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His shoulders were relaxed, as well as his commando stance. The earlier bluster seemed to disappear from his body language, but some indelible hardness remained. He considered her for a moment. “Nothing if you’re not comfortable with this. We’ll find a way around it.”
And maybe arouse Cavanaugh’s suspicion and mess up the whole operation. No way she was going to be the reason this mission failed.
The very fact that Reese gave her a way out made it possible for her to consider letting him closer.
“I’m going to have to get used to human contact.” It was the healthy thing to do. She needed to get over the past in order to move into a better future. Anita had told her that during one of the woman’s numerous pep talks, and Sam could see now that Anita had been right.
She took a deep breath. “Maybe we could start with…” She hesitated, and he waited. “Maybe you could just put your hands on me.”
He raised a hand to her arm, keeping his gaze on her face the whole time. “I can’t promise not to do anything you don’t like in the next few days, but I promise I’m not ever going to do anything that would hurt you.”
She nodded, nervous enough from his touch to jump all the way to the moon.
His other hand reached up to her other arm, and he rubbed the goose bumps away with his thumb. “Everything is different now. Back then, you did what you had to. You got yourself out of a bad situation. You survived. You are a hundred percent stronger now.” He gave her an encouraging smile.
An actual smile. On Reese Moretti.
She was so startled, she almost believed him. She had always thought herself weak for running away instead of staying and fighting. Weak and stupid. Smart people didn’t end up on the street.
A survivor. After knowing the worst of the filth about her, how could he see her like that? How could he still touch her?
She expected the cursory squeeze of polite support, then for him to let go. Instead, he drew her closer, his demeanor nonthreatening, non-sexual. And yet she felt stiff, couldn’t relax, not even in response to the comfort he was offering.
Then, through the acute sense of discomfort, another feeling seeped through slowly. Surprise. His solid strength seemed like a bulwark against the world rather than suffocating restraints as it had with other men. If only she could accept it.
It’s crazy. Her defenses rose. She knew next to nothing about the man.
But that inner voice that had shouted “run, run, run” for the last decade, now stayed curiously silent. After a second or two, she leaned against his shoulder and let him tighten his arms around her. Not because she was beginning to feel comfortable, but because she knew that was what a normal person would do. As long as she was aware of the normal responses and could fake them, they would be okay.
“How are you doing?” His voice was surprisingly gentle.
“Fine,” she lied.
Truth was, she was unable to accept physical comfort from another person.
Anita had tried, Anita Caballo, with her over-developed sense for mothering and saving all who were around her. But Sam had always resisted even the simplest hug. She didn’t trust women any more than men. Her own mother had taken off and left her with Buck at the end.
“I’m here to help you,” Reese said.
“I know.” She drew a deep breath and suddenly felt her eyes burning. What was wrong with her?
“You’re nervous about tomorrow?” He pulled back a little. “What if I kissed your forehead?” But he didn’t move.
A second or two passed before she realized he was waiting for permission.
“Okay.”
His eyes were full of encouragement as he leaned over and pressed his lips above her eyebrow. He stayed there for a second before pulling away.
“See? It’s not that difficult. You just have to trust me.”
He was asking the impossible.
“I’ll try,” she said anyway. “Don’t take it personally. It’s—”
“Don’t worry about it. I know,” he said.
And from the look on his face she got a feeling that he really did. “How?”
“My job is to bring people back. Go up against rebels, bandits, whomever. I’ve done a few pseudo religious sects and gangs, too, over the years. I’ve seen both men and women who’d gone through hell before we got to them.”
They stood in silence for a while as she tried to picture the kind of work he did, the danger of it. The idea that he would do that for strangers was stunning. When she’d lived on the streets, every day she prayed for safety. She’d done dangerous things, but only out of necessity. At the end, prison had been a relief.
And look where she’d ended up now.
What if joining this mission was the worst decision she’d made yet? What if she messed up and let them all down? What if all she ended up proving, to herself and the others, was that she was a lost cause?
“How about if we just watch some TV?” he asked after a while. “You can sit by me and we’ll hold hands. You can put your head on my shoulder when you get comfortable.”
She nodded and sat.
He plopped down next to her and took her hand. “We can’t have you jump and look ready to run every time we brush up against each other.”
“I know. I can do this.” She didn’t want him to think she was a total incompetent idiot who was unsuitable for the mission.
“I know you can. Just relax.”
It helped that he was doing just that, leaning back and surfing through the channels as if he were in his own living room—wherever he lived when he wasn’t sleeping in the bush.
He settled on the National Geographic Channel. “Okay with you?”
“Sure.” She watched an interview with a woman who took in orphaned lion cubs.
