He was waiting for her at his bedroom door. “I know it was. Hey, don’t look at me that way.” He pulled her inside and closed the door behind her, drawing her into his arms and kissing her hard on the mouth, as if trying to wipe the expression of confusion and apprehension off her face. “I’m sorry if I made you feel foolish in front of the police—claiming you were mistaken that way. But I didn’t know what else to say.”
“I don’t understand why you won’t press charges.”
She looked searchingly up at him and he met her gaze steadily. “I know. Thanks for trusting me despite that.” His face softened into his familiar half smile and he kissed her again, more gently this time.
Mia felt herself melt. His clean-shaven cheeks felt sensuously smooth against her face as she deepened their kiss, and she felt a hot surge of desire. His arms tightened around her, and she knew he felt it, too.
But he gently pushed her away, laughing softly. “Damn, you’re dangerous. I’ve got a serious jones for you.”
“A…jones?”
“Addiction,” he explained. “Some guys get a traveling jones—they can’t stay in one place for very long. I’ve had friends with a skydiving jones, can’t go for more than a few days without making a jump.” He crossed to his closet and leaned his crutches against the wall, turning back to smile at her again. “Looks like I’ve got myself a pretty severe Mia Summerton jones.” His voice turned even softer and velvet smooth. “I can’t go for more than an hour or two without wanting to make love to you.”
The heat coursing through her got thicker, hotter. I’ve got a serious jones for you—the words weren’t very romantic. Yet, when Frisco said it, with his husky voice and his liquid-fire eyes, and that incredibly sexy half smile…it was. It was pure romance.
He turned away from her, somehow knowing that if he looked at her that way another moment longer, she’d end up in his arms, and they’d wind up in his bed again.
And there was no time for that now, as nice as it would have been. Thomas was back at her condo, watching Natasha. And Mia was still waiting for Frisco’s explanation.
“Why won’t you press charges?” she asked again.
She sat down on his bed, watching as he took off his jacket and hung it carefully in the closet.
“I saw Sharon,” he told her, glancing back at her, his eyes grim and his smile gone. He was wearing a white shirt, and the dark nylon straps of his shoulder holster stood out conspicuously. He unfastened the holster and tossed it, gun included, next to her onto his bed.
Mia couldn’t help but stare at that gun lying there like that, several feet away from her. He’d treated it so casually, as if it weren’t a deadly weapon, capable of enabling him to take a human life with the slightest effort.
“It turns out that she does owe Dwayne some money. She says she ‘borrowed’ about five grand when she moved out of his place a few months ago.” He hopped on one leg over to the bed and sat down next to her. Bending down, he pulled off his shoes and socks. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing tantalizing glimpses of his tanned, muscular chest. But even that wasn’t enough to pull Mia’s attention away from the gun he’d thrown onto the bed.
“Please—I’d like it if you would move this,” she interrupted him.
He glanced at her, and then down at his holstered gun. “Sorry.” He picked it up and set it down, away from her, on the floor. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t like firearms.”
“I don’t dislike them. I hate them.”
“I’m a sharpshooter—was a sharpshooter, I’m a little rusty these days—and I know firearms so well, I’d be lying if I told you I hated them. I’d also be lying if I told you I didn’t feel more secure when I’m carrying. What I do hate is when weapons get into the wrong hands.”
“In my opinion, any hands are the wrong hands. Guns should be banned from the surface of the earth.”
“But they exist,” Frisco pointed out. “It’s too late to simply wish them away.”
“It’s not too late to set restrictions about who can have them,” she said hotly.
“Legally,” he added, heat slipping into his voice, too. “Who can have them legally. The people who shouldn’t have them—the bad guys, the criminals and the terrorists—they’re going to figure out some way to get their hands on them no matter what laws are made. And as long as they can get their hands on firearms, I’m going to make damn sure that I have one, too.”
