No, if she was picturing him in the shower, he might as well be naked.
Her mind did away with the T-shirt and went back to the pounding water. Soaking his hair, plastering it to his head, running down his chest and back...
A noise in the doorway brought her back to the present, and Tansy felt heat flash into her cheeks when she saw him standing there. Dry and together, with a corner of his mouth curved up, as if he knew what she’d been thinking. “It’s the danger,” he told her.
“Ex... excuse me?” Tansy had to clear her throat to get the word out. She was still holding the dog, so she couldn’t fan herself to get rid of that tell-tale blush in her cheeks, but boy, did she wish she could.
He smiled. “People do stupid stuff when they think they’re going to die. Like have sex with strangers.”
“You’re not a stranger.”
And ho-boy, did that give away what she’d been thinking.
Those dark blue eyes danced. “Sure I am. You feel like you know me because of the situation, but we’ve spent less than a day together. You don’t know me at all.”
He had a point. Tansy sat down on the edge of the bed with Mimi still in her arms. “So tell me about yourself.”
“I already did,” John said, leaning a shoulder on the door jamb.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
He shook his head. “You already know everything.”
She couldn’t possibly. She didn’t know any of the important things. “Your friend Max called you JB earlier.”
He nodded.
“Does your middle name start with a B?”
“My middle name’s Arthur.”
When she just looked at him, he added, “SEAL teams are big on nicknames. We all have one or two. There was a TV show in the seventies,” before either of them was born, “called The Waltons. The oldest son was John-Boy. Because my name is John Walton, my nickname became John-Boy, and then JB. Max is short for Maksim. Sometimes we call him Mad Max. Rusty’s Rusty or Red, but his real name is Dave Russell. Gus’s last name is Gustavsson. Cisco’s first name is Francisco. And Andy Lee, for some reason, is just Andy Lee.”
“Not Andrew?”
John—JB—shook his head. “You can call me whatever you want. From Petty Officer Walton to Hey, You.”
“I kind of like John,” Tansy admitted. “It’s strong.”
“A little overused, though. Not like Tansy.”
“Family name,” Tansy said. “My great-grandmother was a Tansy, too.”
John nodded. “There have been a few Johns on my family tree, as well.”
“Everyone’s family tree, I bet.”
His mouth quirked. “You could be right about that.”
They looked at one another for a moment.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” Tansy said. “You know...” She gestured to the bathroom door.
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I told you, it’s the situation.”
Tansy thought it might be more than just the situation, but she was willing to play along if that’s what it took. “So it happens to you all the time, then, I guess?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” John said. “Like I told you, I spend most of my time crawling around the desert shooting at bad guys. Beautiful women don’t come along that often.”
At least he thought she was beautiful. That was something.
He continued, “When we met last year, it was a very fraught, emotional situation. You were under a lot of stress. I hurt you. Then I had to kill a couple of people. And then we took you out of there and back to safety. That’s the kind of situation where someone might develop a... uh...”
“Unhealthy romantic attachment?” Tansy suggested sweetly.
John’s cheekbones darkened. “Something like that.”
“Sweeping little old me off my feet with bullets flying, and whisking me off to safety.”
“There were no bullets. And that makes me sound like Errol Flynn, swinging on some kind of vine.”
“That was Tarzan,” Tansy said. “And there’s nothing wrong with Errol Flynn. He was gorgeous.”
John muttered something.
Tansy cupped a hand around her ear. “What was that?”
“Nothing. Just wondering what it is with you and these pretty-faced boys.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a pretty face,” Tansy told him.
“Granted. I’m partial to a pretty face myself. But I don’t have one. And that’s my point. If it hadn’t been for the situation, you’d never look twice at someone like me.”
Tansy wasn’t sure about that. That body, wherever she had come across it, would certainly be worth a second look.
But he wasn’t wrong about the rest of it. He wasn’t the type she normally went for. His nose was too big for his face, and when he smiled, his teeth were crowded. Nobody in Tansy’s world had crooked teeth. If your teeth didn’t come in straight, you put braces on them until they were perfect.
Maybe John’s family hadn’t had the money for braces.
No, he wasn’t her usual type. But that didn’t stop her from being attracted to him. And yes, some of it might be the situation. He was putting his life on the line for her. For everyone, every day, but today, for her. How could she not admire that? How could she not be attracted to a man who would step between her and a bullet?
But if he didn’t believe her, that was his loss.
She glanced around. “So the bedroom’s acceptable?”
He nodded. “It’s as good as it’s going to get. Not facing the road. No way for anyone to take a shot at you through the window. And while someone could get in, it wouldn’t be easy.”
“How could someone get in?” She was on the second floor, and there was no balcony or roof below her window.
“Climb the wall,” John said.
“It’s smooth stucco!”
The corners of his mouth curved. “I could climb that wall in under two minutes. The window might be a little harder to get through, but if all I wanted was to make sure you were dead, I’d bust it and shoot you through the hole when you sat up in bed to see what the noise was.”
