With any other woman, he’d have stopped it right away, no reason for anyone to be messing with his face. But how could he say no to Allegra? She was perfectly right—they’d had sex and she had a right to try to figure out what he looked like.
She’d leaned down, bumping noses with him, awkwardly, endearingly.
He’d been trying his best to ignore the fact that they were both naked and that he’d had a hard-on for half the night that showed no signs of going down.
Not grabbing her, rolling over with her and entering that smooth little body was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
Then she’d cupped his face, delicate hands gripping him, huge sightless eyes so intense he couldn’t possibly look away—and told him he was beautiful.
He’d come so hard and so long it was a miracle he had any liquid left in his body.
It was only long moments later, when he had his breath back, when his heart had stopped trying to hammer its way out of his chest, when he could see again, that he felt shame. Their stomachs were smeared with his semen and he felt like a teenager who’d come in his pants. He hadn’t done that since he was a horny fifteen-year-old with a perpetual hard-on.
That shamed him. But it was the dazed, lost feeling of skidding out of control that scared him.
He was thirty-eight years old and he’d fucked his way through a battalion of women and he’d never had this feeling of being on the edge of a precipice, about to fall into an abyss. It scared the holy shit out of him.
With the excuse that he needed to clean up, he’d gotten out of bed as soon as he humanly could, showered up and changed into sweats. From the safety of the doorway, well beyond touching distance, he told her he would cook breakfast while she had her own shower, and had fled to the kitchen.
Kowalski thought longingly of his apartment. It was big and empty, with a functioning kitchen, an oversized bed, a couch and a state-of-the-art home entertainment system, all he needed. Whenever he made a noise in it, there was an echo. But it and every thing in it was completely under his control.
Just listen to her, he thought, edging closer to the door leading into the bathroom. Just listen to that. It was fucking magic. She was trying scales now, up and down, as pure as a waterfall. After a while, she went back to the original melody, a little more complex now, since she was a little more sure of it.
The shower water stopped and Kowalski headed back into the kitchen. Making breakfast hadn’t been hard at all. She had an amazingly well-stocked fridge and a freezer filled with plastic containers of home-cooked meals, just ripe for the nuking. The cardboard tops had been scored with the letters B, L and D. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, he found, when he opened a B filled with homemade blueberry muffins. There was another B container with a cheese omelet right next to it. He’d nuke that, too.
He’d eat breakfast and get out of here, get out of pretty, talented Allegra Ennis’ life. Not for her sake, but for his. This was scary shit and he could be cut off at the knees at any moment. He was tall and strong and tough, had been so all his life. There wasn’t a man alive on the face of the earth that he feared.
Allegra terrified him.
The coffee filtered down from the coffeemaker, the microwave dinged and the short hairs on Kowalski’s neck rose.
She was here.
He could feel her, he could smell her, that faint scent of spring.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“Hi.” Kowalski slowly turned around. She’d changed into faded jeans and a bright green sweater. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and she was barefoot.
She was so fucking beautiful. This wasn’t fair. Why did she have to be so beautiful?
She was looking in his general direction, hesitating on the threshold, one pretty bare foot folded over the other.
Kowalski walked over to her slowly, making sure she could hear his footsteps. He could move silently when he had to, but he wanted her to hear him coming.
The way he’d simply rolled out of bed and escaped to the shower without even a kiss—well, if she spat in his eye, he had it coming.
When he was so close to her that spring-like scent filled his nostrils, she straightened. “Douglas,” she said and smiled, holding her hand out. His heart gave a sharp kick and he rubbed his chest absently before reaching out to her.
Kowalski placed her hand on his forearm and he could feel the almost audible click! as everything in the universe fell into alignment, like tumblers in a slot machine. His arm was made for her hand. Her hand belonged there. This was the way it was meant to be.
Allegra Ennis was going to break his fucking heart, and there was damn all he could do about it.
“Breakfast is ready. I hope you’re hungry because I made a lot.”
“Good.” She drew in a deep breath, delicate nostrils flaring. Though Kowalski couldn’t seem to smell anything but her, he knew she was smelling coffee and muffins and omelet and toast. “I’m starving.”
He walked her over to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair for her with his free hand. “Here, honey.”
“Wait a minute.” She stood a moment, frowning. Her fingers plucked at his sleeve. “This isn’t a tuxedo. What on earth are you wearing? Nothing of mine could possibly fit you.”
He sat her in the chair and placed a warm muffin on a plate in front of her, gently guiding her hand to the plate. She felt awkwardly for the knife. Once she had it, she cut the muffin neatly in quarters and ate a quarter daintily.
Kowalski sat next to her so he could help, if she needed it. “I keep a gym bag in the car with two changes of clothes and a toothbrush and razor in case I want to take off for a weekend without going home. I’ve got on sweats. If you don’t mind, later on I might take off for a run. I’m used to a lot of exercise.”
“Fine. I need some time too, on the harp, practicing.” She smiled as she popped another bite of muffin into her mouth. “I guess we have that in common—we’re both pretty disciplined.”
