Joe must have fallen asleep after he slipped back in beside Cari because he experienced a definite moment of waking up later. A moment of registering a soft, warm body plastered against him from shoulder to knee. A moment of roaring response by his own body, and an infinitely worse moment of chagrined realization that there was no way in hell he got to roll over and relieve his rock-hard need on the sumptuously sexy female beside him. Yeah, he could wake up to her every morning for the rest of his life and not complain about it a bit.

He lay there for a few minutes, soaking in the intensely feminine vibe of white lace all around him. A month ago, he’d have said a room like this would drive him crazy. But, now he had to admit, the fringe benefits all the frills worth it.

Asleep, Cari looked even younger than he knew her to be, and even more innocent. Hell, downright angelic. He tried to slip away from her without waking her up, but she opened her eyes and smiled sleepily as soon as he moved.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”

Her mouth curved up into a smile. “Mmm, I’m not tired.”

She made no move to lift her limbs off of him, no move to roll away from him and relieve his suffering. If anything, she snuggled even more tightly against him. He closed his eyes. Strength, man. Fortitude.

Her hand crept up to his neck. Slid into his hair. And brought her naked breast into unabashed contact with his bare chest.

Fortitude, be damned. He angled his head down and captured her mouth in a full-contact, wet-tongued, tonsil-probing good-morning-to-you kiss. And, Sweet Lord, if she didn’t taste good. Like peaches. How did she do that? He probably tasted like mouth surgery gone putrid. And that was the only thing that caused him to drag his mouth away from hers and come up gasping for air.

“Again,” she panted.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He shouldn’t do this. It was such a bad idea. He’d seen more than one of his own teammates dragged to hell and back by a woman during a mission. He would regret it for the rest of his life….

And he would regret it more if he didn’t kiss her this very second. He drew her against him, kissing her like there was no tomorrow. He all but inhaled her, groaning as their tongues scraped together. He couldn’t get enough of her.

“More, Joe. Oh, please. More….”

Her hands were straying again, skimming down toward places that didn’t need any attention right now.

“Easy does it, princess,” he gasped. “We can’t—”

“Says who?” she grumbled, kissing her way down his neck.

Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God. Her mouth was following the path of her hands—down, down toward parts of him that ached to have her taste him. And he wasn’t stopping her.

He. Had. To. Stop. Her.

It was worse than running in thigh-deep water with an eighty-pound pack on his back, but he managed to drag his hands downward, forced his fingers to wrap around her wrists. He reached deep for the last dregs of his willpower and pulled her hands gently away from him. So that would be what shooting yourself in some vital organ felt like.

She moaned in frustration.

“Honey, I know your pain,” he half laughed, half groaned.

“Then why do we have to stop?” she demanded.

“Because I’ve got work to do and—” another gut check and deep reach for discipline “—and it’s not right.”

Her hands came to rest on his chest once more. “What’s so wrong about this?” she murmured. “It feels pretty right to me.”

His gut was ablaze with need. He really shouldn’t. Except he didn’t want to further scar her when it came to men and rejection. Yeah, that was it. That was his story and he was sticking to it, dammit. That was why he leaned forward and planted another searing kiss on her mouth, lest he let those luscious lips wander where they willed, surrounding him and sucking at him, licking and teasing…

“What work do you have to do?” Cari asked.

“I beg your pardon?” He could barely remember his name past the pounding pulse in his crotch.

“Work. You said you had work to do,” she said breathlessly.

At least she had the good grace to sound hot and bothered, too. “Uh, right. Gotta ask your father about an outing for you and me. Gotta have a look at the perimeter security along the fences,” he whispered in her ear.

“Outing?” she repeated, sounding nearly as distracted as he was.

He sat up. Swung his feet over the side of the bed. Stared at the white carpet between his feet and tried to form complete sentences. “Right. Outing. Like shopping. Or dancing.”

“Sounds good.”

“Which?” he mumbled.

“Either,” she mumbled back, sitting up as well.

“I’ll get on it, then.”

Except when he finally managed to get dressed and stumble downstairs, he was informed that Eduardo was absent today. Out of the house this morning on a business errand. That news cleared his head fast. Was Ferrare out collecting the names and addresses of him and his colleagues in the Blackjacks, perhaps? He had to get the word out to Foley about this latest development.

After breakfast, Joe headed back to Cari’s bedroom or, more accurately, her bathroom to see how she was making out with reconfiguring his cell-phone signal. She’d skipped the meal to get to work on it for him.

