The morning after Tony’s murder, every trace of the bloody event had disappeared. She couldn’t sleep in her room and had fled to Julia’s old bedroom to cower under the covers for most of the night.

But her clothes were in her own bedroom, and Julia’s petite frame meant none of her old clothes even came close to fitting Carina’s taller lankier frame.

She’d reluctantly opened her door and stopped in shock. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a stain left in Carina’s all-white bedroom when she returned to it, let alone a corpse for her to go to the police with.

Damn her father, anyway. She was abruptly so tired she could barely stand.

The stains and the corpse might be gone, but the memory of it overpowered her. The wetness. The smell. That obscene gash under his chin…

Her appetite over the next few days was nil, even though the cook prepared all of her favorite foods in an attempt to cajole her into eating. The servants all knew what had happened and seemed to have taken pity on her. She added humiliation to the roiling stew of grief and guilt and rage that filled her belly and her mind.

Tony was dead because of her.

She was poison. Anything she touched turned into something ugly. Toxic. It came with the Ferrare name, apparently.

Depression set in somewhere along the way.

And that was when she gave in to the despair. She was never leaving this place. Never escaping her father.

Whoever that stranger had been in the ocean that awful night, he couldn’t help her.

It took about two weeks, but eventually her friends and the tabloids started calling, wondering where she’d disappeared to. It was completely unlike her to stay home for weeks on end.

In a weird change of roles, it was her father who finally urged her to go out again. Over dinner on a Saturday night, he insisted that she go to a club. Dance. Smile for the cameras.

Asshole.

She didn’t for a second think he gave a damn about her mental health. But his image—now that was something he cared about.

Listlessly, she stood in her huge, walk-in closet and stared at her clothes. She chose a dress at random. Something red. To symbolize Tony’s blood.

She climbed into the limousine when it came around front to pick her up.

“Where to, Miss Cari?” Freddie asked her with uncharacteristic gentleness.

What the hell. “The Last Tango.”

Who was the mysterious man who’d saved her life, anyway? Joe. Thinking his name gave her a startling spark of hope, tonight. Was there a chance, even a miniscule one, that there might be a way to escape Eduardo?

She didn’t actually believe it. But she was willing to at least talk to the stranger. Listen to what he had to say. If Julia truly had sent him, at least he could tell her how her sister was doing. If Julia was happy, then she could die in peace.

For once, she was truly grateful for her high-profile party-girl image. Now she could only pray that Joe had kept his word and was still waiting for her to show up at the tango club.

She still had no idea who this Joe guy was. She’d asked a few of the maids if they’d ever heard Julia mention a friend named Joe, but none of them recognized the name.

Whether or not she could believe his story and trust him was another unknown. But it wasn’t like she had any choice. Eduardo had murdered her only trustworthy friend in Gavarone.

She prayed a dozen times on the ride to town that Joe had waited for her. She didn’t know if she could take another big disappointment right now.

He had to be here. He had to.

Curbing her impatience as the limousine and an SUV full of her father’s goons pulled to a stop in front of the upscale nightclub, she waited while Freddie and Neddie went inside to scope out the place. She knew the routine. They would check for exits and put a man on each one so she couldn’t make an escape, and they would make sure the customers didn’t include any known enemies of her father’s.

By the time they finally came back to let her out of the car, she was a jangling bundle of nerves. “Gentlemen,” she asked the pair as politely as she could muster around the tightness in her throat, “may I please have a little privacy tonight to enjoy myself in peace?”

The two men exchanged a glance. Freddie growled grudgingly, “You can go upstairs. There’s a bar and a small dance floor up there and only the one staircase for access. We’ll stay downstairs.”

“Thank you, Alfredo,” she murmured gratefully. Please be here, please be here, please be here…

A gaping Neddie lurched into motion as she moved past him, falling in behind her.

She stopped just inside the door. The place gave the impression of an old-fashioned ballroom, with abundant gilding, mirrors and crystal chandeliers. High-tech lighting, a modern bar and a stage for a band kept it from being an old-fogey joint. She looked around carefully and didn’t see anyone remotely resembling that shadowed face from the ocean. Her heart leaped into her throat. He had to be here!

She’d been to this club a few times, but she certainly wouldn’t call it one of her regular haunts. It was more mature—classier—than the places she usually chose. She usually gravitated toward clubs that were wilder. Raunchy. Although, truth be told, she preferred places like this. But the other kind of club aggravated the living shit out of her father.

