Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Not that there was any kind of real yard back there. It was totally in-ground swimming pool, surrounded by a wooden fence, with a small deck right by the sliding doors for a table and the gas grill.

  The water looked incredibly inviting, cool and clean and blue.

  Ken put the steak on the grill then took the wineglass out of her hand. One firm push to the small of her back, and with a splash, she was in the water.

  It felt as amazing as it looked, so she just stayed there, suspended, beneath the surface, surrounded by the delightfully cool silence.

  But then there was a flood of bubbles, and Ken grabbed her, hauling her up and out into the air.

  “Holy shit,” he gasped, grabbing onto the side of the pool with one hand, still holding tightly to her with the other. “I didn’t even think to ask if you knew how to swim.”

  “I do.” She was pressed up against him, practically nose to nose, his muscular thigh between her legs, his arm around her waist, his hand up underneath her T-shirt, against the bareness of her back. “I was just floating.”

  “No, you weren’t. Floating means you’re up at the surface. You were at the goddamn bottom of the pool.” He wiped the water out of his eyes. “Christ, you scared me.”

  She could feel his heart pounding. Hers was going fast, too. She was holding onto his arm and shoulder and he was impossibly solid. He didn’t release her, and she . . . well, she wasn’t about to pull back. She’d dreamed about feeling his arms around her too many times not to want to savor the real thing. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I pushed you. I just thought . . . You’re so polite. I didn’t think you’d go in while I was cooking—not without a little help.”

  He was right, she wouldn’t have. “I like lying on the bottom and looking up at the sun through the water,” she tried to explain. There was water on his eyelashes. Up this close, she could see every hypnotizing drop, every long, dark lash. He had beautiful lashes, beautiful eyes, a beautiful mouth. . . .

  “I should take you diving. You ever go diving?” He was wearing his hair short these days, and his face wasn’t as thin as it had been back in college. He’d filled out all over, in fact.

  “I went on a cruise once, and there was a class, but . . .” He was staring at her mouth, and she knew. He was going to kiss her. Finally. After years of wishing and dreaming.

  But he didn’t move. And rather than just hang there like an idiot, she kept talking. “I’m not very brave. Once I heard the stories about people’s lungs exploding . . .”

  Oh, terrific. Way to get the man to kiss her. Talk about exploding lungs.

  He smiled, and sure enough, the moment was gone. The mood had been broken.

  “That’s only if you’re an idiot,” he said, “and you don’t follow some really simple rules.”

  “I’m good at following rules, but I’m not very brave,” Savannah admitted. He loosened his hold on her, and she knew she’d blown it. She’d brutally murdered that romantic moment. She was an idiot. She deserved to have her lungs explode.

  But there was one lock of his wet hair that was dripping onto his nose, and without thinking, she reached up and pushed it back, and suddenly there she was, with her fingers in Kenny Karmody’s hair.

  And just like that, the moment she thought she’d lost was resuscitated. Instead of letting her go, Ken’s arm tightened around her. And with a flash of heat, the way he was holding her didn’t feel even remotely as if he were rescuing her anymore.

  Even the water felt hot.

  His eyes were so dark brown they were almost black. “Savannah, I have to . . .”

  He kissed her. He kissed her! His mouth was so sweet, his lips so gentle. It was a perfect first kiss—tender and respectful, practically reverent—like something out of a Disney movie with a G rating, featuring a nun.

  She was the one who bumped it up to the next level. She was the one who practically inhaled him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and opened her mouth and . . .

  And Ken was completely up for the challenge.

  Adele had always said Kenny was a terrific kisser. She’d said that unlike some men, Ken didn’t use kissing merely as a stepping stone to sex. She’d said he’d liked to kiss purely for the pleasure of kissing.

  Savannah finally understood what Adele had meant.

  And then she stopped thinking about Adele altogether.

  At least until Ken gently pushed himself away from her and swam all the way down to the other end of the pool.

  “You’re dangerous.” He climbed out and dripped his way over to the grill. “This is filet mignon, you know, and for a minute there, I was completely prepared to let it burn into a blackened cinder.”

  “But you didn’t.” Savannah climbed out of the pool, too, unsure whether she should be charmed by the fact that he hadn’t assumed that one kiss gave him a green flag to take off her clothes, or insulted that she’d been pushed aside in favor of saving a piece of meat.

  “It occurred to me that I should attempt to follow through on my offer to feed you dinner and hello, Jennifer Lopez, I knew there was a reason I should’ve given you a black T-shirt instead of a white one.”

  Savannah looked down. Her shirt had gone transparent and, plastered against her body, it left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Not that she had all that much to imagine.

  She tried to pull the fabric away from her skin, but that didn’t really help. She folded her arms across her chest, but then she realized that after that one brief glance, Ken was carefully keeping his back to her.

  “Third drawer in the dresser in my bedroom. That’s the T-shirt drawer,” he told her. “Help yourself.”

