by Tara Janzen
After a moment, when he didn't say anything, she bit back her irritation and the sob stuck right in the middle of her throat, choking her, and she looked over at him.
He was watching her, his face very still, betraying nothing, and she realized he'd stopped the car. She didn't know when he'd done it, but they were stopped in a shadowed area of a shopping mall parking lot.
“You're crying,” he said.
“Oh, damn.” She checked her face and discovered he was right. Her cheeks were wet. Tears were running into the corners of her mouth. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, wondering what in the world had compelled her to tell him about the pony. She'd never told anyone but Regan and Wilson about the pony, and the whole idea had done nothing but freak the two of them out, especially Regan, who'd been afraid she actually would run off to Peru, whether she had a pony to take with her or not.
“How old were you when your parents died?” His voice was very calm, his question very straightforward, as if she hadn't just told him something really pitiful about herself.
God, the pony story. What had she been thinking?
“Three.” She inhaled a breath, deeply, and hoped it would somehow get past the knot in her chest. “I, uh, don't remember them, my parents, not personally, I mean, because they were gone a lot that last year, and it wasn't until I was around ten or so that I realized my parents were dead. I'd always known Regan's parents were dead, and that was always so awful, the burden we all bore, the great family tragedy. It was what made us different from everybody else in the neighborhood. She cried a lot for them, but for me they were just people I couldn't remember—up until I was ten and it hit me that they'd been my parents, too.”
“That must have been hard,” he said, still so calm, his voice a little sad, surprisingly empathetic. “Hard to realize your parents were gone, and then realize you were really late in figuring it out.”
She slanted him a quick glance, startled by his insight. She'd never told anyone that particular twist on her grief. She'd felt so stupid, and foolish, and alone. Not only had she missed her parents' lives, she'd missed their deaths, which had made her even more of a weirdo than she already was, which according to every housekeeper they'd ever hired was pretty damn weird—a situation that had not improved with the live-models-in-the-garden-shed incidents. Her first piece with Travis had garnered her national recognition in the Cooper-Lansdowne competition, but she'd never had to talk so fast in her life as she'd had to talk to keep Regan from sending her to a psychiatrist for professional help. She hadn't slept with Travis. Regan had made her swear it on their parents' unmarked graves—and to this day, she'd never slept with any of her models.
In fact, she'd never slept with anybody, not the full-contact, welcome-into-my-body type of sleeping with somebody, and seeing as how she'd just turned twenty-one last week, that was probably the weirdest thing about her of all. It was certainly the least known. Everyone thought she was such a wild thing.
“Were your parents' bodies ever recovered?”
“No.” She shook her head and gave him another careful, slightly amazed look from across the Porsche. No one in her whole life had ever had the guts to ask her that.
“You might feel better about it if they were.”
She didn't doubt that she would, had never doubted it, not since she'd first come up with the stupid pony plan. A part of her was utterly compelled to go to Peru, but she hadn't done it, and she wasn't sure exactly what kind of fear it was that kept her from going, whether it was the fear she wouldn't find them—or the fear that she would.
They'd be nothing but bones now. She wasn't sure she could bear that, to see their bones. She'd spent her whole life around bones. Wilson and Regan dragged them home by the truckload. It was the reason she worked with live models, living, warm-blooded, muscular, fleshed-out men who breathed and sweated. And when she painted them, they breathed and sweated on the canvas as well. Life pulsed from them. They were angels and demons and powerful creatures of psychic mythology—and they lived. In her work, she put the flesh on the bones. She didn't scrape the dust away and leave them all bare.
She hated bones.
“Wilson went to look for them once,” she said. “But he couldn't find them, couldn't locate the bodies. Everyone he talked to had a different story about the norteamericanos and where they'd been when the quake had hit. He came home feeling worse than when he'd left, and I guess I always figured if he couldn't find them, I wouldn't have a chance.” She gave a small shrug and rearranged a couple of the eye shadow containers in her silver box. “I wouldn't even know where to begin.” It was an excuse, but an excuse she'd clung to for years.
“I would.”
Dumbstruck, she lifted her head and stared at him. Had he just said what she thought he'd said? And who was he, she wondered, to even offer such a thing?
“If you ever decide you want to try, call me,” he continued. “I'll see what I can do. Steele Street has a lot of connections in South America. I'm down there all the time. Quinn and I just got back from Colombia a few weeks ago, and my brother is still there.”
He was serious. It was hard to believe, but he was actually serious.
“What's Steele Street?” she asked, swiping the back of her hand across her face, then lifting the hem of her T-shirt to do a better job. “The place where you work?” She kept her gaze on him.
“Uh, yes,” he said, after clearing his throat. His gaze had dropped quickly to her bare midriff, before flicking back up to hold hers, and if she wasn't mistaken, a little color had washed into his cheeks.
That was interesting, she thought. Very interesting. It was the most emotional thing she'd seen him do all night. He hadn't so much as flinched during their ordeal in the canyon. Nor had he hesitated, not once. He'd been in complete control of their imminent destruction, right down to his lightning-quick reaction in drawing that wicked-looking shotgun in the middle of it all.
