by Ross, JoAnn
“Finally, she hooked up with some guy who didn’t want kids, some social worker pushed like hell, and the next thing I knew, I was a free agent.”
“After having spent those twelve years doing your best to charm people into keeping you.”
Her tone was flat, and maybe it was just the reflected light from the glow of the setting sun, but he thought he saw suspicious moisture shimmering in her gaze.
“You are a quick study.”
“Like you said, I’m smart. Plus, you mentioned that your charm was partly acquired,” she reminded him.
“Yeah. I guess I did.”
He ran a hand over his hair, surprised yet again at exactly how much he’d opened up to her. He’d managed to stick to just the facts during the interrogation. But there was something about their situation. . . .
Hell, maybe he was pixilated.
“They had this segment on local TV—‘Wednesday’s Child’—where they featured an orphan, hoping people would call in wanting to give the kid a test shot. Sorta like the way the local pound would bring on stray dogs for adoption.”
“I’ve seen it,” she said. “They had the same type of program in Virginia Beach when my family was posted there.”
“Well, there was this couple: Daniel and Angie O’Halloran, who saw my segment, and, although it admittedly doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, they told me, that first day they met me in person at a barbecue at a bash in the park the foster parent folks had set up as a getting-to-know-each-other deal, that although they’d come to terms with the fact that they weren’t able to have children, the moment they saw me on television, they realized God had just answered their prayers a little later by giving them me.”
“Oh, hell.” She began digging into the leather bag. “Dammit, now you did it. You made me cry.” The tears he’d thought he’d seen threatening escaped to trail down her cheeks.
He took the tissue she’d retrieved and began lightly dabbing the tears away. “I didn’t tell you that story to make you cry,” he said gently. “And I definitely didn’t tell you it to make you feel sorry for me, because if you ever met them, you’d know that I’m the luckiest guy on the planet.”
“That’s nice.” She sniffled.
“It’s the truth. Which is my point. Okay, yeah, maybe there are times when I fall into knee-jerk habits. And I’d be lying if I said that I don’t enjoy complimenting women, because usually it makes both of us feel good. And, to my mind, feeling good beats the hell out of the alternative.
“But here’s the deal, Juls. The one thing you can always count on is that I’ll never lie to you. And I won’t hold anything back. We’re a team. Like the Two Musketeers. And if that pilot was killed, we’re damn well going to find the son of a bitch who did it and feed his balls to the fuckin’ sharks.”
She surprised him by smiling at that. A wet, wobbly smile, but it was still damn appealing.
“Roger that, O’Halloran.”
The firefighters were leaving. People were drifting back to the lodge.
“Guess we’d better get back to work,” he suggested, standing up.
“I guess so.” As he held a hand out to her, Dallas liked that she sounded no more eager than he. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For sharing something so personal.”
“Just part of that getting-to-know-you deal,” he said. “I’ll admit to an ulterior motive. Once we know each other’s secrets and solve the crime, then we can get on with our tropical R and R.”
“The flaw in that reasoning is that I don’t have any secrets.”
She did not, Dallas noted with satisfaction, argue the vacation part of his statement.
“Trust me, Juls.” He put his arm loosely around her shoulders as they began walking back across the lush green lawn. “Everyone has secrets. And being honest again, I’m damn sure looking forward to discovering yours.”
19
They’d just reached her room when Dallas stopped, literally smacked his forehead, and said, “Shit.”
Julianne had heard him frustrated. She’d heard him annoyed. But she’d never heard the underlying anger that one word managed to convey.
“What’s the matter?”
“There wasn’t any smoke.”
“We’ve been over that. It was probably a false alarm.”
“Seems to have been. But why?”
“Why what?” Comprehension suddenly dawned. “Surely you don’t think—”
“I think I could get used to living here,” he said as they walked into the combination kitchen/living room/ bedroom. “Sunshine, surf, beautiful women, tropical drinks. What’s not to love?”
“What, indeed?” she asked, as he touched his fingers to his mouth, cautioning her to play along with his sudden change in topic. “Though, having lived here for a couple years when I was a kid, I can tell you that constant summer can get boring.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.” He’d taken a small device about the size of a BlackBerry out of his computer bag and begun walking around the room. “But I gotta tell you, darlin’, the idea of rubbing coconut oil all over you while we’re lying on some private spun-sugar beach is more than a little appealing.”
“Is that all you think of? Sex?”
“Of course not.There have been those who’ve told me I’m a flat-out genius when it comes to multitasking.”
He picked up the phone, shook his head, put the receiver back down again. “For instance, I think a lot about the economy.” He checked out one of the table lamps. “Sex.” The other table lamp. “Why people feel the need to go to war against each other.” He crouched down and swept his arm beneath the bed. “Sex.”
He leaned back on his heels, studying the uninspired, dreadfully clichéd watercolor painting of Waikiki Beach with Diamond Head in the background. “The basic concept of good versus evil.” He lifted the frame off the wall. “Sex.”
