by Desiree Holt
“Aren’t you even concerned?”
“I’d be a fool if I weren’t. But people have tried to take me out for years. Whoever this is better be a real professional or he’s dead meat.” He lifted his coffee mug. “Okay. We’re done with Twenty Questions.”
Lisa couldn’t help but let her gaze roam over the man sitting across from her. What an enigma. She’d never met anyone like him. And whatever he’d been doing to himself since she last saw him was having a major effect.
His tall frame had more muscle definition, the skin was tighter, and she could better see the strong, powerful body. The T-shirt stretched to fit broad shoulders, and the sweatpants he was wearing rode low on lean hips. His hair was longer, but with the beard gone, she could better see the planes and angles of his face.
Ethan Caine was a damned good-looking man in a rugged way. She bet he had been hell on wheels with women before he decided to hide from life. She didn’t know what to do with all the conflicting emotions colliding inside her. Part of her detested him, repulsed at what he’d become.
At the same time, part of her reacted to the absolute maleness of him. Strange, since she hadn’t reacted to a man since the second year of her marriage. After the nightmare with Charles, she’d been sure she’d never be interested in any man again. Now she and Ethan Caine were going to be joined at the hip for the next several days. She’d better get a clamp on her unexpectedly active hormones or she’d be in real trouble.
“Homework time.”
His voice jarred her back to reality. He sat down in his chair, opened a folder, and began spreading the papers on the table.
“What’s this?” She frowned. “What kind of homework?”
“Before we set foot out of this house, we have to memorize everything about these people we’re looking for. And about the geographic area, especially the jungle.” He refilled her mug and returned the carafe to the counter. “We won’t be carrying a briefcase with us. And these aren’t the kind of questions you ask at the tourist bureau. So. Let’s get started.”
Tired as she was, she was having trouble blending this Ethan with the one in her mind. She knew he and Josh had been friends for some time, but her years with Charles pretty much kept her in isolation. She and Josh had to plan carefully for their time together and for him to see his nephew. It had been a miracle he’d been with her the night Charles was killed.
She’d had little contact with Ethan when he worked for Guardian, of course. Why would she? The rare occasions she’d spent in his presence, he’d been just off an undercover assignment and looked much as he did during the past year. This, today, was an unfamiliar and unexpected Ethan. Sharp, focused, knowledgeable. He changed before her eyes from the disreputable hermit into a warrior preparing for a mission. She had a hard time reconciling the two. Maybe the rumors about him had been true after all.
“Think of this as a lecture that you’ll be tested on,” he told her. “It helps organize the facts in your mind.”
In clear, concise sentences, he fed her the information on Las Tormentas, pointing out what they’d be looking for and how they’d go about it. Then he pulled out two maps and gave her a geography lesson. About the time her head began to buzz, Ethan shuffled all the papers together and slid them back into the folder.
“That’s enough for tonight. You’d better get to bed. You’ll need your rest.”
Lisa didn’t move, just sat watching him. Finally, she said, “You still haven’t given me a real answer to my question.”
“Oh?” He cocked an eyebrow. “And what question was that?”
“Why you’re doing this.”
He stared at her with his hooded gaze for a long time. “Let’s just say I owe Josh a great deal. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for him.”
“But I mean nothing to you. Nor does Jamie. And this is not just a walk to the corner drug store.”
“No, it isn’t. My reasons are my own.” He emptied the rest of the coffee and rinsed out the carafe. “But you can count on the fact that if Jamie’s alive, I’m the one who can get him out.” He paused. “And that’s all the answer you’ll get. Good night, Lisa.”
He was gone before she could say another word.
As she made her way to her room, she caught glimpses of him checking doors and windows as well as the monitors in what she called the electronics closet. Some people might call the way he lived paranoia, but Lisa was damned glad for it. For anything that kept them safe.
Breakfast the next morning was even more silent than dinner had been.
