Right. He could already hear the belly laugh his friend Marco would let out if he so much as asked. “Hell no. I said I know some people. I didn’t say I know the president.”
“I figured as much.” Then she slid him a sidelong glance from beneath long lashes. His girl was pulling out all the flirt stops tonight. And it was working. Griffin was ready to abandon this party, toss her into the backseat of his car, and take her on their own private trip to the stars. “I also figured it didn’t hurt to ask. You never know how people can surprise you.”
The crowd pushed them through the front doors. Damn if she hadn’t hit the nail right on the head. This Chloe was full of surprises tonight. He wasn’t sure if he could take many more. He also knew he couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.
—
“What are you looking at so intently?” Chloe’s warm breath on his ear almost made Griff bobble the two glasses of port he held.
“That iron sculpture over the fireplace.” He pointed at it with his glass as he passed her the other one. It was a circle bisected almost like a compass with lines ending in fleur-de-lis. Had to be important. In places like this, even the toilet paper holder was either an antique or embossed with some meaningful nationalistic symbol.
She took a sip. Nodded. “It’s an ornamental version of the armillary sphere found on the Portuguese crest, as well as, of course, on the flag.”
“Huh?” Where did that come from?
Chloe licked a drop of port from the corner of her lips. The woman was killing him with the sensual come-ons, intentional or not. “Oh, an armillary sphere is like an astrolabe. It shows the rings of celestial longitude and latitude—the great circles of the heavens.”
“I know what an astrolabe is,” he snapped. It got covered practically on day one of navigation at the Academy. Seeing as how people had been using them for centuries. “I’m a pilot in the Coast Guard, remember?”
“It’d be a lot easier to remember if you wore your sexy uniform.” She stroked a finger from his Adam’s apple to the top edge of his chest hair, just above the open collar of his shirt.
Griff laughed. The woman had a one-track mind. And he loved it when she focused it on him. “I just didn’t know there was one on the Portuguese flag.”
“They were such huge explorers. It represents their centuries-long contribution to the Age of Discovery.”
“Did you watch a film strip while I was gone? Something like The Pride of Portugal?”
“No. But now that you mention it, where have you been? I know the line at the bar is long, but you were gone for almost twenty minutes. I was about to look for you.”
He’d been afraid of that. “Sorry. There was an incident.”
Griff noticed that she’d done something different to her hair tonight. It wasn’t curly, but it was in these sexy waves that made it easy to picture her lying in the sand with a wet, salty breeze tousling her hair. It made him want to run his fingers through it for a solid half hour, just for starters. But Griff settled for smoothing a hand down the length of it as he dropped an apologetic kiss on the top of her head.
“An international incident?” Funny as hell how gleeful Chloe looked at the prospect. “This date keeps getting more and more interesting. Did you just start a war between the United States and Portugal?”
God. That’d go over like a lead balloon with his commander. Actually, getting kicked out of an embassy might prove to Lewis that Griff didn’t deserve the promotion. That he wasn’t fit to be in charge. That the only place he truly belonged was in the cockpit. It was a tempting idea…until he remembered the whole part about if he pissed Lewis off enough, he’d be in the cockpit above the isolated and icy waters of Maine.
“Prevented one is more like it.”
“Lieutenant Montgomery, you’re a marvel.” Chloe toasted him. “Here you are on leave, and you still can’t keep from rescuing people.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.” But instead of getting short-tempered at the compliment, Griff was able to clink her glass and take a sip of the sweet wine. Because he saw the smirk on her lips, the teasing twinkle in her eyes. Chloe was poking his antihero complex. And he was okay with that. Coming from her anyway. As long as she kept her voice down and didn’t draw the attention of the surrounding crowd. “Long story short, there was a hot embassy waitress, a handsy American who needed to be set straight, and a Portuguese dishwasher who wanted to defend the honor of his lady and his country. The American being your typical entitled douchebag, that wouldn’t have gone well. I de-escalated the situation.”
