Sweet Seduction Read online

  “I need to talk to you, Macon.” Tears shone in Ally’s eyes and she had both hands on his arms, entreating him.

  God, when she cried it was like someone kicked him in the gut. “It’s going to be fine. Tell me what you need to say.” He glared at his big brother. “And you should stay out of it, Adam. I’m grateful, truly grateful for everything you’ve done, but if you’ve pulled up dirt on my girlfriend, you’ve gone too far. She’s already told me about her father. I know he’s in prison.”

  Macon should have told Adam. He should have known that Adam would run some kind of check on Ally. But her father’s crimes weren’t her fault. Not by a long shot. Her childhood had been a chaotic shit storm, but she’d come out of it beautifully.

  Adam frowned. “I didn’t run a check on Ally. I told you. Sean hired her and that was good enough for me. You did ask me to find out everything I could about Sarah Rowe. Should I tell him or would you like to?”

  Adam’s last question had been directed at Ally.

  Macon’s whole body went cold despite the relative warmth of the early evening. He did know a Sarah now that he thought about it. Sarah Rowe had been intent on talking to him. She’d told him in one e-mail that she would get to the bottom of her brother’s death no matter what it would cost her.

  Would she get in bed with the enemy if it meant finding the truth?

  He did the math in his head and quickly realized his Ally was the right age to be Ronnie’s sister. She even came from the right part of the world, if she hadn’t lied about it.

  He slowly let go of her hand and turned to face the woman he loved, wondering if he even knew her name. “Tell me it isn’t true.”

  It was starting to get dark, but he could plainly see her face in the early evening light. The last vestiges of sunlight swept across her hair, illuminating the strands. Her hair normally was a rich brown, but the sunset showed the blonde and red that mixed in. She really was a luscious woman. Was she a liar, too?

  Red rimmed her eyes. “I can explain.”

  There was no explanation. None that he would accept, but he couldn’t seem to make himself move. It was a little like after he’d lost his leg. He’d tried to make it move, his brain sending messages to a limb that was no longer there. He stood there trying to process the fact that he’d built a whole world around something that didn’t exist, that had never really existed. “Ally” had been a character she’d been playing, a construct built to get close to the target. That’s what he was. He wasn’t a boyfriend or a fiancé to her. He was the target.

  “I’d like to hear an explanation,” Adam said, his voice cutting through the dreadfully heavy silence. “Macon asked me to locate Private First Class Rowe’s family. I could only come up with his mother, Carla, who died a few months back. When I dug deeper, I discovered a woman named Sarah Allyson Jones had been living with her at the time of her death. Imagine my surprise when I got your records. It might have been better if you’d at least tried. Next time dye your hair or change up your look.”

  “I wasn’t trying to hide,” she said. She took a step toward Macon.

  He nearly tripped trying to get away from her. He couldn’t let her touch him. If she touched him, he would melt like butter. He wouldn’t give a damn that she’d lied. He’d tell himself anything so he could keep her. He’d already made a damn fool of himself. What would a gorgeous girl like Allyson want with his pathetic ass?

  Sarah. Her name was Sarah.

  She stepped back, her face pale. Her eyes wouldn’t quite meet his. “You wouldn’t answer me. After Ronnie died, my foster mom went a little crazy. She didn’t believe the reports on his death. She said Ronnie would never have taken off his helmet or his body armor. He wouldn’t have not been wearing it.”

  No. They were right about that. Ronnie had religiously worn his body armor and his helmet when they were in the field. He’d been wearing it when the Humvee had exploded and the world had gone to shit. It was only after the firefight that they’d been left alone with the sun. Ronnie hadn’t been the only one who struggled to survive the intense heat. He could almost feel it now.

  He could definitely feel the same hollowness he’d felt that day. He’d looked down and realized he couldn’t save himself. He’d been pinned down by the Humvee, his right leg caught. He’d known even if he’d managed to lift the heavy piece off of him, he’d bleed out. The medic had taken one look at him and put his hands up in defeat. The only thing stopping the bleed was the damn metal deep in his thigh.