His jaw was set, his eyes hard, glittering with an intense blue fire. They were on opposite sides of the fence here, and Mia knew with certainty that he was no more likely to be swayed to her opinion than she was to his.
She shook her head in sudden disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m…” She looked away from him, shocked at the words she almost said aloud. I can’t believe I’m in love with a man who carries a gun.
He touched her, gently lifting her hand and intertwining their fingers, correctly guessing at half of what she nearly said. “We’re pretty different from each other, huh?”
She nodded, afraid to look into his eyes, afraid he’d guess the other half of her thoughts, too.
He smiled wryly. “Where do you stand on abortion? Or the death penalty?”
Mia smiled despite herself. “Don’t ask.” No doubt their points of view were one hundred and eighty degrees apart on those issues, too.
“I like it this way,” he said quietly. “I like it that you don’t agree with everything that I think.” She did look up at him then. “We probably belong to opposite political parties.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Our votes will cancel each other out.”
“Democracy in action.”
His eyes were softer now, liquid instead of steel. Mia felt herself start to drown in their blueness. Frisco wasn’t the only one who had a jones, an addiction. She leaned forward and he met her in a kiss. Her hands went up underneath his open shirt, skimming against his bare skin, and the sensation made them both groan.
But when Mia would’ve given in, when she would have fallen back with him onto his bed, Frisco made himself pull away. He was breathing hard and the fire in his eyes was unmistakable. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. He may have been addicted, but he had a hell of a lot of willpower.
“We have to get out of here,” he explained. “Dwayne’s going to come back, and I don’t want you and Tasha to be here when he does.”
“I still don’t understand why you won’t press charges,” Mia said. “Just because your sister owes this guy some money, that doesn’t give him the right to destroy your condo.”
Frisco stood up, shrugging out of his shirt. He wadded it into a ball and tossed it into the corner of his room, on top of his mountain of dirty laundry. “His name is Dwayne Bell,” he told her. “And he’s a professional scumbag—drugs, stolen goods, black-market weapons—you name it, he’s involved. And he doesn’t earn six figures a year by being nice about unpaid loans.”
He glanced at her as he unfastened and stepped out of his pants. Mia knew she shouldn’t be staring. It was hardly polite to stare at a man dressed only in utilitarian white briefs, but she couldn’t look away.
“Sharon lived with him for about four months,” he told her, hopping toward his duffel bags and searching through them. “During that time, she worked for him, too. According to Sharon, Dwayne has enough on her to cause real trouble. If he was arrested for something as petty as breaking and entering, he’d plea-bargain and give her up for dealing drugs, and she’d be the one who’d end up in jail.”
Mia briefly closed her eyes. “Oh, no.”
“Yeah.”
“So what are we going to do?”
He found a pair of relatively clean shorts and came back to the bed. He sat down and pulled them on. “We’re going to get you and Tasha out of here. Then I’m going to come back and deal with Dwayne.”
Deal with Dwayne? “Alan—”
He was up again, slipping his shoulder holster over his arm and fastening it a
gainst his bare skin. “Do me a favor. Go into Tash’s room and grab her bathing suit and a couple of changes of clothes.” He bent down and picked up one of his empty duffel bags and tossed it to her.
Mia caught it, but she didn’t move. “Alan…”
His back was to her as he searched his closet, pulling out a worn olive-drab army fatigue shirt, its sleeves cut short, the ends fraying. He pulled it on. It was loose and he kept it mostly unbuttoned. It concealed his gun, but still allowed him access to it. He could get to it if he needed it when he “dealt with Dwayne.” Unless, of course, Dwayne got to his own gun first. Fear tightened Mia’s throat.
He turned to face her. “Come on, Mia. Please. And then go pack some of your own things.”
She felt a flash of annoyance, hotter and sharper than the fear. “It’s funny, I don’t recall your asking me to come along with you. You haven’t even told me where you’re going.”
“Lucky has a cabin in the hills about forty miles east of San Felipe. I’m going to call him, see if we can use his place for a few days.”
