by Dana Marton
The soldiers were holding Joseph. Gina marched right up to him and slapped the cuffs on. He drew his head back, and Cal realized he was planning on spitting on her.
“It’s going to be hard wiping your broken nose with a broken arm,” she said without flinching, in a voice any Wild West gunslinger would have been proud of.
Joseph swallowed. Then he let loose a nasty diatribe. Gina just looked at him and stuck her chin out. For a moment Cal thought she might do more. Her hands were fisting at her sides.
“You’re not worth it,” she said instead and turned away from the man.
Even as she walked, bent against the wind, Cal could detect a small spring in her step, a different look on her face, and realized just what Brant Law had given her back by handing her the cuffs. He reached a hand toward the man.
Brant accepted the handshake. “I know the situation you were put in. Thank you for what you’ve done.”
And as they led Joseph away, Cal knew without a doubt that Gina had been right. Loyalty was a tricky thing. He had made the right decision. He had made a decision for justice and for the future, a future he hoped to share with the woman next to him.
How on earth was he going to convince her of that when she was the most independent, self-sufficient person he had ever met?
Joseph called out a few more obscenities to him and Gina. Cal stepped between them to block her from him. “Want me to shut him up?”
“Actually, he’s taking his capture better than I thought he would,” she said.
“He doesn’t believe for a moment that the law could hold him. He probably thinks his connections will have him out by tonight.” Cal looked after him, at the face distorted with hate. “He can’t hurt us. He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
“I promise you that,” Brant agreed. “He has no idea how much we have on him. He will never see the outside of a prison again. Why don’t you two go down to the bay? It’s secured. There are teams going through the woods to pick up any stray targets. I’ll send a man with you to make sure you don’t run into trouble.”
“Keep your men. You need them here. Others might come, trying to get away from the island, not knowing the choppers have been demolished,” Cal said. “We can handle trouble.” He wanted a few moments alone with Gina.
Brant looked at Tsernyakov, then at them. “I suppose you can.”
GINA HURRIED THROUGH the jungle, eager to see the others and make sure they were all right, to thank them for bringing reinforcement.
“Mind stopping for a second?” Cal reached for her arm.
She stopped and turned.
“So…I’ve been thinking…” he said.
“When did you have the time?” Her mind was still reeling from everything that had happened.
“We are leaving the island today.” His face was somber. He was still holding on to her arm.
She stared at him for a moment. They would leave today. Which meant he would go back to London, to his old life, while she would return to the U.S. to start her life over. The distance seemed real and insurmountable all of a sudden.
How soon would they have to part? Maybe as soon as they reached the bay. She wasn’t ready for that.
She lifted her arms to his, as if the small gesture could somehow anchor them to each other. “Listen, I—”
“I need more time,” he said. “I’m not ready to let you go. I think there are things we ought to talk about.”
“Yes.” She swallowed her relief and swayed toward him a little.
He pulled her the rest of the way. His gaze dropped to her lips. She let her eyes drift closed in anticipation.
His mouth touched hers. Her heart gave a slow thud in her chest. His masculinity flooded her senses, the warmth of his lips on hers making her melt. She opened for him, wanting more, wanting him. He kissed her passionately, deep and long. Odd how she could feel neither the wind nor the rain. She could barely remember where they were by the time a tap on her shoulder interrupted.
A second passed before she pulled away and could focus on the people around them. Anita, Sam and Carly were looking at them with smiles that stretched from ear to ear.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt.” Anita grinned the widest.
Cal drew up an eyebrow.
“Get a room,” Sam said.
Carly pointed at herself, then at the other two. “Bridesmaids. It’s a deal breaker,” she told Cal.
Gina winced, but he took her friends in stride. “I took that for granted from the beginning. Ladies, it would be an honor,” he said with his most charming smile.
The air got caught in her lungs.
But she didn’t have time to think about whether he was serious or just rolling with the joke. The others jumped her with their “Are you okay?” and “We were so worried.” They were hugging her for all they were worth, demanding details about everything that had transpired since they had departed.
Complete acceptance.
They knew what she’d done, why she’d been in prison, although not the details. But, oddly, they didn’t seem to hold that against her. She was accepted and forgiven. She glanced at Cal. Same there.
And then something shifted inside her. Cal had been right. It was time she forgave herself. She blinked away the tears that clouded her vision all of a sudden.
“You okay?” Sam asked.
“Couldn’t be better.” Felt ten pounds lighter, for sure.
“What are you doing in the jungle?” Gina asked.
“Looking for you, you—” The sound of gunfire coming from the bay cut Sam off.
“Looks like things are not as secure as they thought,” Carly said and threw her a challenging look. “You two lovebirds coming back with us to kick some terrorist butt?”
“I know why you’re in a hurry. I bet Nick is here,” Gina retorted.
