Heartbreak Hero

by Frances Housden

“No problem, mate.” Kel handed over a matchbook, picked up the night before in a downtown bar where the drums kept time with the dancers’ hips.

  The guy sweated noticeably as he tapped his Marlboro on the cigarette packet, then clamped it between his fleshy lips, drawing hard as the match flared. “Thanks, mate, you’ve no idea how I needed that.” He tossed the matchbook over.

  Kel caught it and nodded toward the other smokers, saying, “You, me and about ten others. Wouldn’t say no to a cold one to accompany it.”

  “A beer wouldn’t touch the sides. This heat bites.”

  He looked like a guy who should be used to hotter climates, but appearances could be deceiving. Kel should know.

  Slipping the matches into his shirt pocket, he hefted his suit carrier, gave the guy a brief salute and moved over a few feet, following the shade. He traveled light. No waiting for the carousel to disgorge his stuff while Mr. N. Two Feathers McKay, like Elvis, left the building. Having nothing to hide, after a mandatory inspection, both his carrier and laptop would be allowed on board.

  Of course, this meant nixing all weapons, other than the skills he’d learned in the SAS and a few dirty moves Gordie had taught him that had helped keep him alive more than once. They were all part of the game. Part of being an agent who might be in Sydney one day and Tahiti the next.

  Five days of sun at Club Med had painted Ngaire pale bronze, her skin’s natural inclination. And she’d enjoyed the soft rush of cooling air as the ferry skimmed the waves between islands.

  By contrast, the current bus ride sucked. Small, packed tight, with no air-conditioning to speak of, it made her long to be winging her way toward New Zealand in the relative luxury of economy class.

  For the first time since she’d left San Francisco, she almost felt homesick for the cool mist that had crowded the Golden Gate Bridge as she flew out of the good old U.S. of A.

  Heaven knows, she wasn’t the only one with problems. The legs of the lanky guy behind her stretched into the passage. His bony knees and ankles had invaded her comfort zone, while he had the nerve to grumble in German to his lady companion.

  Then, like a snowstorm in hell, all her complaints melted away instantly as she caught sight of the airport, with its regulation stands of palms edging the road, for the second time in a week.

  Her skin crawled with anticipation, tightening round her bones until she wanted nothing more than to stand up and stretch it back into shape. In a few hours she’d be landing in New Zealand where her grandmother had been born.

  The land her grandfather had called paradise. Though she preferred the words of American author Zane Grey, last, loneliest, loveliest. An evocative description that sang like a siren’s call in her ears. Though she had the blood of four nations rushing through her veins, Ngaire felt ties to none.

  Maybe in paradise she would find herself.

  The sigh of air brakes announced the arrival of a blue bus carrying a yellow hibiscus logo, pulling up a few yards ahead.

  Kel measured its size with his eye and did the numbers, reckoning on a twenty, twenty-two seater. He’d expected to deal with a luxury coach, so this put him ahead of the game.

  Maybe his luck had turned.

  The bus door swooshed open, folding in two. A pair of shoulders balanced above a belly like Buddha’s took its place as the driver lumbered off in a shirt as loud as his bus. Following him in a jumble of leis and woven palm-leaf hats, a half-dozen colorful Tahitian women alighted, swaying and giggling as the driver unclipped the baggage compartment, calling “Un moment, mademoiselles, s’il vous plaît, un moment” over one shoulder.

  Kel took a few swift puffs of his cigarette, letting hot smoke roll over his tongue to release through his nose in short, sharp bursts. Not a sign of anyone resembling the image he’d built of Two Feathers McKay. “Dammit!” He spat the word out under his breath. The curse didn’t relieve his frustration.

  Tossing the half-smoked butt into a sand bucket, he moved closer as the passengers dribbled out slowly and began to blend. He counted twelve islanders with a filtering of Europeans, French extraction, going by the casual elegance of their clothes. Behind the anonymity of his dark glasses, he eyed a tall man in a crumpled beige suit, heard a smattering of German as the dude snapped an order, a curse, then a demand at the driver.

  One more to cross off his list.

