Silent Warrior: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read Online Free

away.
    “Did you ever get the letter I sent you?”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I got it.” And would go to his grave before admitting he still had it. He started to explain why he’d never written back, even though the note hadn’t required a response, but she spoke first.
    “I meant what I said, John.”
    “Which time? In the letter or in the hospital room?”
    She smiled. It made his chest ache.
    “Both, actually. I resented that I needed someone to push me so hard, to make me do what I knew I needed to do. But I also meant what I said to you in that letter. You were Nathan’s friend. You honored that by taking care of me through some very rough stuff you didn’t have to stick around for. I may not have liked your methods, but I never forgot what you did for me.”
    “I thought we weren’t going to talk about this,” he grumbled.
    To his further chagrin, her smile widened, reaching her eyes this time. God, she was beautiful. Inside and out.
    “I think it was better to get it out of the way,” she said. “I know it’s awkward. But you’re right, it’s been long enough now. It shouldn’t be so hard to talk about. I couldn’t go on, asking for your help again, without at least talking about how we parted last time.”
    “You said I didn’t know everything. Tell me the rest.”
    Her smile turned a bit sad, acknowledging that he’d just closed the subject.
    “I think the meeting Nathan was on his way to the day he died involved this project.” She crossed back to the table and sat down, bracing her forearms on the table.
    “Meaning what?”
    “What I’m saying is that ten years ago Nathan was working on this project and he died. Now the project surfaces, falling into my hands. And now someone wants me dead too.”

TWO
    Cali looked across the table at the man she’d asked to save her life. What had she been thinking with anyway? Certainly not with what was left of her brain.
    Ten years spent building a rock-solid, independent life should have inured her to the overwhelming effect of one John McShane. He was just a man.
    Right. And she was just a hacker.
    She’d told herself she’d exaggerated the power of his steely reserve, of his rigid, unemotional control. That she’d no longer suffer the irritation of discovering that despite his obvious faults, she’d found herself intrigued by those same traits more than once.
    As her father’s hostess, she’d held court for princes and rebels with equal ease. Surely one United States super-spy shouldn’t throw her. Surely it had been her youth and the circumstances of their initial meeting that had caused her reaction.
    A decade later she had to face the truth. She was still intrigued by him.
    Had he always been so impossibly rugged? Had his eyes always been that cold, steely gray?
    To her further dismay, his intense return scrutiny had her averting her gaze. She watched the condensation trickle down the side of her bottle. The direction of her life seemed as random as the beads of water on the glass. She hated the loss of control more than anything else. Hated that she was about to hand over what little control she had left to anyone, but in particular to this man. Once in a lifetime was enough. Never mind that she’d asked him to take control both times.
    And for whatever reason, he’d come. Again. She looked up. Beating herself up with the whys of their past, with guilt over dragging him into her messy life once again, helped no one. She was desperate. She’d figure out how to pay him back later.
    “You think his death wasn’t an accident,” he stated. “You think it’s related to what’s happening to you now?”
    “I have no concrete proof of the connection. But yes, I do,” she said. “When you came to our apartment and told me that Nathan had been killed in a car crash, it never occurred to me that it was anything other than an accident. I know you and the Blue Circle investigated it anyway and concurred with that conclusion. But someone