Heart of a Warrior

by Theodora Lane

  Nathan moaned in protest. He didn’t want to deal with their ribbing right now. His brain throbbed along with his wounded pride. Before he’d head-butted her, he’d thought about asking her to come out with them later this evening. Now, what kind of beautiful woman like that would want to go out with a guy she gave a bloody nose to? He was definitely not winning any Alpha of The Year awards with this one.

  He felt like such a wimp. He had a feeling the whole deck had caught the scene. He could feel their eyes on him. Then the captain came over the speakers and started to explain The Falls as mist began hitting their ponchos.

  Nathan regretted now not having put his on earlier. He couldn’t tell yet if he’d made a mess of his clothes or not because his head was still tipped back and his eyes were shut tightly. Bleeding onto a rain slicker would have been a hell of a lot less messy.

  “Here we go.”

  He heard Selina’s soft, accented voice, and he pried one eye open to catch sight of her smile. He shut it again as he realized she was opening a tin box and digging through it to find first aid supplies she could use on him. “Let’s fix you up, eh?”

  She began by brushing his hand away. “There’s some water in the cooler at the back of the boat,” she said to the snickering Dylan and Charlie, which caused their laughter to subside.

  Nathan peeled his eyes open again and watched her jerk her head in that direction. “Go get him some.”

  Both the guys must have realized she meant business, so they headed off the open deck to the enclosed structure at the rear of the boat. She watched them walk away as she held some gauze up to Nathan’s nose.

  “Some friends, eh? Laugh when you get hurt?”

  He found the sound of her voice so fascinating he didn’t want her to quit talking. “I’d probably laugh too if I were standing where they are.”

  “Honesty.” She moved the gauze away from his nose to look at his face. “Refreshing.” She inched closer to him to get a better look at his injury.

  Although Nathan’s brain knew that her incredibly close proximity was completely innocent, his heart pounded loudly in his ears. She was so close, and the tilt of her head was inviting. It left her neck stretching, open and available. Her skin would be soft, he was sure of it. She smelled sweet and delicate, like clean laundry and flowers.

  “Well, sir—”

  “Nathan.”

  He watched the slow smile spread across her face. “Well, Nathan, I don’t think it’s broken.”

  Nathan didn’t want her pulling away yet, and he didn’t want her soft fingers to stop touching his face. “I think it is.” His response came too quickly.

  Selina grinned down at him as she ran her finger over the impossibly straight bridge of his nose. The action was to determine if there was a break in it, but the brush of her finger against his skin ignited a slow, crawling fire to spread throughout his whole body.

  Nathan watched her eyes follow her finger. The Falls were so loud they matched the pounding heartbeat in his ears. A heavy mist splattered their skin and their clothes, cloaking them in a strange, magical intimacy.

  •

  “I think you’re going to be just fine,” Selina managed to say over the hum of The Falls. As she pulled the gauze away, she noticed that he had stopped bleeding.

  “What’s going on over here?” Her manager, Sheila Ridgegate, came across the wet deck. She was barrel-chested and had her graying, brown hair cut short and tight to her head. If there had ever been a time when she was attractive, it was impossible to imagine now. Selina might have been able to appreciate something in her if she wasn’t such a nasty, conniving, demon of a boss.

  Selina was glad that they rarely worked the same shifts. She preferred to work under Pat Guster; he was a short, round, black man with a peppering of silver in his hair and goatee. He was relaxed and gave Selina lots of space. Whereas Sheila hovered and wrote Selina up for every infraction she could find, even if she had to dig for one.

  Selina felt herself stiffen with the presence of this woman before them. She realized she was about to get in trouble for something. While the bloody nose may have been her fault, it was nowhere near intentional. All Selina had been trying to do was her job.

  “It was my mistake.” Nathan spoke up, which startled Selina. She caught his gaze with her surprised, brown eyes.

  “Do we need him to file an accident report?”

  Selina’s hand was full of wadded-up, bloody gauze. The large woman gave Nathan a once-over, debating about what to do.

