While Cari stared at the German in dismay and shock, Joe’s brain kicked into overdrive. He didn’t want to subject Cari to any unpleasantness in the form of stares or gropes. But on the other hand, he knew from the tone of Gunter’s voice that this was nonnegotiable. And he wasn’t ready to start an all-out war with Eduardo. Not just yet.

The soldier in Joe gave a silent fist pump at the realization that she would be able to hear exactly what Eduardo was up to with these important strangers. It was almost too perfect an opportunity to believe. She could get names, dates, exact details of whatever they were up to—everything.

He was surprised, though, when an even fiercer voice inside of him spoke up. Cari’s safety is more important than the information.

“Just a minute, Gunter,” Cari said heavily.

She closed the door and hurried over to the bed. “Oh, God, Joe. I don’t want to do this. I thought I was done with all that.”

He sighed heavily. “I know, baby. Your father is testing us, testing me, to see how much of a threat I am to his relationship with you. He needs to know if I’ll yield to his wishes. He needs to know that I won’t take you away completely before he agrees to give you to me.”

Cari closed her eyes in anguish, and then whispered, “One more time. I’ll do my father’s bidding one more time.”

She turned toward her closet. Joe lay back on the pillows, his gut churning. He didn’t like letting her go to the meeting. But Colonel Foley would put his butt in a sling if he messed up this mission because he suddenly went uber-protective on a girl. He called out, “Don’t wear anything too sexy. You’re my wife now, not somebody else’s plaything.”

One thing he could do was make sure she wasn’t down there all alone. He might not be able to get into the room, but he could damned well be right outside to keep an eye on her.

It appeared that Gunter was willing to wait patiently outside until Cari emerged. So Joe reversed himself and started putting his clothes back on. He exchanged his black shirt for a pink polo shirt, and his combat boots for sandals, though.

Cari emerged from her dressing area. She wore a short tropical-print dress with a halter-top and a floaty skirt. It was less revealing than some of the things he’d seen her wear. But then, a burlap sack wouldn’t disguise her sex appeal.

He swore at himself. The green-eyed monster was alive and kicking, tonight.

Jaw clenched, he got out of bed. She paused in front of the door and Joe moved over to her side. He put his arms around her waist and whispered, “I’ll be right outside the window in the yard. If you need me, call out, and I’ll come rescue you.”

She turned around, burrowing into him, and nodded against his chest. His arms tightened around her possessively, willing her to feel him, to think of him when she went into that meeting and flirted with those other men. Her father was a fucking creep for asking this of her.

Cari slipped through the door and out into the hall. And then she was gone. Joe charged across the room, heading for the balcony, but drew up short in front of the French doors. Patience, man. Don’t be stupid.

He waited until the cameras all lined up, pointing away from him, and slipped outside, shimmying down the ladder fast. He landed on silent feet behind the oleanders. Interesting choice for Eduardo’s garden. The flowering shrubs were beautiful but very poisonous.

He made his way through the cover of the lush landscaping over to Eduardo’s office. The last oleander bush stood next to the last window in the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ocean. A lower glass panel of the window tilted outward from the bottom, open, allowing him to hear what was going on inside.

The bar was no more than ten feet from his position, and Eduardo and his four guests bellied up to it, grazing on hors d’oeuvres and sipping drinks. No one was drinking much—experienced businessmen, then. They knew better than to let Eduardo get them hammered before they worked out the details of whatever deal they had cooking.

The men’s heads turned abruptly in unison. A door opened across the room and Cari breezed in, as shiny and beautiful as a polished diamond. Joe’s gut clenched at the impact of her beauty.

Eduardo’s guests responded pretty much the same way as Cari turned her dazzling smile on them. Joe restrained a serious temptation to reach through the window, to roll up the jerks’ tongues, and stuff them back in their mouths. They could quit drooling at his wife, dammit.

Not. His. Wife. Dammit.

