Protector

by Catherine Mann

  “Excuse me.” She walked her fingers along the carpeted floor, inching up and using the man’s broad back as her final boost. “I didn’t see you down—”

  “Ooof. Careful. That’s my kidney.”

  His protest tickled her ears, his American accent bathing her in familiar sounds of home. Jolynn skimmed her hand over his spine to his shoulder, enjoying the sinuous trek a little too much. “So sorry. I was preoccupied and didn’t look where I was going.”

  She grabbed the blackjack table for leverage as she stood. She shook her skirt in place with a little shimmy, not wanting to know how much she’d exposed during their impromptu game of Twister. “Did I inflict permanent damage?”

  “Everything seems intact.”

  “Good.” Jolynn looked down at the kneeling man staring back up with mesmerizing mocha dark eyes.

  She’d never been much of a romantic, but his eyes seemed to glint with hidden depths… Okay, okay, light from the crystal chandelier may have added something to the dreamy effect. Even so, she couldn’t look away.

  He shook his sleek black hair into place again. His forearm rested on his bent knee, his other hand pressed to the floor. He had a broad forehead, a firm chin, and fine creases around exotic eyes, perhaps with a hint of Polynesian ancestry. He was a total package kind of guy, with a strong, handsome face. She judged him to be in his late twenties or early thirties.

  He rose, finally stopping just at her level, around six feet in her heels. Perfect. In her father’s world of burly men and overblown personalities, she found calming reassurance in the man’s understated power.

  Safe. Sexy, yet safe. “Are you sure you’re all right? Your kidney, I mean.”

  “I’ve taken worse hits and survived,” he said softly. “How about you?”

  Better than three minutes ago. She welcomed the opportunity to think of something, anything other than where she was. “Just fine.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He nodded slowly, his thick hair sliding over his brow.

  Smiling, she backed away— and bumped into a waitress who shouldn’t have even been in the pit area. A tray of drinks flew from the woman’s hand and crashed to the floor. Jolynn winced.

  Not even back in her family circle for a full day and already she’d reverted to her gangly teen moves. Years of cultivating a poise that rivaled her father’s multitude of Greek and Roman goddess statues evaporated with a simple glance from this guy.

  He grinned, creasing dimples in his cheeks. “Sorry to trip you up like that— again.” He extended his hand, offering her the silver token gleaming in his palm. “I didn’t mean to start such a ruckus just to retrieve this.”

  “No harm done.” Jolynn accepted the token with an ironic smile.

  “I’ll be happy to pay for your dry cleaning.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” She would settle for another one of those distracting smiles instead.

  “At least let me help you dry off.” He grabbed a stack of cocktail napkins and reached out to blot her travel-weary suit jacket. His fist clenched just beside the damp fabric covering her breasts.

  He passed the wadded clump to her. “You may, uh, want to take care of this yourself.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  Fantasy gave way to reality as she refocused on the man in front of her. He wore the standard casino uniform of creased black pants, a loose white shirt, a red bow tie… and a name tag. Charles Tomas: Blackjack Dealer.

  Her safe, beautiful man was a two-bit blackjack dealer. Of course he was. How could she have forgotten where she was?

  Jolynn resurrected the vapid facade she used as a defense against the smarmy losers she attracted like flies to sticky paper. “See you around, sugar.”

  She watched his smile fade.

  “Jolynn Taylor!”

  The high-pitched squeal of her only cousin carried over the mayhem, breaking into any further temptation to daydream.

  Long ago, when she’d learned the truth about her father’s international mob connections, Jolynn had quit believing in fantasy princes. Trusting in fairy tales got people killed. She’d toughened up fast and didn’t plan to change.

  As soon as she helped her father settle in on his floating barge of iniquity, she’d be back on a plane to a normal life. By then, the nagging ache to reconnect with the old man would be soothed and all thoughts of dark-eyed princes would be left behind with the Mediterranean Sea.