“Before we start today’s training,” Ethan told her, “we have some housekeeping things to take care of.”
She frowned. “Like what?”
“Hold on.” Ethan left the room and returned with a small gym bag. Reaching in, he pulled out a wig and held it out to her. “There’s an almost hundred percent chance the kidnappers will recognize you, so we have to counteract that.”
She took the wig, staring at it. “You want me to put this on now?”
“Uh huh.” He reached into the bag and handed her a zippered pouch. “Lily Cameron’s makeup. Go fix yourself up and come back here. I need to take your picture.”
“For?”
“Passport picture. Can we just do this, please?”
Lisa swallowed her exasperation and took everything into the bathroom. With her blonde hair tucked up into the wig, her entire appearance changed. The new hair was long and dark and very curly. She decided to go to town on the makeup, wondering if Ethan would tell her to use some common sense. When she walked out of the bathroom, curls surrounded her face and her eyes were made up with dark eyeliner, heavy smoky gray shadow and heavy eyebrow pencil.
Ethan looked at her and grinned. It was the first time she’d seen any sign of humor on his face.
“Perfect! Exactly what I wanted. Not even your brother would recognize you.”
She snorted. “No kidding.”
“Okay. Picture time.” He snapped four shots of her with his phone. Then sent them off, probably to Nick. “Good. Back to your real self. We have work to do.”
They settled back into what would become their routine. Treadmill. Weights. Self-defense. Lunch. Start over again. On the fourth day, he asked to see her gun. Lisa dug the little Ruger 9mm out of her purse and gave it to him.
“Not bad.” He released the magazine, checked the gun, then slammed the magazine back in and racked the slide. “Let’s see what you can do with it.”
Off to the side in the backyard was an old barn that looked like a strong wind would collapse it. Two targets were pinned to the outside wall. Boxes of bullets were stacked on an old wooden table.
Ethan walked Lisa up to within ten feet of the targets and stopped. “All right, hot shot. Let’s see if your talent matches your mouth.”
If I didn’t need him, I’d shoot him instead.
She took her stance, sited, drew in a breath, partially let it out as she’d been taught, and squeezed off six shots, counting them in her head. When she was finished, she lowered her hand and ejected the empty clip.
He walked up to the target, traced her hits with a finger, and shook his head.
She knew she’d burned a circle dead center. “Maybe you could help me focus a little better,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
He turned to walk back to her. “Smartass. Let’s see how you do from farther away. The bad guys don’t always oblige you by getting close.”
Lisa pressed her lips together to keep any more smart remarks from slipping out, moved back five feet, and repeated the sequence. Again, she hit all six dead center. He had her shoot all the way back to thirty feet, moving in five-foot increments. Then he had her do staggered rapid-fire.
He was relentless, changing her stance, changing the angle of the shot, changing the pacing. By the time they’d used up two boxes of bullets, her shoulders ached and her arms were ready to drop. She was beginning to long for the torture chamber of the gym.
“Okay. Enough.�
� He took the gun from her and placed it on the table. “Rest. It’s my turn.”
She dropped into a wooden chair next to the table, massaging her hand, and watched Ethan go through his paces. It was like watching a machine. Smooth, functioning effortlessly. He was a dead shot from any distance and any angle. Watching him, a slight shiver skittered along her spine. Ethan Caine was a killing machine. His body showed no tension, no hesitation, as he emptied magazine after magazine into the target.
In the week she’d been at his house, she’d seen the emergence of the man Josh said he once had been. He was tougher, more focused, deadlier. Here was the image of the man who had led the blackest of black ops. And wasn’t that what she wanted? Needed? A man with no fear, who’d be deterred by nothing?
When he turned and headed back to the table for the last time, his face held absolutely no expression. She could easily see him in any dangerous scenario doing things most men would be afraid to discuss.
