by Cindy Dees
She walked toward him, hyper-aware of her body, of how she tingled everywhere his gaze touched her. His smoky gaze slid downward slowly and thoroughly, approval registering as he lifted his eyes once more. She was completely mesmerized by the way his dark eyes looked straight into her soul. He all but consumed her with that intense look. Get a grip, girlfriend! He’s only a guy. The little voice at the back of her head whispered, Yeah, but what a guy.
He wore competence like a cloak enfolding him, but it did nothing to hide the sex appeal rolling off him in waves. She could seriously see herself devouring him whole, which was completely unlike her. Although she was a flirt and openly generous with her affections when she was out, she cultivated an image among the party crowd of being the unattainable prize and, as such, pretty much never threw herself at any man, or let any man actually get too close to her.
But this guy was to die for!
The thought jolted her. She wasn’t about to die for him, and she darn well had no intention of letting him die for her.
One of his hands came up to grasp her elbow and guide her to a seat in the booth. He slid in across from her and smiled again. Handsome didn’t even come close to describing him. Hypnotic was more like it.
“Miss Ferrare, my name’s Joe Smith.” His voice was like melted chocolate, rich and dark and warm.
Somehow, she managed to refrain from fanning herself with the nearest thing at hand. “Uh, nice to meet you. I’m Carina Ferrare. But you already know that, don’t you? My friends call me Cari, but I bet you know that, too…” She cut off her babbling abruptly. Good grief, she sounded like some teenaged airhead.
“Like I said before,” he continued easily, “your sister sent me to rescue you from your father.”
Alarm shot through her. The very fact that he’d just uttered those words made him a target of her father’s wrath. She couldn’t help but glance nervously over her shoulder at the stairs. No sign of Freddie and Neddie. “How do you know my sister?” she asked cautiously.
“She’s engaged to a friend of mine. And she’s very worried about your safety.”
“Julia’s engaged? To whom? When did that happen? Why didn’t she tell me?” It was so implausible to imagine her sister meeting some guy and falling for him in a few weeks’ time that she almost laughed. If this guy was lying, he’d have to come up with something a whole lot more believable than that.
The man called Joe smiled again. “Julia’s going to marry a guy named Jim. He’s a friend of mine. A good man. As for when, I don’t think they’ve set a date yet. Things happened pretty fast between them.”
“How did she do it?”
Joe frowned. “How did she fall in love? Who knows? These things just happen.”
Carina laughed. “No, no. How did Julia get away?”
Chagrin flashed across Joe’s features, lowering his guard for a moment and drawing her to him even more potently than his physical beauty.
“Ah. As I understand it, she contacted some people in the U.S. government who helped her hide from your father.”
She narrowly eyed the man across from her. He was built like a soldier, as disciplined in his reactions as a soldier, and he’d been floating around in the ocean, wearing the high-tech diving gear a soldier would have. She took a chance. “Don’t you mean she contacted Charlie Squad? You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Joe leaned back, staring at her evenly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said flatly.
Yeah, right. The denial clinched it. This guy was definitely a soldier from the Special Forces team, which was her father’s nemesis. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d listened to Eduardo rant and rave about Charlie Squad and what a pain in the ass they were. Hope flared in her chest. If Joe was part of Charlie Squad, she might just stand a chance of getting away, after all.
He interrupted her thoughts. “The important thing is that your sister’s safe and happy. She’s worried about you, though. She thinks it’s imperative that you get away from your father immediately.”
Relief and joy reverberated in Carina’s breast, along with a hint of envy. Julia had gotten away. Out from under their father’s oppressive control. No more acting as his banker, no more house arrest, no more gorillas following her everywhere she went.
No worries about friends turning up dead in her bed.
Cari replied wryly, “I think it’s imperative that I get away from my father, too.”
“What’s the rush?” Joe asked lightly.
A shudder of lingering horror whisked down Cari’s spine. She still couldn’t sleep with the lights turned off. For the first week after Tony’s death, she couldn’t even walk into her room. And now she had to have a light on to even step inside what had become a ghost chamber to her. Her father refused to let her move out of the room and had called her a coward for being frightened of her own bedroom, so she’d been sleeping awkwardly on the loveseat in the corner.
A pair of warm hands gripped her icy fingers. “Hey. Are you okay? You look a little pale.”
She took a tremulous breath. “Sorry. It was rude of me to get distracted like that.”
A melting smile. “Not at all. I’m just glad you’re here. I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t come.”
She sighed. “It took me this long to get out of the house. As it is, a whole carload of my dad’s thugs are with me. Freddie and Neddie, my usual bodyguards, are downstairs, and three more are outside in the limo.”
Joe frowned slightly. “Then I guess we won’t be making our escape from here tonight.”
Cari blinked. “You’re serious? You were really expecting to take me away tonight?”
He shrugged. “It would’ve been nice if it were that easy. A guy can always hope, can’t he?”
She was silent while a waitress approached and set a glass of mineral water in front of her. She fiddled with the wedge of lemon perched on the lip of the glass, bemused by Joe’s choice of drinks for her. Most men plied her with booze to help along the cause of getting into the sack with a famous party girl.