  She went into the house, dripping onto his carpeting. It was easy to find his bedroom—only one of the two rooms at the end of the hall had a bed.

  The other was filled with computers.

  She stuck her head into that second room. Ken must’ve had four different home computers and a full array of scanners, cameras, zip drives, and high-tech things she couldn’t even identify.

  The king of all computer geeks, Adele had called him, claiming that when it came to computers, Kenny was a genius.

  “He’s like Albert Einstein,” she’d said. “No, make that Albert Einstein with ADD. I swear, if Kenny would just learn to sit still, he’d be filthy rich. Instead, he’s too busy playing soldier.”

  There was only one thing Ken loved more than his computers, Adele had lamented. And that was being a SEAL. She’d come third in his life. Could she really be blamed for going out with other guys during their months of separation?

  Yes. As a lowly college freshman to Adele’s exalted senior status, Savannah had kept her opinion to herself, but even back then she’d thought Adele was a fool for cheating on Ken. And now, after having kissed him, she knew Adele had been a fool.

  She went into his bedroom, a dim, cool, quiet room where the curtains were still shut. His bed was unmade, and he had packages of clean clothing out on every available surface.

  The T-shirts weren’t in the third drawer—that was empty. Instead, they were in a pile on top of the dresser, right next to his SEAL pin.

  Half of the clothing in his room had various types of camouflage prints. Two different naval dress uniforms hung in the open closet under a thin sheet of dry cleaners’ plastic. It was painfully obvious just from being in there that Ken was a Navy SEAL.

  Savannah took one of the camouflage T-shirts and went into the bathroom to change. So now what was she going to do? He might think it really strange if she came out of his bedroom and didn’t say anything about his uniforms. He hadn’t mentioned to her that he was in the Navy. He hadn’t said that much about himself at all.

  Nor had she. Ever vigilant to keep away from the topic of where she went to college, she’d already changed the subject more than once. She didn’t want to lie to him, but really, she already had. She’d been lying by omission ever since she rolled down the
window of her car, recognized his face, and didn’t admit that they’d already met.

  A million years and a different lifetime ago, for both of them.

  Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, Savannah attempted to make her hair look a little less as if she were a wet rodent. What would Rose, her grandmother, do? She took a deep breath, and went back outside.

  “So . . . you’re a SEAL.”

  “So . . . I am.” Ken glanced up at her, his expression suddenly shuttered. “Is that a problem for you?”

  This was it. Her big chance to try to explain about Alex and Jakarta. “Actually, no. It’s not. In fact, I was looking—”

  “You know what?” he interrupted. “If you’re a SEAL groupie, I don’t want to know about it.”

  “Excuse me . . . ?”

  “A groupie. A woman who fucks SEALs just because they’re SEALs.”

  She recoiled from the harshness of his language, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care as he carried the steak to the glass-topped table.

  “I’m having a really good time believing that you’re here, Savannah,” he said, “because you felt the same jolt that I did when I looked into your eyes. Because we connected. If that’s not true, I’d just as soon not know.”

  “I’m not a SEAL groupie,” she said. How could he think that?

  Except she had come to California to look him up because he was a SEAL. Now probably wasn’t the best time to tell him that. Except, she realized with a sinking heart, there was never going to be a best time to tell him.

  “If you are,” he said quietly, “I’m not going to kick you out. I’m not that stupid. I’m going to take whatever you want to give me. I’m just . . . I’m looking for something more than a one-night stand, that’s all.”

  “I’m not a SEAL groupie,” she said again. “Oh, my God.”

  “Let’s just talk about something else, okay? You want more wine or something else to drink with dinner?”

  “No,” Savannah said. “Let’s not talk about something else. Let’s talk about this. Because I didn’t come here to have sex with you. And if you think otherwise, maybe I should just leave right now, because I have absolutely no intention of having sex with you.”

  Well, that was a lie. “Tonight,” she added. Which kind of ruined the effect of her impassioned, indignant, outraged speech.

  But then it was okay, because he smiled. Ken Karmody had a smile like sunshine after a week of rain. “Really?” he asked. “Does that mean you’ll have sex with me tomorrow?”

  Somehow she’d said the right thing. Somehow she’d convinced him she wasn’t—oh my God—a groupie. He believed her, and now he was teasing her, but she answered as if he were serious.

  “I don’t know,” she told him. “We hardly know each other. Tomorrow still seems kind of soon. Doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe not if we, you know, stay up all night talking.”

  If that was a line, it worked. The thought of this man—who was upset by the idea of a one-night stand, who, oh my God, was looking for something more—being intrigued enough by her to want to spend the whole night talking made her knees a little weak.

  “I apologize for my, um, profanity,” he said. “I tend to, uh, jump to conclusions sometimes. I have a history of being a worst-case scenario thinker and . . . A couple of months ago . . . No, it’s been longer than that now, but anyway, to make a long story short, Janine, the last woman I dated, was pretty much a groupie. And I really don’t want to do that again.”

