by Tawny Weber
Yeah. He admitted it to himself. She was pretty in a non-glamorous way, this woman who was way too determined for her own good.
Moments of silence passed between them, her determined gaze locked on his. She was serious. Dead serious about searching for her brother with or without his help.
He glanced down past her lush lips and determined chin, debating his options and assessing her fitness. Softly arced breasts and gently flared hips had their benefits, but not in his business. She was a lamb walking into a lion's den if left to her own means. But the last thing he needed was to be stuck protecting a lamb.
His gaze fell on her feet. Hiking boots, well-worn by the looks of them. What kind of city girl owned worn hiking boots?
One who was physically fit?
He gave her another once over. Athletically trim. A good plus. Determined. A negative plus. This was a woman who would not be left behind.
Cursing under his breath, he pushed back from her. "Fine. Let's go."
Chapter 4
Bliss woke, aware someone was standing over her in the dark room. She wished she'd tucked one of Jake's knives under her pillow. He had a rack of them on the wall by the door—but she'd made the mistake of believing she was safe in Saint Security's command center. Though, after an insane midnight ride from the Oaxaca de Juárez airport, maybe she shouldn't have been.
The SUV sped away from the city lights, the roads thinning as they climbed through the moonlit countryside and up the mountainside past the occasional silhouette of a shack jutting from the scrub brush. A turn here and there, and they were soon bouncing over dirt roads. Security firms didn't require such remoteness.
But Saint Security was secretive and she'd been preoccupied with trying to keep her stomach out of her throat. Even buckled up, her insides slammed against her ribcage as they climbed the twisting road lit only by the SUV's parking lights. It had her questioning if there was even a shoulder to the road or just a sheer drop off…or if these guys doing the whole maneuvering-to-lose-any-tail was some charade for her sake.
Finally, their lights sliced across a walled compound, a massive iron-enforced wood door sliding open to receive them. If that mad ride hadn't been enough of a warning to Bliss, the armed guards greeting them should have been. But she'd been exhausted and beyond caring about anything, except finding her brother.
Now, with some unknown man standing over her, she realized the mistake she'd made.
Pretending to roll over in her sleep, she simultaneously grabbed her pillow and walloped the shadowed form as she leapt out of bed. The man howled. Her feet tangled in the bedding and she landed belly-down on the floor with a yelp.
Instantly, one of Jake's team filled the doorway, flicking on the light switch. "Everything okay in here, Boss?"
"Yeah," Jake snapped, his tone more than his answer likely sending the man out of the sparse space Jake had referred to as his room when he'd deposited her there last night…or rather in the wee hours of the morning.
From her current perspective on the floor, the scent of coffee filled her nostrils and a tin cup tottered in a pool of dark liquid next to a pair of naked feet—very masculine naked feet. She peered up past the manly toes to find Jake holding the front of his tee and crotch of his fatigues away from his body.
"Why the hell did you hit me?" he demanded.
She rolled onto her backside and sat up. "Because you snuck up on me and, for all I knew, you were some creep come to attack me."
"I was bringing you coffee and a breakfast burrito. Excuse me for trying to be a good host."
Ah, yes, now she recognized the scent of peppers and spotted the salsa and egg fragments clinging to his shirt. She grimaced. "Sorry, all I saw in the dark was a shadow standing over me and I reacted."
He rolled his soiled t-shirt off over his head, revealing a six-pack and sculpted pecs worthy of her fictional Nick Savage. She couldn't count how many times she'd described Savage in this exact stage of undress…and more. Or less. A sigh escaped her.
He tossed the shirt onto the puddle of coffee. His idea of mopping up the mess?
But a humorous snort had Bliss blinking at her hunky hero. A hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth, that near smile softening his angular features and making him appear almost approachable.
"You find my reaction funny?" she said.
"I find it a good reaction."
"Of course it was good. I was defending myself."
"That's what I mean," he said, sobering. "You've got better instincts than I expected. Just, next time make sure your feet are clear of tangling sheets before you run."
He offered her a hand up and jerked her to her feet. She slammed into his bare chest and the breath went out of her. It reminded her of how he'd trapped her against her apartment door when she'd insisted on coming along with him and he'd argued against it. He'd been so commanding, so take charge…so close that if he'd lowered his face but two inches and she'd raised hers an equal distance, their lips would have touched.
She began to tilt her face toward his when he said, "You have green eyes. Your brother has blue."
She stumbled back from him, brushing the feel of him from the tee she'd slept in. "He takes after the Burns side of the family. I take after the O'Haras."
Jake nodded, making no move to replace his soiled tee. Just stood there studying her through unreadable eyes, eyes that took her in from her bare toes to the crown of her head.
Oh God, what had her nap—er, night's sleep done to her hair?
She ran her fingers through her hair, hopefully taming her long, thick locks; and thankful she'd been too tired last night to strip off anything more than her boots before crawling into bed.
"What time is it?" she asked, if for no other reason than to make him stop staring at her.
"Daybreak," he said, nodding toward the room's single shuttered window before turning to the footlocker at the end of the bed.
She swung her suitcase onto the mattress and flipped open its lid. "What kind of clothes do I need?"
