The Colonel's Daughter

by Amy Andrews

  His voice flowed over her all smooth and creamy. They’d barely spoken since this morning and it was always just a little thrilling to hear his velvety voice again after a period without it.

  “And the cops don’t seem to be getting anywhere,” she mused.

  “They probably wouldn’t tell us if they were,” he said. “Those guys tend to play their cards pretty close to their chests. They don’t like to give anyone false hope.”

  Ivy almost did a little jig at the opening he’d given her. “You sound like you speak from experience,” she said casually, forcing herself to calmly keep brushing.

  Lights from the television played in Dean’s hair and washed along the strong plains of his face giving away the slight clench of his jaw. His gaze was still fixed on the telly but she hadn’t missed his tell. He’d just gone on high alert.

  He shrugged. “You’ve been a bouncer long enough, you tend to pick up on a few things.”

  Ivy kept brushing. “How long have you been a bouncer?”

  “A few years,” he said.

  She hid a smile. Time to beat a tactical retreat as the Colonel would say and change tack. She put the brush down and opened the fridge. Maybe he’d be more conducive to sharing after some loosening up? Alcohol helped facilitate a lot of things, right?

  God knew she’d seen that slinging drinks in one place or another for the last year.

  “Beer?” she asked as she pulled one out for herself.

  “No, thanks.”

  Ivy faltered momentarily. Damn the man. Dean Bennett was a tough nut to crack.

  Determined to not be deterred, Ivy detoured around the coffee table and sat at the other end of the couch, putting the beer and the drawstring bag on the table. The news reader introduced a story about the war in the Middle East and Ivy knew she had her opening. She was about to exploit it when her phone rang.

  Biting back her annoyance, she pulled it out of the back pocket of her pajama shorts and looked at the screen.

  “Crap.” She groaned. It was her father. She did not want to talk to him again until this whole episode was over. She tossed the phone on the coffee table and let it ring.

  “You’re just going to ignore that?” Dean said as he kept his eyes glued to the TV.

  “Yep.”

  He looked over at the phone, the screen was lit up with a picture of the Colonel and the word Dad flashing on the screen. “Isn’t that your father?”

  Ivy took another swallow of her beer. “Yep.”

  “You should answer it.”

  “Nope.”

  The phone stopped ringing. “You’ve probably worried him, not answering like that,” he said. His phone chimed a message and he withdrew it from the back pocket of his jeans.

  “I’ll text him after my beer and let him know I’m busy and can’t talk right now.”

  He didn’t say anything as he tapped a quick reply to whoever had texted him and shoved the phone back in his pocket. Ivy leaned forward and snagged the bag off the coffee table. The movement speared through her sore hip and she sucked in a quick breath, dropping the bag in her lap.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, waiting for the pain to ease. “It’s still a little sore.”

  He looked like he was going to suggest she get it seen to again but thought better of it. “What’s that?” he asked instead, tipping his chin at her bag.

  Ivy opened the drawstring and pulled out a bottle of nail polish. “My nail bag,” she said. “Polish, remover, wipes. All that kind of thing.” She pulled out the other four bottles in the bag and held them up to him. “Choose a color,” she said.

  He looked like he’d rather eat dirt. Maybe he’d start talking just to get out of doing it. “They’re all pink.”

  Ivy shook her at him in faux exasperation. “They’re all shades of pink. There’s magenta, rose, pearl, hot, and bubble gum.” She clinked the bottles together to hasten him along. “Come on,” she teased. “Choose. I know you want to.”

  He gave a half smile that did funny things to her pulse as his gaze dropped to her toes. “What’s wrong with the one you’ve got on?”

  Ivy looked down at her feet wriggling her toes. “It’s a couple days old.”

  “Well yes, I could see why that would be a problem.”

  She smiled. “A change is as good as a holiday.” She tapped them together again. “Choose.”

  “Hot,” he said.

  “Figures,” Ivy said as she put the others back in the bag and unscrewed the lid on the hot pink.

  “What figures?”

  “Men always go for hooker colors.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “And you know this from your extensive experience with men?”

  Ivy should have been embarrassed by his implication, but the fact that he was teasing her somehow mitigated it all. “According to Merry,” she clarified.

  He grinned and her heart did a mad crazy skip in her chest. She opened the varnish remover and soaked a wipe with the fluid before propping her right foot up on the coffee table and leaning forward to remove all traces of bubble gum currently on her toe nails.

  Her hip grabbed again and she straightened abruptly on a grimace.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Ivy breathed through the pain, shutting her eyes. “It’s fine.” The pain eased to an ache and she tried again, but it flared instantaneously, setting her back again. “Damn it,” she swore.

  “Maybe you should take one of those painkillers?”

  “I don’t like taking too many painkillers,” she said through clenched teeth as the pain dissipated once more. Her father brought her up to tough things out, and the last thing she needed was to feel uninhibited around him. “And I think it’s wise to keep my wits about me while there’s a hit man on the loose.”

  He nodded. “What about a cushion? Or maybe a heat pack? I could fashion one out of something? Zap it in the microwave? There must be something I can do.”