Carrying a muffin and a glass of orange juice, he shouldered open her bathroom door after calling through the panel to announce himself.

“I brought you breakfast,” he murmured. “How’s it coming?”

“Close the door,” she muttered absently.

He complied and she commented, “Almost done. I’ll need you to attempt a phone call in a minute.”

It was actually less than a minute before she passed him her cell phone, minus its impact-resistant case. “If it rings,” Cari said, “then it’s working. You’ll be transmitting outside the range of my father’s surveillance-system frequencies and of the jamming setup in here.”

He dialed Tom Foley’s number. There was a clicking in his ear and he asked quickly, “Is clicking normal?”

“Yes. That’s actually the Gavronese phone system connecting through.”

“The call definitely won’t be monitored? I can talk freely?”

“Definitely.”

“It’s ringing,” he announced. Damn, she was good.

It picked up on the third ring. “Who is this?” a male voice snapped.

Thank God. Foley himself. “It’s me. Doc,” Joe said. “I’m in the clear on my end. Can you talk?”

“Yes. What’s up?” his boss replied, sounding surprised as hell.

“Cari rigged my phone so it won’t be monitored by her father’s men. We’ve got news.”

“About what?” The surprise in Foley’s voice ratcheted up a notch.

“Eduardo had guests last night. Turns out they’re information brokers and he’s trying to buy the complete roster and home addresses of a certain group of people we both know and love.”

A long pause greeted that announcement. Thunderous silence out of Tom Foley was never a good thing. It either meant he was cooking up some diabolical scheme or tightly reining in his temper.

“And he’s planning to do what with this information?” Foley finally bit out.

“No idea. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess, now, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.” A good case of galloping mad was growing in his boss’s gut. Joe could hear it in the clipped way he was pronouncing words.

Joe continued. “I got pictures of the players last night, but I had to hide the camera. When I retrieve it, I’ll send you the—”

Joe broke off. Cari was holding out his camera, which still had bits of damp mud clinging to it.

“You didn’t climb down and get that while I was downstairs, did you?” he asked in dawning horror.

In his right ear, Foley said, “Come again?”

And in his left ear, Cari replied gaily, “Nope. I just paid one of the maids a hundred dollars to fetch it for me.”

“Jesus, Cari,” Joe complained. “She could go straight to your father and tell him about it. Or she might’ve been seen, or told Gunter about the camera and let him find it. We can’t afford to take crazy chances like that!”

In his right ear, Foley asked, “Who’s Gunter?”

In his left, Cari retorted, “I’ve known Grace forever. She’s always done favors for me, and she never tells. The extra money helps keep her family fed.”

Joe scowled at her, his heart pounding in delayed reaction.

“Doc?” Foley said in his ear again. “What’s going on?”

Joe sighed. “Cari took a risk but seems to have gotten away with it. She had a maid retrieve my camera. When we’re done talking, I’ll send you the photos from last night’s meeting. An ID on the visitors would be useful.”

“I can’t wait,” Foley replied dryly. “When are you two out of there?”

“Working on it. Possibly as early as tonight. I’m scoping out the perimeter systems today to make sure there are no additional security measures on this side of the fence that I didn’t spot in my previous surveillance outside. We’ll need a ride, either by car on the coast road or by fast boat off the coast. And it’ll have to be fast. Eduardo’s men use state-of-the art equipment and vehicles.”

“Got it,” Foley answered. “We’ll cover both egress routes and be standing by on this end for a call.”

Joe continued. “Gunter—he’s Eduardo’s chief of security, probably ex-German secret police—runs a tight ship. We’re going to have to do something creative to get out from under his thumb.”

“Mac and Tex are here. Howdy comes in this evening. Let us know what we can do to help.”

That was good news. Knowing that most of his teammates were nearby was reassuring. And it gave him more options when it came time to break out of this glorified jail.

“Any luck tracking down the mole on the support staff?” Joe asked.

“Nada. Whoever it is, they’ve gone to ground and have quit sending out any information for now, as far as we can tell.”

Joe’s jaw tightened. That mole was one of the main reasons this op was so risky. He stood in grave jeopardy of being exposed and killed if the mole figured out the Blackjacks actually had one of its operators inside Ferrare’s house and relayed that news to Eduardo.

“Now that we’ve got communication,” Foley said, “call me if you need anything. We’re here to help you two. We’ve got round-the-clock eyes on the compound.”

“Are you operating out of the same house I did down the beach?” Joe asked.

“Yup. We’ve still got the armored Mercedes, and Tex scored us a boat yesterday, so we’ve got a ride, either way.”

