by Cindy Dees
She moved up behind him and stood on tiptoe to murmur in his ear, “You’re almost too pretty to be a mortal man.”
He mumbled indignantly, “I’m not pretty.”
Chuckling, she slipped her hands around his waist beneath his turtleneck. Ah, yes. Rippling muscles flexed beneath her palms, his skin sliding against hers like rough satin. He felt so delicious she could practically taste him. His flavor would be a combination of woodsy and pungent. She swallowed as her mouth puddled with anticipation.
“I’m working,” he muttered.
“So am I,” she murmured back.
“How’s that work?” he grumbled. “It feels like—”
Hmm. It felt like what? She filled in for him in a whisper, “It feels like heaven? Like you want more? Like sweaty sex on satin sheets?”
He jerked beneath her hands. Tension thrummed through him. “Jeez, woman. Do you take pleasure in torturing me?”
“I might,” she murmured, her lips pressed against the back of his neck. Oh, yes. He did, indeed, taste like bergamot and fine wine. “I’m game to find out.”
He jerked completely away from her this time, turning sharply to stare down at her.
She stared right back. “You keep treating me like some naive little girl. I’m not, Joe. I’m a grown woman and I know what I want. I’m not afraid to go after it.”
The next words hung unspoken between them. And what she wanted was him. All of him. For some of that sweaty sex on satin sheets.
He cursed under his breath and spun back toward her father’s windows. If she wasn’t mistaken, he was breathing hard. She satisfied herself with standing right behind him, not touching him, looking out over his shoulder on tiptoe at her father’s office. It was almost sexier standing here not touching him than it had been to put her hands on him. This way, she could imagine putting her mouth on all the places where her hands had been and more. And damned if her breathing didn’t take on a heavy quality, too.
Joe had waited out some tense vigils in his day, but this one topped them all. The sound of Cari panting with lust was going to kill him. Assuming his imagination didn’t get the job done first. The memory of her soft, warm hands roaming over his flesh refused to go away. It was all he could do not to turn around, rip off her clothes and bury himself in all that sexual heat exploding from her.
The mission, dammit, the mission!
How many times had he watched the other guys on his team struggle with that one? As many times as he’d seen them weaken and give in to the women who’d stolen their hearts. He unleashed a long string of profanities inside his head. He wasn’t losing his heart to Carina Ferrare. He wasn’t!
Methinks the man doth protest too much.
Fuck.
A movement from inside Eduardo’s office caught his attention. A bartender setting up shop behind the stainless-steel-and-glass bar in the corner. Almost show time. Praise the Lord. He couldn’t take much more of Cari’s breath tickling the back of his neck like this.
Yup, there he was. Ferrare walked into the room, pacing a lap of the big space. The bastard actually looked nervous.
Oh yeah. He definitely had to find out who Eduardo was meeting with tonight.
“When your father’s guests arrive, we’ll go,” Joe muttered.
He felt Cari nod behind him.
Speak of the devil. Four men walked into Eduardo’s office on cue, accompanied by a phalanx of security types. The thugs looked around and then backed out of the room.
“Ready?” he murmured.
Another silent nod at his back.
“On the next sweep of the nearest camera, all the cameras will be looking away from the balcony. We’ll have about fifteen seconds.”
She tensed against his back.
He did his best to ignore the hands that settled nervously on his waist. “Three…two…one…”
He moved fast, flipping the end of the ladder over the balcony. It snaked down into the darkness below. Cari crouched beside him, her eyes huge with fear.
“I’ll go first,” he breathed.
Lying on the balustrade on his belly, he slipped over the edge fast and down the rope ladder. He paused about six rungs down to help Cari climb over the edge. She mimicked him, keeping a low profile as she went over the railing. She’d taken about four steps down and her head was level with the floor of the balcony when she lurched violently above him. What had happened? She started back up the ladder.
“What are you doing?” he bit out.
“Someone just knocked on my bedroom door,” she hissed.
Shit!