She watched as he turned the painting over. “How long the Minnow was actually out on that so-called three-hour tour, and whether Ginger and Mary Ann ever indulged in a threesome with the professor.”
“That’s not only typically sexist male thinking, it’s disgusting.”
“I take that to mean you’re a one-man-at-a-time female.”
“Absolutely.”
“That’s okay.” He pointed at a small black device, no more than half an inch square, stuck to the back of the frame. “I have the feeling that you’re more than enough woman for any man all by yourself.”
“I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting to find out.”
“Like I told you, I’m better at holding my breath than most guys.” Although she had expected him to take the listening device off the frame, he hung the picture back up on the wall. “Actually, I’m better at a lot of things than most guys. And, while I’m not one to blow my own horn, I’ve been told that pleasing a member of the female persuasion fits into that category.”
“And he’s modest, too,” Julianne said dryly. Although she had a feeling it might be true.
“It’s not bragging if it’s true,” he said, unknowingly echoing her thoughts. “You know, it’s stupid to be here in paradise and spend our only evening on the island stuck in these transient quarters.”
“We’re supposed to be working.” Not only was it what she figured he’d intended her to say, for the sake of whoever might be listening, but she actually meant it.
“What’s to do?” he asked. “Look, it’s a real shame what happened to that pilot, but the fact of the matter is, suicide happens in the military. Even more so these past years, with multiple deployments. The entire case, from what I read of it, looks pretty much like a slam dunk. So, we fly out to the ship—”
“Boat.”
“Boat,” he corrected, flashing her a good-old-boy grin. “Back up the doc’s finding, and bingo, case is solved, and you and I can get ourselves in some vacation time.”
“I don’t know—”
“Just a drive,”
he coaxed. “Along the coast. Or maybe a walk down to the beach that Marine’s wife told us about. We can stroll on the sand, let the surf wash over our feet, and watch the sunset.”
“Then you’ll be waiting up a very long time, since this beach offers a sunrise view.”
Although the beach walk sounded too romantic for comfort, Julianne understood that he wanted to get her out of the lodge.
“Staying up all night with you works for me.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’d make a very good attorney?” she asked on a long sigh that was not entirely feigned.
He laughed. A bold, rich, deep laugh that nearly had her toes curling in her pumps. “I think you just insulted me. But that’s okay, Juls. Fortunately for both of us, I’m hot enough for you to overlook the fact that you’re a lawyer. So, think you could round us up a car?”
“Given that everyone’s apparently been instructed to cooperate with our investigation, I believe that’s possible.”
“Terrific.” He scooped up both their bags. “Let’s go.”
20
“She was a distraction, wasn’t she?” Julianne asked ten minutes later, as they drove away from the base. “To keep us from going back to our room so someone could install that listening device.”
“As much as I hate to admit that she wasn’t blown away by my manly charms, yeah, I think she just might have been,” Dallas agreed as he looked up into the rearview mirror.
Night was falling, and as dusk settled over the cliff that offered a spectacular view of the ocean, headlights were turning on.
“How could they get past the firefighters? And why?”
“Good questions. Maybe one of the firefighters placed the bug. Or maybe someone in a command position at the base got by them by playing the rank card.
“As for why, my guess, bolstered by the fact that I strongly doubt that bug was put in our room by some sex pervert who gets off on listening to people doing the horizontal boogie, would be that it has something to do with our case. Which would in turn suggest that the dead pilot might not have killed herself.”
“Or she did kill herself,” Julianne mused. “And someone’s trying to cover up the reason.”
“Good possibility.” He slanted her an admiring glance. “I guess that’s why you’re the investigator. And I’m the nerd.”
“A nerd who figured out my room had been bugged,” she said.
“Well, that’s pretty much the mind-set you get into when you’re in my business,” he said. “It’d be nice if CCTs could just stroll into enemy country and have everyone greet us like liberators and ask what they could do to help us achieve our mission. But it doesn’t tend to work that way. So, most of the time you’re looking for the angle. For the guy who’s out to get you. So you can get him first.”
“Not that I didn’t already know it,” Julianne said, “but I’m beginning to realize how vastly different our military experiences were.”
“In some ways. Not so much in others.”
He glanced up in the mirror again. There was a long line of headlights snaking along the curving highway behind them. Dallas figured most, if not all, belonged to people coming home from work in Honolulu.
“At least in my job, no one was ever trying to kill me,” she said.
“You never know. You were a prosecutor, Juls. There have been cases of bad guys in civilian life trying, sometimes successfully, to hire themselves a hit man to off the person they consider responsible for putting them behind bars.”
“I’m not saying there was never a mistake that allowed an innocent person to be convicted. But most people are behind bars because they put themselves there by breaking the law.”
“You’re not going to get any argument from me on that one. In that way, I guess my job was easier, because I was able to shoot the bad guys.”
“And hope you didn’t make a mistake.”
