Most of it she’d seen before, and as for the rest...well...nothing to be ashamed of there.
Lena dropped her gaze, but not to the floor. She swallowed hard. ‘I, ah—’
‘Yes?’ he enquired silkily, half of him annoyed and half most emphatically not.
His brain thought she was objectifying him and he objected to that.
His body didn’t give a damn whether she objectified him or not.
‘I, ah—’ Finally she dragged her gaze up and over the rest of him and then, with what seemed like a whole lot of effort, looked away. ‘Sorry. Pretty sure I’ll remember what I wanted to tell you sooner or later.’
‘Size queen,’ he challenged softly.
‘Yeah, well. Who knew?’ She did the quickest about-turn he’d seen from her in a long time and headed back into the other part of the room, the part he couldn’t see. ‘I mean, I’d heard rumours... Your old girlfriends aren’t exactly discreet.’
‘No?’ He’d had girlfriends over the years—not plenty, but enough. He’d tried hard to fall for each and every one. ‘What are they?’
‘Grateful,’ she said dryly. ‘Now I know why.’
‘You really don’t,’ he felt obliged to point out, and left the bathroom door open and turned back towards the shower. ‘Who’s to say it wasn’t my winning personality?’
‘You do like to win,’ she said as he stepped beneath the spray and closed the shower door. Surely one closed door between them would be enough.
‘You keep saying that.’
‘Only because it’s true.’
All throughout their teens and beyond, he, Lena and Jared had pushed each other to be faster, cannier, more fearless. It had got them into plenty of trouble. Got them into the Secret Intelligence Service too. Jared rising through the ranks because he was a leader born, Trig and Lena rising with him because they had skills too and the suits knew the makings of a crack infiltration team when they saw one.
No space between him and Lena at all when it came to what they knew about each other. No strength or flaw left unexamined. No shortage of loyalty or love. Lena loved him like a brother and like a comrade-in-arms, and that was worth something. It was.
But sometimes she saw the reckless boy he’d once been rather than the man he was now.
Sometimes she coaxed him into competitive games he no longer had the heart to play.
He raised his voice so that she’d hear him over the spray. ‘Is there a burger on that menu?’
‘Hang on...’ She came back to the bathroom doorway, casual as you please now that a plate of frosted glass stood between her and his nakedness. ‘Yes, there’s a burger on the menu. Lamb burger on Turkish. Surprise. There’s also meatballs and potatoes, salads, green beans, and lots of pastries.’
‘Baklava?’
‘Oodles of baklava. Walnut, pistachio, cashew, pine nuts... You want yours drizzled in rose water?’
‘Rather have it in my mouth.’ He squirted shampoo in his palm and raised his hands to his head.
‘Are you posing on purpose?’
‘Are you looking on purpose?’ It seemed like a reasonable reply. ‘Because I’ve no objection. You want a closer look, all you gotta do is say.’ He reached for the shower door and smirked as Lena squeaked a protest and fled. ‘Thought you were fearless.’
‘That was before I got scarred for life. Now I’m wary. Don’t want to get scarred for life twice.’
‘Amen to that,’ he muttered, all playfulness gone as he shoved his head beneath the spray again, the better to chase away the image of Lena on her back in the mud, her guts hot and slippery against his hands while the world around them exploded. Scrub that memory from his mind.
Good if he could.
‘What kind of baklava did you want?’ asked Lena.
‘Is there a mixed plate?’
‘I can ask.’
He heard Lena ordering the food.
He tried to think about the real reason they were in Turkey. Get Lena’s eyes on Jared and Jared’s on her. Let them realise that everyone was okay and then get Lena the hell out of harm’s way before Jared could tear him a new one.
Simple plan.
Didn’t take a genius to know that the execution was going to be a bitch.
* * *
Trig emerged from the bathroom squeaky clean and somewhat calmer about sharing a hotel room with Lena. Lena had the television on and was standing to one side of it, flicking through the channels. She glanced at him, eyes wary. He thought she had relaxed a bit. Possibly because he had his clothes on.
