“Good morning,” she said.
Frisco glared at Tash. “Where the h—”
Mia cut him off. “Tasha was coming over to visit me,” she told Frisco, “but she remembered that she was supposed to tell you first where she was going.” She looked down at the little girl. “Right, Tash?”
Tasha nodded.
Tasha remembered? Mia remembered was more like it.
Mia mouthed “Positive reinforcement” over Tasha’s head.
Frisco swallowed his frustration. All right. If Mia thought he could get through to Tasha this way, he’d give it a shot. Somehow he mustered up far more enthusiasm than he felt. “Excellent job remembering,” he said to the little girl, opening the screen door and letting both Tasha and Mia inside.
He forced himself to smile, and Natasha visibly brightened. Jeez, maybe there was something to this.
He scooped the little girl into his arms and awkwardly spun her around until she began to giggle, then collapsed with her onto the couch. “In fact,” he continued, “you are so amazingly excellent, I think you should probably get a medal. Don’t you?”
She nodded, her eyes wide. “What’s a medal?”
“It’s a very special pin that you get for doing something really great—like remembering my rules,” Frisco told her. He dumped her off his lap and onto the soft cushions of the couch. “Wait right here—I’ll get it.”
Mia was standing near the door, and as she watched, Frisco pushed himself off the couch and headed down the hall to his bedroom.
“Getting a medal is a really big deal.” Frisco raised his voice so they could hear him in the living room. “It requires a very special ceremony.”
Tasha was bouncing up and down on the couch, barely able to contain her excitement. Mia had to smile. It seemed that Frisco understood the concept of positive reinforcement.
“Here we go,” he said, coming back into the living room. He caught Mia’s eye and smiled. He looked like hell this morning. He looked more exhausted than she’d ever seen him. He’d clearly been sound asleep mere moments ago. But somehow he seemed more vibrant, his eyes more clear. And the smile that he’d sent her was remarkably sweet, almost shy.
Mia’s heart was in her throat as she watched him with his little niece.
“For the remarkable remembering of my rules and regs, including rule number one—‘Tell Frisco where you’re going before you leave the condo,”’ he intoned, “I award Natasha Francisco this medal of honor.”
He pinned one of the colorful bars Mia had seen attached to his dress uniform onto Tasha’s pajama shirt.
“Now I salute you and you salute me,” he whispered to the little girl after he attached the pin.
He stood at sharp attention, and snapped a salute. Tasha imitated him remarkably well.
“The only time SEALs ever salute is when someone gets a medal,” Frisco said with another glance in Mia’s direction. He pulled Tasha back to the couch with him. “Here’s the deal,” he told her. “In order to keep this medal, you have to remember my rules all day today. Do you remember the rules?”
“Tell you when I want to go outside….”
“Even when I’m asleep. You have to wake me up, okay? And what else?”
“Stay here….”
“In the courtyard, right. And…?”
“No swimming without my buddy.”
“Absolutely, incredibly correct. Gimme a high five.”
Natasha giggled, slapping hands with her uncle.
“Here’s the rest of the deal,” he said. “Are you listening, Tash?”
She nodded.
“When you get enough of these medals, you know what happens?”
Tasha shook her head no.
“We trade this thing in,” Frisco told her, smacking the back of the couch they were sitting on with one hand, “for a certain pink sofa.”
Mia thought it was entirely possible that the little girl was going to explode with pleasure.
“You’re going to have to work really hard to follow the rules,” Frisco was telling her. “You’ve got to remember that the reason I want you to obey these rules is because I want you to be safe, and it really gets me upset when I don’t know for certain that you’re safe. You have to think about that and remember that, because I know you don’t want to make me feel upset, right?”
Tasha nodded. “Do you have to follow my rules?”
Frisco was surprised, but he hid it well. “What are your rules?”
“No more bad words,” the little girl said without hesitation.