“De-escalated?” Chloe tapped her cheek with a nail the identical shade as her orange top. She squinted across the room, as if searching for the meaning in the tassels hanging from the valance. “Is that, by any chance, military speak for tossed him out on his ear?”
See? She knew him so well already. “More or less. More like I convinced him that we were guests here and needed to be respectful.” Griff had driven his point home by driving his knuckles into the back of the guy’s neck as he carried him out by his collar. But that was hardly worth mentioning. All his friends would’ve done exactly the same thing.
“Do you have a quota of people you have to rescue each week?”
“All right, that’s enough,” he growled.
Barely able to get out the words through her giggles, Chloe barreled right on. “Does the Coast Guard start holding back on dessert if you don’t hit it?”
“If you won’t cut it out, I’ll have to find a way to shut you up.”
“Ah, then you’d be rescuing yourself from my teasing, wouldn’t you? Another tick mark in this week’s tote board.”
Her last word was smothered by his lips slanting across hers. Griff didn’t care about the waiter at their elbow with his silver tray of tapas. He didn’t care about the couple behind Chloe, who’d already stared at them once Chloe started her fit of giggles. Hell, he didn’t care if the Portuguese ambassador himself came over to watch.
All Griff cared about was tasting the joy of that laugh. Sipping from her smile. And later on, he’d slap himself in the head for thinking in fucking poetry. God, was that what love did to a guy?
The port had left their lips slightly sticky. Sweet. He could lick that off of her for days. Drizzle it everywhere, and then start licking. The best part was that Chloe didn’t seem to care about their audience either. Because she wrapped her leg around his calf. Hung on tight to the back of his jacket. And threw just as much enthusiastic tongue into the kiss as he did.
Griff tipped her back. Just a little, since he had only one hand, the wineglass still in the other, but enough to turn their embrace into a dip straight out of a movie. It made her clutch tighter. Turned her breathy moan into a squeal. And it turned this night into one they’d always remember as everyone in the room began to clap.
He righted Chloe. They took a bow. Then hastily retreated from the wood-paneled library. From the hallway, Griff backed them through white French doors into a bright yellow room with an enormous—and obviously ancient from its faded colors—tapestry covering one entire wall. No snacks. No bar. Also no people, which worked for Griff. He wanted Chloe all to himself right now.
She collapsed onto the yellow satin sofa and scissored her legs in the air before letting them fall. Her high heels clattered onto the parquet floor. “You were right. Embassy parties are a lot of fun.”
“Mostly.” Griffin had dated enough women to know what she needed right now. Way more than another glass of port or tapas. Reaching down, he picked up her legs and pulled them across his lap. Dug his thumbs into the arch of her foot. The gratifying way Chloe moaned and arched her back gave him a great preview into what would happen once he finally—finally—got her into bed. “I still feel bad about leaving you alone for so long. Did you find someone to talk to at the buffet?”
“You could say that.” Chloe turned her head into the couch and looked at him sideways.
It was a weirdly coy response. “Should I?
”
“There was some chatting. I learned all about the annual Madeira Film Festival.”
Foreign films. In other words, moving pictures that you couldn’t see because you were too busy reading the words at the bottom of the screen. Griff hated ’em. Better to talk Chloe out of this here and now. “You know all their films come with subtitles.”
She just rolled her eyes. Tapped him with her toe to get him to switch his attentions to her other foot. “More to the point, I managed to nab myself not just the last of the crab balls, but also two job offers.”
“Here? I thought the embassies only employed their own nationals.”
“Maybe they make an exception for special skills?”
Her nose crinkled. Adorably. Griff found it hard to pay attention what with the stroking of her soft skin and the knowledge that there was no way in hell she actually got a job offer from a foreign embassy. More likely they were just pickup lines.
“Babe, I’m guessing you misunderstood.”
The raised eyebrow was a clear sign that she disagreed. “Nope. They were quite clear. Vociferous, in fact, in their requests that I come work for them. One was from the ambassador’s wife, and one was from somebody much shadier that I’m pretty sure works for the CIA. FBI? I always get them confused. Which one would deal with Portugal?”
