by Alison Kent
She glanced from the garments in need of repair to his face—but didn't make it that far. The heavy white T-shirt he'd pulled on to wear with his suit pants was all she could see.
No. That wasn't quite true. What filled her vision was the amazing expanse of his chest and the width of his shoulders poured into a shirt far too small.
He sat in the chair at a right angle to hers. Politeness forced her gaze to his face.
It was the clearest look she'd had of him so far, and she swore without hesitation that she'd never have climbed into his car if she'd seen him like this.
He'd pulled the band from his hair and the strands now hung to his shoulders; the color wasn't the pure black she'd thought, but a shade of brown just this side.
He patted his thigh. "Let me see your foot."
She lifted her heel to his knee, all too aware that she was wearing next to nothing and tucking the edges of the kimono as best she could over her thighs. "It's worse than I thought. I still don't think it needs stitches, but I'm not looking forward to digging for the glass."
Julian wrapped his fingers around her toes, bent them back gently and tilted her foot. He studied the injury for a moment then turned to search the kitchen counters.
Katrina watched his face, ignoring the pressure and warmth of his fingers that had slipped down to ring her ankle. At least she told herself she was ignoring his touch.
Not that she believed anything she said considering the gooseflesh pebbling the entire length of her leg.
"Hang on a sec." He lifted her foot to the tabletop and pushed to stand, heading for the paper towels hanging from a roller next to the stove and the bottle of Cuervo Gold on top of the fridge. He didn't bother with glasses or ice.
It was when he sat down again that she realized the tequila was for her foot.
He braced the roll of paper towels on his thigh, reached for her heel, and propped it on top, scooting closer until her toes, if she flexed them, could tickle his ribs.
Flexing wasn't in the cards. Not when any movement now spit fire over the ball of her foot. She sucked in a sharp breath as Julian opened the bottle.
"This is gonna burn like a mother."
She gripped the aluminum edging along the seat of her chair and grit her teeth. "Bring it on."
He held her foot in one hand, held the bottle suspended in his other, and hesitated a moment while he also held her gaze.
His lips twitched with what might've been a spot of admiration. Unless it was devilish mischief. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
She stared into his eyes, the blue of a midnight sky. Blue and twinkling like those of a kid holding a match in one hand, a Black Cat in the other, and wondering if he could outrun the blast.
Interesting considering her insides seemed to be burning a similar fuse. A life-affirming sizzle detonating in the face of death. Oh, but this day was so not going well.
She inhaled deeply. "Hit me, bartender."
He poured. The alcohol ran from the ball of her foot down her sole and over her ankle to soak into the thick roll of towels. She wanted to scream but she couldn't. Not with Julian still holding her gaze.
Instead, she lifted one brow, gripped the chair even tighter, and nodded her permission for him to dig in. He took up the tweezers . .. and she never felt a thing.
He was good. Damn good. "I'm guessing you've had medic experience? More than simple Red Cross first aid?"
"I've seen a few guys get patched up, yeah. By medics, and by the Red Cross. None of it simple."
His attention on her foot, he wouldn't have noticed her silent touché. She offered it nonetheless. "How long were you in the service?"
He gave a strange shrug of his shoulders. "Six years. Almost."
She hissed sharply as the tweezers' tips grated over the edge of the glass. "That would be it."
"So it seems." He frowned, his dark brows drawing her attention to his eyes, to his nose, down to his lips.
He'd pressed them together as he concentrated; all she could think about was how much she wanted to kiss them. "Why almost?"
"Hmm?" He pulled the glass free, pressed his thumb to the gash to staunch the bleeding. "Why almost what?"
The pressure he applied created only marginally less pain than the glass. But it was a pain offset by the ridiculous pleasure his hands offered.
Good grief. What was the matter with her? "Why almost six years in the service?"
"You're going to need to be stitched up, but this will have to do for now." He replaced his thumb with a gauze pad. "Hold this a sec."
She leaned forward, held the gauze, watched while he uncapped the antibiotic ointment. His movements were precise and efficient as was his side of the conversation, an economy of words used to tell her nothing.
All he had to do was tell her to shut the hell up and quit asking questions, the answers to which were none of her business.
Then again, she mused, wincing only once as he applied the dressing, she was obviously projecting what she would be thinking were their positions reversed.
So it came as no small surprise when, while packing the items back into the kit, he said, "I was discharged. Dishonorably."
"What was the offense?" she heard herself asking.
Or maybe she wasn't hearing it at all but was only imagining what she would've asked had she found her voice.
Except that made no sense in light of his one-word answer.
"Murder."
Ten minutes later found Julian in the garage wondering if she'd believed him. If she thought he was trying to frighten her. If it had worked.
Or if she'd blown him off as a fuck-up. He wouldn't blame her if she had, considering he'd done such a piss poor job of losing Benny.
At least she'd found them a car that wasn't going to stand out on the road like a sore thumb.
Or a sore foot, he mused with no small bit of ironic humor while rummaging through the tools in the garage for anything he might need on the road.
