He saw surprise, followed by keen interest, followed by skepticism. The same things he felt.

Gabe tipped up his beer, then, squinting against the charcoal smoke, went to work flipping the steaks. “It’s legit.” He glanced over his shoulder and chuckled at their slack-jawed expressions. “You guys need some privacy to talk it over?”

“What I need is another beer.” Looking like he’d been hit with a stun gun, Taggart walked over to the cooler.

“Based out of Langley?” Cooper considered Gabe through deeply veed brows.

“Yup.”

“Complete autonomy?” Mike wanted to make certain he’d heard him right.

“Autonomy is a relative term,” Gabe said. “So, officially? No. Unofficially? Damn straight. Same ground rules as the BOIs play by. Which means you’ll call your own shots.”

Mike looked at Taggart’s beer with envy. He missed the taste of it sometimes. Not as much as he missed the benefits of a clear head, though. He needed all of his brain cells functioning right now. One of the reasons why was inside the Joneses’ apartment with Gabe’s wife, Jenna, who’d returned from Florida yesterday.

Eva had been too quiet since their meeting with Peter Davis yesterday afternoon. He didn’t know what was going on in her head. Didn’t know where they went from here. It was driving him a little crazy.

Then there’d been the conference call from the Secretary of Defense himself in Gabe’s office yesterday afternoon. A formal apology to all three of them. Notification that the paperwork was already in the tube for revocation of their less than honorable discharges, and full reinstatement of their honorable service status. Recommendations for Purple Hearts and silver stars for gallantry in action.

He was still processing his reaction to the accolades and the call. Still deciding if he was pissed or proud. If he felt redeemed or played. Eight years. A big chunk of his life, gone. It was also a long time to be angry. On that, all three agreed. Just as they agreed it would take more than a day to shed the resentment and get on with their lives.

They’d talked way into the night, just he and Taggart and Cooper. Talked about the call. Talked about what they’d pulled off at Squaw Valley. Straight-up honest talk about time they’d lost. About the lives they’d been living. About the would have beens and should have beens, and finally about the futility of looking back.

And now… this very now, Gabe was offering them a future.

“Just for clarity, shoot it by me one more time,” Mike said. “I want to make certain I didn’t doze off there for a minute and dream half of what you said. And don’t burn that steak. That one’s mine.”

“You let me worry about the meat. You just think about this. Short and sweet, DOD is looking to beef up their nontraditional covert-ops units. BOI was the first one brought on board. Sec Def likes our results. Now he wants the three of you to join the mix—a companion unit. Get away from me with that garlic salt,” he warned when Cooper moved in with the shaker.

“Bottom line,” Gabe continued, “you’d be signing on to fight the bad guys. Sanctioned by DOD, but you’ll run your ops on your terms. Not by committee.”

Mike scratched his jaw. “All because we got screwed over eight years ago?”

“No. Because of what the One-Eyed Jacks accomplished. Because you were damn good at what you did. Because you still are. And because we need more good men like you.”

• • •

“What do you think they’re talking about out there?” Jenna asked.

Eva glanced at the woman she’d decided was not only the queen of the multitaskers, but someone she wanted to get to know better. Just back from West Palm Beach and wearing a body-hugging, neon pink tank top and black biker shorts, Jenna balanced little Ali on her hip and stirred a gorgonzola sauce that would garnish the steaks Gabe was grilling outside on the terrace. “Best guess? Boobs, beer, and bullshit.”

Jenna laughed. “I can see why Gabe likes you.”

“I like him, too,” Eva conceded. Gabe was one of the good ones.

“How did the apartment hunting go today?”

“Not great,” Eva admitted as she sliced Roma tomatoes and tossed them into a mixed-green salad. She’d loved her old apartment, but it would be weeks, possibly months before the fire damage would be repaired, and she didn’t think she wanted to return there anyway. She would think about Brewster every time she let herself inside. “But I’m sure I’ll find something.”

Eva had liked Jenna the moment she’d met her yesterday, after the sit-down she and Mike had with Peter Davis. The pretty redhead was a straight shooter, warm and friendly, and held her own in the company of tough men who had a tendency to want to protect their women.

“So—how big does this apartment need to be?”

Eva glanced at Jenna sideways. Okay. Maybe she wasn’t such a straight shooter after all. “Did you mean to ask me if Mike’s moving in?”

Jenna got a guilty look on her face. “Well, I was trying not to, but obviously I should stick to what I know since I bungled that big-time.”

Eva smiled. “It’s okay. And honestly, I don’t know how big it needs to be.”

“Because you don’t know if you want him to move in? Or because you don’t know if he wants to?”

She glanced toward the terrace where the men were all standing around the grill, most likely offering Gabe unwanted advice on the best way to charcoal a steak. “A little of both, I guess.”

Jenna kissed Ali on the cheek, then set her down on the floor with two wooden spoons and a pie tin. Grinning widely at her mother, the toddler started beating on the tin with gusto.