  The whole day was chaos. A few moments after proclaiming Macon would have to wait, the medic—an older man named Johnson—had been shot right through the forehead.

  Macon had lain near Johnson’s dead body for nearly three days.

  He looked at Allyson with new eyes. She’d done a lot for the truth. “I should have answered your calls.”

  “Macon, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  He calmed. There would be time for anger later, but right now all he could manage was a cold resignation. She’d likely thought he’d left her no other recourse. “I wasn’t sure what to tell you.”

  “I know you weren’t involved,” she said quickly. “At the time, we didn’t understand the reports and my mom was so sick. She was my foster mom, but I called her Mom. She and Ronnie were my family.”

  And she was loyal to them. It was a good thing to be. He couldn’t compete with her family. “You’re wrong, unfortunately. I’m the reason he’s dead.”

  “You are not, Macon,” his brother said fiercely.

  Macon kind of wished his brother wasn’t here to witness this new humiliation, but he deserved it. He’d been a shit to his brother most of his life. He’d chosen the wrong people to believe in. He still did since he’d really believed he had a chance with Ally. Elise had only cared about his father’s money. No woman had ever loved him for who he was.

  Who was he, anyway? The serious soldier or the pastry chef? The man who’d thrown his brother under the bus because his wife wanted him to or the man who would stand by his brother no matter what?

  He wanted to be the man Ally had fallen for. The trouble was Ally didn’t exist. The very least he could give her was the truth. She would know what kind of man he was then and she could be satisfied.

  “We were out on an assignment. I don’t even know everything we were supposed to do. We were going to be told when we got where we were going. We were soldiers. We followed orders. Even as an officer, I was trained to follow the orders of my superiors. They wanted it quiet, I would be quiet. We were meeting someone in a small village outside the desert but to get there we had to go through Taliban territory, hence the quiet. We were a small team. They thought smaller was better. I suspect we were picking up a CIA operative, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Macon, you don’t have to,” Ally said.

  He felt his eyes harden. She was still playing games with him. “Oh, I think I do. I don’t want you to have wasted your time.”

  She shook her head, tears streaming. “Please, Macon.”

  “Let him get it out, Ally.” Adam was quiet, as though he knew how close to the edge Macon was. “He needs to tell this story. You haven’t told it to anyone, right?”

  “Not even Kai.”

  “Then don’t,” Ally said through her tears.

  He turned to her. “You came here for this story. You fucked me to get this story. Oh, sweetheart, you’re going to get the truth.”

  “Macon, maybe we should call Kai. We could go to his place and talk about this as a family.” Adam seemed awfully reasonable now.

  “She’s not my family.” And she never would be. “I’m going to give her the information she needs and then we can be done.”

  “I don’t want that,” Ally said, pleading.

  “I don’t want to have been lied to for weeks. I guess we can’t always get what we want. You want to know what happened to your brother? Shit happened. It happened to all of us. We were deep in the desert when we realized we had a low
tire. Rowe and I got out and patched it. The driver liked to play pranks. Asshole kid. He pulled away when we tried to get back in. It was a joke. I believe I threatened to kill the little fucker if he did it again. Which he did. That was when he hit an IED. Blew the fuck out of us. I got caught under a heavy piece of the vehicle. I was pinned down. A couple of us were. That’s when they showed up. Taliban. They started to pick us off. The stupid piece that took my leg provided cover for me. Same for Rowe. He was pinned down next to me, but it was both his legs. At some point they decided to come and do some up-close fighting. There were only three of them. Two of them were kids. I killed a kid. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen. I shot him in the back before he could take out Kellison. Didn’t matter. The other kid got him. Rowe and I took out the other two despite the fact that we couldn’t walk, couldn’t move. We could still shoot.”

