by Brynn Kelly
When she reached the shallows she stood, her body glistening as she rose, barely covered by a bikini. Breasts, legs, curves.
“Mon Dieu.”
She looked up, straight into his eyes. Damn, he’d said that aloud. As she walked—sashayed—to the villa she combed her hands through her short hair.
“Not scared of sharks, then?” He deserved the Légion d’honneur for sounding that nonchalant.
She shrugged smooth, freckled shoulders. “What are the chances of getting attacked twice in twenty-four hours?”
“High, around here. I’d rather not have my treasure stolen from me when I’ve only just secured it.”
“Who says you’ve secured me? I could have slit your throat while you slept.”
He leaned against a pole and took another swig from the bottle. “With a bread knife? Might have taken a while.”
“I’m persistent.”
“You would have got lonely here.”
“I’d have coped.”
Up close, her body looked strong, toned—not as delicate as she appeared in her perfume commercials. The body of a woman who’d never worked a day in her life, who had all day to spend in a gym. And what couldn’t be fixed by a life of leisure could be fixed by a surgeon. There’d been speculation of a nose job, lip implants. The surgeon must have been good. She looked wholly natural. Her nose was straight and her lips were full and pink and...and not something you should be looking at. She strolled past, close enough that he could smell the salty freshness of her.
He allowed himself a glance at her back. Strong shoulders curved down to a narrow waist. The bikini rode low on her hips, revealing the tiny V that only belonged to a woman with a good derrière. A ragged scar was carved into her lower back, in a looping formation. He narrowed his eyes. Not a scar.
“Who is Jasper?”
Her head snapped around, her eyes wide. “What?”
“Your tattoo. Former tattoo.”
She twisted, straining to look, as if it was the first she’d heard of it. “Someone I’d rather forget.”
“The scar’s still pink. Someone you decided to forget recently?”
“Uh, yeah. I’d been meaning to get rid of it for a while.”
“Your boyfriend’s name was Logan, not Jasper. I read about the breakup. You’d been with him nearly ten years.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“If my girlfriend had a tattoo of her former lover on her body, I wouldn’t want her leaving it there for a decade.”
“Maybe that was why he dumped me. Bit slow on the uptake, Logan was.”
“Story was that you dumped him.”
“Like I say, you can’t believe everything you read in the media. I’m going to try out this shower.”
She walked inside, the screen door snapping shut after her. He watched until she faded into the dark interior. Jasper. He’d read everything about her he could find on the internet while preparing for the mission—and there was a lot—and not once had a Jasper been mentioned. Rafe would have remembered the name—there was a Jasper in his company, a shifty guy he’d long ago learned to keep an eye on.
Laura and Logan had been America’s golden couple. They’d been together since she was a teenager, so Jasper had to have come before him. A first crush, a childhood sweetheart? But why wait so long to erase a youthful mistake, when she had all the time and money in the world, and a widely reported fixation on her body image? He crushed the empty water bottle. Parachuting, Jasper. It didn’t add up.
* * *
Holly shut the bathroom door and rushed to the mirror to inspect her back. Hell. The scar had sunburned and the skin around it had tanned, so the letters stood out in sharp relief, pink on brown. They hadn’t looked so obvious a month ago—the scar had been fading into her pale skin. No wonder the damn thing had started itching. She should never have nicked Laura’s bikini—she should have stuck with her own cheap one-piece. Jack wouldn’t have known it was from the Walmart bargain bin.
Had he bought her explanation? She walked to the shower and turned it on. A hiss spat out, by the cabin wall. She yelped and sprang back. A gas cylinder firing up, not a snake. Sheesh, she was jumpy.
“Everything okay in there?” Jack shouted, over the fence.
“Fine.”
Scanning for peepholes, she stripped off the bikini and stepped under the stream of water. Or would voyeurism be a good sign? Not that Jack seemed the pervert type. A guy like that would have women lining up to strip for him, though he’d sure taken a good look at her body just now.