"Whatever makes you comfortable," he said.
"Comfortable?" she asked, digging around inside her suitcase. "Isn't it more important I blend in, or at least dress for where we're going and what we'll be doing?"
"I agreed to let you come this far, Miss O'Hara. But you are not going into the field with us."
She turned to him. "I need to go out and look for my brother."
The footlocker lid shut with a resounding thud and he faced her, a fresh pair of camo fatigues and black tee in his fist. "It's not safe where we're going."
She swallowed hard. "Does that mean you're not going to look for Robbie, or that where you think Robbie is isn't a good place?"
"I'm heading into the city to check out his digs. They aren't in the nicest of neighborhoods."
She suppressed the shiver gathering at the base of her spine. "You cut your vacation short to help me find my brother. I should be involved."
"You coming with isn't going to help."
She sucked a bolstering breath. "He's my brother, my responsibility."
"You might even be a hindrance to our efforts."
He likely saw her as some histrionic woman and that pressed another one of her hot buttons. "I've never been a hindrance to anyone," she said, glowering at him. "And I didn't travel all this way to sit in a bunker of a command center in a foreign country wringing my hands. I'm going out there and looking for my brother with or without you."
"Be prepared for a long walk. We're a good fifteen miles from the city."
She lifted her hiking boots off the floor by way of an answer.
His fist tightened around the clothing he held. "You're stubborn enough to follow us on foot, aren't you?"
"Not stubborn. Desperate."
A contemplative crease deepened above the bridge of his nose and she held her breath, knowing she was better off with him and his men than she was alone.
"Fine," he finally said. "Just don't go all hysterical on
me when you see his place."
"I won't," she said, dropping the boots, so grateful he'd agreed to let her come with him she'd barely turned her back to him before peeling off her tee. "Just give me enough time to change into a fresh shirt and brush my teeth."
Surprised she'd taken off her shirt in front of him, Jake stared at her bare back. Correction, he stared at the slim strap stretched across her back. Red and lacy with even thinner straps riding over her shoulders. A red bra was the last thing he'd expected this woman to be wearing under her t-shirt.
"It's not polite to stare, St. John," she said, her tone no nonsense with a hint of teasing.
His gaze snapped up to find Bliss O'Hara still facing away from him as she threaded a dark tee over her head.
"You got eyes in the back of your head, O'Hara?"
"Motherly instinct," she retorted, smoothing the tee down her anything-but-motherly torso.
"But you're not a—"
She gave him an over-the-shoulder have you forgotten I raised my brother the better part of his life look.
Maternal, stubborn, decisive, instinctual, and sexy. Damn, but this woman had more layers than an onion. And she'd caught him in an unguarded moment. But a red lace bra. Who'd have seen that coming?
Duh. Romance writer. How could he have forgotten that fact?
He scowled and turned his back to her. Which did nothing to erase the memory of that red bra, and had him wondering what color the panties under her jeans were.
A long unused member of his body twitched.
This was not happening. Not with this woman. Not even for a one-night stand. She was Middle-America through and through. A nice normal girl, except that she wrote romance novels and wore a red lacy bra.
But then, didn't most women think in romantic terms? Weren't most women searching for a hero to marry and build a family with them?
He was not romance hero material. Hell, he wasn't even husband material.
His coffee-drenched pants had turned clammy against his groin, further cooling his hormones. He stripped off his fatigues and underwear. A squeal sounded behind him. He spun towards Bliss O'Hara to find her facing him, the hiking boots clutched to her chest and her eyes…
Noting their downward angle lined up with the region just below his waist, he couldn't help but mock her with her own words. "It's not polite to stare, Miss O'Hara."
She dropped her boots, snatched a make-up bag from her suitcase, and headed for the bathroom. "I'll be brushing my teeth."
He watched her stalk off, trying to fit the girl scandalized by seeing his privates with the woman who had written one helluva steamy love scene in the Cooper book. He hadn't thought much about that scene when he'd read it. But now that he'd met the woman who'd created it…
Who was Bliss O'Hara? Protective sister? Seductress? Or something else altogether? Bottom line, the more he learned about this woman, the less he seemed to know her.
"It's been secured," Jake said as he climbed the stairs in front of her to the second floor of the ramshackle building where Robbie had been living.
"I can see that," Bliss said as her head cleared the landing, grateful for the distraction of the muscled guy in fatigues and Saint-black tee standing, arms crossed with holstered guns prominent in front of one of the four doors on this level. Robbie's door no doubt. The image of a naked Jake St. John seemed indelibly imprinted on her retinas, and climbing the stairs eyelevel to his backside did not help her forget what she'd seen.
The hulk stepped aside as they approached. Jake stopped short of the door and offered over his shoulder, "His place has been trashed."
"You already told me…more than once," she replied, annoyed Jake was still treating her like some faint-of-heart girl prone to melodramatic reactions. Though, back in the bunker when she'd turned around and caught him au natural, her reaction was a bit over the top.
To make it worse, she was annoyed she liked every eye-candy inch of Jake St. John, with or without clothing. If only he didn't look so much like her fictional Nick Savage character.