Yeah, whatever. He still wanted to drop them all for ogling Cari.

Eduardo made the introductions. “Gentlemen, this is my daughter, Carina. She’s here to see to your pleasure and comfort.”

Joe’s black gaze snapped to Ferrare. The bastard had put just enough emphasis on the words pleasure and comfort to make that sound like a sleazy offer. Cari’s smile abruptly developed a brittle, fixed quality to it.

One of the men spoke. Sounded Slavic. “Do you have any sons in the family business, Mr. Ferrare?”

Eduardo answered with sincere regret. “Alas, I do not. I was cursed with only daughters. Women are good for one thing only. And it isn’t running a multinational business conglomerate.”

Joe’s gaze narrowed. Pain. He was going to cause Eduardo a lot of pain someday.

The Slavic man gave a sage nod, then sidled up to Cari and ran his fingertips along her neckline, delving under the fabric before following the curve of her neck up to her lips. “The fates were unkind to you, Eduardo. But maybe it is possible to find a use for this beautiful mouth?” he suggested, shoving the tip of his thumb into Cari’s mouth, then slowly pulling it out.

Joe just about rammed his fist through the window.

And then he caught sight of Cari’s face and his heart wrenched. She was smiling more brilliantly than ever and looked ready to shatter into a million pieces.

Eduardo gave a casual shrug. “She can make herself useful later. But first, business.”

God Almighty, how was Cari managing not to pick up a bottle of whiskey and break it over that bastard’s head? Her own father was talking about her like she was little more than an expensive whore.

Eduardo turned away from the Slav and was now engaging a silver-haired, ex-commando-looking type in quiet conversation as they all moved to the other end of the room, near Eduardo’s desk. Joe couldn’t hear much of what they said over the blood roaring in his ears, but from the snippets he caught, he guessed the guy was South African.

He watched in helpless rage as Cari gripped the edge of the bar until her knuckles turned white. She looked more inclined to throw up than to fight back.

Is this what she thought love was? If possible, Joe’s rage swelled even more, to epic proportions. The focus of his fury swung away from the sleazy Slav and on to the rightful target—Eduardo. The bastard had given his guest permission to do this to his own daughter. He was the one at fault!

Joe’s glare skewered Eduardo. The pompous, arrogant, sociopathic—

Something moved behind him. Someone. He froze, his years of training taking over by reflex. No matter how riled up he was, survival took precedence. Stay invisible. Stay still. Avoid discovery at all costs.

A flashlight swept back and forth on the other side of the bushes. Its beam pierced the foliage of the oleander like a sword, then swept away, then back. Crap! It flashed across his feet. At least his jungle boots were olive nylon and black leather.

Whoever was wielding the flashlight apparently didn’t notice his feet because the shadowy figure moved on. The guard turned his head and Joe caught the silhouette: Rico. Joe stayed frozen until Rico had circled the pool and gone back into the house via the dining room doors.

He turned his attention back to the meeting. Eduardo was talking and all the guests were listening intently. He couldn’t hear a blessed word of it. They were too far away from the open window, and Eduardo was speaking too quietly. Joe willed Cari to use the others’ distraction to leave.

Get out, baby! Ease over to that door and slip out while no one’s watching.

But she didn’t move. Desperately, abjectly, he begged her to go.

Instead, she glided away from the bar under the guise of collecting a couple of abandoned drinks. She picked them up and drifted back to the bar to set them down. She lifted one of the plates of hors d’oeuvres and moved forward with it in hand. She set it beside one of the heretofore silent guests who hadn’t manhandled her.

She had to be hearing every detail of what her father said. Joe jolted. Here he was, flipping out in the bushes, while she was in there keeping her wits about her and collecting information. Nerves of steel, she had. He owed her no less. He reached for his cell phone to take pictures. And heard another sound behind him.

He froze.