Griff couldn’t believe they were having this discussion in relation to her imaginary job offers. Neither spy service listed perfect penmanship under special skills. “FBI is national; CIA puts boots on foreign soil.”
“Definitely CIA, then. A spook.”
It just didn’t make any sense. He didn’t want to insult her. He simply wanted Chloe to face reality. “Why would the CIA recruit a letter writer?”
Eyes wide, she pulled out of his grasp and tucked her feet underneath her, coming up onto her knees. “Griffin, letter writing is a dying art form. People everywhere are starting to appreciate it again, and striving to converse eloquently and pithily in a missive.”
Her passion was admirable. Griff respected the hell out of it. But it had zero bearing on the supposed job offers. “I stand by my question.”
“If you must know, I suppose they probably want me for my flawless Portuguese.”
Chloe really was full of surprises tonight. “Why do you speak Portuguese?”
“I learned it because it works in two countries, Portugal and Brazil, and on two continents, Europe and South America. Talk about getting bang for your educational buck.”
“Never heard of a high school that offered it.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Kind of random.”
“Oh, no, I took Latin in high school. Ridiculously useless unless you’re going to study law or medicine, but I wanted to go back to the root of the Romance languages. It was in college that I took Portuguese. And then I moved on to Italian.”
She spoke three languages? Damn, but this woman was amazing. “Why?”
“For fun. Also, because it’s good in two countries: Italy and Switzerland. Well, more than two.” She ticked off a list on her fingers. “It can get you by in Monaco, Malta, bits of Croatia, and Vatican City. Portuguese, to circle back to that, is also spoken in Angola, Mozambique—”
Griff cut her off by simply covering her mouth with his palm. Her geography lesson was making it hard to process the most important information. Chloe was a language whiz. Chloe, whom he adored, but…come on…she hid from the world by working in a coffee shop every day. What was the deal with wasting that kind of a talent?
“Let me get this straight. Learning verb tenses and the gender of stupid, genderless things like chairs and carrots is fun for you?”
“I love learning genders. It’s so interesting how different cultures view a carrot as masculine or feminine. The verb tenses? No matter how many languages I dabble in, there’s no sugarcoating it. Those suck to memorize.”
“So instead of riding roller coasters, or going on a bike ride—”
This time she cut him off with her hand over his mouth. “It’s a way to live out my dreams, okay? If I can’t go to Venice, I can learn the language. Sound like I belong there. Read an Italian fashion magazine. I can be ready for the day, at some distant point in the future, when I let a man in a striped shirt and a straw boater help me into his gondola.”
It put him off balance. His hastily made plans of a few hours ago to sweep in and rescue her from such a quiet life? To use that gesture to make Chloe fall in love with him? Not so workable anymore. His beautiful butterfly only needed help breaking out of her cocoon. She already had an eye on all the gardens where she wanted to fly. Son of a bitch. Now what was he supposed to do?
Chapter 14
Chloe thought about a scone. Busboys and Poets did a double chocolate scone with crystallized sugar on top that…well, okay, she’d go ahead and say it was better than sex, ’cause hey, what did she know? Her hand was cramped from the five letters she’d just churned out. It had been long enough since lunch that she could safely swim. Ergo, time for a snack. Plus, it was Saturday. Working on a Saturday totally earned her a snack.
The downside to having an awesome boyfriend, she’d discovered, was wanting to spend every spare moment talking to him. Hanging out with him. Kissing him. With Griff still on leave—enforced vacation, whatever—they could actually spend all their time together. So they did…and Chloe’s work schedule had taken a hit. It was safe to assume her clients didn’t care that she was falling in love with the most wonderful man in the world. They just wanted their letters from her. On deadline.
Having to play catch-up wasn’t so bad, really. She’d started to miss all her pens and special papers and the zing of satisfaction when the words fell into place. And yes, she’d missed the midafternoon treats here. Pen still in one hand, Chloe dug into her bag for her wallet.
