by Cindy Dees
“Thanks for turning the alarm off, Gunter,” she said as she stepped into the room.
Both men turned to look at her, one in exasperation and the other in frank male appreciation.
Joe commented to the older man, “Is she a knockout or what?”
Gunter blinked in surprise, and his features softened. “Miss Ferrare is quite beautiful, yes.”
“Why Gunter! Thank you!” she exclaimed.
Joe held out his arm to her and she grasped his forearm, looping her fingers around rock-solid muscles that were surprisingly tense. She noticed the rolled towel tucked under Joe’s other arm. What outrageous stunt did he have up his sleeve now? He escorted her to the doorway and paused beside Gunter.
All kidding erased from his voice, Joe spoke to Gunter in deadly earnest. “The name’s Mrs. Smith now. Don’t forget it.”
On that note, he moved gracefully past the stunned German and hauled her down the hall while she stumbled in shock.
“Are you nuts?” she murmured under her breath. “You practically threatened Gunter!”
Joe murmured back, “There’s no ‘practically’ about it, princess. That was flat-out meant as a threat.”
“I’ll say it again. Are you nuts?”
He smiled down at her gently. “Trust me, baby. I know what I’m doing. I know guys like him and I know what it takes to establish respect with them.”
She frowned up at him. If, indeed, he was a member of the Blackjacks, he certainly did know about men like Gunter. He was a man like Gunter.
But then Joe derailed her train of thought completely by announcing, “C’mon. I need to teach your old man a little respect, next.”
Oh, God. What was he going to do now?
Chapter Seven
Carina eyed Joe apprehensively. “What do you have up that diabolical sleeve of yours?” she asked cautiously. “Do I need to talk you out of it?”
Although Joe smiled casually, there was a distinctly icy glint in his eyes. Loudly and, no doubt, for Gunter’s benefit behind them, he announced, “C’mon, babe. I’m hungry. I worked up quite an appetite last night. Please tell me you did, too.” He grinned broadly at her.
She rolled her eyes at him, but couldn’t help grinning back.
Rico, the thug from Colonel Foley’s car window last night, was lounging against the wall at the end of the hallway leading to her suite, chewing a toothpick. When they approached him, he pushed vertical without comment and led the way downstairs to a large dining room.
A wooden table stretched the length of the room, a dozen tall, ornate chairs in the shape of narrow thrones arranged around it. A wrought-iron chandelier and hand-painted tiles around the walls lent the room a classic, Spanish feel. Her mother had decorated this space, and Cari had always loved its calm, elegant ambience. She liked to imagine that her mother had been as calm and elegant.
Her father already sat at the head of the table, reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. He didn’t look up as Joe held her chair at Eduardo’s left and then took a seat beside her. She winced as Joe unobtrusively slid the rolled towel underneath his chair.
She ate in silence and was abjectly grateful when Joe followed suit and didn’t pop out with any outrageous comments directed at her father.
Eduardo’s lawyer and Gunter joined them, sitting across from her and Joe.
Throughout the meal, Eduardo, his lawyer, Sevi Gallegos, and Gunter talked about the business climate in South America, which was a relief to Cari. She doubted Joe would, in dumb gigolo mode, dive into that particular conversation. All in all, it wasn’t a bad first meal with her father and the unpredictable American at the same table.
But she’d let down her guard too soon. As a maid cleared away their dishes, Joe leaned down under his chair and grabbed the towel.
Oh, God. She caught herself looking around surreptitiously for someplace to take cover if this thing exploded into a firefight.
As Joe stepped toward Eduardo, Rico tensed, leaping to Eduardo’s side. But Joe glided forward so fast that he brushed right past Rico before the guy could actually block him.
In fact, Joe moved so fluidly and quickly that he didn’t look like he’d done anything extraordinary. Rico stared, apparently confounded as to how Joe had just gotten past him to Eduardo’s side.
She watched in sick apprehension as Joe raised the towel high in the air and let go of one end of it. It unrolled rapidly and the jumble of wires and cameras fell into his free hand.
