The truth was, Joe had been lucky—he'd never fallen in love. And he was hoping his luck would hold. It would be just fine with him if he went through life without that particular experience, thank you very much.
Joe pushed the top off the cooler with one bare toe. He reached into the icy water to pull out a beer, then froze.
He straightened, ears straining, eyes scanning the horizon to the east.
Then he heard it again.
The sound of a distant chopper. He shaded his eyes, looking out toward the California coastline, to where the sound was coming from.
Silently, Harvard and Blue got to their feet, moving to stand next to him. Silently, Harvard handed Joe the binoculars that had been stowed in one of the equipment lockers.
One swift turn of the dial brought the powerful lenses into focus.
The chopper was only a small black dot, but it was growing larger with each passing second. It was undeniably heading directly toward them.
"You guys wearing your pagers?" Joe asked, breaking the silence. He'd taken his own beeper off after it—and he—had gotten doused by a pailful of bait and briny seawater.
Harvard nodded. "Yes, sir." He glanced down at the beeper he wore attached to his belt. "But I'm clear."
"Mine didn't go off, either, Cat," Blue said.
In the binoculars, the black dot took on a distinct outline. It was an army bird, a Black Hawk, UH-60A. Its cruising speed was about one hundred and seventy miles per hour. It was closing in on them, and fast.
"Either of you in any trouble I should know about?" Joe asked.
"No, sir," Harvard said.
"Negative." Blue glanced at Joe. "How 'bout you, Lieutenant?"
Joe shook his head, still watching the helicopter through the binoculars.
"This is weird," Harvard said. "What kind of hurry are they in, they can't page us and have us motor back to the harbour?"
"One damn big hurry," Joe said. God, that Black Hawk could really move. He pulled the binoculars away from his face as the chopper continued to grow larger.
"It's not World War Three," Blue commented, his troubles with Jenny Lee temporarily forgotten. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the approaching helicopter. "If it was World War Three, they wouldn't waste a Hawk on three lousy SEALs."
The chopper circled and then hovered directly above them. The sound of the blades was deafening, and the force of the wind made the little boat pitch and toss. All three men grabbed the railing to keep their footing.
Then a scaling rope was thrown out the open door of the helicopter's cabin. It, too, swayed in the wind from the chopper blades, smacking Joe directly in the chest.
"Lieutenant Joseph P. Catalanotto," a distorted voice announced over a loudspeaker. "Your shore leave is over."
Veronica St. John went into her hotel suite, then leaned wearily back against the closed door.
It was only nine o'clock—early by diplomatic standards. In fact, if things had gone according to schedule today, she would still have been at a reception for Prince Tedric over at the Ustanzian Embassy. But things had gone very much not according to schedule, starting with the assassination attempt at the airport.
She'd gotten a call from the president of the United States, officially thanking her, on behalf of the American people, for saving Prince Tedric's life. She hadn't expected that. Too bad. If she'd been expecting the man in the White House to call, she might have been prepared to ask for his assistance in locating the personnel records of this mysterious navy lieutenant who looked so much like the crown prince of Ustanzia.
Nobody, repeat nobody she had spoken to had been able to help her find the files she wanted. The Department of Defense sent her to the Navy. The Navy representatives told her that all SEAL records were in the Special Forces Division. The clerk from Special Forces was as clandestine and unhelpful as James Bond's personal assistant might have been. The woman wouldn't even verify that Joseph Catalanotto existed, let alone if the man's personnel files were in the U.S. Special Forces Office.
Frustrated, Veronica had gone back to Senator McKinley, hoping that he could use his clout to get a fax of Catalanotto's files. But even the powerful senator was told that, for security reasons, personnel records for Navy SEALs were never, repeat never, sent via facsimile. It had been a major feat just getting them to fax a picture of the lieutenant. If McKinley wanted to see Joseph P. Catalanotto's personnel file, he would need to make a formal request, in writing. After the request was received, it would take a mandatory three days for the files to be censored for his—and Ms. St. John's—level of clearance.
