“Anything,” Bianca said, “anything is fine.”
He smiled at her answer and handed the list back to the waiter.
“You heard the lady. Bring us a bottle of something you think we’ll like.”
“But, sir…”
“A red. Your choice. Okay? It’ll be fine, whatever it is.”
The waiter smiled. He and the wine list vanished.
Chay leaned forward and took Bianca’s hand again. “This is our very first date.”
Her lips curved in a smile. “I know.”
“And here we are, talking about me and how I’d never read a book and enjoyed it until I was eighteen. What I mean is, here we are, me boring you to death.”
“No! You’re not boring me at all. I want to know all about you. I mean…” She blushed. “I mean, tell me more about that professor in English 101.”
Chay smiled and ran his thumb lightly over her palm.
“You are a very determined woman, Ms. Wilde.”
“Like a dog with a bone, Lieutenant. That’s what my brothers say. So, what book did your professor assign? He did assign one, didn’t he?”
“Yes. The Red Badge of Courage. Do you know it?”
She nodded. “By Stephen Crane. It takes place during the American Civil War. It’s about a man—a boy, actually—who goes into battle without any idea of what war is all about, and how the reality of it changes him.”
“I read the first chapter and I was hooked.”
“Were you like that boy? When you went into your first battle?”
A muscle knotted in his jaw. “I wasn’t quite that naïve, no. I don’t think you can be in today’s world. Still, the first taste of combat is always a shock. It’s nothing like what you expect it to be, no matter what training you’ve had. It’s ten times more brutal, ten times more terrifying…”
“And it’s exhilarating.”
Chay stared at her. “How can you know that?”
“It isn’t difficult to figure out,” she said softly. “Men who are drawn to certain professions love the risk that goes with those professions. Policemen. Firefighters. Warriors. Especially warriors, who believe in duty. In honor. In each other.”
Chay gave a little laugh. “Crap. Do I sound as pretentious as that?”
“No. Oh, no, Chayton. You don’t sound pretentious at all. You sound brave and caring and I love that about you, I—”
Bianca’s eyes widened. Color swept into her face and she fell silent.
Chay—Chay looked stunned.
Why wouldn’t he? She couldn’t believe she’d said such a stupid thing. Thinking she might be falling for him wasn’t the same as knowing she’d fallen for him. And she hadn’t. She was a long, long way from that. From loving him…
“Bianca?” Chay’s voice was low and rough.
She looked at him, looked away. “So,” she said quickly, “did you always want to be in the service?”
He didn’t answer.
“Because I always wanted to be a doctor. Well, a medical doctor. We had a cat when we were little, my sister and I, and I drove that poor creature crazy, bandaging its tail, trying to listen to its heartbeat…” She dragged in breath. “Chayton. Please. Do not look at me that way.”
He started to speak and she reached over the table and put her fingers against his lips.
“There is no need to say anything,” she said quickly. “I meant—I only meant that I admire you. As a warrior. I sometimes still have a problem with my English. You know that.”
It was true.
He did know that.
And just because somebody said they loved something about you didn’t mean they were saying they loved you. Why would a woman like this love a man like him? Why would he want her to love him?
She wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t want her to. No way. No way ever would he want…
“A bottle of our finest zinfandel, sir. I thought it would be best. This way, no matter what you order…”
The waiter’s voice trailed off. No wonder, Chay thought. There was enough tension at the table to cut with a knife.
“Fine,” he said briskly. “An excellent choice. Go ahead. Open it and pour. No, that’s okay. I don’t need to taste it…” Jesus! “So,” he said, flashing a smile at Bianca, “what about you? Any, ah, any college class change your life?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes,” she said, and he could almost see her reaching for the lifeline he’d thrown her. “I, uh, I thought, you know, when I was a little girl… What I said, about wanting to grow up to be a doctor… Actually, I wanted to be a surgeon.”
“A surgeon,” he said brightly, as if she’d just announced that she’d solved the mystery of how the universe began.
She launched into a story about a pre-med course. And a field trip to a hospital. An operating room, and an appendectomy, and how she’d passed out even before the surgeon made the incision.
Chay laughed where he was expected to laugh. He hoped he did, anyway, because he heard only bits of what she said. Mostly, he watched her. Her eyes. Her mouth. Her little gestures.
His woman.
His beautiful, down-to-earth, smart, scarily wonderful woman.
When was the last time he’d thought of a woman as his?
The answer came in a heartbeat
Never.
Never. Not once in his thirty-two years had he thought that way. Had he wanted to think that way. Had he imagined thinking that way.
He knew what he had to do.