She raced up and over the rail. “Just a minute,” she called out. She sounded flustered and out of breath. But then, that might not be a bad thing. Whoever was knocking would think the two of them were fooling around. It would explain the long delay in answering the damned door.
Joe raced up the ladder, rolling over the balustrade and popping to his feet in one frantic movement. He took off, running across the bedroom, as Cari reached for the door.
“Cari! Get some clothes on!” he called out urgently. No time to get close enough to whisper so the bugs wouldn’t hear.
Cari jerked to a halt, frowning. He ripped off his turtleneck and gestured for her to do the same. He jumped for the bed and ripped the covers back, tearing a sheet off.
As yanked off her shirt, he did his best not to notice the black lace bra she wore with its little bow nestled in her cleavage, or the way her golden flesh showed in far too much detail under the flimsy lace, or the generous display of curving breasts above the lingerie. He so failed not to notice.
He flung a blanket at her and jumped under the covers, stripping off his pants and jungle boots under the tangle of blankets as Cari wrapped the blanket around herself and cracked open the door an inch or so.
“What do you want, Gunter? Why aren’t you downstairs with my father?”
“He changed his mind. He wants you at the meeting.”
Joe froze in the act of yanking off a sock. He poked his head out of the covers. Cari voiced his exact thought aloud.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” she exclaimed.
“I’m to wait while you put on a dress and escort you down myself.”
“I’m married now. I don’t want to schmooze his clients anymore. It’s not…seemly.”
Gunter’s reply was impassive. “I don’t think he’s particularly concerned about propriety. He ordered you down there and he expects you to go. Now.”
Chapter Ten
While Cari stared at the German in dismay and shock, Joe’s brain kicked into overdrive. He didn’t want to subject Cari to any unpleasantness in the form of stares or gropes. But on the other hand, he knew from the tone of Gunter’s voice that this was nonnegotiable. And he wasn’t ready to start an all-out war with Eduardo. Not just yet.
The soldier in Joe gave a silent fist pump at the realization that she would be able to hear exactly what Eduardo was up to with these important strangers. It was almost too perfect an opportunity to believe. She could get names, dates, exact details of whatever they were up to—everything.
He was surprised, though, when an even fiercer voice inside of him spoke up. Cari’s safety is more important than the information.
“Just a minute, Gunter,” Cari said heavily.
She closed the door and hurried over to the bed. “Oh, God, Joe. I don’t want to do this. I thought I was done with all that.”
He sighed heavily. “I know, baby. Your father is testing us, testing me, to see how much of a threat I am to his relationship with you. He needs to know if I’ll yield to his wishes. He needs to know that I won’t take you away completely before he agrees to give you to me.”
Cari closed her eyes in anguish, and then whispered, “One more time. I’ll do my father’s bidding one more time.”
She turned toward her closet. Joe lay back on the pillows, his gut churning. He didn’t like letting her go to the meeting. But Colonel Foley would put his butt in a slin
g if he messed up this mission because he suddenly went uber-protective on a girl. He called out, “Don’t wear anything too sexy. You’re my wife now, not somebody else’s plaything.”
One thing he could do was make sure she wasn’t down there all alone. He might not be able to get into the room, but he could damned well be right outside to keep an eye on her.
It appeared that Gunter was willing to wait patiently outside until Cari emerged. So Joe reversed himself and started putting his clothes back on. He exchanged his black shirt for a pink polo shirt, and his combat boots for sandals, though.
Cari emerged from her dressing area. She wore a short tropical-print dress with a halter-top and a floaty skirt. It was less revealing than some of the things he’d seen her wear. But then, a burlap sack wouldn’t disguise her sex appeal.
He swore at himself. The green-eyed monster was alive and kicking, tonight.
Jaw clenched, he got out of bed. She paused in front of the door and Joe moved over to her side. He put his arms around her waist and whispered, “I’ll be right outside the window in the yard. If you need me, call out, and I’ll come rescue you.”