Three days.
Veronica wasn't looking to find Lieutenant Catalanotto's deepest, darkest military secrets. All she wanted to know was where the man came from—in which part of the country he'd grown up. She wanted to know his family background, his level of education, his IQ scores and the results of personality and psychological tests done by the armed forces.
She wanted to know, quite frankly, how big an obstacle this Navy SEAL himself was going to be in getting the job done.
So far, she only knew his name, that he looked like a rougher, wilder version of Tedric Cortere, that his shoulders were very broad, that he carried an M60 machine gun as if it were a large loaf of bread, and that he had a nice smile.
She didn't have a clue as to whether she'd be able to fool the American public into thinking he was a European prince. Until she met this man, she couldn't even guess how much work transforming him was going to take. It would be better to try not to think about it.
But if she didn't think about this job looming over her, she would end up thinking about the girl at Saint Mary's Hospital, a little girl named Cindy who had sent the prince a letter nearly four months ago—a letter Veronica had fished out of Tedric's royal wastebasket. In the letter, Cindy—barely even ten years old—had told Prince Tedric that she'd heard he was planning a trip to the United States. She had asked him, if he was going to be in the Washington, D.C., area, to please come and visit her since she was not able to come to see him.
Veronica had ended up going above the prince—directly to King Derrick—and had gotten the visit to Saint Mary's on the official tour calendar.
But now what?
The entire tour would have to be rescheduled and re-planned, and Saint Mary's and little Cindy were likely to fall, ignored, between the cracks.
Veronica smiled tightly. Not if she had anything to say about it.
With a sigh, she kicked off her shoes.
Lord, but she ached.
Tackling royalty could really wear a person out, she thought, allowing herself a rueful smile. After the assassination attempt, she had run on sheer adrenaline for about six hours straight. After that had worn off, she'd kept herself fueled with coffee—hot, black and strong.
Right now what she needed was a shower and a two-hour nap.
She pulled her nightgown and robe out of the suitcase that she hadn't yet found time to unpack, and tossed them onto the bed as she all but staggered into the bathroom. She closed the door and turned on the shower as she peeled off her suit and the cream-coloured blouse she wore underneath. She put a hole in her hose as she took them off, and threw them directly into the wastebasket. It had been a bona fide two-pairs-of-panty-hose day. Her first pair, the ones she'd been wearing at the airport, had been totally destroyed.
Veronica washed herself quickly, knowing that every minute she spent in the shower was a minute less that she'd be able to sleep. And with Lieutenant Joseph P. Catalanotto due to arrive anytime after midnight, she was going to need every second of that nap.
Still, it didn't keep her from singing as she tried to rinse the aches and soreness from her back and shoulders. Singing in the shower was a childhood habit. Then, as now, the moments she spent alone in the shower were among the few bits of time she had to really kick back and let loose. She tested the acoustics of this particular bathroom with a rousing rendition of Mary Chapin Carpenter's latest hit.
She shut off the water, still singing, and towelled herself dry.
Her robe was hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and she reached for it.
And stopped singing, mid-note.
She'd left her robe in the bedroom, on the bed. She hadn't hung it on the door.
"No...you're right. You're not alone in here," said a husky male voice from the other side of the bathroom door.
Chapter 3
Veronica's heart nearly stopped beating, and she lunged for the door and turned the lock.
"I figured you didn't know I was in your room," the voice continued as Veronica quickly slipped into her white terry-cloth bathrobe. "I also figured you probably wouldn't appreciate coming out of the bathroom with just a towel on—or less. Not with an audience, anyway. So I put your robe on the back of the door."
Veronica tightened the belt and clutched the lapels of the robe more closely together. She took in a deep breath, then let it slowly out. It steadied her and kept her voice from shaking. "Who are you?" she asked.
