“I need to clean up and get something hot and greasy inside me.”
“So do I.” Luke scraped a palm over his bristly cheeks and chin. “How does fish and chips sound?”
“Like manna from heaven.”
“I’ll slip down to the gift shop for a clean shirt and razor, then hit the pub next door.”
“Think you can appear in public without being waylaid by reporters?”
He palmed his cheek again. “I doubt they’d recognize me with this bush. But I’ll take the back stairs, just in case. When I come back, we can work out the details of what we’re going to tell them.”
There it was again. That ubiquitous we. Uncomfortable with how easily they’d slipped into the plural, Dayna backpedaled.
“You’ve already provided service above and beyond the call of duty. You don’t need to hang around here for the media circus.”
“Yeah, Pud, I do.” He scooped her room key off the sofa table. “You and I have some unfinished business to take care of, remember?”
Oh, sure! Kick every one of her hormones into overdrive and just waltz out the door.
The realization that he’d waltz in again shortly sent Dayna hotfooting it to the bathroom.
She’d fully intended to be scrubbed, brushed, dressed and ready for any eventuality when Luke returned. Unfortunately, she failed to take into account the seductive allure of the old-fashioned claw-foot tub. Combined with the hotel’s gardenia-scented soap and bath salts, the prospect of a good soak proved too tempting to resist.
She had at least a half hour before Luke returned with the fish and chips, she reasoned. Plenty of time for a bubble bath. Shedding her clothes, she climbed in while the tub was still only half full.
Ahhh! Feeling every one of her pores open in joyous relief, she slumped against the sloping back. Hot water poured in from the taps. Clouds of steamy fragrance rose all around her. Dayna let the water rise until it threatened to spill over the sides of the tub.
Okay, so maybe she wasn’t as dedicated a nature girl as she used to be. She still loved being outdoors, still thrilled to the roar of water rushing through a gorge, still got lost in majestic scenery like that at the hunting lodge.
But this! This was sheer bliss.
Closing her eyes, she sank to her chin in the steamy bubbles. She could have sworn nowhere near a half hour had passed when an amused drawl penetrated her sybaritic haze.
“You look like you’ve died and gone to heaven.”
Dayna popped open an eye. Luke leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. He held a green plastic bag bearing the hotel’s logo in one hand. In the other he hefted a brown paper bag shiny with spots of grease.
“That was fast,” she commented, resisting the urge to slide lower in the foamy water.
“The pub had butties ready to go.” His gaze skimmed her naked shoulders. “Want yours now?”
“You’ll have to tell me what a buttie is before I answer that.”
“A sort of sandwich. In this case, it’s fried cod, chips and curry wrapped up in buttered bread. Scotland’s answer to the Big Mac.”
Strolling into the bathroom, he dug out a paper-wrapped package and passed it to her. Any doubts Dayna might have entertained about chowing down in the tub vanished when the tantalizing aroma of fried fish and curry overpowered the scent of gardenias.
Peeling back the greasy paper, she eyed the mishmash of fish, fries and bread slathered with butter. “What is this again?”
“They call it a buttie. Don’t ask me why. Go on, take a bite. It tastes a lot better than it looks.”
Her first bite confirmed his prediction. The curry added a piquant flavor to the tender, succulent cod. The bread and crispy fried potatoes, oddly, provided a perfect blend of crunch and carbs.
“This is good!”
“You should down a pint or two with it to get the full flavor.”
“Too much to do today. I’ll make do with tap water.”
“That’s what I figured.”
She thought he would leave her then to feed body and soul. She thought wrong.
“I think I’ll join you.” His eyes gleamed. “We can have a buttie picnic.”
Dayna supposed he’d hunker down on the stool to consume his sandwich. Once again, she was wrong.
Depositing the brown paper bag on the floor beside the tub, he heeled off his shoes. She still didn’t quite believe he intended to climb in with her until he popped the top button on his wrinkled blue shirt. Her toes curling, she issued a warning that came out sounding ridiculously breathless.
“You’d better not! You’ll waltz around the rest of the day smelling like gardenias.”