She turned around, burrowing into him, and nodded against his chest. His arms tightened around her possessively, willing her to feel him, to think of him when she went into that meeting and flirted with those other men. Her father was a fucking creep for asking this of her.
Cari slipped through the door and out into the hall. And then she was gone. Joe charged across the room, heading for the balcony, but drew up short in front of the French doors. Patience, man. Don’t be stupid.
He waited until the cameras all lined up, pointing away from him, and slipped outside, shimmying down the ladder fast. He landed on silent feet behind the oleanders. Interesting choice for Eduardo’s garden. The flowering shrubs were beautiful but very poisonous.
He made his way through the cover of the lush landscaping over to Eduardo’s office. The last oleander bush stood next to the last window in the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ocean. A lower glass panel of the window tilted outward from the bottom, open, allowing him to hear what was going on inside.
The bar was no more than ten feet from his position, and Eduardo and his four guests bellied up to it, grazing on hors d’oeuvres and sipping drinks. No one was drinking much—experienced businessmen, then. They knew better than to let Eduardo get them hammered before they worked out the details of whatever deal they had cooking.
The men’s heads turned abruptly in unison. A door opened across the room and Cari breezed in, as shiny and beautiful as a polished diamond. Joe’s gut clenched at the impact of her beauty.
Eduardo’s guests responded pretty much the same way as Cari turned her dazzling smile on them. Joe restrained a serious temptation to reach through the window, to roll up the jerks’ tongues, and stuff them back in their mouths. They could quit drooling at his wife, dammit.
Not. His. Wife. Dammit.
Yeah, whatever. He still wanted to drop them all for ogling Cari.
Eduardo made the introductions. “Gentlemen, this is my daughter, Carina. She’s here to see to your pleasure and comfort.”
Joe’s black gaze snapped to Ferrare. The bastard had put just enough emphasis on the words pleasure and comfort to make that sound like a sleazy offer. Cari’s smile abruptly developed a brittle, fixed quality to it.
One of the men spoke. Sounded Slavic. “Do you have any sons in the family business, Mr. Ferrare?”
Eduardo answered with sincere regret. “Alas, I do not. I was cursed with only daughters. Women are good for one thing only. And it isn’t running a multinational business conglomerate.”
Joe’s gaze narrowed. Pain. He was going to cause Eduardo a lot of pain someday.
The Slavic man gave a sage nod, then sidled up to Cari and ran his fingertips along her neckline, delving under the fabric before following the curve of her neck up to her lips. “The fates were unkind to you, Eduardo. But maybe it is possible to find a use for this beautiful mouth?” he suggested, shoving the tip of his thumb into Cari’s mouth, then slowly pulling it out.
Joe just about rammed his fist through the window.
And then he caught sight of Cari’s face and his heart wrenched. She was smiling more brilliantly than ever and looked ready to shatter into a million pieces.
Eduardo gave a casual shrug. “She can make herself useful later. But first, business.”
God Almighty, how was Cari managing not to pick up a bottle of whiskey and break it over that bastard’s head? Her own father was talking about her like she was little more than an expensive whore.
Eduardo turned away from the Slav and was now engaging a silver-haired, ex-commando-looking type in quiet conversation as they all moved to the other end of the room, near Eduardo’s desk. Joe couldn’t hear much of what they said over the blood roaring in his ears, but from the snippets he caught, he guessed the guy was South African.
He watched in helpless rage as Cari gripped the edge of the bar until her knuckles turned white. She looked more inclined to throw up than to fight back.
Is this what she thought love was? If possible, Joe’s rage swelled even more, to epic proportions. The focus of his fury swung away from the sleazy Slav and on to the rightful target—Eduardo. The bastard had given his guest permission to do this to his own daughter. He was the one at fault!
Joe’s glare skewered Eduardo. The pompous, arrogant, sociopathic—
Something moved behind him. Someone. He froze, his years of training taking over by reflex. No matter how riled up he was, survival took precedence. Stay invisible. Stay still. Avoid discovery at all costs.