"Who are you?" the voice countered. It was rich, husky, and laced with more than a trace of blue-collar New York. "I was brought here and told to wait, so I waited. I've been hustled from one coast to the other like some Federal Express overnight package, only nobody has any explanations as to why or even who I'm waiting to see. I didn't even know my insertion point was the District of Columbia until the jet landed at Andrews. And as long as I'm complaining I might as well tell you that I'm tired, I'm hungry and my shorts have not managed to dry in the past ten hours, a situation that makes me very, very cranky. I would damn near sell my soul to get into that shower that you just stepped out of. Other than that, I'm sure I'm very pleased to meet you."
"Lieutenant Catalanotto?" Veronica asked.
"Bingo," the voice said. "Babe, you just answered your own question."
But had she? "What's your first name?" she asked warily.
"Joe. Joseph."
"Middle name?"
"Paulo," he said.
Veronica swung open the bathroom door.
The first thing she noticed about the man was his size. He was big—taller than Prince Tedric by about two inches and outweighing him in sheer muscle by a good, solid fifty pounds. His dark hair was cut much shorter than Tedric's, and he had at least a two-day growth of beard darkening his face.
He didn't look as exactly like the prince as she'd thought when she saw his photograph, Veronica realized, studying the man's face. On closer inspection, his nose was slightly different—it had been broken, probably more than once. And, if it was possible, this navy lieutenant's cheekbones were even more exotic-looking than Tedric's. His chin was slightly more square, more stubborn than the prince's. And his eyes... As he returned her inquisitive stare, his lids dropped halfway over his remarkable liquid brown eyes, as if he was trying to hide his innermost secrets from her.
But those differences—even the size differences between the two men—were very subtle. They wouldn't be noticed by someone who didn't know Prince Tedric very well. Those differences certainly wouldn't be noticed by the array of ambassadors and diplomats Tedric was scheduled to meet.
"According to the name tag on your suitcase, you've gotta be Veronica St. John, right?" he said, pronouncing her name the American way, as if it were two words, Saint and John.
"Sinjin," she said distractedly. "You don't say Saint John, you say 'Sinjin.'"
He was looking at her, examining her in much the same way that she'd looked at him. The intensity of his gaze made her feel naked. Which of course, underneath her robe, she was.
But he didn't win any prizes himself for the clothing he was wearing. From the looks of it, his T-shirt had had its sleeves forcibly removed without the aid of scissors, his army fatigues had been cut off into ragged shorts, and on his feet he wore a pair of dirty canvas deck shoes with no socks. He looked as if he hadn't showered in several days, and, Lord help her, he smelled that way, too.
"Dear God," Veronica said aloud, taking in all of the little details she'd missed at first. He wasn't wearing a belt. Instead, a length of fairly thick rope was run through the belt loops in his pants, and tied in some kind of knot at the front. He had a tattoo—a navy anchor—on his left biceps. His fingers were blackened with stains of grease, his fingernails were short and rough—a far cry from Prince Tedric's carefully manicured hands. Lord, if she had to start by teaching this man the basics of personal hygiene, there was no way she'd have him impersonating a prince within her three-day deadline.
"What?" he said with a scowl. Defensiveness tinged his voice and darkened his eyes. "I'm not what you expected?"
She couldn't deny it. She'd expected the lieutenant to arrive wearing a dress uniform, stiff and starched and perfectly military—-and smelling a little more human and a little less like a real-life marine mammal-type seal. Wordlessly, she shook her head no.
Joe gazed silently at the girl. She watched him, too, her eyes so wide and blue against the porcelain paleness of her skin. It was hard for him to tell the colour of her hair—it was wet. It clung, damp and dark, to the sides of her head and neck.
Red, he guessed. It was probably some shade of red, maybe even strawberry blond, probably curly. Yet, if there really was a God and He was truly righteous, she would have nondescript straight hair, maybe the colour of mud. It didn't seem fair that this girl should have wealth, a powerful job, refined manners, a pair of beautiful blue eyes and curly red hair.
