“Relax. I’ll take care of your hair.” The comb drew dark, wet lines from the crown of her head past her shoulders as he carefully worked through each section. “I’ll not mistreat you.”
“Sometimes you sound—” her voice slurred as she started to doze, “—old-fashioned.”
When he wanted to feel modern and energetic, he went to America. In Italy the past slowed him until he could appreciate beauty like the strands of her hair rippling from the comb. The lapels of her robe slid apart as she sagged onto his knee, asleep. His strokes slowed. How long could they stay in the moment, at peace like this?
Her sleeping profile, the shape of her lips and the sweep of eyelashes on her cheek, didn’t change as he shifted her to the bed.
Trying to lie next to her was futile. His need to prowl and protect forced him to his feet. He cleaned and reloaded the HK semi, tidied the bath and inventoried breakfast supplies. Ivar would undoubtedly find some way to make him pay for compromising their security, but his brother’s displeasure wasn’t what kept him pacing after he’d finished his tasks.
The Horizon Kaptan would dock in Albania the next week. If he contacted police, he’d lose the opportunity to monitor the ship, because the operation would be gummed up by layers of law enforcement crossing the jurisdictions of Italy, Albania and America, plus European Union antinarcotics squads. He owed it to his team and the Night Stalker pilots to continue, but he couldn’t leave Theresa alone while he went to Albania.
Montebelli was the solution. Besides being on the Adriatic and offering a boat or a plane for a quick trip to Albania, the fortress would be safe. Whatever the contractors had uncovered about him through the army, they couldn’t know about Ivar’s castle.
Tomorrow he’d take Theresa to Montebelli, Ivar or no Ivar.
* * *
Theresa’s eyes shot open, and her ears filled with the loaded silence that signals a failed alarm. She’d overslept. Was it her morning at the battle update—no.
She wasn’t in Afghanistan.
She was naked in Wulf’s bed in an underground apartment. Last night she’d slept with him, which had been magnificent, except for the part where they’d skipped using protection, and the other part where it was a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Shit.
“You’re awake.” In fresh clothes, he smiled from the foot of the bed. Once again he resembled a European playboy. No matted hair, sandy eyes or fetid breath for him.
He must’ve sensed her unease, because his eyebrows gathered together. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She closed her mouth over her self-recrimination.
“Something is.” Coming closer, he held out a small cup filled with espresso. A tiny rock of raw sugar and a spoon barely bigger than a toothpick sat on the saucer. “Will this help?”
She jammed the blankets into her armpits and inhaled the coffee, which smelled fabulous but wouldn’t change the facts. His life was all immortality, intrigue and excess income, but she lived in the real world where she needed to stay alive, employed and without kids. Yesterday hadn’t increased her odds of continuing those states.
“Please don’t decide anything until after your caffeine.”
As she drained her cup, he leaned on the bedpost with his own espresso. The man didn’t play fair. His morning offering beat army coffee with the same superlatives as last night compared to losing her virginity.
“I didn’t know what you’d like.” A faint red marked his cheeks as he nodded to a formation of three chairs sporting three outfits: a daisy-print sundress and white sweater, a black lace dress and khakis with a skinny pink polo.
“How did you—?” She stumbled into silence, aware that crossing to the new clothes would require loosening the security blanket tucked over her breasts.
“Checked your sizes.” He pointed to her ruined clothes folded on an ottoman.
“And shopped in the middle of the night?”
He threw back his head and laughed, showing his corded throat muscles. “Not even in Italy. It’s fourteen hundred.”
“Whaaat?” Two o’clock in the afternoon? She glanced at the pool. “Do you have a regular shower? With a door?”
“The pool has a handheld nozzle.” He unbuttoned a shirt cuff, grinning in a way that implied plans to use the shower nozzle for purposes not listed in the manufacturer’s instructions. “You can use it while I cook.”
She couldn’t look away from his forearms. He took his time rolling his sleeves, folding one cuff over itself twice before starting the other. She wanted to lay her arm next to his and stare at them, comparing the textures and shapes, the way his veins and bulges declared he was a man and her wrists could belong to no one but a woman. If she wanted to keep any backbone whatsoever, she would study the bed drapes or the walls instead of him, but he had the chiseled lines of a Michelangelo. She hoped she wasn’t panting.
“If you hurry, I won’t have time to peek.” He pointed at the pool.
“You’ve admitted to being a habitual liar.” She was no longer nervous, or not about the same things. These flutters stirred lower than her stomach and carried a deeper rhythm.
The moment he turned his back, she slipped from the covers. Sharing a shower unit with sixteen women had taught her speed, and she was toweling dry before he finished cracking eggs. The sundress and white sweater mimicked the Audrey Hepburn look her mother had chosen, which had proven its impracticality yesterday. If he thought she’d actually wear the black dress with the Versace label, last night in the pool must have been as boiling hot for him as it had been for her, because he’d purchased a complete man-fantasy outfit. Unfortunately she didn’t know how to sit, walk or bend in a dress that stopped that close to her belly button. When she considered the third outfit, a pink polo and cropped pants, what he’d done clicked.