  His heart rate picked up. What if McKay had taken a different route? From the smell of things, their info could be a red herring. Wrapping his fist round the strap of his bag, he clamped down on his frustration. He wanted—no, needed—to be the one to find the goons responsible for Gordie’s death.

  The last passenger left the bus, tightening the thumbscrews on the fear of failure raging inside him. This was a woman, medium height, with muscles lightly sculpted under glowing skin. She flicked a long black braid behind her shoulder, stepping into the remaining space to complete the crescent of passengers awaiting luggage.

  As she dropped her small day pack between her feet, he watched her reach high, stretching with all the athletic grace of a dancer.

  Every instinct shouted “Trouble,” with a capital T.

  Latent sexual greed slugged him a good one. He wanted some of that, wanted a taste of the peach-fuzz skin making his mouth water. Wanted to feel it slide against his own in the heat of passion, as he sank into her to ease his pain.

  He’d heard it could take you this way, but until now he’d never experienced the need to sublimate grief with sex.

  To screw your ass off as opposed to crying. Death substituted by procreation. Lust mollified by this cockeyed piece of home-brewed psychology, he swung his eyes round the passengers one more time.

  Where’n all hell was McKay?

  He began circling the crush, his impatience as obscure as theirs was obvious while the driver dumped piece after piece from the baggage compartment into a heap on the sidewalk. Gucci took its chances with cheap blue-and-pink-striped plastic as the owners pulled their bags from the bottom of the pile.

  Lazy movements at the far side of the crowd snagged his glance and zapped him again. Pushing his sunglasses back to improve the view, he gazed at the growing distance between the black crop top and matching hipster pants, separated by lush skin.

  Isolated by her unhurried attitude, she reminded him of a cat, easing out its kinks as all hell let loose around it. “Eyes left, Jellic, you’re working.”

  As he scolded himself, a piece of crimson, hard-bodied Samsonite, defaced by a Chinese good-luck symbol and propelled by the removal of the one below it, slid from the top of the heap onto his side of the crowd. Kel took off his shades to read the gold words glinting on its side: Blue Grasshopper, Chinatown, San Francisco.

  “Now, that’s what I call carrying promotion to the nth degree.” It didn’t prevent the back of his neck pricking as he moved in for a closer inspection. San Francisco?

  McKay couldn’t be that dumb, surely, or that cheap. Could he?

  The urge to take a gander at the address tag was blocked by a red floral shirt he recognized. The meaty fingers he’d seen lighting a cigarette captured the handle and pulled it away from the rest. He heard the slap of it against the guy’s bare calves as he hopped off the sidewalk toward the back of the bus, swiping the sweat off his brow through his hair as if the exertion was killing him.

  “Hey! That’s mine.” The owner was feminine, unmistakably American and anything but happy.

  Simultaneously, but not in order of importance, Kel watched Ms. Bronze-skin whip off her sunglasses. Her shocked gaze, bluer than a Tahitian lagoon, followed the red shirt, while her pink sunglasses tumbled from her hand, catching the light.

  As their glances clashed, his body tensed, gearing itself to spring after the thief, then he remembered who he was and why he was there. Although he hadn’t moved an inch, Kel felt as if he’d hit a brick wall. A sensation every bit as painful as her swift expression of disappointment, coursed through him.

  As the woman hotfooted it
round her side of the vehicle, pride overcame caution. Dropping his suit carrier, he chased the good-luck-charm that wasn’t living up to its publicity.

  She was fast but in trouble now; the guy outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. Kel heard her yell as she ran, “Drop the case, you jerk, it’s mine.”

  Kel was at least four paces behind them when she confronted the guy, taking up a fighting stance, hands karate style like miniature lethal weapons, as if anything that small could hurt.

  He had to do something quick before she copped a lesson no amount of stretching would get rid of.

  The thief yelped, dropping the case as though it burned before the woman had to follow through with her threat. Two fast paces later Kel grabbed the red collar and felt it rip in his hand as the chunky guy twisted out of his grasp, leaving his ill-gotten gains behind. Then, before Kel could grasp him again, he shambled off at a fast clip without looking back.

