by Cindy Dees
Carrie was speechless. Bastien into her? For real? How had she missed it if these women were correct? Eventually, she managed to sputter, “But he’s mad at me all the time.”
That sent the women off into gales of laughter. Freda finally retorted, “Sure sign he’s got a huge crush on you.”
“Is this some perverse SEAL thing? They show affection by yelling at people and being angry at them?”
The humor evaporated from Kalli’s face and she leaned forward to speak. “Seriously, Carrie. Bass is one of the calmest men I know. Nothing flaps him. He’s nearly as chill as Frosty Perriman, and nothing ever rattles that guy. The fact that you’re getting flashes of any kind of strong emotion from Bass LeBlanc speaks volumes about how far under his skin you’ve gotten.”
Freda added earnestly, “Don’t hose him over, Carrie. He’s one of the good ones.”
The women didn’t exactly threaten her, but Carrie got the distinct impression these women would take deep exception with her breaking Bastien’s heart.
Thing was, he would have to give her his heart before she could break it. And she wasn’t sure he would ever get around to doing that. Not unless she revealed secrets she’d never revealed to another living soul. Not even to the police back home who’d driven her away from everything and everyone she’d known and loved.
She couldn’t do it. She’d locked away that part of her life forever, and she had no intention of dredging it up again. Not for love. Not even for Bastien.
Chapter 8
Carrie slept terribly that night. The combination of an unfamiliar bed, the shocking revelations from the women about Bass’s possible feelings for her, and worry for Gary made for a mix of toxic dreams.
When she woke in the morning, the four women were gone. Wow. They’d been really quiet not to have awakened her. But then, she supposed they were trained in the art of stealth. She went looking for Bass and found him in the ready room talking and joking with a bunch of guys there.
When she appeared in the doorway, he looked up instantly, and his face lit with a smile for her. Oh. Was that what the women SEALs had been talking about?
Warm little squiggles erupted in her stomach.
Bass held an arm out to her and she stepped up beside him, startled as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and said, “This is the woman I was telling you about.”
She recognized Commander Perriman from last night, and in the light of day, his eyes were silver. And they were frankly alarming when he turned that icy gaze on her as if he could look right into her soul. Even his voice was cool as he spoke to her. “Bastien’s been telling us about your recent problems. We’re expecting the translation of your journal back today, and maybe it can tell us more about who’s so interested in you. Then we can form a plan to take out whoever’s threatening you.”
She blinked, shocked. “The SEALs aren’t responsible for me.”
That got a round of laughter, but she didn’t see what was so funny.
Perriman said gently, “We take care of our own, Miss Price.”
She got that. But she didn’t belong to—
Oh. She looked up at Bass in quick surprise. Had he claimed her as someone he cared about to all these other SEALs? His deep blue gaze gave away nothing as she searched his eyes for an answer. The guy definitely held his emotional cards close to his chest.
Of course, he might have told his buddies he was interested in her purely so they would help him capture whoever’d broken into his garage.
That made more sense. Sure, he’d kissed her once. But that didn’t make for an actual relationship. For all she knew, he’d kissed her because he felt sorry for her and not because he was actually attracted to her. Who could blame a healthy, red-blooded male for kissing a woman he woke up to find draped all over him in his bed? Surely, it hadn’t meant anything to him.
She’d been needy and naïve to think it had signaled actual interest in her. Just like she’d been silly to believe the patter of a bunch of women who’d trained with Bass. For all she knew, they were playing some kind of joke on Bass by setting her up to throw herself at him.
The men around her were talking animatedly, and she tuned back in. They were debating the merits of her and Bass returning to his place with a contingent of SEALs hiding in the bushes, and using her as bait to draw out whoever was interested in her.
Bass was adamantly opposed to the plan, but pretty much everyone else seemed to think it was a great idea. Personally, she had no desire to dangle on a hook like a helpless little worm.
She eventually caught Bass’s eye and looked over at the door significantly.
Immediately, he broke into the conversation. “Back in a minute.” He guided her out into the hall without ever removing his arm from around her shoulders. It was almost as if he liked the contact.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I can’t sit around being bait for you guys. I’ve got a show to film. I can do all the background shots and can even do a bunch of the night filming without Gary present. Once he shows back up, we can do a bunch of quick clips of him, and then he can do voice-overs for the stuff I shoot now. Frankly, it works out well for the show to do it this way, because, God bless him, Gary can’t act his way out of a paper bag.”
“Where are you supposed to film over the next few days?” Bass asked.
“I’m scheduled to start the night shoot at the bed-and-breakfast I was at yesterday.”
“Is the night shoot when you film your ghosts?”
She smiled up at him ruefully. “Congratulations for asking that with a straight face. And yes, it is. I try to capture shadows and flashes of light and filming anomalies that can be enhanced into alleged ghost sightings.”
“Congratulations for saying that without putting air quotes around the phrase, ghost sightings,” he replied dryly.
She laughed. “Hey, it’s a job.”
