“I’ll call you after I confirm that it was the Fred Bryant who called for the appointment with the governor,” David said. “Then it looks like you have a plan of action.”
“But why would Bryant set up Acer by calling the governor to set up an appointment?” Shana asked.
“He wouldn’t,” Dane said. “He called because Whitaker was out of jail and Whitaker probably called him and made some kind of threat to scare him, banking on him calling the governor. Maybe his wife prompted the call. Maybe she was scared.”
David pushed away from the table and stood. “I’ll get back to Boston now.” He checked his watch and said, “I can catch the last flight off the island if one of you—not Acer—can give me a lift.”
“I’ll do it,” Shana said. Dane wished they could both go, but there was no way to justify leaving Acer alone. Whitaker was not stupid. He knew where Acer was if he knew about his connection to the governor and the unit. They had to assume that the sniper also knew where Acer was.
“I’ll stay and set up extra security precautions here.” That meant extra video surveillance and turning on the motion-activated alarms and the special perimeter security. He said to Shana, “Call me before you get back.”
She nodded. She knew about the alarms. They were silent, but they alerted the State Police HQ—specifically Cap’s office—so they were only used in dire emergencies or when Dane and Shana were working with him. He could disable that connection for the night. More importantly, these special alarms also set a few things in motion inside the house that might not be healthy for an intruder or anyone trying to enter through a door or window. A kind of electric-fence-type shield was activated which gave a nasty shock to anyone touching the windows or doors.
David left with Shana. The amount of tension that drained from the shack once she drove the old Jeep out of the driveway felt like enough to be measured by a barometer. And not only noticed by Dane.
“Good God, man. How do you stand it?” Acer said.
“Stand what?” Dane knew, but he was interested in hearing Acer’s take on the nature of his problem with Shana. He only knew it viscerally. If Dane could ever accurately and succinctly explain the problem to himself, he wouldn’t have a problem. His cluelessness was most certainly part of the issue. And this was humbling to the point of embarrassment to him, the knower of all people.
Acer shrugged and said, “The tension of unquenched lust? But if you don’t notice it, hell, who am I to point it out to you?”
“You’re a pal, but don’t worry about me.”
Acer raised one brow and shook his head with a quirk of his mouth, but didn’t call him on his exaggerated nonchalance. Dane had sent his message. He had the situation under control. Perhaps the message was premature, but he swore to mighty heaven or the devil in hell that he would get it under control before the night was out. Or someday.
Dane busied himself in his living room-office with setting up the extra security. Acer followed him in—it was Acer’s system. Custom designed and installed for Dane a number of years back.
“Still works like a charm, I see.”
“Yeah. I only had to ‘charm’ someone once. But it worked.”
Acer laughed and they went through the punch list of measures and materials, including weapons on hand, before sitting back down at the table with a couple of beers.
“This all you got?”
“I’ll call Shana and have her pick up a bottle of Patron.”
“Liquor stores are closed by now,” Acer pointed out.
Dane smiled. “I got a connection.”
Acer laughed. “Of course you do.”
Dane called Shana to pick up a bottle at the Lucky Parrot. The owner owed him.
“But make sure you pay him for it. Do not leave there without leaving money behind,” he told her.
Shana complied. She arrived back at the shack within an hour and they toggled off the electric shock sequence when she approached the back door, but Dane opened it from the inside to be extra cautious.
Shana stood on the back step in front of him with the bottle in one hand, a pouty mouth and billowing blond waves of hair. He looked her up from her long strong legs to where her skirt cut across her thighs halfway to the treasure. She put her empty hand on her hip emphasizing the curve into her waist. He ran his eyes up her taut rib cage outlined by the spandex tank top to the bountiful mounds of her breasts and her noble broad shoulders. Then he looked at her face.
Surprisingly, she smiled at him. Not surprisingly, it was a mocking smile. But he didn’t back down from his admiration, his frank lust boiling through his veins, heating him, making him vibrate like his cock was a tuning fork and had been pinged to life just with the sight of her. The vision that was Shana was backed up by layers of excitement, the dense excitement of her intelligence, her passion, her need to protect, her sense of right and moral fortitude to put her life on the line. He recognized every one of those things in himself.
Of all the things contained in the chasm that stood between them, like their age difference, her need to prove herself, his need to chill, the idea that she could be his twin—the female version of him—was the most unnerving. His theory was that this similarity between them sparked their competitiveness, their lines of battle. In some ways it was an old-fashioned battle of the sexes with a layer of young vs. old thrown on top.
But what did it matter? The battle was real and all-consuming. It exhausted him and wound him up to trying levels of intensity, while it excited the hell out of him.
He reached out a hand to touch her hair, but somewhere along the way his fingers changed the game and he grabbed a fistful, simultaneously stepping forward and pulling her up against his chest.
The heat of her stunned him. His heart jolted as if the twin peaks of her breasts pressed against him were like a pair of defibrillator paddles. Maybe it was the electric field—maybe it malfunctioned and hit him. The shock of Shana felt that incapacitating and that exhilarating at the same time.