They were cute feeding from a bottle. She let her tightly wound muscles loosen up a little. The cubs grew and needed to be taught to hunt. That took a while. Life was a learning experience for everyone, everywhere. Sam made herself lean against the man next to her, conscious of their bodies touching, not the least comfortable, but making herself do it all the same. If she could learn to pretend, she would be happy with that.
She didn’t think she could ever forget enough to have the real thing, to be able to relax around a man.
TSERNYAKOV GLANCED at his timetable and ticked off another task done. Next was calling in all debts people owed him. If they didn’t pay now, they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to pay next month this time. The clock was ticking.
He needed all that he could get his hands on, and not just the many currencies he did business in. After the terrorist attack, as economies collapsed, inflation was likely to soar. Whoever couldn’t pay up, he would persuade to substitute hard cash with land, equipment, gold, anything potentially valuable.
He looked at his mile-long to do list, resenting that he had to handle all the work when he employed thousands. But this was information he couldn’t trust to anyone.
COME ON, SAM. Where are you? Reese glanced toward the main house while keeping a smile on his face and his full attention, seemingly, on the blonde in front of him. The beach party was a lot smaller than they had expected. They’d figured over a hundred people. There were only about thirty, scattered in small groups on the sand.
“So what more could I do to avoid taxes?” Eva Hern didn’t bat her eyes, but made long, sweeping moves with her eyelashes, many of which were the glue-on kind.
Who wore fake eyelashes to the beach? And for heaven’s sake, why? He tried not to look at the little clumps of adhesive on her eyelids. Maybe he was out of step with fashion. He had no time to socialize.
“You could give all your money to charity,” he said smoothly.
They both laughed. Then he did his best to give an answer like his brother, David, the attorney whom he was impersonating, would. “I can’t really tell you anything without looking at your particular situation. I’d be happy to get together with you sometime next week in your office to chat about this.”
Judging from the woman’s widening smile, he’d given the right answer.
“I’ll call you. Definitely,” she said and wiggled her shoulders. She swam topless like most of the female guests, but had put on a see-through beach shirt when she’d decided to come over and chat him up.
He made a point not to look below her eyes. It seemed to disappoint and frustrate her enough to keep her constantly moving, from pose to pose.
He glanced at his watch. Sam had been gone for twenty minutes.
Too long.
She was supposed to get in and out as fast as she could. The plan was for her to take pictures of the Cavanaugh mansion’s back entry and kitchen with the micro camera she wore disguised as a large ring. She was pretending to be searching for a bottle of mineral water as they were out of “gentle” at the grass-hut bar outside.
Another thing he had missed somehow, that mineral water now came in three varieties: still (pink cap), carbonated (blue cap) and gently carbonated (green cap)—some weird stuff Cavanaugh had apparently brought in from Europe. He thought of all those times when he and his men had drunk from puddles in the jungle or sucked moisture out of roots in the desert. Different worlds for sure.
“How long are you staying on the island?” Eva was asking.
“Maybe another week,” he said. He certainly had enough work to get back to.
Except for Sam, who’d turned out to be okay, he couldn’t wait to be rid of this job. Going into an operation without a gun left him unsettled. They were armed only with a cell phone and a “secret weapon” that had come from one of the men on his team, Tony Ferrarella, who, in between missions, spent a lot of time in his lab, exercising his inventor genius. The can was a prototype, only with Reese by chance when he’d gotten the call from his brother and hopped the first plane to the island. He wished they had used it today. He couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on in there.
The small can of what looked like breath-freshener spray contained microtransmitters too small to be seen by the naked eye. Each were too weak to work alone, but sprayed on a smooth surface they worked together to transmit voice over a hundred feet or so. They were undetectable, but highly vulnerable, good for about twenty-four hours, after which the fine sheen of dust that would naturally accumulate silenced them forever.
He caught movement from the corner of his eye at the mansion. Cavanaugh was walking out with Sam.
Reese was poised to come to her aid if she needed him, but then Sam laughed and linked her arm with Cavanaugh’s.
Didn’t they just look like the best of friends? What in hell had she been doing in there all this time? He reached to his chest and pretended consternation at the fact that his cell phone wasn’t hanging there. He glanced toward the beach and the towel he’d been occupying, then flashed an apologetic smile to Eva.
“I’m sorry. I seem to have left my cell in the room. I’d better go up there and get it. I’m expecting a call from a client.”
“You couldn’t stop working just for a day or two?” Her eyes promised all kinds of incentives, although she was here at the party with her boyfriend, Derrick something or other.
“Occupational hazard,” he said. “See you around?”
“You bet.” She looked only slightly put out as she headed toward the beach.
She had checked out legit. He’d called in the names of the guests to Brant as soon as he’d had them.