The idea startled him. So far, he’d been completely and utterly blown away by the differences between them. Her beauty, her delicate physique, her incredible voice and musical talent. Her charming smile and easy way with people. She was his polar opposite. But look beyond that, he saw now, and they were in many ways alike.
The women Kowalski had dated so far—well, fucked more than dated—weren’t real big on discipline and hard work and steadfastness. They’d been the kind of women to hang out in bars, hoping to snare a SEAL—for some goddamned reason SEALs seemed to be flavor of the month for the groupies—or at least have themselves a hot time between the sheets. They were women who weren’t that good at holding down a job, who looked at other women as competition, who couldn’t see much beyond tonight’s beer party.
Allegra was completely different. Everything about her showed discipline and hard work, a sober lifestyle. Her house was filled with books—from when she could read—and CDs. Everything in the house was neat and showed good taste. Her friendships with Suzanne and Claire were real. He could never forget her not wanting to bother either of them when she desperately needed help getting up on the stage. After a near-death experience, Suzanne’s first thought had been for Allegra.
“How many hours a day do you practice?” he asked.
“Depends.” She daintily picked up another quarter muffin. Kowalski had already had four muffins himself. “If I’m close to a concert or a recording, I can go up to eight hours a day.” She turned her head toward him. “If we lived together I’d drive you crazy. Guaranteed.”
Kowalski’s heart gave another huge kick in his chest at the idea of living with this woman. At this rate, he was going to have a heart attack.
“Look.” She held her hand out to him, and he took it. “Look at my calluses. I’m surprised you didn’t say anything when I was touching your face.”
Kowalski held her hand, delicate and long-fingered, trying to figure out what she was talking about. Then he saw them—tiny little circular calluses on t
he pads of her fingertips. They were incredibly cute—harp calluses.
“My skin’s pretty weather-beaten, honey. You’d have to have tougher calluses than those for me to feel them. Here, feel mine.” He brought her hand to the web between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, to the thick scarred skin there.
“Oh, my.” Allegra looked startled as she felt gingerly. “Whatever caused that?”
“When we start training on short guns—mainly .45s—that’s what we get. They carry a big kick. When we shoot, the hand absorbs the kinetic energy. A big blister forms where the gun impacts the hand most. It bleeds and breaks open every night because we’re firing hundreds of rounds a day. Thousands a week. Finally, the blister just heals over into a big callus. Sort of like a shooter’s badge of honor. See?” He held out his left hand, touching her lightly to let her know his hand was there. She felt carefully over that hand, too.
“You’ve got the same scars on this hand. Are you left-handed or right-handed?”
“As it happens, I’m right-handed but it doesn’t make any difference. You shouldn’t favor either hand when you shoot. What happens if you’re in a gunfight and your good hand is out of commission? We need to be able to fight with both and we practice with both.”
Allegra rubbed the webbing of his hands. “That must have hurt.”
Like a bitch, he thought. “A little, in the beginning,” he allowed.
She smiled to herself. “Something else we have in common. Matching calluses.” She dropped his hands and he instantly missed her touch, as if a current had been switched off. “Can you please tell me where the milk is?”
It was scary that her touch could affect him so deeply. He was thinking about how much he’d like to just stay here forever, by her side in the quiet morning light, sipping coffee and talking. And he was thinking at the same time that if he had any brains in his head at all, he’d get into his SUV and just drive away, double-quick time. What had she asked? Oh, yeah. Where the milk was.
“Bravo red, eleven o’clock,” he said absently.
“I beg your pardon?” Allegra whipped her head around to him so quickly, soft thick strands of fiery hair caught in the zipper of his sweat-parka. Her lush mouth formed an O.
“Sorry.” What an asshole he was. He’d spoken without thinking. “Sorry, honey. That’s spotter’s language. The milk is—”
Wait a minute, he thought, as he gently disentangled the lock of hair from the zipper before it could hurt her. He needed to think this through.
Kowalski’s job in the Navy had been to break strong, hard men, beat them down to a pulp, rob them of their self-confidence until their characters were down to bedrock. What was left couldn’t be intimidated and if it could, they were out. Kowalski had been the recruits’ worst nightmares because he knew full well that they would face horrible things in battle, worse even than the worst things he could throw at them.
Working men till they bled on the training ground so they wouldn’t bleed in battle wasn’t pretty. He’d had three death threats from men who’d desperately wanted to make the Teams but had crumpled under his brutal, unrelenting pressure.
Kowalski had seen good men, strong men, finally give up their highest ambition, their most cherished dream, because he’d asked the almost impossible of them and they couldn’t do it. Kowalski wasn’t particularly proud of it, but that was what he did. He was a master at breaking men down until they touched bottom. Whether they came up again was their business, and if they came up, they were unbreakable.
Now was his chance here to do the opposite—to give this wonderful woman some self-confidence, teach her how to negotiate her world of darkness a little better. She wasn’t dealing well with her blindness. He could help.
“Listen, honey.” He edged his chair closer to her. “When soldiers observe something in the field through their scopes, they need a language to tell the others what they see. The info has to be given fast and it has to be right. So we’ve built up a code that lets a fellow soldier know exactly where something is. So here’s the deal. Imagine a building, any building. Picture it in your head.”
