“It’s an easy enough problem to solve,” he assured her. “All it takes is an ultimatum.”
“An ultimatum?”
“Unless the next words out of your mouth are ‘Let’s put that big four-poster bed to use,’ I’m going to kiss you until you can’t think straight.”
“That’s not much of an ultimatum.” He could still hear that something in her voice. “Either way, we end up in bed.”
“Let no one ever accuse you of being slow on the uptake.”
She softened in his embrace, all her muscles loosening. And hello! Her softening succeeded in making him hard.
Her breasts cushioned heavily against his chest. Her thighs pressed tantalizingly against his legs. And the sweet heat of her seeped into his bones, warming him from the inside out, chasing away the chill of too many long, lonely years.
She loves me! Chelsea Duvall loves me! He would never tire of that refrain. And he planned to show her just how much he loved her in about two seconds.
Glancing at his watch, he calculated how much time he had. Not enough to do it the way he wanted. But enough for Chelsea. The wonderful woman was like a bottle rocket. When it came to sex, she had a quick fuse, burning hot and fast before the final explosion which, by the way, was really loud and—
A knock sounded at the door.
“What?” he barked, unable to keep the frustration from his voice.
“Sorry to interrupt!” Emily called, not sounding the least bit sorry. Damn her. “But once again I’m going to ask you kiddies to get your clothes on. Angel arrived early, and he’s itching to get you both loaded into his buddy’s sardine can. Something about tides and currents and what have you. So, chop-chop!”
Chelsea pushed out of Dagan’s arms, taking her soft curves and delicious feminine warmth with her.
“That woman has the worst timing,” he muttered, adjusting his hard-on into a more comfortable position.
“I heard that!” Emily called through the door.
“Go away!” he bellowed. “We’ll be down in a second!”
“I don’t trust you, Romeo! I know just how single-minded you men can be. Chels? Can you hear me? Do you need me to come in and wrestle that big gorilla off you?”
Chelsea caught her lower lip between her teeth and shook her head. She looked a little…what? What was that expression? He narrowed his eyes, trying to see what was going on inside that souped-up brain of hers, but before he could get a bead on it, she slipped around him and pulled the bedroom door wide.
“I’d be more than happy to—” Emily cut herself off when she was suddenly staring him square in the face. “Oh, how disappointing. I thought for sure you two were…” She trailed off, narrowing her gaze at the look on Chelsea’s face. Emily turned to him then, attempting murder with her eyes. “What did you do to her?”
“Emily…” Chelsea tried.
But Emily just barged ahead. “What did you say to her?”
“Down, mother bear.” Dagan lifted a staying hand. “I didn’t do anything to her. As far as what I said to her, that’s simple. I told her I love her.”
He was usually a private person. But in this particular instance, he didn’t bother. First of all, because he wanted to wipe that accusing look right off Emily’s face. And second of all, because he wanted to shout his glorious news from the rooftops.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Let it be known far and wide that Dagan Zoelner loves the amazing, talented, and gorgeous Chelsea Duvall. And miracle of miracles! She loves him too!
“Oh.” Emily blinked. Then she said louder, “Oooohhhh. Wow. I just thought you two were visiting Pound Town. But sure, okay.” Emily turned to Chelsea. “Another one bites the dust, huh? I wish I could say I’m happy for you, Chels. But the truth is that I’m jealous as hell. I’ll be the only one left seeing Junior Patrick.”
“Who’s Junior Patrick?” Dagan demanded.
Emily opened her mouth, but Chelsea beat her to the punch. “Never mind that.”
“No. Not never mind that. Who the hell is Junior Patrick?” It was amazing how quickly jealous rage consumed him. Had Chelsea been seeing someone? Had she and Emily both been seeing someone? The same guy?
Chelsea didn’t seem the type. Back up. Rewind. Chelsea wasn’t the type. So what was Emily talk—
“It’s another name for a lady’s best friend,” Emily said.
Huh?