Freddie nodded toward the stairs and she flew up them like there were rockets on her feet. The bar was located at the far end of a wide mezzanine, flanking a long, narrow dance floor that ran the length of the balcony. True to the club’s name, about once an hour a set of tangos played, and one was in progress now. She dodged promenading couples and made her way over to the gleaming mahogany bar. She bellied up to it and leaned forward to talk to the bartender under cover of the tango playing behind her.

“I’m here to meet a guy named Joe. Have you seen him, by any chance?” She prayed the bartender wouldn’t ask her for more details because she hadn’t actually registered much about Joe that crazy night.

She needn’t have worried. The second she uttered his name, the bartender’s eyebrows shot up to somewhere in the vicinity of his hairline. He stared at her with open curiosity. “Over there.” He lifted his chin in the direction of a booth and added, “I thought for sure you stood him up after all this time, but he kept saying you’d show.”

Joe was here. He’d waited for her.

Abject gratitude at this stranger’s perseverance flooded her, and she blinked away tears of relief.

A new set of jitters attacked her as she turned in the direction the bartender had indicated.

Over there. In a booth tucked into the darkest corner of the room.

What would he look like, her mysterious savior? She’d been pretty freaked out that night, but she did recall that he was incredibly strong, and his eyes had looked black in the moonlight. His voice had been gravelly, but that might’ve been from the cold water and the dry oxygen in his scuba tank.

Julia had sent him, he’d said. Please be real. Please be real…

How had he known she would come racing out into the ocean like she had? Was he some sort of mind reader?

She approached Joe from an oblique angle, taking a moment to study him before he spotted her. The first thing she noticed was his thick, dark hair. Its silky, sable waves begged a girl to run her fingers through them. And his face—a plastic surgeon would kill to create a nose that straight or a jaw that firm. His age was hard to peg. Maybe thirty. Except his eyes looked older than that. But his tanned skin was so smooth and taut that she could easily be wrong by five years in either direction.

He glanced over toward her just then, his eyes not showing the faintest recognition. Startled, she watched as his gaze slid past her cautiously, and only when he saw she was alone did his gaze return to her.

He smiled.

Oh, Lord, he was so gorgeous it almost hurt to look at him.

He slipped smoothly out of the booth and stood up, waiting for her. Tall. Six foot two, maybe. Lean. But muscular. Physically fit. As in really fit. Wow. Just wow. She was a sucker for a good set of biceps, and his were perfect. Bulging with power but not too over-the-top obnoxious.

She walked toward him, hyper-aware of her body; of how she tingled everywhere his gaze touched her. For the first time since the murder, she actually felt alive.

Joe’s smoky gaze slid downward slowly and thoroughly, approval registering as he lifted his gaze once more. She was completely mesmerized by the way his dark eyes looked straight into her soul. He all but consumed her with that intense look.

Get a grip, girlfriend. He’s only a guy.

A little voice in the back of her head whispered, Yeah, but what a guy.

He wore competence like a cloak enfolding him, but it did nothing to hide the sex appeal rolling off of him.

She could seriously see herself devouring him whole, which was completely unlike her. Although she was a flirt and physically uninhibited when she was out in public, she also cultivated a more accurate image of herself as being untouchable. The unattainable prize. As such, she never threw herself at any man, or let any man actually get too close to her.

But this guy. Without putting to fine a point on it, he was to die for.

The thought jolted her. She wasn’t about to die for him, and she bloody well had no intention of letting him die for her. One soul was already more than her conscience could bear. She didn’t need any more blood on her hands.

He grasped her elbow politely and guided her to a seat in the booth. He slid in across from her and smiled again. Handsome didn’t even come close to describing him. Hypnotic was more like it.

“Miss Ferrare, my name’s Joe Smith.” His voice was like melted chocolate, rich and dark and warm.

Somehow, she managed to refrain from fanning herself with the nearest thing at hand. “Uh, nice to meet you officially. I’m Carina Ferrare. But you already know that, don’t you? My friends call me Cari, but I’ll bet you know that, too…”

She realized she was babbling and cut off speaking, abruptly. Good grief, she sounded like some teenaged airhead.

“Like I said before,” he continued easily, “your sister sent me to rescue you from your father.”

