by Cindy Gerard
And when something flashed across his face, something haunted and hunted, she was certain she believed him.
Mouth tight, he tugged the T-shirt over his head, then pulled it down over his chest and covered the scar.
“Sometimes the bad guys get in a few licks,” he said flatly, then just that fast, Indy Luke was back. A grin on his face, a light attitude once again ruling the hour.
“The clothes fit?” He gestured toward her sweater and jeans.
Okay, so he didn’t want to talk about the scar. She owed him so much, the least she could do was respect his privacy.
“Good guess on the sizes,” she said, determined to follow his lead and keep this light.
He flashed a wicked grin. “No guessing involved. When I mentioned that I was a fan, did I leave out the part about a minor obsession?”
His smile was teasing, but she was beginning to think there might be some truth to his words.
“You know, I used to receive love letters from teenage admirers, many of whom took pride in finding out intimate details about me. So tell me . . . were you really one of those love-struck puppies who actually knew my bra size?
He laughed. “My secret’s out. But you can relax, Angelface. I already told you I’m not going stalker on you.”
She smiled tightly. “And yet, it would make this lovely adventure so complete.”
He gave her a sympathetic look. “I’ll get you out of this, okay? Just trust me. Now eat.”
He’d spread an assortment of food on the low coffee table, from quinoa, a cereal she had come to appreciate while in Peru, to mangos and bananas and hot peppers. He’d apparently hit every street vendor in town. There were anticuchos complete with corn on the cob, boiled potatoes, and chili sauce; tacu-tacu, a seasoned beans-and-rice dish; and ceviche with limes and onions.
“Inca-Kola?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at the cans of soft drink he pulled out of a paper sack and popped open.
“Nectar of the gods,” he said with a grin. “Smells and looks like a cross between banana juice and—”
“Llama urine?” she suggested, because anyone who’d ever tried the sickeningly sweet soda pretty much held the same opinion.
“Yum yum.” He lifted a glass in salute.
He managed to make her smile again. “I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.”
“It’s the adrenaline,” he said as they both attacked the food. “It’ll burn right past the hunger. At least for a while. Once it lets down, though, everything else takes over. Fatigue. Nerves. And hunger.”
Yeah, she got that part. Especially about the nerves. “And then there’s the pain,” he added, glancing at her knee.
He was right about that, too. A dull, persistent ache had set into her knee. Pain, she could handle. The rest of it . . . not so much.
She watched him dig in to the food like he didn’t have a care in the world. But she knew he was always tactically aware of their danger.
“How do you keep so cool?”
He grunted and licked a drop of pepper sauce off his finger. “Practice.”
She leaned back, suddenly incapable of keeping up the banter. Another question burned for an answer. “How do you . . .” She tried again. “How do you deal with—” She just couldn’t say it out loud.
“Look at me,” he said softly.
When she met his eyes, his sober expression told her he understood exactly what she wanted to ask.
“You just do,” he said firmly. “You remind yourself that if you hadn’t killed him, he’d have killed you. You remember that you didn’t start this fight. Someone else did, someone bad. Someone who wouldn’t blink an eye over the blood he was responsible for spilling.
“That’s how you deal with it,” he went on as tears pooled in her eyes. “You remember that you’re the good guy, and good guys are sometimes forced by bad guys to do bad things.”
12
Val swallowed hard. “I still don’t understand why anyone would be after me. Why they would go to such lengths to find me.”
“We’re going to find out,” he promised with rock-solid conviction. “We’re going to find out who it is, what they want, and then we’re going to deal with them.”
For a short while, back in the woods, she’d been under the illusion that they had dealt with them. The four men who had been chasing her were dead. That was the end of it. They were safe, right?
With a sober look, Luke had set her straight.
“Those men were mercs. Hired guns,” he’d told her as they’d hiked away from the bodies, her knee throbbing with every step. “There’s a mastermind behind this. Someone big. Someone who has the money and resources to hunt you down.”
Despite the hard, vigilant look on his face, she’d kept telling herself that he was wrong. That it was over.
He hadn’t said another word. He’d just let her work it out in her mind.
And eventually, on that long, freezing ride in the rain, she had. Luke was right. One gunman had been talking on the phone. Though she hadn’t understood what he’d said, she did understand that he was reporting in. Whoever was on the other end of the line wanted her badly enough to chase her across Peru—and apparently he’d wanted her alive, or she’d be lying dead on that mountainside.
It was only after she’d reached that point, that she had accepted the reason Luke had gathered so many items from the bodies. He was going to connect the dots that would lead them to whoever was behind this.
“Hey—you still with me?”
Luke’s voice brought her out of her thoughts.
She forced a smile, feeling very contrite suddenly.
“Yeah. Listen . . . I need to say something.” But she was at a loss as to how to begin to cover all she had to thank him for. “I need to thank you.”
“Hey. I was hungry, too,” he said dismissively.
“I wasn’t talking about the food. Well, yes, the food, too, but . . . how do I ever thank you for saving my life? Several times. For getting me out of those mountains. For getting me warm. For making me feel like something other than a burden.”