She closed her eyes and dropped her head under the water. The sickly sweet scent of jasmine wafted around. Bliss. Her first shower in weeks. Expensive-looking toiletries were lined up on a stand. Might as well use them—someone was paying good money for this place, someone who wouldn’t be happy if the ransom wasn’t paid. And neither would Jack.
What was his deal? He seemed so confident, yet occasionally desperation crept into his voice, or his expressions. Reading people was her strength—borne of necessity—but she couldn’t get a fix on him. His tense conversations with the men at the plane, hiding the comms equipment, the things he’d said—no escape for either of us... He obviously wasn’t the ringleader here. His bearing, the way he’d protected her from the pilot and treated her with respect...that suggested a man with principles. She didn’t buy that he was doing this for the money, so what else would drive a seemingly decent man to kidnap?
One thing she’d confirmed she read right—he was physically attracted to her. His eyes had sparked when she’d walked back from the beach. He’d studied her head to toe. She might have been in prison for most of her twenties, but she hadn’t forgotten that look in a man’s eyes. She’d exploited it in many a bank employee and rich asshole, under Jasper’s instructions. If the FBI investigator who’d interrogated her had been a man rather than a sixty-year-old woman, she might have had a better chance. Jack might not be an easy target either, but if she could get him to fall for her, he’d be less likely to kill her when things went to hell.
And just how was she going to do that? The man was made of granite.
She smoothed conditioner on her hair—that alone was more of a luxury than she’d allowed herself in years. She’d been so disgusted with herself for the cons she’d pulled with Jasper, trading on her looks and her youth and her red lips, that until her Laura makeover she’d renounced every vanity except ChapStick. Some of the jobs she’d done for him had required more than flirting. And though she’d never crossed the line from the kind of physical intimacy Jasper called “innocent” and “harmless” to sleeping with the marks—thank God—each time she’d be left feeling nauseous and dirty. She’d take a long shower—just like this—and scrub raw every part of her body, wishing she could scour her soul. But then Jasper would act so grateful and pump up her confidence, and before she knew it she’d be doing his dirty work again. My brains, and your body, babe—unbeatable. She shuddered. Just the thought of that smooth voice... The femme fatale, they’d called her at trial, the scarlet woman who’d lured and corrupted poor, defenseless Jasper. If only.
This time she’d be using her body to save her butt, not to earn acceptance. She closed her eyes and let the conditioner run off. One last con and then she’d become an honest woman. She could be that girl again—she had to.
Chapter 6
As the day heated up, the birdsong subsided to the odd call or squawk and even the insects muted. By late morning Rafe was sitting on the veranda, leaning against a pole, his eyes going screwy as he stared at the brilliant water of the lagoon. Staying still was eating him up from the inside. Somewhere out there his son was being subjected to God knew what and all Rafe could do was wait for the sign the ransom was paid, wait for a boat to collect them.
Too many what-ifs. Too much waiting. Too many
troubling messages coming from Laura, telling him something wasn’t right. Too much reliance on other people. The only people he relied on were his commando team—and he wouldn’t trust some of them to babysit Theo’s pet turtle.
Had Gabriel already started Theo’s training? The thought socked him in the gut. The beatings, the emotional abuse, the humiliation—an unbearable onslaught that would flip the boy’s understanding of right and wrong, and leave him convinced no one gave a damn about him but his commander. How quickly could Gabriel brainwash him into believing his papa didn’t care, that he was all alone, with no choice but to succumb?
Rafe closed his eyes. Theo would know that wasn’t true, wouldn’t he? Rafe hadn’t prayed since his English missionary-school days. But, God, if you’re up there, give me another chance to be a father. He’d held out longer than most when he’d been inducted into the Lost Boys. But he’d already been toughened up by a lifetime of forced independence—trucked from refugee camp to refugee camp as the soldiers closed in, wishing always that at the next stop he’d find the parents he had no memory of, he’d find out where he came from and where he belonged. Until the militia had taken him and Gabriel, they’d survived by polishing shoes in villages near the camps, mostly for food or coins, but sometimes in exchange for lessons in English—the language of movies and escape and dreams. They’d vowed to never leave the other alone in that hell.