He’d purchased three costumes for her: a lady, a hot babe and a slightly fashionable nerd. Which way did he see her? Or as a bit of all three?
Then the realization that none of the outfits included underwear made her snort.
“On the table by the bed,” he said without turning around.
“You should cook.” She glared at his back. “Not eaves-look.”
“Your huff was easy to interpret.”
The table held a glossy black box tied with silver ribbon embossed with the name La Bellezza. She’d passed the flagship store on Via Condotti but hadn’t needed to check prices to recognize a shop out of her league. Beneath tissue paper nestled two sets of lingerie, one fuchsia and the other black. Lace cups connected with a tiny bow and matching lace evoked orchids twining across the sides of the boy shorts. Only a tiny panel between the legs had any substance.
As she stared into the box, the desire to try on something so beautiful fought with the knowledge that she couldn’t accept hundreds of dollars of lingerie from him.
“I pictured your skin under the lace.” His silent appearance behind her made her jump. He pulled her into his embrace until his body cupped hers like a ball-and-socket joint.
If she shifted an inch, the ridge in his pants rubbed through her thin robe. Some traitorous part of her wanted to push and polish in the crudest way her Jersey-girl imagination could supply. Her skin had already warmed as heat crept up her body to her throat and cheeks. Now his scent, something manly and clean like trees after a rain, beckoned.
Move away, her brain cautioned her rebellious body, don’t repeat last night’s screwup.
“Did I tell you how beautiful you were asleep, with your hair spread across my pillow?” He lifted the strands trapped between their bodies.
Her brain gave up, shut down, rolled over and begged as her Viking locked her in his arms. They’d make love on the bed and in the pool and in the chair and he’d never let her go.
Never let her go.
“Stop!�
� She twisted her head and brought her arms up to break his hold. Sidestepping his embrace, she retreated until the backs of her thighs bumped the mattress.
“Finished with me after one night?” His white teeth flashed as he advanced.
Given that her body wouldn’t listen to her rules, she had to cross her arms to hide the obvious points of her nipples under the silky robe. She couldn’t force herself to say words to send him away, but they needed to discuss precautions before they collapsed onto that giant bed. Ruining her career was one thing—and she had no clue how to salvage this situation when they returned to Camp Caddie—but ruining her life was not debatable.
“Right.” His smile fell away and he stepped back. “Maybe you are.” He gestured at the table and chairs with one hand, a wave that dismissed his breakfast efforts as unimportant. “I came to tell you brunch is served. Ma’am.” Her title sounded flat and hard.
“Don’t...” Before she could complete her thought, he turned away and left her to dress. The lacy underwear barely concealed the parts worth covering, and now she couldn’t enjoy them. Wearing the pink polo and khakis, which magically reshaped her butt more effectively than twelve months of power lunges, she crossed the room to where he’d assembled pastries, fresh coffee, individual pitchers of steaming milk and poached eggs.
He waited for her to sit before taking a chair, his manners as agonizingly perfect as everything else about him.
She hadn’t thanked him for the clothes, which left her feeling like a jerk as she picked up her fork and knife. Setting them down next to her untouched food, she tackled her explanation.
“I’m sorry about—” she waved her hand in the direction of the bed, “—that. I wanted to, but I was...uncomfortable.”
“Why’d you push me away?” He crunched his toast without looking at her.
This was the moment to discuss responsibility. “Last night we didn’t use birth control.”
Still avoiding eye contact, he reached for his coffee.
“I’m not—” She’d advised nineteen-year-old privates to have frank discussions about sex and Plan B, but couldn’t spit the words out when it was her turn.
“Don’t worry.” He stared into the cup. “There won’t—can’t—be consequences.”
The hollow tone of his voice warned her she was about to push on a bruise, but she had a right to ask after the previous night. “What do you mean?”
“Fifteen hundred years. I wasn’t a monk, but I never fathered a child. Neither has my brother.” One corner of his mouth twisted, but it wasn’t a smile. No lines appeared around his eyes. “Ivar certainly tried during an Ottoman Vizier phase. He grew a bit obsessed.”
Her hands felt frozen to her cup. Should she reach across the table to him?
“Modern science eventually let us look. It’s extraordinary.” He took a deep breath and blinked rapidly but never raised his gaze from his empty coffee. “Little guys have too many tails. Some have five or six.” His words bumped into each other. “They don’t swim well, not well at all, mostly circles. They get all tangled up. So you don’t—” he swallowed, “—you don’t need to worry.”
In the silence, she knew her face must reflect her shock.
Wulf shoved to his feet. “Would you like more coffee? I’m—I’m getting some.” He left before she could answer.
Nobody could be as alone as the man hunched over the sink. No wonder he sometimes had that devastated look in his eyes. Deavers and Kahananui and the rest of his team had families to send emails and packages and pictures. They had two lives, the army and home, but Wulf had only one. What was it like for him, back at Fort Campbell, when the other men went home? Where did he go?
He returned with fresh coffee.
I’m sorry felt completely inadequate, so she kept her mouth closed and tried to think of something else. Hey, now that you’ve resolved my pregnancy fears, let’s—Uh, no. What shall we do today— After yesterday, she wasn’t sure she wanted that answer.