  * * *

  Chuck Tanaka watched Jolynn hug the casino’s director of operations, before the cousins commandeered stools at the bar.

  When the leggy redhead had charged through the casino, he hadn’t even needed to glance at her security pass to clue him in. He’d recognized Jolynn Taylor, knew her bio in the report he’d received on Josiah Taylor’s operation. The past week had been spent packing his head full of information, preparing as the CIA brought in the NSA as well as the air force OSI and their special ops test unit.

  Some of the briefing had been done in person, some by telecom, some anonymously. For their own protection, supposedly, but it sucked not knowing who all the players were.

  For his own protection, they’d assured him. But then he already knew he couldn’t only rely on his test squadron brothers.

  Implementing their setup and cover stories had been easier than expected with the rest of the world preoccupied with the soldier who’d open fired on the deploying troops.

  Thank God no one had been killed.

  He brought his attention back to the moment. He was in the game again. A last-ditch effort to resurrect himself. Do or die.

  Already he’d almost fumbled when the colonel had slipped the warning about Jolynn’s unplanned arrival. Chuck had nearly botched calling the game when from across the room Colonel Scanlon had pointed her out by that British dude.

  Chuck had known it must be important for Scanlon to break their established routine of exchanging info at designated times. The colonel had whispered the alert under the guise of asking for directions to the lounge to hear his Italian girlfriend sing. The warning that Josiah Taylor’s daughter was due in for an obligatory sickbed visit had come just in time for him to toss himself in her path, literally. Not one of his smoother moves, but his klutz act had gotten the job done. Contact had been made.

  Except she’d rocked his balance right back.

  He monitored Jolynn and her cousin as they ordered drinks. He’d made the requisite attempts to cultivate a low-key relationship with the director of operations. But she was too wrapped up in her security guard fiancé to talk about anything other than wedding plans.

  Chuck mentally reviewed the facts on file about Jolynn Taylor. Boarding school education. Six-figure accounting job in Dallas and dating life that made the social pages. The rumor mill churned with stories of Josiah’s estranged daughter.

  His systematic analysis faded as he remembered the press of her breasts against his chest. He’d almost forgotten to breathe. She’d come too damned close to finding his Beretta strapped in the ankle holster.

  Across the room, her auburn hair gleamed like a warning light. Damn, he’d been too long without. His breakup was already six months old and that relationship had been, well, a mixed-up mess.

  He was better served staying clear of female entanglements. Making contact was one thing. Letting attraction get the better of him was another. A mistake he’d made two years ago and it had cost him. Big-time.

  Chuck turned his back on Jolynn Taylor and dealt the next hand. He wasn’t done with her yet. Thanks to the surveillance device in the token he’d given her— which she’d so accommodatingly placed in her purse— he would be reviewing tapes of her conversation well into the night.

  TWO

  Colonel Rex Scanlon had unfinished business.

  And if there was one thing he’d learned since coming to grips with his wife’s sudden death, he knew life could screw you over in a heartbeat. So a guy had better fix what he could, while he could.

  He closed the door, sealin
g him inside the standard cruise cabin, deep in the belly of the boat with no windows or portals to compromise security. Rex double bolted the additional locks and swept aside a striped privacy curtain. The space wasn’t much larger than a walk-in closet, but perfect for Major David Berg to set up his surveillance equipment along the wall with narrow bunk beds over it for sleeping. They’d declined maid service. The spot was perfect.

  The engine room on the other side of the wall even offered the perfect disguising noise. Not to mention very few would ever bother taking a leisurely stroll down here.

  David “Ice” Berg waved without looking away from his computer screens, one earbud plugged into the system. The token Chuck has slipped to Jolynn was one of their solid standby toys with a boosted range and an imperceptible signal. No one would ever know they’d been bugged. But of course, they developed listening devices that worked from fifty thousand feet. This part was a cakewalk.

  Rex swept the curtain back over the door. Although chances were next to nil that anyone other than he, Berg, or Tanaka would get past the high-level security locks.

