Page 137 of Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games 2)
“No!” Her voice is muffled because she’s talking into my shirt. “It’s not my leg. I mean it is, it hurts like a bitch, but that’s not…that’s not…”
When she gulps in air and her shoulders start to shake, I realize she’s desperately trying to hold back tears. I gently peel her off me and cup her face in my hands. Her eyes are watering. She’s biting her lip.
“Talk to me.”
She swallows hard, blinking rapidly. Gripping my biceps, she hoarsely says, “I want you to promise you won’t call or come visit me. You need to forget about me and go on with your life.”
I stare at her, in total shock. “What?”
“I mean it. If you call, I won’t come to the phone. If you write, I’ll tear it up without reading it. I’ll refuse to see you—”
“You’re breaking up with me?” I say, astonished and so fucking hurt, it’s like my heart’s being cut out with a razor blade. “Now?”
A lone tear crests her lower lashes and tracks a slow path down her pale cheek. “Of course.”
It’s only a three letter word but I’m in so much agony, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it out. “Why?”
She looks at me like I’m the stupidest man on earth. “Because I’m not that selfish!”
We stare at each other in silence while the heart monitor goes fucking nuts. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “Tabitha. You just came out of a very long surgery. Your head isn’t working right—”
“My head is fine!”
My voice rises. “Then what the fuck are you talking about?”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then it all comes out in a blurted rush.
“I know the CIA is here, Connor, I heard the nurses talking! It was nice that they’re letting us say good-bye, I don’t know what you had to promise them to let them do that, but I know they’re going to walk in here any second and put handcuffs on me and take me away and I’ll never see you again so if you think I’m the kind of woman who would ask you to spend the next twenty years waiting for me while I rot in a federal prison somewhere then you don’t know me very well at all!”
She cuts off abruptly, breathing hard, shaking, her face bright red.
And now I understand.
I start to weakly laugh. Relief washes over me in waves.
“This is funny to you?” she asks, outraged.
I pull her toward me and kiss her, very softly, on the lips. “Sweetheart. The CIA isn’t taking you anywhere. They want to talk to you as soon as you’re up to it, but you’re not going to prison.”
She blinks a few times, falling still in my arms. She whispers, “What?”
I shake my head, kiss her again. Her lips are cold. Need to fix that. “O’Doul. He wrote your letter before he went to Miami. Emailed it to his boss, the Director of the FBI, and sent another copy to the NSA. Said any website cracking you did on the job was at his direct request. He honored your agreement.”
“But—but—I went into the NSA’s servers after…”
“Doesn’t matter. He said you were an integral part of the investigation, detailed what you’d done to help, even went so far as to recommend they bring you on as a systems security consultant. Had four agents sign as witnesses so no one could claim it had been faked. Add to that all the intel the CIA got from debriefing everyone involved about what went down… You’re clear. Although I think the NSA really wants to know how you did it.”
Her lower lip trembles. She looks at me with this amazed, disbelieving expression like…well, like she just got sprung from jail.
I grin at her. “You still gonna break up with me? ’Cause I’ve just gotten used to having you around, busting my balls. Would be a damn shame to let all that hard work you did breakin’ me in go to waste.”
Tabby drops her face into her hands and leans into my chest, whimpering.
I gather her in my arms. “Deep breaths, princess. They’re gonna think you’re having a heart attack in here.”
She whispers, “I am. I really think I am.”
I rub slow circles on her back, inhaling the scent of her hair, her skin. She smells like antiseptic, but beneath that, the warm, sweet scent that’s all her.