“I’ve carried worse stinks. The squadron debriefing room gets pretty aromatic after a crew comes off a thirty-or forty-hour mission.”
Mental images of the black, bat-winged B-2 and tired, sweaty crews crowded into Dayna’s head, but they couldn’t compete with the real-life image when Luke stripped off his wrinkled shirt, jeans and shorts. Her pulse skittering, she recorded the swirls of dark hair on his chest. His hard, flat belly. The corded muscles in the thigh he hooked over the side.
“Scrunch up.”
Sloshing water in all directions, he claimed the opposite end of the tub. His arms looped along the rim. His feet wedged under her hips.
“I think this may be my first ever bubble bath,” he commented as the scented foam lapped at his pecs.
“You probably don’t want to make a habit of them,” Dayna drawled, all too conscious of the toes nudging her butt. “The other crewdogs might get the wrong idea.”
His shrug suggested he wasn’t particularly worried about his fellow aviators’ opinion of his masculinity. Not that anyone could doubt Luke Harper was all male. The proof of that knocked against Dayna’s knee when he reached over the side of the tub for his sandwich.
The absurdity of the situation made her shake her head. The hotel’s security chief could call at any moment to advise that he’d retrieved the surveillance tapes. Hawk might return from the airport, with or without Jilly in tow. Dayna still had to prepare for the media barrage. Yet here she sat, playing footsie with Luke in a tub of scented water while they gobbled down fish and chips.
“Do you have any idea how ridiculous this is?” she muttered between buttie bites.
Unperturbed, Luke devoured his fish and fries. “Think of it as an exercise in time management.”
With his thighs cradling hers, Dayna was having trouble thinking at all.
“We get clean,” he said, polishing his sandwich off in a few giant bites, “we fill our bellies, we take care of unfinished business, all in one efficient package.”
A gob of fishy bread got stuck in her throat. While she cleared it, Luke tossed aside the paper wrapping from his sandwich.
“You done with that?” he asked, indicating the remains of her lunch with a jerk of her chin.
“I think I’ve had enough. Luke! Wait!”
Ignoring her shriek, he hooked his hands under her thighs and tugged her onto his lap. Her knees bent at an awkward angle. The remains of her sandwich went flying. She grabbed at the sides of the tub to keep from toppling backward.
“You idiot,” she gasped, clinging to the rim while water sloshed over the sides and onto the tiles. “We can’t do this now.”
“Sure we can.”
He slid a hand around her nape and drew her forward. Between sharp, nipping kisses, he reiterated the ground rules she’d laid out earlier this morning.
“You said you wanted to keep it simple. No hearts and flowers. No frills.” His teeth scraped her lower lip. “Just old-fashioned, uncomplicated sex.”
Sneaky bastard. Tossing the conditions she’d laid down back at her with only a few bubbles separating their naked bodies.
“As long as we agree that’s all it is,” she returned, all too aware of the hair-roughened thighs under her bottom.
“We agreed to that back at the lodge,” he reminded her as his palms cupped h
er breasts.
So they had. Only Dayna knew damned well there was nothing simple or uncomplicated about the sensations roused by his mouth and tongue and hands. Not to mention the rock-hard ridge of flesh poking her thigh. The feel of him sent a swift punch of desire straight to her belly.
“There’s another matter to consider,” she said on a breathless note. “Unless you purchased more than a clean shirt and a razor in the gift shop, we don’t have any protection.”
“Not to worry.” Fishing for the now soggy brown paper bag beside the tub, Luke upended it. “I hit the gent’s room at the pub.”
A rainbow of condoms in different colored wrappers spilled onto the tiles. Dayna knew then she was lost. Still, she took one last stab at reason.
“We’d have to make it a quickie.”
Raising a knee, he inserted his hand between their slick bodies. “We’ll make it as fast or as slow as you want, Puddles.”
Slow, she discovered almost instantly, wasn’t an option. The first friction of his thumb and finger against her wet flesh proved that. Gasping, Dayna arched her back and gave him freer access.
