The Admiral's Bride

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Are you kidding? The man’s almost obsessively possessive.”

  “Hmm. The sharing doesn’t go both ways, huh?”

  “Sharing?”

  “Just more CRO unpleasantness. Women as chattel. You know, it’s a good thing you made it into town today,” Zoe interrupted herself. “The team was starting to make plans to liberate you. You had us all worried.”

  Jake swore softly. “Why can’t they just sit tight and trust me?”

  “They care about you.”

  “They think I’m too old.”

  “You think you’re too old.”

  Jake pulled back slightly. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Zoe shook her head. “Nothing. Look, Jake, I’ve been—”

  “Nothing, my ass! You wouldn’t’ve said it if it meant nothing.”

  “Okay, it meant something, but it’s a personal something, and if we’ve got limited time to talk here, the personal stuff should be the last thing we get to.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Unfortunately it didn’t make him wonder exactly what she’d meant any less. He thought he was too old. Jeez.

  “I’ve been thinking about alternatives to this whole setup,” she said. She pulled him close, breathing into his ear as if her words were seductive promises rather than a plan for an alternative operation.

  God, he’d forgotten for a moment—he’d been standing there arguing with her. They were supposed to be just short of making out on the dance floor. He held her closer, and she moved toward him willingly, her breasts soft against him. He buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair. Oh, God.

  “What’s your take on the hierarchy of power inside the CRO?” she murmured, her breath hot against his ear. “I’ve always gotten the impression that Christopher Vincent’s it. That without him, the organization would fall apart. And if that’s the case, why don’t we just grab Vincent on one of his trips outside of his compound? Hold him hostage in exchange for the Trip X?”

  “I’ve thought about that, too,” Jake admitted. He kissed her neck, ran his hands down her back to cup her rear end. Oh, God. Bad mistake. But once his hands were there, it would’ve looked odd for him to move them right away, wouldn’t it? What were they talking about? Hostage. Vincent. Right.

  “It’s not an option,” he told her, hoping she wouldn’t notice the huskiness of his voice. He cleared his throat. “Vincent’s got contingency plans for all kinds of disaster scenarios. Everyone in the CRO compound has a battle station to go to if the Feds suddenly launch an attack. He’s stockpiled enough food to withstand a two-year siege. He’s got an escape route charted out of this bar, in case he suddenly finds himself a target while he’s here.”

  She slipped her hands into the back pockets of his jeans, pressing his hips tightly against hers. “With or without an escape route, we could get him.”

  “I know that. But what I don’t know is what his contingency plan is in regards to the Triple X. His lieutenants might not know what it is they’ve got. His orders might be for them to use it if he’s taken. So, no, we’re not going to grab him. Not without finding out more.”

  Jake tried to shift back, extremely aware of the fact that when she pulled him that close, there were no secrets between them—including the secret he’d been trying to keep about the enthusiastic way his body was responding to her nearness.

  He tried to make his voice sound casual, conversational. As if he weren’t affected by the sensation of her breasts against his chest, as if he couldn’t feel her heat as she pressed herself against his thigh. “Hey, have you heard from Mitch?”

  “Not since he’s been arrested.” Zoe smiled, her hands traveling up his back. “We almost didn’t recognize him when we saw the news report on CNN.”

  “Yeah, he’s good with disguises. I looked twice at that little old man sitting at the bar just to be sure it wasn’t him.”

  “It’s not. Mitch is still in custody,” Zoe told him. She ran her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and it felt impossibly, sinfully good. “He’s being held at the same federal penitentiary where Christopher Vincent’s stepbrother is doing ten to twenty for armed robbery.”

  Jake laughed. “Well, jeez, that’s pure genius. I mean, I knew Christopher had a stepbrother who’d been in trouble with the law, but…Whose idea was it to send Mitch to the same prison?”

  “I’m a fan of doing just that little extra bit of research,” she told him modestly. “We lucked out that the stepbrother was in a federal jail and—”

  “It was your idea. Good job, Lange. So you’re the genius, huh?”