He laid the handful of electronics beside her father’s plate and said casually, “Obviously, there wasn’t time last night to remove these before we took occupancy of our room. I took the liberty of doing it for your people.”
Eduardo looked up at Joe sharply. Reassessing. Joe had just shown himself to be a brighter bulb than Eduardo had initially given him credit for.
But then Joe shrugged and grinned. “I mean, if you’re planning to put us on the Internet doing the horizontal mamba—you know, to make a little extra cash on the side—you should’ve asked. I mean, you gotta show the right moves, play to the cameras, stuff like that.”
Eduardo choked on his coffee and only narrowly avoided spewing it all over the table.
Cari gaped. If she didn’t know better, she would accuse Joe of timing that remark to coincide exactly with the moment when her father had taken that big mouthful of coffee. Her mouth snapped shut. She didn’t dare smile.
“C’mon, baby. Let’s go practice some moves in case your old man—uhh, daddy—decides to cash in on us.”
Now it was her turn to choke. She sputtered, and he pounded her good-naturedly on the back.
Rico leered at Joe. “Give it your best shot, buddy. You’ll still never know when you’ll be on Candid Camera.”
Joe turned slowly. Real slowly. Took a leisurely step forward until he stood right in front of the bodyguard. And then something funny happened. Joe didn’t move a muscle, but it was almost as if he grew by a couple of inches.
The room went dead silent. This bunch knew a challenge when they saw one.
Joe practically whispered, “You put one second of Cari and me, or Cari, or even her bedroom on film, and I’ll break you in half. Carina’s my wife. And you will treat her with utmost respect at all times.”
He didn’t have to utter the “or else” hanging in the air. It was almost louder for his not having said it. Rico obviously couldn’t decide whether to puff up in threat response or yield the field for now and just walk away.
In consequence, he ended up just staring openmouthed at Joe’s back as he turned casually toward her, returned to his normal size and said, “On second thought, let’s go for a swim, princess. I feel a sudden need to clean off.”
Amazed that he’d walked away from that confrontation alive, Cari followed Joe outside to the crystalline swimming pool gleaming under the late-morning sun. The ocean was vivid turquoise today, the beach a strip of pale gold. The lawn was emerald, the pool deck stark white and the pool itself nearly as blue as the sea.
The quality of the light was extraordinary, glowing with an almost surreal intensity. Or maybe it was the exhilaration of having witnessed someone, anyone, stand up to one of her father’s meanest thugs. Ah, Joe was good for her soul.
She left him in a chaise lounge by the pool and excused herself to head upstairs and change into a bikini. Joe, with outstanding foresight, had worn a pair of baggy swim shorts down to breakfast.
She dug out the skimpiest Rio thong bikini she owned, looked at it for a second, and shocked herself by putting it back in the drawer. Instead, she pulled out a white one-piece suit that was a hundred times more conservative and, truth be told, more complimentary to her figure and her golden tan. Sometimes a girl just wanted to look her best. Today was one of those days.
Besides, her father would croak if she wore something classy for once. Maybe he would rightly credit Joe for the change.
She took a critical look at herself in the full-length mirror in her closet.
Generally, she thought of her extraordinary looks as merely one more weapon to wield in her private war against her father. But today…today they meant more. They were a gift. Something she could bestow on Joe to thank him for risking his life for her. She reached for the bottle of sunblock on the shelf beside her floppy sun hats and array of sunglasses. And smiled. She tossed the bottle into a canvas bag, along with a book and a beach towel.
When she stepped outside through the doors in the dining room, Joe lifted his head lazily to glance at her. He froze, his head several inches off the lounge chair. “Kowabunga,” he exclaimed.
Warmed all over by that ridiculous greeting, she put on her best high-fashion catwalk and sashayed over to him, gifting him with a full display of her long legs and curves.
“Could you put some lotion on me, darling?” she purred, holding out the bottle of sunblock and sinking down into his chaise.