She pushed around him, but he held her hair and pulled her inside the room. He spun her around and pinned her against the kitchen counter. One of her arms was plastered against his chest now and the other, he realized, held the bottle of tequila and was well poised to be used as a weapon. His speeding pulse faltered and then sped up faster than ever as he lowered a hand to cover hers around the neck of the bottle.
“Thanks for bringing us a bottle.” His voice was raspy. He pushed his hips forward, knowing it was a ridiculous clumsy, stupid, unthinking dickish thing to do. She gasped before she lifted her chin. But she didn’t lift her chin to kiss him or to look him in the eye. A classic Shana act of defiance.
“What’s the plan—I mean after drinks?” Her voice had a slight tremble. He saw the strain in her eyes, felt a tremor in the hand against his chest, felt her heart beat as fast as his. The desire overwhelming him receded without him forcing it. There was no act of will involved. Luckily for them. There was in him enough decency to want her whole and happy and to protect her from dicks like him. Must have been his alter ego answering her.
He released her hair, let her back up, but not too far. He kept his hand over hers on the bottle.
“We have an address and a dead body. Cap can look into the dead body and see if we ought to look further into it. We’ll make a visit to Fiona Whitaker, wife of the man Acer had jailed a few years back—who now happens to be out of federal prison.”
She nodded. The tremor was gone from her hand. Her eyes were clear. She pushed on his chest and backed all the way away. He let her.
“I’ll pour us some drinks.”
“You planning to get me drunk, girlie?” He followed her to the peninsula that divided the kitchen and dining areas, standing close behind her. Looking over her shoulder, he noticed Acer wasn’t there at the table. He lowered his voice and said, “Thinking to get me so drunk I can’t take advantage of you?”
She turned. Her eyes flashed at him and her mouth was a rigid
lined scowl. This was the dangerous Shana he knew and loved.
“You couldn’t take advantage of me if you were stone cold sober and armed to the teeth.” She paused, a nostril flared, and continued in a low, clipped, matter-of-fact voice, “Let’s be clear about this, if you did anything I didn’t want done, you would be a dead man inside of three seconds.”
He believed her. Nodding, he suppressed a smile, but not a shudder. He accepted her at her word. It would be only right. Backing away, he retrieved another three glasses from a cabinet and clunked them on the counter. She opened the fresh bottle of tequila and poured three healthy measures.
Acer appeared from the door on the other end of the dining room. “I see I’m just in time.” Walking past the table, he joined them at the peninsula counter and they raised glasses.
“To this unholy trio of roommates. May we not kill each other before the sniper does.” Dane downed his drink without waiting for the clink of glasses.
Acer grinned and Shana scowled. They both drank. Acer downed his and Shana only took a sip.
“You’re going to fall behind, girlie. Still worried?”
She shook her head.
He said, “You didn’t expect me to stop teasing, did you? Too late to change stripes.”
“Too late in the game or too late in your life?” she asked. He wasn’t sure if it was a rhetorical question, but he had no intention of giving her any answers. It would always be the wrong answer. Besides, he didn’t know the answer.
“Where do you want me to bunk?” Acer said.
Dane pointed down the hall to his second bedroom. They followed Acer.
The room contained one single bed and one three-drawer low-slung bureau with a mirror. There was a nightstand with a lamp. The rest of the things in the room were Shana’s.
“I’ll get my things out of here.” She pushed past Dane and Acer and swept the things from the top of the bureau into a basket. She got a large piece of luggage from the closet and pulled clothes from their hangers and dropped them into the open bag. Then she opened the top drawer, gathered everything into her arms and dropped the things into the other half of the open luggage. She closed it up and took the luggage and the basket and went back out the bedroom door.
Dane’s heart raced in something like panic. He wanted to shout at her but he had no idea what to say. He held his breath waiting to hear the back door slam shut behind her. Then he’d bolt after her and drag her back. He needed her to stay.
But when she got to the short hall, she didn’t turn right toward the kitchen and back door. She turned left. Toward the only other room in the house. His bedroom.
He let out his breath and felt a surge of heat and pleasure and the telltale kick of adrenaline having nothing to do with fear. Goddamn but she was the most unpredictable woman he’d ever met and that was considerable. And it was hot.
“I reset the perimeter for the night,” Acer said.
Dane turned to him. He’d almost forgotten about his friend and why he was there. He was supposed to be protecting Acer.
“You have a piece with you? Let me bring a few things up from the basement.”
“Dane’s famous basement of armaments—I’m going down with you. I gotta see this.”
“Sure, but I’ll have to blindfold you in case you’re tortured for intel on where I keep the goods,” Dane said.
“They wouldn’t need to torture me—I’d lead ‘em straight to you.”
Dane slapped Acer’s back and led him to the basement stairs. He glanced toward the end of the hall. His bedroom door was closed. She was in there waiting for him. He stepped down the stairs, his feet drumming a staccato beat along the way, matching the relentless thrumming of anticipation in his chest.
Shana’s hand shook as she pulled the zipper down on her skirt. She shimmied it over her hips and let it drop to the floor. Dressed only in panties now, she looked around the room and realized there were no mirrors. Not one. The realization was enough to kick up her nerves so that her stomach felt like a popcorn popper with the seeds pummeling against her insides in wild abandonment.