“Last night Lorenzo gave you another paper.” Her voice croaked, and she took a gulp of juice. “Have you read it?”
“I have.” He reached for a croissant. “Our Ostia Antica friend’s answers. We guessed right. He worked for Black and Swan.” He took his time breaking the roll in half and brushing tiny flakes into a line with one finger. “He came in from the Iraqi Green Zone and met five guys—hopefully the broken arm, the face shot, and our sewer friends, not five others—at the airport.”
She wanted to yank the croissant from his hand to make him hurry, but she knew he had to go at his own pace.
“They received text directions from someone they never met. Picked up our photos at a dead-letter drop in the Borghese gardens.” He wiped his lips with a napkin. “All very Cold War.”
“But I still don’t understand why.”
“According to Lorenzo, our prisoner assumed they were protecting drug operations. His mission was to follow us and report periodically. He claims he didn’t know what the other men planned to do.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Lorenzo gets results. Probably the hoity-toity accent. Or maybe the wine cellar.”
“Is he—” She didn’t understand why her tongue stalled over immortal. “Like you?”
“No, but close enough.” Wulf shook his head. “His family’s worked for my brother for seven generations.”
When Wulf had decided to open up, she couldn’t have imagined the explanations he’d give her, let alone that he’d answer everything she asked. It felt as if she’d been invited across a fence, leaping from outsider to insider status, privy to all his secrets.
He scraped yolk from his plate. “We’ll leave after kitchen patrol.”
“I suppose that’s best.” Her empty, streaky dish matched her emotions at the news their time was over. As soon as she’d decided to enjoy having an affair in Italy, he’d taken the decision from her hands. “We can report all this back in-country.”
“But we’re not going back to Caddie.” His multicolored eyes showed a thread of his normal bad boy. “You’re still on leave, so I’m taking you to the countryside. Emilia-Romagna, near Ravenna.”
Her imagination supplied a tile-roofed farmhouse, pasta in brightly patterned bowls and an olive grove outside a window. “We don’t have reservations—” she began.
“Don’t need them.” Now he had a full-on grin. “My brother and I happen to own a castle there.”
A castle? She shut her mouth to contain a squeak. Peeping sideways at the chairs with the two rejected outfits, she almost expected to see glass slippers, but the floor held only leather ballet flats. Yes, confirmation that even if Wulf did have a castle, she’d never be a princess.
Chapter Eighteen
Losing the first team in the Roman sewers had improved Draycott’s luck. Since that afternoon, he’d achieved every task the Director had demanded. He’d coordinated with the lab courier. He’d acquired mountaineering equipment, night vision gear and an anonymous van. Now he stood in baggage claim holding a welcome sign for a bogus Japanese tourist while he watched for the last member of the takedown squad. He’d already spotted the first four. If plans continued to proceed this smoothly, he had a good chance of leaving Italy alive.
The new men were South African and obviously paramilitary professionals instead of organization flacks. He had cautious confidence in their ability to capture Wardsen and a bad feeling about the brunette doctor’s odds of avoiding the crossfire.
As soon as the fifth man emerged from security and proceeded to baggage claim, Draycott pulled a cigarette pack from his jacket and headed for the sidewalk. The foul things were ubiquitous with drivers and thus good cover. Well apart from the other cabbies, he dialed his boss. “Sir, they all arrived.”
“Deliver them to Emilia-Romagna. A town called Montebelli off the
E55 highway. It’s not on most maps. Cliffs drop to the sea on two sides, so I sent frogmen.” What sort of tension could make his boss speak in paragraphs?
“Sir.” Why he crept out on this limb, he’d never be able to answer. Perhaps it had to do with Jane and his stepdaughter. “The woman. Is she yellow or green?” He’d phrased his question carefully, not as an argument or a request, but as a choice between two status designations, either of which would help her stay alive.
“She’s his. That makes her red.”
Red. A hard stop. Terminate. Never before had he disagreed with the Director, but he couldn’t forget that every time he’d observed her, she’d been smiling. “Red, sir? Not yellow?”
“Red. If you like, we can debate my decision over Thai food. I hear it’s your favorite.”
“Sir?” He couldn’t choke words past the paralyzing lump in his throat. The Director didn’t issue social invitations.
“Didn’t your wife mention our visit yesterday? I felt the urge to introduce myself. Best management practices.”
He wasn’t surprised the Director monitored his family. After all, he’d advised similar security measures relating to other key personnel. But to hear it confirmed...the world outside his phone call faded. In a fog, he listened as the Director continued.
“She resembles her photos. I have several of those too. Such an open, friendly smile your Jane has, no doubt with all her own teeth. She must take very good care of herself.”
He understood the message. I know how to find your wife. I will kill her, with intense pain that begins by pulling her teeth, if you don’t toe the line.
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate—” his voice shook, but he forced himself to carry on, “—your compliment.” Jane needed to get out. He didn’t know if any of his plans were good enough, but he no longer had the leisure to refine them. “I’ll see that the packages are delivered as you instructed.”
“Do it yourself.”
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