Crazy Sweet

by Tara Janzen

  Lydia Shore had given her the cupboard, brought it back with her from a recent trip to Osaka. Lydia and her husband, Alan, were nice. Gillian liked them, even if their connection to her was nothing more than a confusing blur. Regardless, she’d instantly been taken with the woman’s gift, with the cupboard’s warm, worn wooden drawers, with each one’s intricately cast bronze handle, with the ancientness of the piece. Two hundred and fifty years old, Lydia had told her, so old, so sturdy, and yet with a softness about it.

  Gillian liked soft things, insisted on them. The only hard things she allowed in her life were her weapons—and her weapons were very hard. Sharp. Clean. Loaded. Lethal.

  Running her fingers over the drawers, she stopped at number forty-three, Tony Royce’s drawer, and pulled it open. A small pile of newspaper clippings were tucked inside, each with the paper’s name, place of publication, and date. She took the latest addition out of her back pocket and laid it on top of the others: La Prensa; San Luis, El Salvador; and yesterday’s date.

  She’d been too late to get him in her sights, missed him by two days, but he’d been there in his new Central American lair, the monster who hid in the back of her brain and lunged out of the muddy darkness of her memories to sabotage her.

  She’d left him a message. One he wouldn’t miss. One he couldn’t resist. This time, he would come for her.

  She was counting on it with everything she had.

  Royce wasn’t the only monster who haunted the dark recesses of her mind, but the other man, Dr. Souk, was dead. She knew it deep down in her gut. Every time she saw the sallow-faced doctor standing next to Royce, leaning over her with a syringe in his hand, she also saw a bullet rip through his chest.

  It was a comfort.

  Such a comfort to know he was dead, no matter how much blood filled the image.

  And yes, she knew she was a strange woman not to mind Souk’s blood, but the white room had been splattered with lots of blood by then. Even stranger, sometimes, if she moved slowly enough in her dreams, carefully enough, she could turn her head and follow the path of the bullet back through the air—back across the endless sea of pain to where it had come from, back to the angel, to the gun in his hand, to the cold calculation in his eyes and the hard, brutally calm set of his face.

  And sometimes she was able to keep going back—back out the door, out of the building, back through the woods . . . back, back, back . . . before—

  She let out a soft curse and closed the drawer. She never got out of the woods. Never.

  Never got away from the men who had hauled her down the path, dragging her toward the lights and the building in the trees, into the white room. Always there was so much . . . white.

  Shit! A spasm of pain shot down her arm, instantly drawing every tendon tight, automatically clenching her hand into a fist—her gun hand. Goddamn. Dreams, memories, and the white room were no place for her to go when she’d been pushing herself so hard, when she was tired.

  Another spasm ripped through her, tightening her arm even more, and she gasped.

  It hurt. It always hurt, but she didn’t panic. She never panicked over reality and the goddamn aftereffects of being injected with XT7. The stuff was never going to go away, not completely, not ever. She’d been the Lab Rat of the Year for two years running over at Walter Reed. There was a doctor there, Dr. Brandt, who tested her every month. He was brilliant, insightful, and kind, too kind not to give her hope.

  But she knew how the cards lay, so she dealt with the pain, and saved her panic for Royce. That boy was going away someday, with one of her match-grade bullets through his head. Sometimes he ate her alive with panic and terror, his scream of pain twisting his face and echoing in her ear, blood flowing from a gash that started above his eyebrow and went all the way to his jaw.

  Skeeter had done that to him, caught him with her knife and laid his face open.

  Taking a breath, she shifted her attention from her rigid tendons to her pulse, and with every beat of her heart, she let space and softness flow down through her veins. Her body had been such a wreck until Superman had made her strong and Angel had taught her how to breathe.

  The seconds passed with her heartbeat, one after the other. When the door to the loft swung open, she looked toward it.

  No panic. She knew who it was. Angel had been on her tail all the way from Beck’s, driving the crappy old Jeep Skeeter barely kept together for him. The Jeep spent more time at 738 Steele Street than he did.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.” His gaze immediately went to her arm, but he didn’t say anything. He knew what she needed, and it wasn’t talk, not when it came to her arm.

  She watched him cross the room, her gaze following every step he took, following the ease with which he unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it. With a small toss, the shirt ended up in a pile next to her bed, a built-up pallet on the floor covered with layer upon layer of soft blankets, cotton sheets, silk pillows, chenille throws, and a gossamer canopy in rich shades of green and gold.

  His shoulder holster came off next, and he set it and his pistol on a table by the bed. Then he reached back and pulled his T-shirt off over the top of his head. With another toss, it landed on top of his collared shirt.

  Angel . . . his hands went to his belt, and her heart started to slow, the softness in her veins to deepen.

  He was beautiful, exquisitely so, his dark blond hair tied in a ponytail at the nape of his neck, his face more rugged than it once had been, his body more starkly chiseled than in most of the paintings she’d seen of him, angel paintings done by his friend Nikki Chronopolous.

  She owned two of Nikki’s paintings: an ascending angel, where he appeared almost transparent, he was so shot through with golden light, and a descending angel. Dark and tortured, lost and falling, the descending angel reminded her of what she’d been when she’d first woken up into her nightmare.

