Hope's Wish Read online

  The safe hung open—and surprisingly, her passport sat untouched inside. As did the fine gold necklace she couldn’t believe she still owned.

  Hand shaking, she reached in and withdrew both, tucking her passport into her back pocket before fastening the chain around her neck.

  “You didn’t throw it away?”

  She started at James’s low exclamation.

  “No,” she muttered, turning to face him. “Don’t read anything into it.” Dropping her gaze, she touched the small genie’s lamp pendant once again nestled between her breasts.

  “Hope,” he murmured.

  Why hadn’t she been able to throw the damn thing away? She should have ripped it from her neck and tossed it in the Thames the night he’d left.

  She hadn’t. But she’d tried.

  She’d ridden the Tube to the station closest to the river, stomped to the edge, and unclipped the necklace. Balled her fist around it and drew her arm back behind her head, ready to lob it into the fast-moving water.

  And then lowered her arm, opened her hand, and fastened the chain back around her neck.

  He’d given it to her for her birthday only six months earlier, his smile sheepish as he told her it wasn’t expensive, but from his heart.

  It was the most precious present she’d ever been given.

  She’d walked away from the Thames, muttering about how much she hated him all the way home on the Tube. Took it off her neck and flung it in the top drawer of her bedside table.

  Took it back out and returned it to her neck.

  Occasionally she took it off and tucked it into her underwear drawer. She just couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it, no matter how much it reminded her of James every time she looked at it. In the taxi taking her to Heathrow for her flight to the US, she’d actually stopped the driver a block away from her flat, making him go back so she could get it.

  She was an idiot three years ago, she was an idiot twenty-four hours ago, and she was an idiot now for being worried whoever had trashed her room had taken it.

  During the drive to the hotel, neither had raised the issue again. The issue of what he’d done three years ago. She’d opened her mouth to do just that the second he put the Jeep Grand Cherokee into gear and drove away from Guarded Souls, but her phone had bleeped with an incoming news alert from her BBC app, about the Prime Minister. She’d read the alert, telling herself it was important, even as she accepted she was avoiding the confrontation.

  Schrodinger’s Conversation. That’s what it was. If she didn’t have the conversation with him, she wouldn’t find out the real reason he’d taken off and left her.

  Fifteen minutes of staring blankly at her phone’s screen made her realize how stupid she was being. How gutless. She’d raised her glare to him and—as if aware of her intention—he’d flicked her one of his sheepish smiles.

  No. It was a conversation she wasn’t ready for, no matter how much she thought she was. So, she’d snapped her mouth shut. She’d spent the rest of the trip pretending to check her email on her phone, scowl firmly in place, ignoring him.

  For his part, James had let out a hitching sigh, turned on the music, complained under his breath when it wasn’t what he wanted to listen to, and then settled back with a smile when the music suddenly changed to David Bowie singing “Ashes to Ashes”.

  She’d continued to glare at her phone even as she’d fought the urge to chuckle. David Bowie. James’s musical weakness. He used to say David Bowie was the one true musical genius in a world of posers and frauds. Of course finding Bowie on the radio would have sent him into his own world.

  Which made the trip here… easier. Brought back bittersweet memories of long nights making love to each other in their flat as Bowie played in the background.

  Although, now she thought about it, the entire trip had just been Bowie from that point. And when had he changed the radio station? She hadn’t seen his hand move from the steering wheel.

  “Damn you, Hastin,” she whispered, lifting her gaze back up to his. “Do you have any idea how much you hurt me? Do you?”

  “Yes.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “And if I could take away your pain…”

  “I wish I could just forget all about you, James.”

  His eyes closed at her words. Grief etched his face, as if he were struck by an invisible blow. “Please don’t say that.”

  She’d never heard him sound so wretched.

  “Why did you leave, James?”

  “I…” A wry laugh tore from him as he dragged a hand through his messy hair. “I wish I could tell you.”

  “Did I scare you off?” God. For three years, she’d promised herself if she ever saw him again, she’d never ask him that question. “Did you stop finding me attractive?”

  Pain transformed his features, and he closed his eyes. “Tahlee, the only living soul I’ve ever been attracted to is you. The only person I’ve ever wanted to be with is you. If nothing else, believe me on—”

  She destroyed the small space between them, fisted her hands in his hair and pulled his mouth to hers.

  Poured three years of longing and anguish and anger and hunger into the kiss.

  And he kissed her back.

  With a tormented groan, he kissed her back.

  It was like coming home.

  His lips moved over hers the way they used to, as if their very lives depended on the passion of the kiss. Life rushed through her. Reason for breath. It had always been this way with James. From their very first kiss. Exhilaration, lust, joy, and comfort beyond comprehension.

  She’d instigated that kiss as well… the very first… just as she had this one. Stolen it when they’d been playing darts in a pub in Wimbledon South.

  He’d been about to throw the final dart of the game, the one that would—unless he totally fluffed it—leave him the victor.

  She’d kissed him to distract him. To stop him from winning.

  A few moments later, they’d been asked to leave the pub.

  “You can’t snog like that in public,” the barman had complained when they’d come up for air at his shout. “Get a room.”

