A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire, #1) Read online

  Parker knew she let Milo pursue her because he was safe. She knew he would never get past the façade or question the person she’d become. The Parker in high school would have politely told him no, understanding that the butterflies in her stomach and the ache in her chest when she looked at his friend was nothing to be afraid of. That Parker would have taken a chance on the man who could tear her apart with just one look, see inside her soul with just one touch, and place a crack in her armor with every word he spoke.

  Parker was still a typical girl for the most part and therefore still dreamed of marriage and children and a house in the suburbs. Parker built a life with Milo and agreed to marry him because, as far as her heart was concerned, he was harmless. She loved him, she cared for him, and she knew with every part of her that she'd be faithful to him for as long as he’d have her. The guilt over keeping part of herself shut off from him reared its ugly head every once in a while, especially the days when they fought and she sought solace in Garrett. He was the one person that could make her change her mind about everything and it scared her to death. On those days when she’d cry to him about fear, change, and Milo’s latest argument, he’d look at her like he knew her secret. Garrett was her best friend and could read her like a book, most of the time better than her own fiancé. She had longed for him to call her out on her lies and the way she kept her heart safe by never letting it be free just as much as she feared it. Parker knew if she ever gave him the chance, he would break her.

  So she had remained content and kept up the walls and no one got hurt. It didn’t matter if she had cried herself to sleep most nights wishing for things she’d long since said goodbye to. Nothing made you reevaluate your life like death did. Parker knew that better than anyone.

  These past six months, spending almost every moment with Garrett, she had started to feel the cracks in her foundation. With each passing day, her core was shaken to the bone, and she felt like she needed to hold on to something to keep from toppling over. Parker always knew he had the power to crumble everything around her into a pile of dust and regret. She didn’t have much time to decide what to do about that.

  A few bumps of turbulence pulled Parker away from her thoughts. She wondered briefly if maybe the change in altitude had affected her hearing and she hadn’t really just heard Garrett say they would be playing house on this mission.

  The look on his face said it all though. He was quite pleased that it was his turn to shock her. Too bad her poker face was much better than his. He may have had a pair, but she had a full house.

  Parker quickly took her mind off of Garrett's pair and shrugged. “I don’t mind working on our honeymoon if you don’t, dear.”

  Garrett looked at her quizzically, confident that there was no way she would be able to pull this off. This was his dream, his fantasy—to be close to her and touch her and pretend like they were as familiar with one another as a husband and wife should be. Parker wasn’t that good of an actress.

  Garrett snorted. “Please, like you’re going to be able to do this. Look someone right in the eye and tell them you’re my wife and that you’re madly in love with me.”

  Parker tamped down the butterflies in her stomach when he called her his wife and scolded herself for acting like a teenage girl, giddy with excitement. Those were emotions that had no business in her world.

  She turned to face him and leaned in a little closer, letting her shoulder graze against his.

  “I’ve passed hundreds of polygraph tests over the years, blatantly lying about information I was given. I think I can handle telling a few people I’m married to you,” she replied.

  Garrett couldn’t hide his confusion at her words. He wondered why in the hell she would ever need to take a polygraph test, let alone hundreds of them. There was something different about her in that moment. She held herself with an air of authority all of a sudden, and she didn’t shy away from his stare. Parker appeared confident and strong, sexy and aloof. It reminded him so much of the first time he’d seen her.

  Jesus, she was beautiful. Garrett hadn't been paying any attention to the nonsense Milo was complaining about while he put in his coffee order. He had been too busy wondering if it would be wrong to walk across the room and kiss her.

  Garrett briefly wondered if there was something wrong with him. Maybe he didn’t get enough sleep last night or something. Since when did he ever want to just walk up to a complete stranger and make out with them?

  Since he saw one that looked like her, obviously.

  Garrett didn’t know a God damned thing about hair, but hers was chocolate brown with some highlights mixed in. It looked so soft his hands were itching to run his fingers through it to see if it felt like silk.

  She had on a pink, low-cut sweater that was showing just enough cleavage to make his dick stir in his jeans.

  Milo must have been fed up with Garrett ignoring him and turned around to see what had kept his friend so silent.

  “Fucking hell. She’s hot,” Milo whispered as he handed Garrett his usual cup of black coffee with two sugars.

  Garrett took the steaming cup from him without looking and just nodded.

  The beautiful girl had glanced back and forth between them and smiled with confidence. It was like a magnetic pull neither man could resist. They had blindly walked, elbow-to-elbow, over to her table.

  A few feet away from her, Milo had leaned his head close to Garrett and whispered, “I saw her first.”