Frisco glanced up at Mia again, chagrin in his eyes. “Okay,” he said, looking back at Tasha. “That’s a tough one, but I’ll try.”
“More playing with Mia,” Tasha suggested.
He laughed nervously. “I’m not sure we can make that a rule, Tash. I mean, things that concern you and me are fine, but…”
“I’d love to play with you,” Mia murmured.
Frisco glanced up at her. She couldn’t possibly have meant that the way it sounded. No, she was talking to Natasha. Still…He let his imagination run with the scenario. It was a very, very good one.
“But we don’t have to make a rule about it,” Mia added.
“Can you come to the beach with us for my swimming lesson?” Tasha asked her.
Mia hesitated, looking cautiously across the room at Frisco. “I don’t want to get in the way.”
“You’ve already got your bathing suit on,” he pointed out.
She seemed surprised that he’d noticed. “Well, yes, but…”
“Were you planning to go to a different beach?”
“No…I just don’t want to…you know…” She shrugged and smiled apologetically, nervously. “Interfere.”
“It wouldn’t be interfering,” Frisco told her. Man, he felt as nervous as she sounded. When had this gotten so hard? He used to be so good at this sort of thing. “Tasha wants you to come with us.” Perfect. Now he sounded as if he wanted her to come along as a playmate for his niece. That wasn’t it at all. “And I…I do, too,” he added.
Jeez, his heart was in his mouth. He swallowed, trying to make it go back where it belonged as Mia just gazed at him.
“Well, okay,” she finally said. “In that case, I’d love to come. If you want, I could pack a picnic lunch…?”
“Yeah!” Tasha squealed, hopping around the room. “A picnic! A picnic!”
Frisco felt himself smile. A picnic on the beach with Mia. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such anticipation. And his anticipation was for more than his wanting to see what her bathing suit looked like, although he was feeling plenty of that, too. “I guess that’s a yes. But it shouldn’t be just up to you to bring the food.”
“I’ll make sandwiches,” Mia told him, opening the door. “You guys bring something to drink. Soda. Or beer if you want it.”
“No beer,” Frisco said.
She paused, looking back at him, her hand on the handle of the screen door.
“It’s another one of the rules I’m going to be following from now on,” he said quietly. Natasha had stopped dancing around the room. She was listening, her eyes wide. “No more drinking. Not even beer.”
Mia stepped away from the door, her eyes nearly as wide as Tasha’s. “Um, Tash, why don’t you go put on your bathing suit?”
Silently Tasha vanished down the hallway.
Frisco shook his head. “It’s not that big a deal.”
Mia clearly thought otherwise. She stepped closer to him, lowering her voice for privacy from Tasha’s sensitive ears. “You know, there are support groups all over town. You can find a meeting at virtually any time of day—”
Did she honestly think his drinking was that serious a problem? “Look, I can handle this,” he said gruffly. “I went overboard for a couple of days, but that’s all it was. I didn’t drink at all while I was in the hospital—right up ’til two days ago. These past few days—you haven’t exactly been seeing me at my best.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to imply…”
“It’s no big deal.”
She touched his arm, her fingers gentle and cool and so soft against his skin. “Yes, it is,” she told him. “To Natasha, it’s a very big deal.”
“I’m not doing it for Tash,” he said quietly, looking down at her delicate hand resting on the corded muscles of his forearm, wishing she would leave it there, but knowing she was going to pull away. “I’m doing it for myself.”
8
“Is Thomas really a king?”
Mia looked up from the sand castle she was helping Tasha build. The little girl was making dribble turrets on the side of the large mound using wet sand and water from a plastic pail that Mia had found in her closet. She had remarkable dexterity for a five-year-old, and managed to make most of her dribbles quite tall and spiky.
“Thomas’s last name is King,” Mia answered. “But here in the United States, we don’t have kings and queens.”
“Is he a king somewhere else? Like I’m a princess in Russia?”
“Well,” Mia said diplomatically, “you might want to check with Thomas, but I think King is just his last name.”