Not Rico again. Irritated beyond belief, he shifted into full-stealth mode—where he should have been all along, dammit!—and eased his head to the side far enough to have a look around the backyard. Freddie and Neddie were walking a slow circuit around the pool this time.

Damn. They might actually be alert enough to spot him. Worse, in a dozen more steps, they would be in position to glance over and see the ladder hanging in the shadows of Cari’s balcony. Frantically, he cast his gaze around at his feet. There. He picked up a golf-ball-size stone and, extending his arm above the top of the oleander fronds, pitched the stone across the yard.

The rock swished through some bushes and hit the ground with a muffled clatter. The cacophony of cicadas, crickets and frogs went silent. And that was almost more noticeable than the rock itself. The two guards jerked, reacting in unison to the intrusion of silence on the tropical night. They hustled off toward the other side of the pool.

Working fast, Joe stood up just far enough to peer between the leaves of his hiding spot. He aimed his camera at Eduardo’s office, quickly capturing the faces of the four men with Ferrare from several different angles.

Cari picked up an armful of empty plates and glided toward the back of the room as unobtrusively as the finest of waiters. Joe kept one eye on her and the other on Freddie and Neddie as they poked around in the bushes on the other side of the pool like a couple of hogs rooting around in the mud for a truffle.

Okay. Cari was clear of the room. She’d just slipped out so subtly he’d nearly missed it. A move worthy of the Blackjacks. But then, she’d grown up having to make herself invisible if she didn’t want her life to become very unpleasant. Why was it that he suddenly felt a burning compulsion to make that up to her?

Joe slithered on his belly under the oleander, inching along the stucco wall past the dining room. Alongside the TV room and its French doors leading out to the pool.

He stopped. Right at ground level, a long, flat metal grate interrupted the line of the house’s concrete foundation. It looked like a vent of some kind. The faintest light shone from between its narrow slats. Was there a basement in this place? It certainly wasn’t indicated on any blueprints he’d ever seen of the place.

He had no more time to think about it. He had to get back upstairs before his absence was discovered. He crawled a few feet past the mysterious vent. He would have to leave the cover of the bushes to cross an open stretch of lawn now, but the shadows were good. He hugged the ground, following the dark spots, his entire body plastered against the cool grass. In another couple of hours, this area would be covered with dew and his passage would leave a telltale track as visible as snail slime across a sidewalk. But for now, he was okay.

Another fifteen feet and he’d be at the ladder. A short pause for the cameras to line back up and he would be safely back where he belonged. Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, Cari would already be waiting for him in the room.

He reached for the bottom rung of the ladder. One more sweep of the camera directly over his head and all the lenses would be aligned away from the balcony. Five…four…three…

He dived flat as lights abruptly illuminated overhead and voices called from inside Cari’s room.

Her absence from the meeting must have been noted and someone had gone looking for her. Obviously, she hadn’t made it back to her room before someone—it sounded like Rico—knocked on her door and got no answer.

He gave the ladder a yank. Hooked solid. It wasn’t coming down off that balustrade anytime soon. The evidence of their little outing would be discovered in a few seconds.

Maybe he could draw them off. Make them think Cari had nothing to do with all this. He would take the fall, but maybe she would live. And just maybe the Blackjacks could find another way to get her to safety.

His death was so going to suck. He had confidence that Eduardo’s thugs would torture him within an inch of his life before they finally killed him.

Crap. He had to ditch the camera, too. Maybe Cari would find it later and get the pictures out to Colonel Foley somehow. He scrabbled with his fingernails in the mulch and soft earth around the base of the landscaping, burying the camera beneath a shallow layer of dirt and pine chips. He just prayed the waterproof case was truly waterproof.

Time to face the music. He pulled his knees under him and braced his hands in preparation for standing up and surrendering to whomever stuck a gun against the back of his head first. Any second now, someone would come tearing outside to see where the trail led away from the telltale ladder.

