by Cindy Dees
“Speaking of which—” the Asian woman stood up “—any injuries among you in need of a medic?”
“Who are you?” Hake asked.
“Cho. Medic.”
Short on words, too, apparently. And then Casey’s hands were on him, running over his limbs, across his belly, down his back. “Anything hurting?” she murmured.
He shook his head. “I’m fine. Yet again, your lightning-fast reflexes saved me.”
“Franz took the brunt of the shrapnel meant for you. He’s the one who should get the credit.”
“I pray he lives so I can thank him,” Hake replied quietly. Their gazes met in tense understanding. “Are you injured?”
She stopped for a moment, thinking. “No. I was behind Franz, too.”
Several of the other men, however, had superficial wounds in need of care, and Cho set about cleaning and bandaging them.
Monica spoke up briskly, “What’s the plan now?”
Casey sighed. “Well, that didn’t work out the way we wanted. The terrorists outsmarted us and didn’t show themselves. Only way we’re going to get close to them, apparently, is to go through with the sale of the milling machine.”
Monica shrugged. “At least we’ve got their psychology nailed. We thought we could provoke them to attack and we did. That’s good, at any rate.”
“Small consolation,” Casey muttered. “Viper briefed yet?”
A compact brunette with a single, shocking red streak of hair over her right ear replied, “H.O.T. Watch is on the horn with her right now in Bhoukar. No attacks on the El Aran compound. So it wasn’t a coordinated hit. This was definitely retaliation for Hake’s antics.”
“Which one are you?” Hake asked the punk rocker chick.
“Roxi,” she replied. “Or you can call me Hornet.”
Ah. The giver of excellent romantic advice. He made eye contact with her and nodded. She grinned back and then turned away quickly.
A beautiful, Persian-looking woman strolled out of another room. “Satellite imagery is chaotic. It’ll take hours to I.D. everyone in the vicinity of the polo field. My guess is the mines were placed last night, or even earlier, and went off on timers. H.O.T. Watch is working on recovering telemetry from the past day or two that covers the polo grounds.”
Casey made the introductions. “Hake, this is Naraya.”
“What’s her bug name?” he asked wryly.
Casey smiled. “Black Widow.”
Hake nodded. “Any other dangerous insects I should know about?”
“Cho goes by Dragonfly and Monica’s handle is Mantis. Tarantula is around somewhere. Her name’s Alex, if you prefer.”
Monica-Mantis murmured without looking up from the map of Nice, “Her turn to sleep.”
Hake frowned. How could a person sleep through all this chaos? Although truth be told, the apartment was pretty quiet. He was the one in the chaotic state.
“Anyone thirsty?” Cho asked.
The women all grinned. He looked at Casey askance and she explained, “One of the symptoms of shock is pathological thirst.”
Now that he thought about it, his mouth was as dry as cotton. He indicated he’d like a drink and added, “It’s also a symptom of some woman running a guy all over town.”
Casey smiled, holding out a two-liter water bottle to him. “That, too.” He took it and cracked it open, promptly downing it in its entirety. Tomas and the other men had congregated around the table where Monica was briefing them. They looked rapt. Whether they were impressed with what she was saying or more impressed by the stunning woman delivering it, he couldn’t tell.
“Would you like to rest, Hake?” Casey murmured. “There’s a bedroom free at the moment.”
“Show me where it is?” he murmured back.
Her gaze snapped up to his, but she merely commented, “This way.”
He followed her down a long hallway which appeared to have no less than four bedrooms opening off it and a surprisingly large bathroom by French standards. She turned into the last room on the left and held the door for him. He passed by her and she pulled the door shut behind them both.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m rattled. It’s not every day someone wants me dead bad enough to blow up a whole field full of people and animals to get me.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the TV remote on the nightstand. She turned on the television and he sat down beside her, numb, to watch the breaking news coverage. No mention was made of him, and that was just fine with him. The images of the polo field were bloody and hard to look at.
“How did we escape with so little harm?” he asked in disbelief.
She shrugged. “You weren’t sitting on a horse unprotected, and you let Franz have the front-row seat you normally would have taken.”
“I sat in the second row so I could be close to you,” he commented, feeling a little detached from his body.
“I’m glad you did,” she replied fervently.
“Any idea what’s going to happen next with us?” he asked.
She looked up at him sharply, as if questioning how he meant that question. Frankly, he wasn’t quite sure how he’d meant it. She chose to answer in a professional context rather than a personal one. “I expect we’ll abandon the business of trying to draw an attack to you.”
His stomach dropped like lead. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
She blinked, startled. “I don’t know what will happen next. My guess is a team will take you home to Bhoukar to join your family. It consolidates the security coverage, and I doubt the terrorists want to take out both you and your father simultaneously. They need someone alive with whom to do the deal.”
“I haven’t been to Bhoukar in years. I do not consider it my home,” he replied woodenly.
“Nonetheless, I’m betting that’s where you’ll be headed next.”