Luke took advantage of her vulnerable position to explore at will. She reciprocated by sliding her hand down and wrapping her fist around his straining erection.
They’d made aquatic love before. A good number of times, Dayna recalled with a shiver of ecstasy. In showers. In Colorado’s clear mountain lakes. In rivers warmed by late-summer suns.
But never in such a confined space, or with such sudden urgency. Fusing two eager bodies in a narrow tub filled with soapy water that splashed over the sides with every move required a series of athletic maneuvers.
They managed pretty well, considering the hunger that grew with every twist, every touch. This was what she remembered, Dayna thought on spiraling waves of need. This heat. This craving. The old anger and hurt should have eradicated both, or at least diminished them.
Yet every slick of her palms over the hard contours of his body, every bunch of his muscles and rough scrape of his whiskers reminded her she’d never wanted any man the way she wanted Luke. Then, or now.
Grinding her mouth against his, she struggled to get her knees under her. Half the tub had emptied onto the tiles before she sank onto his rigid shaft. Luke reciprocated with a series of upward thrusts that left her gasping. She could feel her climax rushing at her with the force and speed of a runaway locomotive.
“Luke! I can’t hold back. We’d better…You’d better…”
Swearing, he pulled out, tore into one of the condoms and sheathed himself.
Dayna groaned and threw her head back. Squeezing her vaginal muscles with every ounce of her strength, she tried to take him with her.
He had other plans. Banding her waist with one arm, he levered them both up. Water dripped from bathroom to bed as he dragged down the covers. Locking her arms around his neck, Dayna took him into her again.
“Wow.”
The breathy whisper slipped out as Dayna’s sensual haze faded degree by exquisite degree. Flopping an arm over her forehead, she lay sprawled on her back in a tangle of soggy sheets.
Luke’s face was buried in the pillow beside her head, his body a deadweight atop hers. When he lifted his head, the whiskers he hadn’t yet gotten around to shaving rasped against her upraised arm.
“Yeah,” he echoed. “Wow.”
She wasn’t quite sure she liked his expression. It was one part satisfied lover, two parts possessive male as his gaze skimmed over her flushed face.
“Any time you want lunch delivered to your bathtub, Pud, just let me know.”
“I will. Now, I think we’d better get dressed and get to work.”
As if to add emphasis to her statement, the house phone buzzed. Dayna reached across Luke’s naked chest to snag the receiver.
“This is Victor Woodhouse, Ms. Duncan. I’ve retrieved the surveillance tapes. The images are best viewed on the high-resolution monitor here in the security center. It’s on the ground floor, next to the business center.”
“Thanks. We’ll be down in ten minutes.”
While Luke put the razor he’d purchased in the gift shop to work, Dayna scrambled into clean underwear, gray linen slacks and a short-sleeved silk turtleneck in emerald green that covered the whisker burns on her neck and shoulders. Her hair went into its usual ponytail but, mindful of the media that would descend on her in a few hours, she added mascara and eye shadow along with her lip-gloss.
Not that she needed either. The woman who stared back at her from the dresser mirror showed zero signs that she’d curled up on the floor in agony less than twenty-four hours ago. This woman buzzed with energy and impatience to get on with the task that had brought her to St. Andrews. She also wore the look of a woman well loved.
Whoops. Wrong choice of words. Love didn’t constitute part of the equation. She and Luke had agreed on that.
So why did the sight of him emerging from the bathroom with his jeans riding low on his hips make her pulse jump and skip like a barefoot kid trying to cross an asphalt road on a hot summer’s day?
Throat tight, she watched him remove the wrapping and pins from the shirt he’d bought in the gift shop and drag the red knit over his head.
“Ready?” she asked when he’d shoved his feet into his loafers.
“Ready.”
Woodhouse was waiting for them in the security center. The man took Dayna’s hand in his bulldog grip. When he reached for Luke’s, his nostrils twitched and a surprised look came over his face.
Dayna bit her lip. Unfazed, Luke supplied the answer to the man’s unspoken question.
“Gardenia bath salts.”