  “Macon,” Ally began.

  Adam held up a hand. “Don’t. He needs to do this.”

  He ignored them both. He wanted to get it all over with. He wanted to walk away. His first instinct was to leave, but he was going to fight that. His brother hadn’t done anything wrong. He could at least still have his brother in his life. But no Ally.

  “It got quiet after that. Really quiet. Rowe and I were the only ones left alive. We did what we were trained to do. We took stock of what we had. Neither one of us could move. I managed to get a tourniquet around my leg, but I couldn’t move the Humvee. We had a couple of energy bars and one bottle of water between us. We rationed it, but there wasn’t much left after a day and a half. We knew there was more. I could even see a bottle of it, but I couldn’t get to it. At one point I tried to use my knife. I tried to saw my own damn leg off so I could get to it, but I kept passing out.”

  Ally was weeping freely now, but he was strangely numb. He didn’t even want to hold her. It was all bullshit. She was crying for her brother. He thought about all the times he’d left her alone in his house. Had she searched his computer, his phone, his paperwork? She wouldn’t have found anything. She hadn’t found anything or she likely would have hit the road by now.

  “On the second day we realized we had no idea if anyone at all was coming. Our mission had been secretive.” His stomach rolled as he thought about some of the things he wasn’t saying. He didn’t mention that the vultures had shown up. They’d been smaller than American vultures, but no less hungry. He’d tried to get them off his teammates, but he’d been useless. He’d sat back and waited to die. “If the Agency was involved, we could have been written off. We had no idea. We were dumb and utterly at the mercy of the elements. Helpless. I’d never thought of myself that way before. I was completely helpless and I started to believe that dehydration would get us before anyone would think to look for us. If they looked for us.”

  He’d wondered if anyone would even care that he was gone. Elise would take his insurance and buy a better husband. He didn’t have kids. He’d cut off ties with the one brother who might have given a shit.

  “He talked about you.” If he was going to tell the truth, he was going to tell all of it. “He loved you. He said you saved him when he was a dumb kid getting the shit kicked out of him in high school. He never once mentioned you weren’t his blood. You were his sister and he loved you.”

  “I loved him, too.”

  That was obvious. “We knew the water wouldn’t keep us alive for long. I like to think that he thought he was in worse shape, that he thought he was doing the right thing.”

  Her hand covered her mouth as she choked down a sob. She’d obviously figured out the secret he’d kept, but he had to say it.

  “During the second night, Private First Class Rowe put his service pistol to his head and he pulled the trigger.” He could still hear that sound. He’d come to, his own gun in hand, thinking it was all over. Another group of Taliban had found them. He’d been surprised at how little it scared him. He was ready to fight because it was what he did, but he wasn’t sure he really cared. There was nothing in his life worth fighting for.

  And then he’d realized what had happened.

  “I ran out of water the next day. The chopper came for me that night. I don’t know if we could have survived or not, but I think he made a triage choice. I think he decided I had a better shot without him.”

  “Or the pain got to be too much for him,” Adam said.

  Macon shook his head. “We were numb by then. At least I was. He’d said something about making the right choices at the right times. We were talking about religion. It’s funny what you talk about when you’re two men dying in a desert. That was what religion meant to him. The right choices. I sometimes think I should have done it. I should have pulled that trigger and given him the shot at living. He had more to live for.”

  He was numb now, as oddly unfeeling as he’d been back then. Somehow Ally’s tears couldn’t seem to reach him. It was like discovering her lies had pulled the soft part of him out and left him gutted, hollow and only animated by the survival instinct.

  Had he recently stood in the middle of Top and toasted his engagement to Ronnie’s sister? How long would she have played it out? She certainly couldn’t have meant to go through with the wedding. Did she want revenge? If she did, she’d gotten a good one because he was broken and wasn’t sure he would be fixed again. He’d thought Elise’s betrayal had hurt? It was nothing like this. He couldn’t even muster real anger.