“Okay.” Allegra’s eyes were closed as she concentrated. She was smiling. “Great-grandma’s house in Ireland.”
“How high is it?”
“Three stories. My great-grandparents had eleven kids. My second cousin Moira turned it into a hugely successful bed-and-breakfast last year. I spent a lot of time there when I was a child. We had family reunions all the time. Big, noisy, singing-and-dancing reunions.”
Kowalski tried to imagine a big, noisy, singing-and-dancing family reunion and failed. He’d grown up with a sad, drunken father and a mom who’d lit out when he was eight.
“Did you have your own room?”
“No. I always slept with Moira’s two eldest daughters, Kathleen and Sinaid.”
“Where was their room?”
“On the third floor. Front right-hand corner window.”
“Okay. So the first thing you need is a system of reference points for a building. We call it the color clock. Each side of the building has a color code. The façade is white, the back is black, the left-hand side is red and the right-hand side is green. Can you repeat that?”
“Front white, back black, left red and right green,” she said promptly.
“Good girl,” Kowalski said, and she beamed at him, pleased.
Shit, his heart did that huge thump again. Oh, Christ.
“Now, from the ground up. Each floor has a letter and we use military designations. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie…”
“So I would have been sleeping in Charlie green?”
“Hey, so you know this stuff already. You were in the Navy, then, and didn’t tell me. No fair,” Kowalski said in a heavily exaggerated suspicious tone, and Allegra laughed out loud.
“I don’t think I could be in the Navy. Can you be in the Navy if you can’t swim?”
“Be a little hard.” He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. “But you’re smart and brave. If anyone can do it, I’d bet on you.”
“Ah, Douglas Kowalski, of the County Cork Kowalskis, ye’ve kissed the Blarney Stone one time too often, ye have.” She lay her hand on his arm, which he was beginning to recognize as her way of orienting herself. Grounding herself through him. “But bless you for it, me lad.”
“No, no, you’re a natural.” Kowalski loved everything about this. The gentle flirting, the feeling that he could help her gain self-confidence. The feeling that she depended on him for something he could give her. “Okay, pay attention, now. Let’s say we’re talking about a surface, like this table. Under the table is Alpha. The table itself is Bravo, above the table is Charlie. Now we go by another clock, this time a real one. Imagine the table surface as a clock face. So straight ahead of you on the table is six o’clock, across the table is noon, to your right is three o’clock and to your left is—”
“Nine o’clock.” Her head wobbled gently as she took all of it in. “So, tell me. Where is the milk again?”
“Bravo red eleven o’clock,” he said, and her hand reached out and unerringly found the milk carton.
“Oh! Oh my God!” Allegra’s face lit up as she grasped the carton. There was no other description for it, she simply glowed, with pride and delighted surprise. “Again! Tell me to find something else!”
“Coffee pot at Bravo green three o’clock.”
She reached for the coffee pot and he managed just in time to turn the handle toward her so she wouldn’t burn herself, cursing himself for not thinking. Damn it, he always thought things through, several moves ahead, but Allegra simply ate up huge portions of his hard disk.
“Bingo,” she said, and hefted it.
“Here, honey, let me pour.” There were limits to what he’d let her do. Pouring boiling coffee in her lap was not in the program. She sipped and he watched the thoughts going through her head as she realized new possibilities. She felt for the saucer, placed the cup delicately in it, and turned to hi
m with huge gleaming eyes.
“Again,” she breathed.
“Muffins. Bravo noon.”
Muffins, check. Sugar, check. The omelet plate, check. His fork, check. Her fork, check. They covered every object on the table.
Finally, Allegra sat back, a brilliant smile on her face. “That’s really great,” she said. “Let’s try you.” Her left hand tapped its way up his right arm and stopped, cupping his right shoulder, delicately kneading. “Charlie red.”
Kowalski placed his hand over hers. “That’s right,” he said huskily.
Her right hand slowly felt its way to his other shoulder. “Charlie green.”
She was holding him in her arms, awkwardly, leaning forward from her chair. Kowalski lifted her up and over him, straddling him.
They sat quietly a moment, adjusting to the feel of her on him, Kowalski’s hands resting loosely on her small waist. Her hair spilled over his arms in a shiny fall. He looked down, watching her face intently. She was staring straight ahead, at chin level. Her breath washed over his neck. She was caressing his shoulders, slowly, learning him all over again through touch.
Allegra slowly leaned forward until her forehead touched his chin, rolling her head back and forth, as if she could get to know him through her skin. Then she turned her head slightly to kiss his jaw. Exactly where his ugly scar was. She lifted her head to look sightlessly at him.
Kowalski’s chest grew tight. There was no mistaking Allegra’s expression, a mixture of admiration and affection. He didn’t even try to lie to himself about it because it was the first time he’d ever had a woman look at him like that.
Women had two expressions with him—repulsion or lust. No in between, certainly never anything like what he was seeing on Allegra’s face right now.
She brought her right hand down slowly over his chest until it rested over his heart. The heart she could clearly feel beating rapidly, like someone in fibrillation, on the verge of a heart attack.
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