Teasing and experimental at first, the kiss turned bolder when his tongue slid in to caress hers and explore the smooth inside. She tormented him with her delicate tongue. Muscles along his shoulders rippled with each needy grip of her fingers.
His fingers roamed under the back of her damp shirt to caress every creamy inch of smooth skin. He slid a hand down to her waist, snugging her closer into him.
Desire pounded in his brain, pulsed in his groin, but something deeper clawed around inside him. A primal need to protect and care for a woman?
Maybe. Not just any woman. This one.
Why this one?
Damn if he knew and right now didn’t particularly care to examine why.
He tore his mouth from hers to explore the sensitive skin along her neck. She purred against his chest, flexing up like a kitten in need of cuddles.
With one hand, he pushed under the front strap of her tight running top to graze her nipple with his thumb.
She arched forward against him, igniting a fiery blaze that threatened to engulf both of them. His arousal throbbed against the two thin layers of nylon separating them, sending a clear message.
He wanted her.
A horn blew outside, startling both of them, and broke through the erotic haze.
Zane gritted his teeth. Dammit all. What the hell was wrong with him? Some maniac stalked her and he’d dropped his guard.
Another minute and he’d have dropped his pants.
His self-control was disgusting. No, his lack of self-control.
He withdrew his entangled hands, but held her by the shoulders when she swayed. Passion glazed over her eyes. Damn if that didn’t stroke his ego, repair the dent she’d put there by not trusting him to help her.
Her lips were soft, puffy from being kissed, begging for another round.
She blinked, pushed away. Both confusion and surprise darted through her eyes. When her lips parted to speak, he shook his head.
Her delicate eyebrows knitted together in irritation before she finally nodded her understanding to be quiet.
Blowing out a frustrated breath, he scoped the exterior activity. By the amount of daylight, he guessed the time to be around seven o’clock. A young boy rode past on a tangerine bicycle, oblivious to any danger lurking nearby.
Zane leaned close to her ear, his lips in her hair when he spoke. “We’re moving out. Stay close to me.”
“No.”
Wrong answer.
“The last time you said that I had a gun shoved in my face. Do as I say. We’ll discuss this later.”
He pinned her tight against his chest in an unspoken order to cooperate. Until she was safe, they did it his way. No discussion.
She yanked hard on the back of his shirt. The scowl he gave her didn’t seem to deter her at all, because she pushed up on her toes. The stubborn woman seemed determined to say her piece.
Zane lowered his ear close to Angel’s mouth, fully expecting the berating he deserved for behaving like a hormonal teen.
“Let me go ahead,” she whispered. “I had an…incident on the beach. Someone is following me. It’s risky for you to be with me. I’ll meet you somewhere.”
Zane couldn’t believe his ears. Unarmed, wearing clothes bright enough to stand out in any crowd, she was trying to shield him. He’d left the apartment without a weapon, but, armed or not, he was trained to deal with any situation.
Unfortunately, she didn’t know that and he couldn’t risk blowing his cover to tell her.
Now what?
He tucked her head close to his shoulder and whispered, “I know all the back ways out of here. If someone is following you, they won’t see us. Trust me.”
Angel drew back. Myriad emotions crossed her face, none of which appeared to be trust. What had she been through not to trust the man who’d come to her aid twice, expecting nothing in return?
Liar. He’d been seriously close to undressing her only minutes ago.
Zane rubbed her back lightly and gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. He took her hand, leading her outside before she could resist his help.
She never stumbled as he scuttled them through a maze of narrow passageways, taking several diversions in and out of vacated buildings. Though he’d traveled miles following her, she’d circled so much they weren’t far from his apartment. In less than an hour, they stood at his front door.
In his rush to leave, Zane left the apartment unlocked. Any other time he wouldn’t be concerned, but that was before someone had taken a shot at Angel.
He hesitated with indecision for several seconds. The last thing he wanted was to expose Angel to a hidden danger, but he’d learned better than to let her out of his sight.
Pushing the door open slowly, he glanced around the corner at his unmade foldout bed. Frigid air seeped from the opening. When Zane stepped inside, Angel tried to move next to him, but he swung her close to his back and kept an iron grip on her wrist. Room to room, he eased through the house until he was convinced no one waited inside for them.
In the living room, he rounded on her. Arms crossed, feet apart, he was ready for answers. “Okay, enough of these charades. What’s going on?”
“I told you.”
“You said you had an arrangement that went sour,” he pressed. “This looks much worse than a simple disagreement. Who is this guy and what does he want?”
Angel wrapped her arms around her chest and moved away from him to stand in front of the terrace doors. “I can’t tell you.” She sounded as disappointed as he felt.
“Then explain why you can’t.”
She spun around to answer, hair swatting her face. “Don’t you understand? He’s a dangerous man. In fact, he’s deadly. I have to go. If he finds me with you he’ll—”
“He’ll what?” Zane interrupted.
“He’ll hurt us both. I couldn’t live with it if I were the reason something happened to you.”
Her distress was sincere. This hunted woman put his safety ahead of her own.
It happened again. The lines between black and white blurred a little more.