Alarm shot through her. The very fact that he’d just uttered those words made him a target of her father’s wrath. She couldn’t help but glance nervously over her shoulder at the stairs. No sign of Freddie and Neddie. Whew.

“How do you know my sister?” she asked cautiously.

“She’s engaged to a friend of mine. And she’s very worried about your safety.”

“Julia’s engaged? To whom? When did that happen? Why didn’t she tell me?”

It was so implausible to imagine her sister meeting some guy and falling for him in a few weeks’ time that she almost laughed. If this guy was lying, he would have to come up with something a whole lot more believable than that.

The man called Joe smiled again. “Julia’s going to marry a guy named Jim. He’s a friend of mine. A good man. As for when, I don’t think they’ve set a date, yet. Things happened pretty fast between them.”

“How did she do it?”

Joe frowned. “How did she fall in love? Who knows? These things just happen.”

Carina laughed. “No. How did Julia get away?”

Chagrin flashed across Joe’s features, lowering his guard for a moment and drawing her to him even more potently than his physical beauty.

“Ah. As I understand it, she contacted some people in the U.S. government who helped her escape from your father.”

She narrowly eyed the man across from her. He was built like a soldier, as disciplined in his reactions as a soldier, and he’d been floating around in the ocean, wearing the high-tech diving gear a soldier would have. She took a chance. “Don’t you mean she contacted the Blackjacks? You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

Joe leaned back, staring at her evenly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said flatly.

Yeah, right. The denial clinched it. This guy was definitely a soldier from the Special Forces team that was her father’s nemesis. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d listened to Eduardo rant about the Blackjacks and what a pain in the ass they were.

Hope flared in her chest. If Joe was part of the Blackjacks, she might just stand a chance of getting away, after all.

He interrupted her thoughts. “The important thing is that your sister’s safe and happy. She’s worried about you, though. She thinks it’s imperative that you get away from your father sooner rather than later.”

Relief and joy reverberated in Carina’s chest, along with a hint of envy. Julia had done it. She’d slipped out from under their father’s oppressive control. No more acting as his bookkeeper, no more house arrest, no more gorillas following her everywhere she went.

More to the point: no worries about friends turning up dead in her bed.

Cari replied wryly, “I think it’s imperative that I get away from my father, too.”

“What’s the rush?” Joe asked lightly.

A shudder of lingering horror whisked down Cari’s spine. She still couldn’t sleep with the lights turned off. For the first week after Tony’s death, she couldn’t even walk into her room for more than a minute or two at a time.

She still had to have a light on to even step inside what had become a ghost chamber to her. Her father refused to let her move out of the room and had called her a coward for being frightened of her own bedroom, so she’d been sleeping awkwardly on the loveseat in the corner.

A pair of warm hands gripped her icy fingers. “Hey. Are you okay? You look a little rattled.”

She took a tremulous breath. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude.”

A melting smile. “I’m just glad you’re here. I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t come.”

She sighed. “It took me this long to get out of the house. As it is, a whole carload of my dad’s thugs are with me. Freddie and Neddie, my usual bodyguards, are downstairs, and there are guys stationed at every exit.”

Joe frowned slightly. “Then I guess we won’t be making our escape from here, tonight.”

Cari blinked. “You’re serious? You were really expecting to whisk me away just like that?”

He shrugged. “It would’ve been nice if it were that easy. A guy can always hope, can’t he?”

She was silent while a waitress approached and set a glass of mineral water in front of her. She fiddled with the wedge of lemon perched on the lip of the glass, bemused by Joe’s choice of drinks for her. Most men plied her with booze to help along the cause of getting into the sack with a famous party girl.

The waitress retreated and Cari said, “My father’s a really powerful man. Dangerous.” She added for emphasis, “Deadly dangerous.”

“I know.”

Joe’s quietly uttered words made her look up at him sharply. His gaze was sympathetic, but it was something else, too. Intelligent. Razor-sharp. This guy knew exactly who and what her father was.

“I have to warn you, Joe. Anyone who crosses my father ends up dead. As in six feet under.”

Another calm nod.

“And you still want to try to rescue me?” she asked incredulously. This guy was definitely in the Blackjacks. Either that or he was nuts.

“Yup. Except I’m not just going to try. I’m going to succeed.”

“How?” she asked in escalating disbelief. Even if he was in the Blackjacks, her father’s security measures were legendary. She was guarded around the clock, and if Joe tangled with her father’s men, he and possibly a whole lot of innocent bystanders would end up dead.

