by Cindy Dees
“Because I tripped and fell, and you overreacted.”
“I did not overreact. You’re important to—” he hesitated “—You’re a valuable asset to Uncle Sam.”
That was not what he’d originally intended to say. Who was she important to? Him? Could it be? She sighed. “Thanks for your concern. But I promise you, my knee is fine. I’m fine.”
He squatted on his heels, studying her. “You’re not fine,” he announced. Then he added abruptly, “Let’s get out of here.”
Something in his voice made her look up quickly. “What do you mean?”
“Let’s take the rest of the day off. You’ve earned a break. What do you say?”
She laughed. “What? Like I’m going to say no? Does a starving man refuse food?”
He stood up and offered her a hand. Abruptly, the mile-long run back to the beach house seemed to fly by. By mutual, unspoken consent, they didn’t speak of their plan to play hooky. No need to tick off Big Brother and risk having their escape ruined.
She and Brian headed for the kitchen and packed themselves a quick picnic. He disguised the meal in a couple of plastic grocery bags and they headed out in no time. As the SUV passed through the gates of the military installation and back into the real world, she breathed an enormous sigh of relief.
“I know exactly the place for our picnic,” he announced.
She sat back and enjoyed the drive. They wound along the coast on a narrow road perched high above the ocean. Beachfront estates lined the drive with secluded, gated entrances. She blinked in surprise when he turned in at one.
“Brian, this looks like a private home.”
“It is. An old friend owns it. He lets me stop by whenever I want to.”
“Is he home?” she asked doubtfully.
Brian shrugged. “I don’t know. But I wasn’t planning on going up to the house to find out. He likes to garden. I thought I’d show you the grounds.”
The driveway was lush, framed in overhanging trees and brilliant bougainvilleas in full bloom. A lovely Asian-inspired house topped a hill, but Brian guided the SUV around the base of the hill behind the home and parked the car.
She climbed out, looking around in wonder at the tropical splendor. Layer upon layer of greenery stretched away from them, a crushed gravel path winding into the trees invitingly. Spots of color broke up the verdant palette, drawing the eye forward into the mysteries of the forest.
“This place is beautiful,” she breathed.
Brian smiled over at her. “I thought you might like it.” He strolled off down the path, which was wide enough for them to walk on side by side.
Birds and crickets and frogs sang, each vying to be the loudest, a joyous cacophony that soothed her soul. She breathed deeply of the rich, earthy air. “It’s good to be alive, isn’t it?” she murmured.
He glanced over at her and replied solemnly, “Yes. It is. In my career, I’ve learned to slow down and appreciate moments like this.”
She nodded with new understanding. His world revolved around hard work, intense mental focus and unthinkable danger. To let down his guard for a moment, to simply enjoy a place of beauty and peace was a gift indeed.
They wound through the woodland paradise for fifteen or twenty minutes. And then a small space opened up in the path. It wasn’t exactly a clearing because the canopy of trees overhead completely enclosed it. A small structure stood in the middle of the glade. For all the world, it looked like a Japanese cottage.
“This way,” Brian murmured. He led her to a covered porch and slid open a low, wood and rice-paper panel that came up to about mid-thigh on him. He dropped to his knees in front of the opening, startling her. “It’s a traditional Japanese teahouse.”
And with that, he crawled inside. She followed him through the opening, bemused. The inside was breathtaking, elegant and simple. Piles of silk cushions served as the only furniture in front of a low wooden table with curved legs. Woven grass tatami mats covered the floor, a stunning watercolor scroll hung on the far wall, and an artistic floral arrangement rested on a small pedestal beside it.
“This is gorgeous,” she breathed. “But why isn’t there a regular door?”
Brian set the bags on the table and started unpacking lunch. “The walk through the woods to get here is designed to remind you of nature’s magnificence. Then you enter the teahouse on your knees to remind you of man’s humble place in the universe.” He gestured to the pile of cushions beside him.
She sank down, smiling. “I see why you like this place.”
