Going Dark

by Monica McCarty

  Annie wanted to snort. Mr. Hard-Ass was laying the laid-back-surfer—windsurfer—thing on a little thick, to Annie’s getting-annoyed mind. But the woman was eating it up.

  “There’s a small boutique next to the big hotel. It has mostly women’s things, but Sara has a small men’s section of basics. Tell her Patsy sent you and she’ll take care of you. There are also a couple beach shops for T-shirts, sweatshirts, and bathing suits if you need those. And a charity shop further down the road.”

  “That should be plenty to get us through,” Dan said, taking the package that Patsy seemed reluctant to let go of. “Thank you, Patsy.”

  The woman blushed like the proverbial schoolgirl—of fifty, Annie thought uncharitably.

  “My pleasure,” Patsy said. “Hope to see you and your wife around during the competition.”

  Annie thought Patsy had forgotten she existed. Normally Annie was the typical overfriendly American. But since she was now Brazilian, she must have forgotten. Annie also didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. It was close to Spanish, which she did speak, but she wasn’t going to take a chance on hasta luego.

  Dan must have noticed. “What’s the matter?”

  “No hablo inglés.”

  He laughed. “That’s not Portuguese.”

  “Which is why I didn’t say anything.” She side-eyed him. “I didn’t take you for flirtatious.”

  He shrugged. “When the situation calls . . .”

  “Yeah, well, a little advice. If you ever have a real wife, I wouldn’t do that in front of her.”

  He gave her a look as if she were crazy—which was exactly how she was feeling. “You’re right. You do get cranky when you are hungry. Let’s eat and then get cleaned up.”

  Annie devoured her brunch in an embarrassingly short time, and then headed into the public bathroom to wash up a little. Dan said they’d go shopping afterward to pick up clothes to change into after showering, but he wanted to change their appearances a little before checking into a hotel and too many people saw them.

  The mirror was one of those nonglass safety types found in public restrooms and didn’t give off the best reflection, but she managed to dampen her hair, cut a good six inches off in a mostly straight line—her hair was wavy, so it didn’t matter as much—to just past chin level, and do a light application of makeup.

  She was fine until she started filling the paper bag Dan have given her for the purpose with her hair. Looking down at the pile of thick brown waves, she wanted to cry. Maybe it was good that she couldn’t really see in the mirror that well.

  It’s just hair.

  How much difference could it make?

  A lot. As she discovered when she left the bathroom and found Dan waiting for her. She took one look at him, and her stomach dropped. Or flipped—she couldn’t tell. But everything inside her seemed to be skidding around in all kinds of directions.

  Oh, crap.

  He’d shaved.

  Eighteen

  Dean took another sip from his pint, wondering what he’d said this time. The newly dubbed Mrs. Thompson—of the Mr. and Mrs. Thompson who’d registered at the guest house—had been prickly since their trip to the market earlier.

  “Thanks,” Annie grumbled, barely looking at him before turning back to her food.

  Maybe she was cranky because of all those vegetables she ate. He was tempted to offer her some of his steak but figured she might not see the humor right now.

  All he’d said was that her hair looked cute. She’d done a good job with the cut. The silky, dark strands fell to just past her chin in those loose, sexy waves that were popular right now, framing her face and emphasizing the delicateness of her features. Except for her eyes, which looked enormous.

  She had this vulnerable thing going that if anything made her look even hotter, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that. But definitely Bambi 2.0.

  He’d been having a hard enough time keeping his eyes in his head since she walked into their shared room after using the hall bathroom—the guest house didn’t have en suites.

  He’d never seen her dressed for dinner before, and she looked like a million bucks. Which was all the more impressive since he’d only given her a couple of hundred to buy the clothes she would need for a few days. She’d come back with an impressive stack of garments. And even though like most straight men he didn’t know shit about fashion, he knew enough to know that wasn’t enough money for anything designer. But somehow she’d turned a slinky black sundress, a black cotton wrap sweater, and thin black flip-flops into a fashion model straight off the pages of a glossy magazine.

  He, on the other hand, had bought the first white polo and tan cargos he could find, as well as a few pairs of shorts, T-shirts, board shorts, and surprisingly—given that it was Scotland and not Coronado—a Baja-style sweatshirt.

  Windsurfing was big on the island, and the big competition that Patsy had assumed he was participating in—the Tiree Wave Classic—was the longest-running windsurfing contest in the world. Not bad for a small Scottish island most people probably hadn’t heard of. But it explained the beach vibe of the place. “The Hawaii of the North” was what they called it. He wasn’t sure he’d go that far, but it had been a lucky pick.

  Dean wasn’t a professional by any means, but he was a decent surfer and windsurfer courtesy of the years spent in Coronado and Hawaii. If the need arose, he would be able to fake it.

  As for faking the laid-back surfer dude? For that all he had to do was harness his best Donovan impression. Maybe he should have looked for an ugly Hawaiian shirt in that secondhand store.