“Outstanding,” Joe replied, relieved. All he had to do was get outside the fence with Cari and the Blackjacks would take care of the rest.

“Just out of curiosity, did you say Cari reconfigured your cell phone?”

Joe laughed. “Yeah. Turns out, she has a degree in engineering. Specialized in microelectronics.”

“You’re kidding,” Foley blurted in patent disbelief.

“As I live and breathe,” Joe replied.

“I’ll be damned. These Ferrare girls are just full of surprises.”

“There’s a lot more to them than meets the eye,” Joe agreed.

Foley snorted. “I don’t know. They’ve both got a hell of a lot to recommend them to the eye.”

Joe smiled across the small space of the bathroom at Cari. “They do, indeed.”

“Watch your tail, champ. And I’ll be standing by for those pictures.”

“Roger.”

They hung up and Joe immediately plugged the camera into his phone and sent the pictures.

“Wanna take a shower with me?” Cari asked.

Lord, that sounded tempting. “I need to walk the fence line while your father’s out. Gunter will relax while the boss is away. He’ll take care of administrative stuff he can’t do when your old man’s around and he’s stuck on bodyguard duty.”

Cari looked disappointed but said cheerfully enough, “I guess I’ll take a shower, then.”

He pushed away from the counter and couldn’t resist planting a quick kiss on her cheek. “Thanks for modifying my phone. You’re a peach,” he murmured.

She laughed aloud. “A fruit, am I? I’ll have to work on my image, I see.”

He stepped closer again but refrained from touching her. He said roughly, “Don’t knock it. I adore peaches.”

Then he spun around and left the room. He dared not stay in close proximity any longer or he would be in grave danger of showing her just how much he loved the sweet, juicy fruit.

With Eduardo gone and Gunter occupied somewhere inside the house, checking out the fence was a piece of cake. Joe stumbled across a path running along the inside of the fence line—no doubt made by security guards walking perimeter patrols. He didn’t find any new security measures he wasn’t already aware of.

Of course, the stuff he knew about was impressive enough— heat sensors, motion detectors, cameras, and infrared beams, not to mention the fact that the fence itself was twelve-feet tall, made of heavy cast iron and topped with numerous pointed spikes that were undoubtedly electrified. And he was sure the code to the gate leading out to the beach had been changed since Cari had blasted through it the night they’d met. Hopping the fence wasn’t going to be an option for him and Cari, then. Maybe a little C-4 to blow a hole through it. They weren’t likely to be able to sneak all the way out of this place undiscovered, so they might as well leave in a blaze of glory.

After his hike around the estate, which encompassed nearly five acres, he headed for the swimming pool. Might as well get a little exercise while he waited for Eduardo to come home so the two of them could talk.

He swam for a solid hour, losing count of how many laps he’d done. It helped burn off a little of his immediate sexual frustration, but it didn’t touch the overall tension thrumming through him at the thought of getting Cari in his arms again.

When he finally climbed out, he was pleased to see that Cari had come out to the pool, wearing a fire engine red bikini that was an absolute knockout. He flopped down on a chaise lounge next to her and let the sun warm his skin.

He felt a presence approaching and lifted his head lazily. Rico. The thug who’d gotten so mad at finding him and Cari skinny-dipping in the pool last night. He didn’t look much happier today. The set of his meaty shoulders was distinctly aggressive.

Joe pegged him as a guy looking to increase his status within the organization and jonesing to find someone to rough up a little. Joe sighed. Rico stopped at the foot of Joe’s lounge chair and stared down at him.

Joe gazed back impassively. “Can I do something for you?” he asked evenly.

“Yeah. Quit flaunting the fact that you’re sleeping with the boss’s daughter,” Rico growled.

Joe smiled easily. “I don’t have to flaunt it. I have a piece of paper that says I can sleep with her whenever I feel like it.”

“Yeah, well, who the hell are you? You waltz in here and steal her right out from under her father’s nose and think you can get away with it?”

Joe shrugged. “I didn’t steal her. Eduardo knew we were seeing each other. And I’m sure he knew we were getting serious. Besides, he gave our marriage his blessing.”

What was this guy’s angle? He was acting acutely jealous. Like a big brother. Or a jilted lover? Joe eyed Rico afresh. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, in a linebacker sort of way. Was this beefcake Cari’s type? She must think he was a scrawny little wimp, then.

He glanced over at Cari. She was frowning uncertainly at Rico, but she didn’t look guilty or irritated, like she might if an old flame stirred up trouble with her new husband.