“Sometimes I need this place. When I’m out on a mission and it’s going to hell and I’m tired and frazzled, this is the spot I think of to calm myself down and refocus my mind.”
She nodded. “It’s as close to perfect as any place I’ve ever seen.”
He glanced over at her, a quiet, grateful smile in his eyes. Like he was relieved that she got what this place meant to him. She’d almost forgotten this Brian existed under the grim, demanding instructor.
She helped him lay out their ham sandwiches, carrot sticks, apples and potato salad. The plain meal ought to have looked out of place in this graceful setting, but its simplicity fit somehow. They ate in companionable silence, serenaded by the woodland creatures outside.
After a few minutes, she set down the remains of an apple. “So tell me. Am I going to need this place?”
“How so?”
“Am I going to need a perfect moment in a perfect setting to focus on, when it’s all going to heck around me?”
A frown flickered across his face momentarily. And she knew him too well to miss it. He replied lightly, “I sincerely hope not.”
“But you can’t say for sure that I won’t.”
“Nothing’s certain in life, Sophie.”
“No kidding. Six weeks ago, I was going about my regularly scheduled life, working at the law firm and getting used to the idea of being single forever. Accepting the fact that I’ve turned thirty and my body’s starting to go.”
He laughed at that. “I’ve met guys in their sixties who do triathlons and give the twenty-five-year olds a run for their money. Fitness is a state of mind. Once you commit to it, no matter what age you get started, you can shape and train your body to be as healthy as you want it to be.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Some of us need a little bigger push than other people to make that commitment.”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately? Checked a stopwatch at the end of a run? You’re doing fantastic. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I wouldn’t be doing anything at all if it weren’t for you bullying me and cheering me on. You know, if you ever get tired of this Special Forces gig, you’d make a heck of a personal trainer.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I don’t have the patience for it or the positive attitude.”
“That’s not true!”
He shrugged. “It works with you. But I wouldn’t want to try it with anybody else. I couldn’t duplicate the chemistry.”
Oh. Well, then. Her cheeks felt warm all of a sudden. She cleared her throat. “So when am I likely to need this perfect memory?”
A shadow passed across his turquoise gaze, darkening it to the turbulent blue-green of a troubled sea. “Well, for one,” he replied thoughtfully, “if you’re captured, it’s an effective technique for POWs to visualize pleasant places as a means of temporary escape from their current reality.”
She propped her elbows on the table, studying his face carefully. “Is there a chance I’ll be captured?”
Brian exhaled heavily.
She said soberly, “I’ll take that as a yes. What will Freddie do to me if he captures me?”
The troubled blue of his eyes went a dark, muddy shade, like an ocean lashed by a hurricane. Reluctantly, he mumbled, “Use your imagination. Then double it.”
Fear fluttered like a trapped bird within her ribcage. She didn’t want to think about
it. Such a thing couldn’t really happen to her. Could it? No. She definitely didn’t want to think about it. Except she had to. She had to face the possibilities of this mission. Not only for her sake, but for Brian’s, too.
She took a deep breath. “Okay, so I have a pretty good imagination. Are you planning to give me any training in withstanding such things?”
He retorted sharply, “Not me. I’ve already told Hollister he’ll have to get someone else to do your POW training.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t hit you. It’s hard enough for me to wrestle you in your unarmed combat training. At least then you can fight back.”
She laughed. “Not that I succeed in tagging you, oh, ever.”
He grinned at her unrepentantly. “Nobody said I was going to make your training easy.”
They smiled at each other. The moment elongated itself as they each became aware of the other and of their unwillingness to break the fragile connection they’d reestablished. The smiles faded from their eyes, but their gazes remained locked. Her eyes widened as his pupils expanded, turning his eyes as black as midnight. Her breathing waxed light and fast. Her skin tingled. A slow flush climbed his cheeks, and the sight of it gave her a sudden urge to fan herself.