“I’m not letting you do any filming without me. Not until we catch whoever kidnapped Gary and is coming after you now.”
“You think it’s the same people?” she asked in alarm.
“It has to be. What are the odds that two members of the same television crew would be attacked within days of each other by entirely separate people?”
She had to agree with him. Even if her past did come looking for her, it would take more than a single day to get to her.
“Where’s this bed-and-breakfast?” Bass asked. “I want to let the guys know where we’ll be.”
She gave him the address and watched, perplexed, as he poked his head back in the door of the ready room and called out the address. “Carrie has to film at this place tonight. Anyone wanna go ghost hunting with her?”
She rolled her eyes as the jokes flew thick and fast at that. She’d heard them all before, and she stood by her standard response. Filming the show paid her bills.
* * *
They might have joked about it; but as she stepped out of the Hummer with her big bag of camera equipment that Bastien had fetched from her van, still parked in his garage, no less than six SEALs were waiting on the front steps of the bed-and-breakfast. And one of them was holding her overnight bag. Oh, Lord. Had one of them gone to her place to paw through her underwear and toiletries?
But as the guy held it out to her, he said, “One of the female cops who works with Bass got this stuff for you.”
Thank goodness. “What are all of you guys doing here?” she asked the group at large.
Bass answered, “The guys will be spending the night with us. No one’s getting close to you on the SEALs’ watch.”
Oh my. The owner was going to swoon over all these hot guys moving in with her.
Carrie’s prediction turned out to be entirely accurate. Amelie, indeed, was so flustered she had trouble fetching eight room keys and passing them out, let alone instructing everybody on how
to get to their rooms in the warren of winding hallways.
After she set her little bag down in the middle of her bed, Carrie stepped out into the hall in time to see SEALs heading off in both directions. Bass stepped out of his room directly across the hall from hers, and she asked, “Where are they going?”
“Reconnoitering the hotel layout. We couldn’t find any floor plans on this place before we came over here. In a little while, we’ll be able to move around this place blindfolded.”
“It’s an old house, not a military installation,” she responded.
“It’s the site of potential operations.” He shrugged. “Even if this weren’t a security assignment, SEALs would roam around and get the lay of the land in a place like this out of force of habit.”
“Because it’s important to be prepared?”
“Exactly.”
“Has anyone told you you’re a little bit crazy?” she queried.
“I’m a SEAL. I’m a lot crazy.”
The way he said that, with pride and affection, made her understand why the idea of giving up being a SEAL to be a full-time cop was so hard for him.
She asked him, “What made you choose to be a SEAL?”
“The challenge of doing the impossible, I suppose.”
“Are you that big an overachiever, or are you simply an adrenaline junkie?”
He stared down at her. “Why do you care?”
“Just trying to understand what makes you tick.”
“You’re overthinking it, Carrie. The mountain was there. I climbed it.”
He wasn’t being honest with her. People didn’t put themselves through the rigors of SEAL training just because it was there. What wasn’t he telling her about himself or about his background? Obviously, the truth was something private and personal to him. And just as obviously, he didn’t trust her enough to share it with her.
She sighed, belly-punched yet again with the fact that she wasn’t good enough for a man like him. “I’m going to shoot a fill of nighttime background shots and then turn in. You have fun traipsing around the house.”
“We’ll try to stay out of your shots.”
She grinned. “Go ahead. Let me catch you guys on film. You’d be the hottest ghosts ever recorded.”
“No thanks. We’re better off if there’s no public record of our faces.” He added, “If you get scared or can’t sleep or just get lonely, my door will be unlocked,” Bastien replied.
Okay, she hadn’t seen that coming. An open offer to join him in his bed, huh? Taken aback, she blurted, “Aren’t you worried that the ghost will come in your room and haunt you if you leave it unlocked?”
Bass laughed at that. “The day I’m worried about a ghost is the day I check myself into the loony bin.”
“Oooh, you shouldn’t have said that. Now you’re gonna get haunted for sure,” she teased.
Grinning, Bass shook his head. “Go take your pictures. I’m gonna stroll around a bit and get my bearings. This place is a maze.”
With Amelia not hanging around bugging her, she got the footage she needed in under an hour and packed it in for the night.
She tried to sleep, but the stress of everything was catching up with her. She stared at a crack running across the ceiling plaster over her bed for hours, but no answers came to her. She had no idea what had happened to Gary or why, and she had no idea what the deal was with her and Bastien.
She was definitely interested in him. He was at least mildly interested in her. But enough to do something about it? Enough to break his stated rule about not dating suspects and his unspoken rule about not having serious relationships at all? Should she take him up on his invitation and crawl into bed with him? Maybe strip off her pajamas and go for the gusto? Of course, with her luck, Bass would think it was a joke and laugh his head off at her. Or worse, he would kick her out of his bed.
A cheap alarm clock on the nightstand said it was just after 1:00 a.m. when the first hard splats of rain hit her window. A gust of wind sent tree branches rattling against the side of the house, and something banged not far away, making her jump.