  “It’s just a nose bleed.” Nathan laughed it off. “Really, I’m fine.” Sheila still didn’t look appeased. “Selina came over here…”

  Selina’s head nearly spun around in shock. She hadn’t realized this dark-haired, green-eyed stranger knew her name. “She needed these life jackets for one of the kids over there, and I got a nose bleed.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. “She saved me.” Nathan grinned in a most charming way.

  “Is that what happened, Miss LeClézio?” Selina looked between Nathan and Sheila, trying to decide if she should lie or not. Sheila widened her eyes expectantly, and the delicious stranger gave her a slow, confident, reassuring nod. Selina found herself nodding in agreement.

  “Yes, precisely.”

  Sheila eyed her incredulously but bent at the waist. Her stomach folded in half by the straining waist line of her pants. She picked up one life jacket, took the other from Selina’s hand, and walked across the deck to take it to the parents of the kids Selina had motioned to.

  “Take care of him, I’ll take care of them.” Sheila walked away, leaving Selina alone with Nathan once more.

  “You didn’t have to lie.” Cute and noble too.

  “You seemed distressed.”

  “I could have handled it.” She smiled because she liked that she hadn’t needed to.

  Just then his friends reappeared with two water bottles. She took the one the shorter of the two offered her, dumped some water onto some fresh gauze, and began to clean up Nathan’s nose.

  “I believe it.” Nathan nodded, his face stoic and serious. “But now you don’t have to.” She was a proud woman, but this man was so cute and such a smooth talker that he had her smiling.

  “What brings you to The Falls?” She was stalling now. He was pretty well cleaned up, but she didn’t want to pull away just yet.

  “Charlie here’s obsessed with Ripley’s.” The cute blond motioned to his friend.

  “I’m convinced this is the greatest place on earth, at least the greatest vacation I’ve ever had. Well, except that Dylan can be a real buzzkill.” Charlie ribbed his friend back. Then, in a stage whisper, said, “He hates Ripley’s.”

  “I don’t hate it,” Dylan said, first to Charlie and then repeated it back to Selina. “I just don’t like watching the same exact show a million times over again.”

  “Ah.” Selina nodded and looked down to realize she couldn’t keep touching Nathan’s face, and yet she was still reluctant to pull away. “There.” She handed him the half-empty bottle of water. “All good.”

  “Thanks.” Nathan took the bottle from her, their fingers brushing. “This is sort of our last hurrah. Dylan and I just completed our last semester, and Charlie here has only one more to go. We decided we needed some kind of celebration. This is it.”

  “Just the three of you? The rest of the house didn’t want to come?” Selina pointed at the Greek letters emblazoned on the front of his hoodie.

  A slow, sexy smirk crept across his face. “Yeah, just the three of us. It’s a long story.”

  Selina opened her mouth to say she’d love to hear it sometime, but she stopped herself. Flirting with him was absurd. He was only here visiting. So she closed her mouth and smiled at him and then at his two friends. She couldn’t think of anything else she could stall with. She waited for a long, quiet, drawn out second, for what—she didn’t know.

  He eventually nodded and smiled back at her. “Thank you again.”

  “It was
nothing.” Selina walked away, taking the bloody gauze with her to throw out. She headed to the staff bathroom, which was about the size of a closet, to clean up in. She had quite the knot on the back of her head, and once she was alone with clean hands, she began to laugh to herself and at her circumstances thus far today.

  Her laughter subsided when she thought about the missed opportunities with that man. They had a significant amount of chemistry. Being under his gaze had made her skin feel hot and tender, like a sunburn.

  She looked up and met her face in the mirror. She didn’t look different, but she felt different. It’d been a while since she’d met a man who made her nervous, and she didn’t understand why Nathan did. He seemed friendly. He had a nice, open face, one that didn’t seem capable of hiding anything malicious. He was tall, tan, and handsome. There was something about those bright-green eyes that almost didn’t fit his face. They made her feel a little edgy.