“When will we know?”
“There will be some sort of teleconference before long. Then as soon as transportation can be arranged, we’ll move you.”
“Are we looking at a day or two?” he asked grimly.
“More like an hour or two. If that much.”
“What will you ladies do with all that gear in the living room?”
“We’ll take it with us to wherever we end up going next, of course. We can have that stuff packed in a van in a few minutes.”
He snorted. “I’ve never met a woman yet who can pack for anything in under an hour.”
That made her grin. “We can pack to deploy for ninety days in ten minutes.”
“Are you sure you’re really a woman?” he demanded.
The humor left her face as abruptly as if he’d slapped it off her. He stared, startled. “Surely you know I was joking.”
“Of course.” Her lips moved and sound came out, but there wasn’t even a hint of conviction in her words.
He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close to him. She was so familiar to him, and yet it felt entirely strange to hold her like this in the privacy of a bedroom. This was real. He kissed her gently. At least at first. As always when they kissed each other, the room quickly disappeared and nothing was left but the two of them straining toward one another, lost in their own world of passion and blinding need.
He murmured against her lips, “I’ve never met another woman remotely like you. You’re a warrior by day and all woman by night. You’re smart and capable and take charge in a crisis, but you cuddle against me like a kitten and make me feel like the king of the world when you do. You’re as at ease with a gun in your hand as a mascara brush.”
“Makeup brushes terrify me,” she mumbled against his neck.
He smiled back. “You laugh in situations that most women would fall apart in.”
“Yeah, but I fall apart in situations most women would sail through, so it all evens out.”
He drew back enough to gaze down at her. “Like when?”
“Like every time we came b
ack to your hotel room after kissing and groping each other all evening. I didn’t have the slightest clue how to tell you how much I wished it could continue behind closed doors.”
“You wanted to be with me?” he demanded. “Why on earth didn’t you say so? I thought you hated my guts after I needed to be alone that first night in Nice.”
“What was that all about anyway?” she demanded back.
“Things were moving so fast with us. I was messed up in the head. Had to sort a few things out.”
“Like what?”
“Like whether or not I was developing real feelings for you.”
She said nothing. Most women would jump all over a comment like that and want to know what he’d decided. But she was not most women. “Don’t you want to know what I figured out?” he asked.
“Do you want to tell me?”
“I have real feelings for you,” he announced. “Oh.”
He frowned. “Is that all you’ve got to say to my big declaration?”
“A big declaration of what? So you have feelings for me. They could be feelings of dislike and distaste.”
“Difficult woman,” he grumbled. He exhaled hard. “I think I’m falling in love with you, for crying out loud.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Oh!”
He felt slightly better. She at least had the good grace to appear shocked.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I’m not sure about anything. I’ve never done this before. I don’t have any idea what falling in love feels like. But I can’t sleep at night for wanting to be with you. I can’t wait to see your face when I get up in the morning. I want to know what you’re doing and thinking and feeling all the time. I feel…empty…whenever we’re apart, and I only feel like myself when we’re together. You tell me. Is that love?”
She contemplated him thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Could just be a bad case of infatuation.”
Frustration soared in his gut. “Why are you fighting this?” he demanded. “Aren’t you supposed to be happy when someone tells you they love you? And then you declare your feelings back?”
Her detached facade cracked. She said in a small voice, “Mostly, I’m scared to death. This has so much potential to go wrong. And I don’t want to get hurt again.”
He replied, “Don’t all the poets and playwrights say you have to be courageous to risk love? You’re the most courageous woman I’ve ever met, so what’s the holdup?”
“I’m a fraud. I’m as scared as the next person. I just know how to mask it better than most.”
“You’re no fraud. And I’m as scared as you,” he said.
She smiled sadly. “We’re some pair, aren’t we? Most people would be thrilled to discover they’re falling in love and rush headlong into it. And here we are, hesitating like complete cowards.”
“I’ll jump if you will,” he said quietly.
She stared at him a long time. And he held his breath for endless seconds. Finally, she said slowly, “Maybe after the mission. When I’m not working with you. When your family’s out of danger…”
“You’re procrastinating,” he accused. “Avoiding the real issue.”
Her gaze slid away from his.
“For the record, I’m planning to fight for you,” he announced. “And we’ve already established that I don’t fight fair.”
That made her look at him warily. “What do you have in mind?”
“A warrior never reveals his tactics to the enemy,” he replied grimly.
“Please don’t mess with my career,” she blurted. “I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am. Sacrificed too much—”
“Like love? Personal happiness?” he challenged.
Her gaze met his reluctantly. “Yes. Exactly.”
“Why can’t you have both a career and happiness?”
“That would take a man who fully understands and accepts my work. Who is willing to share me with my career until it has run its course. And with all due respect, Hake, you were raised in a culture where women’s needs don’t take center stage. I have a hard time believing you’re going to be okay with my work at the end of the day.”