“I don’t believe you,” Tansy said.
“That I’d shoot you? Or that I could climb the wall?”
“Both. Either.” She knew he wouldn’t shoot her. But she also had a hard time imagining anyone being able to climb the wall to her window. “Someone would hear you. You can’t drive ice picks into the side of a house and expect people to stay asleep!”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be using ice picks, sweetheart. I could get up to your window in under two minutes, without making a sound.”
“Prove it,” Tansy said.
He looked at her for a moment with his eyebrows raised. Then he nodded. “Open the window. Since I’m not shooting you for real, it’ll give me something to hold onto once I get up here.”
“Sure,” Tansy said.
“I’ll see you in a minute.”
He headed for the door, and told her over his shoulder, “Lock the door behind me. Don’t leave the room until I come back.”
Tansy shook her head. As she closed and bolted the door behind him, she heard his voice talking to his team out in the hallway. “I’m going to climb the outside wall to Tansy’s window. She doesn’t believe I can.”
As he approached the stairs, she heard Max’s voice reply. She couldn’t hear the words, but she heard the amusement in them. Then John disappeared down to the first floor, and Tansy left the door and crossed the rug to the window.
The house was old, built in the first part of the last century, and the windows were original. They were casement, the kind that swung out to the side, and they were closed with locks on the inside. She unlocked them both and swung them out. Then she leaned across the sill and peered down.
The formal gardens spread out beyond the house, but directly below the window was a flagstone patio. It would make for a hand landing for anyone who fell. John had seemed certain clim
bing up wouldn’t be a problem, but Tansy was less sure. The wall was perfectly smooth. There were no hand-holds that she could see.
Maybe she should drag the mattress off the bed and throw it down, just in case he fell. It would give him a soft landing. And he’d already taken one fall today.
As she stood there, John came out the patio doors, and she watched as he dropped his phone into his pocket. When he looked up, she asked, “Are you sure you want to do this? What if you fall?”
“I won’t fall,” John said, examining the wall.
“You got hurt when you fell off the horse this morning. You might not be in optimum condition.”
“My condition’s fine. I’ve climbed with bigger injuries than that.”
He moved closer to the wall, and put a hand against it.
“Is this something they teach you in SEAL school?”
“Free climbing. Yeah. Now be quiet, so I can concentrate. This isn’t easy, you know. Two minutes. Time me.”
He jumped, and gripped the top of the patio door frame with his fingertips. Tansy watched as he hung there for a second, swinging gently back and forth, before he pulled himself up, by sheer upper body strength, and started to move sideways.
From her vantage point up above, there didn’t seem to be anything for him to hold onto on the smooth wall. But somehow he managed to find something. She watched as he made his way from the patio door, diagonally across the wall until he was below her window. He even took the time to stop about five feet down to flash her a grin. “Told you I could do it.”
“I never doubted you for a second,” Tansy told him.
“Sure you did.” Somehow he managed to find another handhold, on a smooth part of the wall where she would have sworn there was nothing to hold onto, and moved a foot closer. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “How much time left?”
Tansy looked down at her wrist. “Thirteen seconds.”
“Plenty of time.”
He reached up. And that was all he managed to do before a shot rent the silence. Something slapped into the stucco wall just above his head, and Tansy screamed.
7
Somehow, he managed to get the rest of the way up the wall and over the windowsill into Tansy’s bedroom without any memory of having moved. One second he was there, clinging to the stucco with his fingertips, and the next he was on his hands and knees on Tansy’s floor. Next to Tansy. Who was flat on her back telling him, “I’m OK. I’m OK,” over and over again.
He had no idea how many times she’d had to say it before he heard her. He also had a feeling he’d had his hands all over her body checking for damage, and it was a damn shame he couldn’t remember that.
She lifted a hand and brushed her fingers over his cheek. “You’re hurt, though.”
She held up her hand. Her fingertips were stained with blood.
“I can’t feel it,” JB said hoarsely. With the adrenaline pumping through his body, he wasn’t feeling much of anything. Apart from an almost overwhelming desire to take advantage of the fact that she was there, on the floor, and all he had to do was bend his head a little to kiss her.
Bad idea. Seriously bad idea. Especially after the way he’d been talking to her earlier. Because this really was just the situation, and had nothing to do with anything except the adrenaline and relief that he wasn’t dead. And that she wasn’t, either.
Tansy squirmed out from under him and sat up. “I should call for help.”
“They’re coming.”
He could hear the voices through the rushing of blood in his ears, and footsteps out in the hallway. Rapid footsteps coming this way.
He shook his head to try to clear it, and managed only to spray little droplets of blood in an arc across Tansy’s fuzzy rug.
Way to go.
She made a distressed sound. That same sound she’d made back on the yacht last year, when she’d walked into the salon and seen Kareem’s dead body.
Now it was probably distress over the death of her expensive rug.
Did blood come out of cashmere?
Someone grabbed the door handle and turned it. And pushed. The hinges protested, but held.
