CHAPTER ONE
Present Day – Virginia
Burke Lennox stood outside the two story house, his eyes narrowed in study. The gorgeous Victorian practically glowed, a warm welcoming sight in contrast to the frigid wonderland surrounding it. It was a huge damn disparity to the distress signal they’d received earlier. Right now, everything about this place looked perfect and cheerful. Beautiful—a lot like the woman who lived here.
Looks, Burke had learned over the years, could be very deceiving.
“She’s still not answering her phone.” His brother’s voice cracked harshly through the chilled air as he tucked his phone in his pocket.
Cole was bone-deep tired. Burke could feel the weariness coming off his brother in waves. He was certain he reflected the same back, and that Cole felt it, too. Their mother had termed their odd, silent communication “Wonder Twins” powers. Burke didn’t need to ask Cole how he felt. He simply knew. And they shared other feelings tonight. Desperation. Edginess. They both shook a little like an addict who’d been on the wagon for a long time and realized that he might just get one more coveted taste.
No doubt about it, they were both addicted to Jessa Wade.
“Should we knock?” Cole asked, sounding more uncertain than Burke could ever remember.
Cole was the darker one. He usually plowed through any given mission without ever letting on that he wasn’t one hundred percent confident. But Jessa had knocked him on his ass, and just over a year later, Cole hadn’t quite recovered.
It had been that long since either of them had laid eyes on the lovely girl. Burke still remembered the last time he’d seen her, naked in a hotel room bed, rumpled sheets around her. Her auburn hair had been a sensual contrast to the white pillow. She’d looked like an angel.
When he closed his eyes, he could still remember the scent of that room. Jessa always smelled like citrus, sweet and sharp. And that night she’d smelled like sex, like him and his brother because they had spent the whole evening inside her. In her pussy, her mouth, her ass. They had taken her over and over again, as though they could imprint themselves on her.
She’d been the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen, ever touched.
He’d left her there with a promise that he’d be back. Cole had made the same promise, kissing her deeply before they’d gone.
In the last year, everything had gone to shit. God, sometimes that amazing night felt like a fucking lifetime ago.
“Why would she leave us a distress message then not answer our calls? Shit. What if she can’t answer the phone because that fucker she married is stopping her?” Cole asked as they walked across the yard.
Yeah. The fucker she’d married. Angus.
According to the reports they’d received from the investigator they’d hired to keep tabs on Jessa, she hadn’t let the grass grow under her feet before moving on. Less than three months after they’d left, she’d traveled to Scotland, apparently met and married some guy named Angus, then returned to the States with him in tow.
Burke could still remember the day their fantasy of Jessa waiting for him and Cole had come crashing down. Their dutiful personal assistant of five years, Hilary, had kept Lennox Investigations running during their long operation in South America. They’d returned home, ready to hop a plane to New York and claim Jessa for good, but their assistant had delivered the terrible news their private investigator had dug up: Jessa was married. He winced at the memory and tried to console himself with the knowledge that he’d given Hilary an extra holiday bonus to atone for their bad behavior that day.
“He doesn’t take good care of her,” Burke muttered, wishing he could take something apart with his bare hands. God, he knew he had no right to be, but he was really fucking bitter that she’d married someone else. “He doesn’t even shovel the damn walkway. She could break her leg just trying to get her mail.”
“Which she clearly retrieved as soon as the storm let up.”
Burke’s gaze tracked the dainty footsteps in the snow directly to the mailbox, then back to the front door. It was so damn cold those footprints had frozen in the powder.
It hadn’t been cold in South America. The weather had been hot, so humid he could still feel the thick air clogging in his lungs. The chill of the Virginia night should have been a welcome change, but it only brought home the fact that he’d spent the worst year of his life in a tropical hellhole doing a job that had cost him and Cole the only woman they would likely ever love.
But when they’d gotten the urgent call twenty-four hours ago, they’d come running for Jessa, anyway.
Last winter, as their case had led them to South America and they’d realized just how deep undercover they would have to go, they had left behind a phone number for Jessa to contact them in case she needed anything. While abroad, they’d left that phone with their friend and sometimes employer, Dex James of Black Oak Oil, along with instructions to keep it charged and to contact them immediately if Jessa called. Dex owed them a couple of big-time favors, and it seemed more appropriate to task the man experienced with security—and ménage relationships—than their assistant. That poor woman had enough to keep up with in their absence.
God, he hadn’t expected to survive the op in South America. In fact, neither one of them really had thought they would make it. In the back of his head, Burke had hoped that Jessa would reach out to them. But she hadn’t called. Finally, nearly a year after they’d last seen her, she’d sent a simple text, which Dex had relayed.
Please. I need to see you. As soon as possible.
Burke had instructed Dex to call and find out what she needed, but she hadn’t answered. She hadn’t replied to a text back, either. Three planes, thousands of miles, and not a wink of sleep later, they stood outside her house, wondering what the hell was going on. If she needed help, why wasn’t she turning to her husband?
Unless he was the problem… Had Jessa brought home a man who hurt her, who scared her so much she would reach out to two men who had left her so abruptly after a few brief days of heaven?
“There’s no way to know until we find her and ask.” God, he’d faced down some of the most dangerous men in the world, but one sweet-faced five foot three inch woman had him trembling.
Perhaps because that sweet-faced woman held way more in her hands than his life. She still held his goddamned heart.
He stared at the front door, his breath puffing out in little clouds. Jessa was behind that door. She’d built a whole new life for herself while they’d worked that op. She’d left New York and her school, found someone new. Jessa had utterly moved on, while he and Cole hadn’t even begun to try yet.