  Another spasm of pain rolled down the length of her arm, less severe, but enough to pull a soft groan out of her.

  He turned, still unbuckling his belt, and cocked his head toward an open arch in the wall on the other side of the bed. “You want to do this?”

  She nodded silently. He knew she did.

  His hands moved to the top button on the fly of his jeans, and when she didn’t move, he spoke again.

  “Do you need help?” His fingers moved down to the second button, then the next one.

  Yes. Oh, yes. Her gaze followed the last button as he slipped it open. She watched the slide of his pants down his legs, watched him toe out of his boots and step out of his jeans, and leave everything, including his boxers, in a pile on the floor.

  He was so unabashed, years younger than she, and so still, even in motion. She loved his stillness, the calm ease with which he moved and thought, and he thought a lot, about everything. He was highly intelligent, highly educated, compassionate, kind, philosophical, generous, and absolutely deadly—lethally skilled.

  And until Royce came for her, he was still hers. A couple more weeks at the best, only days if her plan had worked.

  She knew the cost of what she’d done in San Luis. Part of it was going to be leaving Angel behind. He deserved better than a life on the run—and once she killed Royce, she would be running hard until the day she died.

  He started toward her, naked, pulling the band off his ponytail and dragging both of his hands back through his hair . . . Angel.

  Her pulse picked up, a slow hum of desire replacing her pain. He was so good for her.

  She knew he hunted Royce and planned on killing him if the chance arose, but that would never do. The monster was hers to slay. There was no other way.

  Angel . . . angel . . . angel—he was everything she’d clung to so desperately as the pain and the drugs had slowly eaten away at her memories, destroying the years of her life and making them disappear. It was his image she’d conjured against the agony, his name she’d formed in her mind to combat the fear.

  H
e touched a switch on the wall next to the cupboard, and warm, subdued light filled the arch behind the bed, revealing a glassed-in shower, an open shelf full of soft, peach-colored towels, and the curved recesses of a large, jetted bathtub.

  Circling behind her, he slid his hands around her waist and took hold of the bottom of her shirt. He had strong, large hands, sure hands.

  “Lift up,” he said.

  She did the best she could, and he gently pulled her shirt off over her head. Another easy toss landed the soft pile of sheer red silk on top of his T-shirt. The black lace bra came off next, and his hands came around to cup her breasts.

  With a sigh, she relaxed back against his naked chest, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder, letting him play with her. His mouth came down on the side of her neck, his tongue laving her skin, his fingertips brushing across her nipples, and she relaxed even more deeply against him.

  He was so good for her.

  He moved his hands to the top of her zipper, and with her help, they got her out of her jeans and boots. Then he did a panty switch on her, slipping the new scrap of boy-cut lace up her legs and over her hips: a perfect fit.

  His gifts always made her feel so sweet—and so sweetly bad.

  She arched up on her toes, the pain in her arm drifting away as his hand slid around her waist and down between her legs, under the lace. He cupped her there, pulling her close against him, against his arousal.

  A groan slipped free from her mouth. God, how she loved him, how she loved this—being close, knowing they’d soon be even closer, with him deep inside her.

  He parted her with his fingers, touched her, and a wave of melting pleasure washed through her, leaving a slight tremor in its wake.

  He understood.

  “Come on, baby.” He pulled his hand out from between her legs and swung her up into his arms, holding her close.

  A light dusting of dark brown hair covered his chest, and she ran her fingers through it. He grinned at her and tightened his hold.

  She loved his smile, the warmth of it, the ingenuousness of it. When he smiled, the hardness of the last two years slipped away from him, and he looked more like the angels in the paintings, more like what he’d been before the night their lives had changed. He’d been her salvation that night, and her redemption ever since. Only the direst circumstances could ever take her from his side, could make her walk away and never look back—and she wouldn’t be looking back. Not once. She’d sworn it.

  He carried her straight into the shower, panties and all, and started a warm stream of water pouring over them—and then he started in on her with his hands. “Sexual imprinting” he called his massage technique, a hands-on method of physical and emotional therapy he’d refined over the last two years to be specifically sexual, and specifically for her.

  She felt his palms and his fingers moving over her, working on her, easing the tension from the muscles in her back and shoulders. She felt his strength and the skill of his hands as the water grew warmer and fogged the glass, blocking out the rest of the world.

  And she felt the heat of his touch, the softness of the creamy soap he was smoothing over her.

  He would find love again. He’d been made for love—and tonight he’d been made for loving her. Turning in his arms, she slid her hands around his neck, through his hair, and stretched up to meet his kiss.

  CHAPTER

  3

  C. SMITH RYDELL sat outside a cantina across from the Hotel Palacio in San Luis, El Salvador, drinking a beer, watching the street, and wondering if it was possible for the town to get through the night without something exploding or going up in flames.

  Probably not, he decided. According to the local newspaper, La Prensa, there had been two explosions and five car burnings in the last week—and now the weekend had arrived. Things were bound to heat up when the sun went down, and it was sliding fast, sinking into the ocean like it had more sense than to stick around San Luis in the dark.

