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Garrett figured they could spend the night at the palace, stay locked in their room for a few hours, maybe make a few noises so the staff would hear theht when everyone was asleep, do so around

Parker kneouldn’t be that easy to lurk around the presidential palace in theher and twenty other agents to spend five seconds in the bushes outside of the palace attaching a listening device to aThey wouldn’t be able to just open their bedrooiven Fernandez’s possible connection to the death of a young girl, heThere could be people sitting outside of Garrett and Parker’s door all night long for all they knew

"He loved you ," Garrett told her quietly as he sat down beside her

Regardless of what he felt for Parker, he could never lie to her She deserved to know that her fiancé really did love her, no matter what his actions said before he left

"He had a funny way of showing it," Parker replied softly, staring across the lobby at nothing as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, absent around her finger

She’d reer ht to keep wearing it She always thought she would feel naked without the ring so she wore it around her neck to keep it close to her When she took the chain and the solitaire diamond off of her neck yesterday before the dinner at the palace, she felt no sense of loss or sadness Just touching the ring that Garrett had given her and knowing it would only be a er filled her with an incredible sense of sadness

"He’d get phone calls in thein the hallway," Parker continued, pulling her thoughts away froer "He’d tell me he had to run to the store and then never coet up out of bed at all hours of the night and just leave, not co home until the middle of the afternoon, without one word of explanation I knoe both had things we couldn’t tell the other, but it was never like this If one of us took a phone call for work, even if we couldn’t discuss it, we could at least say it ork related He’d pretend like nothing happened and when I’d ask him, he’d blow up inon h

"He would never cheat on you," Garrett assured her, allowing his instincts to take over as he reached over and pushed her hair behind her shoulder so he could see her face He let his hand make its way under her hair and to the back of her neck, his fingers kneading away the tension he felt there

Garrett listened to Milo brag about how often they had sex constantly over the years After those conversations, Garrett always drowned himself in whiskey and called up a "friend" to occupy his mind It was unfathomable to him that the same man who boasted about the sex life he had with the wo elsewhere

"Well, he had to have been getting it fro it from me"

Parker watched her words click into place in Garrett’s ht as well lay it all out there

"In that year, I can count on one hand how many times we had sex, the last time was five months before he left"

Garrett couldn’t keep the shock off of his face if he tried Everything Parker said to him was the exact opposite of what Milo had told him It wasn’t a question of who to believe; he would choose Parker every ti about Parker’s actions the night she showed up at his place and strippedMilo a few days later if everything was okay between Parker and hiushed about how happy and in love they were and how they just couldn’t keep their hands off each other, going into explicit detail about every sexual encounter they’d had recently Garrett had thought it was a bit overkill for Milo to go into so much detail, but at the ti happy and suffered through the onslaught information

Garrett wondered if he knew then what he kne, if that night would have ended differently when he turned around and saw Parker standing in his living room, wet from the rain that soaked her skin and lace underwear He wondered if the guilt of wanting to sink himself inside of her would have still eaten him alive like it had every day since then

He wondered if he had known about the proble at the time if he would have taken what she had offered and what he’d wanted since the day he ht back to the private cell phone Milo oith all of the phone calls back and forth from here to the Dominican Republic He’d never explained to Parker why he questioned her about Milo owning another phone because he didn’t want to worry her He honestly believed his friend would never, ever cheat on Parker or do anything to hurt her But thinking back to the phone and the way Milo had acted with her, Garrett realized that ht he did

Before he could say anything, Parker stood as a sleek, black lirabbed their bags, and theycar

Once they were seated and the driver stowed their bags in the trunk, Garrett raised the privacyas they began pulling out of the resort

After driving for several minutes in silence, Garrett turned towards Parker She was staring out of her , but the running lights in the back of the vehicle lass She was lost in thought, and he kneas his own da Milo up in the first place Parker was right, Milo was his friend as well, and he knew he should feel coh to talk about him, but not at the expense of her happiness

With Parker’s hands resting in her lap, Garrett reached one of his hands over and touched the inside of her wrist with the tips of his fingers, sliding theh her palers were interlaced

At the heat of his touch, Parker turned her face toward Garrett He squeezed her hand once, letting her knoithout words that everything would be okay while he softly rubbed his thumb back and forth over the knuckle of her thumb

Garrett and Parker stared at each other silently as the li if they’d be able to pull off the ruse of husband and wife tonight with all of the thoughts andto drown them

Chapter Twelve

Garrett and Parker were able to avoid all the security checkpoints their second ti the palace since they weren’t in their own vehicle When they were ushered past the security guard with thehis gun After the infor about all of this

Parker wondered as going through Garrett’s mind after the admission about her relationship with Milo Garrett hadn’t said a word after she confessed they hadn’t slept together in ages She probablyabout his friend that way, but she’d kept things bottled up for too long It felt good to confide in Garrett―soo