  “Whoa,” she said, laughing. Her eyes sparkled and danced with amusement. She was so pretty, so full of life. The longing that hit him was so strong, it took his breath away. “Don’t go overboard. Yes, it was a good idea, but—”

  She stopped short, her smile fading at the look he knew was in his eyes. He couldn’t hide it, and he prayed she would think it was only part of the game they were playing.

  They’d both stopped moving, and they stood on the dance floor just holding each other. She gazed at him, her beautiful lips slightly parted, and when he didn’t move, she stood on her toes and kissed him.

  It was the smallest of kisses, light and delicate, a feathery brushing of her lips across his. She searched his eyes again, then stood on her toes once more. This time she kissed him a little bit harder. This time she tasted him, gently touching the curve of his lips with the very tip of her tongue. And this time he kissed her, too, just as delicately, just as softly.

  Jake’s heart was pounding, and he was dizzy from wanting more. But he took his cues from her, letting her lead, refusing to push her into harder, deeper, longer kisses, no matter how badly he wanted just that.

  She delicately swept her tongue into his mouth and he groaned aloud. She took him right to the point where he knew they were on the verge of crushing their mouths together and positively inhaling each other, but instead, she pulled back.

  “We’re both good actors,” she whispered, “but we’re not this good. Part of this is real, Jake, whether we want to believe it or not. That’s what I was trying to say when I told you I’d make love to you. That I also want to make love to you.”

  Jake didn’t know what to say.

  She kissed him again, hot and sweet and long. “That’s me kissing you, no games, no pretense. We can have it both ways, you know. We can do our jobs and get naked—if you can get past everything you need to get past, if you can come to the conclusion that you’re not too old for this sort of thing.”

  “Ah,” Jake said, finally finding his voice as she pulled free from his arms. “We’ve finally come to the personal stuff.”

  “I bet you look good naked,” Zoe told him as she picked up her tray and headed to the bar.

  Jake wanted both to laugh and cry. He’d never met anyone as completely in-your-face honest as Zoe Lange. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t shy about asking for it.

  She wanted him.

  And his big problem was that he wanted her, too.

  Even though he knew that wanting her was wrong.

  Chapter 8

  “Oh, hell, he’s naked!”

  Bobby Taylor thrust his big hands in front of the video monitor. But because there was more than one camera, there was more than one screen to cover. Wes Skelly grabbed Zoe’s chair and spun her so she was facing the other direction.

  She just laughed at them. “Oh, come on, you guys. Like I haven’t seen a naked man before? I grew up in a very small house with four brothers. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the male anatomy has just never been a mystery to me.”

  “Yeah, but he’s an admiral,” the bigger SEAL told her. Bobby Taylor could have made a fortune playing professional football. At six feet seven inches, he weighed at least two sixty, maybe even more. When he sat down, he took up two chairs, but very little of his bulk was fat. He was simply enormous. Yet despite that, he was one of the most graceful men Zoe had ev
er met. He was part Native American—part Navajo, he’d told her. He had the darkest, most serene brown eyes she’d ever seen. “He’s earned the right to towel off after his shower without an audience.”

  “Besides,” Wes added, “you don’t want to be looking at him naked. He’s an old man.”

  “He is not—”

  “Okay,” Bobby said. “He’s got his shorts on. Although it still seems a little disrespectful for us to be staring at an admiral when he’s in his underwear.”

  Zoe spun her chair to face the row of video monitors. Jake stood, displayed from three different angles, combing his hair out of his face. One of the cameras must’ve been positioned directly behind the mirror, because he gazed straight into it, his eyes a vivid blue. His arms were over his head, his biceps and triceps flexing.

  “I’m sorry, Skelly,” Zoe said, tapping that screen. “But that is not an old man. I don’t know where you get off calling him that. He’s in better shape than you are.”

  His stomach was rock solid and his chest was muscular, despite being badly scarred.