No wonder Gabriel sought revenge and had taken the only thing that mattered to Rafe. Deep inside, Rafe could still feel the hatred and violence the militia had beaten into him, like a core of molten lava. Every day he fought to keep it dormant. The last time he’d lost control, had allowed himself to retreat into that dark place of numbness where he could disengage from his conscience and do unspeakable things, an innocent woman and child had died. More than twenty years on, he could still smell the spilled blood, could still feel the anguish and self-disgust that had ripped through his chest when he’d come back into himself, when he’d realized what he’d become. It had turned him into a coward who broke a promise to his only friend.
Oh yes, he knew exactly what fueled Gabriel. The one thing that separated them was that Rafe had found a way to control the demon, by shutting himself off from anger and fear—the dangerous emotions that led to the dark place. If other feelings were shut off at the same time, so be it.
“Don’t suppose you have any cards?” In the hammock, Laura linked her arms behind her head.
Doing nothing would do his head in. He never let his company rest for too long. Rest invited doubt, bickering, impotence. What would he do if his men were sitting here, instead of the heiress? Article five of the Code of Honor: Soldat d’élite, tu t’entraînes avec rigueur, tu as le souci constant de ta forme physique. As an elite soldier, you train rigorously and you take constant care of your physical form.
“Do you run?” he said.
“Run?”
“As in jog, sprint...”
“Have been known to. Is this you making light conversation?”
“Get some running gear on.” He began yanking on his socks and combat boots.
She swung her legs onto the floorboards and took him in with blue eyes so bright they were almost painful to look at. “Seriously? It’s a gazillion degrees out there.”
Which made running an even better prospect. “It’ll be cooler under the canopy. And the snakes will be sleepy.”
“Isn’t there some law against torture of prisoners? The Geneva Convention or something?”
“Only if we were at war.” He tied the lace on his second boot and leaped up, welcoming the energy sparking in his veins.
“Some might argue that we are.”
He marched inside, grabbed her sneakers and backpack and threw two bottles of water in it. Then another two, followed by nut bars and chocolate, though it’d probably melt after a minute. As he stepped back outside, he yanked off his T-shirt. No point creating dirty laundry.
He sensed her stillness before he saw it. She was staring at his chest, her mouth open. What was it—a spider? His gaze darted down, his throat drying out. Nothing amiss.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m not.” She spoke too quickly, casting her eyes down. Pink flushed her face, from neck to forehead. Because he’d removed his shirt? Oh. A grin tugged at his mouth. He clamped down on it. She hadn’t struck him as the blushing type. She was more I’ve seen it all, and I don’t give a damn. Perhaps it wasn’t just his body that was responding in inappropriate ways.
All the more reason to run it off. He tossed her sneakers over. He’d stashed the comms gear in a place she wouldn’t dare go hunting, but he’d learned the hard way not to let her out of his sight.
“Put on sunscreen. And a baseball cap. I don’t want you dying of sunstroke before the day’s out.”
She leaned down and pulled on a sneaker. “Oui, Capitaine.”
His stomach knotted. One offhand comment from Uriel and now she had a clue to Rafe’s identity. If the guy wasn’t already dead, Rafe would have wrung his neck. It wouldn’t take a genius to narrow down the options—a non-French native with a French rank. He jumped off the veranda.
She stood. The blush had settled, leaving her skin the color of pale honey and just as smooth. Her blue tank top intensified her eyes, and her frayed denim shorts ended far too soon. He turned his back on her.
“Hurry it up,” he said.
Footsteps padded down the steps. “Where are we going?”
“A trail circles the island.” Recon plus a workout. That should stop his mind straying to places it shouldn’t.