  Kel could easily have overtaken him—hell, he ran like a red sofa on speed—but GDE business came first, no matter how beautiful the victim. His first reaction had been correct.

  She was trouble.

  As the woman straightened, he checked her over with his eyes and tossed what was left of the shirt collar away with a grin. “That’s the problem these days, nothing’s made to last. You all right?”

  “I’d have managed.” Her features were tight, the fabulous blue eyes shuttered. The words “Without you” hung in the air like a film title on a theater marquee. He realized she’d seen him hit that wall. How was she to know that just this once he hadn’t let duty win. A first for him. Though, instead of squandering the occasion on her, he wished he’d spent it on Gordie.

  “You want to watch it, lady. Acting as if you’re in some kung fu TV show could get you more than you bargained for. Someone might take you up on it, and then where would you be?”

  He reached for the case, flicking the name tag over to read. She was too quick for him. No surprise, considering he was working under two handicaps—the lush, arousing scent of her body and the way her breasts fell forward, cupped by the knit of her crop top.

  One thing for sure, she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  She caught him looking.

  Well hell, he was only human.

  “Thanks, I’ll remember that,” she replied, voice cool as the drink he’d fancied earlier, especially with the ice in her eyes to chill it.

  She curled her fingers round the handle, pulling it closer.

  “Let me get that for you.”

  “No problem, it has wheels.” She flicked a catch on the curve of the red monstrosity and conjured up a handle. The laptop case still in his hand was written off by a raised brow that made him feel roughly the same size. “Shouldn’t you be saving your own luggage before it disappears?”

  He recognized a dismissal when he heard it. His carrier still where he’d abandoned it, he picked it up and realized she must have been watching him, as well. At least he’d been savvy enough not to damage the laptop. Gorgeous she may be, but he’d long ago given up abandoning his gear in a lost cause, or given the IT engineers who’d invented its programs cause for complaint.

  That given, why did that look she’d shot him earlier still rankle? For sure, he wouldn’t disappoint her in the sack, but what man wanted to be needed just for the sex?

  He joined the tail-end passengers, all too caught up in their own affairs to react to the contretemps. But on his way to the terminal, he noticed her shades in the gutter and picked them up. He wouldn’t mind another close-up of those cool blue eyes.

  A vision startled him with its clarity. A hank of black hair twisting round one hand, to pull her closer, the other sliding under her crop top, bringing an end to another ice age.

  Hell, a guy could dream, couldn’t he? That and no more.

  Time to scrape the bottom of the barrel and see what floated to the surface.

  Waiting at the boarding gate, the thought of how close she’d come to losing the package in her care bathed Ngaire in cold sweat. It was worth a fortune. The fear of not living up to the trust placed in her yawned at the back of her mind like a bottomless pit waiting for her to trip. By now it had been checked in and was secreted in the plane’s hold, safe while no one suspected its nature. The attempted theft today had to be a coincidence. She’d told no one but Leena of her plans. And her best friend would never let her down, not even for the million dollars Paul Savage had brandished under Ngaire’s nose. Savage thought her a fool for turning it down. Like a spoiled child he couldn’t imagine not getting his own way, yet Savage was as every bit an outlaw as the ones who once held up coaches saying, “Your money or your life.”

  She’d chosen life. The money didn’t come into it.

  Taking a long, cooling drink of orange juice, she scanned the passengers for the guy in the black-and-white shirt but couldn’t see him. So, why bother?

  “Yeah, yeah,” she chided herself, knowing his features had made her heart jolt at first glance. One of those things you read about but never in a million years expected to happen.

  Disillusionment had come hard on the heels of the first thrill spiking low in her belly. He was no different from all the rest.

  Sure, she could take care of herself. She was a hapkido master, for heaven’s sake. No fragile rosebud ready for picking.

  Then again, she yearned for just one man to treat her like that bud, even after discovering her talent. Was that why she hadn’t set him right when he’d patronized her attempt to regain her luggage? Annoying, yes, but she couldn’t have it both ways.