“I have a plan,” he said mildly. “Would you like something stronger to drink?” He looked across the room, trying to get the attention of a waitress.

Nobody plotted against her father this casually. “Which is it?”

He looked back at her in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“Which is it? Are you insane or brain dead to cross my father on his home turf?”

Joe draped an arm across the back of the booth. The tanned limb was wreathed in muscles that made her gulp. He asked lightly, “Have you considered the possibility that I’m actually capable of taking on a man like your father and winning?”

She snorted. “Nobody’s that good.” Not even if he was in the Blackjacks.

“I am.”

Again, he spoke with a quiet certainty that stopped her cold. Was he that good? Could it be? Had her despairing pleas to a heretofore deaf God finally been answered? In a daze, she ordered an American-style iced tea while he asked for another glass of water.

After the waitress left, she asked him bluntly, “Who are you?”

He completely ignored the question, saying instead, “So, Cari. Tell me about a typical day for you at your father’s house.”

Over the next half hour, she answered his every question, and there were dozens of them. Even though they were pleasantly delivered, they amounted to nothing less than an all-out interrogation.

Finally, Joe pushed back his empty glass and stared at the bad Van Gogh reproduction on the wall above their booth. He sat that way for a long time, and she didn’t break his intense concentration. What would it be like to have all that attention focused on her? A tingling started low in her belly that made her squirm against the vinyl seat.

His gaze shifted to her, pinning her in place. “Well, Cari, I don’t see any feasible way for you to get out of your father’s house and leave with me without tipping off Eduardo’s goons…and hence, blocking all our escape routes. I’ve been watching you for weeks and your father’s security is close to impregnable. Worse, we’re in Gavarone, on his turf, like you said. His informants are everywhere.”

Disappointment slammed into her, flattening her fleeting hopes. For a minute there, she’d thought she might actually have a chance. Why, oh why, had Joe stopped her from drowning if he couldn’t come through for her now?

“So,” he continued casually, “I guess we’re just going to have to go with my original plan. I’m going to come inside the walls and rescue you with your father’s blessing, more or less.”

She stared at him in shock. “How in the hell are you planning to do that?”

“I’m coming into your father’s house and getting you out myself,” he said with quiet finality.

“You’re going to break into my father’s house? Didn’t you hear what I said? The place is an armed fortress.”

“I’m not going to break in. I’m going to infiltrate the place. I’ll come in with a cover story and get inside that way.”

She frowned. “My father doesn’t hire just anybody. Nobody gets close to him personally unless they’ve worked for his organization for years and proven their loyalty a hundred times over.”

Joe nodded. “True, but he doesn’t completely control who gets close to you.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

A slow smile curved his mouth and the thought of kissing it all but made her swoon. “How do you feel about getting married?” he asked.

“Married?” she echoed, clearly one step behind in this conversation. “To whom?”

“Me.”

The room swirled around her and she grabbed the edge of the table as dizziness practically knocked her over. “We hardly know each other,” she choked out.

“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and I think it could work. You have a reputation for being—” he paused delicately “—impulsive.”

Now there was an understatement.

Joe was talking again. “I’m betting your father isn’t too crazy about your wild child behavior. Am I right?”

She snorted. “He hates the way I act. Have you seen the way my bodyguards are plastered to me, chasing off any guy who gets near me? Trust me. Daddy dearest despises my…lifestyle choices. And he’s doing everything he can to change them.”

Joe nodded. “Perfect. I’m proposing that I sweep you off your feet and single-handedly mend your wild ways.”

Whoa. Now there was a thought. Tempting, actually.

“It’ll all be an act,” he added.

Her stomach—and her fleeting hopes—plummeted. Well, hell.

He continued, “You and I will elope. After we’ve had a whirlwind romance, of course.”

Of course.

Joe continued. “I’m betting your father will let me into his house in profound gratitude that someone else will finally be responsible for curbing your wild ways. In effect, he’ll transfer responsibility for keeping you on the straight and narrow from his pet gorillas to me.”

She blinked, startled at the depth of insight into her father that his idea showed. It might just work.

But…a husband?