  He watched Annie pick at her food while enjoying his pint of the local ale. As he’d chosen a small guest house that only served breakfast, the innkeeper had suggested the restaurant down by the harbor for dinner. It wasn’t cheap, but Annie deserved a nice meal after what she’d been through. He had a feeling that now that they were out of immediate danger, it was all catching up to her.

  “You okay?”

  She looked up at him. She had that surprised strange look on her face again before she lowered her eyes and blushed. “I’m fine.”

  She’d been doing that all day. Ever since he’d walked out of the public bathroom minus the beard and longer hair.

  Dean frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Or maybe not looking was the better question.

  She glanced up again. Warily. “Like what?”

  “Like I’m some kind of freak from X-Men?”

  The blush deepened. She lowered her gaze again before forcing it back to his. She’d never seemed shy before, but that was definitely how she was acting.

  “I’m just not used to seeing you without the beard and long hair. You look”—she paused for so long Dean started to feel self-conscious, which was an entirely new feeling for him—“different.”

  Different? What the hell did that mean?

  Maybe he was getting the cute issue now.

  Dean found himself rubbing his chin, which was definitely self-conscious. Christ. What was he, seventeen? Why did he care if she didn’t like it? “It’ll grow back soon enough.”

  “It’s not that,” she said quickly—maybe a little too quickly. “I like it.”

  Suddenly he understood the blush and shy looks. Ah, shit. She was attracted to him. Given that he was feeling the same way, it probably wasn’t a good idea, but he said it anyway. “I feel the same way about your hair.”

  He was glad he’d said it when she gave him a smile that reached all the way up to her eyes. He could get really used to making her smile like that.

  As he was on a roll, he thought about mentioning the dress—the low-cut, tight dress that showed off a pretty spectacular chest and got even lower every time she leaned forward to take a bite—but he thought that might give too much away. Yeah, he was also a pig and
not above taking cheap thrills where he could find them.

  This place was too romantic anyway. A small table tucked in a corner, low light, sea view, intimate conversation . . . It wasn’t a date, but it felt a hell of a lot like one.

  The problem wasn’t just that he was hot for her. He was hotter for her than he’d ever been for any woman in his life. So hot that the next few nights sharing a room with her—and not touching her—were going to be fucking torture. The kind of torture that would put last night to shame.

  But even one cheap room and food were going to deplete his stash of cash quickly. They couldn’t do a his and hers.

  Better not to think about that right now. “Tell me about your dissertation.”

  She eyed him warily. “Really? Mr. Anti-Save-the-Whales is interested in my liberal, environmental agenda?”

  He was interested in everything about her. Shit. He had to stop thinking things like that. “I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t. And I’m not anti-Shamu or environment.”

  She arched a very pretty dark eyebrow. “I notice you didn’t say anything about the liberal-agenda part.”

  He smiled, caught.

  “I thought so! Well, to pay you back, I’m going to bore you senseless.”

  She was wrong. She didn’t bore him at all. It was fun listening to someone who truly loved what they did.

  She told him how she’d switched majors after the Gulf Oil spill, and how she wanted to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.

  Dean remembered some of the pictures of the dead wildlife after the disaster—dead birds and dolphins coated in crude oil. They’d been disturbing, but given some of the things he’d seen as a SEAL, they hadn’t made much of an impact.

  When you’d seen men blown apart by an IED or seen heads explode like watermelons from a gunshot, the loss of a few birds didn’t seem that important.

  But through her eyes, he realized that wasn’t the way to look at it. Valuing human life more highly didn’t mean that nothing else had value. Senseless loss was senseless loss. And someone who cared deeply about protecting living things big and small from that should be commended, not dismissed.

  She’d been willing to put herself on the line by getting on that ship. He might not have been one hundred percent behind the method, but he could admire the action. Maybe they were more alike than he wanted to think.

  “I wasn’t just interested in what happened right after the spill,” she said. “That was easy to see. I wanted to prove that even when the oil is dissipated and ‘cleaned up,’ there are lasting effects. I was looking at the levels of different types of PAHs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” she translated, although he knew what they were, “which are commonly found in crude oil in Gulf fish—particularly tilefish, since they’re bottom feeders, where the oil eventually settles—at various distances from shore and morphological changes in heart structure.”

  In other words, changes to the actual form or structure of the organism. “Did you find any?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Enough to put in question the current thinking on how far is ‘safe’ for offshore drilling operations.”

  “So what’s next?” he asked. “More lab research?”

  “I thought so. I’ve been offered a position at a private research lab.”

  “But.”

  She smiled, realizing he hadn’t missed her hesitation. “I’ve been gone for eight years. My mom wants me to go back to Florida for a while.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know. I love lab work, but I miss being out in the field. The lab sometimes feels a little detached.”

  She stopped talking when the waiter interrupted them to take their plates, refill her wineglass, and ask if they wanted dessert.

  She shook her head, and he ordered another ale, not ready for the evening to end.

  When the waiter left, she looked at him apologetically. “I’ve been talking all night. What about you? I don’t even know where you went to school.”