‘Food’ll be here in an hour,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d take longer. I thought I might soak in the spa.’
Soak. Right. Lena was about to get naked and soapy not five steps from where he was standing, and he was going to ignore her and not even think about palming the bulge in his pants, not even just to rearrange it.
‘I need a walk,’ he muttered. And tried not to slam the door on his way out.
* * *
Lena sagged against the nearest wall the minute the door closed behind him. She didn’t know what to make of Trig’s moods these days—one minute teasing, short-tempered the next. That was her bailiwick, not Trig’s. Trig was the even-tempered one, rock-steady in any crisis.
Calm, even when she’d been flat on her back in the sticky grey clay of East Timor and he’d been holding her guts in place with his hands. Calm when Jared had skidded in beside him and told him to get out of the way and Trig had said no, just no, but Jared had backed off, and gone and stolen transport and got them to safety while Trig kept Lena alive.
Trig, steady as you please, as the world around her had turned cold and grey.
‘Don’t you,’ he’d said, his voice hard and implacable in her ear. ‘Fight, damn you. You always do.’
She’d fought.
She was still fighting.
Her injuries. Her reliance on others.
Her feelings for Trig and the memory of his cheek against hers and the gutted murmur of his voice when he’d thought her unconscious.
‘Stay with me, Lena. Don’t you dare go where I can’t follow.’
Closest he’d ever come to saying he had feelings for her that weren’t exactly brotherly.
Once upon a time, maybe, yeah, she’d have been all over that. All over him if he’d given her enough encouragement.
But now?
No way.
Because what could she offer him now? She who could barely hold herself together from one day to the next. She whose default setting ran more towards lashing out at people than to loving them.
And then there was the matter of her not so minor physical injuries. A body as beautiful as Trig’s deserved a beautiful body beneath it, not one like hers, all scarred and barely working. No babies from this body, and Trig knew it. He’d been there when the doctor had broken that news, only it was hardly news to Lena because given the mess her body had been in at the time she’d already figured as much.
It had been news to Trig though, and she’d plucked at a thread in the loose-woven hospital blanket and watched beneath lowered lashes as he’d dropped his head to the web of his hands and kept it there for the duration of the doctor’s explanation. No comment from him at all when he’d finally lifted his head, just a stark, shattered glance in her direction before he’d swiftly looked away.
Not pity. He didn’t do pity.
It had looked a lot like grief.
A bottle of red wine stood on the counter above the little hotel-room fridge. Lena cracked it and poured herself a generous glass full. She picked through her suitcase for a change of clothes and took those and the wine with her to the bathroom.
Water would help. Water always helped her relax and think clearly.
Find Jared. That was her goal.
Keep Lena out of trouble. She was pretty sure that was Trig’s goal.
And then, once the world was set right, she and Trig could find a new way of communicating. One that didn’t involve him being overprotective and her being defensive. One that involved more honesty and less bickering. Lena sipped at her wine and stared pensively at the slowly filling tub.
One that involved a little more wholly platonic appreciation for the person he was.
THREE
Trig returned just as their dinner arrived. He gave her a nod, tipped the man for his service and started moving dishes from the room-service cart to the little table for two over by the window.
Lena poured him a wine and another one for herself. She didn’t ask him about his walk straight away. Given the tension that had followed him into the room, she figured she might hold that totally innocuous question in reserve.
‘You taken any painkillers?’ he asked, not an unreasonable question given how much of the wine she’d drunk. What could she say? It had been a long bath.
‘Not yet. Tonight I’m rocking the red wine instead.’
‘Any particular reason why?’
‘Long day.’ You. ‘New city.’ You. Never want to be on the wrong side of you.
She used to be able to read him just by looking at him. These days she’d have better luck reading Farsi.
Trig took a seat, lifted his burger and bit into it, chewing steadily.
Lena sat opposite, picked at her spicy chicken salad and drank some more wine.
‘When are you meeting with Carter?’