  “Wow,” Bobby said, subdued by the sight of all those scars. “He’s seen some action, huh?”

  “Two years ago he was the target of an assassination attempt,” Zoe said. God, if those scars were any indication, he’d been nearly mortally wounded. It was a miracle he was still alive. He’d miraculously escaped death many times while in Vietnam, too. Some people said he’d led a charmed life. Without a doubt, luck had always been his constant companion.

  Zoe hoped that same good fortune was riding copilot with Jake right now. If Christopher Vincent even suspected Jake was there as a spy…

  On the screen, Jake threw his comb on top of the dresser. He took his jeans from the closet. Too bad. He had very nice legs. As Zoe watched from three different angles, he pulled on his jeans and covered them up.

  His bedroom was a former executive office for the old factory, the walls still covered with cheap, tacky paneling, ancient orange-shag carpeting on the floor, blessedly faded. The furniture was cream-colored, with gold ornamentation—directly from a low-rent motel liquidation sale. She’d have thought a group declaring themselves to be the chosen race would have a little more taste.

  “Besides behind the mirror,” Zoe mused, “the other cameras are, where? Over by this window…” She pointed to the screen. “And…here near the door?”

  Wes spread the floor plan of the CRO compound—the former Belle Frosty Cakes factory—out on the counter behind her and she swiveled her chair to face him.

  “In Admiral Robinson’s quarters, the cameras are here, here and here.” He highlighted the locations in pink.

  “Any in Jake’s bathroom?” she asked, leaning over for a closer look.

  “At least one,” he told her. “Here.”

  “Show me that one,” she said, turning to the video screens.

  Bobby keyed a command into the computer, and the image on the far left screen changed.

  The camera in the white-tiled bathroom had a clear shot of the door, the sink and the toilet. But not the tub. The tub, with the shower, was off to the side, out of camera range. Interesting.

  On the other two video screens, Jake buttoned up his shirt, pocketed his wallet and keys and left the room.

  “Can you follow him?” Zoe asked.

  “Yeah, as long as he doesn’t go too fast.” Bobby had fingers the size of hot dogs, yet they flew over the computer keyboard. “But even if we do lose him, it won’t take long to find him again. As soon as he speaks, we can use the computer and trace him by his voice.”

  On screen, Jake walked purposefully along the corridor. He had a cocky walk, with a spring in his step more befitting a twenty-five-year-old. It was self-confidence, Zoe realized. Jake Robinson walked the way he did because he trusted himself completely. He liked himself, too.

  It was powerfully attractive.

  It had been two whole days since she’d seen him last, and Zoe felt a sharp tug of longing. She missed him.

  They’d been together every evening at the bar for two and a half weeks before that. During that time Zoe had smuggled to Jake the equipment he’d needed to enable the SEALs to tap into the CRO security cameras. And during that time, they’d established a very hot, very high-visibility romance.

  Zoe had made it clear to all the patrons of Mel’s Bar that she was holding out for marriage. Despite the sparks she and Jake made on the dance floor, she publicly refused to bring him home with her. And Jake, he’d made it clear that he wasn’t ready for any kind of commitment.

  It was kind of funny, actually. In truth, the man was Mr. Commitment. He would still be married to his first wife right now if she hadn’t died. And Zoe didn’t doubt for one nanosecond that he’d still be happily married.

  Conversely she, Zoe, had never even imagined herself married. She’d never seen the need, considering that she’d never truly been in love. She’d always purposely sought out and let herself fall halfway in love with men she knew would never be right for her. Halfway in love was all she’d wanted, though. It was safe. She knew exactly what she’d get, knew she’d never be in too deep, never out of control.

  She was doing the exact same thing with Jake, too. Even if she could convince him to make their relationship more physical, more intimate, she knew damn well it would never go beyond that. He still loved his wife, and he wasn’t looking to replace her.

  Zoe could love Jake—just a little—and still be safe.