“He looks like a king.” Natasha giggled. “He thinks I’m from Mars. I’m gonna marry him.”
“Marry who?” Frisco asked, sitting down in the sand next to them.
He’d just come out of the ocean, and water beaded on his eyelashes and dripped from his hair. He looked more relaxed and at ease than Mia had ever seen him.
“Thomas,” Tasha told him, completely serious.
“Thomas.” Frisco considered that thoughtfully. “I like him,” he said. “But you’re a little young to be getting married, don’t you think?”
“Not now, silly,” she said with exasperation. “When I’m a grown-up, of course.”
Frisco tried to hide his smile. “Of course,” he said.
“You can’t marry my mom cause you’re her brother, right?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Frisco told her. He leaned back in the sand on his elbows. Mia tried not to stare at the way the muscles in his arms flexed as they supported his weight. She tried to pull her gaze away from his broad shoulders and powerful chest and smooth, tanned skin. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen him without a shirt, after all. She should be getting used to this….
“Too bad,” Tash said with a sigh. “Mommy’s always looking for someone to marry, and I like you.”
Frisco’s voice was husky. “Thanks, Tash. I like you, too.”
“I didn’t like Dwayne,” the little girl said. “He scared me, but Mommy liked living in his house.”
“Maybe when your mom comes back, the two of you could live a few doors down from me,” Frisco said.
“You could marry Mia,” Tasha suggested. “And move in with her. And we could live in your place.”
Mia glanced up. Frisco met her eyes, clearly embarrassed. “Maybe Mia doesn’t want to get married,” he said.
“Do you?” the little girl asked, looking up from her handiwork to gaze at Mia with those pure blue eyes that were so like Frisco’s.
“Well,” she said carefully. “Someday I’d like to get married and have a family, but—”
“She does,” Tasha informed her uncle. “She’s pretty and she makes good sandwiches. You should ask her to marry you.” She stood up and, taking her bucket, went down to the edge of the water, where she began to chase waves up the sand.
“I’m sorry about that,” Frisco said with a nervous laugh. “She’s…you know, five. She’s heavily into happily ever after.”
“It’s all right,” Mia said with a smile. “And don’t worry. I won’t hold you to any promises that Tasha makes on your behalf.” She brushed the sand from her knees and moved back onto the beach blanket she’d spread out.
Frisco moved to join her. “That’s good to know.” He turned to look at Mia, his warm gaze skimming up her legs, lingering on her red two-piece bathing suit and the enormous amount of skin it exposed, before settling on her face. “She’s right, though. You are pretty, and you make damn good sandwiches.”
Mia’s pulse was racing. When had it started to matter so much whether or not this man thought that she was pretty? When had the urge disappeared—the urge to cover herself up with a bulky T-shirt every time he looked at her with that heat in his eyes? When had her heart started to leap at his crooked, funny smiles? When had he crossed that boundary that defined him as more than a mere friend?
It had started days ago, with that very first hug he had given Natasha in the courtyard. He was so gentle with the child, so patient. Mia’s attraction to him had been there from the start, yet now that she had come to know more of him, it was multilayered, existing on more complicated levels than just basic, raw sexual magnetism.
It was crazy. Mia knew it was crazy. This was not a man with whom she could picture herself spending the rest of her life. He’d been trained as a killer—a professional soldier. And if that wasn’t enough, he had barrels of anger and frustration and pain to work through before he could be considered psychologically and emotionally healthy. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the fact of his drinking.
Yes, he’d vowed to stop, but Mia’s experience as a high school teacher had made her an expert on the disease of alcoholism. The best way to fight it was not to face it alone, but to seek help. He seemed hell-bent on handling it himself, and more often than not, such a course would end in failure.
No, if she were smart, she’d pack up her beach bag right now and get the heck out of there.
