Riley cursed.
Obviously he’d let the gripe session cloud his mind. This was an ops, he firmly reminded himself. And the woman he was gawking at was his partner.
He quickly got his mind on something else.
They walked through the master suite and into the bathroom. Their weapons and other assorted communications equipment were there; all the items they might need over the next few days. Agent Ingram had even hung some of their clothes and had placed their luggage in the adjoining dressing room.
Tessa turned on the shower full-blast and, without removing her underwear—something Riley was truly grateful for—stepped inside the steamy spray. Since there was a showerhead in each corner, and since the space was large enough to accommodate an NBA team, Riley got in, too, to save some time.
He kept his attention focused elsewhere—on the ornate mosaic tiles, on the beveled glass of the shower door they’d left open.
On anything but Tessa.
He was pretty sure she was doing the same thing. Well, she was until she shifted to her right and bumped into him. How that happened, he didn’t know. After all, it wasn’t as if they ran short of space. But it happened. Her slick, wet, right butt cheek swished against the front of his slick wet boxers.
Man, she couldn’t have touched him in a worse place. That particular part of him was having a tough time accepting that showering with an attractive woman wasn’t anything less than foreplay.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Me, too,” he mumbled back.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Why are you sorry?” she whispered, her nearly silent words muffled even more by the shower.
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
He watched that register. Frowning, then scowling, and finally shrugging, she turned off the water. Tessa stepped out and snagged a couple of thick, white, terry-cloth robes from a nearby rack. She tossed him one.
“Start explaining,” Riley demanded before he even caught the robe.
Thankfully she didn’t ask for clarification. Riley was dead certain Tessa knew exactly what he meant. Well, hopefully she did. He didn’t intend to discuss their shower and his reaction to it. Nope. It was time to settle some business.
“If I’d refused the insemination outright, Fletcher would have canceled everything.” As if she’d declared war on it, Tessa latched onto her shoulder-length blond hair and squeezed it. Hard. The water snaked down her nearly naked shoulders and arms before she put on the bathrobe. Finally. “And you know it as well as I do.”
“I don’t know any such thing. But what I do know is that it didn’t solve anything by you agreeing to a procedure you can’t have.”
She picked up a comb from the vanity and raked it through the tangles in her hair. “I’ll figure a way around it.”
“And if you can’t?”
“I’ll figure out a way, okay?” But this time her words weren’t quite so calm or so quietly spoken.
“Oh, yeah. That’s really convincing.” Riley caught onto her arm and whirled her back around to face him. “Once we’re inside that facility, Tessa, you might not be able to refuse it. Hear me? If you do, Fletcher might get suspicious and try to kill you.”
Which couldn’t happen. It couldn’t. He refused to lose another partner. Just the thought of it turned his stomach.
“So, what are you saying? You want to call off the mission?” Tessa asked. That was obviously a rhetorical question since she didn’t give him a chance to answer. “You want to let Fletcher walk because of a contingency that may or may not arise?”
“No. But I don’t want you to get pregnant, either.”
She paused. Mumbled something indistinguishable under her breath. And combed her hair again. “There really is little chance of that happening.”
Just because she said it with such certainty, that didn’t convince Riley. “If you’re thinking about using some form of birth control, it’s too risky. Lab tests would detect—”
“Trust me. It’s not an issue.”
He was about to say something along the lines of I beg to differ, but there was something in her tone that stopped him cold.
“This isn’t about birth control, is it?” he asked cautiously.
“No.” And that was all she said for several long moments. Tessa slowly put the comb back on the vanity, aligning it with the soaps and other bottles of cosmetics. “If you must know, I had endometriosis when I was a teenager. It’s a problem with tissue growing where it shouldn’t. I had surgery. But the damage had already been done.”
Since he had no idea what to say to that, he just stood there and listened.
“I have slim-to-none odds of getting pregnant even under ideal circumstances,” she continued. Not easily though. Her bottom lip trembled. Just a little. And her voice wavered slightly. It was more than enough for him to realize this was no well-healed wound. “So Fletcher’s procedure poses no risk whatsoever. For once, Murphy’s Law is on our side.”
Ah, hell.
Riley thought about reaching for her. Maybe even a touch to her arm. Some kind of human contact to let her know he was here for her. It’d make him feel better, that was for sure, but he didn’t think it’d do a thing to help Tessa.
“That’s the nerve I hit,” he mumbled.
Her gaze lifted, meeting his. “Excuse me?”
“In the limo when I was talking about people screwing around with Mother Nature to get a baby. Or not get one. I hit a nerve.”
She dismissed that with a shrug.
Riley knew better.
There was no way to dismiss the pain in her eyes.
“It’s old baggage,” she mumbled. “A dream about recreating a childhood, my childhood, with the child of my own. A dream where mothers don’t leave one day and never come back.” Suddenly looking disgusted with herself, she cleared her throat. “The kind of dream that sends people into therapy.”
Oh, yeah. Definitely wounds.
“The bottom line is, the only thing I’ve ever wanted more than being an SIU agent is a baby, and I can’t have one. So, there. You know all my deep, dark secrets.” She flexed her eyebrows. “Guess that means I’ll kill you now.”
Her attempt at humor didn’t diffuse anything.
Riley disregarded his veto about touching her and slipped his arm around her. Before she could protest, or before he could change his mind, he hauled her to him. Right against him.
“Don’t,” Tessa said, already trying to break out of his grip.
Riley held on. “This isn’t sexual, Tessa.”
She pulled back and faced him. “It’d be safer if it were,” she countered.
That was one hundred percent true.
Riley still didn’t let go.
“Does your father know about your infertility?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Okay. It took him a moment to get his teeth unclenched. “And he let you come on this mission anyway?”
This time she did step away from him. But Tessa didn’t just put some distance between them, she stared at him with accusing eyes. “Don’t blame him.” She hitched her thumb against her chest. “I lied to you this morning. I did have a choice. But I wanted to do this. For Colette.”
“And