by Cindy Dees
What in the hell was she talking about, then? Why was she so mad? Did she know who he was? Did she know of his sleazy reputation with women? Surely not.
Regardless of what she knew or didn’t know, he shouldn’t have taken advantage of her emotional distress and overwrought state to seduce her. It had been wrong on every possible level, and he felt like as big a jerk as she claimed he was. But for some reason, he got the impression she was talking about something else entirely. Clearly, he was missing something. But what?
Chapter 4
Sunny’s eyes burned as she emerged onto the deck the next morning in glaring sunshine. The big cry she had last night probably hadn’t helped her eyes feel any less salty and grit filled. Why Aiden’s insensitivity should upset her like that, she couldn’t fathom.
She’d been around enough men in her day to know they could act like completely clueless louts without having the slightest intention to do so nor any idea that they were doing it. But to apologize after having just given her the best sexual experience of her life? To call it a mistake to her face? That went beyond clueless to royal jerkdom.
Of course, she’d been a willing participant in said mistake, too. It wasn’t all his fault. She knew it was stupid to go for the gusto with a man she hardly knew and who clearly came from a completely different world from hers. She stacked up her stupidity to her overall stress at everything she’d been through the past few days. Okay, the past few years. It was hard making her way alone in the world, particularly in her chosen career of documentary filmmaking. She lacked both funds and experience, and without one it was impossible to gain the other.
“Sleep well?” Steig asked cheerfully from behind her.
“Uhh, yes. Thank you,” she mumbled. “Where’s Aiden?”
“Swimming.”
She glanced out at the crowded port in front of her. “In all of that?” A jumble of ships, varying from decrepit, two-man fishing boats to giant container ships clogged what she recognized as the Port of Djibouti.
Irritation flitted across Steig’s Nordic features. “Yes. In all of that. He insists upon guarding the Nymph.”
“From whom?” she asked curiously.
“Pirates. They’ve been known to seize ships and steal cargo right here in the harbor. They are...what’s the word in English?...brazen.”
“That’s the word,” she answered, searching the choppy water for any sign of Aiden. “How long has he been out there?”
“Several hours.”
“Hours? Isn’t he getting tired?”
Steig laughed. “Not him.”
She frowned. Ocean swimming was hard work even in the best of conditions, and these turbulent waters were far from ideal. “I don’t see his bubble trail.”
“He’s not using scuba gear,” Steig replied.
“Didn’t Dr. Jones say something about him holding his breath a long time?”
“Did she, now?” was the sailor’s noncommittal answer.
She turned to press the man for a real answer to her question, but the Swede was saved by the sight of Aiden’s lithe body knifing up out of the water in a shockingly dolphinlike move. “Oh! There he is,” she exclaimed.
She moved over to the rail to wave to him, but he’d already dived again. She waited for him to surface again. Two minutes passed. Three. He might be able to hold his breath a long time, but she was getting nervous. As she counted off another thirty seconds in her head, panic erupted.
“Steig!” she called out. “He’s been under too long. Something’s wrong!”
“He’s fine,” the sailor answered casually.
She scanned the water again. She must have missed him surfacing. Maybe he’d gone around to the other side of the Sea Nymph. It really was an unsafe water practice not to have a swim buddy. Not that she had any intention of getting in the water with him.
He popped up, treading water easily this time.
“Aiden!” she shouted, waving her arms at him.
He looked her square in the eye and dived, disappearing infuriatingly from sight. Moments later, she heard the splashing of someone climbing aboard the swim deck extended at water level behind the yacht. She hurried aft.
“What on earth were you doing out there?” she demanded. “You could’ve been hurt or killed!”
“I was keeping you from getting hurt or killed,” he replied stiffly.
Damn. He was back to being the polite, distant man who would never dream of making passionate love to her again on the floor. “You shouldn’t have been out there alone.”
He shrugged. “I’m a good swimmer. And I like swimming alone.”
“Why?” To her, the wonder of the ocean had always been something to be shared. It was why she’d filmed it. So other people could share her love of the sea with her.
“It’s peaceful,” he answered. “I like the silence.”
She knew the feeling. There was a certain magic to the sea. A ballet in its constant movement. And sometimes, when the noise of the world became too much, she felt drawn to the primal wordlessness of it all.
“Still,” she admonished. “You should buddy swim, particularly if you’re expecting trouble. I hear this port’s far from safe.”
That earned Steig an annoyed glance at the far end of the deck. “We are trouble free this morning.”
“Have you brought the Nymph to Djibouti to make repairs?”
He nodded.
“Then I guess this is as good a time as any for me to disembark,” she announced quietly. “I’ll go pack my things.”
If she’d secretly been hoping for him to stop her, to invite her to tarry aboard the Nymph, to repeat last night’s encounter, she was sadly disappointed. He turned away, toweling himself off, and didn’t even watch her go.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she made her way to her cabin. Of course, packing took approximately thirty seconds. And it only took that long because Gemma had insisted that Sunny keep the cosmetics and toiletries the doctor had so kindly shared with her. She slung her sea bag over her shoulder and headed topside. No sign of Aiden.