He’d always been the toughest kid in his class, never bested by an adversary, from football to martial arts training. He’d been his sister’s protector, his squadron’s leader and the front man in the High Vision drug-smuggling investigation.
No one had ever stood between him and the enemy.
He’d learned to defend himself at a young age both physically and emotionally with no one to rise to his defense. The depth of her concern pushed him into turbulent emotional territory, with no navigational charts.
In the same breath she refused to answer his questions—which aggravated him beyond reason—then confused him with her selfless consideration for his safety.
His world to this point had been simple.
Everyone was either guilty or innocent.
Not knowing on which side of the law Angel stood was giving him hell. If he could share his background, she’d understand he was better equipped to deal with the threat.
Somehow, he sensed it wouldn’t change her mind, strange as that seemed.
Convincing her to go to the police might be his best recourse after all. The longer he delayed, the higher her risk was of injury or capture by the wrong people.
“Angel, since this guy is so dangerous, why don’t you go to the police?”
Her eyes flashed an immediate negative before she said, “No! They wouldn’t understand.”
“What would they not understand? There are laws to protect women from men who stalk and brutalize them.”
“It’s complicated.”
He got that bad feeling again, the one that told him she hid something not quite kosher. By the end of the day, he would have a fingerprint, if he had to tie her down to get it.
Zane’s cell phone rang in the distance. “Don’t move.” He retrieved the palm-size phone. His pulse jumped when he recognized the task-force number set up as his charter-delivery dispatcher. This had to be
a call to fly.
What was he going to do with Angel?
He stood where he could keep an eye on her from the doorway while he answered.
“Make it quick,” Zane said.
“Sammy, here.” Samuel Jenkins was the agent on his team who coordinated flights for the bogus Black Jack Airlines. “You’ve got a pickup at Bentley Field in south Georgia for High Vision this afternoon. Has to arrive in Ft. Lauderdale in time for a transfer to Miami by 1900.”
“I didn’t think they had a branch in that area.”
“They don’t. The chief financial officer has a home on Saint Simon’s Island,” Sammy clarified.
Zane checked the clock on the microwave. Making the run was no problem, but he didn’t want to let Angel out of his sight.
“I can be there by one o’clock. Is this a special load?” Intelligence informed central office of any shipments that were suspect. If today’s delivery was other than a standard shipment to keep his cover intact, he couldn’t take her along.
“Negative. All we’ve been told is it’s a hot shipment from the CFO’s wife, something personal. They’ll let you inspect it before loading. Supposedly it’s smaller than a three-by-three crate, but based on the insurance binder, the cargo carries a high price tag.”
Zane checked his watch. “I’ll confirm delivery by 1700.”
“Ten-four.”
Zane snapped the phone shut.
Angel hadn’t moved from the same spot, looking every bit a chastised child in time-out.
“I’ve got to make a run to Georgia just south of Savannah and back. You’re going with me,” he instructed.
“Why?”
“You did agree to translate, didn’t you?” Zane gave himself a mental pat on the back for quick thinking.
She frowned. “Are you sure you’ll need me to translate in Georgia?”
“There’s a possibility.” A rare possibility, but one never knew what to expect, he reasoned.
After he’d pulled that randy-boy stunt in the abandoned gas station, she had every reason to be suspicious of anything he said. What little gain he’d made toward earning her trust had probably been negated by his lust.
“Angel, another thing. I’m sorry about what happened in that building. It won’t happen again. I don’t want you to be concerned about staying here with me.”
Her eyes drooped with hurt. She said nothing.
Great. Now he really felt like a snake’s belly.
“Why don’t you grab a shower,” he suggested.
Angel rolled her eyes up and gave an exaggerated sigh. She was obviously not happy with him or the plan, but carried her bag of clothes to the bathroom. The door snapped shut. The lock clicked from the inside.
Not happy at all.
Zane bolted the front door then secured the latches on all the windows. Next he went to the alarm pad, bypassed the motion detectors and keyed in the code. He planned to return from his shower with her still present and accounted for.
Angel emerged from the bathroom wearing the only other clothes he knew she owned—the jeans and white shirt. At this rate, after a week of washing they’d disintegrate.
She’d dried her hair and twisted it up in the back with a clip he assumed she’d found in his sister’s paraphernalia. The style suited her high cheekbones and slender neck, a soft kissable neck.
The memory of holding her in the corner of the dark building hadn’t fled far from his conscious thoughts.
Desire wrestled with logic. For all he knew, she was wanted by the police. He’d better zip up any attraction and treat her the way he should have from the first—as a suspect.
With the apartment fortified against entry or exit, he could relax for the first time since meeting her.
Angel pivoted in the living room, her gaze tracking across every inch.
The sofa bed had been converted back to an overstuffed leather sofa, the area around it tidied. Her sweep of the room stopped at the flashing security keypad. She arched an accusatory eyebrow at him.
“Angel, I’ve alarmed the apartment so no one will enter without us knowing it.”
“Or leave?”
Okay, so he hadn’t fooled her. “Or leave. I’m grabbing a shower and then we’ll go. Fix yourself something to eat.”