That wiped the smirk off his face fast. “Uh, sure,” he mumbled, glancing over at Gunter, who made no secret of watching them from a chair in the shade of the covered porch in front of the media room. She laid down on her stomach on the chaise beside him.
And then Joe’s hands touched her and all else fled before the onslaught of images and sensations that rolled over her. The smooth glide of his warm palms down the curve of her spine provoked blatantly sexual thoughts.
And despite the heat of the sun baking her, a chill shivered across her skin, nearly orgasmic in the shuddering shower of tingles shooting through her.
How was it that lust and worship could be one and the same? Sin and absolution as one?
No matter how chaste the hand gliding up the back of her thigh, she wished for it to slide off the slope of her thigh and between her legs, to plunge into her darkest, most secret places and stroke them to screaming release. She ached to let her legs fall open, to invite him to do it.
It was unnatural, nearly criminal, to keep her knees pressed tightly together against her rampant lust, her lips pressed shut against a moan of welcome, an invitation of longing.
His fingertips trailed down her arms toward her hands and she marveled at the impromptu anatomy lesson of the nervous system he was giving her. Who would have guessed that every single inch of the underside of her arm was peppered with such sensitive nerve endings that shimmered and sparkled under the lightest of caresses?
And then the lesson changed. His hands grasped her shoulders, rolling the muscles of her neck and upper back under the heels of his hands, and her moans of need became groans of pleasure escaping against her will to mingle with the pounding rhythm of the ocean nearby.
His hands lifted away from her and she nearly cried aloud at the void left behind.
His weight shifted on the chaise beside her and she nearly jumped out of her skin as his hands settled on her right calf. He massaged his way down the limb, circling her ankle and digging his thumbs into exactly the right spot in the arch of her foot to send melting pleasure rushing through her.
Her other foot got the same treatment, and not a solid bone remained anywhere in her body. She was a formless mass of heat and desire, molded helplessly like melting cookie dough to the lounge supporting her. The sun radiated its own brand of heat, twining in and around the moment like a molten ribbon of gold, binding it irrevocably into her memory.
She whimpered faintly.
Joe’s hands stilled on her skin.
Cari turned her head to look at him and caught a flash of movement over his shoulder from inside her father’s office. Fear speared through everything else she was feeling to pierce her heart like an arrow of ice.
“Don’t stop,” she murmured. “My father’s watching.”
Without moving his lips, Joe murmured, “Where is he?”
“In his office.”
Joe reached for the bottle of sunblock and tipped more of the lotion into his palm. His hands began their smooth slide across her skin once more. “Let him watch.”
Her eyelids drifted closed in spite of themselves. On a long exhalation, she placed her trust in Joe and let him worry about her father for the moment. She simply enjoyed, savoring the warmth of the sun and Joe’s magic hands on her body.
A blissful eternity later, his hands lifted off her flesh and she cracked open one eyelid enough to see him stretch out on the chaise beside her, his face turned up to the sun and his eyes closed.
“Are the office windows bulletproof?” Joe breathed, so low that Cari could barely hear him.
“Yeah,” she breathed back. “Worried about him shooting you?”
“Nah. Was thinking about shooting him. It would make our exit from here a whole lot easier.”
She jolted. Her eyes flew open and she stared at Joe in shock. “You’re serious?”
Joe’s eyes opened lazily and a single eyebrow arched at her. He didn’t bother to answer her question. He didn’t need to. She saw the answer in his eyes. It wasn’t a threat of death; it was a solemn promise of it. Hatred so thick she could barely breathe past it rolled off of Joe.
And then it was gone. As quickly as it had flashed out of him, the emotion was erased. But it left her shaken. It was all the more frightening because of the tremendous control he had over it.
“What?” Joe murmured. “What’s that look on your face?”
She answered, stiff-lipped, aware that Gunter was still watching and could read her words if she wasn’t careful. “Who are you?”
Joe’s mouth turned up in a smile, but his words, uttered past clenched teeth, were all but snarled. “I’m the guy who’s going to set you free.”
With her body still singing its need for him, it was hard to ignore the pull of her desire, hard to reconcile the cold knot in her stomach with the heat zinging across her skin.