Hell, he'd even aimed. And now he was affected by her midriff? Was it possible he was feeling a little of what she was feeling? And wouldn't it be great if she could figure out exactly what that was?
“We do a lot of, uh, international business as well as domestic.”
She read men for a living, and Mr. Thank You, Ma'am, but I'm in Charge was just a little bit flustered by her flash of skin. It was subtle, amazing, and definitely there. And in the odd way of things, it made her realize she wasn't having any more trouble breathing, and that she'd stopped crying, and that he truly had a remarkably soothing voice and incredibly beautiful eyes—which was about the millionth time she'd noticed that particular fact. They were thick lashed and deep set, with the most wonderfully stark, hawklike eyebrows.
She needed to paint him. Not on canvas, but put the paint right on him, her fingers on his face, sliding color across his skin—and if that flustered him a little more, all the better. She kind of liked him flustered.
“What kind of business?” she asked, and gave the edge of her shirt a quick glance. Dark streaks of mascara dirtied the white cloth, giving her a pretty good clue as to what she must look like: a mess. The smudge of blue swirled next to the mascara didn't look promising, either. As usual, she must have had paint on her face the whole night, and as usual, no one had bothered to tell her.
Dang it.
“Cars, mostly. Specialized cars and security.”
“You mean cars like this one, with armor?” And there they were, having a little old regular conversation, without her talking her head off. What a relief, even if the conversation was about armored cars.
But what in the world, she wondered, had Wilson been doing with those dinosaur bones to get them all in so much trouble?
“Yes.”
“And is that where you learned how to drive like you were doing up in the canyon?” Which had been utterly insane, but she wasn't going to put it in those words. He'd probably saved her life driving like a madman.
“Actually, we go out to California, to a tactical
driving school, every few months and burn up a few sets of tires.”
Ex-sniper, ex-Marine, tactical driving, private company, bought his car complete with armor from a man who'd lived in Panama—finally, it was all starting to make sense. “So you're a bodyguard?”
“Sometimes. Yes, ma'am.”
Ma'am. The man had offered to help her find her parents' remains, been blatantly sidetracked by her midriff, and he was still calling her ma'am? God, who would ever have believed that a sniper could be so sweet? Sweetly fierce like he'd been in her studio, sweetly sincere in the offer he'd made, and so sweetly beautiful, it hurt.
Yeah, she liked him flustered all right. She liked him flustered, because he flustered the hell out of her. His hair, short as it was, was standing on end. A trace of beard stubble darkened his jaw and upper lip. His clothes were rumpled and damp from the ungodly heat, and he was still beautiful, with cheekbones she wanted to slide her fingers over and a mouth she wanted to kiss—thoughts even more disconcerting now than they'd been an hour ago, when she'd been safely behind her camera.
“Have you been to Peru?”
He shook his head. “Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, and all over Central America, but not down into Peru.”
But he would go there? For her? To find her parents?
“I just about drove Grandpa crazy asking questions about Peru,” she told him. “Where he'd gone. Who he'd talked with. I took notes in a special notebook. I wanted to know everything for the trip. I had maps and snacks, and a backpack full of winter clothes. Regan was terrified I was going to run away, and then one day, I just quit talking about going, quit planning the whole, big, awful adventure. I wasn't curious anymore. I was just angry, and I pretty much stayed angry.”
“Until?” he asked.
“No until,” she admitted. “I'm still angry.” She knew the fact didn't throw her in a very mature light, but it was the truth. She was angry at her parents for hurting Regan, and for hurting Wilson, and for not even bothering to hang around long enough to find out who she was, before they'd gone and gotten themselves killed. She'd seen her grandpa crying, when he thought there was no one around.
Poor Wilson and Regan, they should have both learned a long time ago that she was always around, usually with a camera connected to a long lens. Shameless Nikki McKinney who spent her days painting beautiful, naked men. She couldn't imagine that her parents would have found her any less interesting than the other people who knew her. Every woman she knew wanted her job, but none of them had the talent, or the obsessive passion that took her work out of the prurient into the divine. Her men were beautiful, because she made them so. They were real, because she didn't let them keep their secrets.
“I guess I'd be angry, too,” he said, and she looked up again to find him still watching her. The low light in the car cast him in the gray halftones of muted nighttime colors—making his face a study in silky ecru and velvety soft shadows.
So touchable. That's what he was, and if he showed her even one more ounce of sensitivity and compassion, she'd probably fall in love with him for life.
“What about you?” she asked, ignoring the soft wave of heat rolling through her body, turning in her seat to face him more fully. This was comfortable, being here with him in the dark, cozily tucked in his car. “Have you ever explored your feminine mystique?”
The question took him by surprise; she could tell by the way his eyebrows drew together, one lifting slightly higher than the other.
“I don't have one to, uh, explore,” he said after a second more of confusion.
“Every man has one,” she said, and watched his expression go from confusion to extreme doubt. “Honest. If you'd like to come to my studio sometime, let me paint you, I can guarantee you'll find yours.” Oh, and wasn't she just so smooth—for all the good it was going to do her. From the look on his face, his feminine mystique wasn't something he particularly wanted to find.