“A battery-operated boyfriend, numb nuts.” Emily rolled her eyes. “Don’t get your boxers in a twist. Jeez.”
“Oh,” he said. Then, “Oooohhhh.”
“Is there an echo in here?” Chelsea demanded, hands on hips Wonder Woman–style.
Dagan lifted a brow, imagining her in bed, pleasuring herself with a vibrator. His little downstairs buddy liked the imagery very much. Too much.
Damnit. He glanced at his watch. He should’ve still had thirty minutes to screw her brains out. He’d have to have a talk with Angel when he saw him. Not sticking to the schedule was wreaking havoc with Dagan’s sexual ambitions.
“And why are we talking about any of this anyway?” There was no mistaking the two red flags of color in Chelsea’s cheeks. She might be one tasty little wildcat in bed, but out of it, she was still a Southern girl. Talk of her adult toy collection—he hoped it was vast. Please let it be vast—embarrassed her. “We shouldn’t keep Angel waiting.”
Dagan tossed an arm around her shoulders. He thought he felt her tense and wondered what that was all about. They’d cleared things up, hadn’t they? They were on the same page, weren’t they?
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll be on our way. But at some point in the future, I expect you to introduce me to Mr. Patrick. I’m curious to meet my competition.”
“Gag me with a very large spoon.” Emily threw her hands in the air. “You two are so adorable that you’re making me sick to my stomach.” She turned and flounced down the stairs.
Chelsea glanced at him through the fan of her sooty lashes. There it was again, that something in her eyes.
He was done trying to figure it out on his own. Best just to sac up and ask. “What is it, babe? What’s bothering you?”
“You really believe love conquers all?” She gnawed on her lower lip.
He gave her the words she needed to hear, promising to prove them to her every day for the rest of his life. “I do, Chels. I really, really do.”
Chapter 35
Chelsea followed Dagan down the stairs on rickety legs. She was old enough to know that words were cheap. It was easy to say something in the heat of the moment. But it was another thing entirely when the chips were down and the truth was revealed.
Dagan reached the bottom step and turned, offering his hand. Scratch that, his paw—the man’s hands were too large and scarred and callused to be called anything else.
She reached for his fingers, and the instant they were skin to skin, a jolt of electricity zapped her system. Was it her imagination, or did the lights flicker? Would she always feel that white-hot frisson of awareness? If he were to touch her every day for the next fifty years, would she still feel a shock at the brush of his fingertips?
Please, Lord! Let me find out.
“In case it isn’t obvious,” Ace said when they walked into the living room. Joy of joys, the whole gang was gathered, grinning at them like a bunch of nitwits. “These two have finally admitted they’re hot to trot for each other.”
“More like ass over teakettle,” Emily chimed in. “According to Zoelner, they’re in love.” She made the word into two syllables. Luh-uv. “And as I said upstairs, another one bites the dust. It’s nearly enough to make a single girl want to scream and pull out her hair.”
“Mmm,” Angel hummed noncommittally. “I suppose congratulations are in order, then.”
The former Israeli Mossad agent looked at Chelsea with his dark, uncanny eyes. The
man gave new meaning to the phrase Riddle wrapped in a mystery shoved inside an enigma. In all the time she had worked as the CIA liaison to Black Knights Inc., Chelsea had only met him on a handful of occasions. Each time, she had come away feeling slightly unsettled.
There was just something about Angel.
“Thank you for doing this, Angel,” she said. “You’re saving my bacon.”
“No thanks necessary.” He spoke with a precision that would make an English teacher weep with happiness and an accent that was impossible to place.
Chelsea reckoned both affectations were intentional.
“Well, now that the social niceties have been concluded, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” Emily said. “This has been one long-ass day, and I, for one, can’t wait to hop on that swanky private jet and catch some z’s. Adrenaline is hell on the body.” She shouldered into her backpack. When she had trouble with one strap, Christian obligingly helped her on with it. “You know”—she turned to the Brit and smiled—“you’re really not so bad.”