Without makeup, her face looked alarmingly young. Her features were delicate, almost fragile. She wasn't particularly pretty, at least not in the conventional sense. But her cheekbones were high, showcasing enormous crystal blue eyes. And her lips were exquisitely shaped, her nose small and elegant.
No, she wasn't pretty. But she was incredibly attractive in a way he couldn't even begin to explain.
The robe she wore was too big for her. It drew attention to her slight frame, accentuating her slender wrists and ankles.
She looked like a kid playing dress up in her mommy's clothes.
Funny, from the cut and style of the business suits that had been neatly packed in her suitcase, Joe had expected this Veronica St. John—or "Sinjin," as she'd pronounced it with her slightly British, extremely monied upper-class accent—to be, well... less young. He'd expected someone in their mid-forties at least, maybe even older. But this girl couldn't be a day over twenty-five. Hell, standing here like this, just out of the shower, still dripping wet, she barely looked sixteen.
"You aren't what I expected, either," Joe said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "So I guess that makes us even."
He knew he was making her nervous, sitting there like that. He knew she was nervous about him getting the bedspread dirty, nervous about him leaving behind the lingering odour of dead fish—bait from the smelly bucket Blue had knocked over earlier that morning. Hell, he was nervous about it himself.
And damn, but that made him angry. This girl was somehow responsible for dragging him away from his shore leave. She was somehow responsible for the way he'd been rushed across the country without a shower or a change of clothes. Hell, it was probably her fault that he was in this five-star hotel wearing his barnacle-scraping clothes, feeling way out of his league.
He didn't like feeling this way. He didn't like the barely concealed distaste he could see in this rich girl's eyes. He didn't like being reminded that he didn't fit into this opulent world of hers—a world filled with money, power and class.
Not that he wanted to fit in. Hell, he wouldn't last more than a few months in a place like this. He preferred his own world— the world of the Navy SEALs, where a man wasn't judged by the size of his wallet, or the price of his education, or the cut of his clothes. In his world, a man was judged by his actions, by his perseverance, by his loyalty and stamina. In his world, a man who'd made it into the SEALs was treated with honour and respect—regardless of the way he looked. Or smelled.
He leaned back on the big, fa
ncy, five-star bed, propping himself up on his elbows. "Maybe you could give me some kind of clue as to what I'm doing here, honey," he said, watching her wince at his term of endearment. "I'm pretty damn curious."
The rich girl's eyes widened, and she actually forgot to look disdainful for a few minutes. "Are you trying to tell me that no one's told you any thing?"
Joe sat up. 'That's exactly what I'm telling you."
She shook her head. Her hair was starting to dry, and it was definitely curly. "But that's impossible."
"Impossible it ain't, sweetheart," he said. A double wince this time. One for the bad grammar, the other for the "sweetheart." "I'm here in D.C. without the rest of my team, and I don't know why."
Veronica turned abruptly and went into the hotel suite's living room. Joe followed more slowly, leaning against the frame of the door and watching as she sifted through her briefcase.
"You were supposed to be met by—" she pulled a yellow legal pad from her notebook and flipped to a page in the back "—an Admiral Forrest?" She looked up at him almost hopefully.
The navy lieutenant just shrugged, still watching her. Lord, but he was handsome. Despite the layers of dirt and his dark, scowling expression, he was, like Prince Tedric, almost impossibly good-looking. And this man was nearly dripping with an unconscious virility that Tedric didn't even begin to possess. He was extremely attractive underneath all that grime—if she were the type who went for that untamed, rough-hewn kind of man.
Which, of course, Veronica wasn't. Dangerous, bad-boy types had never made her heart beat faster. And if her heart seemed to be pounding now, why, that was surely from the scare he'd given her earlier.
No, she was not the type to be attracted by steel-hard biceps and broad shoulders, a rough-looking five o'clock shadow, a tropical tan, a molten-lava smile, and incredible brown bedroom eyes. No. Definitely, positively not.
Prince Joe Page 3