  But he would be long gone soon; she had to remind herself of that. He was obviously just visiting, and Niagara was big. She would probably never run into him again. Just as well. With a shake of her head, she cleared his face and those green eyes from her mind.

  By the time she was out of the bathroom, the boat had docked and people had already started to leave. Selina unconsciously checked the bench seat. The three college kids who had taken up residence there were gone. Selina let the air fall out of her lungs in a deep sigh. She knew he couldn’t stay there forever, but she’d never known a boat ride to take so little time before.

  She grabbed her squeegee and began to run it along the floor, pushing the accumulated water off the deck.

  •

  “Forget it.” Dylan slapped a hand on Nathan’s shoulder as he looked down behind him, hoping to catch one last glimpse of her. “She was out of your league.”

  “I think you should go back down there and ask her to come out with us tonight,” Charlie countered.

  Nathan’s stomach swarmed with butterflies so intense it nearly doubled him over. He couldn’t imagine taking one more step away from this boat without at least giving it a try.

  “Charlie, that’d be dumb. She’s just going to turn him down.” Dylan gave Charlie a playful shove on the shoulder.

  “Maybe she won’t.” He shrugged.

  The two of them kept arguing and walking, but Nathan stood in place. He then turned around and jogged back down the incline before Dylan or Charlie knew that he was gone.

  “Nathan?” Dylan hollered down to him.

  Nathan spun, jogging backward expertly. “I’ll be right back,” he shouted up to his friends. “It’ll take one minute.” He held a finger up in the air. Nathan was out of breath by the time he got back to the boat, but it wasn’t from the run. It was sheer exhilaration.

  Selina looked up, apparently startled to see him again. He was mildly panting from the jog back down to her, and her eyes drifted to his chest and back up to his face. Selina eventually stood from her slouched sweeping stance and just stared back at him.

  “Did you forget something?” she finally asked. A smirk appeared on those beautiful, shapely, pink lips. He hated to admit it, but something about that smile alone had his heart doing flip-flops in his chest.

  “Kind of.” He laughed and stepped back on board the boat to stand in front of her. “Yes.”

  Selina glanced around the deck she’d been cleaning. Obviously her eyes were scanning the boat in search of whatever it could be that he’d left behind.

  “Selina.” He hated how breathless her name sounded on his lips.

  She looked back to him, and he could have sworn she blushed. “Yes?”

  “Come out with me tonight.”

  Selina hesitated. He didn’t blame her. He was, by all definitions, a complete stranger. Except that she didn’t feel like a stranger to him.

  “I don’t know.” She nibbled on her bottom lip and tipped her head back. She eyed him in a way that made it very clear to him that he was being sized up.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Nathan hedged.

  She took her time answering but eventually shook her head no.

  Nathan could feel the wicked smile spreading across his face. He tried to contain it because it must have looked goofy as hell, but he’d just received the best news he’d gotten in a while. Good.

  “I’m not in town very long, but we’re going to The Bulls Den tonight if you want to meet us there.” He ran a slightly sheepish hand through the dark brown locks of his hair.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing tonight yet.”

  Nathan felt his brow quirk. Was she playing with him? Or was she always this coy? Was this her playing hard to get? Why was his easy charm powerless when it came to her? Was it wrong that it only made him want her more?

  “Right. Well, what time are you off?”

  She gave Nathan a knowing smirk. “Eight o’clock.”

  Nathan checked the time on his watch. “Perfect.” Although he didn’t quite know how perfect it was. Eight was a long way off.

  “Perfect?”

  “My friend, Charlie, he’s been dying to go to Ripley’s.”

  Selina smiled in understanding. “Right.”

  “So … maybe I’ll see you tonight, then?” He waited for the slow nod of Selina’s head to come before he started to walk away. He turned around on an afterthought to ask, “Do you like The Bulls Den?”

  “Love it,” she responded with a wide smile. She tried to restrain it, though, with a bite to her bottom lip.