He didn't care what Katrina said. She needed stitches. For now, the butterfly bandages he'd used would have to do.
His sewing skills were meant to save lives, not to pretty up an injury. He got within a meter of her with a needle, she'd need a televised extreme makeover.
He wondered if she'd bother repairing that sort of damage to the bottom of her foot. What he'd learned of her when prepping for this mission told him she'd have scheduled the surgery while on the run for her life.
What he'd learned of her since told him his intel was way off the mark.
High maintenance? Maybe. Spoiled princess? Not that he'd seen so far.
Sure their circumstances were way outside the realm of her norm. But they were also circumstances in which he'd have expected her to show her true colors—and he wasn't talking about that damned irritating parakeet yellow.
Leaving through the garage's side door, he headed back to the house, hoping Katrina had found something to wear and was ready to go, because they needed to move. This delay couldn't be helped, but it had taken time away from putting distance between themselves and Benny.
The quicker they reached the safe house, the fewer complications left in the way of Mick Savin taking out the Spectra IT shooter. The less complications distracting Julian from his agenda, as well.
The biggest distraction of all, the length of Katrina's naked legs in that damn bikini, had hopefully been taken care of by now.
She'd sworn she'd find something to wear, even if she had to dig through Tomas's wardrobe as well as Maribel's, what with Katrina being a nice five-foot-ten and Maribel reportedly eight inches shorter.
One step through the door and into the kitchen, however, had Julian barreling to a stop. Katrina's back was to him as she leaned over the countertop bar separating the kitchen from the small nook with the table and chairs.
She wore a pair of chunky athletic shoes, the left one unlaced and left loose over the thick sock and gauze wrapping binding her foot. Instead of the kimo
no, she wore a man's white dress shirt, sleeves cuffed to her elbows, hem knotted at her waist.
That left the rest of her, from ass to ankles, in a pair of indigo jeans way too big and obviously belonging to Tomas. She'd rolled the hems above the tops of the shoes and switched her hair from a topknot to a ponytail.
The look shouldn't have made him hard but it came goddamn close.
The way she'd shifted her weight to her right hip, the way the waistband of the Levi's rode low, the way a strip of smooth skin showed between the jeans and the shirttails had him thinking of handcuffs, silk ties, and old-fashioned hemp rope.
And chocolate chip cookies, as well.
He cleared his throat, held the tool tote he'd scavenged so that it covered his fly, and inclined his head when she glanced over her shoulder. "What're you doing?"
"Leaving Maribel a note and a check for the clothes"— her gaze dropped to the tool tote—"and I guess for whatever else you've borrowed."
"You have your checkbook with you?" A ridiculous thought but the only one that came to mind.
She nodded. "I always tuck my wallet in with my sunscreen and stuff. So I'll have my ID. I keep a spare key, too. That way I don't have to carry the whole ring to the pool."
"Hmph." He crossed to where she stood, set his tools next to her pool bag and a pair of fuzzy pink slippers she'd obviously filched, pulled his money clip from his pocket, and tossed three Benjamins on the counter. "I'll cover it."
"You don't have to do that."
"It's a business write-off. Don't worry about it." He pocketed the rest of his cash. "You have everything? We need to get gone."
"Let me finish this note—"
He pulled the paper from beneath her hand and read.
Maribel,
I had an emergency and borrowed a few things. The money will cover the incidentals, and there's a car in the garage you should consider collateral until I return yours.
Katrina
Satisfied, he handed it back. "She'll know your handwriting?"
"She's worked for me for two years," she said, tearing the check she'd written from her checkbook. "She definitely knows my checks."
She'd matched his cash outlay to the penny. "I told you I'd cover it."
"I know you did." She dropped her wallet down into her tote and met his gaze. "But it was my bad choice in men responsible for this mess. Allow me to assuage at least a small measure of my guilt."
Buying her way out of her own bad judgment. Seems he hadn't been far off his original mark after all, he mused, offering a shrug that didn't convince him things were that cut and dried.
Especially since he found himself curling his fingers over his palm where the remembered feel of her slender foot nearly choked him. "Your prerogative."
"No, Julian." The smile on her lush lips grew twisted. "My multitude of sins."
Five
Florida Turnpike, Florida City, Friday, 6:15 p.m.
A multitude of sins.
What a thing to confess to a murderer—if that's what he indeed was. What, not whom, because she refused to believe she was on the run with a man who held no regard for human life.
If that was the case, why go to the trouble to save hers when he didn't know her from Eve?
No. Julian Samms may have been responsible for people dying, but she would stake what reputation she had left that such incidents were line-of-duty, either military or with the covert organization for which he now worked.
She wanted to know more about him, about this unnamed group that kept tabs on men like Peter Deacon and the nefarious underworld through which his type circulated. Where they wheeled and dealed. Where they killed.
Dear God, she thought, and shivered, rubbing her palms up and down her arms to ward off the chill that had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with how unknowingly stupid she'd been.
"Cold?" Julian asked, reaching for the air conditioner controls on the sedan's dashboard panel.
She shook her head, glanced over. "I'm fine. As fine as possible considering this mess I've managed to create."
