Hunter wasn’t one of those pussies afraid of commitment or his emotions, but he wasn’t the only part of this equation. He’d pushed Kata to her mental and physical limit before leaving on this mission. He was coming off three days of adrenaline rush and sleeplessness. His mood was bad, his temper worse. Normally, he wouldn’t go near Kata until he was rested and calm. But since he had to leave again Sunday morning for what would likely be months, he couldn’t waste time. He had to see—and deal with—her now.
Inside the hospital’s too-white lobby, Hunter bypassed the sleepy receptionist and headed for the bank of elevators. He counted to ten ... twenty. Fuck, counting to a thousand wouldn’t calm him down. If Tyler hadn’t been on top of the situation, Kata could have fallen prey to an assassin’s bullet; the heart Hunter still sought to earn could have stopped beating. The very thought turned his blood to ice.
With a muted ding, the elevator stopped on the third floor. Hunter jogged down the hall, spotting Tyler tucked in the shadows at the nurses’ station, just as he’d promised. Jack and Morgan had gone home for a bit of sleep. Deke had stepped in while visiting his wife, then left around midnight. None of them could convince Kata to leave the hospital and rest someplace safe.
Hunter’s palm itched. He was going to spank her but good. After they settled her mother, they were going to spend hours and hours sleeping and making love and resolving their problems. He’d do whatever necessary to make her damn well promise not to put herself at risk again. And he’d earn her love by Sunday.
Finally, room 304. Though less than a few dozen steps, the jog had seemed interminable. He rounded the corner and stepped into the hospital room.
And stopped cold.
In one of the room’s two chairs, Kata sat, all curled up on Ben’s lap, with her face in the crook of his neck and her arms around him, fast asleep. Ben had curled his arm over her thighs, his broad hand anchored near her hip. The other clung to her nape as he dozed. They looked cozy. Intimate.
The sight felt like a battering ram decimating his solar plexus.
Behind him, he heard familiar footsteps, and without looking knew they belonged to Tyler.
“How long has he been here?” Hunter swallowed, but nothing could keep the jagged fury from bubbling up inside him.
“He brought Kata and her mother here Monday night and has barely left since. Kata hasn’t gone anywhere with him, but . . .”
Tyler’s unfinished sentence suggested that, given their snug, sleep-warm embrace, it was only a matter of time before Kata fell back into Ben’s bed. And from where Hunter was standing, that looked like an accurate assessment.
Fuck.
The bottom line was, Ben had been there for her when she needed him; Hunter hadn’t.
What did you expect? An absent husband can’t give me what I need. He can. His mother had screamed those words at his father fifteen years ago. No one in his family had seen or heard from Amanda again, divorce papers excepting, before she’d died.
Fisting his hands, Hunter stared at his wife curled up on another man’s lap, a million thoughts racing through his head. He could turn around, leave, and never come back. But the Colonel had done exactly that when his wife had fallen for someone else, despite the fact that it cost him his heart. No fucking way was Hunter waving his white flag.
His dad had never quite healed after the bitter divorce, and Hunter knew if he let Kata go now, he’d likely crawl down that same emotional path. Unlike the Colonel, Hunter wasn’t going down without a fight.
“Do you want to kill him, or should I?” Tyler whispered.
Personally, Hunter had assumed the man would understand Ben’s position, mired in an unrequited love for Luc’s wife, Alyssa, for about a year. But Tyler wasn’t his focus now.
“Neither. I took Kata from Ben. Maybe he thinks this is tit for tat. I’ll deal with him later. Since the doctor isn’t releasing Kata’s mom until later today, I’m going to have a long . . . chat with my wife.”
When he finished, she’d understand exactly the lengths he’d go in order to keep what was his.
Chapter Thirteen
A HEAVY presence woke Kata from a deep, tangled sleep. Had the doctor returned? She opened her eyes to find herself on Ben’s lap and frowned. How had she gotten there? Shaking her head, she stood on shaky legs, then turned—and gasped.
A forbidding shadow stood directly above her, face inscrutable in the predawn dark. Heart pounding, she gasped, adrenaline jolting her. Then recognition hit.
“Hunter!” Her first urge was to throw her arms around him, but she suddenly saw his taut shoulders and cold, cold gaze shift down to Ben before lifting back to her with the sharpness of a lethal blade. Trepidation tightened her belly.
Kata glanced back at Ben, who shifted restlessly in the chair, then faced Hunter once more. “It’s not what you . . . I—I was just exhausted. I guess we fell asleep. I don’t remember. But nothing—”
“Not here.” His voice sounded like the snap of a whip. “The doctor says your mother will be discharged this afternoon. Once she is, we’ll get her home and settled. When was the last time you showered or ate a whole meal?”
Kata swallowed a lump of dismay. She knew better than to think that he hadn’t asked why she’d been sitting on Ben’s lap because he didn’t care. Rage vibrated off of him. No, he was saving this ass chewing for later. Ben had originally agreed to share her with Hunter, but she didn’t think for one second that Hunter would be at all willing to share with Ben.
Jack’s warning about the spanking Hunter would undoubtedly give her dive-bombed her thoughts. Had she, in his mind, added to her list of infractions by falling asleep on Ben? Would Hunter strip her bare, force her to lie across his knees, and take every hot, commanding swat of his hand on her ass? What self-respecting, independent female would want that? Yeah, his few swats back at Logan’s condo had been . . . nice, but to actually want him to truly spank her? No way. Not her.
Still, the thought made her heart stutter . . . and made her pussy dismayingly wet.
God, her whole relationship with Hunter was confusing, destructive. Kata had fallen asleep trying to decide if she should give him the divorce papers. She still didn’t know what to do. All the ways he’d touched her as if staking his claim, everything he’d said about loving her . . . She wanted so badly for that to be true, even though it terrified her.
“Kata, your last meal and shower?”
The way he barked questions rattled her. All his warmth, passion, and fire had been replaced with barely checked thunder. An odd shame crawled through her. She’d displeased him, and for some reason that bothered her. A lot.
She didn’t like it one bit.