Christian clutched his chest. “My God! I’m having that put on a T-shirt.”
“Like you’d wear a T-shirt.” Emily rolled her eyes, then turned to Angel with a hand on the knob of the front door. “Say, Angel, what does this friend of yours do with a submarine in the English Channel, anyway?”
Angel’s face was expressionless. “He is not a friend. He is a…contact. And one would not necessarily call him a law-abiding citizen.” Drug smuggler, Chelsea thought, her stomach sinking. “Are you certain you wish to know the what, why, and how of his operations?”
Emily curled her lip. “Well, not when you put it that way. Jeez!”
“Very good.” Angel nodded. “Shall we go?”
“Uh, Angel?” Chelsea didn’t like the hesitation in her voice. But, lovesick puppy that she was, she really liked the way Dagan gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. How was it possible he could be so attuned to her and not know she was hiding something huge and life-changing from him? Please don’t let it be love-changing too! “How, um, how long will it take?”
She didn’t need to clarify. Along with being spooky, Angel was sharp as a tack. “Gautier’s vessel is small, but it is fast. He can have you to Calais in ninety minutes. Barring any course corrections he might need to make to avoid the tanker and cargo ships that pile through the Channel, of course.”
Gulp. She hadn’t considered that.
A series of images bloomed to life inside her head. A propeller striking the submarine. A loss of pressure. Her, Dagan, and Gautier—that sounded like a drug smuggler’s name if ever she’d heard one—sinking to their watery deaths.
“Right-oh.” Christian nodded. “It’s a piece of cake.”
“You’ll be in and out before you know it,” Ace added.
Rusty winked. “Easy breezy.”
“Says everyone who isn’t about to be squeezed into the vessel of a criminal named Gautier,” Chelsea groused, giving them all dirty looks. “And how will the rest of you be crossing?”
“It is my hope that Mr. Parker will be good enough to take his truck with us through the Eurotunnel,” Angel said. The train that ran beneath the English Channel was equipped to carry both passengers and vehicles. “Once we are on the other side, he can give us all a lift to Paris.”
“No problem,” Rusty assured him. “Done and done.”
“Thank you.” Angel nodded. Then he added, “If the online schedule is correct, Chelsea, you and Zoelner will beat us across by approximately thirty minutes. You will wait near the beach until we can come and get you. It is all very simple.”
Simple? That’s not a word she would have used. Not with a French drug runner and a submarine involved.
“You will want to wear coats,” Angel advised in that raspy, scoured-vocal-cord voice of his when she and Dagan had moved to don their backpacks. “The Channel…she is very cold.”
“Tell me about it,” Chelsea grumbled. The memory of that afternoon’s swim was all too clear in her mind’s eye. Then a terrible thought occurred. “We don’t have to swim out to the sub, do we? Where is it?”
“It is beneath the end of the pier.” Right. The pier. Good. Great. Her wounded shoulder chose that moment to throb dully. “I swam to shore,” Angel continued, and she noticed his jet-black hair was wet. His clothes on the other hand? Bone dry.
Huh. She wondered how he had managed that. Something similar to what they had done with the waterproof float bags, she hoped. Though she had the sneaking suspicion that he might have swum to shore—either clothed or naked—and then stolen dry threads off someone’s clothesline or out of someone’s dryer.
Stories of Angel’s deft hand when it came to five-fingered discounts abounded back at BKI. And if she needed further proof that those stories were true, Angel finished with, “But not to worry. I appropriated a dinghy for you.” Appropriated. Right. “It is tied on the beach beneath the pier. All you need to do is boat to the end of the harbor arm. Gautier is there waiting.”
Okay. So…she was about to hop into a stolen dinghy to row out to a drug-smuggling submarine, which she would then take across the busy English Channel, all while telling the man she loved that once upon a time, when she had been scared and dumb and faced with an impossible decision, she had chosen her mother’s happiness and memories of her father over him.
You know, just your ordinary, average day.