  Garrett always wished he’d been the one to voice those words, but he’d been too enraptured by Parker at the time. All he wanted to do was stare at her, drink her in, and memorize every inch of her. While the three of them talked over coffee, he laughed at her snarky attitude and admired her fierce independence. Over the years, the hard edge that he first noticed in Parker diminished slightly. She could still out-argue anyone and stood her ground with things she believed in, but she definitely became more complacent. Garrett often wondered about the change in her but chalked it up to her being comfortable enough with them to let her guard down and be who she really was. There were moments through the years, every once in a while, where she almost became another person for a split second. The steal resolve and the strength would shine behind her eyes, then just as suddenly, almost as if she forgot where she was for a moment, she’d blink herself back to reality.

  He watched Parker shift her body closer to his and rest her elbow on her armrest. Her shoulder pressing against his sent a shiver down his spine.

  “I’m a little concerned with your ability to handle this though, Garrett,” she said softly. He had to swallow roughly at the sound of his name on her lips. She always made it sound sensual, and his mind usually conjured up images of her naked and pinned beneath him, moaning his name.

  This time was no exception.

  Her face inched closer to his, and when she spoke next, he felt her breath on his lips.

  “Are you going to be able to hold my hand when we walk through the streets and look me in the eyes like I’m all you’ve ever wanted?” she asked breathlessly as she placed her hand on his stomach and slid it up to his chest. “Will you be able to touch me like you’ve done it a thousand times before, pretend that you know the spot on my neck that makes me sigh and where to graze your fingertips to make me moan?” she whispered as she traced lazy circles on his chest with her fingertips.

  Garrett had no idea just how well she could lie when she needed to. She was lying to him as she leaned in closer, feeling the heat from his arm against her and the smell of his skin surrounding her. She told him she was concerned with his ability to handle this, but she knew without a doubt he could. He could hold her and call her his wife and talk about a life they didn’t have and forget all about it when the mission was over. Lucky for her, none of her acting ability would need to be put on display. Every word, every touch, and every moment would be real for Parker. Every minute she spent with him chipped away another piece of the wall she’d so carefully built. She kn
ew the first day she met him that he’d be the one to do it. Through the years she’d been able to stop it from happening, but now she didn’t have a choice. She didn’t have Milo as a buffer or her job to take her away from the confusing emotions so she could get back on track. Her conflicting feelings would be on display, making her question every decision she’d made in the last eight years for the duration of this mission. Parker was good at her job. She was phenomenal at separating life from work and concentrating on the job at hand. But there would be no way to do that this time. Life and work were colliding into one big, fiery inferno. She would be alone with Garrett, falling easily into the fantasy of the two of them as a couple, while at the same time, the guilt of being unfaithful to Milo would be eating her alive. It didn’t matter if he was dead and buried. Garrett was Milo’s best friend. No matter how or when it happened, no matter that the feelings were only one-sided, it would be a betrayal of Milo’s memory and all that he meant to them.

  Garrett stared at her lips while she spoke and tried to keep his hand away from his dick when she talked about sighs and moans and let her tongue dart out to slide across her top lip. He wondered what the hell she was doing right now with her voice. He had never heard her talk that way, all breathy and seductive—at least not with him. Garrett needed to get his head and his dick out of the gutter pronto before he did something really stupid like ask his best friend to join the Mile High Club with him. Thoughts of bending Parker over the sink in the bathroom at the back of the plane and lifting her skirt up so he could run his hands over her smooth, heart-shaped ass before sliding into her, temporarily took over his brain. He needed to get back on track so he moved a few inches away from her.

  “I’m pretty sure I can handle that, Parker. But what are you going to do when we’re walking down an alley and a group of three armed men ambush us and point their guns at your head?” he asked seriously.

  Garrett had to swallow back the revulsion he felt picturing Parker with a gun pointed at her. He would do everything in his power to make sure they were never in that kind of situation during this mission. His heart wouldn’t be able to take it.

  Parker confidently reached up and popped the first three buttons of her shirt until her cleavage and the edges of her red lace bra were visible. Garrett's eyes immediately flew to her exposed skin, watching her chest heave with every breath she took, her breasts straining against the thin lace fabric covering them.

  "Distract man number one long enough to disarm him," she said softly as she removed her hand from the inside of his coat, carefully palming the 9mm SIG M11 she slid from his shoulder holster while his eyes were otherwise occupied. With a straight face she mimed the action of shooting him in the chest.

  "When number two comes to the rescue, a double roundhouse kick to the wrist will force his gun out of his hand, allowing me to incapacitate him with a jab cross right elbow to the sternum, knocking the wind out of him long enough for the shot," Parker explained easily, raising the gun a little higher so it was aimed directly at his heart and pretended to fire.

  "Shock will be on my side for number three,” Parker continued. “A double sweep kick should drop him where he stands, allowing for the final kill shot right between the eyes," she said, aiming the gun higher so the barrel pointed to the middle of Garrett’s forehead.

  "Bang," she whispered.

  Garrett hadn't blinked or spoke in the last couple of minutes, and he wasn't sure he'd ever recover the ability to do so. His brain was at war with his libido, and he wasn't positive which would win or which he wanted to win for that matter. Watching Parker hold his gun turned him on and horrified him equally. Listening to her talk about disarming gun-toting killers with such casual nonchalance made his dick hard and baffled him at the same time.