  That’s exactly what they’d done.

  She still didn’t remember how they’d made it back to her flat so quickly, but they had, and what they’d started in the pub had finished on her living room floor, their naked bodies sweaty and sticky and joined in the most carnal, natural way.

  She’d never forgotten that kiss.

  It had been the catalyst for their life together.

  This kiss, however…

  Tightening her fists in his hair, she rolled her hips, pressing her lower body closer to his. Needing to feel what she hadn’t for so long—him. His desire for her. His need.

  God, she’d missed it. Craved it.

  His hands smoothed up her back as he deepened the kiss, took control of its ferocity.

  His tongue mated with hers, demanding and giving back in equal measure. Heat flushed through her, pooling low in the pit of her belly.

  She moaned, squeezing her thighs together as the parts of her body she’d thought retired tingled into hot, impatient life.

  Raking her hands over his shoulders, she fumbled at the buttons of his shirt. She wanted more.

  She wanted the heat of his hard chest beneath her palms again. She wanted the smooth kiss of his six-pack against her fingertips again.

  She wanted the broad breadth of his back under her nails as she scored his flesh and branded him as hers once—

  No.

  Tearing her lips from his, she staggered back a step.

  What the flipping hell was she doing?

  “I can’t believe I did that.” She pressed her hand to her mouth, the moisture lingering on her lips from the kiss a mocking blow. “I can’t…”

  Shaking her head, she turned and strode for the door.

  “Hope.”

  His voice—thick with confusion and shock—flayed at her.

  Pivoting on he
r heel, she stomped back into the bowels of her suite, snatched her laptop bag from the floor, and stormed back to the door.

  “Hope.”

  “No,” she threw over her shoulder. “No, we’re not talking about this. We’re ignoring the fact that this ever happened.”

  Three years.

  Three years of getting over the bastard, telling herself it was her own stupid fault for trusting someone.

  Trust was for the weak. The foolish.

  Trust had allowed her big sister to accept a lift home from school one day with an older boy, instead of catching the DL with Tahlee like she always did. Trust had allowed Tahlee to sit at home, eight years old, waiting for Diahne to arrive, watching television, hungry but knowing she wasn’t allowed to eat anything when she was alone.

  Trust had allowed Tahlee to tell her mum and dad, at six o’clock that night when they’d gotten home from work, that Diahne would be home soon. She would. Diahne had promised it was only going to be a quick ride in a car with the boy, and she’d be home soon.

  But trust had mocked Tahlee back then. Destroyed her.

  Just as it had three years ago.

  The difference between Diahne and James, though, was she now knew James was at least alive.

  You already knew he was. For three years, you knew. Even if you cursed his name over and over and wished he was dead, you knew he was alive. Every time you looked at the necklace, you knew. You felt it in your soul. As if you were still connected to the bastard, despite him running off.

  “Can we just get to the safe house please,” she ground out.

  “I have to—”

  She spun around. “Have to what, James? Make it all better?” Had she ever been so angry?

  Yes. Three times. Once at him for leaving, once at yourself for trusting him in the first place. And once at Diahne for letting herself be—

  She shook her head. “You lost that right three years ago.”

  Something dark shimmered in his eyes, and he let out a choppy breath. “I have to do my job, Hope. So to protect you, I need to know who’s coming after you.”

  She swallowed. The soft dejection in his voice smacked her in the chest. Which was ridiculous, given what he’d done to her all those years ago.

  “Give me ten minutes,” he said. “Five, even. I just want to prowl around a bit to see if I can get any… clues.”

  Why did it sound like he’d wanted to say something else?

  “What’s happened to you?” She frowned. “The James standing here now is so different from the James I knew.”

  A wry laugh fell from him, and he rubbed at the back of his neck before scruffing his hair with both hands, head ducked, that familiar sheepish smile on his face. “Ah, Hope, I wish—” He snorted, rolling his eyes. “I wish you could know how wrong you are.”

  And with that, he turned and began inspecting the room.

  Tahlee narrowed her eyes. What was going on here?

  Doesn’t matter. You didn’t come to LA to find a lost love.

  Ha. Her journalism professor would slaughter her for such a cliched phrasing. And follow up the slaughter with a dressing-down for getting sidetracked. She was here to expose Minister Simmons’s corruption, not uncover whatever the deal was with James Hastin.

  Hell may hath no fury like a woman scorned, but this woman had to keep her focus on the matter at hand.

  Despite the little side-trip into possible US political insanity, threats to her life, and a resurrected threat to her heart.

  Ah, flipping hell, she needed—

  To kiss James again?

  “Flipping hell,” she muttered, slinging her empty, torn laptop bag onto her shoulder and dumping herself in the nearest chair.

  Resting her chin on her fist, she tracked James’s movement around her suite.

  What exactly was he looking for? And how the hell did he think he was going to find whatever it was merely by hovering a palm over things like he was?

  And what was he murmuring under his breath?

  It didn’t sound like English. Nor like any language she’d heard before, and when you were an investigative journalist, you’d pretty much heard every language on the planet.