  His eyes drifted there briefly. He hoped before this trip was over he’d have the chance to taste that mouth. Hell, he hoped it happened before the night was over. He smiled then too before turning back around and walking away.

  •

  Selina couldn’t help herself. She watched him go. He had nice, broad shoulders that tapered to a trim waist. He looked solid. She could tell this because every once in a while the wind would ripple his damp sweatshirt against him, outlining the strong, muscular lines of his back. Even under the mildly baggy material of his jeans, she could tell he had a great ass.

  Nathan turned back around just then and caught her staring at him as he walked away. “See you after eight,” he reminded her, and she gave him a quick wave. He continued to walk back up to where his friends were.

  He was halfway there when he turned around, and in a mildly desperate fashion, he hollered back down to her again. “Come on, just say you’ll be there?”

  His enthusiasm was contagious, though, and yeah, maybe screaming down the hill to beg her to agree to a date was a little desperate, but it was also kind of strangely romantic. So much so that she could feel her cheeks getting warm.

  Glancing around, Selina made sure he wasn’t making too big of a scene, at least not one large enough to attract Sheila’s attention.

  She nodded at him, afraid to speak just then in case her voice didn’t come off as cool and aloof as she hoped it would. She didn’t want the excitement to seep out into her words. She did her best to swallow it and then eventually attempted to speak through it.

  “Okay, oui. I’ll see you. The Bulls Den. After eight.”

  With a satisfied smile, Nathan turned back around and continued the jog back up to his friends.

  The rest of the afternoon, Selina went about her job. It was just an ordinary day, except she couldn’t quit replaying their exchanges in her mind. She’d sometimes catch herself staring off with a dorky, broad smile on her face. She kept trying to shake him off, but he was there in the back of her mind all day.

  He was a tourist. Tourists didn’t stick. This was fine by her because she didn’t want him to stick. She did, though, want to have a good time with him while he was around. Nathan looked like he could be a real good time.

  The day dragged on, and when eight finally rolled around, Selina headed home to get cleaned up and changed. Walking through the front door, she was stopped by Angeline, who looked to be on her way out, looking fresh and pretty. Selina vaguely remembere
d hearing her say something about a date earlier in the week.

  “How was your day, love?” Angeline opened the shoe closet in the entryway. She squatted, obviously digging for a specific pair of shoes.

  “I don’t know yet.” Selina let out a sigh that had Angeline looking up with a worried expression.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Selina slowly climbed the stairs, turning at the landing to look down at Angeline. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “All right?” Angeline seemed concerned about her sister and was just about to follow her upstairs when a car honked outside. “That’s me. Au revoir!” She slid on her shoes.

  “Who is honking?” Selina became defensive. Her sister was already half out of the front door.

  “My date.” Angeline peeked around the closing door. “I have to go, we’ll talk later.”

  Selina shot her sister a look that was full of warning and concern. She did not approve of anyone honking for her sister. It was unacceptable behavior, and she knew that Angeline wouldn’t approve if it had been the other way around.

  “I know.” Angeline sent her a sad smile.

  Selina knew that Angeline hadn’t had many boyfriends, and the ones she did have were barely men enough to be considered as such. Selina didn’t think that was reason enough to quit being picky. Angeline was beautiful, smart, and courageous. Men looked, but she was often too focused on something else to notice them. Selina was happy she was going on a date, but she thought her sister should be holding out for a gentleman; a man who could, at the very least, walk up to the door and take her out properly.

  “No, get back in here and make him come to the door.” Selina snapped her fingers and pointed as she came down a few steps.

  Angeline looked over her shoulder at the waiting car and then back at her sister. “I can’t, Selina, I’m already outside.” She laughed nervously.

  “I don’t care. Get back in here, or I’m going to come out there and give him the old one-two.” She slapped the back of her hand into the palm of her other hand.

  “I’m just going to go. We’ll talk later,” Angeline promised, backing out of the door again and grabbing her keys from the white-wicker entryway table.