The waitress retreated and Cari said, “My father’s a really powerful man. Dangerous.” She added for emphasis, “Deadly dangerous.”
“I know.”
Joe’s quietly uttered words made her look up at him sharply. His gaze was sympathetic, but it was something else, too. Intelligent. Razor-sharp. This guy knew exactly who and what her father was.
“I have to warn you, Joe. Anyone who crosses my father ends up dead. As in six feet under.”
Another calm nod.
“And you still want to try to rescue me?” she asked incredulously. This guy was definitely in Charlie Squad! Either that or he was nuts.
“Yup. Except I’m not just going to try. I’m going to succeed.”
“How?” she asked in escalating disbelief. Even if he was in Charlie Squad, her father’s security measures were legendary. She was guarded around the clock, and if Joe tangled with her father’s men, he and possibly a whole lot of innocent bystanders would end up dead.
“I have a plan,” he said mildly. “Would you like something stronger to drink?” He looked across the room, trying to get the attention of a waitress.
Nobody plotted against her father this casually. “Which is it?”
He looked back at her in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“Which is it? Are you insane or brain dead to cross my father on his home turf?”
Joe draped an arm across the back of the booth. The tanned limb was wreathed in muscles that made her gulp. He asked lightly, “Have you considered the possibility that I’m actually capable of taking on a man like your father and winning?”
She snorted. “Nobody’s that good.” Even if he was in Charlie Squad.
“I am.”
Again, he spoke with a quiet certainty in his voice that stopped her cold. Was he that good? Could it be? Had her despairing pleas to a heretofore deaf God finally been answered? In a daze, she ordered an iced tea
while he asked for another glass of water.
After the waitress left, she asked him bluntly, “Who are you?”
He completely ignored the question, saying instead, “So, Cari. Tell me about a typical day for you at your father’s house.”
Over the next half hour, she answered his every question, and there were dozens of them. Even though they were pleasantly delivered, they amounted to nothing less than an all-out interrogation.
Finally, he pushed back his empty glass and stared at the bad Van Gogh reproduction on the wall above their booth. Joe sat that way for a long time, and she didn’t break his intense concentration. What would it be like to have all that attention focused on her? A tingling started low in her belly that made her squirm against the vinyl seat.
His gaze shifted to her, pinning her in place. “Well, Cari, I don’t see any feasible way for you to get out of your father’s house and come to me without tipping off Eduardo’s goons…and hence blocking all our escape routes. I’ve been watching you for weeks and your father’s security is downright impregnable. Worse, we’re in Gavarone, on his turf, like you said. His informants are everywhere.”
Disappointment slammed into her, flattening her fleeting hopes. For a minute there, she’d thought she might actually have a chance. Why, oh why, had Joe stopped her from drowning if he couldn’t come through for her now?
“So,” he continued casually, “I guess we’re just going to have to go with my original plan. I’m going to come inside the walls and get you with your father’s blessing, more or less.”
“What?” She stared at him in shock. “You’re going to do what?” she repeated blankly.
“I’m going to go into your father’s house and get you out myself,” he said with quiet finality.
“You’re going to break into my father’s house? Didn’t you hear what I said? The place is an armed fortress.”
“I’m not going to break in. I’m going to infiltrate the place. I’ll come in with a cover story and get inside that way.”
She frowned. “My father doesn’t hire just anybody. Nobody gets close to him personally unless they’ve worked for his organization for years and proven their loyalty a hundred times over.”
Joe nodded. “True, but he doesn’t completely control who gets close to you.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
A slow smile curved his mouth and the thought of kissing it all but made her swoon. “How do you feel about getting married?” he asked.
“Married?” she echoed, clearly one step behind in this conversation. “To whom?”
“Me.”
The room swirled around her and she grabbed the edge of the table as dizziness practically knocked her over. “We hardly know each other,” she choked out.
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and I think it could work. You have a reputation for being—” he paused delicately “—adventurous.”
Now there was an understatement.
Joe was talking again. “I’m betting your father isn’t too crazy about your rep. Am I right?”
She snorted. “He hates the way I act. Have you seen the way my bodyguards are plastered to me these days, chasing off any guy who gets near me? Trust me. Daddy dearest despises my…lifestyle choices. And he’s doing everything he can to change them.”
Joe nodded. “Perfect. I’m proposing that I sweep you off your feet and single-handedly mend your wild ways.”
Whoa. Now there was a thought. Tempting, actually.
“It’ll all be an act,” he added.
Her stomach plummeted to her feet. Damn.
He continued, “You and I will elope. After we’ve had a whirlwind romance, of course.”
Of course.
Joe continued. “I’m betting your father will let me into his house in profound gratitude that someone else will finally be responsible for curbing your wild impulses. In effect, he’ll transfer responsibility for keeping you on the straight and narrow from his pet gorillas to me.”
She blinked, startled at the depth of insight into her father that his idea showed. It might just work. But a husband?
