Okay, this was bad. Ten minutes ago, Jude would’ve bet his balls that Pruitt would never voluntarily seek him out. Only something earth-shattering would mobilize the colonel into doing so. “What situation? What’s going on?”
Pruitt drew a breath through his nose and squared his wide shoulders as if fortifying himself. “Libby’s in trouble. She needs protection, and as much as it pains me to admit this, you’re the best man for the job.” The last was said with a faint sneer.
Jude ignored the flutter in his chest. It wasn’t worry. Just…indigestion. Right. “What kind of trouble is she in?”
“She has a stalker, and the threats are getting more and more personal. We believe someone is trying to get her to drop the charges against Richard ‘K-Bar’ Niles.”
“The gangbanger up for murdering that single mother in Anacostia?” Camden asked.
Pruitt gave one curt nod of acknowledgment in the twins’ general direction. “Yes. Libby’s the prosecuting attorney, and of course, she’s not going to drop it. The case is rock solid, but the trial isn’t set to begin until August, and K-Bar made bail. He’s free, and if he’s not personally terrorizing her, then he’s hired someone to do it for him.”
“So you want to hire her some protection,” Greer concluded.
“I want to hire him.” Pruitt tipped his head toward Jude. “He and Libby have a history that will make it all that much easier for him to protect her. His sudden reemergence in her life won’t raise any eyebrows.”
Jude stared at his former instructor, fury burning hot in his gut. “You want me to pretend to be her lover? Like none of the past shit happened and we got back together?”
“It’s a plausible reason for you to be around her all the time.”
“No.” Dread coiled its greasy fingers around his throat and squeezed. “No, no, no.”
Pruitt paid no attention to his protests. “If you agree to my terms,” he said to Greer, “he can start tomorrow morning.”
“Do I really have to repeat my answer? How about, hell no? That sink in, Colonel?”
“This is not a request, Marine.”
Jude got in Pruitt’s face, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. How dare the man ask this, after everything? He had some massive, steel-lined balls to come in here and dredge up a past Jude had spent eight years doing his damnedest to forget. “I’m not active duty. You can’t order me around anymore. Sir.”
Pruitt’s rigid features softened—only the slightest bit, but Jude had seen that face screaming into his enough times that he noticed and backed off a step, his anger draining away. Sure, Elliot Pruitt was a hard-ass, in-it-for-life jarhead, but he wasn’t a deadbeat father. His love for his only daughter was deeper even than his love for the Marines, and that was saying something. The strain he felt for her situation showed in the lines around his eyes. He just wanted her safe, and nobody could fault him for that.
“Find someone else,” he told Pruitt softly and shook his head. “This plan? With me? Won’t work.”
“Yes, it will. I know the feelings you had for her, Wilde.”
“Had. It was eight years ago, sir. People change.”
“Not you.” Pruitt jabbed a finger into his shoulder to enunciate each word. “Not about this.”
What could he say to that? That he’d wanted the man’s daughter more than he’d ever wanted anything? That he’d contented himself with a slew of nameless, faceless women who all blended together in his memory because none of them were the woman he loved? That he’d been noble one fucking time in his life and it had cost him more than anyone could imagine?
No. He had too much pride to admit all that, but any argument he made to the contrary would bounce off the colonel like a rubber bullet, so he kept his mouth shut. At his back, he could almost feel Camden twitching with eagerness to ask him about Libby Pruitt.
Greer shifted in his seat, and the springs of his chair squeaked as his two-hundred-thirty-pound, six-foot-five-inch frame reclined, breaking the silence. He folded his hands across his abs and studied Jude for a long moment, then sighed. “Give us a moment, Colonel? There’s water and soda in the fridge out the door and to the left. Please, help yourself.”
Pruitt gave a curt nod, nailed Jude with another stern look that was somehow a cross between an order and a desperate request, and then let himself out.
“I don’t want to see her,” Jude said once he was gone. “It’s not fucking happening, Greer. Libby will castrate me if she sees me again. She won’t go for the whole pretend relationship thing. Pruitt’s out of his mind.”
“What did you do to her?” Camden asked.
“The usual college romance sob story. Young love and all that, then I went and broke her heart in the worst way I knew how.”
“You cheated,” Greer concluded.
It took every ounce of control he had not to show his internal wince on his face. Cheater. Man, he hated that word, but he shrugged like it was all no big deal. Just Jude being his usual fuck up self. “And rubbed her face in it. I was young and stupid.”