She avoided looking directly into his eyes. She didn’t want to feel any empathy for this man. What had happened to him was soul damaging and her heart went out to him, but she couldn’t afford to let it affect her. She needed to fuel her anger at his arrogance and her residual distaste for him. It was her only ammunition against a growing, unwanted sexual attraction.
Why, oh, why was she always attracted to the wrong kind of man?
She was just grateful he had agreed to do this, and that’s what she had to remember. She didn’t have to like him to be grateful, and she certainly didn’t have to show her gratitude in a way she’d regret.
Still, for the first time since the day Jamie disappeared, Lisa felt a small spark of hope stirring within her.
Chapter Eight
As Lisa headed to the kitchen Friday morning, she ran into Ethan standing in the front hall with a man she’d never seen. Neither of them was smiling, but their posture indicated business rather than antagonism. They spoke briefly in quiet tones. Then the man handed Ethan a thick envelope, they shook hands, and the man left.
“A friend?” she asked.
“In a manner of speaking. From Guardian with some stuff for me. Nick had an agent they work with here deliver it to me.” His face was as blank as solid stone, hinting at nothing. “Let’s eat breakfast.”
He served them both bacon and eggs and mugs of coffee. His folder and a pad of yellow paper were on the table next to his place.
“Studying again?” She motioned to the papers.
“Checking facts again. We leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Her eyes popped open. “It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this for a week.”
A week unlike any other she’d spent. From daylight to dark, they trained. With the equipment. On the mats. In the yard with the guns. By now, she was sure she could take almost anyone hands down and shoot from any position and any angle. The whole thing had a surreal quality. She was going into a strange country with a man she hardly knew, armed to the teeth to rescue her son. Whatever happened to her nice, sane existence?
She met Charles Mallory, and nothing had been normal since.
“I wish we had a month, but this will have to do.” He looked down at the pad in front of him. “Our flight leaves from Tampa International—”
“I’m ready.” She tried to sound more confident than she felt. Now that they were actually going to do this, her stomach twisted in knots and a sliver of fear raced through her.
“I’m glad one of us is.” He gestured toward the envelope with a forkful of food. “We’re Ed and Lily Cameron. Welcome to the honeymoon.”
She raised her eyebrows at his comment. She hadn’t given a thought to different identities. “We need fake names?”
“Do you know how many people would be waiting for us with heavy hardware if the name Ethan Caine appeared on a passenger manifest?”
“B—but what do you do when you normally fly?”
“I don’t. Let’s just leave it at that. We leave on the ten a.m. Continental flight, change planes in Houston, and get into Cancun about two. Our reservations on the flight and at the hotel are for the Camerons.”
“No direct flight?” Lisa bit off a tiny piece of toast, wondering why they were complicating the trip with a layover.
“Not for the hours I want.” He stirred sweetener into his coffee. “Besides, this way I can tell if anyone’s keeping an eye on us. It’s hard to be invisible in a bunch of places.”
She almost choked on her toast. “You think the people who shot at us will be following us?”
“Maybe. It’s a good bet they’ve got eyes out looking for me. Eyes that might have nothing to do with you. Except they could screw up our trip if we’re not careful.”
“Then isn’t it just adding to the danger if we don’t take a direct flight?”
“No.” His lips thinned. “Like I said, it gives me more opportunities to see if we have a tail.” He swallowed some coffee. “Besides, I don’t think anyone will be looking for a loving couple.”
“I hope you’re right.” She picked up her own coffee mug.
“I have all the ID we’ll need in this envelope except for your passport,” Ethan went on. “We’ll have that tomorrow. After supper tonight, give me everything in your purse except cosmetics. I’ll lock it up in the safe.”
“All right.”
“Your gun, too.”
“My gun? What will I use?”
The look he gave her was part irritation, part impatience. “Don’t you read the papers? You try to get on the plane with a gun, you won’t see daylight for months.”
Of course. How stupid. Now he’d think her a dumbass for sure.
