Page 12 of Wyatt

That got the tiniest of small, tentative smiles. He wanted to reach out and touch the side of her mouth, capture it.

“I noticed,” she said. “How many messages did you leave?”

Oh. Those. “You…got them?”

She nodded. “But I was afraid to answer. I didn’t want…well, maybe RJ told you that—”

“Yes.” He held up his hand, glancing around. There weren’t others out here, but just saying the words—assassin,Russian general, and maybe evenconspiracy—felt like it might alert some FSB tracking system. Theywerein the former Soviet Union. “I know everything.”

Her eyes widened, and he might have been imagining it, but it seemed she had paled, her breaths shallow.

He couldn’t stop himself from putting his hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay, Coco—”

“Kat. I’m Kat now.”

He drew that in. Um,never,but he didn’t say that. “So, here’s the plan. You’re an American citizen, so you don’t need a visa to get into the country. I’ve got a flight out in a couple days. We’ll leave tomorrow with the team, go to the US Consulate in Vladivostok, tell them you lost your passport, and they’ll issue you a temporary one. Then we’ll fly out with the team and—”

“No.” She backed out of his grip. “I’m not leaving, Wyatt. I…I appreciate that you came all this way, but…I can’t leave.”

He had nothing, her words reaching in to steal his heartbeat. His breath.

His entire future, the one that still made him look into the stands in hopes she might be there, cheering for him. Waiting for him after practice.

In his world, where she belonged.

“You’re in danger here, Co—Kat.” And yeah, he was pleading, but, “Please come back to the US with me. I can keep you safe—”

Even as he said it, it sounded hollow. He wasn’t Tate the bodyguard. Or Ford the Navy Seal, or even Knox or Reuben who had their own brand of toughness.

He was just an athlete. And a cover model—yeah, that had made him feel silly, but Nick Coyote, his publicist, said it was good for his image.

Wyatt had wanted to turn all the copies face in on the newsstand.

So no, Wyatt probably couldn’t protect her. But he wanted to, and maybe that counted, right?

“You’ll be safe on the ranch” was all he could come up with.

She was shaking her head. “I…I just can’t, Wyatt. But I did bring the evidence you need to prove that RJ is innocent.” She pulled out a jump drive, a tiny USB stick, and held it out to him.

He stared at it as if it might be a bomb, his world sort of exploding.

“No—” He met her eyes. “No. I wantyou, Coco. I want—please.” And now he couldn’t stop himself—he touched her face, earnest. “Please. I haven’t…I miss you. And I—”

“You have plenty of friends,” she said, looking away, a flash of hurt in her eyes.

He frowned. Shook his head. “I don’t—”

She swiped his hand away from her. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t leave. Iwon’tleave.” She looked back at him, and a tear slid down her face.

It shattered him as it dripped off her cheek.

And he just…

Oh, no, he kissed her. Because he’d lost his head and he didn’t know what else to do to show her how he felt, so he slid his hand behind her neck, bent down, and pressed his mouth against hers.

He was desperate and pitiful, and oh, how he’d missed her. He drank her in, kissing her with so much of himself outside his body, he didn’t have the strength to rein it in.

And heaven help him, for a second, it worked. Sure, at first she froze, probably from shock, maybe anger, and if she’d fought him in the least, he would have let her go, but…

---