  Hot tropical nights, hot tropical country, hot tropical politics, gangs, drug lords, the disenfranchised remnants of the civil war rallying into a rebel force in the mountains, and him smack dab in the middle of all of it—business as usual, except this round of adventure could be laid squarely at Red Dog’s feet. C. Smith Rydell had arrived this morning, almost immediately realized he’d missed her, and spent the rest of the day gathering intel and figuring out just exactly how much trouble she’d gotten herself into since they’d wrapped their Panama mission.

  Plenty, and then some, and as soon as he figured out why his secure cell wasn’t working with the local system, he needed to let the boys at Steele Street know. The other option, going through the hassle of opening a Salvadoran cell account, was way at the bottom of his list, especially since he was heading back to the States first thing in the morning. So for now, C. Smith Rydell was drinking his beer and watching the street. He was especially watching the people on the street, and as of two minutes ago, most especially watching the tawny-haired blonde in the tight white halter dress with the red polka dots, little matching jacket, and white bow-tied spike heels with the two-inch platforms, which brought her all the way up to about five feet four—maybe. She was carrying a straw tote bag that was almost as big as she was, had hoop earrings the size of saucers and white designer sunglasses so big they barely perched on her nose. She also had, unbelievably, three tiny red polka-dot bows scooping up all that tawny blond hair into an elegant, if slightly mussed, French twist, which was more appropriate than a person might imagine, because she looked like something straight out of a brochure for the French Riviera. She looked like candy, sure, but expensive candy. The polish on her toes matched the polka dots, the flowers on her tote matched her toes, and her lipstick matched both.

  C. Smith Rydell took another slow sip of beer, waiting, his gaze following her through his Ray-Bans. Certain laws of physics all but guaranteed that something was going to fall out of a dress that tight, and so help him God, he didn’t want to miss anything when it happened. The halter top, in particular, was giving him whiplash, even though he’d barely moved a muscle since he’d seen her.

  Candy. Eye candy, sex candy, melt-in-your-mouth-and-come-back-for-more candy—all of it wrapped in polka dots and a bolero-style jacket that didn’t quite make the dress modest. She looked like she was more trouble than she was worth, but sometimes that sort of reasoning didn’t really register in a guy’s brain.

  Smith wondered, idly, if it was registering in his.

  She was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time. He knew that much. As long as she’d kept moving, she’d been almost okay, but she’d stopped to sort through some street vendor’s cart of junk in front of the Palacio, and it was setting him on edge. She was one full block off the beaten path, the path the tourists took from one almost-brand-name hotel to the next, with stops in between for a couple of cute boutiques, cute cafés, and a light sprinkling of franchised restaurants. “Fledgling” was the word most analysts used to describe El Salvador’s tourist industry, and she was one full block and a bit away from it.

  She’d slipped into decrepit-hotel-and-locals’bar land, which was only a block from El Salvadoran barrio land, which was no place for a curvy blonde in a tight dress and platform heels—especially when his room on the third floor of the old Palacio had been chosen specifically for the view it gave him into the courtyard of Tony Royce’s backstreet villa.

  Yessirree, the whole friggin’ town of San Luis was crawling with bad guys—real bad guys—and there wasn’t a one of them who wouldn’t want a piece of what he was looking at.

  She needed a keeper, and women who looked like that usually had one who didn’t let them too far out of their sight. So where was hers? There had to be some rich old guy tagging along behind her somewhere, but Smith wasn’t taking the time to look for the lucky bastard. He didn’t dare.

  He took another swallow of beer without taking his eyes off her. He didn’t care what the hell was in the vendor’s car
t, it wasn’t worth the trouble she was going to find if she didn’t get her butt back to her oceanfront hotel.

  The sooner the better. Smith wasn’t the only one who had noticed her. She was starting to draw looks from every direction, and it wouldn’t be too long before the guards patrolling Tony Royce’s gated mausoleum of a house checked the street and noticed her, too.

  He had his bottle of beer halfway to his mouth, when the fat lady sang. Almost on cue, the blonde’s time was up. Royce’s men had spotted her. Two of them were coming through the big iron gate that fronted the street, one of them visibly packing a pistol, both of them heading straight for her, looking damned serious and like maybe they wanted to have some fun—bad fun.

  Dammit.

  Smith pushed himself out of his chair and abandoned his beer.

  Saving damsels in distress wasn’t anywhere in his mission statement or his job description, but here he was, moseying across the street, getting ready to put himself between the bad guys and the cupcake.

  It occurred to him that with his blue parrot shirt, baggy cargo pants, a day’s worth of beard, and scruffy haircut, he might not exactly look like a hero coming to her rescue, but he’d play that part by ear. All he needed to do was get her moving in the right direction, which was west. Due west. Back to the ocean and the one paved street in San Luis.

  To that end, he speeded up his gait. She’d lifted a leather-wrapped bundle of something or another out of the cart and was giving it a once-over. With a hasty move, the vendor shoved the bundle toward her tote. She resisted for a second, but then he put a wooden crucifix on top of the bundle, and both items went into her bag. After another second’s hesitation, she pulled out some cash and handed it over.