A faint moaning sound caught her attention, and she shook her head ruefully. Good thing Gary wasn’t here. He would be knocking frantically on her door, demanding she get up and go ghost hunting with him right away. She would tell him it was the wind, but he would insist it was spirits calling to him from the nether world.
Maybe that was why, when she finally drifted off to the pounding of the rain, she dreamed of Gary. He was calling out to her to help him, moaning rather like a ghost himself. Then he exhorted her to finish the work he’d started. To finish the quest.
She tried to ask him if he meant his treasure hunt, but the ghostly image of him either didn’t hear her or didn’t want to answer. A pair of faceless men came up behind him then and carried him away, down into a dark abyss she knew to be death. In her dream, she cried out to him. But he never looked back at her.
She sat bolt upright, mumbling, “Don’t leave me...”
Carrie flopped back against the flattened feather pillows. God, she was so lonely. Gary might have been a pain in the butt, but he’d been her constant companion and had staved off the ugly truth that she was all alone in the world except for him.
Meeting Bastien had been a stark reminder of what she was missing by cutting herself off from other people, by traveling all the time and never staying in one place long enough to develop friendships, let alone actual relationships. She could totally relate to Bastien’s choice not to date seriously. But the price of it—these moments in the dark, late at night, when the scary world was banging at her window...
Had she done the right thing by running away all those years ago? By not facing her attacker? By taking the coward’s way out?
Oooooooh. A sigh of breath, as if someone moaned in great pain, disturbed the patter of rain.
What was that?
She was no rookie to creepy sounds associated with ghost hunting, but that strange moaning noise was unnerving. No wind she’d ever heard had made that noise.
Her curtains stirred, and she jolted away from them, staring. The window was definitely closed and locked. She’d checked it before she went to bed. There must be an air vent somewhere in the room, making the curtains flutter like that.
The moaning sound came again, so close it sounded as if it was practically in bed with her. What the hell?
She sat up, clutching the covers close to her chest. Of all people, she knew for sure that ghosts were not real. Which meant a human was making those noises. If someone was trying to freak her out, they were doing a darned good job of it, though.
A flash of lightning outside was followed by an almost immediate crack of deafeningly loud thunder that made her jump. She thought she caught a glimpse of a shadow outside her window, a human-sized shape in the tree, as if someone had climbed it and was peering inside.
Ohmigod.
She bolted out of bed and flew out of her room, shooting across the hall to leap into Bastien’s room in about one second flat. She plastered her back against the door, breathing hard.
Bass was out of bed and standing in front of her in about the same amount of time. Crud, that man could move fast. “What’s wrong?” he bit out.
“I thought I saw someone outside my window. It was nothing, I’m sure, but it spooked me.”
He touched his throat with a finger and ordered tersely, “I need someone to check out Carrie’s room, inside and out, ASAP. She thought she might have seen someone outside her window.”
“Who are you talking to?” she asked.
“My men. We’re all wearing earbuds and microphones.”
“You went full commando in a bed-and-breakfast? Isn’t that a tiny bit of overkill?”
“What if there really is a guy outside your room?” Bass responded.
Oh,
God. There went her pulse again.
Bass gathered her into his arms as if he sensed her panic. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you.”
She mumbled against his chest, “I feel so stupid.”
“No need. You have every reason to be jumpy.” A pause, then he added, “You’re freezing. Come get under the covers and warm up.”
He deposited her in his bed, which was still warm from his body. Heat wrapped round her like the hug he’d just given her, comforting and secure. She was disappointed when he didn’t join her. Instead, he continued to stand over by the door, listening at the panel.
Without warning, he slipped outside, leaving her alone in his room. Great. Now she could freak herself out in here.
She stared fixedly at the alarm clock on his nightstand, her tension climbing with every passing minute. What was going on out there? Why had he bolted out of the room like that?
The door flew open and she froze in terror, her gaze darting around frantically in search of a weapon. That alarm clock was her best bet. She started to dive for it when Bass murmured, “It’s me.”
She collapsed across the pillows. “Good thing you identified yourself. I was about to bean you with the alarm clock.”
Bass lifted the covers and slipped in beside her. “Come here.”
She rolled toward him, and he drew her into his arms. He smelled of rain and fresh cut grass and his shirt was damp. “You’re wet,” she announced. “You should take off that shirt before you catch a chill.”
“Our body heat will dry off my clothes soon enough.”
“Why did you go outside?”
“The guys spotted someone moving around out there.”
“Did you catch him?”
“Nope. Whoever it was took off when we closed in on him.”
“I thought you guys were super stealthy.”
“We are. Which makes it interesting that the person noticed us and managed to slip away.”
“Interesting how?”
“Whoever’s after you is no amateur.”
Her heart sank. She couldn’t hide behind Bastien and his buddies forever, and Lonnie Grange was a patient man. If he’d found her and decided to take revenge upon her, he wouldn’t ever give up. She said heavily, “I’ve got to leave New Orleans. Go somewhere far away from here where no one can find me.”