“Yes, of course. I’ve cued the surveillance tapes to an hour before your attack, Ms. Duncan. I think you’ll find this sequence very interesting.”
With Dayna and Luke at either shoulder, Woodhouse seated himself in front of a flat-screened monitor displaying a frozen image of the kitchens.
“As you may suppose, several of the women competing in the tournament require special diets.”
The screen showed what looked like the vegetable prep area of the kitchen, where several cooks’ helpers washed fresh fruit and vegetables with an oversized sprayer.
“Miss Wu is especially particular about her meals. Her trainer supplies us with a daily menu designed, he tells us, to provide her with maximum energy and power. He delivered today’s menu yesterday morning, an hour before your attack.” Woodhouse rolled the tape. “There he is.”
Her jaw tightening, Dayna leaned forward and watched the Korean confer with the head chef for several minutes before turning to leave. On his way out of the kitchen, he paused beside a cart containing ice buckets lined up in neat rows.
“The buckets are empty,” Dayna observed.
“The bottles that went into them are still in the wine cooler,” Woodhouse explained. “But each of the buckets was tagged with a card identifying the recipient and her room number.”
“So our friend saw a bucket would be delivered to my suite. But how could he know which bottle would go with it?”
“He couldn’t.”
Keying in a series of commands, Woodhouse switched to a video showing the length of a hallway. The scene he cued up showed elevator doors opening. A skinny male in his early twenties pushed a cart out of the elevator and rolled it down the hall.
“Do you recognize the waiter who delivered the champagne to your room yesterday, Ms. Duncan?”
“I wasn’t there when it arrived.”
“I was,” Luke stated. “That’s him.”
“His name is Benjamin Howard. He’s a local bloke, has worked for us for three years. He started his deliveries on the second floor and worked his way up. In this sequence, he’s delivering a bottle to Ms. Wu’s suite. When he knocks on the door, note the time on the screen.”
One-seventeen. A half hour after Dayna had come off the course.
“Here he is, exiting Ms. Wu’s suite. Again, please note
the time.”
“One-thirty six,” Dayna read. “Almost twenty minutes later.”
“After which he took the elevator to your floor and delivered your bottle.”
This stretch of video showed Luke opening the door to the waiter. Howard carried the silver tray containing the ice bucket and a crystal flute into Dayna’s suite. He exited again a scant three minutes later.
“He stayed inside just long enough to deposit the tray and pocket the tip I gave him,” Luke confirmed.
“Back up to the sequence at the doors at Miss Wu’s suite,” Dayna instructed tersely. “Right there, after he goes inside. Can you zoom in on the cart?”
“Certainly.”
Clicking the keys, Woodhouse enlarged the cart until the champagne bottles tipped to the side in their silver buckets looked like a row of drunken soldiers.
“Not one of those bottles is uncorked,” she pointed out with a serrated edge to her voice. “Now cut back to the sequence at the door to my suite and zoom in on the bottle.”
There it was, larger than life. The silver bottle stopper in the shape of a thistle plugging the bottle the waiter carried into Dayna’s suite.
“I want to talk to Mr. Howard.”
“So do we,” Woodhouse said. “Unfortunately, he didn’t show up for work this morning. When I rang up his house a bit ago, his mother indicated he didn’t come home last night. She wasn’t unduly worried. Apparently he plays on a local rugby team and has caroused all night with his mates before.”
“But…” Dayna said with a hollow feeling in her stomach, sensing what was coming.
“But,” Woodhouse continued heavily, “none of his mates have seen him, either.”
Chapter 11
Dayna received a signal from Hawk as she and Luke were on the way back to her suite. In response to his terse request, they detoured to his room.
When he opened the door, she could see at a glance he was not a happy camper. His mouth was drawn into a tight line and what looked like a permanent crease was carved into his forehead.
By contrast, the reason for his sour mood brimmed with energy and enthusiasm despite what must have been a killer flight. Jilly’s calf-length suede skirt swirled around her ankles as she rushed across the room to envelope Dayna in a fierce hug.
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