  Berg was a driven perfectionist and workaholic, still reeling from a messy divorce. His ex had walked out on him and both kids. The older child, a boy, had been from her first marriage so he went to his biological father while Berg had custody of the daughter.

  Life was definitely too complicated to miss out on settling unresolved business whenever possible.

  Hopefully, this mission would tie up a number of loose ends at once, tightening until they formed a net around a particular Al-Qaida cell that had wreaked havoc on his squadron. He needed this. Chuck had to have this win in order to move on.

  Not that Rex would have brought him along unless he was the best. Tanaka’s lightning-quick reactions during the hangar attack proved he was the man for the job. The hell he’d endured merely honed him.

  Rex dropped into a silver plastic chair beside Berg. “We really gotta get you better seats in here.”

  “My ass would thank you for that, sir.” Berg unplugged the headset and switched to speaker. A conversation softly filled the air. Jolynn Taylor talked with her cousin Lucy.

  And an Italian love song echoed in the background sung by Livia Cicero. His unfinished business.

  Her husky voice crooned over the airwaves and straight into his senses like a shot of undiluted liquor. Top quality. High potency.

  “Heard anything interesting yet?”

  “Give it time, sir. I’ve barely unpacked my flip-flops yet,” Berg said dryly, clicking through images on the split screens, one of which focused on Chuck Tanaka flipping cards between fingers that doctors had once considered am pu tating.

  Tanaka had taken a beating at the hands of a bitch intent on prying secrets from his brain and selling them to terrorists. Yeah, this mission was more than a little personal. The woman was in jail. But they were still chasing down higher-ups in the network.

  The boat would leave port tomorrow at noon. Word had it Josiah himself would slip on board in the morning— against his doctor’s advice. Further affirmation something big was shaking down.

  Thank God for the tip he’d gotten from Livia Cicero, an almost lover who’d never been an item in his life but someone he’d never been able to forget. In semiretirement from singing, she ran with a high-power political crowd throughout Europe and Asia. People assumed she was dense.

  Stupid people who were dense in their own right. Livia had brains and spunk to spare.

  Five minutes into hearing what she’d observed on the cruise ship, Rex had called Eagle Eye, a counterterrorism clearinghouse. Because of her tip, they’d pieced together bits from intercepted cell phone chatter to know that someone major in the terrorist network would be getting on board at one of the stops, while making his or her way across Europe and into the United States. The ultimate goal? Set off a dirty nuke in a major subway.

  Now they had to figure out who, when, where that person would climb on the ship, and hopefully, details of the attack. Failure wasn’t an option. “Are the parabolic devices generating anything of interest?”

  Attached to windows, the device could pick up the vibrations on the pane, reading conversations. “No major red flags, but I’m piping data back to our lab techies for detailed review.”

  “What about Jolynn Taylor’s suite?”

  “I’m on it. I’ll have something for Chuck to work with by morning.”

  “Good, good.” He stared at the technology in front of him and wondered if it would be enough. “Anything I can get you before I go back up?”

  “A sunlamp?” The former South Carolinian semi pro golfer scrubbed a hand over his shaggy hair. When on base he kept his mustache and hair trimmed to regulations. But he was known for letting both grow out during undercover missions. “I’m gonna be so pale after this maybe we can change my call sign to Dracula.”

  “Your country appreciates your sacrifice.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yada, yada, whatever. Don’t forget to toss some bread and water in every now and again, sir.”

  Normally Berg oversaw entire test programs these days, but this mission made Rex itchy, nervous. He’d pulled David Berg to join in even though he was technically overqualified. Because if— God forbind— Chuck couldn’t deliver, they needed all the muscle possible to haul his ass out of the fire.

  Berg tweaked a knob, filtering through noises as he zoomed in the camera on Jolynn Taylor chatting with her cousin. Rex looked quickly from screen to screen and realized he wasn’t the only one watching her— Tanaka and the British gambler were both trying to be covert, but from this angle there was no missing it.