He pushed aside the table at the same moment she leaned forward, reaching for him. They came together with the desperate passion of Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers stealing a moment out of time. A single moment. Just for themselves. An hour with the nightingales before the lark heralded the dawn and ended their secret tryst.
“I’ve missed touching you,” he murmured as his hands skimmed over her.
She knelt before him, her hands roaming where they willed across his skin, “I’ve been right here the whole time.”
“Which made you all the more untouchable,” he grumbled.
“Touch me now.” It was a sigh of want, a plea of need, from the deepest well of her being.
“Ahh, sweet Sophie. It was all a lie. I couldn’t stay away from you if I tried.”
Tendrils of joy unfurled in her heart, pulling her forward to meet him halfway, on their knees in supplication to one another. “Then don’t try.”
Their hands darted about like impatient hummingbirds, touching and teasing, then flitting away to alight somewhere else. As if by magic, their clothes fell away while Sophie burned, hot and cold all at once.
“We shouldn’t—” Brian started.
She pressed her fingertips to his mouth. “Give it a rest. We probably shouldn’t, but we’re going to anyway. We’re making a perfect memory in a perfect place.”
He grinned down at her, flashing a lopsided dimple. “Perfect, huh? That’s a lot of pressure to put on a guy.”
She looked him straight in the eye and said deadpan, “I wouldn’t ask it of you if I didn’t think you could do it.”
He burst out laughing and wrapped his arms around her, carrying her down to the silken pillows. “I’ll do my best to live up to your expectations, ma’am.”
Their laughter sparkled like crystal, scattering diamond prisms of light all around them. He speared his hands into her hair, drawing her up to him, kissing the laughter off her lips. She sipped the nectar of their unspeakable ecstasy at finally being together like this. The relief between them was a palpable thing, a sigh hanging unspoken.
“Ahh, Sophie. I’ve been dreaming about you every night. I wake with the taste of you on my lips. I’ve stood in front of your door and argued with myself more times than I can count.”
Surprised, she asked, “What do you argue with yourself over?”
“Whether or not I give a damn about my career in the face of my need for you.”
“Which one of you is winning?”
He smiled down at her. “My fear of testing your doorknob and finding it locked against me.”
She stared up into his eyes, losing herself in their blue-on-blue depths. “It has never been locked against you. Not even that first night when you told me to lock it.”
The smile faded from his eyes as he searched for the truth in her words. “Jeez, Sophie—” Words failed him and his mouth descended, a journey of inches between two worlds apart. And then they became one. He kissed her over and over, and she savored the spicy honey-mustard taste of him.
“Mmm. Better than any ham sandwich I’ve ever had.” She smiled.
“You still taste like peaches. You always smell like them, you know.”
“It’s my shampoo.”
“I’ve started to throw out the bottle more times than I can tell you…” he paused to bury his nose in her hair, and while he was there, he kissed the side of her neck below her ear, sending shivers shimmering down her torso “…but I always stop. I open the lid for one last sniff, and I can’t make myself toss it. It would be like throwing away a part of you.”
She buried her face in the crook of his neck, “That’s so sweet.”
“Honey, I’m a lot of things, but sweet is not one of them.”
She pushed, rolling him over onto his back among the brilliant ruby-and-emerald cushions. “You are, too, sweet.”
He tried to scowl, but ended up grinning up at her. “I’m tough. And macho. And scary.”
She leaned down to kiss him. “You forgot grouchy and unsympathetic and a bully.”
He looped an arm around the back of her neck. “Ahh, yes. A bully. That’s me, all right. I’m a real SOB.”
She sprawled wantonly on top of his delicious body. “But you’re my SOB.”
He whispered, “I like the sound of that.” Quickly, he rolled over, his wonderful weight pressing her deep into the haphazard pile of cushions. He kissed her thoroughly, inhaling her into him, drawing her into the magic spell the teahouse cast around them.
The heavy beams overhead were solid, masculine. The delicate panels of paper between them the complete opposite. Light on dark, strong on fragile. Man on woman. A cool breeze blew, and the birds sang on, and the sun smiled down through the leaves.