As much as she would love to play along with that particular little fantasy, she replied reluctantly, “He’d never buy it. He would see right through a story like that, not to mention he would check it out thoroughly. And then he would slit your throat….” She gagged as bile leaped into her throat at the idea of another man, this man, lying dead in her bed, bleeding from a horrible gash in his neck. She slammed a napkin to her mouth as she narrowly avoided throwing up.

Joe’s dark eyebrows slammed together abruptly. “My God,” he breathed. “Is that what happened?”

She frowned at him, unsure what he was asking.

He leaned forward and reached for her hands, gripping her fingers tightly. “Is that why you ran out into the ocean like that? Whose throat did your father slit?”

Wow, this guy was sharp. He’d made that leap of logic look easy.

Did she dare tell this man? Did she dare trust him? God knew, the knowledge of what had happened to Tony could get him killed. But he did seem like the sort who could take care of himself…

She took a deep breath. “My friend Tony. He was going to help me escape. But my father killed him.”

She clutched Joe’s big, callused hands desperately. “That’s why I can’t agree to your plan. I don’t want you to end up dead in my bed, either.”

Joe’s eyes went black. Hard and flat. Gone was the warm, sympathetic man she’d been talking with. “Your father killed this guy in your bed?” he bit out.

She nodded, suddenly afraid of the cold man seated across from her, radiating violence.

He cursed viciously under his breath, so low she barely caught the muttered oath. And then he leaned forward, staring at her intensely. “This changes everything. If your father has turned his violence on you, you’re in more danger than you can imagine. You are going to agree to marry me. As soon as it can be arranged. And I am going to get you out of there. Got it?”

She blinked at the icy authority in his tone. He wore it easily. Like a man who’d given orders before and expected them to be followed. Where had the quiet, kind, sympathetic man disappeared to all of a sudden? Who was Joe Smith? And what was he?

She answered her own questions. Did it really matter who or what Joe was as long as he could help her?

Aloud, she said, “I need to talk to Julia. To confirm who you are.”

Joe blinked, but to his credit, he answered evenly, “All right.”

He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and dialed a phone number. “Hey, Dutch, it’s Joe.”

What kind of name was Dutch? A nickname, maybe?

“Yeah, I’m sitting with her, right now. She wants to talk to her sister.”

He waited in silence and she watched him cautiously. Not real chatty, these Blackjacks. And then he held the phone out to her.

Eagerly, she put it to her ear. “Julia?”

She all but cried in relief at the sound of her sister’s voice in her ear, sobbing, “Cari? Is that you? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Are you all right?”

Julia laughed and then made a little sound of pain as if laughing hurt. “Oh, yes. I’m fine. More than fine. But you need to leave Gavarone, honey. Get away from Eduardo.”

“I got that memo a while back, Sis,” Cari retorted dryly. “But you and I both know that’s easier said than done.” Then she asked seriously, “Did you send Joe to help me?”

“Yes, I did. And you’re welcome—he’s a hunk, isn’t he? I thought he might be your type.”

Cari grinned. “You got that right.”

“He’ll take care of you. Trust me. Trust him.”

Cari looked up as Joe leaned forward and murmured, “That’s long enough. I don’t want the call traced.”

She said into the phone, “Apparently, we can’t talk anymore or this call might get traced. I love you, J.J. And thanks.”

A laugh. “You’re welcome. I love you, too. Take care, and get out of there. Now.”

Cari handed the phone back to Joe, who tucked it in his shirt pocket.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

How could she not be? Her sister had sent this gorgeous stranger to save her life. If Julia trusted him, why in the world shouldn’t she?

“So,” he asked lightly, “will you marry me?”

Joe waited tensely for Cari’s response to his question, his freaking marriage proposal. His gut tied itself in knots at the very thought.

The other guys on the team hadn’t liked the idea, either. It was fraught with risks. But he’d been doing ’round-the-clock surveillance on the Ferrare compound for over a month now, and not once—not once— had he found a weak spot in the bastard’s security measures.

If Cari refused to go for the fake marriage thing, he and the rest of the Blackjacks had no idea what to try next. And after that little bombshell she’d just dropped about her father killing Tony—whoever the hell he was—the team had no choice but to move fast.

The Blackjacks had considered and tossed out dozens of plans. And it always came back to this one: the only way to get Cari out without putting her life in serious jeopardy was for someone to infiltrate the Ferrare fortress, learn the security system from the inside, and sneak her out by cunning. And even then, it was going to be one hell of a trick to pull off.