  Parker lowered the gun to her lap and watched all of the emotions play on Garrett's face. Some of them confused her, and if she didn't know him better, she might have suspected that her display turned him on. She almost laughed at that idea.

  She’d once stood before him in her underwear, practically begging him to sleep with her, and he was completely unaffected. Parker had been upset and drunk at the time though, so her memory might have been a little off.

  "Say something," Parker whispered.

  Garrett had no idea what he was supposed to say. This was Parker, one of his best friends, the woman who cried when she hit a squirrel with her car, squealed when you gave her a present, and cursed a blue streak when she broke a nail or had to wear pants because they made her feel like a guy.

  This woman who sat in front of him right now was not that same person.

  "You could have shot me," Garrett protested lamely, unable to come up with anything more intelligent to say.

  Parker rolled her eyes at him.

  "Don't be so dramatic. The safety is on. At least I didn’t grab the loaded Beretta Jetfire in your ankle holster or the back-up .357 snubnosed revolver in mine."

  Garrett didn't bother to try and stop his jaw from dropping.

  A few years ago Garrett and Milo had forced Parker to accompany them to the shooting range. She had bitched and complained the whole way there, stating quite firmly that you couldn’t pay her enough to hold one of those “shotgun thingies” and fire it. Milo and Garrett both thought it was quite funny that Parker was raised by a cop and had such an aversion to guns. And the fact that she had thought the small handgun they used was called a shotgun kept them in fits of laughter for the rest of the day. Obviously, the joke was on them.

  “What kind of weapon is this?” Garrett tested her, pointing to his other side arm that was carefully placed on the seat across from him. He had a brief moment of hope that maybe he just imagined what had happened a moment ago.

  “It’s an MK23 SOCOM pistol.” Parker replied without missing a beat, lifting the gun up to inspect it. “It uses a polygonal barrel design, which improves accuracy and durability. It also features an ambidextrous safety and magazine release on both sides of the frame,” she explained as she held the gun with her right hand, flipped off the safety with her thumb, and used her index finger to click the magazine release, letting it drop into her left hand so she could check the rounds.

  Parker smacked the magazine back in place and put the safety back on, turned the gun around so it wasn’t facing him, and handed it calmly to Garrett. Her arm remained suspended in air as he stared at her with his mouth open.

  "Who the fuck are you?" he asked her.

  Parker turned away from him so she could reach into the bag next to her, scared to death that this moment was here, yet breathing a sigh of relief that the cloak and dagger nonsense would finally be over.

  Garrett watched her rummage through her bag until she found what she was looking for. She turned back to him, holding out a thin, black leather billfold that looked like a passport.

  Was she going to tell him she wasn't a U.S. citizen? That would be pretty funny. Maybe she was only marrying Milo for a green card.

  He took the square wallet from her outstretched hand and flipped it open, the smile fading from his lips.

  Inside was a picture of Parker, his Parker, looking seriously into the camera with her hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. Underneath the photo were the words that made his heart jump up into his throat.

  Annabelle Elizabeth Parker

  Central Intelligence Agency

  Special Ops

  Chapter Six

  Garrett and Parker weren’t afforded any alone time the remainder of the flight. As soon as Garrett’s brain caught up to his eyes, and he finally understood what it was he was holding in his hand, Brady came down the aisle and sat down in the empty seat on the other side of him.

  When Parker saw Brady coming towards them, she snatched her identification out of Garrett’s hand and stowed it back in her carry-on. She hadn't made a decision yet as to just how much information she wanted to give the rest of the guys.

  Garrett had so many questions swirling around in his head, he found
it hard to concentrate on what Brady was saying. He was too busy wondering when Parker managed to find the time to join the CIA and more importantly, if Milo knew all about this secret life she had. His anger grew leaps and bounds as he sat there barely listening to Brady drone on about security, on-site surveillance, and engaging targets.

  All these years, he thought he knew her better than anyone. Parker had been lying to him this entire time, laughing at him whenever he worried about her safety or told her she wouldn’t understand something to do with his job. She probably knew more about his job than he did. She probably knew more about this mission than he did.

  Garrett was certain that she and Milo must have sat back at the end of an evening and had plenty of fun discussing how clueless poor Garrett was. He wanted to get up out of his seat and throw his fists into something. He wanted to yell at Parker and ask her how in the world she could claim to be his friend and never be completely honest with him about who she really was. If Garrett calmed down enough, he'd realize that his anger stemmed from a hell of a lot more than just having a friend keep him in the dark about her job. Parker was more than just his friend, but he'd never admit that. Garrett rubbed at the pain in his chest and wondered why it felt like his heart was cracking in two. All the lies she told were piling up inside of him, and they felt like a physical ache, like someone was reaching inside of him and squeezing the life out of his heart, making the air from his lungs shakily pass through his lips and his blood pressure soar.