He shoved to a half crouch and prepared to stand up and show himself. Men were slamming around in the room above now, calling loudly to each other as they searched the space. It wasn’t like there were a whole lot of possible hiding spots. The search would take them a matter of seconds and then they would burst out onto the balcony, find the ladder, and point their AK-47s down at him.

The French doors beside him at ground level burst open and he whirled reflexively, his hands reaching for the stars.

“Hurry!” Cari whispered frantically. “To the pool!”

The swimming pool? What in the world did she have in mind? He stared at her, stunned that she wasn’t Gunter or one of the others come to kill him.

“Come on. And strip while you’re at it!”

That jolted him into motion. “Say again?” he managed to say as he sprinted beside her toward the open space of the swimming pool.

Ahead of him, she fumbled with the knot at the back of her neck as she ran. The halter-top of her dress sagged and she paused by the pool just long enough to let the fine silk drop to the ground. All she had beneath it was a black thong. A flipping unbelievably skimpy black thong.

He gaped in amazement.

She reached for his pants and tore down the zipper. “We used the fire rescue ladder to sneak down here for a skinny dip. But you’ll have to be naked for them to believe it.”

And then it dawned on him what she was up to. She’d realized they had to have a cover story for the ladder and had come up with a brilliant one.

He tore off his shirt. Kicking off his sandals, he yanked his belt buckle free. She shoved his pants down around his knees while he staggered and managed to yank his foot clear of the pant leg. The French doors on her balcony burst open.

The men up there wouldn’t have night vision, having just come out of a brightly lit room. But their eyes would adapt in a few seconds.

Joe sat down on the edge of the pool, pulling Cari down beside him. He slipped carefully into the water, making as little noise as possible. Cari slipped in beside him.

“Can you get your shorts off?” she muttered.

“I dunno,” he mumbled back. “Spandex gets real clingy when it’s wet.” He peeled the fabric off his skin, treading water while he kicked the sports trunks free. He set them on the edge of the pool and gulped as Cari put a tiny scrap of black fabric beside them.

She grinned beside him. “Having fun yet?”

How in the bloody hell could she be so relaxed at a time like this? His nerves were balanced on a razor’s edge.

“That’s not the word I’d choose, no.”

“Welcome to my insane life,” she murmured.

Insane was also not the word he would choose. No one should have to live like a special forces operative in his or her own home, dodging death from one’s own father.

“For the record, this was pure genius.”

She smiled briefly, acknowledging the compliment. “C’mon,” she said. “We may as well get out in the middle of the pool so there’ll be no doubt as to what we’re up to when they turn on the underwater lights.”

He shoved off from the side. “Do me a favor. When the lights go on, move your arms around a lot and make a lot of waves.”

“Why?” she murmured as she commenced treading water with a slow, rhythmic motion of her limbs. Good idea. They would be able to keep that up for a while. Although he doubted they’d be out here more than a few more seconds by themselves.

He answered wryly, “That way, the surface of the water will be good and disturbed and nobody will be able to make out details below the waterline.”

“You’re worried about your modesty at a time like this?”

“Hell, no. I’m worried about yours!”

She was saved from having to reply by a phalanx of armed men bursting into the backyard, followed by a blinding flash of light as the house’s exterior floodlights were thrown on. The entire yard was lit up nearly as bright as day.

“Hell’s bells,” he complained loudly into the blackness beyond the spotlights. “Can’t a guy and his girl have a little privacy around here?”

Cari paddled over to where he treaded water and draped herself around his neck, giggling. “Poor baby. You’ve been trying all day to have your way with me and nothing’s working out! The goon squad keeps catching up with us.”

Gunter glared. Freddie and Neddie gaped. And Rico looked so mad his head could explode. Must have a crush on Cari or something.

“Uh-oh,” Cari mumbled against his neck. “Here comes trouble.”

Joe glanced up. And looked squarely at the tailored knees of Eduardo Ferrare’s suit. Trouble, indeed.