A flashlight swept back and forth on the other side of the bushes. Its beam pierced the foliage of the oleander like a sword, then swept away, then back. Crap! It flashed across his feet. At least his jungle boots were olive nylon and black leather.
Whoever was wielding the flashlight apparently didn’t notice his feet because the shadowy figure moved on. The guard turned his head and Joe caught the silhouette: Rico. Joe stayed frozen until Rico had circled the pool and gone back into the house via the dining room doors.
He turned his attention back to the meeting. Eduardo was talking and all the guests were listening intently. He couldn’t hear a blessed word of it. They were too far away from the open window, and Eduardo was speaking too quietly. Joe willed Cari to use the others’ distraction to leave.
Get out, baby! Ease over to that door and slip out while no one’s watching.
But she didn’t move. Desperately, abjectly, he begged her to go.
Instead, she glided away from the bar under the guise of collecting a couple of abandoned drinks. She picked them up and drifted back to the bar to set them down. She lifted one of the plates of hors d’oeuvres and moved forward with it in hand. She set it beside one of the heretofore silent guests who hadn’t manhandled her.
She had to be hearing every detail of what her father said. Joe jolted. Here he was, flipping out in the bushes, while she was in there keeping her wits about her and collecting information. Nerves of steel, she had. He owed her no less. He reached for his cell phone to take pictures. And heard another sound behind him.
He froze.
Not Rico again. Irritated beyond belief, he shifted into full-stealth mode—where he should have been all along, dammit!—and eased his head to the side far enough to have a look around the backyard. Freddie and Neddie were walking a slow circuit around the pool this time.
Damn. They might actually be alert enough to spot him. Worse, in a dozen more steps, they would be in position to glance over and see the ladder hanging in the shadows of Cari’s balcony. Frantically, he cast his gaze around at his feet. There. He picked up a golf-ball-size stone and, extending his arm above the top of the oleander fronds, pitched the stone across the yard.
The rock swished through some bushes and hit the ground with a muffled clatter. The cacophony of cicadas, crickets and frogs went silent. And tha
t was almost more noticeable than the rock itself. The two guards jerked, reacting in unison to the intrusion of silence on the tropical night. They hustled off toward the other side of the pool.
Working fast, Joe stood up just far enough to peer between the leaves of his hiding spot. He aimed his camera at Eduardo’s office, quickly capturing the faces of the four men with Ferrare from several different angles.
Cari picked up an armful of empty plates and glided toward the back of the room as unobtrusively as the finest of waiters. Joe kept one eye on her and the other on Freddie and Neddie as they poked around in the bushes on the other side of the pool like a couple of hogs rooting around in the mud for a truffle.
Okay. Cari was clear of the room. She’d just slipped out so subtly he’d nearly missed it. A move worthy of the Blackjacks. But then, she’d grown up having to make herself invisible if she didn’t want her life to become very unpleasant. Why was it that he suddenly felt a burning compulsion to make that up to her?
Joe slithered on his belly under the oleander, inching along the stucco wall past the dining room. Alongside the TV room and its French doors leading out to the pool.
He stopped. Right at ground level, a long, flat metal grate interrupted the line of the house’s concrete foundation. It looked like a vent of some kind. The faintest light shone from between its narrow slats. Was there a basement in this place? It certainly wasn’t indicated on any blueprints he’d ever seen of the place.
He had no more time to think about it. He had to get back upstairs before his absence was discovered. He crawled a few feet past the mysterious vent. He would have to leave the cover of the bushes to cross an open stretch of lawn now, but the shadows were good. He hugged the ground, following the dark spots, his entire body plastered against the cool grass. In another couple of hours, this area would be covered with dew and his passage would leave a telltale track as visible as snail slime across a sidewalk. But for now, he was okay.
Another fifteen feet and he’d be at the ladder. A short pause for the cameras to line back up and he would be safely back where he belonged. Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, Cari would already be waiting for him in the room.