Ethan swallowed a mouthful of food. “I have stuff being delivered to us after we land. Including a duplicate of your Ruger. I don’t think you can handle anything larger.”
Lisa watched him eating, cutting his food, and chewing it carefully. Again, when he sweetened his coffee it was without the careless disregard he’d displayed at The Club. All week, she’d seen a totally different side of this man than he’d ever exposed.
“You fake it, don’t you?” she asked without preamble.
He looked up, startled. “Excuse me?”
“You’re a fraud, Ethan Caine. You’ve created an offensive persona to make sure the world doesn’t ever see what’s underneath. What are you afraid of?”
The mask snapped into place again. “You’re nuts, you know that? What you see is what you get.”
“But it depends on what you let people see. Doesn’t it?”
He didn’t answer, and at last, she went back to her plate of food. Who is he, really? Before the disaster that led to his “retirement,” who had he been? Now he was just a figment of his own imagination, dealing with disaster and hiding behind a wall of pain and guilt. Josh had told her no matter how many times people tried to convince him it hadn’t been his fault, he brushed them all away. He led the mission; he was responsible. And it was a burden that was slowly destroying him.
They spent the day refining the self-defense moves he had taught her. After dinner, he shut everything down and brought her a zippered canvas tote. “Wear one tourist outfit. Take jeans, shorts, and one T-shirt.”
“I won’t be a very well-dressed honeymooner. Won’t they be suspicious?”
His grin held little humor. “We eloped. We’re buying what we need in Mexico. Anyway, as a new husband, I won’t want my bride wearing too many clothes.”
The thought of being naked with Ethan Caine sent a sudden rush of heat through her system.
In a pig’s eye.
But she couldn’t get the images out of her mind. The flex of his muscles as they exercised. The now-leaner body in jeans and T-shirt at the firing range, every move smooth and fluid. The thick pelt of hair on his hard-muscled chest that lay like a shadow beneath a white shirt.
The feel of his hands on her body as he moved and guided her, like a living flame heating her skin wherever he touched her.
I’m going
to be in big trouble if I don’t get my mind back on the business at hand. Don’t be stupid, Lisa. Ethan Caine is the last man in the world to have fantasies about. As if fantasies ever came true, anyway.
She dumped the contents of her purse into a plastic baggie and handed it to Ethan along with her gun. After he locked everything in the safe, he handed her the new identification.
“I think we can treat ourselves to one beer. We’ve earned it. Okay with you?”
“Yes.” She almost smiled. “That would be nice.”
They sat on the ancient rockers on the front porch, each holding a cold bottle of Coors, watching the sun bathe the landscape with its last rays of the day. Neither of them said a word. She had learned during the past week that Ethan Caine wasn’t much for small talk, so she sat in silence.
Finally, he broke the silence. “You did good.” Each word sounded as if someone dragged it out of him.
She laughed for the first time in weeks. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’m sure you were waiting for me to hang it up.”
“Matter of fact, I was. You surprised me.” He tipped the bottled back and drank two healthy swallows.
Lisa watched the movement of the muscles in his neck as he drank, then shook herself. Holy mother of god. What was with her? She was smack in the middle of the biggest crisis of her life—even bigger than trying to deal with her marriage—and her hormones decided to do a wild tarantella. She was getting entirely too fascinated by Ethan Caine and his body. A man, by the way, she was pretty sure she didn’t even like.
Must be years of abstinence. Or the misery that described sex with Charles. I didn’t think I’d ever have an honest urge again in my life. And sex is last thing I need to think about right now. Especially with Ethan Caine. I must be losing my mind.
“Well.” He drained his bottle. “Time to hit the sack. We’re outta here at eight a.m. Josh is taking us to the airport.”
“Oh!” She’d just assumed they’d drive themselves.
“I’d rather not leave the beast in the parking garage. Don’t know exactly how long we’ll be gone. Anyway, we won’t be coming back through TIA.”