‘Tomorrow at two p.m. at the Nuruosmaniye Gate of the Grand Bazaar. You want to come?’
‘I’ll watch.’
‘From afar?’
‘Not that far.’
‘Play your cards right and I might even buy you a silk scarf.’
Trig smiled. ‘Not my thing.’
‘How’s the burger?’
Trig nodded and took another hefty bite.
The burger was fine.
He looked at her salad and kept on chewing, right up until he swallowed. ‘Get your own,’ he said darkly.
Mind reader. ‘I’ll have you know that this salad’s delicious. Crisp little salad leaves and cucumber. Tasty tomato. All very healthy.’ How was she to know that she’d take one look at Trig’s burger and want something drippy too.
Trig’s sigh was well practised as he broke what was left of his burger in two and held out one half to her.
She took it with a grin. ‘My brothers aren’t nearly such soft touches.’
‘I’m not one of your brothers,’ he said, and something about the way he said it shut her up completely.
Good thing she had the burger to concentrate on. And the wine. And those two little double beds that hovered in her view no matter where she looked.
‘Adrian, is there a problem? Between you and me?’ She hurried on, never mind his frown. ‘Because we’ve been friends a long time and I know I’ve relied on you far more than I should these past couple of years. You’ve been more than patient with me, and I’m grateful, because I know damn well that I don’t deserve anyone’s patience a lot of the time. It’s just...lately I get the feeling that you’ve had enough of me. And that would be perfectly understandable. Is perfectly understandable. And if that’s the case, you need to stand back and let me take care of myself. I can, you know.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘Sure as I can be without actually having done it. I have this family who seem to think I’m fragile, you see. They baby me. They send you to handle me when they can’t. I don’t think that’s fair on you. You don’t have to do that. You have your own life to live.’
He thought on that, right through what was left of his burger, and then he drained his wine and turned his attention to the baklava.
‘Tell me why I’m here,’ he said finally.
That was easy. ‘You’re the family-appointed babysitter, sent to keep me out of trouble.’
‘That’s one reason. But it’s not the main one.’
‘Loyalty to Jared.’
‘Has nothing to do with it.’
‘You have a hankering for baklava?’
‘Not enough to travel halfway round the world for it.’ Trig eyed her steadily and no matter how much Lena ached to look away, she couldn’t. She couldn’t find her breath either.
‘You’re well enough to go chasing after Jared,’ he said finally. ‘I figure you’re well enough to hear me out. Not going to jump you, Lena. Nothing you don’t want. But you need to know that I’m here because I want to be here. With you. Because there’s pretty much nowhere else I’d rather be than with you. You need to know that I have feelings for you that are in no way brotherly. You need to know that I both love and hate it when you treat me like family.’
He took a deep breath. ‘You also need to know what you do to me when you book us into a hotel as husband and wife. Because it gives me ideas.’
She didn’t understand. He’d peppered her with too much information and not enough time to process any of it. ‘I— Pardon?’
‘I want you.’
‘You—do?’
He looked at her as if she were a little bit dim. ‘Yes.’
‘But...you can’t.’
‘Pretty sure I can.’
‘I’m broken.’
‘Nah, just banged up.’
‘I’m me.’
‘Yes.’ He was looking at her as if she were minus a few brain cells again. He was just so...calm.
And she wasn’t. Somehow she had to bring this farce of a conversation under control. ‘How’s the baklava?’
‘Tastes like dust.’
‘More wine?’ She poured him some anyway, whether he wanted it or not, and maybe that wasn’t such a good idea because he drained it in one long swallow. ‘You need to give me some time with this.’
‘Little hint for you, Lena: this doesn’t require much thinking. We’ve known each other a long time. I’ve been trying to impress you since primary school. You’re either impressed or you’re not. You either want me or you don’t.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘I saw your body earlier.’ She didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say. ‘It’s perfect.’
‘It’s skin.’
‘It’s still perfect.’
‘Still just skin. You think I can’t see beneath yours?’ He eyed her steadily. ‘You have flaws. So do I. No one’s going into this blind.’
