Touching Ghost (SEALs On Fire) by Regina Carlysle Read Free Book Online

she trembled, and then they collapsed against each other.
    Could she learn to live without this kind of sexual pleasure and this man she’d loved all of her life? Tears filled Sadie’s eyes when he pulled her against him and held her as if he never wanted to let her go. Her hands swept his side, bumped against the damn black pager attached to his belt, and reality came crashing in.
    Ren kept the thing with him twenty-four/seven, and at any moment, he and the rest of the team could be called into a terrorist hot spot. The thought chilled her, and along with that came the realization that if worse came to worse, she wanted Ren to know just exactly what he meant to her. She loved him, and it was time he knew the truth.

Chapter Five
    Ren glanced over Sadie’s bare shoulder to see the damn pager setting on the night stand in her room and wanted to cuss. The thing served as a constant reminder that his time was quickly running down, and the moment when he had to leave this darling woman would come sooner rather than later. His entire life had been a pretense, and what he would do now was no different. He hated it.
    As a kid, he’d pretended that nothing and nobody mattered. His dad hit him? So what? That had been his stance back then. Lonely? Sad? Who, him? He wore a chip the size of a damn boulder on his shoulder. Even now, the nature of his work demanded that he pretend things that just weren’t true.
    Now, he had to fake it again.
    Telling Sadie that this, the sex, the affection had only been a trip down memory lane for him was the worst pretense of all. She was everything that was good and sweet and worth keeping, yet he would throw her away.
    To save her.
    No, he wasn’t noble. Making love with sexy Sadie had been the deepest wish of his heart, and he wasn’t stupid. He could see the tears that floated randomly across the surface of her eyes and knew there wasn’t a shallow bone in the woman’s body. She loved him. She always had. The evidence of that love was plain as day on her pretty face. And because he was a selfish, indulgent prick, he had to break her heart. His, too. Sadie deserved more than an emotionally damaged man who might leave on a mission and never return. She deserved those two or three perfect kids and the perfect man and the spectacular house.
    As they lay in bed, the sheet rumpled and warm around their bodies, he dragged his hand down the length of her back, loving the way she wrapped her long legs around his.
    “I keep waiting for the axe to fall,” she whispered.
    He couldn’t see her face. She’d tucked it away, leaving him with only the image of her curly hair. “What axe?”
    She laughed a little. “That pager. I hate that damn thing. Guess it’s the axe I’m thinking of. Keep waiting for it to beep. I don’t know. Maybe it’s more than that. Why are you so quiet?”
    Despite the intimacy of the moment, Ren felt the tension and knew she did, too. He blew out a breath. “It has been good seeing you again, Sadie. I have so many memories tied up with you.”
    She looked up, and the sadness in her eyes made him want to bawl like a bare-assed baby. “Is that all this is, Ren? You can tell me the truth. I won’t break.”
    She might not break, but he sure as hell wanted to. Already, his heart was cracking into a million pieces. Knowing the hardest moment of his life was upon him, he untangled his legs from hers and sat up on the side of the bed. Feeling every kind of coward, he kept his back to her. “This won’t work, Sadie. You know that. Too much time has passed, and though I’ve loved seeing you, being with you like this, our lives are just too different. You don’t see this thing between us as anything permanent, do you?”
    Silence fell.
    Ren didn’t want to look back at her. He wanted to shove his naked body into his clothes and run from the room, but he forced himself to face her.
    Damn it. Goddamn it!
    Tears swam across her eyes to drip down her face. She’d pulled