Hell, he was her husband. He had the right to ask the question. “Baby, were you and this guy ever an item?”

That was genuine surprise on her face. Hallelujah. “Good Lord, no!” As Rico scowled darkly, she added hastily, “I was never allowed to date my father’s men.”

Hmm. She, too, sensed something dangerous in Rico’s manner. Not good. Should he stay sprawled out on his back on the assumption that Rico wouldn’t attack a man in no position to defend himself, or should he be moseying to his feet?

Getting up won out. He wanted to move far enough away from Cari so if Rico did something stupid there was no chance she would get caught in the fray and get hurt.

Joe sat up, wiping the sweat off his face in a leisurely fashion with a towel. He eyed the bulge under the guy’s left armpit beneath the light jacket he wore unzipped. A gun, no doubt. Right-handed, then. Probably wouldn’t pull it, though because Gunter and the other guards would have to respond aggressively to a brandished weapon. It could get Rico in trouble or fired or, around here, worse.

The look in Rico’s eyes said he didn’t just want to bloody Joe; he wanted to kill him. The guy wouldn’t come in unarmed using only his fists. A knife, then.

Rico’s hands flexed into a fist. Opened. Oh, yeah. Going to reach for a weapon any second.

“Look, man,” Joe said calmly. “I don’t want any trouble. Why don’t we go inside and get a drink. Sit down and talk about what’s on your mind. I’m willing to listen to what you have to say.”

Rico bared his teeth. Definitely not interested in talking.

Joe spoke quietly. With the calm assurance of a man speaking the truth. “I’ve got to warn you, Rico. I can handle myself in a fight. This isn’t going to go down easy the way you think it will. You’re going to come out of this with mud on your face. Cari’s going to be furious that you attacked me. This is not going to win you any points with her. She’s going to demand that you be fired, and Eduardo might very well kill you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cari open her mouth to speak, but he made a subtle cutting gesture with his hand, ordering her to be silent. She caught the signal and subsided, frowning. Thank God. He needed to keep all of Rico’s attention on him and away from doing something stupid like grabbing Cari and putting a knife to her neck or a gun to her head.

“Think, Rico. There’s nothing but downside potential to this scenario. Walk away from it now. No harm, no foul.”

“I don’t think so,” the big man snarled. “You think you’re so fucking smart and can talk circles around me. But you’re a pissant punk in need of a lesson on the way things run around here. You can’t just stroll in and take over the joint.”

“I have no interest in taking over the joint,” Joe replied flatly, and hopefully loud enough for any surveillance cameras to pick up. He would love for Eduardo to hear that declaration out of him. He continued, “I’m telling you again. Turn around and walk away from this. You’ve got nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, pretty boy shithead. The boss rewards initiative. He wants to be rid of you. And the guy who steps up to the plate and takes care of the problem is going to be rewarded richly.”

If that was Rico’s reasoning, there was going to be no way around dropping this guy by force. Several movements behind the windows caught Joe’s eye. They’d already collected an audience inside the house. Now there was no way whatsoever that Rico would back down.

Joe spoke to Cari without taking his eyes off the bigger man. “Princess, is there some sort of first aid kit around here? A crash kit, maybe?”

“What’s that?” she asked, her voice vibrating with desperation. Lord, he hoped he could spare her the violence to come, but his gut said Rico wasn’t going to be that considerate. He did the next best thing. He tried to get her out of here.

“A crash kit is an extensive first aid kit,” he explained over his shoulder. “It usually comes in a good-size canvas bag or backpack, or maybe a box the size of a small trunk.”

She replied in dawning understanding, “Yes, of course. We’re a long way from the nearest hospital. We have all kinds of medical supplies.”

“I need you to go inside, sweetheart. Tell the first person you see to have Gunter fetch the crash kit and bring it out here. I’m going to need it to patch this numskull back together when I’m done with him.” Joe’s eyes narrowed. “That is, assuming he doesn’t piss me off enough that I decide to just kill him and be done with it.”

It was never good to go into a fight with the opponent sure that you wouldn’t kill them. Fear worked on a man’s mind. Ate at it. And Rico needed to taste fear today. A lot of it. Enough to scare the ever loving shit out of him. Or else, someday soon, he’d be back for more of the same.

Cari eased up out of her chaise and sidled away from the pool. When she was several yards away, she turned and ran for the house. Thank God. She was clear of the danger zone. And if he was really lucky, she wouldn’t have to witness what he was about to do.

He turned back to Rico. “Okay, Einstein. Let’s get this over with. Show me what you’ve got.”