He shifted so he was facing her. “You’re not a burden.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Right. You’re being shot at because of me. Don’t tell me it’s just a typical day in the life of Luke Colter.”
The minute she said it, the visual of that horrible scar came to mind. Oh, God. Maybe this was a typical day for him.
He was quiet for a moment, then confirmed her thoughts.
“Actually, that’s not too far from the truth.”
She met his eyes, recognizing that it was a big admission for him to make. “And what is the truth, Luke?”
He scratched his head, then shrugged. “Screw it,” he said, apparently reaching a decision. “You’re going to find out most of it later anyway. Earlier, you asked what I did for a living. And you’ve already figured out I’m not a nine-to-fiver. So here’s the down and dirty. I work for a man named Nate Black. Nate was my CO when I was still in the SEALs. He headed up a special task force at the request of and under the direction of President Billings.”
President Billings? Whoa. Val steeled herself because she understood that what came next was going to be huge.
“Nate pulled the team together from all branches of the military—Army, Marines, Navy . . . even a couple of company men. CIA,” he clarified when her brows furrowed.
“Anyway, we ran covert missions mostly in the Middle East and Africa, all off the grid, all under the directive of the joint chiefs. The unit—Task Force Mercy—was controversial to say the least, and after Billings’s second term expired, the new leadership’s prevailing consensus was that TFM was a potential political time bomb and needed to be disbanded. And just like that, it no longer existed.”
He lifted a shoulder as if it didn’t bother him, but she got a strong sense that it bothered him a lot. Just like she understood that he’d glossed over the importance and the dangerous nature of their missions.
> “Okay, fine. Shit happens. Power shifts. Life and war go on. So most of the team separated from the service shortly after that, and joined Nate when he set up a private contracting firm headquartered in Buenos Aires.”
“Private contracting?” She felt herself go pale. The term raised thoughts of rogue CIA agents and hired assassins. “You mean you’re mercenaries?”
His mouth tightened. “Mercenaries hire out to the highest bidder, Princess. Like those bastards back there on the train. Black Ops, Inc. works pretty much the way our old task force worked. Most of our ops are contracted for Uncle and were still doing the same kind of jobs. Only now, the government can disavow any association if an op goes FUBAR. Keeps the PC preachers happy.”
PC she got. Politically correct was the watchword of the day. FUBAR, however went over her head.
“Fucked up beyond all recognition,” he explained, seeing her confused frown. “Only BOI doesn’t fuck up. And we’re definitely not going to fuck up with you.”
She didn’t doubt it for one second. Despite his tendency to joke under the most extreme conditions, he was competent, capable, and ruthlessly brutal when he needed to be.
“Wait.” She’d skimmed right over something he’d said. Something important. “You said ‘we.’”
“I found a pay phone when I went out and put in a call to the guys. You’ve got most of the BOI team on board now. Nate’s working on getting us transpo.”
Oh, God. She’d been so caught up in getting warm and dry and fed, she hadn’t remembered a very immediate problem. “How am I going to get out of the country without a passport?”
“You don’t need a passport, Princess. You’ve got the BOIs. Nate’s got contacts everywhere. Old military buddies. Diplomats. People whose asses we’ve pulled out of slings. So don’t worry. We’re going to get you out of here, and then we will get to the bottom of this for you. I’ve got to call back in”—he checked his watch—“in a little over an hour. See what kind of bird he’s arranged to fly us out of here.”
“I can pay,” she said without hesitation. If his teammates were half as good as Luke, she’d be willing to pay any price to make this all go away.
He grinned and looked at her like she was a sweet but slightly dim child. “You don’t pay, Angelface.”
“Oh, yes, I do.”
“No, see, you don’t get it.” He leaned forward, propped his forearms on his wide-spread thighs, and held her gaze. “This might have started out all about you, but those assholes have messed with me now. They didn’t intend to but the fact is, they did. So now it’s personal. And once it gets personal, the entire team gets involved. Okay?”
No, it was not okay, but she could see he was determined.
“Okay.” He slapped his hands on his thighs, then stood abruptly. “Excuse me for a minute. That shower’s been calling to me.”
After digging around in his pack for a razor, he headed for the bathroom. “Did you leave enough shampoo so that I can smell all girly, like you?”
The idea made her smile. “Knock yourself out.”
As the bathroom door closed behind him, she picked up a chunk of mango and nibbled absently. Once upon a time, if someone had told her she would be running for her life from some unknown assailant with unknown motives, she’d have told them to back off of the booze.
Once upon a time, before a night train in the Andes.
Thoughtful, she glanced toward the closed bathroom door. She appreciated that he’d been square with her about who he was and what he did. Sure, it was a little dismaying to realize that she was keeping company with a black ops warrior. Dismaying but also comforting and . . . she had to admit, a little exciting.
He was exciting. And funny. And kind.
And sexy.
And oh my God, the scar. How had a wound that horrific not killed him? From the looks of it, still angry and red, it had happened not that long ago. The idea that a man so vital and heroic could have died . . . it made her heart drop just thinking about it. What if he had died? Then he wouldn’t have been on that train. She never would have met him.