  Ivy shook her head. She wondered if he knew how sweet he sounded trying to come up with a solution. Big tough guy fussing over a chick with a sore hip. “You want to do something? You can help me with my toes.”

  He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “What?”

  Ivy laughed at the horror on his face. She waved the wipe at him. “My toes.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t paint toes.

  As if he’d needed to clarify that. “Oh come on,” she cajoled, “It’s just like coloring in.”

  “I failed coloring in.”

  Ivy laughed. “All you have to do is stay between the lines.”

  “I failed staying between the lines.”

  Ivy’s breath hitched. She just bet he had. Dean didn’t looked like a coloring-outside-the-lines kind of guy.

  She waggled the wipe again. “You wanted to know if there was something you could do.”

  He looked at her toes as if they were live snakes. “About your pain.”

  “I think the endorphin rush I get from freshly painted toes would go a long way to help with my pain.”

  He eyed her critically. “Pink toes give you an endorphin rush?”

  If he was the one painting them they’d probably give her more than that. She pondered how mortified she might be if she came while he was painting her toes. That would be embarrassing.

  Although not enough to deter her.

  “What can I say? I’m easy.”

  He lifted an eyebrow and she waited for his comeback. She’d chosen the words deliberately, after all.

  “Worried about your tough-guy image?” she goaded a little more. “I promise I won’t tell the other bouncers. What happens in the hotel, stays in the hotel.”

  Their gazes locked momentarily before his dropped briefly to her mouth then back again. Ivy’s breath roughened as a crackle charged the air between them. Was he thinking about much more than painting toenails now?

  She sure as hell was…

  “Fine.” He grabbed the wipe. “
But I will deny, if ever asked, that this happened.”

  Ivy grinned at his capitulation. “I would expect nothing less.”

  Gingerly, she swung her legs up onto the couch, settling back into the corner as she slid her feet into his lap. He grabbed them quickly, almost in alarm, halting their progress before she got too comfortable and shifting them to the meat of his thigh.

  “Here will be just fine,” he muttered as she quirked an eyebrow at him.

  Did he think she was going to take advantage of the situation to fondle his junk? What the hell? She may be desperate to ditch her virginity, but she wasn’t some kind of nympho.

  He rubbed at her toes methodically, the pressure hard as he removed the polish. Hard, but good. Goosebumps marched in waves up her calves and higher, straight to the juncture of her thighs, and she squirmed a little. When he was done she passed him the bottle of hot pink. He pulled out the wand and looked at the glossy liquid drip off the brush.

  “You know this isn’t going to be pretty, right?” he said, glancing at her.

  Pretty, no. Hot? Totally. “It’ll be better than nothing. Practice on the big toe first. Use the wipe if you go outside the lines.”

  He dropped his head from side to side, stretching out his neck muscles as if he were prepping to go into a boxing ring. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered.

  Chapter Six

  Ivy bit her lip as his fingers grasped her big toe. Tingles rippled up her legs and settled high and hot right between her thighs.

  Maybe there was something to all that chakra/reflexology shit after all.

  “So…your Dad’s a Colonel, huh?”

  She smiled. “Are we talking about military stuff because you’re painting my toenails and trying to pretend you’re not?”

  “Probably.”

  She laughed as the top of his tousled hair and the long, dark sweep of his eyelashes did strange things to her equilibrium. “Colonel Archibald Danforth, retired,” she confirmed, hoping her voice didn’t sound too high and breathy as little darts of pleasure streaked from her toe to her heel to her ankle and then much, much higher.

  “Army brat,” he said, a slight smile touching the wicked fullness of his mouth. “Figures.”

  Ivy’s breath got caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat. He should really tease more often. “Yep, that’s me. Dragged from one army base to the next.”

  “That must have been an interesting life.”

  Ivy shrugged. “I guess.”

  He glanced up from his paint job. “You didn’t like the constant moving?”

  She shook her head. “That was okay…I was younger then. He did it less and less as I got older and he moved higher up the chain of command. But there were times when he’d have to fly off somewhere for operational reasons—the Middle East or Africa or Europe and it was just me and whoever was employed to look after me for long stretches in whatever fortress we were living in at the time.”

  The brush overshot, smearing her skin in hot pink and he cursed under his breath as he wiped it away. Clearly whatever this man did, he liked to perfect.

  She did not let her mind wander there.

  “How long has he been retired?”

  Another wave of goose bumps skittered up her leg as he moved his fingers to the next toe. “Eight years.”

  “Did he find the transition to civilian life difficult?”

  Ivy wanted to ask, did you? But she kept on the subject of her father. Ironic, considering she generally tried to avoid that particular subject with men altogether. But if he wanted to talk macho subjects while he painted her nails hot pink, then she wasn’t going to say no.

  At least they were finally conversing. Even if it was only about her.

  “If the way he tries to run my life is anything to go by then I guess the answer is yes.” She shot him a rueful smile and her heart fluttered when he smiled back. “He’s served in various overseas military attaché roles since, so I wouldn’t exactly say he’s transitioned to civilian life at all.”

  “Is he overseas at the moment?”