What was wrong with her? She desperately wanted to get away from her father. She wanted to live her own life, to be free of the web of crime and violence all around her.
Joe had promised to take her away from all of this. But at what cost?
Was she willing to pay his price?
She’d certainly known in her head that Joe would do whatever it took to get her out, but she’d been naive to ignore what that really meant. If even a fraction of the stories her father told about the Blackjacks were true, every member of Joe’s team was ruthless when it came to accomplishing the mission. According to her father, they bordered on crazy.
And she’d just brought one of the chief nutcases into her father’s home.
She started when Joe announced abruptly, “I’m no good at just sitting around. I’m going for a swim. Wanna come?”
The mere thought of cool water and Joe flowing over her heated skin evoked almost unbearable sexual pleasure. “I think I’ll pass,” she mumbled.
Joe shrugged and stood up. He took two quick, powerful steps and made a running dive into the swimming pool, knifing cleanly into the water in a shallow dive. He emerged nearly at the other end of the pool, executed a neat flip turn, and took off stroking toward her. Fifty easy laps later of her father’s twenty-five-meter pool, and showing no sign of tiring, she quit counting. Well, that explained where the gorgeous physique came from.
Even Gunter was openly watching Joe’s smooth, powerful strokes. He glided through the water like a porpoise, with water streaming off his sleek body in a V-shaped wake as every pull of his arms rocketed him forward. Turbulence just under the surface of the water behind him gave testament to the strength of his legs as he kicked piston-like from the hips. His was the beauty of a true athlete.
She was almost sad when, over a hundred laps later, he popped out of the pool. Mesmerized, she drank in the sight of him strolling toward her, his body flushed from exertion, his hair standing up every which way like he’d just gotten out of bed, and his eyes so alive she could hardly stand to look at them without exploding.
She handed him a towel as she asked, “How far did you go?”
“’Bout two miles,” he answered casually from underneath the snowy terry cloth as he dried h
is hair.
“Where did you learn to swim?” she asked.
“Duh. In a swimming pool,” he answered drolly in his best beach bum voice.
Suddenly suspicious, she glanced over her shoulder and, sure enough, Gunter was standing there. The German threw an assessing look at Joe and said shortly, “Mr. Ferrare wants to see you. Now.”
Chapter Eight
Joe padded barefoot into Eduardo’s office behind Gunter. The air-conditioning was cold against his bare skin, especially after the tropical sun outside. Although he’d have preferred not to show Eduardo any reaction to it, there was no help for the goose bumps on his chest and arms, nor the occasional shiver that rattled through him.
It was a blatantly transparent tactic by Eduardo to drag him in here like this, wearing nothing but a pair of swim trunks and a towel around his neck. No doubt he was meant to feel naked and vulnerable before the grandeur of the great man. Whatever.
He dug his toes into the thick carpet and struck a casual pose. “Yo, Mr. F,” he drawled at Eduardo, “you really gotta get outta this mausoleum and hit the waves. It’s gorgeous out there.”
Ferrare scowled. “Your arrival has caused me substantial unexpected work that keeps me at my desk.”
He could imagine the mad scramble by Ferrare’s people to figure out who in the hell had just blown into their midst like a minor hurricane. He silently prayed they ran into the fake life history the Blackjacks had planted for Ferrare’s people to find.
“Hey, man. I’m not a high-maintenance guy. I’m totally willing to pull my weight around here. I used to clean swimming pools, and I’m pretty good with plumbing. You got any johns backed up? Flushing sluggish, maybe?”
Eduardo looked taken aback at the turn this conversation had taken. “My plumbing is fine.”
Joe grinned and opened his mouth to speak, but Eduardo cut him off, correcting hastily, “Rather, my house’s plumbing is fine.”
That was more like it. The guy was off balance, now. Joe pressed his advantage and perched a hip on the edge of Ferrare’s desk. Gunter gaped, appalled at the nerve of such a thing. Good. Wouldn’t hurt to have him off-kilter, either.