“Mistakes happen. The people who are way above my pay grade who start the wars sure as hell had better understand that going in. The thing is, there’s no reason not to believe that someone out there might not have been real happy with you. In fact, if you’d stayed in the military long enough, you could’ve ended up with someone trying to kill you.”
“Well, isn’t that a pretty thought,” she murmured.
“The world is filled with possibilities.” He spotted a scenic overlook up ahead. There was already a car parked there, which he figured would make it as safe a place as any to pull off, then wait and see if anyone joined them. “A whole lot of them not pretty.”
“What are we doing now?” she asked as he pulled in about thirty feet from the parked car and cut the engine.
“Making out?” He looped an arm around her shoulder.
“I understand compartmentalization, but this is ridiculous.” She reached up to knock his hand away. “Somebody just bugged my room. Probably yours as well. Someone who may, for whatever reason, want to stop our investigation. And you want to play kissy-face?”
“I wouldn’t be opposed to that.” He laced their fingers together, squeezing her hand tightly, holding it where it was. “If you were inclined. Meanwhile, I figured we’d just act like any other couple enjoying a romantic Hawaiian evening and see what develops.”
“You think we may have been followed?”
“Don’t look back.” He reached across the space between them with his other hand and touched his fingers to her cheek. “But yeah, I think that might be a possibility.”
He felt her slight, involuntary shudder beneath his arm. Then felt her resolutely stiffen her shoulders. Oh, yeah. She was one tough cookie. Which, rather than putting him off, intrigued Dallas all the more.
“You act in the courtroom, right? When you’re presenting a case.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it acting.”
“But it’s not the same way you’d behave when you’re hanging around watching chick movies with Merry.”
“You remembered her name.”
“Yeah. I told you—”
“No.” She looked up into his face, studying him with that same serious look that suggested she wasn’t about to worry about those furrows etching her forehead causing wrinkles later in life. “You remembered her name—said her name—because you know she’s important to me.”
“That could be part of it,” he allowed. “Like I said, I’m looking forward to learning all about you, Juls. Because you intrigue the hell out of me and I want to peel away the layers. The same way I imagined peeling off that sexy-as-hell dress that night of the party at the del Coronado.”
She shrugged beneath their joined hands. “What you see is pretty much what you get.”
“No.” He skimmed the thumb of the hand that was still on her cheek across her lips. “No one is exactly how they seem. We all have different faces we show to the world. Different faces for different occasions.
“And right now, I’d be really, really happy if you’d just go along and put on your girl-parking-with-her-guy face.”
“So anyone who might be following us doesn’t suspect we know about their surveillance?” she asked, her lips parting beneath his stroking touch.
“Partly. But mostly because I’ve been thinking about kissing you a lot. And this seems a perfect time to see if the reality lives up to the fantasy.”
“Opportunist.” Those lips he’d been dying to taste tilted under his thumb and took any sting from her accusation.
“Absolutely.”
He tensed ever so slightly as another car, a four-door sedan that screamed military staff car, pulled into the lot. Without appearing to do so, he reached down with his left hand and pulled a pistol from his ankle holster.
“You expect me to get romantic when you’ve just put a gun between your legs?”
She did not sound at all thrilled. Neither did she sound the least bit nervous, which a lot of women might. Which made sense, given that she’d grown up in a military family.
“It’s only a precaution.”
/> He trailed his hand down her throat, lingering against her pulse beat, which leaped in response to his touch. Or maybe to the idea that they’d just gotten themselves in a situation that might require gunfire.
“Just don’t get carried away.” He pressed his lips against her hair and inhaled some spicy fragrance underlying the sweetness of the lei she was still wearing. “Although Glocks come with three internal safeties, if things get too hot, I could end up losing any chance to father Dallas O’Halloran Junior.”
He shifted his attention to her earlobe. No one was getting out of the car. Which was the good news.
“Is anything happening?”
“Not yet.” While he’d promised to be honest with her, he decided there was no reason to mention the fact that—talk about compartmentalizing—he was beginning to get one helluva boner.
Dallas wasn’t exactly thrilled by the way he so often seemed on the verge of losing his well-honed self-control whenever he was around this woman. To lose his edge at any time was dangerous. To lose it when bad guys might be gunning for him was insane.
But that didn’t change his need to taste.
As he lowered his head, he watched her lips part in anticipation. A lustrous invitation gleamed in her eyes, and if she was faking it for any possible observers, she ought to win an Oscar.
As his mouth covered hers, which was as soft as it looked, but much, much warmer, her breath caught, then shuddered out.
Her lips opened more fully, inviting his tongue to dip deeper.
Deciding not to think about all the reasons this could be a huge mistake, Dallas dived headlong into the kiss.
Her rich, dark taste, tinged with fruit and rum, seeped into his mouth, into his blood, causing it to burn. When he caught her lower lip between his teeth, her resultant tremor sent all that heated blood shooting south.
It was only a kiss, he reminded himself. And not even a real one, but one designed just for show. He could end it any time.
And pigs would sprout wings and start dive-bombing Pearl Harbor.