That gave him serious pause. Finally he said, “You forget I was raised with twelve sisters and a European mother. I was raised to remember to think about the woman.”
“Right. And that’s why you’ve been hopping in and out of bed with them by the hundreds. Because you’re so committed to their emotional well-being.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Are you sure it’s not?” she challenged.
He paused to consider the accusation. He fought to set aside his defensive reaction. “I was always honest with them. I told them up front that I don’t do long-term relationships and not to expect anything more out of me than the moment.”
“And yet you wonder why I hesitate to dive into a relationship with you,” she retorted drily.
“Things are different between us,” he responded with a hint of desperation.
“Because we’ve nearly died together a time or two? That’s just another day at the office in my world, Hake. It’s not the basis for lasting love.”
“Then what is?” he demanded.
She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t have the answers.”
He felt everything he’d ever wanted and not known he’d wanted until he met her slipping away from him. “Promise me you’ll look for the answers with me. Let’s figure this thing out together. Don’t close me out until you’ve given us a chance.”
“I don’t know—”
“Just don’t say no. Withhold a final answer until this thing with the terrorists is over.” God, he hated negotiating for his life like this. He was sorely tempted to sweep her into his arms and kiss away her doubts, but he sensed that winning over her mind was every bit as crucial as winning over her body in this fight.
She frowned at him.
“Please. It’s not too much to ask.” It felt supremely strange to beg. It was not a thing he’d done often—or ever, really, truth be told—in his life.
She sighed. “All right. Fine. I won’t decide anything until the mission is wrapped up.”
He knew her well enough to believe that she would keep her word at all costs. She was honorable that way. Hence his next request. “Promise me?”
She commented reflectively, “You’re getting to know me well if you know to ask that question.” She studied him for an endless moment. Sighed. And then said, “Fine. I promise I won’t make any decisions about us until the mission’s over.”
Chapter 15
C asey swore at herself under her breath. Every time her shoulder rubbed against Hake’s, her breath caught in the back of her throat. She had to stop reacting to him like this! They were firmly back in her world, on a military transport plane headed for Bhoukar and a showdown with a group of deadly terrorists.
The rules of engagement were entirely different now. She wasn’t playing the floozy girlfriend anymore. She was back to being the professional soldier, currently acting as a bodyguard for an extremely important asset. This was a no-fail mission, which meant she and her teammates were under orders to do whatever…whatever…it took not to fail. Up to and including killing. Or dying. This was no time to be making goo-goo eyes at Hake.
Although how she was supposed to turn off her feelings and pretend there was nothing between them was beyond her. He was in love with her? Her? The thought boggled her mind and did funny things to her stomach every time it occurred to her. She was pretty well head over heels for him herself. She hadn’t the slightest idea what to do about it, however.
Ever since the terse teleconference in the apartment where Vanessa ordered them to bring Hake and the milling machine to Bhoukar, a tornado of activity had kept her from thinking about Hake’s declaration to her. But now a ten-hour plane ride stretched before her. Hake sat strapped in a web seat in the cargo compartment on her left, and her Medusa team stretched away to her right. The big machine that was the cause o
f this whole mess sat in a wooden cargo crate at the rear of the aircraft. She shifted in the uncomfortable seat, and her shoulder brushed against Hake’s yet again. Her breath caught, and she rolled her eyes in disgust at herself. She was hopeless.
Thankfully, Hake stretched out his muscular legs, crossed him arms over his chest, and closed his eyes. It was easier to think without his steady, warm gaze on her every move.
Roxi leaned close to her. “Chica, roll up your tongue and tuck it back in your mouth, eh?”
She turned to her teammate sharply. “What are you talking about?”
“You can’t look at the man without lighting up like a tracer flare. Your whole face glows.”
“Crap.” She looked glumly at her friend. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Get the job done, and then drag that man to bed and don’t get up for a week.”
“I don’t think a week would be enough between us.”
Roxi laughed. “You may be right. He looks at you like he’s planning to eat you alive. I knew he was hot for you, but I had no idea.”
Casey sighed. “Thing is, you and I both know I can’t just dive into the sack with him. Vanessa would have my head on a platter.”
“If you two were to become involved seriously, you know, in a real relationship, the boss lady couldn’t say much about it. You are allowed to have a personal life after all.”
Casey rolled her eyes. “Hake El Aran serious about one woman? How likely is that?”
“I don’t know. He looks pretty darned serious about you.”
“That’s just because I’m so different than a normal woman. I’m still a new and exotic flavor to him.”
“Only way to know if that’s all it is may be to let him have a good, long taste of you,” Roxi said sagely.
Casey glared at her teammate. “Are you advising me to have a torrid affair with him to see if what we have is real?”
Roxi watched at her for a long time. Then she said, “What say you, ladies?”
Casey looked down accusingly at the microphone velcroed around Roxi’s throat. “Were we on hot mike with the rest of the team this whole time?” she demanded, appalled.