  So she did. And she used her feelings to bring a certain authenticity to her role. No, she would not sleep with him, not until they were married. Well, okay, pretending that was a stretch. A long stretch.

  And at times, when Jake held her in his arms on the dance floor, or when she kissed him goodbye each night, she thought the sheer irony would drive her completely insane. Here Jake always pretended that he wanted to spend the night with her, and Zoe always pushed him away.

  She could think of only one thing she wanted more than to spend these long, cold autumn nights with Jake Robinson in her bed. She wanted to find the Trip X. But that was the only thing she wanted more.

  Still she sent Jake back to the CRO fort each night. And each night she slept alone.

  Each day, she locked herself in the team’s surveillance trailer, using the computers to access the CRO cameras, electronically searching for the missing canisters of Triple X.

  She was exhausted, bleary-eyed and completely frustrated on many, many levels. She wasn’t going to find anything this way. She had to get in there, inside that electric fence. She needed to search with more than just her eyes, restricted by the lens of a camera.

  She had to get inside Christopher Vincent’s private quarters, into those few rooms where there were no security cameras. The more she came into contact with Vincent, the more she was convinced that he was the type of man who’d get off on keeping a crate of deadly poison—enough to wipe out the capital city of this country—on the sideboard of his private dining room.

  She’d had it. She’d played it Jake’s way for long enough. She was going to get inside the CRO walls whether he liked it or not.

  On the video monitor, Jake turned a corner, and with a flick of his fingers, Bobby made him appear on a different screen. The enormous SEAL didn’t consult any list, didn’t look at the factory schematic. He just somehow knew the camera codes.

  “You’ve already memorized both the layout of this part of the factory and the location of the cameras?” she asked.

  “I’ve got the whole factory up here.” He tapped on his forehead. “I’m pretty good with maps.”

  Pretty good?

  “Morning, John,” Jake said in greeting to a man heading in the same direction. Bobby made another adjustment, and their conversation about the current dreary weather came in crisp and clear over the speakers, fading slightly as they moved away from one microphone, getting louder as they walked past another.

  “Tell me about the audio signal,” Zoe said. “Do all t
he cameras have microphones, or is there a different miking system?”

  “There’s a combination,” Wes told her. “The dedicated mikes are higher quality, but they’re also more expensive so there’re fewer of ’em.”

  “Is it possible to speak quietly enough so’s not to be heard?” Zoe asked. “I guess what I need to know is, once I’m in there, is there any way I’ll be able to talk to Jake without the mikes picking up our conversation?”

  “Mid to high-range frequency overload will block low-volume conversation,” Bobby said. He typed in a new command, and on the right-hand screen, the CRO kitchen appeared. About a dozen women were in the big room, about half of them washing dishes. “See?”

  “Run water,” Wes interpreted. “And speak softly. But don’t whisper. A whisper could cut through.”

  Sure enough, in the kitchen, water was running from the faucet, and Zoe could only make out the words of the women who raised their voices significantly when they spoke.

  “We also found a spot where the security cameras were set up a little carelessly,” Wes told her. He pointed to the floor plan again, and she stood to get a better look, stretching her legs. “Up here there’s access to the roof. There must’ve been some kind of recreation deck there at some time. And the entire northwest corner of that area is completely out of camera range. It overlooks the millstream—an added bonus, running water. Again, speak softly, and your conversation will be covered by the sound of the water. You won’t be overheard.”

  Bobby turned in his chair to face her, his dark eyes very serious. “Zoe, are you sure you want to go in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but I’m not sure the admiral’s got this under control.”

  “Admirals can lose touch,” Wes agreed. Since Bobby was so tall and broad and always with him, Wes always seemed short and wiry in comparison. But Zoe had to lift her chin to look at him as he straightened up. He had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve, revealing a stylized barbed-wire tattoo that ran completely around an extremely well-developed bicep. He may have been wiry compared to Bobby, but only compared to Bobby. Wes Skelly was no lightweight, that was for sure.