The only positive was that Eduardo’s security was set up to keep bad guys out, not good guys in. It ought to be possible to move Cari out from under her father’s nose if Joe was careful and quick when the time came.

A few days ago, Colonel Foley had run this marriage idea past the Blackjacks’s consulting psychiatrist, and she’d assured him that Ferrare would be desperate to hand over control of his uncontrollable daughter to someone else. She was certain Ferrare would leap at the idea of a son-in-law to rein in Carina.

Still, Colonel Foley had resisted the eloping scheme—that is, until the psychiatrist had dropped the other shoe. She predicted that Eduardo Ferrare would kill his daughter rather than let anyone take her away from him. The only possible exception might be if Eduardo gave his daughter away to someone of his own free will—as in approving of a marriage. Reluctantly, the colonel had green-lighted the op.

Now, Joe just had to get Carina to go for it.

“Okay,” she breathed.

“Okay what?” he asked cautiously. He needed to hear her say the words.

“I’ll marry you, Joe. But there’s one thing…”

Christ, his pulse had just shot up like a rocket. “What’s that?” he asked, much more calmly than he felt.

“It has to be a real wedding. My father will demand proof, and he’ll verify it himself. We won’t be able to pull off faking it. We’ll have to actually exchange vows and get a marriage license—the whole nine yards.”

Panic speared into him, followed by an involuntary surge of exultation at the idea of possessing this beauty for himself. And then his brain kicked into gear. Get a grip, buddy. This is just a mission. They would get an annulment as soon as she was clear of her father. She was a Ferrare, after all. No way in hell would he ever legally tie himself to a criminal empire like Eduardo’s.

Although, now that he’d met her face-to-face, Carina wasn’t what he’d expected. She seemed more…human. Less of a princess. He’d expected a phony, shallow girl. But the young woman before him was intelligent. Self-possessed. Genuinely worried about her sister. This human being had seen suffering in her life. Her eyes looked much older than he knew her years to be.

He gathered his thoughts and replied belatedly, “No problem. We’ll do a real wedding.” Now, why did his throat go tight when he said that? “Anything else?” he choked out.

She frowned, chewing on her full, pink lower lip. An urge to kiss that luscious mouth nearly sent Joe around to her side of the booth. God, she was beautiful. And young. Way too damned young for him. Nine years too young, to be precise. He was thirty-three and she was twenty-four.

Her sultry purr interrupted his train of thought. “We need to be seen together around town, so we can claim to have met and fallen in love. You can bet my father’s going to want independent confirmation that you’re for real.”

For real. He’d been working undercover for so long he wasn’t even sure he knew who he was for real. Regardless, there was no way he would reveal his true identity. Not to Eduardo, who’d kill him for it, and certainly not to Carina. He had no way of knowing if she could keep a secret or not, and he dared not stake his life on it.

Her guess that he was part of the Blackjacks was impressive, but he wasn’t about to confirm it. To his knowledge, Julia hadn’t identified him as a Blackjack member to Cari. Listening to her end of the call, it hadn’t come up in the brief conversation. But he would need to confirm that with Dutch. He made a mental note to do it tomorrow.

Joe said aloud, “A whirlwind romance will be difficult to stage since your father never lets you off your leash.”

She shrugged. “Then we’ll have to figure out something else. I’m not going to do this unless I’m sure you won’t be in danger.”

Joe snorted mentally. Not in any danger? Infiltrating the inner sanctum of the most dangerous criminal the Blackjacks had ever run up against? Dangerous wasn’t quite the word for it.

Now that he was physically sitting in front of the target, the reality of what he’d gotten himself into hit him full force. This could easily turn out to be the most horrendous assignment of his career. Not only could the father kill him, but the maverick daughter was a complete wild card in the equation.

He’d already made one huge tactical mistake with her: he’d told her his real name. At least she didn’t know his real last name, but it was bad enough that she knew him as Joe. When they’d been out in the ocean and she was so panicked, so lost, and had asked who he was, his real name had just popped out.

Now that he’d met her again, his misgivings deepened. The pull of attraction he felt toward her was unmistakable and alarming. Could he trust himself to keep a level head around her? Could he really masquerade as her husband—her husband—and not end up in serious trouble?

Did he have any choice? If the Blackjacks wanted to nail Eduardo Ferrare, they needed Julia’s testimony, and the only way to get it was for someone to rescue this girl.

