Dan & Tyler 2 - Wintergreen by Jane Davitt Read Free Book Online

"What about him?"
"He's an unexpected addition to your life."
     
Tyler had to admit that it was the perfect word to describe Dan, from Cole's point of view at least. "Yeah, it felt that way to me, too, but it's working out."
     
"A little young for you, perhaps?" Cole asked, clearing his throat.
    Tyler smothered a grin. Cole could be diplomatic and tactful when the job required it, negotiating with smooth finesse, but when it came to something personal, like one of his former agents falling for a kid just out of his teens, that finesse began to look a little ragged.
    Tyler didn't really want to watch Cole squirm, though. Cole was his boss, and Tyler trusted him. Not with his life; Cole would have signed that away if he thought that the nation needed it. If the man had a favorite saying, it was probably Jefferson's assertion that the tree of liberty needed the blood of patriots and tyrants to nourish it. Cole kept the tree well watered. The other stuff, though, like protecting his people from assholes in government and sometimes themselves, because agents had been known to crack spectacularly at times -- that, at least, Cole did well.
    "He's twenty-one in the summer," Tyler said, and cursed the unexpected defensiveness he heard in his voice. He didn't have to explain his relationship with Dan to anyone, least of all his exboss.
    "A little young for you," Cole repeated. "From what I recall of your previous, ah, partners, they were all your age and type, and they didn't last long enough for you to remember their names. Mr. Seaton is young in thought, body, and experience--"
"Old enough," Tyler said. "And not as innocent as you think, or as sheltered. When we met, he was starving and he'd been trading sex for rides."
    "Innocent and stupid," Cole clarified. "And he's stuck around long enough to know all about you. Interesting. You don't find that in the least suspicious? Or are you as good in bed as you are with a rifle?" He smiled. "Please don't answer that; I'd rather not have to think of you as quite that deluded."
"You're a cold-hearted bastard at times, you know that?" Tyler kicked at a jagged lump of ice on the path and watched it splinter. "He's a survivor. He dealt with his father turning his back on him, and he got through a month alone on the road. And he stayed cool as a cucumber when I found him picking berries on my land and came close to shooting him."
"But you didn't," Cole pointed out as they reached the bench, skimmed white with snow and too wet to use.
    Tyler gripped the back of the bench and felt the wood creak under his gloved hand. "You don't know how close I came. Listen, Cole, I was good at what I did, yes, but not now. My hands shake. I wake up sweating, screaming." He swallowed, the words difficult to say. He hated admitting a weakness, especially to Cole, hated seeing pity or sympathy in someone's eyes. Dan never looked at Tyler like that, which was one reason Tyler had kept him close. One. "I can't do it anymore. I'd get killed, and, more importantly as far as you're concerned, I wouldn't complete the mission." His voice cracked, shaming him, and he steadied it, growling out, "I'm a fucking liability; why can't you see that?"
"I know you are," Cole said with a killing kindness. "There's no question of you going back into the field, and I'm frankly astonished that you even -- well. You're not yourself."
     
"That's right," Tyler muttered. "Make allowances for me."
    "Enough," Cole slammed his hand down on top of Tyler's, the force of the blow less of a shock than the action itself. Cole didn't touch people often. "Enough self pity. Enough hiding here in this nowhere place with your stray puppy. I need you. Your country needs you."
Only Cole could say something as corny as that without a flicker of self-consciousness.
     
"I've got nothing left my country wants," Tyler said, and tugged his hand free. "Killing was what I was good at, and I can't -- don't want to -- do that now."
    "You had a brain as well as