The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(26)
Author: Catherine Mann

Alex Morrow needed them to close this case.

No more holding back. No more secrets. Finally, Kelly asked the question that had knotted her muscles all night, necessitating her relaxing escape to the greenhouse.

“Who’s Celia?”

Ethan planted his feet to keep from staggering. Damn, the woman knew how to stage a hell of an ambush. “What?”

Kelly flung her coat on top of bags of potting soil. “Who’s Celia?”

He stalled for more time to find his footing. His head still buzzed from the outright fear that something had happened to Kelly. He didn’t need this conversation, not now when he just wanted to look at her and reassure himself she wasn’t somewhere bleeding out.

Or already dead.

Ethan braced a hand against a support beam. Yeah, he would just hold up this wall for another few minutes. “Where did you hear her name?”

“Samantha mentioned Celia as if I should already know about her.” Kelly trailed a hand down a table of empty clay pots, her sweatshirt doing nothing to disguise her curves now that he knew what rested beneath that cotton.

“Who’s acting dog-in-the-manger jealous this time?”

She met him toe-to-toe. “This has nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with the integrity of our cover. If I’m going to convince people we’re a couple, you can’t hide important parts of your dating history from me.”

She was right, damn it. He pulled the words up and out. “Celia and I were engaged. She died.”

Kelly deflated. “Oh, Ethan. I’m sorry. How? What happened?”

“Still working to get our stories straight?” he asked with bitter precision.

Her hand settled on his arm with a gentle reassurance he didn’t want.

“Ethan, be fair, please. That’s not why I’m asking now, and you know it.”

He stared down at her wide-open face, so full of emotions and caring and giving. The eleven years difference between their ages stretched in front of him. The world he’d made for himself would suck her innocence dry in a heartbeat.

He held still, only an inch of air and miles of experience separating them. “In case you haven’t noticed, life isn’t fair and I’m not a nice guy. Whether it’s poker or basketball or my job, I fight to win. I learned fast and early there are too many damned times you can’t control losing, so you’d better fight like hell to win the ones you can. No rules. No boundaries.”

She didn’t move, didn’t stop him, just listened with her typical Kelly understanding that wore him down faster than any amount of questioning.

Ethan jammed his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her, holding her close and stealing some of that sweet innocence, and damn it, yes, comfort, for himself. The sooner he told her about Celia, the sooner they could move on. “She caught hepatitis on a trip to Mexico. It destroyed her liver. She died before an organ donor became available.”

Kelly stroked his arm. “I wish you’d told me.”

Anger steamed through him, mostly at himself. “Damn it, I know I should have briefed you.”

“No.” Silky hair straggled free from her ponytail, but not enough to hide the sympathy he didn’t want. “Before this case. I wish you’d told me.”

And watch her eyes turn soft and compassionate the way they were doing now? Not a chance would he have risked that. “Talking about it won’t change anything. It happened six years ago, right before I joined ARIES. I was a regular CIA operative then, so most people in ARIES don’t know. I should have considered that Samantha or Matt or Jake might mention her.”

He defied her to ask more. Hell, he would have. But then Kelly was a better person.

“Okay, that subject’s closed.” A bracing sigh later, she asked, “But is there anyone else I need to know about?”

He shook his head. “No one. There haven’t been more than passing relationships since then. Never anything serious.”

Never.

The word hovered between them in the silence, only the watery hiss of the plant mister answering his one statement that told more than he’d wanted to relay.

Time to stem all the sympathy pouring from her like water from the ceiling. “You know I go out, but only with women who want as little as I do. The smart ones like Samantha punch out of any relationship with me damned quickly.”

Her gaze probed him, luring him to share more than if she’d openly asked. He needed to distract her before he started spilling his guts in some pathetic display that would land him right up against the comfort of those incredible br**sts. “So what were you doing out here anyway in this getup?”

“Pilates.”

Pilates Method exercising? Good God, he’d expected any answer but that. “How does a girl who grew up on a Nebraska wheat farm pick up an affinity for Pilates?”

She stared at him so long he wondered if she would let him off the hook, but her sweeter side obviously won out against her pit-bull determination. “Nebraska isn’t the boonies.”

He held up his hands. “Sorry! No offense to Nebraska.”

“None taken.” Her shoulders relaxed their defensive arch. “Actually, I started out with meditation first, looking for some kind of relaxation. It takes a lot of late nights to become fluent in seven languages. That doesn’t leave many hours for sleep.”

“Seven, huh? I wondered what the count was.”

She packed a big-time IQ under all that hair. No secret since Hatch had plucked her from the CIA ops support for ARIES so fast.

Kelly rested her hip on the center row of plants, facing him while he held up the support beam for a while longer. “If I wanted to maintain the pace, something had to give. One day in eleventh-grade gym class, I fell asleep standing up on the volleyball court. I didn’t wake up until the ball clocked me on the head.”

Eleventh grade? He expected that kind of drive in a college student, but not in a high-schooler. He kept silent though, so she would keep talking. Kelly didn’t share often and he needed distraction from the unwanted emotions talk of Celia had raised…the old fears of losing someone close to him again. Only Kelly hadn’t gotten that close. Had she?

She swept wisps of dark hair off her face. “My gym teacher took pity on me. She was a real health nut who mastered meditation in the sixties before she fell for the farm boy standing next to her at Woodstock.” A smile played with Kelly’s full lips. “That day after the volleyball game, she gave me an icepack along with my first meditation lesson. Once I realized how much rest I could cram into a power nap, my world changed.”