“I don't think I'd make much of a model, ma'am.”
Ma'am again. He was in perpetual politeness mode, and she wanted to take his clothes off.
“What about your folks? Where do they live?” she asked, giving him a break and changing the subject.
The relief on his face was so obvious, it was almost comical.
“My mom's in L.A. still trying to make it in the movies, which as far as any of the rest of us has been able to tell, isn't going to happen. She left when I was eight. Us boys stayed with Dad in Denver.”
“Do you have any sisters?”
“No. All guys. My dad, my two older brothers, me, and usually two or three other kids who just always sort of ended up at our house for days or weeks on end. Quinn was there a lot, and a couple of other guys who are with Steele Street now. It was like growing up in a locker room, both the good and the bad.”
“There's a good side to a boys' locker room?” she asked skeptically, but with a humorous edge, feeling better, safer, by the minute.
“Yeah, but you have to be a guy to appreciate it.” He grinned, a flash of white teeth in a boyishly lopsided curve, and without any warning, her heart careened off into a slow, uncontrolled, 360-degree skid. He had dimples and slightly crooked lower teeth, and when he smiled he was absolutely devastating.
Oh, my God.
She was in such deep trouble.
A short laugh that had nothing to do with humor and everything to do with the nameless emotion tightening into a knot inside her chest escaped her on a surprised breath.
A Marine sniper.
God help her. She'd been so wrong. She didn't want to paint him; she wanted to inhale him.
CHAPTER
19
CHRISTIAN HAWKINS PULLED INTO Steele Street just before ten o'clock, pretty disgusted with the whole night.
The Pentagon's guns, which they should have found weeks ago, had disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving them with nothing but a bunch of dusty dinosaur bones in a Lafayette warehouse, and a whole bunch of people running around getting shot at. Regan McKinney's side trip to Cisco had started an avalanche that was picking up speed as the night wore on. The enemy had now been engaged, up close and personal, shots fired, and evasive action taken. But they were no closer to finding the Pentagon's assault rifles than they'd been four months ago.
He hoped to hell everything was about to change.
His footsteps echoed hollowly as he crossed the dim, open space, winding his way through the cars. This building on Steele Street was SDF's secret headquarters. Only nine people on the face of the earth had the fingerprints necessary to open the doors, or run the elevators, or access the building in any way, shape, or form. Most of them lived there at least part of the time. Hawkins kept a loft on the eleventh floor across from Skeeter's apartment. Quinn had the tenth, and Creed had taken the jungle loft on the ninth. J. T. had dibs on most of the twelfth along with Kid. Dylan, the boss, commandeered the top floor, the thirteenth, and there were enough nooks and crannies in the rest of the building to accommodate anyone who needed a place to store their stuff or themselves for a while.
As Hawkins neared the east side of the garage, he could see Jeanette parked in the shadows to the left of Roxanne. Great, he thought. At least one part of the night was going down right. Quinn had traded Jeanette for a less conspicuous ride.
Or so he first thought. When he looked around, he realized Quinn's idea of less conspicuous was none other than a candy-apple-red 1967 Dodge Coronet with hot pink piping.
Quinn had taken Betty, which was damned interesting since he had about forty-two cars to pick from. The one time out of a hundred he would pick Betty would be the one time he had a woman with him. It was the only reason any guy would pick Betty over something with a lot more muscle, because women loved Betty.
They loved her paint, her whitewalls, her tuned headers, and they really loved her hot pink piping. She was a babe magnet. He'd seen Betty charm females from Creed Rivera's seventy-eight-year-old great-grandmother to Johnny's thirteen-year-old little
sister.
So what the hell was up with Quinn and Regan McKinney? He remembered her from all those years ago at Rabbit Valley. She'd been built even at fifteen, and cutely blond, fun to talk with, and nice—too nice to hold his interest beyond friendship. He didn't remember Quinn ever having much to say to her, but he definitely remembered Quinn watching her.
Shit.
The closer he got to the two cars, the clearer it became that Jeanette had been ridden hard and put away wet.
But how in the world had her windshield wiper been broken off? Quinn made a point of keeping Jeanette looking dirty and mean, but he treated her with kid gloves. She was an ultrahigh-performance machine who could turn on a dime, damn near break the sound barrier, and fall apart at the drop of a hat if her specs weren't met. So how in the hell had she lost a wiper?
He reached out to smooth his hand over her hood, then leaned down to take an eye-level gander. Sure enough, she'd been dented.
What the fuck? he wondered.
The rest of her body was in good shape, and he ducked his head through the driver's-side window to check her out on the inside. Everything looked good, if good was the right word to describe the stripped down, bared bolts and snake-pit look of Jeanette's interior.
He started to duck back out of the car, when something pink caught his eye. Leaning in deeper, he reached out and picked up a scrap of cloth from between the passenger seat and the gear console.
It was a pair of lace underwear. Not very big. Pink. Torn.
Scented with expensive perfume.
He arched a brow. Regan McKinney's?
He brought the scrap of lace closer to his nose. Hell. Quinn had never had a chance. The guy just wasn't that strong when it came to smart, beautiful blondes built like Jack O' Nines strippers.