‘Look at me, Adrian. Think of all the things you can do that I can’t do any more. I’d hold you back and you’d come to hate me for it. I’d come to hate me for it. You’d have to be blind to want this.’
‘I’m not blind,’ he said grimly. ‘This can work—you and me. You just have to want it to.’ He sat back in his chair and pushed a hand through his dark shaggy curls. ‘This isn’t going well, is it? You don’t think of me in that way at all.’
‘I didn’t say that! Don’t put words in my mouth. God.’ Trust her to push him away when she didn’t mean to. She just didn’t know how to not push him away now that he wanted to get closer. ‘You’re important to me, Adrian. You occupy a huge part of my life and always have done. Aren’t you scared that if this doesn’t work out, we’ll lose everything else we do have?’
‘Scared is watching you slide into unconsciousness for the sixth time in as many hours. Scared is thinking you’re going to die in my arms. This doesn’t even rate a mention on the fear scale.’
‘Speak for yourself. I’m terrified here.’ Lena reached over and circled his wrist with her fingers as best she could, one fingertip to his pulse point and her heart beating a rapid tattoo. His pulse skittered all over the place too. ‘You’re not that calm.’
‘Could be I’m a little nervous. Doesn’t mean I haven’t thought it through,’ he said stubbornly. He withdrew his hand from beneath her fingers and headed for the bedside phone. He picked it up, pressed a button and waited.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You said you needed some time with this. I’m giving you some.’ He turned his head into the phone a little. ‘This is Adrian Sinclair. I’m going to need a second room. King bed this time.’ He listened a moment. ‘No, it doesn’t have to be connected to this one.’ He waited another moment. ‘Thanks.’
He put the phone down. ‘A porter will be here for my bag in a few minutes.’
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
He didn’t have to repack his bag. His stuff was good to go. She didn’t want him to go. ‘Adrian, I—’
‘See you for breakfast, yeah?’
Hell. ‘Yeah.’ She tried again. ‘It wasn’t a no. I haven’t said no to anything you’ve put forward. I have thought of you like that. From time to time. I’m female. You’re you. Who wouldn’t?’
She thought she saw a glimmer of a smile.
‘But think about it, Adrian. Are you sure this is what you want? Because I really don’t think you have thought this through.’
He frowned down at her, and then he leaned down and gently brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth. His lips were soft and warm. Lena felt her eyes flutter closed.
He drew back slowly and she wondered when his eyes had got so dark and hungry.
‘I’ve thought it through. You need to do the same.’
He picked up his bag; he walked to the door.
And it clicked shut behind him.
* * *
As far as declarations of intent were concerned, that one could have gone better, decided Trig as he headed for the lifts. Lena had never handled romance well. In her teens she’d been too forward with boys, too fearless, too competitive, and she’d sent them running. Later on she’d got the hang of not scaring away potential suitors—she’d even taken a few of them to her bed, but for some reason known only to her none of them had ever measured up. Not in her eyes.
Not in Trig’s or Jared’s eyes either.
So she’d had standards that had suited them all.
Standards based around her father, the highly successful international banker. Around Damon, adrenaline junkie and hacker extraordinaire. Around Jared, who feared nothing and regularly achieved the impossible.
Standards that made her picky, and then, when she did break things off with the latest but not quite greatest, she’d start second-guessing herself and getting all despondent because the jerk she’d just let go had told her she wasn’t feminine enough or that she needed to soften up a bit before any man would take her seriously. Sour grapes, a parting shot, but Lena had never seen it that way.
She’d mope for a few days and then Jared would tell her he was going skydiving on Friday and that he’d saved her a chute.
She’d try and be softer with other people for a bit and then Trig would turn up with his lightest kite-boarding rig, and there’d be a thirty-knot cross-shore wind blowing and he’d eyeball the conditions and they’d barely be manageable and he’d ask if she wanted to go break something.
The answer to that being, ‘Hell, yes.’ Always yes.