Chapter 36
Steven sat forward in the backseat of Morrison’s SUV when Rusty Parker’s front door opened. A whole horde of people piled down the front steps. Seven, to be precise. He couldn’t help but notice they were all dressed for traveling. Parkas, rucksacks, an air of furtiveness and impatience hanging around them.
Bloody hell. He glanced at the glowing green clock numbers on the console and grimaced. His backup wasn’t due to arrive for another twenty minutes.
“Who is the new bloke, do you suppose?” Morrison frowned as the group gathered on the sidewalk beside Rusty’s monstrous, king-cab pickup truck.
The streetlight cast the crew in an odd glow. It created sinister shadows and made them look more menacing than they really were. Then again, perhaps they looked exactly as menacing as they really were. Christian Watson numbered among them, after all.
“Another operative, if the economical way he moves and the covert way he catalogs his surroundings is any indication,” Steven answered, eyeing the dark-haired gent who had entered the house not five minutes prior. Then Steven’s attention returned to Watson. He had not told Morrison about the famous SAS officer. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because to admit that the great Christian Watson was on the premises would highlight just how far Steven himself had fallen.
“Economical way he moves. Catalogs his surroundings.” Morrison parroted Steven’s words, flashing his shark teeth. “Oh, how very droll. I do so love the way you clandestine types speak. It’s all so…shaken, not stirred.”
Steven was glad one of them was having a good time.
On second thought, no, he wasn’t. He was annoyed that Morrison wasn’t taking this more seriously. After all, weren’t both their arses on the buggering line?
“Oh, sodding hell,” he hissed when five of the seven piled into the pickup truck. The other two, Chelsea Duvall and the big bearded bloke, set off down the lane.
“Who should we follow?” Morrison asked.
“Both.” Steven checked the clip on his SIG Sauer P230, the same make and model he had used while with the SAS. “You and Ramón will follow those in the truck. I will follow Chelsea and her hairy companion.”
“Not bloody likely,” Morrison growled.
“Pardon?”
“I told you. Chelsea Duvall wormed her way into my life and my home. She planted some insidious virus onto my computer to try to bring me down. I want to be there when that cunt is brought in.”
�
��Sir—”
“Don’t sir me.” Morrison’s usually pale face was livid. “Give me your spare weapon. I know you carry one.”
Steven wanted to argue, but Morrison’s mulish expression told him he wouldn’t win. To save time, he took his Ruger LCR from the holster on his ankle. But before he handed it to Morrison, he narrowed his eyes. “You do know how to handle this, yeah?”
“Oh, piss off.” Morrison snatched the gun from Steven’s hand. “I was taking shooting lessons while you were still wetting your nappies. Don’t let the luxury condos and sports cars fool you. A man doesn’t get to where I am without knowing how to protect himself.”
Steven clenched his jaw. “Remember there are only six rounds in the cylinder.”
“If it comes to that,” the old man sniffed, “six rounds are more than I will need.”
Now that made Steven decidedly uncomfortable. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say he was now decidedly more uncomfortable, because he was always uncomfortable around Morrison, given the man’s…predilections.
“It shouldn’t come to that,” Steven stressed. “Remember, we need Chelsea alive. She might not have the drive on her person, which means we need to be able to interrogate her to find out where it is.”
The roar of the engine on Rusty’s ridiculous vehicle had Steven glancing at Ramón. “Follow them,” he instructed. “Then text us their whereabouts.”
Ramón glanced at Morrison in the rearview mirror, waiting for permission to follow Steven’s order. When Morrison nodded regally, Steven hoped neither man could hear his back molars creak.
As they waited for Rusty and the others to drive by, Steven kept an eye on Chelsea’s progress. She and her companion turned southwest on a road that led to only one place. Back to the beach.
“I’ll trail behind them,” he told Morrison. “You circle the block and stay to the west of them. Once we have them boxed in, we can both advance with our weapons drawn. But no shooting to kill,” he felt compelled to stress. “Not unless absolutely necessary.”
Fuel for Fire Page 20