Carly grinned, not bothering to deny it.
Gina smiled back. They were fighting the good fight. They were on the right side. She didn’t have to look at Cal to know the answer. “You bet.”
“NO REGRETS?” GINA asked.
“None,” Cal said, and from the look on his face he meant it. “You were right. Loyalty is tricky. A person has to be loyal to the right people, to the right cause.”
She nodded and leaned against the railing, looked out at the endless ocean. “I can’t believe you got the yacht.”
The cyclone had cleared out as rapidly as it had descended on the island. The Army boats that had taken them through the zone controlled by pirates had left them now that they were in safe waters. They were alone and out of danger. Hadn’t he promised something if such an occasion ever presented itself? The thought was enough to send tingles down her spine.
“They owed me a favor.” He moved closer, his gaze on her face, heat swirling in his eyes. “I turned on the autopilot. We have a couple of hours before we get near Acapulco and I have to take over again.”
She really hoped he had the same plan for those hours as she did.
He took her hands. “Maybe we should remove ourselves from the sun.”
A very sensible suggestion. “Definitely.” She followed him toward the cabin, turned out in cherrywood and luxury fabrics, the finest cabinetry work anywhere. The place was spacious as far as boat cabins went but still pretty tight quarters. The sprawling bed took up most of the space.
She sat on the silk bedcover. There wasn’t really any other place to go. The room was charged with awareness between them.
“Can I get you a drink?”
She drew up an eyebrow. “Let me guess—you drink martinis.”
“Not a great fan, actually. Given a choice, I prefer gin and tonic.”
“How very un-Bondish of you. Soda would be fine.”
He poured and handed her the crystal glass. “There’s another difference between me and Mr. Bond,” he said.
“You don’t have a souped-up car waiting for us?” she guessed. “It’s okay. I’ll live with the disappointment.”
“Wel
l, of course I have that. I’m a guy. It was my number one priority when I made my first million.” His grin faded, his expression turning serious. “But now I want you and only you. Very—how did you say?—un-Bondish. I think he prefers to flitter from woman to woman.”
Her heart expanded. “That will considerably extend your life expectancy. I don’t do flitterers. I’m Italian-American. We can be a little fierce when it comes to things like that.”
He sat on the bed next to her and pulled her onto his lap. He was smiling again, looking pleased as all get-out as he leaned in to kiss her, giving ample demonstration that under all that cool and smooth British demeanor, he wasn’t a stranger to fierce.
His hands stole under her shirt, and pleasure skittered across her skin as his palm glided upward.
“I want to spend some serious time with you,” he said when he pulled away. “I know it’s kind of sudden, but I want you to factor that into your plans when you sit down to figure out what you want to do next.”
Her heart thundered. “Consider it figured,” she murmured and returned her lips to his.
He dragged his thumb across the undersides of her breasts, making heat pool inside her. It was a little frightening how he could undo her with a look, with a touch, how he could make her body crazy for him.
She stole her hands up his chest, over the wide pane of muscles. He had an incredible body. All in all, he was an incredible man.
His palms moved higher until they covered her aching nipples. The friction sent moisture to the vee of her thighs.
“Hot here,” he said between kisses.
“Too much clothing.” She helped him out of his shirt as he helped her out of hers.
“You’re breathtaking.” He caressed her.
Maybe she was being superficial, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his chest. “Not bad yourself.” She outlined his pectoral muscles.
He sucked in a breath when she got to his flat, hard nipples. She leaned forward and kissed first one, then the other.
He laid her gently on the bed, pushed her bikini top out of the way and returned the favor. When he gently began to suckle an engorged tip, she nearly came off the bed with the exquisite sensation.
Then he did some twirly thing.
“What was that?” she asked when she regained her breath.
“Trying to learn what you like.” He applied pressure to the nipple between his lips.
“So far, so good,” she said when she could talk again.
“I believe in slow, careful learning. One’s studies should always be deliberate.”
“Is that the English method?” She sighed as he nibbled his way up her neck. “I like it.”
“I’m a thorough sort of chap.”
“Commendable—” She forgot whatever else she was about to say when his hand slipped inside her shorts. “I…it’s been a while.” She rode the building pressure, feeling none of the slow-careful thing he seemed to possess. She was in more of a quick-and-reckless frame of mind. Cultural differences, she supposed.
He flicked the button open and dragged the shorts down over her feet, then let them drop to the floor. She was naked save her bikini bottom.
“And finally the naughty bits,” he said with a sly look and hooked a finger into the waistband.
Naughty bits? She hated the silly grin she knew must be sitting on her face. She was just going to have to get over it. Because she liked the way he handled her naughty bits. She liked it a lot.
His naughty bits were straining the zipper of his fly. She eased their plight by tugging the zipper down. That didn’t seem enough. She peeled his pants over his hips and down his legs. Now they were even. And…oh, my.