Get to his feet. Dump some bills on the table, hustle her into a cab, get her back to the hotel and phone Aidan Maguire. Or Declan Sanchez. Or any of the other guys in his unit, tell them he had a woman in New York who needed protection…
Or take her to the hotel, to their room, away from lights and people, gather her into his arms, kiss her until she sighed his name and then tell her that what he should have told her this morning, that she was everything to him…
“Madam. Sir. Are you ready to order? We have some specials this evening… Or perhaps you have questions about our menu. I’ll be happy to answer any you might have.”
Chay opened the menu. Stared at it. The letters seemed to dance on the heavy paper. He looked at Bianca. She’d opened her menu, too, but judging by the expression on her face, she was nowhere near ready to order.
Bianca and menus.
He’d almost forgotten what that was like. Her almost-compulsive, drive-everybody-crazy attention to menu details.
Yes, but tonight that would be a good thing.
She’d come up with something, take five minutes to ask questions, another five to question the answers to the questions, and that was fine.
It was Bianca.
And it would give him time to get his head together.
“Bianca,” he said briskly, “what would you like?”
At first he thought she hadn’t heard him. Then she closed the menu, folded her hands neatly on top of it and raised her face to his.
“You order for me, Chayton,” she said softly. “I know I’ll be happy with anything you choose.”
Chay looked at her. This made it twice. First, the wine. But that might have been because she was still embarrassed by what she’d said. What she’d seemed to say.
Now, this.
His Bianca. Ceding control. Trusting him. Trusting herself to him.
Later, he’d think back and realize that he should have known his life would never be the same again.
• • •
After dinner, they walked to a little place she knew on Fifth Avenue.
The night was still soft and warm, and since this was New York, the evening was just beginning.
Bianca wanted to sit at a sidewalk table.
Reality intruded when Chay realized that it was the last place he want
ed to sit.
It was too exposed.
His time in those faraway mountains had taught him all about survival. So had the experiences of today. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that or deny her such a simple pleasure, so they sat outside, drank coffee and shared a slice of New York cheesecake.
Once again, they talked about everything and anything, from music—she was a secret Frank Sinatra fan, which made him roll his eyes—to which was the more exciting sport, American football or European football. She told him about the cliffs in Sicily and how she’d loved climbing down them to the sea, and he told her that the sea had always been important to him, too, and somehow he found himself telling her about all those sea stories, Moby Dick, the Hornblower novels…
But Chay began to feel uneasy.
He felt the change coming over him, that almost subliminal contact with what was happening around them.
“… always wanted a dog,” Bianca was saying, “but Mama said dogs were too much…”
“Honey?” Chay pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “It’s getting late. We should head back.”
His Bianca was smart. Too smart. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said.
He could tell that she didn’t believe him, but, thank God, she didn’t argue. She stood up and he put his arm around her and they walked swiftly in the direction of their hotel. They were almost there when he tugged her into the doorway of a closed shop.
“Chayton?” she whispered. “Please. What’s the matter?”
He hesitated, but she had the right to know, especially since he was going to step away from her to do a quick surveillance.
“Someone’s following us.”
She dug her fingers into his arm. “Who?”
“I don’t know who. I only know that somebody’s—Bianca. I want you to stand right here.”
“No! Chay. Don’t—”
“Baby. I’m not going anywhere. I just want to take a fast look around, okay?”
He knew that was the last thing she wanted him to do, but she swallowed hard and whispered, “Okay.”
He gave her a quick kiss. She clung to him and he hated to let go of her, but he really didn’t have a choice. If there was the slightest chance he could get a look at whoever was stalking her…
Another quick kiss.
Then he stepped forward in the doorway, just enough so he had a clear view of the sidewalk.
Slowly, he scanned the scene before him. He missed the high-powered binoculars he’d have been using were he on deployment, but with a field of vision so reduced, his own eyes would probably be sufficient.
Nobody seemed suspicious.
Lots of people walking. Walking slowly. That was unusual by New York standards, but it was a warm Saturday night and, for the most part, nobody would be in a hurry. Cars and taxis moved briskly beyond the sidewalk. He didn’t pay them more than cursory attention.
You didn’t follow walkers from a moving vehicle.
His tension eased.
He must have been wrong. He was, once in a while. His ability to sense something before others did sometimes suffered from sensory overload. And this was definitely the place for sensory overload. The beep of horns. The rumble of car engines. The omnipresent background sounds of people walking and talking and laughing…
There!
Chay’s pulse quickened.
A tall figure. Thin. A mop of unruly brown hair that could easily be red in the proper lighting…
And then the figure was gone. Swallowed up by a clump of laughing pedestrians and there wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do about it without leaving Bianca alone.
No way was he about to let that happen.
One last look. Then he stepped back.
“Whom did you see?”
Her voice was steady, but he could hear the faint whisper of fear in it along with that telltale grammatical stiffness.
He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Nobody,” he replied, and, hell, it wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t seen anyone, not clearly enough to identify. The man he’d glimpsed could have been the guy from Cuppa Joe’s as easily as it could have been somebody else.