Until she’d got shot and everything had changed for all of them.
These days no one challenged Lena to push harder or go faster, even though she still pushed herself.
These days he looked at her with concern in his eyes; he knew he did. And she looked at him and told him to go away.
Rough couple of years.
But things were getting better now. Lena was getting better now and together they could find a new way of doing things and of being with each other if only she’d try.
The lift doors opened. A uniformed boy gave him an appraising stare. ‘Mr Sinclair?’
Trig nodded.
‘Let me take your luggage.’ If the boy wondered why Mr Sinclair needed to change rooms, he was too discreet to ask. ‘Room 406 for you, Mr Sinclair. I have your entry cards here.’
Trig stepped into the lift.
He just had to convince her to try.
FOUR
Trig woke to the sound of morning prayer at a nearby mosque. His bed had been big enough but his dreams had been chaotic. Loss, always loss. Lena walking away from him because he’d asked too much of her. Lena disappearing into the gluggy grey mud of East Timor. Slipping away from him, one way or another, with Trig powerless to prevent any of it.
The prayer song was hypnotic.
Trig closed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair and sent up a prayer of his own that this day would be a good day and that Lena wouldn’t be freaking out about last night’s declaration of undying devotion—or whatever it was that he’d declared.
She wouldn’t run; she was smarter than that.
But she might feel uneasy with him and he wouldn’t put it past her to have argued herself around to thinking that she wasn’t good enough for him or that he’d be better off without her. For someone so magnificent, she had the lowest sense of self-worth he’d ever encountered.
She’d told him once that it came of being an ordinary person in an extraordinary family. She’d never seen herself as extraordinary too.
He reached for the hotel phone, tapped in the other room number and waited.
She wouldn’t have done a runner. If nothing else, she knew he’d track her through Amos Carter if he had to. She might reschedule but she wouldn’t blow that meeting off. Her need to find Jared was too strong.
‘What?’ she finally mumbled, once she’d picked up.
‘You want to have breakfast at this little café I saw on my walk last night?’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Five-seventeen.’
Lena groaned, a sleepy, sexy sound that had him shifting restlessly. ‘You want to have breakfast now?’
‘I’m starving.’
‘You’re always starving.’
‘Their breakfast special is lentil soup, a loaf of sourdough and a big chunk of cheese.’
‘Go get ’em, Tiger. Bring me back a cup of tea,’ she muttered and hung up.
Trig grinned and shoved the sheet aside, suddenly hungry to seize the day. She hadn’t said no and she hadn’t been wary. She hadn’t said, ‘Darling, come make me yours,’ yet either, but that was pure fantasy anyway.
He got breakfast.
He went walking and found the gate where Lena would meet up with Carter and set about exploring exit options and observation points. By the time the seven a.m. prayer session sounded, he was back at the hotel and knocking on Lena’s door, takeaway tea in one hand and a tub of yoghurt and honey in the other.
‘Breakfast,’ he said when she opened the door, and she let him through and closed the door behind him and yawned.
She looked like a waif. A little too slender, a halo of tangled black hair and those startling bluish-grey eyes, smudged with black lashes. A modelling agency had offered to contract her once after seeing her on the beach. Surfing sponsors had come after her too. She’d turned down both offers with startled surprise. Couldn’t see what they’d seen in her. Didn’t want what they’d offered anyway.
‘Is this the courting you?’ she wanted to know as he set the tea and yoghurt on the table.
‘This is the impatient me,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen this me before. I’m waiting to see if you want me to court you before I start that.’
‘My mistake.’ Lena smirked and carefully removed the lid on her tea. ‘What’s got you all pepped up?’
‘You mean besides wanting to know if you’ll go out with me?’
‘Yeah, besides that. Because I’m not awake enough yet to make a definitive decision on that. I couldn’t think clearly enough to make a decision on it last night either.’
‘Red wine does that.’
‘True.’ She sipped at her tea and let out an appreciative sigh. ‘So you’re happy this morning because...’
‘You have got to see this bazaar.’