  He wasn’t surprised by the assumption. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. It was the first time, however, that he cared about the reaction.

  He wasn’t embarrassed. College hadn’t been for him, and God knew, he’d learned more as a SEAL than he ever would have in the classroom. But she had a PhD. In his experience, the more educated the person, the more biased about the value of education—whether warranted or not—and the more likely to equate not educated to not intelligent. More than once after telling a date he hadn’t gone to college, he’d heard, “Wow, but you seem so smart.”

  “I went to JC for a few semesters, but it wasn’t for me.”

  If she was surprised, she hid it well. Instead she seemed curious, studying him with an intensity that made him want to squirm a little. “College isn’t for everyone. They seem to have a much better grasp of that here,” she said, referring to the UK, where it wasn’t necessarily assumed that after secondary school you went to university (or “uni” as it was called). “With the exorbitant cost of tuition, I think kids should be weighing that decision a lot more. Your parents must have been happy not to have all that debt.”

  She’d meant it lightheartedly, and he didn’t want to make her feel bad, but he also wanted her to know the truth. At least as much as he could tell her. “My dad wasn’t around, and my mom didn’t have money.”

  Nor would she have given it to him if she had.

  She seemed to sense that there was more—a lot more. But didn’t press, probably because she knew he couldn’t tell her. “I’m sorry.”

  He dismissed the sentiment with a shake of his head. “Don’t be. I got over it a long time ago.”

  “Is that why you went into the navy?”

  He nodded. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  He’d spoken without thinking.

  “Then why did you leave?”

  “I . . .” The frustration of the situation was eating away at him. He couldn’t tell her anything, but he didn’t want to outright lie to her. “I can’t talk about it, all right?”

  She seemed to understand, although he could see she wanted to ask more. “You never thought about going back to school to become an officer?”

  “Hell no!” The words were out before he could stop them. He might be a Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator—a petty officer—but he was still a ground pounder. “Paperwork and politics aren’t my thing.”

  She laughed. “Understatement of the evening. You don’t have a politic bone in your body, which you need to rise up the ranks. You are all about hard truths and saying what’s on your mind.”

  He knew what she was talking about. “I’m sorry, Annie. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way. I was pissed.”

  She shook her head. “No. You had every right to say what you did. I was naive, and I should have asked more questions. I’m just sorry that I got you messed up in all this.”

  He wasn’t. He should be, but he wasn’t. And that scared the shit out of him.

  • • •

  Soap made lousy makeup remover. Annie stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, but it wasn’t the dark circles she was worried about. What was she going to do?

  She liked him. She liked him a lot.

  Tonight had been nice. Actually it had been better than nice. It had been pretty close to a perfect first date. Which was all the more ironic because it hadn’t been a date at all.

  Maybe after what they’d been through, it was understandable that Dan was so easy to talk to and that being with him felt so natural. But that didn’t explain the constant hum and buzz of awareness that made her feel as if there was a magnet drawing them closer and closer together.

  The magnet was physical attraction, she told herself. Physical attraction that had gotten a hundred times worse after he walked out of that public toi
let earlier.

  Someone should have prepared her.

  She’d felt as if she’d been hit by the proverbial freight train. Her tough, grizzled longshoreman had turned into a clean-cut, all-American tall drink of gorgeousness. He was every bit as good-looking as she’d feared—maybe more so.

  He had a great jawline—strong and masculine but not overly Neanderthal square. And with the beard gone, she could really see his mouth. On anyone less masculine looking it might be sensual, but on him it was just . . . sexy.

  Pretty much everything about him was sexy. And every time she looked at him, her heart stopped a little and she remembered exactly how it had felt to have him kissing and touching her.

  This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

  Annie splashed her face with cold water from the tap, but it didn’t help. She still felt flushed.

  She knew better than to blame it on the wine. It was him. Her. The blasted awareness between them.

  Realizing she’d dawdled in the no-frills but clean little girls’ room long enough to get ready for bed—bed!—she gathered up her discarded clothes and limited toiletries and padded barefoot back down the hall toward the room.

  Their room.

  God, she had to stop thinking like that.

  It was a small guest house. Four rooms shared two hall bathrooms—a women’s on one end of the long hall and a men’s on the other. Annie wasn’t sure, but she thought they might be the only people staying here tonight. She hadn’t heard any sounds behind the other three doors she passed to get to room number one, which they’d been given.

  It was more like being in someone’s house than a hotel. Although the bathroom had been white utilitarian—stand-up shower, toilet, towel bar, hamper, and small pedestal sink—the rest of the house was an explosion of Victorian. She hadn’t seen so many doilies, flowers, and dark wood since her grandmother died. Even in the hall the decoration was dark maroon carpet and mauve-colored rose wallpaper on the walls.

  She stood outside the bedroom door. This was ridiculous. She was being silly. It was the twenty-first century. There was no reason to make such a big deal about this. Two adults could sleep in the same room. She didn’t need to get weird about it. They’d slept in the same room last night.