If she wasn’t vigilant, she could let herself become unwisely attached to this man. She was already dangerously attracted to him.
Except for the Indy thing and the hero thing, though, she still wasn’t sure why the attraction was so strong. Clichéd as it was, he wasn’t her type.
She was constantly surrounded by the most beautiful of the beautiful people. Surrounded by men who dazzled with a smile, a tilt of their head, a blink of a heavily lashed eye. Razzle and dazzle, however, was often all there was to them.
She needed more from a man than surface charm and sex appeal. She needed a gentle man. An intellectual. Someone who shared her hopes and her dreams and . . .
Oh, wait. Marcus had been that man. And Marcus had almost destroyed her.
She glanced toward the bathroom again. Maybe that’s why, cute, sexy, funny, brave, and resourceful Luke Colter appealed to her. He was the exact opposite of Marcus. While he was clearly intelligent and he could be gentle, he was a very dangerous man. As a Navy SEAL, he’d done things most men would never do. Seen things most men would never see, experienced things most men couldn’t handle.
He’d killed two men on that train without a nanosecond of hesitation. Shot the man who had held her at gunpoint.
He’d saved her life.
He’d run her a bath. How sweet was that?
He’d also stripped her almost naked . . . and walked away, though he hadn’t wanted to. As miserable and cold as she’d been, she’d also been acutely aware of that.
He made it easy to remember that a man and a woman could make magic together when everything was right between them. And right now, everything about him felt right.
Her thoughtful gaze was locked on the bathroom door when it swung open.
Luke was clean-shaven and fully dressed—except for his bare feet, which were large and long and for some reason made her smile.
“What?” he asked, his hand stalled mid-air as he towel-dried his hair.
She met his eyes. Said nothing.
It didn’t take him more than a second to follow the direction of her thoughts. His eyes darkened dangerously. A little thrill of anticipation zinged through her body, heating her blood when he balled up the towel, tossed it aside, and crossed the room in several long strides.
“Seriously?” he asked after a close assessment of her face.
“Heart-attack serious,” she said, and stood.
They were toe to toe. She could see the pulse beating steady and fast at his throat, feel the testosterone radiating off him in heady waves. He smelled clean and male and aroused. And when she lifted her hands, wrapped her fingers in a light caress around his biceps, he tensed like a coiled spring, the muscle hardening to stone beneath her fingertips.
A shiver went through his big body and she experienced an unfamiliar stirring of power, knowing that she could shake him this badly.
His eyes narrowed. “Look . . . if this is about the scar—” She pressed her fingertips against his lips, not surprised to find them soft yet firm and deliciously enticing. “It’s not about the scar.”
Every part of him tempted her.
“It’s about life,” she said, moving into him. “It’s about death. It’s about making the most of the time in between.”
Never had she felt as close to death as she had today. And not since the moment when she’d decided to trust this man had she felt anything as strongly as she felt it now.
“I almost died today,” she whispered, holding his gaze. “You almost died.”
His hands moved to her waist. “Which is why this isn’t really a stellar time for you to be making these kinds of decisions, Angelface,” he said carefully. “You’ve been through the wringer. You’re running on empty.”
She tilted her head, studied his tortured expression, and turned the screws. “So you’re turning me down.”
“Jesus, no. I mean—yes. But I don�
�t want to.” He closed his eyes on a groan. “I mean I want to. I want to do this. But I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
She knew what she needed to know now. And she understood exactly what she had to do to bring him around. Not caring that she wasn’t playing fair, not even caring that she was manipulating him, she skated her hands down his neck, around his shoulders, feeling his skin heat beneath the trail of her fingertips. Feeling his big frame shudder with the effort to keep himself under control.
A low growl this time. “You are seriously screwing me up here,” he said between clenched teeth. “I’m not in the habit of practicing restraint. Not when it comes to something I want as badly as I want you.”
“And I’m not in the habit of coming on to men who throw me out of trains. But I’m making an exception in your case.”
He pushed out a helpless laugh, then shook his head as if he were attempting to ward off Lucifer and all of his devils.
“There’s a perfectly good bed over there.” She let her fingertips drift all the way down his arms again, laced her fingers with his, and felt a kick of excitement eddy through her blood when she realized his hands were unsteady. “Let’s take advantage of what’s going on here and use it.”
She started walking backward toward the bed, tugging him along with her.
“What exactly is going on?” he asked, finally giving in and letting her lead him.
“I’m not sure.” She wasn’t sure of anything but this moment. “Just like I’m not sure it’s important that I know. Can’t we just be in the moment, Luke? Can’t we just make each other feel good for a little while? After what we’ve been through, would it be so wrong to give that to each other?”
He swallowed hard, and his struggle to do the right thing endeared him to her even more. Made her trust him more. Made her want him more.
“Luke, this is a huge leap of faith for me. I don’t do this, okay? Contrary to what the gossip rags say, I’ve never slept around. And I don’t ever hop into bed with virtual strangers.”
His eyes sought more than answers. “Then why me?”
She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. Something about you . . . something about us . . . it changes the rules. Changes so many things. There’s only one thing I know for certain. I don’t want to question this anymore.”