  His background had always intrigued her. He’d passed it off one night, as they lay in bed together watching the latest Doctor Who episode, as being a mixed bag of ancestral heritage. At times, she’d swear his racial background was Middle Eastern, despite the green eyes and light brown hair. Other times, it was as if someone had written a checklist of what made the perfect hot British man, and James was the result. Occasionally, she’d detect a slight New Zealand accent, which always made her smile, and from time to time, she’d even get a vibe from him that she could never define… but it somehow made her feel more content and safer than she could fathom.

  He’d always been a bit of an enigma, but truthfully, that had been a part of his appeal. That, and the fact she’d felt like she knew him, deep in her heart, from the second she first saw him.

  Stop it. You’re romanticizing him. Don’t do that.

  Balling her fist tighter under her chin, she glared at him. “Are you actually going to pick anything up, or are you just trying to look like you know what you’re doing?”

  He tossed a grin over his shoulder. “I could be wrong, but I’m getting a strong sense of sarcasm in this room right now.”

  She grunted. Damn him, why did he have such a knack for making her want to smile?

  “Is this how you used to groom your dog clients, as well? Wave your hand over their backs, and then use that charm of yours to convince the owners they were shampooed and brushed and clipped?”

  “That’s exactly how.” He moved to the abstract painting that had been hanging above the bed when she’d first checked in. Now it was on the floor near the room’s window, broken and sorry. It was too easy to imagine the person responsible for her extreme room redecoration stomping their foot through the generic artwork in frustration when they couldn’t find what they were looking for—most likely her.

  You should be scared.

  She should. Given the state of the room, the destruction in it.

  But she wasn’t.

  And you know why, even if it pisses you off.

  She glared again at James, turning up her exasperation to one hundred. “Is there any chance of you actually doing something anytime soon?”

  He dropped into a crouch beside the painting, feathering his fingers over its splintered frame. “Hope, there are two things I want to do right now,” he said without looking at her. “One, get anything—no matter how small or insignificant—from this room about the threat to you. And two, kiss you until we’re both incapable of standing. The odds are, you’re not going to let me do one of them, so I’m going to focus on the other.”

  She swallowed. “You’re a pain in the arse.”

  “Yep.”

  He straightened from the broken painting and crossed to the bed, surveying the mess of her upended suitcase strewn all over and around it.

  “Did they take any of your clothes?” he asked over his shoulder, focus still on the bed.

  “I don’t know.” She pushed herself from the chair, hitched her laptop bag higher onto her shoulder and crossed to where he stood. “At least they didn’t take my favorite bra.”

  “I remember that bra.” He chuckled. “Was partial to it myself.”

  She laughed, even as she tried to bite it back. “I think I still have the photos of you strutting around our bedroom in it.”

  He lifted a curious eyebrow at her. “With the matching thong?”

  “With the matching thong.”

  She shouldn’t be doing this. She hated him now. Was furious with him. And yet, being with him was like slipping back into the warmth of everything she knew was right and wonderful and comfortable.

  His lips curled as he returned his attention to the bed. “Can’t see the thong. Did they take it?”

  A tight pang stabbed at her chest. Should she tell hi
m she was wearing it now? Or would that throw the whole conversation well and truly over a line it was already teetering on?

  Pulse pounding, she opened her mouth.

  And gasped when he suddenly spun to face her, stare locked on her laptop bag.

  “What—”

  “Can I have that?” he almost growled, hooking his fingers around the strap near her breast and sliding it off her shoulder.

  She blinked, an icy prickle crawling over her scalp as he grabbed the bag with both hands, knuckles white, and closed his eyes.

  What the…

  “Shite,” he muttered. “This can’t be.”

  He lifted the bag closer to his face, tilting his head to the side, as if listening to it.

  Tahlee’s stomach clenched. “Are you okay? Or are you having a stroke or something?”

  “Shhh.” His closed eyes scrunched tighter. A stillness fell over him, except for an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “This can’t…” he whispered.

  “What can’t? James?” She thumped his shoulder with a loose fist. “You’re freaking me out a bit.”

  His eyes snapped open—and she gasped again, staggering back a step.

  What the fuck? White… ?

  Oh God, his eyes are glowing white! Why are his eyes glowing—

  He blinked, his eyes green once more, a choppy laugh falling from his lips.

  Tahlee blanched.

  Once more? Don’t you mean green like they always were? How the flip would they be anything but green?

  “Sorry.” He ducked his head, handing back her laptop bag. “It’s all good. Nothing to freak out about. Bad joke on my behalf. Thought I’d lighten the mood.”

  “Lighten the…” She gaped at him.

  Green eyes regarded her. Green. Not white. Not glowing and iridescent and… and…

  Inhuman.

  Green.

  You’re losing your mind, Tahlee.

  He tossed one of his sheepish grins at her, and then motioned toward the room’s open door. “I’ve got what I need from here. Ready to go?”

  Chapter 3

  Shite.

  Shite shite shite.

  Shite.

  Gripping the Jeep’s steering wheel, James stared at the dark road. Kept his expression loose, relaxed, even as his mind raced.