Her eyes, which had gone wide at the sight of him, floated closed the next second as he invaded her body with a long finger, parting her flesh, eliciting waves of pleasure. She didn’t notice when the bikini bottoms disappeared. The boxer shorts vanished just as miraculously.
He held her gaze, filling her slowly, stretching her, pushing her higher and higher onto some imaginary cliff of pleasure. He barely got all the way when she reached the peak and soared, her muscles pulsating around him.
He gave her a very rakish and satisfied smile.
“Hey, I’m part of the fast-food generation, attention deficit and whatever. I don’t think I should be expected to know slow.” Then she grew oddly embarrassed for a second. “I didn’t mean to rush to the end.”
He began to move with a deliberate, tantalizing pace. “What end? We’ve barely started.”
And then he proved it to her.
An hour later, when they lay sated in each other’s arms, she said, “It hasn’t…Is it like this for others? I’ve never…It was like in the movies. Did you use some secret trick? Some British thing?”
He gathered her close and grinned at her. “It’s a love thing, luv,” he said.
Epilogue
“Is this an American thing?” Cal held up the fifth pair of handcuffs they’d gotten as a wedding present.
“It’s a cop thing.” Gina took them away from him. A couple of her ex-colleagues had attended the wedding.
“Not that I’m complaining.”
She raised an eyebrow but couldn’t help a smile. “We could always return them.”
“Absolutely not, Mrs. Spencer. That would be rude. You should know by now that us Brits are unfailingly polite,” he said with mock severity.
Guests whirled around them in the grand ballroom at the Berkley in London. Her sisters were on the dance floor, as were Anita, Carly and Sam, the sisters of her heart. Her ex-teammates were in various stages of engagement and battling prewedding nerves themselves. Their records had been cleared and now they could all focus on the future.
All four of them had found new lives, new loves, new hope. Gina’s hand slid to her belly, where something else new was growing day by day. Cal’s arm came around her and he put a hand over hers, over their unborn child.
She smiled up at him.
Once, she had believed that the dangerous mission she’d been recruited to was Mission: Impossible. She knew better now. It had been Mission: Redemption for all of them.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0582-0
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Copyright © 2007 by Marta Dana
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Table of Contents
Chapter One French PolynesiaOne week later Gina Torno padded barefoot toward the ocean, wearing nothing but a midnight-blue bikini, keeping an eye out for the motley staff that worked on their mysterious host’s private island. The rest of her team—Carly, Anita and Sam—were all busy conducting their own recon missions. They needed to cover ground quickly, which required splitting up. Two workmen were hammering something at the dock, wearing jeans and nothing else, swearing up a blue streak. The yacht that had brought the women in the night before from Acapulco was still there, as were two motorboats. The water was the most brilliant azure. Unlike Seven Mile Beach, which they had left behind on Grand Cayman, where tourists stirred up the sand. The contrast between
the gorgeous, unspoiled environment and the evil-hearted man who owned it was startling. If their mysterious host was Tsernyakov. They’d been hunting for the man for months now, and he proved to be as elusive as the morning mis
Chapter One
Chapter Two “What do you mean, he caught you?” Anita’s forehead tightened with tension. Gina took a deep breath and recounted the events of the last hour, watching the path that led to their bungalow, standing in the cover of the half-open door. “So who was he?” Sam kept an eye on the back through the bathroom window. “What kind of computer was it?” came from Carly, who already had a gleam in her eyes. She was going through the kitchen, looking for makeshift weapons. They’d identified as many as they could upon arrival. She was now distributing them so they would be on hand if anything happened. “You’ll get your turn with the PC, I’m sure.” Gina shook her head with a half smile. Carly was computer crazy. Not surprising from a former hacker. “You bet I will.” She paused midtask and reached for a cookie on the kitchen counter under the window through which she kept an eye on the beach. “Sugarcane cookies.” She made a face. “I could kill for a doughnut.” Gina winced at the word choice. Be
Chapter Two
Chapter Three Not only did she not know anything about birds, she didn’t know the first thing about hiking, despite what she had told Mark. She’d been a city cop, born and raised in Philadelphia, a city girl through and through. Gina trudged behind Cal, uphill on slippery mud. Under the thick canopy, the soil hadn’t yet had a chance to dry out since the last storm. They’d had to leave their four-wheelers behind halfway up the mountain. “Watch your step,” he said without turning around. She didn’t respond but kept her attention on her surroundings. Without him, she would have been lost already. She did great with city mazes, back alleys, irregular streets and winding boulevards. She knew the marks to pay attention to, could orient herself by smell alone. Chinatown had a distinct scent, as did the old industrial district and its factories that had been converted into high-priced condos, the Italian market, the park system that started behind the Art Museum, the projects. The jungle left