His cold, dead heart.
“I’m beginning to see the draw to this kind of work you do,” Alex said, pulling him out of his thoughts. She gave him a sweet smile, one he didn’t see very often. “You can be this rich partygoer one day, then someone totally different the next. It must be thrilling work.”
“Beyond thrilling,” he agreed.
From their week together in Paris, Rowan had learned that growing up had been hard for Alex. Her father was a deadbeat. Her mother was a drug addict who overdosed when Alex was sixteen years old. She’d been in and out of foster homes until she was an adult, but even Rowan knew she spent more time on the street than in any foster home.
Remembering all these details about Alex made him want to share part of himself with her too. “In my twenties, I lived for this type of life,” he explained. “The adventure. The danger. It was the adrenaline rush I sought like an addict.”
His emotions must have shown on his face. “And now, in your thirties, how is it?” she asked, a soft curl resting against the curve of her cheekbone.
He kissed that spot on her cheek, loving how she drew even closer toward him. “Now I see that this line of work comes at a price.”
Her fingers tightened around his, head cocked and her eyes turning gorgeously inquisitive. “A price you don’t want to pay anymore?”
He nearly answered, then stopped himself. After the Feds cut him out of the information loop, and the CIA wouldn’t let him help, he started to question how much of himself he’d given up for the job, and since the minute he entered Alex’s hotel room, he had started questioning life and what the hell he was doing with his. With Mia’s life in danger, everything got put into perspective. Now… Christ, his mind definitely wasn’t in the game. “The murder, the death, the darkness…it’s grown exhausting. Add that to how the agency sidelined me on the case, I’m beginning to question my dedication to them.” He let out the breath he’d unconsciously been holding. “There’s gotta be something more to this world than seeing its dark underbelly.”
Aware of it or not, she tightened the fingers clasped on his shoulder too. “That’s why Ryder left the Army Rangers. Too much death, and working in security has a lot fewer bad guys.” She hesitated, obviously pondering something, and then her eyes filled with warm curiosity. “Have you ever considered the private sector? Ryder’s always looking for new guys, especially former CIA.”
He didn’t hate the idea. A thought to consider later. He dipped his chin and held nothing back in his grin. “Are you asking me to move to San Francisco for you?”
Most women would blush and gasp or show some type of embarrassment. Alex held his gaze intently and smiled playfully back. “Believe me, Hawke, the last thing you’d want to do is move anywhere for me. I don’t play nice.”
He kept his mouth shut at that comment. Relationships couldn’t have been an easy thing for her, not coming from the past she did. They weren’t easy for him either. No wonder they’d both bolted five years ago.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lennox leave his place next to his two trophy dates and move to the bar closest to them. Before Rowan could react to reel Lennox in, Alex’s hand suddenly slid over his neck, bringing his focus back to her. When he met the swirling hints of brown within the amber hues of her eyes, he staggered to keep his mind steady, becoming so lost in their depths.
“Stop worrying,” she said. “We’re getting close to finding Mia. I can feel it.”
She still thought Mia was on his mind. She was, of course, but Alex was there too. He stared intently, holding her close. He could never pinpoint the reason for the mess she created inside him when she watched him like he was her whole world for that moment, but all he knew was that she easily unraveled him. “Nothing is more dangerous to our task tonight than you looking at me like that,” he told her seriously.
The side of her mouth curved. “And why is that?”
He dropped his mouth closer to hers and murmured, “For the control
it has over me.”
Her lips parted, inviting him to kiss her, whether she realized it or not. She pressed herself a little tighter against him, nearly making Rowan lose all sense of himself, but then he remembered why they were there. He drew in a deep breath to steady himself, and then leaned away, finding Lennox watching them. Rowan trailed his fingers gingerly up Alex’s back and then down again, ensuring Lennox noticed how incredible she looked there all the way down to her smoking-hot ass. “How about you answer a question for me now?” Rowan asked, not only to keep their minds screwed on straight, but for his own curiosity.
She released a shuddering breath, obviously affected by the heat from his fingertips along her spine. “What do you want to know?”
“Why you were so agreeable to help me find Mia?” The thought had been weighing on his mind since Alex had agreed back in the hotel room. He thought he’d need to lay claim to her physically to secure her to his side, but she barely hesitated to help once he told her the complete truth. “Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but I saw the emotion in your face that day when I told you my sister was abducted; there’s something driving you here, something personal.”
She searched his eyes a moment then said, “I had a sister, and I understand that love.”
“You had a sister?”
Alex gave a soft nod, glancing away for a moment before addressing him again. “Lena died when she was eighteen. I was seventeen.”
Rowan tightened his fingers around Alex’s hand, wanting to be anywhere but there while hearing such a personal conversation. “Do you mind explaining what happened to her?”
“What happens to the not-so-lucky foster kids,” Alex said in a dry voice, lacking any emotion at all. “Lena had it rough, turned to drugs, and overdosed.” Alex’s expression couldn’t lie, and pain waved off her. “We talked a lot even though we were placed in different foster homes after our mother passed away, but one night she went missing. I tried desperately to find her and then ended up racing around the city, looking in all the wrong places.”
Every time Rowan learned more about Alex, he liked her a little bit more. She wasn’t bitter, as he’d expected. She wasn’t angry, as was warranted. She’d had a hard childhood but had come out on top of it. Something occurred to him then, making him curious. He stopped dancing, wanting to understand, and watched her intently. “Is that what got you into hacking?”
Alex gave a soft nod. “Had I had access to her cell phone, I could have saved her. I felt…helpless”—the word sounded strangled from her throat—“that night trying to find her. The police wouldn’t help because it hadn’t been twenty-four hours since she’d gone missing. When she eventually was found by tracking her cell phone, she had been dead for ten hours, alongside her boyfriend in a crack house, and I swore I’d never be that helpless again.”
His fingers tightened possessively on her back. “And you haven’t been.”