She walked to the kitchen mumbling something under her breath about the male population that didn’t sound flattering.
“Be out real quick,” he called to her. No answer, which was a loud answer in some ways. Zane gave the perfectly clean bathroom a brief once-over, no longer surprised to find it that way, then showered and shaved.
Zane threw on a collared golf shirt and khaki pants. He slid his loaded .32 Smith & Wesson down the inside of his boot. The 9mm Glock stayed hidden within the false center of a hardback novel in his flight bag.
He walked into the kitchen to find Angel leaning forward on the counter with a slice of cold pizza in one hand. Her downcast eyes drifted back and forth across the front page of yesterday’s paper. An almost empty glass of milk rested near the edge of the paper.
“You can have anything you want,” Zane pointed out to her. “You don’t have to eat day-old pizza.”
“This is great. You have no idea how badly you miss pizza until you can’t get it for a year.” She’d mumbled her answer without looking up from the newspaper.
Where had she lived that she couldn’t get pizza? He’d file that away for now.
Zane checked his watch. They had to get on the road.
“You ready to go?”
She didn’t even hesitate as she cleaned up after herself, wiped down the counter and washed the glass. “Sure, if you’re ready to unlock my cell.”
That zinged right to the heart. “It’s for your safety more than anything else.”
“Just like a man to justify his action as it being for my benefit rather than admit the real reason. Fine.” She hefted the linen bag to her shoulder. “I’m ready.”
She made him sound underhanded. He hadn’t turned her over to the police. He was keeping her safe. She had no reason to question him.
On the other hand, he supposed she had no reason to believe him either. Her resistance to sharing information left him few options. Until Zane knew who Angel was and what or whom she ran from, she’d just have to accept what he told her.
Then if he determined she was innocent of any wrongdoing, he’d have a professional help her deal with an ex-boy-friend, or husband.
Zane hadn’t even considered the possibility of a husband—probably because he’d been thinking with the wrong part of his anatomy.
With his professional armor securely in place, he scooted her out to the truck. After three switchbacks on his way to the airfield, he had detected no one following them, but a bad feeling stayed with him.
Where would her pursuers show up next?
At Sunshine Airfield, Angel waited anxiously while Zane did a quick review of the maintenance log. She expected a black sport utility to block their exit from the hangar—more Hollywood influence—while Zane satisfied himself that the airplane was up to par.
After she buckled in, he taxied down the east runway, explaining they had to take off into the wind.
The Titan lifted effortlessly into puffy cotton clouds drifting through a sapphire-blue sky. At a thousand feet he settled back.
Hurt by the admission he considered the kiss a mistake, she’d hardly spoken to him since leaving the apartment.
She disagreed. To her, the kiss had been wonderful.
Of course, she had little experience to use for comparison. Based on that amazing kiss this morning, Zane definitely had more practice than her. She imagined groomed and sophisticated women flowing through his apartment.
Okay, so she was not sophisticated, but the kiss hadn’t been that bad. If he had so much experience, he could have at least pretended he liked it, couldn’t he?
Fine. If he wanted to act as if nothing happened between them, so would she.
Her nipples mad
e a liar of her. The pair of traitors hardened just thinking about his touch. If he’d kept his hands on her another couple of minutes in that old gas station, her clothes would have combusted from the heat coming off her skin.
“Looks like a great day for flying.” Zane’s voice buzzed in her headphones.
“What?”
“Looks like a great day for flying,” he repeated.
She shrugged.
“Have you flown a lot?” he asked.
“No.”
“What type of work do you do?”
Let’s see. What’s a good answer? She’d worked as a courier when she’d been arrested for unknowingly delivering drugs for her father. After jail she’d worked as a maid in a filthy motel, shoveled refuse at the dump and waited tables in a strip club because a respectable restaurant didn’t want an ex-con.
Oh yeah, she had it. She’d been hired by one of the largest import-export companies in the country. Two months in to her employment, she’d earned a raise and moved up to the position of inventory clerk. That job had come with opportunities for advancement from small-time jailbird to a maximum-prison resident.
Hmm. Maybe not.
“You could say I’m in between jobs right now.” Good answer, even if it was a bit flippant.
Zane’s mouth firmed into a straight line.
She couldn’t read his eyes behind the aviator glasses, but figured he didn’t appreciate her smart comeback. She didn’t care. She was still ticked off about the kiss.
“Look, Angel, I’m just trying to make conversation. It shortens the trip.”
She shrugged again and stared into space, literally, feeling like a brat.
“We’re traveling north, just west of the A1A route. You can see the coast.”
While Zane commented on landmarks along the way, a thought came to her. “How did you find me this morning?”
“I normally jog in the mornings. When I heard you leave, I slipped on my shoes to run with you, but you were way ahead of me by the time you reached the beach. Next thing I knew, you were running across the street like your life depended on it.”
A call on the radio interrupted him for a moment. Zane continued. “I lost track of you and had just walked into that old gas station when I heard someone coming up the side and there you were.”
Worth Every Risk Page 9