More Than a Mission - Caridad Pineiro [86]
A stain of color came to her cheeks at his words. “You bugged my restaurant? What about my house? Did people see what—?”
“No, they didn’t. Dani jammed the signal. I’m sorry. It was what we had to do to catch—”
She silenced him with a tense wave of her hand. “Don’t. Dani said it wasn’t what we thought. That’s what I want to believe.”
Given what he had heard from person after person during the memorial service, he could understand why she wanted to hold onto that belief. So many people couldn’t be wrong. It made him wonder yet again what Dani had meant when she had said she’d been doing a job. That it hadn’t been what it seemed.
“I understand, and again, I’m sorry. About everything.”
She said nothing and for a moment, he thought the rigor might leave her body, but it didn’t. Despite that, he embraced her awkwardly, needing that last touch since he had decided that tomorrow he would send the men from the guard detail to remove the equipment.
It would be better that way, he thought as he stepped away and raced out the door, eager to put some distance between them.
Lizzy roused too many feelings, some of them threatening to the way he lived his life—carefree, exciting and without any attachments.
It was the way it had been all his life.
He wasn’t about to allow one woman to change it all.
Chapter 30
Days had passed since the Lazlo Group technicians had come to retrieve their equipment, removing cameras from every room in the restaurant, the gardens and even her front parlor.
She assumed Aidan was long gone, as well, moving onto his next assignment. Did he ever look back? she wondered. Did he think about the job he had just finished and the people he had met?
The people he’d slept with and lied to? People whose lives he had irrevocably changed?
Rubbing her temples to quell her growing headache, she stared out her bedroom window. The ocean was calm tonight. Totally unlike the way she was feeling. Restless. Angry. Lonely.
Even though Dani had been gone often, there had always been the prospect of seeing her. That would never happen again. Ever.
Just as she would never see Aidan again. Ever. He and Dani had had so much in common. They were both warriors and wanderers. She only hoped that Aidan’s life didn’t end like Dani’s. Or like his friend Mitch’s.
If there was any consolation in either of their deaths, it was that neither had died alone. She and Aidan had been at Dani’s side. Aidan had been with his friend.
And one day, Aidan would…
She shook her head and drove that thought away.
She wanted to wedge any remnants of him from her mind. Best to forget what had happened between them. It would only bring continued pain since, like Dani, Aidan was gone from her life forever.
Unable to stay in her room for another second since it brought too many reminders of what she had shared with him, she rushed from the cottage and out onto the beachfront.
A breeze, strong and brisk, washed over her. As she walked along the shore, she wished for it to wash away memories of him. To cleanse her spirit and bring peace to her heart, a heart battered by the loss of two people she had loved.
Dani and Aidan. Both lost to her. One never to return. The other…
He had given them the location of every camera except one. He’d known it was wrong, but convinced himself that he’d done it for her sake. So that he might keep an eye on her just in case Donovan returned. Just in case she needed him.
Her image filled his laptop screen. The smallish picture on the PDA didn’t quite satisfy his need.
Lizzy was at the window facing the ocean. A familiar stance for her lately. She had been at the window every night since he had brought her home after Dani’s death.
Unlike those other nights when he had watched her in silence, his observation was interrupted by the shrill ring of his cell phone. “Spaulding.”
“Aidan. Ms. de Hayes has advised that she should be arriving in Paris in two days. Are you prepared to meet her?”
Was he? he wondered. When Corbett had mentioned continuing with the next part of this assignment,