Steig made docking the big yacht look like child’s play. Sunny eyed the pier cautiously. The mostly men ashore were a mishmash of nationalities and cultures. Westerners in jeans and T-shirts, Muslims in traditional robes and Somali in loose, togalike wraps jostled on the pier.
She watched two of the Nymph’s crew tie off the vessel and deploy a gangplank to shore. Still no sign of Aiden. Wow. He was a bigger jerk than she’d realized. Wasn’t even going to say goodbye after their one-night stand, was he? Dismay and hurt tussled in her chest for supremacy.
She made her way to the gangplank, and Steig materialized from somewhere belowdecks. “Miss Jordan, it has been a pleasure having you aboard.”
“Thank you for saving my life. And please pass my thanks to Aiden, too.”
“I will. Do you know where you’re going?”
“No. I’ll find somewhere to stay until I can get my bearings.”
“May I recommend lodgings for you?”
She winced. She highly doubted she could afford any place he would recommend, given the luxury he and his guests were accustomed to. “Of course,” she said politely.
He pulled out a business card and a pen and scribbled something on the back of it. “An American security firm operates this place. You’ll be safe there. And I dare say if you flash a little leg they’ll put you up for free.”
Frowning, she took the card he thrust into her hand.
“Don’t walk there. Take a cab. Djibouti City can be a lawless place. The civil war was not that long ago. And it’s a conservative Muslim town. A Western woman like you needs to be especially careful.”
He shook her hand vigorously, and then there was nothing to do but leave. She’d delayed as long as
she could without looking stupid. But Aiden had never shown up. What. A. Jerk. What on earth had she been thinking to make love with him? Yet again, her impulsive nature had led her down exactly the wrong path. She had to learn to do the opposite of what her instincts urged her to do.
In a horrendous funk, she disembarked and let the throng swallow her. She was predictably jostled and groped a few times but made her way to a city street without any truly serious trouble. She flagged down a cab that was more rust than steel. The driver spoke no English, but he nodded and smiled when she showed him the address on Steig’s card. The jalopy jerked into the flow of humans, carts, trucks and buses. The dust was chokingly thick and the heat stifling. But thankfully, the cab ride was not long.
The vehicle pulled to a stop, and she handed over the fare in U.S. dollars. She probably should have haggled the price down a few dimes, but she was too depressed by Aiden’s rejection to bother. And she was so close to broke that a few cents didn’t really matter at this point.
She climbed out of the cab and looked around in surprise. She’d assumed Steig had sent her to a hotel. But no such building was anywhere in sight. In fact, all that loomed before her was a tall hurricane fence topped by rolls of barbed wire and a gate. Across the street was a seawall and water beyond. What the heck?
A guard shack that looked like a miniature fort stood beside the tall gate. A maze of cement barriers blocked direct entry through it. Nobody loitered by the fence, and on the other side, a man wearing jeans and a casual shirt sported an enormous rifle of some kind.
This was clearly an industrial area. How in the heck was she supposed to get to a hotel from here? For lack of any other options, she made her way to the guard shack and prayed someone there spoke English, or at least knew the word phone.
A Caucasian guard stared at her as she approached the shack. “Do you speak English?” she asked.
“I’m from N’Awlins, but she be English we speak in dat dere Big Easy,” the guy drawled, grinning, in a thick Cajun accent.
“Thank God. I think there’s been some sort of mistake. A friend suggested I come here to find lodgings.”
“Aiden McKay?”
She blinked, startled. “Actually, a friend of his.” Aiden had arranged this for her? What did it mean? Was he signaling that he cared about her a little, after all? Or was it just his man’s way of offering an oblique apology?
“McKay called a little while ago. Told us to be on the lookout for you. Come on in. I’ll need to see some ID first and get you a visitor’s badge.”
“What is this place?”
“Private security business. We leased this base when the French Foreign Legion moved out of it. We provide guards for ships in the region. Do a little pirate hunting, too.”
“Ahh. So that’s how you know Aiden. Did he tell you about the attack yesterday?”
The man’s friendly gaze went granite hard and just as transparent, which was to say, not at all. He said stiffly, “I can’t talk about operational information, ma’am.”
“Sorry. So you run a hotel in here, too?”
“Not exactly. But there’s a ton of barracks space, and we occasionally share as a favor to a friend.”
“Aiden’s a friend?”
“Hell, yeah.”
Huh. Interesting. She followed the guard inside the shack, coughed up what ID she had and was escorted by another man—a mercenary, apparently—to a two-story building that looked like government-built housing in a bad section of an American city.
The room he showed her to was spartan but clean and reasonably comfortable. Okay, she had a temporary roof over her head. Now what?
Not even a hint of an answer to that one came to her. Every time she closed her eyes and tried to think about her future, the memory of Aiden’s arms around her, his mouth on hers, his body claiming hers, came to mind and pushed all other thoughts aside. She silently screamed at him to get out of her head. But it didn’t do a lick of good.