Lucky. From Frisco’s former SEAL unit. He was Frisco’s friend—no, they were more than just friends, they were…what did they call it? Swim buddies.
“I’m asking for your help here,” he continued quietly. “I need you to come along to take care of Tash while I—”
“Deal with Dwayne,” she finished for him with exasperation. “You know I’ll help you, Alan. But I’m not sure I’m willing to go hide at some cabin.” She shook her head. “Why don’t we find someplace safe for Tasha to go? We could…I don’t know, maybe drive her down to my mother’s. Then I could come with you when you go to see Dwayne.”
“No. No way. Absolutely not.”
Her temper flared. “I don’t want you to do this alone.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “What, do you really think you’re gonna keep Dwayne from trying to kick my butt again? Are you going to lecture him on nonviolence? Or maybe you’ll try to use positive reinforcement to teach him manners, huh?”
Mia felt her face flush. “No, I—”
“Dwayne Bell is one mean son of a bitch,” Frisco told her. “He doesn’t belong in your world—and you don’t belong in his. And I intend to keep it that way.”
She folded her arms across her chest, holding her elbows tightly so he wouldn’t see that her hands were shaking with anger. “And which of those worlds do you belong in?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Neither,” he finally said, unable to look her in the eye. “I’m stuck here in limbo, remember?”
Positive reinforcement. To use positive reinforcement to award positive behavior meant being as consistently blasé as possible when negative behavior occurred. Mia closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself not to fall prey to her anger and lash out at him. She wanted to shake some sense into him. She wanted to shout that this limbo he found himself in was only imagined. She wanted to hold him close until he healed, until he realized that he didn’t need a miracle to be whole again—that he could be whole even if his knee gave out and he never walked another step again.
Wallowing in despair wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good. And neither would her yelling at or shaking or even comforting him. Instead, she kept her voice carefully emotionless. “Well,” she said, starting for the door with the duffel bag he’d tossed her, “I’ll get Tasha’s stuff.” She turned back to him almost as an afterthought, as if what she was about to say to him didn’t matter so much that she was almost shaking. “Oh, and when you call Lucky to ask about the cabin, it would be smart to tell him about all this, don’t you think? He could go with you when you find Dwayne. He could watch your back, and he probably wouldn’t resort to lectures on nonviolence as means of defense.” She forced herself to smile, and was surprised to find she actually could. His insult had been right on target—and it wasn’t entirely unamusing.
“Mia, I’m sorry I said that.”
“Apology accepted—or at least it will be if you call Lucky.”
“Yeah,” Frisco said. “I’ll do that. And I’ll…” It took him a great deal of effort to say it, but he did. “I’ll ask him for help.”
He was going to ask for help. Thank God. Mia wanted to take one of the colorful medals from his dress uniform and pin it on to his T-shirt. Instead, she simply nodded.
“Then I’ll stay with Tasha at Lucky’s cabin,” she said, and left the room.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NATASHA PUSHED OPEN the cabin’s screen door, but then stopped, looking back at Frisco, who was elbow deep in dinner’s soapy dishes. “Can I go outside?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but stay on the porch. It’s getting dark.” She was out the door in a flash, and he shouted after her, “Hey, Tash?”
She pressed her nose against the screen, peering in at him.
“Good job remembering to ask,” he said.
She beamed at him and vanished.
He looked up to find Mia watching him. She was sitting on the couch, a book in her lap, a small smile playing about the corners of her mouth.
“Good job remembering to praise her,” she told him.
“She’s starting to catch on.”
“Sure you don’t want me to help over there?” she asked.
Frisco shook his head. “You cooked, I clean. It’s only fair.”
They’d arrived at Lucky’s cabin just before dinnertime. It had been close to six years since Frisco had been up here, but the place looked almost exactly the same.
The cabin wasn’t very big by any standards—just a living room with a fireplace and a separate kitchen area, two small bedrooms—one in the back, the other off the living room, and an extremely functional bathroom with only cold running water.