  Even as he’d been telling her off, “You want to watch it, lady,” the timbre of his voice had made her shiver with desire. You mean lust, don’tcha? She’d been careful not to let it show and now she was kicking herself for pouting like a spoiled brat.

  For real, the thief hadn’t been quite so certain her stance was all show and no substance. She’d caught a flicker of fear in his eyes as she faced up to him. Her rescuer had been the mugger’s last straw, sending his fat, sturdy legs into a Road-runner windmill.

  The guy who’d made her heart leap from her breast would be in no doubt of her abilities by now, if she’d had to carry through and taken the bozo out. Shooting herself in the foot again by losing any chance of seeing a look in his eye that said she was special. Not superwoman special. Just the ordinary, everyday meeting of minds, attraction, desire and falling in love.

  Foolish, when she’d never see him again. But for a moment, she’d looked, and wanted something more than the same old, same old. Her relationships all took a predictable cycle.

  Me man, you wo…man.

  Then bring out the role confusion. Me man, you…?

  She was five-four and could down a two-hundred-and-fifty pound man with a flick of her wrist. What did she need a man for?

  Ngaire had never yet come out with “Duh? Sex, dummy!” But she’d wanted to.

  Surely there was one man in the world she couldn’t intimidate?

  What she needed was someone with X-ray vision. Someone who could see through her soft black cotton do bock uniform pants and tunic to the flesh-and-blood woman underneath.

  She remembered when their eyes met, how the crush scrambling to find their gear had melted away. For a brief moment there had been only her, only him.

  Then she’d caught his fight-or-flight reaction. Ngaire knew the sensation well, adrenaline pumping hard, flowing out to the nerve endings and the body’s response. She never felt so alive as when she was afraid of death. And these days that was every time she let her mind wander.

  He’d hesitated, sending her gratification on a steep downward slide weighed by chagrin.

  So, she’d been wrong before and she’d be wrong again. No sense in putting herself through the wringer for a guy she’d exchanged less than a dozen words with. She’d never see him again.

  “Mind if I sit here?”

  Scratch the last statement.

  He was here, and he wanted to sit at her
table.

  His eyes narrowed and the words, dark and dangerous took on new meaning. Ngaire’s heart began practicing rolls and break falls, beating its little self up against the barrier of her sternum. Stay cool. Remember, he hadn’t survived the cut in the macho stakes. She looked around, counted four empty tables. “No worries, help yourself.”

  She’d known he was tall, but until he sat opposite she hadn’t had the pleasure of assessing the width of his shoulders. They made his chair look as if it came out of a kindergarten classroom. She could tell that every last bit of him, narrow waist and hips, broad chest, were in perfect proportion. And that was only the bits she could see. Maybe she should stop staring at him as if she’d escaped from someplace surrounded by high walls and barbed wire.

  He’d bought a beer. The hands carrying it were large, palms wide, fingers long, blunt-tipped and workmanlike as he set down a dewy bottle already dripping rings onto the table. “Glad to see you’re none the worse for your adventure.”

  “It was nothing, thanks to you. And there’s nothing to get over. I’ve had worse experiences.” Memory plucked a knife out of the past and laced it with pain.

  Now, what had made her say that? On average, it took longer to refer to the most horrific incident in her life. Right about the time she got over worrying about taking her clothes off and showing her scars.

  She shrugged it off with a quick piece of trivia. “Did you know that, worldwide, the odds of getting mugged are 260,463 to one?”

  “I guess I do now.”

  He grinned at her, making his dark, almost black eyes crinkle at the corners. He was the first honest-to-God guy she’d met with a Kirk Douglas dimple in his chin. Maybe that was why his mouth had a little curl to the lip that reminded her of someone.

  Someone else. Hazy, dreamlike, the notion tugged at her mind though she couldn’t put a name to him.

  “Of course the odds increase depending on where you live.”

  “Bet you never thought you’d become a statistic in a little place like Tahiti.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank.

  It was unrealistic to envy an inanimate object. The bottle had no way of knowing how lucky it was. “Guess I’m now a three-time loser.”