As much as she’d love to play along with that particular little fantasy, she replied reluctantly, “He’d never buy it. He’d see right through a story like that, not to mention he’d check it out thoroughly. And then he’d slit your throat….” She gagged as bile leaped into her throat at the idea of another man, this man, lying dead in her bed, bleeding from a horrible gash in his neck.
Joe’s dark eyebrows slammed together abruptly. “My God,” he breathed. “Is that what happened?”
She frowned at him, unsure what he was asking.
He leaned forward and reached for her hands, gripping her fingers tightly. “Is that why you ran out into the ocean? Whose throat did your father slit?”
Wow, this guy was sharp. He’d made that leap of logic look easy. “My friend Tony. He was going to help me escape.”
She clutched Joe’s big, surprisingly callused palms desperately. “And that’s why I can’t agree to your plan. I don’t want you to end up dead in my bed, either.”
Joe’s eyes went black. Hard and flat. Gone was the warm, sympathetic man she’d been talking with. “Your father killed this guy in your bed?” he bit out.
She nodded, suddenly afraid of the cold man seated across from her, radiating violence.
He cursed viciously under his breath, so low she barely caught the muttered oath. And then he leaned forward, staring at her intensely. “This changes everything. If your father has turned violence on you, you’re in more danger than you can imagine. You are going to agree to marry me. As soon as it can be arranged. And I am going to get you out of there. Got it?”
She blinked at the icy authority in his tone. He wore it easily. Like a man who’d given orders before and expected them to be followed. Where had the quiet, kind man disappeared to all of a sudden? Who was Joe Smith? And what was he?
She answered her own questions. Did it really matter who or what Joe was as long as he could do what he’d promised? Aloud, she said, “I need to talk to Julia. To confirm who you are.”
Joe blinked, but to his credit, he answered evenly, “All right.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a new-model cell phone and dialed a phone number. He spoke into the mouthpiece. “Hey, Dutch, it’s Joe.”
What kind of name was Dutch? Some kind of military nickname, maybe?
“Yeah, I’m sitting with her right now. She wants to talk to her sister.”
He waited in silence and she watched him cautiously. Not real conversational, these Charlie Squad guys. And then he held the phone out to her.
Eagerly, she put it to her ear. “Julia?”
She all but cried in relief at the sound of her sister’s voice in her ear, sobbing, “Cari? Is that you? Are you all right?”
“So far. Are you all right?”
Julia laughed and then made a little sound of pain as if laughing hurt. “Oh, yes. I’m fine. More than fine. But you need to leave Gavarone, honey. Get away from Eduardo.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Cari retorted quickly. Then she asked seriously, “Did you send Joe to help me?”
“I sure did. He’s a hunk, isn’t he? I thought he might be your type.”
Cari grinned. “You got that right, Sis.”
“He’ll take care of you. Trust me. Trust him.”
Cari looked up as Joe leaned forward and murmured, “That’s long enough. I don’t want the call traced.”
She said into the phone, “Apparently, we can’t talk anymore or this call might get traced. I love you, J.J. And thanks.”
A laugh. “You’re welcome. And I love you, too. Take care, and get out of there—” The line went dead.
Cari handed the cell phone back to Joe, who tucked it back into his shirt pocket.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
How could she not be? Her sister had sent this gorgeous stranger to save her l
ife. If Julia trusted him, why in the world shouldn’t she?
“So,” Joe asked lightly, “are you going to marry me?”
Joe waited tensely for Cari’s response to his question, his marriage proposal. His gut tied itself in a thousand knots at the very thought.
The other guys on the squad hadn’t liked the idea, either. It was fraught with risks. But he’d been doing ’round-the-clock surveillance on Ferrare and his daughter for over a month now and not once—not once— had he found a weak spot in the bastard’s security measures. If Cari refused to go for the fake marriage thing, he and the rest of Charlie Squad had no idea what to try next. And after that little bombshell she’d just dropped about her father killing Tony—whoever the hell he was—the squad had no choice but to move fast.
The squad had pondered and tossed out dozens of plans. And it always came back to this one: the only way to get Cari out without putting her life in serious jeopardy was for someone to infiltrate the Ferrare fortress and sneak her out by cunning. And even then, it was going to be one hell of a trick to pull off. The only positive was that Eduardo’s security was set up to keep bad guys out, not good guys in. It ought to be possible to move Cari out from under her father’s nose if Joe was careful and fast when the time came.
A few days ago, Colonel Folly had run this marriage idea past Charlie Squad’s psychiatrist, and she’d assured him that Ferrare would be desperate to hand over control of his uncontrollable daughter to someone else. She was certain Ferrare would leap at the idea of a son-in-law to rein in Carina.
Still, Colonel Folly had resisted the eloping scheme—that is, until the psychiatrist had dropped the other shoe. She predicted that Eduardo Ferrare would kill his daughter rather than let anyone take her away from him. The only possible exception might be if Eduardo gave his daughter away to someone of his own free will—as in approving a marriage. Reluctantly, the colonel had green-lighted the op. Now, Joe just had to get Carina to go for it.
“Okay,” she breathed.
“Okay what?” he asked cautiously. He needed to hear her say the words.
“I’ll marry you, Joe. But there’s one thing…”