Maybe the colonel’s idea that they lure Cari and Eduardo’s goons to an isolated location and just shoot it out with the bastards was a better idea. Except Cari could end up getting caught in the crossfire, and she was a one-hundred-percent nonexpendable asset. She had to be kept alive at all costs. He shuddered at the idea of bullets ripping through her satin skin, ruining her luscious flesh….

Jeez, he was already in trouble. He’d been with her for less than an hour and his imagination was running away with him. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. A fake marriage was the only thing he could think of to place himself close enough to ensure her safety and get her out alive.

He asked briskly, “Do you have access to e-mail? A cell phone?”

“Limited— and definitely spied upon e-mail, yes. Cell phone, no. My father took my phone away after…”

He nodded in understanding, his jaw tight. The e-mail was a little help, at any rate. They could strike up an Internet acquaintance. “If I can come up with ways to bump into you and be seen with you in public, maybe go out with you a few times, then you’ll go through with it?”

She nodded, her gaze wary. She didn’t like the risk involved with his plan. Not that he could blame her. Neither did he, although probably for completely different reasons. In the final analysis, he was possibly more afraid of her than of her father.

He returned her nod and said lightly, “Then it’s a deal.”

He had no idea whatsoever how he was going to pull off courting Cari Ferrare. She was a prisoner in her father’s home. But he would make it happen. He had to. The bastard had slit her boyfriend’s throat in her own bed, for God’s sake. He shoved back the rage that bubbled up in his gut at the thought.

He knew better than to let his natural empathy get the best of him. He might be a medic for the Blackjacks, but on this op he was the primary operator. He had a sneaking suspicion he was in for some bloodshed before it was all said and done.

Joe pulled the paper napkin out from under his water glass, scribbled on it and shoved the paper across the table. “This is my cell phone number and e-mail address. You and I met tonight. You were accidentally seated at the table I’d reserved and we ended up sharing it. Make sure you mention me casually to your father over breakfast, or whenever it is you have cozy family conversations with him.”

Cari’s lovely mouth twitched at that one. “Cozy? My father?” A giggle escaped her and, for just a second, she looked like the dazzlingly beautiful, carefree young woman she ought to be. Of course, with the sights she’d probably seen in her father’s home and the hard living she’d already done, it was no wonder she acted older than her years.

An errant urge to protect her from any more hurt washed over him. Well, buddy, that’s exactly what you get to do. There was just the small matter of keeping his own throat from being slit in the process.

“Call me tomorrow if you can get access to a phone,” he instructed her. “Thank me for the pleasant conversation we had. There’s no need to be secretive about it.”

She laughed lightly. “I’m glad there’s no need for secrecy because every phone in the house is monitored.”

“Perfect. I’ll ask if we can go out again some time, and I’ll try to set up a date. Okay?”

“I don’t know if my father will let me keep the date, but I’ll try.”

“Just try to keep the tone of the call casual. Nothing that might arouse his suspicion. If your father objects, tell him you should go out with somebody now and then, for appearances’ sake. People will start talking if you never show your face in public anymore. It’ll draw too much attention to him.”

Cari looked startled at the tactic he suggested. Her gaze lit with admiration, and she looked like she was wondering whether he was psychic or just really smart. No need to tell her that a team of psychologists and behavior analysts had studied her father exhaustively and briefed him thoroughly about Eduardo.

She took a deep breath and nodded gamely. “Okay.”

He had to admit it. She was a brave woman. They slid out of the booth and stood up simultaneously, abruptly coming chest to chest. She stared up at him like he was some sort of conquering god, and damned if he didn’t feel like one for a second.

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Everything’s going to be fine. I promise.”

He could swear her eyes filled with tears as she turned away, but she spun around so quickly he couldn’t be sure. He watched her slender back retreat with quiet dignity down the sweeping staircase and out of sight.

He gave her enough of a head start to collect her goons and leave before he made his way out to the delivery van parked behind the club. With a careful look around to make sure nobody had followed him, he slipped into the passenger seat.

After the white van pulled out into traffic, he pushed aside a curtain and crawled into the high-tech surveillance setup in the back. As he pulled the microphone and battery pack out from under his shirt, he asked his boss over the body mike, “Did you get all that?”

He could hear the scowl in Colonel Tom Foley’s voice as he answered, “Yeah. I got it. And I still think you’re nuts.”