“JB!” Max’s voice called. “Ms. Leighton! Is everyone all right in there?”
JB looked at Tansy.
“I locked it,” she said. “You told me to lock it and not let anyone in until you came back.”
He’d done that. “I’m here now. You can open the door.”
It took her a second to get to her feet. And her steps were unsteady as she made her way across the miles of hardwoods and fluffy rug to the door. JB concentrated on moving from all fours to his ass.
When she turned the key in the lock, the door burst open, and Tansy had to step back to avoid being flattened. Max was the first one inside, and he took in the situation with a glance. While Rusty hurried over to check on JB, and Mick, followed by Walter Leighton, descended on Tansy, Max headed for the window.
“Careful,” JB told him.
Max spared him a glance on his way past. “You all right?”
“Just a scratch.”
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Tansy rolling her eyes. “Where have I heard that before?”
Some sort of silly romance novel, probably. Or one of those old movies with pretty people she seemed to like. “This really is just a scratch.”
She glanced at Rusty for corroboration. The team corpsman nodded. “A couple of butterfly Band Aids, and he’ll be fine. He won’t even need stitches.”
He dug in his bag for the Band Aids, while Tansy turned back to her father and Mick.
Max came back from the window to crouch next to JB. “What happened?”
He waited for Rusty to apply the last butterfly. There went any shot he’d ever had of being handsome this week. “I was on my way up the wall. Had about five feet to go when we heard the shot. The bullet smacked into the stucco between my head and Tansy. She was standing in the open window.”
“So whoever was shooting missed both of you.”
JB nodded. “This—” he touched his cheek, where he was starting to feel a little pain now that the adrenaline high was fading, “must have been a ricochet. A piece of stucco or something. I know I wasn’t shot. The bullet went over my head.”
“We’ll have to dig it out,” Max said. “At least this time we have a chance of figuring out where the bastard was standing.”
“Better get going before we lose the little daylight that’s left.” JB tried to push to his feet, and was pushed back down, gently, by Rusty.
“Not you, John-Boy. You stay here with the girl and take it easy.”
“The bastard shot at me.” Or at Tansy. “I want a piece of taking him down.”
“He won’t be there no more,” Max said. “You won’t be missing out on anything.”
Probably not. But it still grated to let the rest of his team go after the guy while he stayed here and did nothing.
“Do your job,” Max said, with a hand on his shoulder. “Take care of the girl. We’ll get the bastard for you.” After a second he added, “But it probably won’t be tonight.”
It probably wouldn’t. Because Max was right: the shooter wouldn’t be there anymore when the SEALs reached the place where he had been. The best they could hope for, was some clue to his identity.
“I’m gonna send a couple guys out with pictures of Cooper and el Saud,” Max added. “Have them flash them around the gas stations and convenience stores in the area. See if anyone has seen either of them. If we know who we’re dealing with, it’ll be a little easier to take precautions.”
JB nodded. Cooper’s approach to killing Tansy was likely to be very different from el Saud’s approach, and if they knew what to plan for, they were more likely to succeed.
So Max took off, along with Mick, to dispatch teams of security personnel and SEALs to comb the estate for intruders and clues, and Rusty gathered up his medical supplies and followed. “I’m gonna join the search,” he told JB. �
��Can you stay with both of them until I get back?”
JB nodded. Walter Leighton wasn’t showing any signs of wanting to move from Tansy’s side anytime soon, so it shouldn’t be a problem for him to keep an eye on both of them for the time it took to search the estate. And it would free up Rusty to take part in the search.
So Rusty headed out with the others, and JB made his way over to Walter and Tansy and explained the situation. “We’ll have to lock all the doors and sit tight until they come back. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about—the guy’s long gone by now—but since we’re leaving the perimeter unguarded for a while, we’ll have to take some extra precautions in here.”
Walter Leighton nodded. “Are you all right, son?”
“I’m fine,” JB said, a little taken aback by the genuine concern in the older man’s eyes. His own father had beaten him bloody at times, with no thought for the pain or damage he inflicted. And here was Walter Leighton, who hadn’t known him this morning, worried about his wellbeing.
“I’m hungry,” Tansy announced. “Is there anything to eat?”
Her father nodded. “Cook has made roast beef and green peas.”
They had a cook. Of course.
“And there are trays of sandwiches in the kitchen that your team can go and get throughout the night,” Walter Leighton added, with a nod at JB, “if they get hungry.”
Between Walter, Max, and Mick, they’d probably got all that figured out already. “That’s very kind of you, sir.”
Walter patted his shoulder. “We can’t have you boys starving, son. Not when there’s plenty of food to be had.”
“Let’s go,” Tansy said, moving from foot to foot. “I’m hungry.”
She hooked her hand through her father’s arm and pulled him toward the door. “Come on, John.”
JB arched his brows, but followed father and daughter out the door and down the hallway to the stairs. He did wonder what he was expected to do, though. Hold the dining room chair for her before taking himself off to the kitchen for a sandwich?
* * *
The Socialite and the SEAL Page 7