Sophie’s heart took flight. Skin on skin, heartbeat to heartbeat, they soared. He filled her body to bursting with his eager heat and controlled power, but more than that, he filled the void within her soul. It had gaped, empty and yearning, for the past month, aching for him to fill it once more.
“Brian!” she cried out. She clutched him tight, and he drove her higher. She gasped, and gasped again, layer upon layer of explosion building within her. “I’ve missed you so much!”
“Baby, I’ve been going crazy for you.” He looked deep into her eyes, his body poised, aware that he held her on a razor’s edge of release. Their gazes locked, and he plunged so deep within her she forgot to breathe. Shattering glory started through her, one wave after another, brighter and brighter, stronger and stronger.
In that moment, they were the universe and the universe was within them. She cried aloud, arching up into him, and he kissed her with his entire body, absorbing her and her cries of delight into himself. He joined her in an endless moment of perfect sensation, of perfect union, of perfect spiritual alignment.
They collapsed bonelessly into the silk pillows, their bodies spent, their souls merged into a single awareness. She breathed when he did, he sighed when she did. The thought crossed her mind to seek more comfort, and he rolled onto his side, drawing her against his body.
A cool breeze wafted across her skin, and he reached under the table with his free arm to pull out a light silk throw and toss it over them. It rubbed against her sensitized skin, sending shivers of sexual pleasure racing through her again. A moan of pleasure rippled past his lips involuntarily.
He kissed away her smile, leaving a new one in its place. “I should steal the feather out of that flower arrangement and see what sounds I can draw from you with it.”
“I’d die of the pleasure,” she murmured against his warm, firm lips.
“Ahh, but what a way to go. Death by orgasm. Sign me up.”
She traced lazy curlicues across his chest with her finge
r. “I think I already died. This has to be a little corner of paradise.”
He smiled down at her. Outside a bird began to sing, a haunting melody of love and loss and piercing sweetness. The smile faded from his lips as an echo of the song repeated itself more faintly from further away.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “What is it?”
“Nightingales. The male is singing, trying to attract the female who answered him back. It’s said that a male who cannot find a female will sing himself to death trying to draw a female to him.”
“How romantic and sad.”
His eyelids flickered. “Such is love. It can drive a man to death and beyond.”
Sophie stared up wordlessly into Brian’s vivid, intensely blue eyes. What was he saying? That she’d gotten under his skin like that? Was he willing to cast aside all he’d worked for, all he’d achieved in the name of love? “I wonder what it’s like to love like that,” she murmured.
“I feel like that about my work. It’s bigger than me. More important than my life. It’s a compulsion. Just like that nightingale singing for a mate—for his life.”
She stared at him. To death and beyond? She couldn’t imagine anything more important than life itself. Except if that was the case…
Why had she agreed to do the mission? Hadn’t she weighed the odds of failure against the importance of the job and come up with a rational decision? Was that what Brian was driving at?
Was he warning her again that he always said good bye to the women in his life? The thought sent a sharp pang through her. The thought of the day arriving when Brian breezed out her life as abruptly as he’d breezed into it pained her. No man had ever swept her off her feet so completely. She felt more alive when she was with him than she’d ever felt before.
Fear vibrated within her, low and ominous, that, if he left, she’d never feel this way again. And yet, he’d just told her that his work was his wife, mistress and true love. What kind of a fool did that make her?
She frowned.
He reached up with the pad of his thumb to smooth away the wrinkle between her brows. “I didn’t mean to put a frown on your face.”
Why did she agree to do this mission anyway? Duty, country and honor, right? Except the words rang hollow in her head—every last syllable false. She propped herself up on an elbow and stared down at Brian. Beautiful Brian. Sexy, charming, mesmerizing Brian. Brian, who’d prior to this, managed to completely hold himself away from her in the name of the mission. Why now? Why this? Why today? Why that comment about his job being more important than his life? And then it all clicked.