* * *
Aiden felt like screaming at someone for no good reason. The impulse was startling and unpleasant. “What do you mean you don’t know if she went to the American base? I told you to send her there.”
“I gave her the address, Aiden,” Steig answered, “but she’s a grown woman. She can go where she wants.”
He needed to know she was safe, dammit. This town was a cesspool of bottom feeders that would love to snap up a tender, tasty morsel like Sunny Jordan. Aiden paced restlessly. “Call them. Find out if she went there.”
Frowning, Steig dialed. Aiden listened to the Swede’s end of the conversation impatiently. “...that’s right. Sunny Jordan...Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Attractive...yes. Great legs, that’s her...Thanks.”
Steig ended the call. “She’s there.”
Aiden felt like throwing up in his relief.
“So. What are you going to do about her?”
Aiden looked up at his old friend’s question. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not just going to let her walk away, are you?” Steig demanded.
“What am I supposed to do? Like you said, she’s a grown woman. She can make her own decisions. And she left the Nymph.”
“Did you ask her to stay?”
Hell, hadn’t that been what making love to her last night without laying down the rules of engagement had been? He turned away from Steig and stared out at the pier full of questionable characters. He winced at the idea of Sunny out there somewhere all by herself fending off slimeballs and criminals. But she’d left. Walked off the Nymph this morning and never looked back. He knew. He’d been watching her.
Logic said he was well rid of her. She had a knack for breaking down his defenses. Made him feel things that distracted him from his primary mission. Made him break his promises to himself.
Like it or not, he was different from other men. From other humans. He didn’t have the luxury of allowing himself a normal life. He held himself apart from the people around him for good reason. His work was incredibly dangerous, not to mention the rest of them didn’t understand what it was like to have his special ability. With it came special responsibility to use it for good. And that left him with no time for a personal life.
No, he was better off without Sunny Jordan.
“There you are, Aiden. Ready for your physical?”
Gemma. He’d forgotten that she wanted to check his breathing on dry land after his swim this morning. “Coming.” He sighed. He followed her down to her research lab belowdecks.
As she hooked him up to electrodes and passed him a respirometer, she asked, “How are you feeling physically?”
“Okay.”
“Psychologically?”
He shrugged. She knew him too well, dammit, and pounced. “What’s going on? Are you feeling more of a sense of withdrawal from humanity?”
The hell of it was he’d signed a contract when he entered her research project to share all pertinent information with her for research purposes. “Actually, exactly the opposite, Doc.”
“Ahh. We’re talking about Sunny, I gather. You like her?”
“Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t like me.”
Gemma snorted. “Men can be so dumb.”
He stared, dumbfounded. Since when had supergeek Gemma become such an expert on relationships?
The doctor declared, “She cried all night last night. I heard it through the wall. Kept me awake for hours. She’s crazy about you.”
“But she was crying...”
Another snort. “Dumber than dirt,” Gemma pronounced him.
“I don’t understand.”
“Obviously. She’s waiting for you to make a move. She set up that big, elaborate date with you to signal that she’s interested in you.”
“She said it was an apology.”
&
nbsp; “Aiden, think about it. You used to date women all the time. She put on makeup and high heels and a sexy dress for you. Even I know she was sending you a message.”
A message he’d received loud and clear. Like a proper Neanderthal, he’d thrown her to the floor and made passionate love to her in response, in fact. And she’d walked away this morning and never looked back.
But there was that whole business about her calling him a jerk last night. She’d been right, of course. He hadn’t treated her with the courtesy and consideration she deserved. Although he’d gotten the feeling at the time that he was missing something when she’d declared his jerkness. As if she thought he was a jerk for an entirely different reason than he did.
He frowned. “So, what do you think I should do now, Doc?”
“Find her. Talk to her. Tell her how you feel.”
How he felt? Hell, he hadn’t the slightest idea how he felt. He spent most of his life trying not to feel anything. It made keeping his distance from humanity so much easier.
Gemma interrupted his train of thought by announcing, “I spoke to Leland Winston a little while ago. He wanted me to remind you of your conference call with him this afternoon.”
Aiden scowled. Leland would no doubt want a detailed report of last night’s attack on his yacht and the extent of the damages to the Nymph. And knowing
Leland, he’d want to go over the plan in detail to find and capture the pirates now that the tracker was in place. Ugh. The call could take most of the afternoon.
And then Aiden was scheduled to dine with the
Djiboutian Minister of Trade this evening. Damn. What he really wanted to do was go check on Sunny. What he needed to do was stay far, far away from her.
“Here. Breathe into this,” Gemma ordered, holding out the respirometer again to measure his lung capacity.
Scowling, he shoved the respirometer in his mouth.
Chapter 5
Sunny took a deep breath and approached a man who looked like some sort of harbormaster. It had taken her nearly three days to find this guy and get permission to speak to him. He took one derisive look up and down her Western-garbed frame and sneered.