Reese set his course toward one of the two guest bungalows that stood on either side of the Cavanaugh estate. Sam and he had been housed in the upstairs suite of the smaller. He’d seen plenty of fancy before: most of his clients had been big-time businessmen, and he’d spent time in their homes. Sam seemed uncomfortable, however, by the effortless splendor.
Not that she needed anything more to make her feel self-conscious. The woman was a bundle of nerves as it was. He wished he could think up something that would set her at ease and give her some sense of security even if just for half an hour. Then again, the middle of a dangerous recon mission was probably not the right time to relax. He really hoped she was going to be able to work out her issues and move beyond her past. When he looked at her, beyond the beauty, he saw plenty of courage and potential.
He wished he hadn’t let his distaste for the FBI’s strong-arm tactics show at the beginning, behaving like the morose bastard he could be when something rubbed him wrong. But he had a new client halfway across the world he was supposed to save. And would the FBI just give him the information he needed to do his job? Hell, no. They dangled it in front of him, forcing him to take on this mission first, stuff that had nothing to do with him. He’d been annoyed and let it show, and had probably scared her, which had been the flat-out stupidest thing to do considering her past and the fact that they were supposed to be a team.
He slipped inside the house and went up the stairs, waited for her in the living room. Be nice.
But then he laid eyes on her slim figure as she came in and it hit him what Cavanaugh could have done to her, alone in the big house. How the hell was he supposed to protect her when his hands were tied by the instructions he’d been given—protect without interfering. What kind of insane guideline was that?
“What took you so long?” He could have kicked himself at how harsh his voice sounded.
She cast him a wary glance. “I ran into Philippe.”
He had checked their room for listening devices the first day they’d gotten there and rechecked again every single day. So far it seemed their host wasn’t snooping on his guests, so they could speak freely.
“I saw.” He hadn’t missed the prolonged looks earlier either and the always too-bright smiles, Cavanaugh’s frequent excuses at conversation. He couldn’t blame the man, but he wasn’t going to let whatever the guy thought would happen go anywhere. Sam didn’t need that kind of harassment.
He hadn’t been too fond of the mission at the beginning, but he was really starting to hate it now that he’d met Cavanaugh and his goons. Any way he looked at it, the women were being used in a dangerous game.
Sam skirted by him toward the kitchen, and his gaze fell to her lower back, to the tattoo of a rose closed tight in a bud, the short stem having some pretty nasty-looking thorns. She stopped and drew a breath, turned to look him in the eye. He recognized the moment for what it was, her decision not to let him intimidate her. She had plenty of sheer guts, this one. He put the frown away.
“So I saw Eva keeping you company,” she remarked with a smirk before continuing to the kitchen to search the fridge. She ate on the hour, every hour. Not that any of it stuck to her.
“She wanted free tax advice,” he said, meaning to move away, but his attention stayed fixed on Sam.
She wore a tasteful bikini that covered everything and still managed to entice more than all the bare flesh on the sand. She had hair a startling color of Irish red, falling in soft waves to just below her ear, as well as big, luminous green eyes shining out of her face. She had no shortage of guys coming over to meet her on the beach.
She played along, even flirting on occasion, although he was pretty sure that was all bravado and she couldn’t have followed through if her life depended on it. She was uncomfortable around men with hunger in their eyes, but was good at hiding that fact and never let her unease stop her from doing her job.
He made a point of sticking by her as much as he could. He would have thought the two of them coming together, rooming together, sent a message to the others, but it seemed the standard rules of society were not strictly kept on private beaches.
“So what have you got?” he asked, returning to the business at hand. He tossed himself into the armchair by the window, slumped deep, arms and legs open, his body language as easygoing as he could make it.
She seemed to relax in response, leaning against the counter. “He showed me around downstairs.” She grinned, looking pretty pleased with herself.
“Pictures?”
“I got everything.” She licked some thick sugary cream off her bottom lip. “You sure you don’t want one?” She extended the plate of goodies toward him.
He shook his head.
“Okay, almost everything.” She stuck the plate back into the fridge. “There were a couple of closed doors he didn’t elaborate on.”
“We’ll start our search there. You should put on more sunscreen.” Her shoulder was getting a pink tinge to it. She was fair skinned. He looked away.
“I should try to get back in. I could pretend to need extra towels.”
“The guesthouse has its own linen closet.”
“I’ll say I couldn’t find it.”
They’d been shown around a couple of hours ago, upon their arrival, but the place really was big enough to forget some of it. Still, if she kept coming up to the mansion, someone might think it suspicious.
“We do it together. Tonight,” he said.
THE DRINKING PICKED up as the sun went down. Cavanaugh had brought in a local band to play Caribbean tunes mixed with popular French music. He spent a fair amount of time with his guests, but disappeared inside his house now and then.