  Savannah didn’t know what to say. And when he pulled out the chair for her, she sat down.

  God help her, she had to tell him the truth.

  And she would.

  Right after dinner.

  New York City. January 23, 1943.

  I walked into the party at my boss’s penthouse apartment expecting just another decadent attempt to ignore the fact that, as Americans, we’d been in the war for over a year now, and things weren’t going quite the way we’d hoped.

  Our allies in Great Britain were still getting the spit kicked out of them every night from bombing raids by the German Luftwaffe. Our own boys in the Pacific were fighting and dying in their attempts to regain one small island after another from the Japanese.

  But in New York, we laughed and danced and drank champagne.

  I was twenty-two, and thought I was quite the experienced and cynical woman of the world. I’d graduated from college. I’d traveled to Europe. I’d had my heart broken. I’d worked for nearly four years now as a double agent, code name Gretl.

  Most of the other young women I knew complained about the inconveniences of the war—the lack of silk for stockings, the shortage of men and chocolate, and the fact that the blackout was disrupting the glitter of the city at night. What was the point of turning off the lights? We were far from Europe, far from danger.

  I sometimes had to bite my tongue to keep from telling them that the war was closer than they thought—that I was fighting it every day from my office at Grumman, where as part of my cover I actually worked a full ten hours a day as Jonathan Fielding’s secretary while I also maintained my Nazi contacts and fed false information to the Third Reich. All the while, I constantly prayed that today wouldn’t be the day that my Nazi “friends” discovered my allegiance was not to der Vaterland but rather to the land of the free and the home of the brave—not to mention my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers.

  Yes, because I was “Gretl,” I knew far more than the average twenty-two-year-old woman in New York City. I knew that German U-boats moved silently and unseen just outside of New York Harbor. I knew they often came close to shore just off Long Island to allow Nazi spies and saboteurs to disembark.

  I had been told by my Nazi contacts that if I found myself facing “discovery” by the Americans, I should head to South America. There was apparently a Nazi stronghold in Brazil, the idea of which gave me nightmares of squads of German soldiers—similar to the ones I’d seen in Berlin in 1939—goose-stepping their way through Mexico, up into Texas and beyond.

  No, we were not far from danger. Yet on the evening of January 23, I put on my best gown—a low-cut dark blue number. The color set off my fair hair and eyes, and the daring neckline set off my other attributes.

  In this war, my pretty face and female figure were my weapons and my gown was my uniform. I marched forth that night, heading into the thick of it—Nazi hunting.

  I’d heard rumors that a high-powered Nazi agent, code name Charlemagne, was due to arrive in New York at any moment. I was planning to hit the Supper Club and the Bubble Room—and all the other popular nightspots—to scan for new faces, after stopping briefly at Jonathan’s party.

  I remember the disdain with which the maid took my winter wrap and my hat at the door to the Fieldings’ apartment. She glanced pointedly down the hallway, as if looking for my missing escort, who, of course, didn’t exist. In 1943, if a woman went out only when she had an escort, chances were she wouldn’t go out at all.

  And, considering that I was supposed to be Jonathan Fielding’s mistress as well as his secretary, the scandal of my appearance at his party far outweighed the scandal of my lack of escort.

  Evelyn Fielding, Jon’s wife, greeted me with the warmth of a glacier. She was so good at hating me, I nearly always laughed aloud when we came face to face in public.

  She knew darn well that I wasn’t her husband’s mistress, that I was a double agent working for the FBI. Jon had told her the truth from the start.

  At first, I’d been terribly upset by this. It was bad enough that Jon had to know who I really was, but his wife . . . ? My very life—and the lives of my dear mother’s brothers and sisters back in their tiny village outside of Freudenstadt—depended on total secrecy.

  But then I met Evelyn and she became the older sister I’d never had. I knew instantly why Jon trusted her so completely, why he adored her. And once a week, when Jon would take me—his “mistress”—for a daytime rendezvous at the Grand Hotel, Evely
n would meet us there, and we’d all have a cozy luncheon a trois.

  She was always so worried for me, always bringing cookies and homemade soup. She was sure that I wasn’t taking the time to eat properly, and Lord knows she was right.

  “I’m afraid I can’t stay long,” I told her now as I took a glass of champagne from a passing tray.

  “What a pity,” she drawled, so beautifully disingenuous, I couldn’t help but laugh.

  Fortunately, anyone watching would think I was laughing at her out of spite, or maybe nervousness at such close contact with my lover’s wife.

  “Careful.” She leaned close to whisper with a near perfect sneer that made her look as if she were quietly threatening to boil my panties if I didn’t leave immediately. “Euro-God at nine o’clock. He’s got you in his radar, Rose. You’re in trouble now.”