  “Why didn’t you tell the Army?” Ally’s back was against the wall as though she needed it or she’d fall. “None of that was in the report. That was why Mom was so upset. She knew something was off with that report. She went a little crazy after Ronnie died. She was sick and so lost. She grabbed on to that report. If she’d known…”

  “She wouldn’t have received death benefits,” Adam finished for her. “Private First Class Rowe received the regular hundred thousand for dying in the line of duty, but he’d maxed out his SGLI.”

  “We all do,” Macon said. This conversation was coming to a close and it couldn’t be soon enough for him. “It doesn’t pay in the case of suicide—not for as short a time as he’d been in. I often wonder if he knew that. He’d only had that policy for eighteen months. He sacrificed himself, but they would have seen it as suicide. When the extraction unit came for me, they covered it up. They knew why he’d done it. It was easy to see. No one wanted his family to suffer. You deserved the money and we weren’t going to allow some paper pusher to make that decision. Not that it helped. How did you end up living in your car? You should have had half a million.”

  She covered her mouth again and sobbed. The sound made his spine straighten. He wasn’t going to hold her. No matter how much his instinct told him to. His instincts sucked or he would have figured out her game before now.

  Adam had softened. He moved to her side and Macon was a little grateful that someone could be there for her. “Your mother was in an assisted living facility, wasn’t she?”

  She nodded. “Medicare wouldn’t pay because she suddenly had too much money. I didn’t know what else to do. She needed the care.”

  Macon laughed, the sound bitter as hell even to his own ears. “The facility ate through it until Medicare took over. What a fucking joke. He died for his country and his mother got eaten alive by it. Nice. Well, that explains why you’re broke.”

  He couldn’t kick her out. Not if the money was really gone. He owed it to Ronnie. They hadn’t been the best of friends, but they’d worked together and they’d shared something very few people ever did.

  It struck him again that Ronnie had been the one who should have survived. The half a million would have thrilled Elise, and his father would have been infinitely prouder of him if he’d died in combat. Another Miles hero to put on the family wall. If he’d been the one to die, Allyson wouldn’t be weeping like she was never going to stop.

  “Adam, could I have a moment alone with her?”

  His brother frowned. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea. Macon
, I got mad. I thought she was sending that PI after you to hurt you, but I think I misjudged her. I didn’t handle this well. I really think we should all go home and cool off and talk about this.”

  Ally shook her head. “The first week I had a little money, I rehired the PI who had worked for my mom. He was supposed to ask a few questions. I haven’t paid him anything since. I didn’t intend to ever again.”

  “I need a moment alone with Allyson,” he said in his firmest voice.

  “Don’t do anything you’re going to regret,” his brother said as he stepped back into the restaurant.

  And left him alone with the only woman he’d ever really loved. Hell, he hadn’t even understood what the word meant until she’d showed up. Too bad it had been one sided. “I think you should stay in the guesthouse until you have enough money for a decent apartment.”

  The desolation in her eyes damn near killed him. “But you won’t be there, will you?”

  “No. My brother has a guest room. I’ll stay there. I’ll head home with him and be out of your way in an hour or so.” They wouldn’t have to see much of each other. Even at work. She was in the front of the house and he was in the back. He could come in early and get most of what he needed to done. He could leave at close or right before.

  Or he could go home. He could accept his place. He wouldn’t accept Elise. Nothing could make him do that, but he could go home. Once his father understood no reporter was coming for him to trash the family name, he would likely take him back and the money would open up again. He could shuffle his way numbly through life. He would have to work for his father, of course. It wouldn’t matter.

  “Macon, please listen to me,” she said.

  He held out a hand. “I’m not angry. I understand why you did it. I should have spoken to you. It was hard to do it, but I owed it to you and your mother. I failed. I wish you well, Allyson.”

  He started to go.

  “Please talk to me. Please don’t leave me,” she pleaded.