“Honey,” he said gently, as they moved out of the doorway and began walking, “I’m going to be blunt. We need to talk.”
“Talk?”
He nodded. “I know how you feel about discussing your patients, but there’s no other way to go about this.”
“You really believe the man doing this is someone I’m treating? Because I don’t. The only one, the only possible one it could be, is a former patient, the one I told you about, and he’s in treatment. His doctor would surely know if he was causing this problem.”
Causing this problem.
She had an interesting way of defining the word problem, but Chay figured debating that wouldn’t be helpful.
“When was the last time you were in touch with this guy’s doctor?”
Bianca thought back. “Weeks,” she finally said.
Chay nodded as they stood on the corner and waited for the light to go green.
“I want you to contact him again. Find out if anything has changed.” They stepped off the curb. “And it’s possible, isn’t it, that a patient you wouldn’t connect with this kind of behavior is responsible for it anyway?”
She hesitated. “Anything’s possible, I guess.”
They stepped onto the sidewalk. The hotel was just ahead and Chay picked up their pace, knowing he’d feel better once he had her safely inside. He’d considered—and discarded—the idea of not returning here. Of checking them into a different hotel.
If someone was tailing them, that might be the prudent course of action.
On the other hand, if, in fact, they were being followed, going someplace else would alert the follower that he’d been made.
Besides, Chay already knew the layout of this place. Like lots of other crisis-hardened cops and soldiers, he’d automatically asked for a room with certain characteristics when he’d checked in: he didn’t want to be next to the elevators or the fire stairs, or even next to an ice machine because the sound of the machine could dull other sounds that might be more important.
He felt comfortable staying here for the night—but they’d be out by tomorrow. He already knew where they’d be heading, just as he knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to drop that information on Bianca tonight.
“So,” he said as they neared the hotel, “I want you to phone that doctor tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday. I don’t know if he’ll be available.”
“Make him available. Tell him this is urgent. And while you’re doing that, I’ll take a look at your files.”
Bianca didn’t answer for what seemed a very long time.
“The most I’ll agree to,” she finally said, “is that I’ll go through them and look for indicators of personality disorders that might lead to such erratic behavior.”
Jesus H. Christ! Somebody had ugly plans for his woman and she was talking psychobabble. Yeah. Okay. Maybe that helped her deal with it.
He knew what would help him, and there was no reason to share that kind of thing with her.
“That’s good,” he said, lying through his teeth.
The doorman smiled as he opened the front doors. Chay nodded at him, led Bianca to the elevators, stabbed the call button. Then he turned and took a long, hard look around the lobby. Nobody looked out of place. Still, when the elevator doors opened, he hurried her inside the car.
She gave a little shudder as the car rose.
“What?” Chay said.
“Nothing. Just me, suddenly remembering yesterday, the blackout in my office building.” She made a little sound that might have qualified as a laugh. “Would you believe that the lights had already dimmed and still I came this cl
ose to getting in the elevator?”
She held up her hand, thumb and forefinger an inch apart. An alarm bell went off in his head. That blackout. He’d been concerned about that blackout yesterday, but he hadn’t followed through…
“Good thing you didn’t,” he said, with what he hoped was casual ease, and he lowered his head and kissed her fingers.
When they reached their room, he stepped in front of her as he inserted the key card in the lock.
The door swung open and he breathed a sigh of relief. The room was just as they’d left it, except the maid had been there to turn down the duvet and leave chocolates on the pillows.
Chay closed the door and locked it. Then he took Bianca in his arms.
“Bianca.”
She smiled up at him. It was a very diverting smile, diverting enough so he knew he had maybe two minutes before his blood rushed from his brain to his dick.
“Chayton?” she said softly
“One last thing, honey. I’m good with you checking those files.” Back to lying time. “I’ll be satisfied with a list of your patients’ names.”
“Chay. We’ve been through this.”
“Names. Nothing else. I just want to run them through a program that’ll throw up an alert if anyone you’re seeing has had a felony arrest.”
“You have such a program?”
No, he did not. But he sure as hell knew somebody who did. Or at least he knew somebody who could write the program if he had to.
“Lots of people have such a program,” he said carelessly.
She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
He nodded. She could think about it all she liked. Things would be easier if she agreed, but life wasn’t about things being easy, it was about taking action.
He had a plan. And a plan was what they needed. It was how you approached a mission—and finding the man who was stalking his Bianca was a mission.
And Chay knew, without question, that it might very well be the most important mission of his life.
• • •
He took her to bed.
They made slow, easy love. Lots of deep kisses, lots of touching, lots of tasting and then a long, incredible climb to the stars
After, she lay in his arms.
Privilege: Special Tactical Units Division: Book Two Page 18