Lucky kept the place stocked with canned and dried goods—and enough beer and whiskey to sink a ship. Mia hadn’t said a word about it, but Frisco knew she wondered about the temptation. She still didn’t quite believe that alcohol wasn’t a problem for him. But he’d been up here dozens of times with Lucky and some of the other guys from Alpha Squad, and he’d had cola while they made short work of a bottle of whiskey and a six pack of beer.
Still, he knew that she trusted him.
This afternoon, she’d followed his directions without so much as a questioning look as he’d asked her to leave the narrow back road and pull her car onto what was little more than a dirt path. They’d already been off the highway for what seemed like forever, and the dirt road wound another five miles without a sign of civilization before they reached an even smaller road that led to Lucky’s cabin.
It was, definitely, in the middle of nowhere.
That made it perfect for SEAL training exercises. There was a lake not five hundred yards from the front porch, and countless acres of brush and wilderness surrounding the place.
It was a perfect hideout, too. There was no way on earth Dwayne Bell would find them here.
“How’s your knee?”
Frisco glanced up to find that Mia had come to lean against the icebox, watching as he finished scouring the bottom of the pasta pot. He rinsed the suds from the pot by dunking it in a basin of clear, hot water, nodding his reply. “It’s…improved,” he told her. “It’s been about eight hours since I’ve had to use the painkiller, and…” He glanced at her again. “I’m not about to start running laps, but I’m not in agony, either.”
Mia nodded. “Good.” She hesitated slightly, and he knew what was coming.
“When you spoke to Lucky…”
He carefully balanced the pot in the dish drain, on top of all the others. He knew what she wanted to know. “I’m meeting him tomorrow night,” he said quietly. “Along with a couple other guys from Alpha Squad. The plan is for Thomas to come up in the afternoon and give me a lift back into San Felipe. You and Tash will hang out here.”
“And what happens when you actually find Dwayne?”
He released the water from the sink and dried his hands and arms on a dish towel, turning to l
ook down into her eyes. “I’m going to give him a thousand bucks and inform him that the other four thousand Sharon owes him covers the damages he caused by breaking into my condo. I intend to tell him that there’s no amount of money in the world that would make retribution for the way he hit Natasha before she and Sharon moved out, and he’s damned lucky that I’m not going to break him in half for doing that. I’m also going to convince him that if he so much as comes near Tash or Sharon or anyone else I care about, I will hunt him down and make him wish that he was dead.”
Mia’s eyes were wide. “And you really think that will work?”
Frisco couldn’t resist reaching out and touching the side of her face. Her skin was so deliciously soft beneath his fingers. “Yeah,” he said. “I think it’ll work. By giving Dwayne some money—a substantial amount of money, despite the fact that it’s only a fifth of what Sharon took—he doesn’t walk away with nothing. He saves face.” He paused. Unless this situation was more complicated than that. Unless there was something that Sharon hadn’t told him, something she hadn’t been quite honest about. But Mia probably didn’t need to know that he was having doubts.
Unfortunately, she read his hesitation accurately. “What?” she asked, her gaze searching his face. “You were going to say more, weren’t you?”
He wanted to pull her close, to breathe in the sweet scent of her clean hair and luxuriate in the softness of her body pressed against his. He wanted that, but he couldn’t risk touching her again. Even the sensation of her smooth cheek beneath his fingers had been enough to ignite the desire he felt whenever she was near—hell, whenever he so much as thought about her. If he pulled her into his arms, he would kiss her. And if he kissed her, he wouldn’t want to stop.
“I got the sense Sharon wasn’t one-hundred-percent honest with me,” he finally admitted. Mia had been straightforward with him up to this point, sometimes painfully so. He respected her enough to return the favor. “I don’t know—maybe I’m just being paranoid, but when I find Dwayne, I’m going to be ready for anything.”
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 68