He set off down the hard-baked path behind the villa, going slowly for Laura’s sake, though his body urged him to push harder, to the point physical effort consumed thought. As a child soldier he would spend weeks on the move, hauling a rifle, his legs whipped if he slowed. His Legionnaire training had him marching eighty kilometers from the Pyrenees almost to Carcassonne in full patrol gear, and then every year the two hundred kilometers from one end of Corsica to the other with a fifty-kilogram backpack. After Simone died, he would spend his rare leave days running near-marathon distances. Anything to get out of that haunted house with a silent son and a mother-in-law whose stoicism thinly veiled her heartbreak. Losing a child had almost broken her. Losing the grandson who’d kept her functioning would be the death of her.
That wasn’t going to happen.
“Hey, Usain Bolt, slow down. Some of us like to breathe occasionally.”
“You go in front,” he said, hanging to the left to let her pass. He stared at the back of her head, forbidding his gaze from trailing down her body again. He hadn’t even looked at a woman that way since Simone. Their relationship had been a failed experiment, and that part of him had died with her. Or so he’d thought.
After his upbringing, he should have known better than to drag anyone into the twisted debris of his life. Not only had he dragged a woman into it, but a child, too. He wouldn’t let it happen again. He’d rescue Theo, then spend the rest of his life doing nothing but protecting him—even if it meant disappearing with him and leaving behind the Legion and Simone’s family. He might never be able to show Theo the love his mother had, but he could keep the boy safe, which was more than Rafe’s own parents had been able to do.
He frowned. But a kernel of hope was still buried deep in his chest—that he could placate Gabriel, that Theo could return to Simone’s family, where the boy was safe and loved, and Rafe could go back to the Legion, where he could do the most good—and the least harm. Was he deceiving himself?
He settled into the heiress’s pace. She wasn’t tall, but her strong, regular stride was comfortable enough to follow. As they ran, she seemed to relax, as if she was equally relieved to do something physical.
The trail was reasonably clear, at least. Whoever owned the island must em
ploy someone to keep nature from reclaiming it, though gnarled tree roots snaked across at intervals. Intended more for romantic strolling than hard running, no doubt. The jungle smelled of overripe fruit, rotting leaves, rich dirt. Nothing like the deserts and plains he’d grown up in. He closed his mouth, breathing solely through his nose to let the scent wash through him, as if it could clean the muck from his brain.
The jungle eased out into a clearing. Laura bent double and clutched her thighs. He hurriedly pulled focus from the bottom of her shorts, which had ridden up almost to her butt cheeks. Merde.
“I need a rest,” she panted.
“We’ve just started.” He lowered the bag to the ground. “Two minutes. Have a drink.”
As she recovered, he dropped to the dirt and started push-ups, willing his muscles to burn, keeping a silent count in French. A couple of hundred followed by the same in abdominaux at the next stop would make up for the leisurely jog.
“You’re a freak,” she said, still breathless.
You have no idea.
* * *
Holly’s damn eyes wouldn’t stop staring. It was an anatomy lesson, at the least. Muscles pumped and rippled across Jack’s slick back like some kind of hydraulic machine. His biceps looked like they would burst like balloons, though he was jerking up and down so quickly she struggled to get a fix on him without bobbing her own head in time. Two greenish stones swung from leather cords around his neck, bouncing against his chest.
Just watching was exhausting. She stretched her arm in front of her and bent back her hand to ease the ache in her forearm. What was that from—holding onto the inflatable last night? Wow, this time yesterday she’d been sailing across the ocean, congratulating herself that for once something good had happened to her, and now she was on a deserted island with He-Man. One day this would be a story for her grandchildren.
Grandchildren. Hardly. She’d have to have children first, and no child deserved to share her life. And given that the only man she’d been stupid enough to love had used and betrayed her, she wasn’t gagging to start dating. Loneliness was a small price to pay for safety and freedom.