"Just reminding you," he said. "Be prepared."
She rolled her eyes at his back as he opened the door, as much an attempt to break the spell he had on her as her annoyance surfacing. The hulk, catching her eye-roll, raised an eyebrow at her. But it was the scan of Savage-blue eyes sliding over her shirtless back she was recalling.
Yeah, she'd caught him looking her over back at the command center when, in her haste, she'd removed her shirt without thinking. She wasn't used to having other people around, plus she was determined not to give him any excuses to complain she was holding them up.
Jake stepped aside, revealing the state of Robbie's quarters, jolting her back to the present. She swallowed, stepped inside, and glanced around the space.
"You okay?" he asked.
Was that a note of concern in his deep voice? Probably just wishful thinking on her part. She tossed back at him, "Reminds me of Robbie's bedroom on a larger scale." Giving him a sidelong look, she added, "You were a teenage boy once. You know what slobs you guys can be."
His pupils pulsed at her. "With five kids in tight quarters, my mother never allowed this level of disorder."
She might have been affronted by his jab at her parenting skills if the fact he was one of five children didn't distract her. She hadn't even thought about him having a family.
Then again, he'd been on his way to visit his sister when their paths first crossed. And, now that she thought about it, she remembered hearing the sounds of children in the background the first time she'd called him. Children and Jake St. John just didn't seem to fit together in her mind.
He nodded into the room. "Since you're here, you might as well look around and see if you spot anything out of the ordinary."
"I've never been here," she said as she moved through the room, room being the operative word. It was a one-room space, with even the bathroom partitioned off by just a curtain. Far removed from the spacious hacienda of a compound she'd woken up in.
The bathroom adjoining Jake's quarters might only have been big enough to house a sink, toilet, and shower, but it far bested Robbie's draped off toilet. Also, unlike Jake's bathroom with its burnt orange walls and bright blue tiled fixtures that had distracted her from having seen a naked Jake…at least for a second or two, this one did nothing to distract her from reality.
"You know your brother. Maybe there's something here that'll mean something to you, something that'll give us a direction to work toward," Jake said.
And this was reality.
She eyed an ancient couch with its frame upended and cushions sliced open. So much for her smart-aleck remark about the place looking like a teenage boy's room. This had nothing to do with being a slob. Bliss bit her bottom lip and gave Jake a glance. She could use the reassurance of a strong arm right now.
But he was across the room, peering out the window facing what had to be a side street, given the apartment building was on the corner.
She moved on, noting how few possessions there were in the room. A wooden chair on its side next to a small upturned wooden table. Nowhere near as grand as the massive carved table off the hacienda kitchen. No brightly tiled kitchen either, just a hot plate on the floor by the overturned table. Was that all he had to cook on? Where was his fridge? Jake's team had four gas burners, an ample refrigerator, and microwave.
An empty shelf hung cattywonkus from the wall, cans and dry goods littering the floor below. Refried beans, and more refried beans. Every can. Nothing wrong with beans, but the boy she remembered lived on cheeseburgers, fries, and junk food.
Like the couch, the bed—more a cot than even Jake's single bed—had been upended and its mattress shredded. She'd hoped to see evidence of a robbery. But this went beyond a missing television…if he even had one. She hadn't seen any cable or antenna hook ups and she knew what they'd look like, even in this part of the world. Back at the compound, several computers and a bank of surveillance screens occupied long tabl
es to one side of the common area that took up most of the front of the hacienda.
The hulk at the door beckoned Jake, drawing their attention, and Jake stepped out of the room. She'd have liked to hear what they were talking about, but she couldn't walk away from the carnage that had been her brother's life. This was as close to him as she'd gotten in over two years, and it shocked her how much his life had changed.
She moved to a chest, its drawers pulled out and upended. A small picture frame had been smashed, its pieces scattered across the top of the dresser. She picked up the photo that had been torn from it, a shot of her and Robbie at an amusement park in happier times. What was so special about this photo that this should be the one he'd chosen to take with him on his trip?
A closer look revealed it'd been printed on plain paper, not photo paper. He hadn't taken it from home. But she had an idea where he'd copied it from.
"You're a lot younger there," Jake said, peering over her shoulder.
She startled, unaware he'd come back into the room. "It was a throwback Thursday shot I posted on Facebook."
He frowned, his brow furrowing.
"Facebook," she snapped, afraid any tone more cordial would reveal her true feelings and she didn't want Jake St. John seeing her as any weaker than he no doubt already thought her. "You know. Social media."
"I know what Facebook is."
"Then, Mr. Smarty Pants, you know Throwback Thursdays are about posting old photos."
"Actually, that I did not know. But what's more important is, it means your brother was monitoring your page."
So that's what Jake the SEAL's contemplative frown had been about. He'd been trying to make a connection between social media and Robbie's disappearance. She was just heartened to know her brother had been watching her life events, and murmured, "Yeah. That's where I figure he got the picture."
She picked through several other crumpled pieces of paper littering the floor, finding more photos she'd posted on-line. Standing, she smoothed one picture against the top of the dresser. Her stomach churned to see pictures of herself—their life so violently crushed.