  Rex scraped back his chair. “Okay then, Berg. Time to take in some culture.”

  The Italian singer’s voice summoned from the screen. He could only trust himself and two of the best from his squadron to keep her safe.

  * * *

  Jolynn used the tiny straw to stir her seltzer water with lime, the love ballads beginning to grow old fast. Didn’t the Italian songstress know anything else? Maybe the woman was depressed over losing her pop star career and having nothing left but to hit the cruise ship circuit.

  “Hello?” Lucy tapped a manicured nail against her glass, ting, ting, tinging for attention. “How did it go when you saw him?”

  Jolynn blinked fast and worked to keep her eyes off the blackjack dealer. How had Lucy noticed—

  Wait. Her cousin meant how had it gone when she saw her father. Which she hadn’t. And God, but she needed a distraction.

  “My flight was delayed because of tightened security. That attack on the base in Nevada has all the airplanes on higher alert.” She shivered at the raised terror level. “I’ve been wanded, frisked, not to mention dog sniffed by very thorough canines. By the time I arrived here, it was too late to go by the rehab center.”

  Lucy reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny travel bottle of hand sanitizer— orange nectar scent.

  Smiling, Jolynn extended her hands. The day Lucy joined her at boarding school had started the happiest time in Jolynn’s life. Lucy, a pixie of a woman with bobbed blond hair, possessed an effortless charm that had won over the private academy cliques in a way Jolynn never would have managed on her own.

  Sometimes she could almost forget that her father paid his niece’s tuition out of guilt. “How’s he doing? Really?”

  “The old man’s hanging in there. He says he prefers to recover on one of his ships, with his own doctors around him. That an eight-day cruise is the tonic he needs… blah, blah, blah. I’m not so sure it’s the wisest decision, but no one can make him do anything he doesn’t want.”

  Lucy squeezed her hand. “Let’s talk about happy things… like how you sure can make an entrance.”

  She tossed her straw aside on the clear acrylic table. “My feet tangled with your clumsy blackjack dealer.”

  “He’s new. I hired him about a month ago. His name’s Thompson, uh, Turner, or uhm—”

  “Tomas. Charles Tomas.�
�� His name tasted new and memorable on her tongue.

  “So you noticed, did ya? Join the crowd. Mr. Tomas has everyone in skirts working their chops off to gain his attention. The waitress probably flattened him out of desperation.” Lucy gave her friend an assessing once-over. “We’ve all been wondering what it would take to sneak past his defenses. You may be just the ticket.”

  “Me?” Jolynn forced her eyes to stay off him. “Forget it.”

  “Coy doesn’t suit you,” her kittenish cousin said, tucking her hair behind her ears. Lucy’s hair was razor cut, shorter in the back, trailing in the front. “We’ve got a running bet on which lucky lady he’ll ask out. I’d go after him myself if I weren’t already engaged. As of this minute, I’m putting my money on you, Red.”

  More than ready to talk about something else, she said, “So when do I get to meet your fiancé?”

  “You’re gonna love Adolpho…” Lucy paused. “Hey, nice try, but don’t change the subject.” She waggled a finger, bracelets chiming like the chink of coins from a jackpot. “Help me out. I need the cash I could rake in from winning this one to pay for some of that beading on my wedding dress.”

  Jolynn stared at Charles Tomas and cursed her bad instincts with men. Chanting encouragement to the crowd, he sailed cards toward Mr. Blow on My Dice, who’d abandoned craps in favor of blackjack.

  “No offense, Lucy, but this visit is as close as I want to be to Dad’s business.” Remembering the day she’d witnessed her father’s business practices in action, recalling the acrid smell of blood, she shuddered. She’d learned at twelve years old not to trust anyone, even her own dad. She hadn’t met a male since who’d changed her mind.

  “Hmmm.” Lucy twisted her bracelets around her wrist.