“Since I’ve pretty much walked in those same shoes,” Jenna said, smiling down at her little daughter, “the best advice I can give you is go with your heart. Advice you can feel free to ignore, by the way. I’m not usually this interfering. Can we blame it on hormones?”

Again Eva smiled. “It’s okay. Frankly, it’s nice to be able to talk to someone about it.” Someone other than Mike… who hadn’t been doing a lot of talking since they’d gotten back to D.C.

“I like Mike,” Jenna said decisively, as if she were talking about fruit or a soft drink. “Do you like Mike?”

That one threw her. “Is that a trick question?”

Jenna laughed. “No… it’s just… these guys are so intense, you know? And so present. They’re gorgeous, tough, intelligent, a lot driven, a little broken. Sometimes it’s difficult to see past the sensory overload and cut to the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is: Do you like him?”

Eva glanced out the terrace door again and stared at Mike—at that stunning cosmic union of muscle and bone and brain and brawn. At that beautiful man who had been so broken, who would always be a little broken, and was all the more beautiful because of it—even covered in bruises.

Love him? Yes. And that had been a tough admission to make. Adore him? Absolutely. Want to heal him? More than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

But did she like him?

A very astute question.

Jenna was right. She needed to figure this out. Could she step back, divorce who he was from how he looked and what he did, and like him?

How could she answer that? She’d known him all of seven days. Seven intense, wild, dangerous days that were hardly a traditional getting-to-know-you experience.

And she’d loved another man once. A gorgeous, driven and, she’d recently discovered, broken man. A man she’d never known well enough to like, but had married anyway.

Look how that had played out.

Then there was the other side to that question: Did he like her?

God, what was she, thirteen? This was so junior high school.

But she’d sensed a change in him. Now that the danger and adrenaline rush was behind them, maybe he was having second thoughts. Maybe he was running back-out scenarios in his mind. They’d been back in D.C. two days and he’d spent most of that time with the guys—time he’d needed to spend. Time she was glad he had with them, and she’d been busy, too. But at night, when they were finally alone, they still didn’t talk. They made love. Hot, intense, needy love, like each time was the last time.

“When this is over, we will figure this out and we will finish it.”

Was that what he’d meant on that gravel road, just before they’d driven into the UWD compound? When it was over, they’d be finished?

“You okay over there?” Jenna asked.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling to minimize the concern in Jenna’s eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

I just don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

39

Mike reached around Eva and flashed the key card over the lock on their hotel room door. She’d been quiet on the ride back from Gabe and Jenna’s. She was still quiet. And it scared the ever-loving crap out of him.

He shoved open the door and let her walk in ahead of him.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

That’s all she said as she walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Not, Plenty of room in the shower for two. Not, I’ll wash your back if you’ll wash mine. Wink wink.

“Sure. Go ahead,” he said to the empty room. “I’ll just be out here beating my head against the wall, wondering if ‘I’m going to take a shower’ is some kind of code for ‘It’s been fun and it’s been real, but now it’s time to move on.’ ”

Then he tried to convince himself that the click of the lock on that bathroom door wasn’t symbolic.

Rousing himself from his stupor, he walked across the room and tossed the room key on the bedside table, along with the keys to the rented SUV. Then he toed off the sandals she’d bought him, stripped off the rain-forest shirt, and flopped down on his back on the bed.

And stared at the ceiling. Feeling gutless and panicked and scared.

Yeah. Scared. He’d never been so fucking scared.

There were times in a man’s life when he had to admit he was in over his head. Afghanistan had been one of those times. When he’d laid in that trench with Cooper and Taggart, with the heat from his burning Black Hawk turning the night into an inferno and his buddies lying dead all around him, he’d known that life as he’d known it was over. But he’d survived.

He’d survived a military tribunal that had twisted lies around the truth and destroyed his career before his very eyes. He’d survived assholes like Lawson and Brewster who wanted him dead.

But that kind of fear he knew how to handle. Don’t let ’em see you sweat. Don’t let ’em know they’ve got you by the short hairs.

That kind of fear he knew he could survive.

But this… whatever he was facing with Eva… he didn’t have a clue. Not one freaking clue how to come out of it in one solid piece.

Not if he lost her. Hell, he’d just found her.

Now she was pulling away.

He couldn’t let that happen. But his old standby bag of tricks wasn’t going to help him. He couldn’t laugh. Couldn’t crack jokes. Couldn’t swear or shoot his way out of this one. He simply had to face the fire.

He needed a cigarette.

He needed a drink.

Hell—he needed a game plan.

Lucky for him, one popped into his head.

He bolted up off the bed before he could think about the wisdom or lack of it, stomped over to the locked bathroom door, gave it a hard glare, then hauled back and kicked it off its hinges.

Eva screamed and peered around the white shower curtain.