“Your letter was a disaster.”
Startled, Chloe looked up so fast she heard her neck crack. Whoa. The short, angry woman wearing a motorcycle helmet and a frown was standing way too close. Not to mention that she’d bent over to slam a crumpled paper onto the table. Chloe scrambled to come up with her name. Definitely an ex-client. A recent one. But all Chloe’s brain cells were capable of coming up with were variations of Griff. Griffin. Lieutenant Montgomery. Her brain was evidently just like a junior high girl scribbling her crush’s name on a notebook.
“I’m sorry?” Although the woman didn’t know it, the apology was intended to cover both the lack of a name and whatever had the woman in such a furor. And possibly, just possibly, one percent of the apology was also aimed at Chloe’s taste buds for the delay on serving up the scone.
The shiny black helmet came off with a wrench, revealing choppy scarlet hair almost as short as Griff’s. The helmet clattered onto the table on top of Chloe’s pale blue airmail stationery. It took all her control not to lunge to protect the whisper-thin sheets.
“The letter you wrote for me three weeks ago. My sister finally got back from her bachelorette blowout and read it.”
Ah. Her name might be fuzzy, but Chloe remembered the letter. She always remembered the letters. Sisters. At odds over the slew of social events leading up to a wedding. The bride had certain expectations of her bridal party. Well, she claimed it was for the whole bridal party, but the comments applied only to the sister.
All tattoos covered, most piercings removed, legs and underarms shaved, and hair dyed back to its natural brown, which matched the bride’s. Because they were twins. Everyone knew they were twins. When you were identical, it wasn’t easy to hide the resemblance.
But nameless sister here giving Chloe the stink-eye had spent a good portion of her life trying to do just that. Trying to be her own person, instead of a carbon copy of somebody else. As much as the bride didn’t want Lucy—Lucy, aha!—being mistaken for her in any of the photos, Lucy sure as heck didn’t want to be mistaken for her sister. After a big blowout on the topic at the engagement party and at all three bridal showers, Lucy decided to try a different approach.
/>
She hired Chloe to write a letter explaining that keeping her own identity was vital. That being herself was in no way a slap in the face to the bride, her groom, or the team of wedding planners. The flowers could match the napkins and the bridesmaid dresses and the cummerbunds and the place cards. But under no circumstances would Lucy’s face and hair be a match for the bride’s.
Chloe had loved writing that letter. It was an ode to fierce independence and self-worth, and yet still slathered on the sisterly love. She’d used a funky, textured, recycled paper and a thick green felt pen. Everything about the letter was a reflection of Lucy.
With careful precision, Chloe set her purple rollerball back in line with the four other pens she’d used so far today. “So your sister understands that you’re not going to take out your piercings for the wedding?”
“That’s not an issue anymore.” Another palm slap to the table. This one jostled Chloe’s favorite orange highlighter to the floor. Then Lucy jabbed her fingers against Chloe’s sternum. “Because Lacey the Bridezilla won’t let me be in the wedding. She kicked me out of the bridal party.”
Uh-oh. “Why?”
“Because of your stupid letter!” Lucy picked it up and began ripping it.
Ah. This had happened before. Only twice before since opening her business, but at least Chloe wasn’t blindsided by this reaction. After her first dissatisfied customer—well, during, actually—she’d started to cry. Not big sobbing tears. Just a couple of drops in the corner of one eye. But it was humiliating. Unprofessional. In general, Chloe could deal with confrontation. Especially when she was quite certain she’d done nothing wrong. That first time, though, gave her…well, not a flashback, per se. More of an emotional echo from the shooting.
As they’d wheeled her out on a gurney, it rolled right past the shooter. Dave. Dave, who sat across from her all semester in Humanities in the Western World: Classical Greece to the Renaissance class. Dave had been on his own gurney, thanks to a sniper taking him out with two shots to the knees. Apparently he’d thought the bulletproof vest he’d worn would make him impervious to any attack by the police. Clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer. For a number of reasons.
Risking It All Page 16