  “No, he’s in Canberra for now. He was based there during my last year of high school and when I was accepted into college I told him he could go wherever he liked, but I was staying put.”

  “So he stayed,” Dean mused, moving on to her next toe.

  Ivy’s eyes fluttered briefly shut at the brush of finger against toe. “Unfortunately.”

  He looked up. “You didn’t think he would?”

  She shrugged. “He was due to go on assignment to Israel and he’d been looking forward to it. I insisted he go but he decided he’d be”—Ivy lowered her voice and injected a gruff note to mimic her father—“here to support my daughter.” She grimaced as he returned his attention to her toes. “So I purposefully did a double degree which I knew would take me five years, hoping he’d get itchy feet and realize I wasn’t a little girl anymore and could look after myself, but alas…he’s remained stubbornly by my side.”

  “Goddamn it,” he growled at another hot pink outbreak, quickly wiping at it before continuing to the next toe. “I suppose in his job he’s seen a little too much of man’s inhumanity. Nothing wrong with him wanting to shield you from that.”

  “I know.” And she did—better than anyone—why her father was over-protective. Losing her mother like that, what had happened all those years ago…she could totally see his side of the story.

  But that didn’t make it any less stifling.

  “Little toe looks tricky,” he said, staring at it.

  He was examining it like it was mountainous terrain and she smiled at his concentration. “It does require skill.”

  He shot her an impatient look. “You didn’t exactly pick the right man for the job, did you?” he muttered as he stuck his tongue out and hunched over, carefully painting the tiny strip of nail.

  Ivy disagreed. His skill set may not be in beauty therapy, but she knew women who’d pay good money for Dean to do their nails.

  “There,” he said, looking up, clearly satisfied with his work. “What now?”

  Ivy couldn’t help herself. “You blow on them.”

  “You’re shitting me?”

  Ivy shook her head. “It hastens the drying process.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, picking up her foot and depositing it on the floor. “They’ll have to manage on their own.”

  She bit back a laugh as he returned the wand to the bottle and gave it a shake as if he’d been painting toenails all his life.

  He unscrewed the lid and grabbed the big toe of her other foot. Ivy’s other toes fanned out in response and for an awful moment she thought she might purr. “Maybe your father mightn’t have been so protective if your mother had been around,” he said, painting the toenail with military precision. “She died when you were four, you said?”

  Ivy blinked at Dean’s downcast head, surprised he’d remembered. “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  Ivy didn’t particularly like this subject. But he was being very good about painting her nails and maybe if he knew more about her he’d be willing to divulge more of himself.

  “She and I were snatched from the streets when Dad was deployed in Germany.”

  Dean looked up abruptly from her toes. Oh, yeah. That got his attention!

  “We were held for ransom. There was a bungled rescue attempt. Apparently she pushed me out of harm’s way under a bed when the soldiers kicked in the door, but one of the kidnappers…shot my mother. She was dead before she hit the floor.”

  “Jesus,” he swore, his brow crunched, her toe forgotten. “That’s…horrible.”

  It had been horrible. Not that she remembered it. But she remembered the years of sadness and grief after. For her and her father. She remembered the desperate ache of missing her mother. And still today felt a hole in her life for not ever having really known the woman who’d loved her, who must have been frantic for her safety during those long tense hours of their captivity.
<
br />   She had a photo of her with her mum taken just before that fateful day and it could still make her cry nearly twenty years later.

  “I thought cancer or…an accident or something.”

  “Nope. Some heavily armed fringe group trying to leverage my father and draw attention to their cause.”

  “Did they get the guys who…”

  Ivy nodded. “All three shot dead.”

  Dean shook his head obviously shocked at the revelation. “No wonder he’s so paranoid about your safety. How long were you held?”

  “Two days apparently.”

  “You don’t remember any of it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s probably a good thing.”

  Ivy had lost count of the number of people who had told her exactly that over the years. From her father and well-intentioned relatives to several psychologists. “Yeah,” she said, her gaze fixing on the label of the toenail polish bottle. “I know.”

  “But…you miss her.”

  She glanced up as his insightful observation flowed over her like warm silk. His dark espresso eyes invited her to confide in him instead of keeping her out for a change. And she wanted nothing more than to shuffle over and put her head on his shoulder.

  But she wasn’t after his pity.

  “Yes,” Ivy murmured. “It seems crazy, though. How can I miss somebody I never really knew?”

  “Because she’s your mother,” he said, his voice quiet, captivating. “The person who gave you life, who saved your life that day by pushing you under the bed. You don’t need to have remembered her, to have known her, to miss her. You should never underestimate how the loss of the most significant person in your life affects you.”

  Ivy tried to drag her gaze from his but couldn’t. There was a streak of compassion, of understanding in the depths of his eyes that was utterly compelling. Like he knew exactly what he was talking about. She could barely breathe from the sudden thickening of the air between them.

  “You lost your mother, too?”

  She expected Dean to deflect the question like he always did, but he just nodded. “I was six.”

  “You…remember her?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “A little. She had this long, dark hair that curled down her back, it used to swing when she walked. And she had really white teeth. She laughed. A lot.”