Instead, she put more sunblock on her face. “I went into your kitchen to help Natasha load the cooler with soda,” she said. “And I noticed you had only one thing stuck onto your refrigerator. A list.”
He glanced at her, his expression one of wariness. “Yeah?”
“I wasn’t sure,” she said, “but…it looked like it might’ve been a list of things that you have difficulty doing with your injured knee.”
The list had included things like run, jump, skydive, bike, and climb stairs.
He gazed out at the ocean, squinting slightly in the brightness. “That’s right.”
“You forgot to include that you’re no longer able to play on the Olympic basketball team, so I added that to the bottom,” she said, her tongue firmly in her cheek.
He let loose a short burst of air that might’ve been called a laugh if he’d been smiling. “Very funny. If you’d looked carefully, you’d have noticed that the word walk was at the top. I crossed it off when I could walk. I intend to do the same with the rest of those things on that list.”
His eyes were the same fierce shade of blue as the sky.
Mia rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin up in her hands. “Tell me about this amazing pink couch,” she said. “What’s that all about?”
This time Frisco did laugh, and the lines around his eyes crinkled with genuine amusement. He stretched out next to her on the blanket, making sure he could still see Tasha from where they lay. “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s gonna look great in my living room, don’t you think? Dirt brown and ugly green go real well with pink and silver.”
Mia smiled. “You’ll have to redecorate. Maybe a white carpet and lots of Art Deco type mirrors on the walls would work.”
“And it would be so me,” he said, deadpan.
“Seriously, though,” Mia said. “If anything will give Tasha incentive to follow your rules, that will. She’s only mentioned it five thousand times today already.”
“Tell me the truth,” Frisco said, supporting his head with one hand as he gazed at her. “Did I go too far? Did I cross the line from positive reinforcement into sheer bribery?”
Mia shook her head, caught in the intense blue of his eyes. “You’re giving her the opportunity to earn something that she truly wants, along with learning an important lesson about following rules. That’s not bribery.”
“I feel like I’m taki
ng the point and heading into totally uncharted territory,” Frisco admitted.
Mia didn’t understand. “Taking the point…?”
“If you take the point, if you’re the pointman,” he explained, “that means you lead the squad. You’re the first guy out there—the first guy either to locate or step on any booby traps or land mines. It’s a pretty intense job.”
“At least you know that Natasha’s not suddenly going to explode.”
Frisco smiled. “Are you sure about that?”
With amusement dancing in his eyes, a smile softening his face and the ocean breeze gently ruffling his hair, Frisco looked like the kind of man Mia would go far out of her way to meet. He looked charming and friendly and pleasant and sinfully handsome.
“You’re doing a wonderful job with Tasha,” she told him. “You’re being remarkably consistent in dealing with her. I know how hard it is not to lose your temper when she disobeys you—I’ve seen you swallow it, and I know that’s not easy. And giving her that medal—that was brilliant.” She sat up, reaching for the T-shirt Tasha had been wearing over her bathing suit. “Look.” She held it up so he could see. “She’s so proud of that medal, she asked me to pin it onto this shirt for her so she could wear it to the beach. If you keep this up, it’s only a matter of time before she’ll remember to follow your rules.”
Frisco had rolled over onto his back and was shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun with one hand as he looked up at her. He sat up now, in one smooth effortless motion, glancing back at Natasha, checking briefly to be sure the little girl was safe.
She was crouched in the sand halfway between the blanket and the water, starting a new dribble castle.
“I’m doing a wonderful job and I’m brilliant?” he said with a half smile. “Sounds like you’re giving me a little positive reinforcement here.”
Natasha’s T-shirt was damp and Mia spread it out on top of the cooler to dry in the sun. “Well…maybe,” she admitted with a sheepish smile.
He touched her gently under her chin, pulling her head up so that she was forced to look at him.
His smile had faded, and the amusement in his eyes was gone, replaced by something else entirely, something hot and dangerous and impossible to turn away from.
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Part 1 Page 60