What the hell was she doing?
Where the hell was Dane? She imagined he would follow her within a minute. She picked up her cell phone and checked the time. It had only been five minutes. A door closed and feet shuffled in the hall. Her heart stopped and leapt up to escape through her throat. She slipped the panties from her hips, steadying her hands. She had them halfway down her thighs when the bedroom door opened and Dane walked in.
He stopped, closed the door behind him and stared at her, his mask melting into the look of a starving lover.
“Don’t let me stop you.” He stood there, eyes hooded, hands at his side. She felt the nervous tremor return and shouted at herself to stop with the adolescent behavior. She’d never been like this as an adolescent, in fact, or ever. Until now.
She smiled at him and pulled the panties off in a swift motion, kicking them off with her toes. Then, pushing herself to be brave, she lifted her arms in a lioness-like stretch and took a turn around as if she were a Miss America contestant—or maybe something less wholesome.
“No need to sell me,” he said. He moved toward her and the fraction of a second it took him to reach her even in the small room shocked her. He reached out and touched her hair.
That melted her like nothing else would have. Liquid pooled and muscles clenched and her knees almost bent as her heart floated around as if it were an effervescent bubble. Stabbing, pulsing need radiated from between her thighs and ran through her as the heat of his body closed in. He tugged at her hair, then fisted it and drew her to him, against him.
“I shouldn’t ask,” he whispered, “but I need to know why.”
“Why do you want to know why?” She stalled because she had no answer, no words or thoughts coalescing in her spinning mind.
He chuckled, bending his head so that his breath fanned her ear. Goose bumps of thrill and anticipation bombarded her and she forgot what he’d asked.
“Stop stalling and tell me why you’re coming to my bed tonight. Why should we break our rule?”
“I can’t—” She would have said that she couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, with him touching her, breathing on her, commanding the attention of every cell of her and wanting him desperately.
“Darlin’, you can.” He let go of her hair, took a deep breath and stepped back. She felt the strain, the monumental effort it took. She held onto his arm, felt the solidness of his muscles, the heat of him through his shirt. The room felt warm and she felt a flush rise. She dropped her hand as if her hold on him was connecting her to a heat source.
“I want you. Is that what you want to hear?”
“It’s not about what I want to hear. Besides, you always want me. I always want you. That’s nothing new. Not likely to change. What about the rule, the understanding we have?”
“I’m the one who made the rule. I can break it.”
He shook his head, but there was a small crinkle at the corner of his eyes as if he could only stop his mouth from smiling, but had no control over his eyes. She lifted her chin, then clenched her hands to stop herself from putting them on her hips. She stood naked and felt another flush with the awareness.
Not that he was looking at her naked body. He studied her eyes, her face, without a hint of his gaze wandering.
She continued, “Because I want to feel connected to you. I want to be honest—I want us to be honest. I can’t …” She shook her head, unsure what to say next under his stare, unsure if he knew what she meant. And if she were honest, unsure of exactly what she meant because none of that excused her behavior in the face of their rule.
There was a good reason for the rule forbidding an intimate relationship between them.
“Damn.” He spoke her next thought. Then he pulled her back in and held her, stroking her bare back and nuzzling her neck, burying his face in her hair.
It didn’t matter that he was fully clothed. She ran he
r hands over his hard rippling muscles, pressed her hips against his arousal, full and irresistible. A shock of energy and scorching heat zinged through her like an electrical shock, only this shock left shudders of pleasure in its wake and the need for more. She pulled him closer.
He resisted. “Hey babe, I need to get these clothes off.” He took her arms from him and pushed her back toward the bed. He whipped the belt from his pants and dropped it on the floor, then in one motion unsnapped his jeans and stepped out of them. The instant his pants dropped he pulled his shirt over his head, not bothering with buttons.
Before she had a chance to react or move, he stood before her naked and magnificent, hard and scarred. She knew his scars, had seen them before, but the sight of the one low on his belly like the curving gouge of a knife tightened everything inside her into a knot of grief as she imagined what he’d been through.
He reached out a hand and touched her hair. Before he pulled her to him, she stepped into the protective circle of his strength. When she felt her skin touch his all along her body, she shivered. Pressing herself close she put her arms around his torso, reveling in the feel of his body in her arms. She touched her cheek to his rough unshaven one and breathed in his maleness, the sweat and the motor oil from tinkering with the kid’s engine, his musky skin, and the fresh soapy scent of his hair because he didn’t bother using shampoo.
One of his hands bunched in her hair as he nuzzled her neck and the other stroked her back from the top of her spine down in a slow arc over her ass, outlining the crack and then cupping her against him. A jolt of pleasure lit up her center and she moaned like a violin being played by a master. And she had been.
Lost in her body’s demands and desperate to quench the desire, she was surprised when he spoke. Surprised at the husky gentleness of his words.
“Will you let me make love with you, Shana?” He lifted his head away and lifted her chin to face him, and the deep burning intensity of his hazel eyes struck her. The air was sucked from her lungs as if he took it all, wanted it all. But she wanted to give everything to him.
Beachcomber Investigations Page 5
