Tansy’s room was on the second floor, overlooking the formal gardens. She’d always liked her view, and it seemed as if John approved of it, too. He braced his hands on the windowsill and looked out, nodding. “Good.”

“I’ve always enjoyed it,” Tansy said, watching the muscles in his arms bulge. She had picked up Mimi when they walked into the room, and was cuddling the small dog. Ostensibly because Mimi had been upset about the confinement and needed comforting, but in reality because she needed something to keep her hands occupied so she didn’t fall into temptation and throw herself at John.

She hadn’t expected this wave of emotion to hit her as soon as they walked into her bedroom and she looked from him to the bed and back.

For the past year, she hadn’t really thought much about sex. At first, the idea of getting involved with anyone again had been scary. Kareem had totally fooled her into believing he cared for her. She didn’t want it to happen again. And while she’d always had to worry about guys wanting to be with her because of her father’s money, now she also had to worry about the ones who wanted to be with her because of the notoriety. Because she was ‘that girl who got hijacked by terrorists.’

As a result, she hadn’t been with anyone since Kareem. Hadn’t really wanted to be, because of the problems. But now her libido had picked a hell of a time to wake up.

Especially since John was sure to turn her down. For any number of very logical and understandable reasons.

His job was to protect her. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. He wasn’t interested in her personally. He’d never be interested in someone like her. He probably thought she was frivolous and stupid, with her small, fluffy dog and her self-indulgent Maserati and her frothy pink room.

Never mind the fact that she’d decorated this room when she was fifteen. She was a different person now.

But John might not realize that. He might even think she deserved what happened to her last year. He’d saved her, sure. And he’d been nice to her. But he probably thought she deserved it, for being stupid enough to get involved with Kareem in the first place.

John turned away from the window. “It’s good that it’s not on the front of the house. We’d have to find somewhere else for you to sleep, if someone could just drive by on the road outside and shoot out your windows.”

Tansy stared at him. It was such a normal thing to say.

Or not exactly normal. This situation was anything but normal. But while she’d been worrying that he was blaming her for last year, and by extension, for what was going on now, he’d just been looking at the view and trying to determine how safe she was in her bedroom.

“That’s a good thing,” John assured her.

Tansy nodded. “I’m sorry. It’s just... this is a lot to deal with.” And now she had this inconvenient attraction to him on top of everything else. While he was probably just here because he’d been told to be, and couldn’t wait to get back home.

She ducked her face into Mimi’s soft fur so she wouldn’t have to look at him anymore. So she didn’t have to see him standing there, tall and solid, just a few short feet away.

“Is she all right?” John sounded worried. And Tansy couldn’t let him worry about Mimi, too, when there was no reason to.

“She’s fine. She just likes to be where the action is.”

“Don’t we all?” John prowled past her with a quick scratch under the chin for Mimi. “Bathroom?”

He indicated the door on the other wall.

Tansy nodded, and turned to watch him open the door and disappear into the large attached bath. It wasn’t pink, thank God. Just gray and white. With a big soaker tub surrounded by candles, a tub she liked to fill up with bubbles and smelly stuff.

God, she really was frivolous, wasn’t she?

She should probably just take showers from now on. Quick ones, to save water.

The bathroom had a nice shower, too. Big enough for two.

She spent a second—just a second, no more—imagining John in that shower, with hot water pounding down, plastering his hair to his head, soaking that tan T-shirt and making it cling to his chest...

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 climbing 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.