Free All or Nothing by Catherine Mann Page A

her in the first place knowing he would never choose to tell her about his contract work with Interpol. He’d deluded himself that he held back out of a need to protect her, but deep down he knew he’d always feared he needed the job more than he needed her. That he needed that outlet to rebel, a way to channel the part of his father that lived inside him, the part that had almost landed him in jail as a teenager.
    He’d been so damn crazy for Jayne he’d convinced himself he could make it work.
    He’d only delayed the inevitable.
    Now she was paying the price for his mistake. He resisted the urge to put his fist through a wall. Her life could be at risk because of him. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if anything happened to her.
    He scoured the cove below, every yacht and cruise ship lighting up the shoreline suddenly became suspect.
    A sound from the doorway sent him pivoting fast, his hand on the 9mm he’d strapped into a shoulder harness.
    Troy Donavan lounged in the entrance, his fedora in hand. “Whoa, hold up. Don’t shoot your body double.”
    “My what?”
    Donavan stepped out onto the balcony. “Your double. I’ll travel as you and you travel as me. If anyone manages to track either of our movements, they’ll still be led in the wrong direction.” He dropped his hat on the lounger. “Salvatore said we’re not heading out for another couple of hours. I can keep watch over Jayne while you catch a nap.”
    “I’m cool. But thanks. Insomnia has its perks.” He glanced sideways at his best friend of over seventeen years. “Did Salvatore send you here to check on me after the showdown with Jayne?”
    “He alerted me to the crap with Zhutov and the concerns for your wife. I know how I would feel in your shoes, and it’s not pretty.”
    Damn straight. He didn’t know how Donavan handled having Hillary keyed into the Interpol world. She’d even started training to actively participate in future freelance missions.
    “I have to get Jayne as far away and under the radar as possible.” How long would this nightmare last? Would she end up spending the rest of her life on the run? He wouldn’t leave her side until he knew she was safe. He’d wanted to grow old with her, but sure as hell not that way.
    “I promise you, brother, if Zhutov has so much as breathed Jayne’s name, he will be stopped. You have to believe that.”
    “After this is over, I have to let her go.” Those words were tough to say, especially now with the image of her building a life with another man. “I was wrong to think I could have her and the job.”
    “People do dangerous jobs and still have lives. You can’t expect every cop, firefighter, military person and agent not to have families. Even if we don’t get married, there are still people in our lives who are important to us. The best thing you can do for Jayne is stick to her, tight.”
    “You’re right.”
    “Then why aren’t you smiling?” Donavan clapped him on the shoulder. “Want to talk about what else is chewing you up?”
    “Not really.”
    “Fair enough.”
    And still he couldn’t stop from talking. “She just...gets to me.”
    He remembered the way she’d called him on the carpet for teasing her on the ride home tonight, giving him hell for talking about that evening they saw La Bohème together. As if he knew that would turn her inside out the same way it did him. Damn, he’d missed that spark she possessed.
    “That’s what women do. They burrow under your skin.” Donavan grinned. “Didn’t you get the memo?”
    Conrad didn’t feel one damn bit like smiling. He stared down at his clenched fist, at his own bare ring finger. “She’s seeing someone else.”
    “Damn,” Donavan growled. “That’s got to really bite. But it’s been three years since the two of you split. Did you really expect you would both stay celibate?”
    Conrad looked out over the harbor, the sea stretching as far and dark as each day he’d spent apart