Julian didn't respond right away and she used the time to study his profile. His eyes, which were hidden behind sleek designer eyewear, dark narrow lenses in high-tech pewter frames. His lips, full yet unsmiling. His patrician nose, which she easily imagined on the silhouette of a statue in Rome.
He had cheekbones to die for, an uncompromising jaw, a warrior's long dark hair.
A warrior. Yes. That was it. That was exactly the man he brought to mind. Fierce and protective and dangerous, yet one she didn't fear. One with whom she felt safe.
One unlike any man she'd ever known—a thought that renewed the prickling sensation of gooseflesh, that roused tingles of awareness, a buzz of inappropriate sexual heat.
"You think you created it?"
"Excuse me?" She'd totally lost the drift of the conversation while indulging in her little chieftain/maiden fantasy.
"You said you created this mess."
"Well, yes." She shifted, cocked up her knee onto the seat and slipped the high-top from her swollen and bandaged left foot with a sharp hiss of breath. "Of all the men in all the cities in all the world, Peter Deacon had to be the one to walk into my life."
Julian snorted, then sobered. "Is that hurting much?"
"Which? My foot or my pride?"
"Your foot."
She nodded. "Throbbing a bit, but I'll live."
She caught the press of his lips as he battled speaking further, caught the surrender in the slack parentheses bracketing his mouth.
She couldn't help but smile when he gave in and asked, "And your pride?"
She shrugged. "What can I say? I've been better."
"Tough break," he said, switching lanes.
She turned her attention to the road and beyond. To the sawgrass prairie stretching into the deceptive nothingness of the Everglades. And because her pride was still an issue, she glanced back and changed the subject.
"Do you like what you do?"
"What I do?"
"Your job. Your career. Your calling."
He huffed, shifted to lean away from her, draped his right wrist over the steering wheel. Interesting, she mused, knowing whatever answer he might verbally offer would never be as telling as the language his body spoke.
Withdrawal. Self-preservation. Solitude.
"I don't think about whether or not I like it," he finally said. "It's just who I am. What I do."
Strange that his thoughts reflected the reverse of hers. She wondered why. "You don't differentiate between the two? The who and the what?"
He shook his head. "It's all the same in the end."
Something in his tone of voice . . ."Is that your choice?"
"What's to choose? You do what you do because you are who you are."
A warrior's sentiment. A man called. A man certain, sure. A man who stirred her blood in ways she could barely fathom. It was so unexpected yet so very real.
She shifted to face forward again, deciding she'd hold up her end of the conversation much better without his profile or the cotton-covered round of his shoulder and biceps in her vision's field.
What she didn't count on was the impact of simply having him near. Drawing a breath that wasn't scented with his clean musky warmth was impossible.
Who needed oxygen, right? She'd simply hold her breath. "I can see that, I suppose. Since I've written one thing or another most all of my life."
He remained silent for several long moments, and it took more willpower than she'd have ever expected not to glance over. It took another whopping amount not to scoot closer to him on the long bench seat.
Finally, he spoke. "Why do you write what you write?"
"Excuse me?" She arched both brows then frowned.
"If you've always written. Always wanted to write. Why your column?"
"Ah," she mused softly, smiled softly. "You don't think gossip and lifestyle observations are real w
riting then?"
She felt the heat of his gaze, the change in his breathing pattern, in the car interior's temperature, in his body language as he leaned toward her rather than away—they all made his opinion perfectly clear.
"I didn't say that." His voice rumbled deep and low. Intimately low.
It was all she could do to sit still. "You didn't have to. Your silence screams your disapproval."
"It's not my place to approve or disapprove." He checked his mirrors. "I'm not your audience."
"You're right. You're not." But he had issues with her column anyway. She needed to let it go. She really did. But it bugged her to be dismissed without reason. "That's why I'm curious as to the basis of your complaint."
This time she did glance over. It was his left wrist now hooked over the steering wheel, his right arm draped along the back of the seat.
Her peripheral vision picked up the motion of his hand as he flexed his knuckles; his fingertips brushed her shirt collar. She felt the sting of his heat and stayed put.
"It wasn't a complaint," he said, looking at her, his eyes hidden behind his dark lenses. "It was a question."
"A question with an attitude," she said, her chin coming up.
"Really?" His mouth quirked. "You think so?"
"Yeah. I know so. I get it a lot." She moved her gaze back to the road ahead, then turned to stare out her passenger side window, regretting that she'd allowed him to stir her insecurities.
That she'd let him put her on the defensive was bad enough.
"So why do it?"
How the hell had he turned the tide of this conversation to wash over her like this? "Why not? I'm giving a whole lot of readers exactly what they want."
"Whether they need it or not."
"And that's your job? Determining what they need?"
"No. My job is making sure you live to write another day."
"Even though I have nothing worthwhile to say."
"I'm sure you have all sorts of worthwhile things to say."
Argh! Men! "So why am I not writing hard-hitting news pieces, you mean? Instead of fluff?"
"Putting words in my mouth now?"